Chapter Text

“Where is my doctor?!”

Angela shoves the heels of both hands against her eye sockets, then pulls her hands down over her face until only her bloodshot eyes are visible, elbows braced against her knees. The lanista calls for her again, and again she does not answer his shout.

“My doctor,” she mutters into her hands, letting them slide from her cheeks until they flopped between her legs. Her head drifts back until it rests against the stone of the building she hides behind. “‘My doctor,’ like he’s the praefectus urbanus himself.” She shakes her head, eyes rolling closed at the increasing frenetic yelling to locate her. As if she were just another slave, called to heel by her master.

“He’s going to find you back here, you know,” comes a lighthearted voice, and Angela startles before she can override her instincts.

“Damn your eyes, Helena, I told you to stop sneaking up on me.” The girl’s musical giggle inspires no hope of contrition for her actions, so Angela tries a scowl.

Helena’s eyebrows crawl toward her hairline. “Ooh, scary.”

Angela’s mock anger deflates. With a smile curling her lips, Helena plops down next to her, nudged up against the back of the mess hall. She gazes at Angela for a few moments, which Angela simply allows. Helena’s admiration is a welcome balm to her weary heart, and she is too tired to think better of indulging her aide’s crush.

The manhunt for Angela drifts toward the other end of the grounds, closer to the palaestra in the stadium’s western shadow. As if I would be caught dead on the exercise-grounds while run this ragged, Angela titters internally.

Searching for grace and finding none within, Angela indulges in a little lady-gazing of her own. Helena flushes prettily when Angela’s blue eyes land on her from behind lowered lashes. The shock of unruly brown hair partial to an almost improbable lift of curls up top is cut close to her skull on the sides and back, like a freshly shorn sheep. Angela reaches out, traces a fingertip over the shell of one ear, grazes a cheekbone and taps the gently reddened tip of her nose. “Boop.”

Helena’s brows draw together even as she blushes a little deeper, a bemused smile on her face. “You must really be tired if you’re into affectionate gestures.”

The blonde’s eyes slide closed, and her hand falls limp to her side. “Mm,” is all Angela can muster as reply. The temperature in the shade is quite cool as the year draws further into autumn. Goosebumps rise on Angela’s bare arms and she’s thankful for the prickle of chill. The cold nipping at her skin keeps her from falling dead asleep, reminds her that time is passing and things may yet change.

“It’s almost time for prandium, Angela. You know he will find you then.”

“Not if I don’t eat,” Angela grumbles.

“If you think I’m going to let you ignore perfectly fine food when I know you’ve been skipping meals, you’ve got another thing coming,” Helena says, springing to her feet with a boundless, youthful energy Angela merely glares at.

“Come on, then,” Helena says, reaching out a hand. Angela groans. “Come on!”

She relents, slapping her hand into Helena’s palm and letting the girl haul her to her feet. Angela finds herself standing much faster than she expected, and Helena winks at her surprised blink.

“Time to go,” Helena urges in a sing-song voice, turning Angela around and marching her back into the light of day. When they round the corner of the mess Angela stops short, Helena’s sandals scuffing her achilles, her ankle at the abrupt halt.

“I said come on, doc, really—”

Angela is deaf to her complaints. The lanista is there in the courtyard, but he has yet to see her. No, what Angela is fixed on is a tall, dark-skinned woman with a peculiar tattoo curling beneath one eye. Who stands in a plain blue tunic that stops at her muscular calves, a bow slung over her chest, spinning an arrow idly between her fingers. The muscles in her forearm bunch and relax while the slender wood shaft twirls, mouth set in a thin, almost disapproving line. She looks like a coiled spring waiting to be set loose, all potential energy yearning to be kinetic.

Bright amber eyes sense being watched and land unerringly on the source. If Angela had not already been frozen by her very presence, she would have been rendered immobile by that penetrating, intelligent gaze meeting her own.

(Later, Angela dreams of those eyes again, and she wakes with the same singular coherent thought that strikes her now: Cupid, I curse thy very name.)

“Doctor Zeigla, there you are!” bellows the lanista, and she is literally propelled forward out of her reverie by Helena, a hand on each shoulder, driving her forward.

“Meet my newest gladiator. Her name is Fareeha Amari, and she comes to us from Aegyptus. I stole her away from their praefectus who had earned her in the spoils of a small rebel skirmish.” At Helena’s raised brow, he bares his teeth in a wide, ape-like grin. “It was his mistake to bring her here to Rome and show off her skill. Now she belongs to me, the urban prefect, and the emperor.”

