Death of a Gladiatrix, Act One: Beginning — The Reflection of Fate

1.1 Blood and the Sacred Flame

On the day of the Vestalia, noon had passed and Rome lay baking under the sun.

It was the grandest festival of the year. Countless garlands hung from the temple doors, the edges of the laurel leaves curled in the heat, and the fat of white sheep melted slowly on the small altars.

Along the Sacred Way, the crowds were pouring towards the Colosseum. The air was thick with mixed smells — coarse flatbread, olives, salted fish, cheap wine and sweat — all stirred together and pushed into the arcades by the hot wind.

But nobody turned back, because today’s games had been ordered by the emperor Trajan himself.

The news had been going round the city for three days.

A notice board stood outside the arena. On it, the sea had been painted as a beast with its jaws wide open, and a gladiatrix in scale armour rose from the crest of a wave, her hair wound over her shoulders like seaweed.

Behind her the painter had added a foreign goddess holding an oar and a basket of fruit, and beside them, in large, rough Latin letters, he had written:

Scylla the Sea Monster, favoured of Nehalennia, strange goddess of the North Sea.

People stopped in front of the board and looked up at the monster, painted bigger than a ship.

“She comes out of the fog,” a man in a leather cap told a child. “The god of the northern sea made her bones like iron. Even lions back away when they smell her blood.”

The child’s eyes went wide.

A wine seller beside them laughed. “A god? She’s just a she-wolf raised in a gladiator school.”

“Today’s match was ordered by the emperor.” Another man lowered his voice, with the care people always took when they spoke the emperor’s name. “Trajan wants Rome to see how a monster from the sea dies on Roman sand.”

“Lady, would you like a piece?”

A hawker had called out to you.

“It’s the sea monster today. You won’t last till evening on an empty stomach.”

Your slave reached out to wave him off, and only then did the hawker notice the fine purple border on your clothes, and the pure white robe of the woman beside you. He stepped back at once and quickly lowered his head.

Everyone around you fell silent. As a senator’s daughter, you walked a different road from the common people.

A crowd will not make way for kindness. But it will part for your family name, for the border of your robe, and for the veil of the woman at your side.

That was your aunt Claudia, walking on your left.

Her robe fell from her shoulders, white and heavy, and not a speck of dust had touched its hem. Wherever she passed, the noisy crowd went quiet. Men lowered their heads, women looked away, and mothers pressed a hand to the backs of their children’s necks.

No guards shouted, no slaves cleared the way. She herself was like an order that spoke for Rome.

Only after she had passed did people dare to whisper.

“The Chief Vestal.”

“Daughter of the goddess Vesta.”

“She’ll sit in the front row today.”

“Her hand can decide whether the sea monster lives or dies.”

“Yes. The will of the gods has to come down through clean hands.”

Clean hands.

You glanced at Claudia’s hand, hanging at her side. Long, slender fingers, neatly trimmed nails, skin almost bloodless in the sunlight.

When you were very small, that hand had led you up the temple steps after they had been washed with water. The stone had been cool then, and the smoke of the sacred flame drifted out from the doorway, mixed with the bitter scent of laurel.

The Vestals guarded the sacred flame. Romans believed that as long as the flame did not go out, the city was still under the protection of the gods. That hand was clean. It stood for the will of the gods. And now, the same hand would decide, in front of tens of thousands of eyes, how another person died.

“Vestal, give your judgement! Give the sea monster your hand!”

As you crossed the square and passed a tall statue that had only just been finished, you saw a boy wearing a garland climb onto its base. His forehead was covered in sweat. He clung to the statue’s foot and kissed the hilt of its sword.

“Avenge the great legate! Let the lions tear out the sea monster’s heart!”

He was shouting to Claudia, shouting until his voice cracked.

The statue’s eyes seemed to be watching all of it. Without thinking, you raised your sleeve against the smell drifting out of the arcades — sweet and rank, like sugar, like blood.

