Chapter Text
Nica was thirsty, and her bottom was sore after many hours of stillness. She wanted to stretch, wanted to stand and reach her body as tall as it would go towards the heavens—towards Mamma and Felix—, wanted to run through the streets just to feel a breeze on her face.
But Nica was working.
“Spare a coin, sir?”
The man—elderly and poorly clothed, but well fed—walked on, ignoring Nica’s pleas for a few extra sesterces. Her clay cup sat empty but for a pair of coins which clanged against one another as Nica shook the cup at passing strangers. Her small, slender frame was tucked under the awning of a fruit stand, its owner long retired for the evening. Nica and Woola had been stationed in the square for two days, watching an apartment on Aventine Hill. For two days, no one had come or gone from the dwelling, and Nica knew if the woman did not reveal herself soon, Tenax was going to be in a foul mood.
“Any spare coin, lady?” Nica asked at another passerby, her little hands reaching upward to offer her cup. “Please, I am hungry.”
The ruse was a familiar one. Tenax had taught it to Felix—a way to remain invisible even when there was nowhere to hide, the city does not see the needy—, and her brother had taught it to her. Usually, her gentle begging went unheard, but this evening, with the moon fat and low in the sky, she had scraped a few sesterces together, enough to buy an apple from the stand tomorrow—or perhaps a honeyed cake, if the woman in front of her deigned to drop a coin in her cup.
“You are awfully little to be out so late.”
“I have nowhere else to go, lady.”
The woman was fair of skin and tall—but then, all adults were tall to Nica—, and she bore a burgundy cloak, the hood of which covered her hair and cast shadows over her face. She had pleasant features, Nica decided, and when the child smiled up at the stranger, the woman smiled back, then reached inside her cloak.
Nica strained to listen for the tell-tale jingle of a coin purse.
“Find a bed for tonight. Rain is coming.” The lady dropped two coins in Nica’s cup, and the girl’s eyes widened at the generosity. In earnest, Nica thanked her, already looking forward to the sweet and soft honey cake tomorrow, and when the stranger turned, the trail of her cloak tickled the girl’s knees.
Nica’s gaze followed the woman as she crossed the square, pausing to sip from the fountain, before she entered the very apartment upon which Nica and Woola were spying.
The girl waited for several moments after the woman entered the derelict dwelling before she glanced across the square to the staircase where Woola was hiding. She knew he would’ve seen the woman, too, and Nica waited with bated breath until—
There. The swooping whistle. The signal.
Standing, Nica dumped the coins from her cup into her pocket, discarded the clay dish, and ran.
Lucretia was, frankly, fucking sick of Rome.
The great general Titus was dead, and with his madman of a brother ascending the curule throne, rumors of assassination and revolt swirled in the Eternal City’s sewers. Instead of addressing the speculations of his brother’s murder, the littlest Flavian had announced an endless series of games. Races to pay tribute to his late brother, bloodsport to welcome himself as emperor—all an elaborate ruse to satisfy the mob’s bloodlust, a tidy and convenient distraction as the city itself threatened to collapse around them.
Nothing but bread and circuses—however, Lucretia had to admit that the capital’s near constant state of upheaval had been very good for business as of late.
Slipping out of her cloak with a groan, Lucretia lowered herself into a chair in her modest kitchen to inspect the damage. She poked at her stomach and chest, testing for breaks as her ribs throbbed with pain, and eyed the bruised flesh of her left arm. The night before had seen Lucretia tackled out of an open window by a man the size of Mount Vesuvius. A ground-floor window, thank the gods, but a window, nonetheless—and it had fucking hurt.
Reaching for the carafe of wine on the table, Lucretia didn’t bother with a cup and drank straight from the vessel. The wine was warm, the air inside her humble apartment hot and thick as it always was in the summer. She prayed the coming rains would cool the rooms in the night so that she might sleep well. Her aching body certainly needed the recovery.
The sudden sound of a knock on the door echoed like thunder throughout the small space, and Lucretia reached for the knife on her belt on instinct.
Silently, she slipped over to the window and peaked out from the shadows into the square below. It was empty still. Moving to the door, Lucretia double checked that her second and third knives remained secured to her person, before she called through the thick wood, “Who is it?”
“A man looking to buy a white horse.”
Lucretia stiffened at the phrase. It was the code she used with her clients—a reference to the white horses of Diana, goddess of the hunt—, but no one in Aventine knew of her profession, and none of her clients knew where she lived. Pressing an ear against the door, Lucretia listened and tried to estimate the number of men in the corridor.
It was alarmingly quiet.
At her silence, the visitor drawled in a tone managing to be both entirely disinterested and utterly impatient, “Open up, Cretia. It’s me.”
Knife still firm at hand, Lucretia unbolted the door and let it swing open. She dangled the blade before him. “Well, if it isn’t the plebian slum lord of Subura himself. To what do I owe the honor?”
Tenax raised a pointed brow. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Lucretia stepped back to allow him entry, and Tenax swept inside to hover in the cramped space between her bed and kitchen table, the hint of a frown twisting at his mouth. “I see you still enjoy living like a bottom dweller, despite your successes.”