“Salutaris,” Angela hears herself say, inclining her head. “I hope you speak Latin.”

“I do,” comes a haughty, lilting purr that takes hold of something hidden and low in Angela’s belly. It hooks right in the depths of her loins, tugs sharply—the sensation makes her breath catch.

Oh. Oh. Angela is in so much trouble.

“We shall take prandium with the rest of the crew and then get you settled into your barracks, Amari.” Fareeha nods her assent as a young boy, no older than thirteen, bounds up to the group just inside the gate of the school’s grounds.

“Excuse me,” he pants, gulping for air and straightening his shoulders. “I have a message for the lanista of Ludus Invigliare. I seek Nikomedes Argus Winstonus.”

“That’s me,” Nikomedes says. The youth hands over a single scroll and trots out the way he came, with no further fanfare. Nikomedes turns the scroll over in his hands thoughtfully. “Curious.”

With that, Nikomedes ushers them into the mess hall, unfurls the papyrus carefully as he sinks down on to a long bench seat butted up to one of multiple serving tables. Each table is laden with apples, dates, and dried plums; several athletic, muscled individuals are scattered among them, a low murmur of conversation in the room. Fareeha sits next to Nikomedes, arrow still twirling between her fingertips. If Angela didn’t know any better, she’d think the woman nervous, but that isn’t possible. (Because what could this woman—who so fearlessly faced a lion and slaked the public’s thirst for blood in one fell swoop—possibly have to fear?)

Helena fetches them each a bowl of barley porridge and a warm roll of common bread studded with nuts. Nikomedes absently accepts the bowl just to place it on one corner of the scroll; an apple goes on the others as he squints at the writing. He plucks a clear bit of glass out of a pocket on his tunic and polishes it on his sleeve, then places down the stone over the text. It is made bigger and clearer by the glass, and so he slides the stone across the parchment, murmuring quietly to himself as he reads.

Angela, bored of this trick and trying not to stare at their guest, lets her eyes roam about the mess, checking that all her charges are filling up properly on fruits and grain. A sharp elbow digs into her ribs and she stifles a curse.

“Helena,” Angela says, in a tone both worn and warning.

“Eat,” the girl commands, but obediently gives up her nudging. Angela sighs and forces herself to lift food to her mouth, though it tastes like so much ash on her tongue.

Nikomedes exclaims suddenly, “Fareeha’s been selected for the Secular Games!” and suddenly the mess hall is awash in fervor. Though months away into next year, it means the emperor himself has heard of her victory. She must fight a bout in the meantime, maybe two, by order of the urban prefect—this is to assure her competency, and drum up further popularity.

Angela knows exactly why he has leapt upon Fareeha and managed to wrest her from Gaius Septimus’s grasp. Titus Aurelius Fulvus is a good prefect, but a better politician. What better way to ensure continued political dominance than to pluck a crowning gladitorial jewel from your rival governor's very own land? Thus Fulvus the elder curries further favor with Emperor Domitian, and the people are satisfied both in hearts and in minds. If the game the Empire played with Rome every single day weren’t so bloody, Angela might even be impressed by it.

The retired gladiator teachers have gathered round, arguing about whether to train her as a hoplomachus or as a retiarius. The conversation isn't meant to be private, and some listen with rapt attention (Helena) while others ignore it completely (a white-haired man with a long, ragged scar across his face frowns into his bowl and leaves the table as soon as he’s finished, apparently unconcerned with the future glory their ludus might attain). Fareeha is silent throughout, after methodically finishing her porridge and fruit repast. Angela thinks of other things (namely, mysterious Egyptian warriors and what it might be like to kiss them).

“She is obviously comfortable with the shield and sword. Why would we waste any time? Train her to be even better with a smaller shield, which is all she would need against an armored man instead of a beast.”

“But she dispatched the praefector’s lion with one blow! Can you imagine the draw to see her killing three great animals in a row? Five? Ten! She could be Rome’s finest beastiarius.”

“A useless title, and one we shall not seek.” Nikomedes speaks with an authoritative rumble, one that brooks no further debate.

There are grumbles, but the decision is clearly made. Chatter begins anew as the crowd disperses to clean their plates and return to training. Back to the normal routine already for the gladiators and their doctor, except:

This time when Angela is on the receiving end of an intense, probing look from a pair of golden eyes before Fareeha turns for the exit, she isn't imagining a thing.