Chapter 3
With her good arm, Lea knocked on the door of her manager’s office. A day had passed since her injury, and because she couldn’t train, she had decided to make use of her free time to raise an important matter with Lucullus.
“Come in,” Lucullus called, and she entered.
Lucullus was a middle-aged man with graying hair and a square jaw, rather small of stature just like his niece, Velia, who worked as his assistant.
He was shrewd but fair, and he treated his gladiators well, believing that keeping them as content and healthy as possible would only increase their success in the arena.
“Penthesilea,” he greeted her. “How is your arm? Is that palace medicus any good?”
“I think so,” she replied, standing before his cluttered desk. “I feel all right.”
She refrained from mentioning that she’d already disregarded the physician’s instruction to rest. Yesterday, her friend Ferox had been forced by the emperor to face his own student, Achilles, in what was supposed to be a fight to the death.
Ferox had won, and the will of the crowd had swayed the emperor to spare the novice.
But after the games, Achilles had been loudly claiming he’d let Ferox win. That sort of slander couldn’t be tolerated, and a punch to the mouth was the most efficient way to shut him up.
She feared she might have ripped out one of Kallias’s careful silken stitches. But he’d promised to return today, so he could sort it out.
“What did you wish to discuss?” Lucullus asked, sorting through the messy papers on his desk.
She lifted her chin, steadfastly ignoring the pain in her arm. “How much am I worth?”
He stilled, though his face remained neutral. “Why do you wish to know?”
“Because I want to buy my freedom.” She’d been saving money for a while now, and yesterday’s gift of prize money—one thousand sestertii—had bolstered her holdings.
She believed Lucullus had paid around two thousand sestertii for her when he bought her eight years ago.
Her value would have increased since then, as she was now a trained gladiator instead of just a household slave.
She estimated she might be worth around ten thousand, which she nearly had.
One more win, one more prize, and she could be free.
A gray eyebrow twitched. “Are you unhappy here?”
Not precisely: she was good at fighting, and she liked the feeling of power as she swung a sword or loosed a bow.
But there was something to be said for having a choice. Lucullus, after all, was getting older. What if he woke up one day and decided to sell off all his gladiators to someone else? Someone less fair-minded, someone cruel? Life could change in the blink of an eye, as she well knew.
She might have been born a slave, but she didn’t intend to die one.
“I only want to know how much it would cost,” Lea said.
He let out a considering sigh. “I’d have to examine the numbers in more detail, but my first estimate would be somewhere in the realm of forty thousand sestertii.”
“Forty thousand!” she hissed in shock. That was four times what she’d expected. “That can’t be right.”
Lucullus fixed her with his customary cool gaze. “You are quite possibly the most valuable gladiator in my possession, Penthesilea. Especially now that Ferox is officially retired, as of yesterday. How many female gladiators are there in the city?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered, still dazed by the figure. “Eight? Ten?”
“Something like that. Compared to hundreds of male fighters. A skilled female gladiator is a thing of great rarity. And thus, great value.” He drummed his fingers on the surface of his desk. “Come back with forty thousand and we’ll talk.”
There seemed to be nothing further to say, so Lea trudged from the office, closing the door behind her.
Forty thousand. It could take years to earn that much from her winnings.
Only a few weeks remained of the emperor’s games, and Lea was scheduled for one more match.
And now, with her injury, her chance of winning was far smaller.
Games would happen with much less frequency after this set finished, so her opportunities to earn the money she needed would diminish.
A hopeless weight pressed down on her. Maybe she should abandon her dream of freedom. Take the money she earned, spend it on whatever she wished. Stop saving every coin. Live out her life, for as long as the gods granted her, as one of the city’s best female gladiators.
No. She wouldn’t give up so easily. She wanted a different life for herself, the life she and her mother had dreamed of together.
They used to whisper of it in quiet nighttime moments, how one day they’d have a little cottage by the sea with orchards and vegetable gardens and maybe even a cat.
A peaceful life where they belonged only to each other.
Her mother had not lived to see the fulfillment of that dream, but Lea knew her mother was still keeping an eye on her from the afterlife. She’d be so disappointed if Lea simply gave up. So for her mother’s sake, Lea would keep trying.
