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Chapter 1
I. Salt on the Tongue
The world is louder in the arena, as if the stone itself shouts at you to be brave. My tongue tastes of salt and iron and the oiled leather of my helmet. I feel the sand’s heat through the soles of my caligae. Across from me the murmillo stamps his foot and the plume on his helmet trembles, crimson like a fresh wound. The crowd roars in layers—citizens, slaves, soldiers, the idle rich who paid for seats in shade. Their voices braid into a rope and wind around my ribs.
“Thraex!” someone jeers, because of the curved sica in my hand. They mean it as insult, but I take it as a measure. Thracian. Foreign. I am both, and I am alive.
We circle once, twice. He thrusts, shield forward like a wall. I turn the sica into the rim of his scutum and hook, wrenching him off line. He’s strong. I’m faster. The summa rudis flits by in white, a moth of a man with a laurel-shaded face who keeps us honest.
I think of the boy Felix back in the ludus, who watches me the way I once watched the older fighters and tries to hide how badly he’s afraid. I’ll show him the trick later with a stripped branch and meat on a string.
The murmillo lunges. We clang, scrape, grapple, my muscles burning. He falters, slips—my sica kisses flesh where his greave meets his sandal. He screams, falls to one knee. The rope of voices tightens.
“Iugula!” they chant. Cut his throat.
I lift the blade. I want to live. I want to sleep without ghosts.
His eyes are green through the eye slits. There is a boy’s fear in them, not an enemy’s. He swallows, his breath a ragged prayer. He drops his sword and offers his neck.
The Emperor is not present today. No thumb to consult. Only the editor in the box with his wreath and velvet cushion, weighing spectacle against cost. The summa rudis looks to him. The editor looks to the crowd. The crowd looks to me. The sun bakes the top of my head through the helmet’s bronze.
“Iugula!”
I do as the world demands.
When I raise my hands after, I’m sick and the sand sticks to my knees like pollen. They roar because I’m alive, and in Rome that is both victory and offense. The spoliarii drag the body away and the trail they leave is a red line. Maybe I have crossed it. I can’t tell.
