She scans the walls, reading all the familiar phrases. Hey Fabia! That one makes her wince, thinking of how little life changes. On 15th June, Hermeros, Phileterus and Caphisus fucked here. She is happy to have missed that particular night—handling a group of men is usually hideous. She passes on to happier messages. Hail, Victoria the Conqueror! Victoria, Unconquered! The praise makes her smile. She wouldn’t be surprised if Victoria dictated it herself. Amara squats on the floor, looking for her favorite scrawl. An anonymous act of rebellion half-hidden at the base of the bed. Felix takes it up the arse for 5 asses. She wonders what happened to the woman who wrote it.

Another message catches her eye, its letters large and jagged. I FUCKED. She stares at it. The words look like an act of physical aggression, a reminder of her own powerlessness. She opens her father’s bag, searching for the broken stylus she once picked up in the street. It has already come in useful. She used it to draw a bird in her own cell the other day, a small act of defiance against the endless fucking and sucking that hems her in. She walks over to the message, starts to gouge into the stone, her hand shaking with anger. A man’s profile takes shape, the letters of the boast becoming his forehead, transforming his own words into a slave brand.

She steps back to look at her picture. But all her rage was spent in the carving, and now it’s done, she finds that staring at a branded face doesn’t make her feel better. Victoria will probably hate it. She flops down on the floor. How long is it since she left the Palaestra? One hour? Two? The day feels endless.

Amara leans back against the stone bed. At home, she would have had actual books to read: her father’s medical texts, natural history, poetry—verses of idealized love, rather than the crude variety now splattered all over her walls. She starts to recite Odysseus’s meeting with Nausicaa from memory, but the sound of her own voice makes her feel even lonelier. She remembers singing a version of that story for her parents. Amara closes her eyes. She holds her arms out, imagining the shape of her old lyre, moves her fingers over the nonexistent strings.

“First door on the left!” It’s Gallus. He is warning her to expect company as much as giving directions to the customer. She scrambles to her feet. A stranger appears in the doorway, making the cell even darker. Amara smiles at him, tilting her head the way Victoria does, letting her cloak slip off one shoulder.

“You’d better be worth the money,” he says.