Claudia turned her eyes aside, and her gaze rested on your wrist. It was a brief look, like a flash of white in a breaking wave.

“Aelia,” she said. “Put your hand down.”

You did.

Your sleeve slipped away, and the heat, the sweat, the smell of burning fat and old blood all rushed in at once. You tightened your jaw and lifted your chest.

You could despise this place. You could despise the statue. You could despise the blood. But you could not let the people see that you could not bear it, because this was their bread, and this was their circus.

Above all, the woman beside you today was the purest woman in Rome, the one woman no one could ever doubt.

The passages leading up to the stands were packed. Seat markings were carved into the stone walls — senators, knights, commoners. The ranks divided from the very entrance. Rome cut its crowds into neat, orderly layers.

You heard someone behind you lower their voice.

“Is that Aelia?”

“The senator’s daughter. They say she once saved that sea monster.”

“Saved her? Would she dare to save her today? Rome’s legate died on the road, and who knows what she did out there.”

“Marcus? Wasn’t he her betrothed…”

“Hush. Her aunt the Vestal is right there.”

The voices broke off and slipped back into the crowd.

You kept walking, your fist clenched inside your sleeve, your nails almost cutting into your palm. Claudia did not look back, and her pace did not change, as if none of those whispers had ever touched the edge of her robe.

The light at the end of the passage grew larger and larger.

When you stepped out of the shadow, the whole arena opened up in front of you.

The sand in the middle had already been turned over. New sand covered old bloodstains. It was paler than the dust outside and carried a damp smell of rust.

The imperial box hung high on the far side, its purple canopy falling in folds, golden eagles blazing in the sun.

Below it were the seats of the consuls, the priests, the noblewomen and the officers, and below them, the heat of the common seats burned like the air itself. Arms waved everywhere, cheering and shouting everywhere. Garlands, shards of cups, fruit stones and cries all rained down onto the sand.

The drums began.

First three beats, heavy, splitting the throat of the crowd.

Then horns sounded above the east gate, with a deep, trembling, metal note.

Behind the gates came the sound of chains and iron rings dragged along stone channels. Deeper inside, in the animal pens, something breathed low and heavy.

The herald, in a bright red cloak, walked onto the sand. He raised his staff and, in a trained voice, announced the emperor’s generosity, the glory of the festival, the victories of Rome, and the killing that was about to take place under the eyes of the gods.

The west gate slowly rose.

First came a shadow. Then a round shield — its red face stained with blood and covered in sword cuts, two rivets missing from its rim. Then a woman’s arm, old scars across the bare skin, new wounds bound with rough linen.

She walked from the shadow into the sunlight, and in that instant the roar of the crowd rose higher.

Scylla the Sea Monster was standing in the middle of the sand.

No iron bones, no sea fog, no god of the sea. She was only a woman. Strong shoulders and back, leather armour close against her body, old leather straps wound round her forearms, a freshly closed wound on the side of her knee with red seeping from the edge of the bandage. Her hair was tied back, a few strands clinging to her neck. When the sunlight caught her eyes, the grey in them showed a cold hint of blue-green.

She lifted her face, and her sea-grey eyes swept across the imperial box, across the priests’ seats, across the waving crowd — and at last, for a moment, paused on the white veil of the Vestal.

Claudia’s hands rested on her knees. The backs of them were pale, blue veins lying just beneath the skin.

The pause was torn open by the first curse.

“Murderer!”

“You killed Lord Marcus!”

“Pay with your life for the legate!”

“A Roman soldier died by her hand!”

They cursed her and threw bread, fruit stones, bones and broken pottery down at her.

A shard landed at her feet, bounced, and rolled into the sand. She did not dodge. She only lifted her shield a little to block a flying bone. It struck the shield with a very small sound.

Other voices rose at once, full of wine and excitement.

“North Sea bitch!”

“Sea monster!”

“Daughter of Amazonia!”

“Achillia’s bloodline!”

Those two names flew through the burning air and struck you. Your fingertips stopped on the silver clasp.

