The Left Hand of Calvus Read online

  At last, he speaks, and there’s something in his voice this time, an edge that prickles the back of my neck. “After you’ve delivered the money to the lanista, you will remain at the ludus.” His eyes narrow as one corner of his mouth lifts. “As an auctoratus.”

  My heart beats faster. “Dominus, with respect, an auctoratus? I am not a citizen. I’m not even a freedman. How can I be an auctoratus if I am still—”

  Calvus puts up a hand. “You will remain my slave, of course, but until such time as I tell you otherwise, you will live at the ludus. Train as a gladiator.” He inclines his head and lowers his voice. “To everyone but us and the gods, and according to the documents that will accompany you, you are a citizen voluntarily submitting to be owned by the ludus and its lanista. Am I understood?”

  No. No, what are you asking me to do? And why?

  But I nod anyway. “Yes, Dominus.”

  He moves now, walking toward, then around me, circling me slowly as he continues speaking. “While you train and fight, you will keep your eyes and ears open. Listen and watch the men around you.”

  I sweep my tongue across my dry lips. Every familia gladiatori is already rife with dangerous rivalries. To spy on my brothers within the ludus? Especially when I am the newest blood? I should cut my own throat now and be done with it.

  “As an auctoratus,” he says, still walking around me, “you will be able to leave the ludus of your own free will, so long as you return and you don’t leave the city. When I wish to speak to you, I will contact you. Understood?”

  “I . . . yes,” I say. “What am I looking for, Dominus? Er, Calvus?”

  “You’re a gladiator, Saevius,” he says. “Surely you know how women feel about men like you?”

  I nod again. Women were no strangers to the ludus where I trained before. Many of them married, plenty of them noble; my lanista took their money, the women cavorted with gladiators, and the husbands were never the wiser.

  “A man of my stature cannot afford the embarrassment of a wife’s . . .” He pauses in both speech and step, wrinkling his nose. “Of a wife’s unsavory indiscretions. Especially with creatures so far below my station.” Calvus resumes his slow, unsettling walk around me. “And when word begins to spread of a woman doing these things, a husband, particularly a husband of my political and social stature, has little choice but to put a stop to it.” He steps into my sight and halts, looking me in the eye. “Which is where you come in, Saevius.”

  Oh, dear sweet gods, help me . . .

  “You will listen, and you will watch.” Calvus comes closer, eyes narrowing. “Learn the name of the man who keeps drawing my lady Verina into his bed. Am I clear, gladiator?”

  In all my years in the arena, my heart has never pounded this hard. What woman doesn’t have slaves as lovers? Gladiators fuck married women as often as we fight amongst ourselves.

  Unless Calvus thinks his wife isn’t involved with a slave. One of the freedmen working as trainers? Perhaps the lanista himself? Or one of the munerators renting fighters for some upcoming games? No citizen, especially not a public figure such as Calvus, tolerates that kind of insult from his wife, and for some, divorce isn’t nearly punishment enough.

  Regardless of Calvus’s reasoning or what he plans to do once he knows the name of his wife’s lover, is there any place more dangerous for a man than the middle of games played between a wife and the husband she’s scorned?

  “Am I clear, gladiator?”

  I swallow hard. “Yes, Calvus.”

  “Good.” He steps away and lifts his wine again. “I will have your papers drawn up tonight. Tomorrow morning, you will be taken to the ludus owned by the lanista Drusus.”

  Drusus. Gods, any lanista but him. I silently beg the ground to open up beneath me. Drusus’s reputation extends beyond any reach Master Calvus could dream of his own doing. No gladiator who’s heard the stories about Drusus would ever volunteer to fight for him.

  Calvus looks me up and down, his brow furrowing as he inspects my arms, one then the other. “These scars are . . .” He meets my eyes. “You’re left-handed, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  He grins. “Excellent. I’m sure Drusus will be doubly pleased with you.” The grin widens. “Perhaps I should have chosen you in the first place over that Phoenician. After all, a left-handed fighter like you belongs in the arena where he can make his lanista rich, yes?”

  I resist the urge to avoid his eyes.