“Perhaps, I have other use for my coin.” She elected not to confess that she preferred smaller lodgings. That her previous homes—larger and more impressive in style—had made her sick with loneliness. “It’s been a long time…”
“It has.” Tenax dropped onto a seat at the table, helping himself to a cup of wine without the pretense of invitation, and gestured her side. “That looks fresh.”
“It is.”
Nearly three summers had passed since Lucretia had last laid eyes on Tenax. A former slave, Tenax had been beautiful as a boy. Head thick with dark curls, eyes blue as the Tyrrhenian Sea—but being pretty as a child meant that Tenax was sought after by the worst sort of men. As he grew into manhood, Tenax had worked diligently to make his body strong, to destroy the softness which made him desirable. As a man, he was handsome still, though now in a thuggish sort of way—his nose a little too broken, his scruff a little too wild.
But there was nothing he could do to hide those pretty cerulean eyes.
“You look…old.”
Tenax huffed a laugh of surprise. “This city takes from us in more ways than one…” he replied with a grin. Then, it was his turn to study her, and Lucretia forced herself not to squirm under his knowing stare. When she was a girl, Tenax had been able to read her without effort. Though she had grown wiser and better in the arts of deception in the years since, Lucretia suspected she nevertheless remained transparent to the street hustler. Finally, Tenax murmured, “You look beautiful, as always.”
Lucretia had heard such honeyed words her entire life, yet the words had always weighed more when it was Tenax who spoke them so. She slipped onto the chair beside his and reached for the wine once more. “How did you find me? Was it the girl—one of yours? I should have known…I gave that little shit two coins.”
Tenax gifted her a wolfish grin. “You fall for the doe eyes every time. Always have.”
“I am known to be fond of pretty eyes.”
His smile was small but sincere over his wine cup. Not one to linger in small talk, Tenax said, jovially, “I heard you poisoned a senator’s mistress.”
“I heard Dacia was dead.”
Lucretia tracked the discomfort as it bloomed behind Tenax’s eyes and spread over his shoulders, a blanket of anger and grief stitching itself together. “Yes. Murdered by the sins of my past.” A muscle twitched in Tenax’s jaw where he’d clenched his teeth. “Noro, too, the betrayer.”
“He always was a coward…I’m sorry for Dacia’s loss and that of your dear Scorpus, as well.”
“Scorpus was a drunk and a whoremonger, but he was my friend, and as you know, those are rare to come by for people like us.”
“And yet, now you’re living high in his villa on Esquiline Hill, so perhaps condolences are not in order after all.”
Tenax snorted, bitterly, and met her with a hard stare. “Perhaps, it is you who has spies all over the city.”
“No spies. But you’ll remember, I am very good at listening.”
“It’s what makes you so good at your job.”
“And so, we’ve come to it.” When Tenax raised his brow in question, Lucretia seized the carafe of wine to refill her cup. “You did not come here to chat with an old friend. Because it is always business with you, Tenax. So, a job then. What use have you of me…? Seeing as our beloved Titus is already dead.”
Several heartbeats passed as her words settled on the table between them. Tenax’s features remained cooled as he spoke, voice low and controlled, “That is quite the accusation.”
Lucretia had known men with ambition her entire life. Though her father never wanted more than the land he farmed and the wood in his hearth, her uncles had always been greedy little men with more appetite than good sense. Moreover, in the days since she had left Naples for the Roman capital, Lucretia had known men and women who would, like the great god Saturn, eat their own children just to get a half a step further in the life.
And every single one of those monsters paled in comparison in the face of Tenax’s hunger.
“Always so unsatiable.” Blue eyes bore into her own green gaze, and Lucretia reached a placating hand to rest atop his arm. She squeezed once and held firm. A truce. “Enough. What care do I have for dead emperors? Now, tell me why you have come.”
Lucretia sat—not entirely comfortably—under Tenax’s calculating gaze until the man finally relaxed the tense of his shoulders, the stiffness of his spine. “There is a gladiatrix in the arena. I have a vested interest in keeping her alive. I need you enroll in the Ludus Magnus and protect her until she can win the wooden sword.”
“You are now the Aedile Ludi, are you not? And a personal client of Flavius Domitianus. Can you not simply free the girl yourself?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I could.” Things are more complicated than they seem. It was one of the first lessons she’d learned in the bowels of the Circus Maximus. “I will pay you handsomely—”
“I have enough money, Tenax.”
“Then, consider it—” The man paused and glared out the window. When he looked back, it was with regret that he did so. “—a favor.”
Lucretia met Tenax when she was a young woman, nearly fifteen summers and alone as a newcomer in Rome. Five summers older, Tenax was already acting as a thug for hire for the betting taverns, mostly collecting past due debts, and operating low stakes gambling schemes of his own. He employed many of the younger strays of the Circus Maximus, giving them a coin here and there to throw stones at debtors or distract Praetorian guards. When Lucretia arrived in empire’s capital, fresh off a caravan from Naples following the death of her mother, it was Tenax who saved her from a rape at the hands of a drunken stableman that first night, and in exchange, Tenax had asked only for her loyalty—and a favor to come.