Amazonia. Achillia.

You looked at the woman in the middle of the arena, and the pad of your finger brushed over an uneven mark carved into the stone railing.

For a moment you remembered a day many years ago. You had sat in a seat very close to this one, only then your feet had not reached the step below. Claudia had been beside you. She was not yet the Chief Vestal, but she was still your aunt, and her white robe had been even whiter then, and even colder.

That day had also been the Vestalia. The last light of the setting sun lit up the sand, as if the blood had been smeared across it.

The crowd had shouted and roared then too, and those wild cries felt as if they would stay on this sand forever.

In the middle of the sand stood two gladiatrices. One held up a net, the other dragged a short sword. One was broad in the shoulders, her left arm wrapped in a bloodied strip of cloth; the other was thinner, with a fresh cut across her cheek.

Cheap red cord was woven into their hair.

People threw flowers down from the stands, and people threw the coins of their bets. Petals fell at their feet. Copper coins rolled into the sand with a small, soft sound.

They looked up and smiled, like two rays of sunlight. Only there was blood on their teeth.

The drums quickened. The shouts of the crowd grew clear again and pulled you out of the memory and back into the present.

Standing in the middle of the sand was Scylla the Sea Monster.

“Kill her! Kill the sea monster! Avenge the legate!”

Someone was shouting, and in the middle of that shout, Scylla raised her sword, and then her shield.

She struck her shield with her sword.

The first blow rang out clear, louder than the curses nearby.

The second was heavier, like iron striking the side of a ship.

When the third fell, a small patch of the crowd actually went quiet.

She did not salute the emperor. She did not bow her head to the senators. She only stood in the centre of the arena and let her eyes move slowly around the ring of seats, inch by inch.

Then she saw you.

Her gaze did not stay long. But as it passed over you, it was like cold water running over the bones of your fingers. You saw that she recognised you. You also saw that she gave no sign of it.

A long horn sounded from above.

The herald unrolled a wax tablet and read out the notice written on it: “By order of the most high emperor Trajan, a show is offered for the Vestalia — Scylla the Sea Monster, daughter of the North Sea, who killed the legate Marcus, shall fight before the people of Rome.”

“Let her fight!”

“Let her fight!”

“Let the Vestal judge!”

The noise boiled up again, higher than before. Someone threw down a garland. The stems snapped and it landed in front of Scylla. She glanced down at it and did not step on it. She moved half a step to the side, away from the flowers the dust had dirtied.

Very few people noticed that small movement.

You did.

Perhaps Claudia did too.

But her hands stayed on her knees, and her knuckles did not move. Everyone’s eyes were beginning to gather on her — from the lowest commoners, to the seats with purple-bordered robes, and down to the middle of the arena, to the woman they had named a monster.

A Vestal had the power to spare a prisoner, if she chose to raise her hand, thumb up.

Now a whole city was waiting for one hand.

Scylla was still standing there. Sword point down, shield close to her body. She did not look at the emperor, and she did not look at the people.

She looked at you.

Those sea-grey eyes came through the heat, the dust, the cheering and the old shadows of more than ten years, and stopped on your face. You heard your own breath knock against your breastbone, short and painful.

The silver clasp of your belt left a small crescent mark in your palm. You had to hold back the cry that was nearly bursting out of your chest.

Because she was still alive.

Because Claudia’s hand had not yet risen.

1.2 A Crack in the Sunlight

The real story began a year before, in this same arena, in this same blood. That was where you first met Scylla the Sea Monster.

Rome’s summer was nearly over then. The sunlight in the arena was bright, and the sand burned hot under it.

Rome’s armies had not yet set out on their march. The young legate Marcus was still alive.

His breastplate had been polished bright by slaves. When he sat in the good seats, the little eagle on his shoulder clasp flashed gold in the sun.

“Aelia,” he reminded you, “you can’t know Rome only from books.”

You turned your face towards him, just so far — not cold, not close.

You did not answer.