  “You’ll be his left-handed moneymaker, and you’ll—” Calvus gives a quiet, bone-chilling laugh. “Well, I suppose in a way you’ll be my left hand, won’t you?”

  “I suppose I will, Dominus,” I whisper.

  Calvus puts his hand on my shoulder. The amusement leaves his expression. “Listen closely, gladiator. This is very important. The money you’re giving Drusus, the five hundred sestertii, is from the magistrate called Cassius. The same one who will be providing your auctoratus documents. Is that clear?”

  My mouth goes dry as I nod.

  “You will not mention me or our arrangement,” he says. “Not to anyone within the ludus under any circumstances. Understood?”

  “Yes, Dominus.” I hesitate. “Calvus.”

  “Be warned, Saevius. I do not tolerate treachery or dishonesty.” He leans in, lowering his voice so I’m certain no one but me and the gods can hear him, and he presses down hard on my shoulder. “Give me a single reason to believe you’re not doing precisely as I’ve ordered, or that you’ve breathed my name within the walls of the ludus, and I will see to it the magistrate asks Drusus if he received the full seven hundred sestertii. Am I understood?”

  With much effort, I swallow. With even more, I nod. “Yes, Calvus.”

  And silently, I beg the gods to send me back to Rome to fight in its Colosseum.

  All the way through the streets of Pompeii, every scuff of my weathered sandals on the road sounds like the name of my new lanista.

  Drusus. Drusus. Any lanista but Drusus.

  There isn’t a gladiator in the Empire who hasn’t heard his name. The man’s ill reputation is as widespread as his history is mysterious. Most lanistae begin as fighters themselves, but no one, not even the men who’ve been in the arena for years, can remember seeing him in combat. Some say he must have fought under another name, as many of us do, but no one knows for certain. All that’s known is that he came out of nowhere—seven years ago, people say—and apprenticed under the equally notorious lanista Crispinus for two years. After Crispinus was killed, Drusus took over the ludus. His first order of business? Executing half the men in the familia—by his own hand, most agree—just to flaunt his newfound power. Even more of a madman than most lanistae.

  He comes to Rome once or twice a year to buy and sell fighters, and over the years, my old lanista has bought a few of Drusus’s men.

  “Scum, that man,” a young fighter had told us. “Even the other lanistae stay away from him. They’d rather wear a curse than be ’round Drusus.”

  “The Furies have got nothin’ on Drusus,” another had told us after he’d been with us half a season. “Every man in the familia knew: just look at ’im wrong, and your ass is in the pit and beaten within an inch of your life.” With a shudder, he’d added, “Assuming the bastard didn’t get bored one day and kill you for sport before you even had a chance to make a mistake.”

  A scar-covered Egyptian came to us from Drusus and never said a word about the man. But then, that Egyptian never said a word at all. He just stared blankly at his food, his opponent, the wall. Didn’t even bat an eye when the medicus sewed up his arm after the Ludi Florales. About the time he started making some noise and we might’ve gotten some stories out of him, a fighter from Gaul put a sword through him during the Ludi Appollinares. Sometimes I think Fortune was smiling on him that day.

  Where are you on this day, Fortune? I silently plead as Ataiun leads me past Pompeii’s immense amphitheatre, the place where fights are held in this city.
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br />   Just beyond the amphitheatre, there’s a building I can only assume is Pompeii’s State-run ludus and barracks. I’ve heard the State is swallowing up all the ludi now. In Rome, there’s talk of the State-run ludi being the only ones left in a few years’ time. Maybe this means politicians will one day replace the lanistae as the men who buy, sell, and rent us out. I don’t suppose anyone would notice if they did. Shit replacing shit, after all. Then again, I don’t suppose anyone but men like me will notice when the State takes over the ludus and familia owned by Drusus, anyway.

  And may that day come swiftly.

  As I walk between two guards, people eyeing us warily and shielding their children, the presence of the scrolls tucked into my belt threatens to burn right through my clothes. These are the documents that will grant me entrance into the ludus. One proclaims I was reinstated as a citizen by Master Blasius after completion of a previous stint as an auctoratus. Another states I was inspected by a medicus I’ve never seen and approved by Cassius, the city magistrate whose monetary gift I carry, to volunteer—again—as an auctoratus. Fake permission all based on a false declaration of freedom.