Later that day, Lea sat on a bench in the shade, scowling at the gladiators training in the sunny open space before her.
She wished she could join them. She’d experienced forced rest before with other injuries, and she hated how helpless it made her feel.
At least this arm wound didn’t have her in bed all day, like the time she’d broken her leg.
Maybe she could jog a lap or two…but as she shifted, contemplating the idea, her wounded arm gave an extra-painful throb. She should be resting. Especially after she overexerted herself yesterday punching Achilles.
“Glowering like a thundercloud doesn’t make a wound heal any faster, you know,” the newly retired gladiator seated next to her on the bench said. “Trust me, I’ve tried it.” Ferox jerked his chin down at the bandaged wound on his thigh.
Lea shot Ferox a sidelong glare. “I don’t like sitting around doing nothing.
It makes me…itchy.” Inactivity felt foreign to her.
As a child, she’d been put to work in some capacity as soon as she was old enough to take orders.
Even after being sold to Lucullus, her days were filled with endless training, sparring, stretching, and the like.
Ferox shrugged his powerful shoulders. “Doesn’t hurt to enjoy some rest now and then, even if it’s forced on you.”
“Spoken like an old man.” Ferox was thirty, the oldest among them.
And he’d been in far too good a mood since reconciling with his beloved Velia yesterday.
He didn’t even seem that bothered by his wound, which the ludus physician warned might leave him with a permanent limp.
His match yesterday had been his last, and now he would occupy his time as a trainer.
Yesterday’s fight was as close as she’d ever seen Ferox come to death, and she was selfishly glad she’d never have to watch him risk himself again.
It had brought up memories she wished she could forget—their friend Hector’s brutal death in the arena two years ago.
It was one thing to lose a friend. It was quite another to watch him be slaughtered while twenty thousand people cheered.
That helpless grief would never fully leave her, and freeing herself from this world was the only way to ensure her own death never inflicted that on anyone.
A shout distracted her from her grim thoughts. “Lea!” Velia’s voice rang out over the training ground as she scurried over to them, dodging a pair of sparring gladiators. “There’s a man in your bedroom!”
Several nearby gladiators stopped and stared.
Lea shot to her feet, wincing as she jostled her arm. “The physician,” she corrected loudly. “The physician is here to see me.”
Ferox gave a low, rumbly chuckle.
If he hadn’t been wounded, Lea would have kicked him.
“Velia said she saw this fancy physician with you yesterday, and apparently he’s…how did she put it? Devastatingly handsome?” Ferox asked. “Is he really?”
“Interested, are you?” It was easier to trade jokes than admit that yes, in fact, Kallias was extremely appealing, in a way that seemed like it shouldn’t be allowed for a mortal man. She recalled the silky darkness of his hair, the amber sparkles in his eyes, and her cheeks heated.
Maybe her memory was exaggerating his good looks. Maybe she’d see him again today and notice some imperfection.
Velia slid into the spot on the bench Lea had vacated. “I’m afraid there’ll be no devastatingly handsome physicians for either of us,” she said with exaggerated regret. “We only have eyes for each other now.”
Ferox wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her close against his side.
“I’d better go,” Lea said. Best to leave Velia and Ferox to their newfound bliss. “Mustn’t keep the fancy physician waiting.”
She turned and trudged toward the barracks building.
As Velia said, Kallias was indeed inside her bedroom. Her memory, unfortunately, hadn’t betrayed her, and he was just as handsome as she remembered.
Nyx, the ludus’s infamously ill-tempered cat, surveyed Kallias from atop the small table that rested against the wall.
Kallias was in the middle of unpacking items from his bag.
As his hand approached the table to put a small clay container down, Nyx let out a low growl, flattening his ragged ears, and the physician snatched his hand back.
“I see you’ve met Nyx,” Lea said as she closed the door behind her.
“Is that the creature’s name?”
Yellow eyes fixed unblinkingly on Kallias, Nyx extended a mottled brown paw and slowly pushed a stack of bandages off the edge of the table.
Lea’s hand shot out to grab them before they hit the ground.
She passed them to Kallias. “Don’t take it personally.
He doesn’t like most people.” For some unknown reason, Lea was the only one the cat tolerated.
“Come here, you. Get your mangy body off my table.” She scooped the cat up with her uninjured arm.