You should not have been there at all, but your father had asked you to go with him. Your education had been good enough to teach you how to nod when you felt disgust, and how, in silence, to let the other person believe he had been respected.

Marcus sat on your left.

He understood better than most soldiers how to watch a show. Shoulders straight, hands resting lightly on his knees. Now and then he leaned towards you to explain what was happening on the sand, his voice not loud, but loud enough for the nearby seats to hear.

“Shows like this help the people remember the edges of the empire,” he explained. “They see lions here, Numidians, slaves from the northern sea — and so they know how far the roads of Rome have gone.”

You nodded slightly.

You had heard this kind of talk too many times. At banquets, under the colonnades outside the Senate, in the study at home, again and again: the great roads of Rome, the order of the empire, the glory of the emperor… and civilisation.

Seeing that you did not argue, Marcus went on. “Everything we live through is only one long spectacle — Totum hoc quod agimus, spectaculum est.”

He smiled as he said the Latin, as if quoting a saying that showed off his good breeding.

You did not reply, and looked out at the sand.

Slaves had just spread new sand to hide the blood of the last match. Shouts the crowd could not hold back came from the stands. People were caught up in a fever, like lions stirred by the smell of blood.

You hated this place.

The amphitheatre, the arena, the gladiators’ ground — it had many names, but underneath them all it was always a circus.

Here Roman citizens collected their bread, watched executions, watched prisoners sent to the lions. Every cheer made the city forget, for a moment, its hunger, its anger, its debts and its rumours.

The blood dried, the sand was turned, the sun rose, and it all went on the next day.

You remembered a line your Greek tutor had once written along the edge of a wax tablet: Consuetudo oculorum assuescit etiam malis. Once the eyes grow used to it, even evil becomes bearable.

You had been too young then to understand it. But now, sitting in the arena, watching a child lean over the railing and clap and cheer for a slave who was about to be killed, you found yourself, somehow, remembering that line again.

Marcus was still talking.

“The gladiatrix today is special. From the North Sea. Not the tallest, but her endurance is rare. She doesn’t like to salute important men, and she doesn’t bother to please the crowd, so plenty of people hate her. But she’s good, and the people can’t bear to miss a single match of hers.”

He said it easily. You looked at his polished wrist guards. There was no battlefield mud on them, only the oily shine left by a slave’s cloth.

“What’s her name?” you asked.

“Scylla.” Marcus smiled. “The sea monster of the North Sea.”

The horns cut off whatever he said next.

The gate rose, and the lion was driven out first.

It was a male lion from Africa. Its mane was soaked with sweat and old blood and stuck to both sides of its neck. Its tail swept low across the sand and came up stained with blood.

The crowd grew excited.

“Let her out!”

“Bring on the sea monster!”

On the other side an iron gate opened, and a woman walked out of the shadow.

She did not salute the seats above.

Every gladiator knew the rules of the stands. You acknowledged the emperor, the senators, the sponsors, the important people of the day. Even a small bow of the head might buy mercy after a defeat.

But she walked straight to the middle of the sand without stopping even once, and went directly towards the lion.

Boos and cheers came down at the same time.

“Sea monster!”

“Make her bow to Rome!”

“Tear it apart!”

As the lion sprang at her, Marcus tapped his finger lightly on the railing. You heard the noblewomen around you draw in sharp breaths, and heard the lower stands stamping their heels on the stone steps.

Scylla turned sideways and slipped past it. Her shield slammed into the lion’s shoulder, and her short sword cut across its foreleg. Blood splashed onto the sand and quickly darkened.

The lion turned and sprang again. Its claws scraped across her shield with a screeching sound. Scylla was forced back three steps, her heels sinking into the churned sand. The tips of its claws opened a cut along her left arm, and blood ran down to her elbow and dripped. The crowd shouted louder.

Your fingertips pressed against the edge of your seat, but you did not look away.

When she held off the third charge, her short sword was finally close to the lion’s jaw. It was only an instant — then the blade was in under its ribs. She pulled it out, and blood sprayed across the sand, a patch of the deepest red.