  The scrolls are sealed, and the seals are only to be broken by Drusus himself. I can only hope that the documents are what Calvus says they are, and that they’re convincing forgeries, or it’ll be my throat that’s cut. Though perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad turn of events.

  The ludus that will be my home now is on the other side of the city from my master’s house, past the amphitheatre and near the brothels and taverns. It smells worse than the marketplace out here, and the sounds of fighting and fucking are loud and boisterous even now, just past sunrise.

  Over the noise of the drunk and the amorous comes the familiar, rhythmic thwack of wood smacking wood and the clank of metal on metal. Men shouting, grunting, swearing. The crack of a whip, the bark of a trainer.

  A busy ludus.

  The ludus of the lanista Drusus.

  Gods, watch over me . . .

  Armed guards stand outside the front gates of the ludus. Mixed blood, both of them, dark skin marred by scars and brands. They’re probably mongrels with ancestors from all corners of the Empire, Gaul to Carthage. Retired gladiators, maybe.

  “What’s your business here?” one asks me, his accent thick and unusual.

  I glance at one of my escorts. He nods sharply toward the two standing in front of the gate, so I turn to the guards again.

  “I’ve come to speak with the Master Drusus.” The words are hot sand on my tongue. “To enlist as an auctoratus.”

  “An auctoratus?” The other guard’s eyes dart back and forth between the two men flanking me. “What’s with them, then?”

  “He owes our master a debt,” one of my escorts says quickly. “Magistrate’s approved him.” A hand between my shoulders shoves me forward, nearly impaling me on the two spears suddenly pointed at my guts.

  I catch my balance and show my palms. The guards hesitate, then draw back their weapons.

  “All right, then,” one says. “Come with me.”

  He takes me through the gate and hands me off to another weathered foreigner. One of the trainers, if the wooden sword and leather flagellum on his belt are any sign. He gruffly orders the guard back to his post and then leads me across the training yard.

  The inside of the ludus isn’t unlike the one where I spent my previous fighting years. Barracks along two sides of a sand-covered training yard. Men sparring. Trainers, some sparring, some watching with flagellum at the ready in case anyone gets out of line.

  Heads turn as I’m escorted across the yard. Gladiators are bought and sold all the time, moving from city to city depending on where the auction’s wind blows them, so it’s no surprise I’ve seen a few of their faces before. Some more than others.

  One of the trainers watching a pair of fighters—novices, both of them, says their footwork—fought at Circus Maximus a long time ago. I’d recognize those scars and brands anywhere.

  Next to that pair of fighters, a lethally quick-footed Egyptian lad spars with a Roman twice his size. The Egyptian sold at an auction earlier this year for a small fortune. We’d all wondered who was willing to pay so much for a single gladiator. Now I know.

  I also recognize the bald Parthian by the water trough. He fought for another lanista in Rome until last summer, and I figured he must have died when I didn’t see him at the Ludi Augustales. But he must have been sold to Drusus, and when he sees me, he narrows his eyes and folds his massive arms over the thick scar I left on his chest two summers ago.

  Any of these men, any one of them, may be the one who’s bedding the Lady Laurea. By the Furies, when I learn the name of the fighter who’s the reason I’m here, there might well be nothing left for Master Calvus to punish.

  We leave the training yard and follow a corridor—much cooler than outside, thank the gods—past the barracks and out into a flat, empty courtyard. On the other side of the courtyard, in the breezeway along the lower floor of a limestone house, we stop outside a closed door. Beyond the door, there’s an argument going on. A loud one.

  “You can’t be serious!” shouts an exasperated man.

  “Your master wants a fight to the death?” comes the cool response, a calm voice that contrasts sharply with the gruff, gravelly one of the man with whom he argues. Drusus, I assume, and I swear I hear the smirk in his voice as he adds, “Then he’ll pay more.”

  “But . . . but . . . Jupiter’s balls, you price-gouging flesh peddler. Gladiators die in the arena all the time!”