In fourteen summers, Tenax had not called in that favor.
A slow smile found her thin lips, and she felt a stab of fondness for the blue-eyed man. “After all this time…”
Once more, Tenax worked his jaw. “I wouldn’t ask if I had any other options.”
“So,” drawled Lucretia. She tipped her wine cup towards her face. It was empty. “I am to be a gladiatrix… you’d better get me the best fucking armor in all of the empire. And I will not be fighting any fucking lions.”
Tenax smirked in that familiar old way. “We wouldn’t waste the beasts on women, anyway.”
Claudia greeted him at the doors of Scorpus’s villa—his villa—upon Tenax’s return.
His most trusted servant, Claudia was the closest thing Tenax had to family. Born into servitude, she was the first slave Tenax ever bought. He was still a boy, then, with barely enough coin to purchase her and zero gravitas to his name. As he clawed his way towards wealth and respect, Tenax treated her fairly in those first few years, and when he granted Claudia her freedom, she chose to remain at his side, entering into his employ as a freed woman. The old maid was loyal, discreet, and always kept his hearth warm and his pantry full, even though she disagreed with the manner in which Tenax earned their livings.
“You are late.” Claudia removed his cloak, dampened by the rain, her wrinkled hands clutching the cheap fabric as she inclined her head towards the entrance hall. “She is waiting in the atrium.”
Cala stood from her perch on the edge of the rain bath as he entered.
“You sent for me,” the Numidian woman murmured, her tone and frown perfectly communicating her displeasure at being summoned by Woola. “It is early. I should be at the tavern, preparing for today’s races.”
“I have secured Aura protection in the arena.”
A gasp slipped past Cala’s full lips, and she reached for Tenax with both hands. “Tell me.”
“A famed mercenary birthed by the underbelly of the racetrack, a skilled assassin and fighter—and my old friend. She will enter the arena as a gladiatrix, and I will ensure that she is paired with Aura. Lucretia will protect your daughter and help her win over the mob for her chance at the wooden sword.”
Tenax witnessed as hope morphed into something tangible and dangerous in Cala’s dark gaze. “How long?”
He shrugged. “A matter of months, perhaps.”
“And Kwame?” she demanded, pushing further still, always refusing to relent. Tenax smiled. This—this was the source of his damnable attraction to her. Cala’s ambition might be rooted in a more noble cause than his own, but she was no less hungry than Tenax, no less ruthless in her pursuit. It was so different to the soft sweetness he once sought to protect in Lucretia.
“Kwame will need to keep the attention of the mob, which means more fights. But eventually, he must once again make such a spectacle that the crowd will demand his freedom, offering him the wooden sword once more as they did with Flamma.” Tenax took hold of Cala’s upper arms in a firm but tender hold. “He will be freed—they both will. But it will take time, and in the meanwhile, I will see to it that they are treated and fed well. But I need you focused on the tavern.”
Tenax had murdered the emperor with his own hands, and in doing so, had irrevocably hitched his chariot to Domitian. In the beginning, Tenax had seen the fickle and brutal son of Vespasian, and in his hubris, thought that Domitian could be controlled just as Scorpus had been and as Gaius, the former proprietor of Tenax’s tavern, had been before him.
But every night since, Somnus had plagued Tenax’s dreams with the final words of Titus Caesar Vespasianus, which echoed like the endless ringing of a Vestal bell within his mind. My brother is just a child. He's just a weak, petulant, little child… It's the fear that drives him…That fear will be your death…vile, desperate, weak, despicable worm. Domitian was, as his brother claimed, a weak man driven by an acute paranoia—but he was clever and forked of tongue, and Tenax had stolen for him the most powerful seat in the world.
Staying two steps ahead of his enemies had never been a problem for Tenax, but the stakes had never been higher.
With Scorpus and Andria dead, the Gold Faction had no drivers and a lump of broken chariots, and Tenax’s role as Legislator of the Aedile Ludi meant that all of his time was now spent organizing games that would satisfy the never-ending bloodlust of the mob and the savage delights of their new emperor. Now more than ever, Tenax needed Cala to operate his betting tavern if he was to continue amassing a fortune which would secure his financial freedom and ensure his transition into the Patricians’ ruling class.
It was why Tenax had called in a long-awaited favor with Lucretia—a most valuable prize. He needed Cala focused on his businesses and not her children. The sooner they were freed, the sooner she could increase his profits.
And when she takes her children and leaves your stubborn ass?
That had been happening, too, alongside the nightmares—Scorpus’s voice coming alive once again inside his head. Perhaps, it was not Domitian’s madness that Tenax needed to fear most.
“What are you thinking?”
The soothing tones of Cala’s voice wrenched Tenax from his own mind. Swallowing, he stepped away from her. “I am thinking that I am tired. Go, ready the tavern. I’ll stop by before the races this afternoon.”
Cala studied him in her quiet, perceptive way, then nodded once and gathered her skirts in her hand. “As you wish.”
Then, as ever, he was alone.