The lion did not fall at once.

It swayed, breathing in rough, heavy gasps.

“It won’t live,” Marcus explained. “That blow must have gone straight through the heart.”

Scylla stood there, the point of her sword hanging down. Her chest rose and fell slowly, and blood ran down her arm.

“Kill it!”

“Cut its throat!”

“Now!”

The shouting pressed in from every side. They wanted the woman to raise her sword and drive it through the lion’s throat.

But Scylla stopped.

The lion was kneeling in the sand, its forelegs folded under it. Its eyes were still open — golden-brown, the pupils shrunk small in the harsh light. It tried to breathe, and bloody foam bubbled up in its throat, again and again.

Scylla stepped closer.

She crouched, set her shield down at her side, and covered the lion’s eyes with her left hand, her palm hiding the last of the light. Then she lowered her head, and her lips moved.

You could not hear what she said. You only saw the hair fall across her forehead and its shadow land on the lion’s nose.

Marcus frowned.

“Here we go again,” he said. “She’s always doing these barbarian things.”

Then curses came pouring down from the stands like a landslide.

“Kill it!”

“Don’t pray over an animal!”

“Is the sea monster afraid of blood?”

Scylla was still covering the lion’s eyes when she drove her short sword into its throat. The movement was clean and quick. The lion’s body jerked once, its tail swept up a little sand, and the deep red blood spread slowly, mixing with the shadow beneath it.

But Scylla did not get up straight away. She kept her hand over those eyes, which could no longer see anything, until the very last breath was gone.

The stands fell silent at first, and then the noise split apart.

“Kill her! She’s making a fool of Rome!”

“Execute the barbarian!”

“But she won!”

“Let her live!”

Some clapped, some cheered, some stood up and cursed.

Marcus leaned closer to you and spoke very softly.

“She won, but not prettily. The people don’t like to be defied.”

You looked down at the sand. At last Scylla stood up. She did not salute, did not raise her sword, and did not dedicate her victory to anyone. She only wiped the blood from her sword, slowly, as if finishing some necessary kind of cleaning.

Marcus was waiting for your voice. You knew he was the young officer your father favoured, and that he hoped this show would please you. But he probably assumed you would go the way the crowd went, or the way his eyes went.

You raised your hand, thumb up.

Against her death.

For a moment there was silence beside you. Marcus looked at you, then quickly smiled, as if folding a surprise into his own performance. He stood, raised his arm to the crowd below, and called for mercy on your behalf.

“She won! Rome does not fear a slave who knows how to kill. Let her live, and bleed for Rome in the next match!”

The young legate’s voice was loud, his pose handsome, and Romans loved that kind of handsomeness. He called for the festival day to end with mercy, and said that the brave deserved to fight again.

The crowd changed quickly. If death could be entertainment, so could mercy.

In the end, the herald announced that Scylla would live.

She did not kneel to give thanks. She only put away her sword, turned and left the sand. When she reached the gate, for the first time she looked up at the nobles’ seats. Her eyes went past the shining shoulder plate on Marcus’s armour and stopped on you.

They were sea-grey. In Rome, they would have been eyes like your aunt Claudia’s.

Your mother had once told you that the sea-coloured eyes of the Vestals were inherited from the goddess of wisdom, Athena, and could see through darkness and understand all things.

But now, when that blue appeared in a barbarian from the North Sea, it meant the arrogance and savagery of a monster.

1.3 Words Left Unsaid

“You saved her,” Marcus said.

There was exactly the right amount of surprise in his voice. Not too much, so as not to offend you. Not too little, enough to show that he had noticed your choice.

You watched the iron gate slowly come down.

“I only voted against her death.”

“Here, there’s not much difference between voting against her death and sparing her.” He gave a small smile. “Especially when it comes from your hand. So — why?”

On the sand below, slaves were turning it flat again. The beast handlers were dragging the lion’s body away with iron hooks, and clean yellow sand was being poured from baskets over the blood.