  “It’s unfortunate.” I can almost see the man shrugging indifferently. “Some live, some die. But a guaranteed fight to the death with one of my gladiators is triple the price of a standard match.”

  “Triple? That’s theft!”

  “If I wanted to steal your money, I would just steal it instead of engaging in these tiresome negotiations.” Drusus sounds amused, but his voice is still chiseled from cold stone. “Gladiators are expensive, you know. Even the barbarians have to be trained and fed. If you want a guarantee of a dead man at the end of the fight, you’ll damn well pay for the live man I’ll have to purchase and train if mine is the one who loses.”

  “And if your man wins?”

  “Then the people attending the fight are entertained,” Drusus says, “and the gods are duly honored. The price stands.”

  The other man is quiet for a moment, and then releases a sharp, aggravated huff. “Very well. I will let my master know, and if he’s willing to pay your absurd prices, I will return to negotiate a contract.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  The door flies open. A gray-haired, red-faced man storms out, clutching a tablet to his chest and grumbling to himself.

  “Wait here.” My escort steps into the room. A moment later, he re-emerges and sends me in. When the door closes behind me, I’m alone.

  No. Not alone. My escort is gone, but I am certainly not alone.

  The room is dark except for weak sunlight that squeezes past the single, shuttered window. An oil lamp on a table offers just enough light for me to make out the faces staring silently back at me. A scribe in the corner, propping a tablet on his knee and holding a stylus. Against the back wall stand two immense men who look like they could, without much effort, break any man in the training yard in half.

  And sitting in front of the two armed men, leaning on the armrest of a large, ornate chair with a wine cup cradled between his slender fingers, is Drusus.

  I gulp.

  So this is the mythical Drusus, then. Some legends are wildly exaggerated, but the ones about the man called Drusus are not. Slight in the shoulders and sharp in the eyes, and though he’s seated, I can tell he’s easily a head shorter than me. And just as the legends say, he’s young. He’s no longer a boy, but I can’t imagine it’s been too many summers since he first had to shave the smooth skin across his sharp jaw and cheekbones. I never thought it was possible to consider a lanista beautiful, but i
t’s hard not to think of Drusus that way, especially compared to all the other lanistae, the grizzled, graying men with bulging bellies and rotting teeth.

  Youth and size aside, the legends certainly don’t falsify or even begin to exaggerate the man’s unnerving presence. He’s the lowest of the low, a reviled fleshmonger, but he sits straight and tall with an arrogance about him, like he’s ready to receive the Emperor himself. The Emperor, who’d be wise to bow and scrape at Drusus’s feet.

  I’d bow and scrape if I could move. As it is, I can barely breathe. Perhaps it’s my fear of being discovered, but I swear the blue eyes staring back at me can see right through to any lie or truth I might try to hide. Maybe it’s the truths I’m hiding, or the stories I’ve heard about him, but Drusus intimidates me just as all the stories said he would.

  The pair of massive bodyguards makes him appear even smaller than he already is, but two elephants don’t make a lion any less dangerous. I’d sooner take on both of them in the arena than face him alone.

  Always he wears that leather breastplate, they say. I’ve heard he never ventures outside his own chambers without it, not even when the sun is merciless. And he never leaves the ludus without both the breastplate and his bodyguards.

  Wise, I suppose. With or without his reputation, a lanista can’t be too careful. There are stories back in Rome about one who used to strut about with nothing on above his belt. No one likes to be anywhere close to a lanista, so he figured there was no need to protect himself. Didn’t even have guards with him because the gods and his reputation were all he needed.

  The gods and his reputation didn’t stop the blade that pierced his ribs in the crowded market, though.

  Drusus isn’t so careless, not even among his own men.

  Still and silent, he watches me, his face devoid of expression. He’s strangely familiar, but not only have I never seen him before, I can’t even put my finger on his homeland. He doesn’t look quite like a Roman man—too fine, too slight—but he’s not black-eyed and brown from Egypt or pale and hairy from the north. He’s certainly not like the bronze Parthians or the massive Carthaginians training just outside.