You did not answer at once.

Marcus waited very patiently. He knew how to wait for a senator’s daughter to speak, and how to make his own silence look like respect.

“Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. There are tears for things, and mortal burdens touch the heart,” you said.

He raised an eyebrow slightly.

“My mother’s book,” you added. “One of the things she left behind.”

You still remembered the smell of that book, a smell of myrrh, and the leather cover darkened by hands. Your mother’s writing was thin but neat, as though she had copied the lines down in secret.

As a child you had not understood that line. You only knew that when your mother read to that place, she would rest her hand on the edge of the page for a long time before she turned it.

Marcus repeated the line quietly, his pronunciation correct, the ending elegant.

“If your mother wrote it down, she must have loved it,” he said. “Anyone who can remember it in an arena is nobler than most of the people here.”

The line had in fact been one of your aunt Claudia’s notes, but you did not bother to correct him.

Because Marcus never let a word fall to the ground for nothing. He had already moved closer.

“You want to know what that barbarian did at the end,” he said.

You did not deny it.

Marcus seemed to have been waiting for exactly that silence. He stood up and lifted his hand to signal your attendants to fall back.

“The games master is a friend of mine. After the match, it’s not so frightening down below. You could take a closer look at her. Perhaps she’ll make you feel that line wasn’t wasted on her.”

You should have refused.

A noblewoman should not go into a place like that without good reason, still less be taken there by a young officer to look at a gladiator who had just come off the sand. But you remembered the hand that had covered the lion’s eyes, and the words she had spoken without a sound.

You had already raised your hand in the stands. To refuse now would look a little late.

So you rested your hand on Marcus’s. It was a small movement — enough for others to see good manners, not enough to look like closeness.

“Come. She’s just below.”

The passage beneath the arena was lower than the stands, and darker.

Torches were stuck into the damp stone walls, and the smoke stung your nose. The blood left on the iron gates had turned almost black, and a few animal hairs were stuck near the hinges.

The gladiators sat on low stools. One had a slave doctor stitching his shoulder. One was scrubbing sand from his skin with pumice. One was silently eating coarse bread soaked in water. The smell here was heavy — fat, sweat, vinegar, herbs and blood all mixed together — even harder to escape than the smell in the stands.

These gladiators were not the heroes of the painted notices, and not the people of poems.

They were property.

Numbers were branded on their wrists, and everything was clearly recorded: how much bean porridge they could eat, how many days a wound would take to close, how much the next match was worth in bets. The strong were kept like expensive warhorses. The weak soon disappeared. Bruises from wooden-sword training were layered over old wounds, belts rubbed the skin raw at the waist, and the linings of iron helmets were soaked with sweat.

Marcus was a passionate lover of the games, and he walked here as if he knew every step. Some saluted him, some lowered their heads and stepped aside. The games master came to meet him, his face shining with grease, two heavy rings on his fingers.

“Legate, that North Sea she-wolf made trouble again today. If it weren’t for you, who knows how it would have ended.”

“But she always earns back what you spend feeding her,” Marcus said.

Several of them laughed.

You did not. Your eyes went past them to the end of the passage.

Scylla was sitting there.

Her shield lay at her feet; her sword had already been taken away. She had not yet taken off her leather armour, and a graze on the side of her shoulder was seeping blood. A slave doctor stood nearby holding a basin of water, as if unsure whether he should go near her. She paid him no attention, only lowered her head and began unwinding the leather strap from her wrist.

The torchlight fell across her face, the shadow lying over her cheekbone. In the dark, her sea-grey eyes looked like ice in the deep sea.

Marcus stopped in front of the iron bars and studied her for a moment.

“Strange,” he said. “Her face looks familiar somehow.”

Scylla did not look up.

“Perhaps because everyone who is dragged down here starts to look the same after a while,” you said.

Marcus smiled. “No, she’s a bit different…” He paused, as if he could not find the right comparison, and soon gave up. “Never mind. Northern barbarians often have strange blood in them.”

He turned back to you, his voice light again.

“What do you want to ask her?”

You walked closer.

“That thing you did just now — what did it mean?”

Scylla’s fingers paused for a moment, then went on unwinding the strap.

Marcus answered for her quickly. “Most likely some savage ritual.”

You did not look at him.

“What did you say to the lion?”

This time, Scylla’s fingers did not even pause.

Silence settled on both sides of the bars. Somewhere far off, someone was swearing. The slave doctor’s copper basin was knocked over, and water ran towards you along the cracks in the stone, a pale red.

Marcus gave a small sigh, as if he were being patient with a toy not worth any more of his time.

“She may not even understand Latin,” he said. “And even if she does, she doesn’t know who you are. A beast like this won’t know it was you who gave her one more day of life.”

Scylla finally raised her eyes, just for a moment.

Not at him.

At you.

The look was very short, so short that Marcus did not notice it. He was still talking. “You don’t need to waste your time on her. You’ve already given her more than she deserves—”

Footsteps came from the other side. Several high officials in togas with narrow stripes, their purple borders swaying in the firelight — perhaps men close to the emperor.

Marcus turned at once.

His smile changed without leaving a trace, and he bowed slightly to you. “Please wait a moment. I’ll go and greet them. I won’t be long.”

He did not wait for your answer before going to meet them.

You stayed where you were.

In front of the iron bars there was only you and Scylla.

You could hear spectators in the distance still shouting her name. The stone walls weakened the sound, as if it were coming up from the bottom of a very deep well.

You stepped half a pace forward.

“That thing you did,” you said, very quietly, “what did it mean?”

Scylla looked at you, and at last she spoke. Her Latin was stiff, but her voice was clear.

“May its soul go home to Nehalennia’s arms.”

You looked at her.

She understood. She had understood Latin all along.

A torch spat out a spark. It fell on the wet stone and went out at once.

Nehalennia. You had heard of her — the name of a foreign goddess of the North Sea, the kind of name people used to frighten children.

“Nehalennia,” you repeated softly.

“The goddess of the sea,” she said. “Fog, tides, the voyage home. Even what dies on land needs a way home.”

When she had said this, she said nothing more.

You wanted to ask more: where she came from, why she spoke words of farewell before killing an animal, why she would not salute the emperor’s box — and if she could speak Latin, why hadn’t she?

All that lay in front of you were those silent sea-grey eyes. You remembered another note in the margin of your mother’s book, the ink paler than the rest, as if whoever wrote it had paused for a long time.

“The face may be silent, but the eyes speak. (Facies muta, sed oculi loquuntur.)”

Scylla suddenly looked up.

“Your eyes,” she said, “are like someone I once knew.”

The words came with no reason and no warning, sudden as a knife.

You stepped back.

All your life, many people had said this. The slave women who combed your hair had said it, and your father had said it when he was drunk and looked at you in silence. You had your mother’s eyes, almost exactly. By the light of the candles beside her coffin, everyone had remembered those eyes — and then, one by one, had found them again in your face.

You gripped the iron bars.

“Who?” you asked.

Scylla did not answer. Her eyes moved past your shoulder.

From the other end of the passage came Marcus’s laugh. He was walking back with several of the officials.

You swallowed the words that were about to come out. A noblewoman might say a word of pity to a gladiator. She should not, in front of everyone, press a slave about her memories.

Least of all beside Marcus, beside the games master, in front of nobles who could turn every pause into gossip.

You stepped half a pace back and let go of the bars.

The rust left reddish-brown marks on your fingertips.

Marcus came back to your side, his voice attentive. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. It smells bad down here — let me take you out.”

You did not ask anything more. You only turned and went with Marcus.

But those words followed you through the damp passage, through the echoes of the crowd that had not yet faded, through the torch smoke and the smell of black blood.

They were like a splinter driven under a fingernail. In many quiet moments afterwards, they made you think again and again of those sea-grey eyes.