Look at You

“How...?”

“Same way you do, I expect,” Flavia said. She shrugged. “I just...know how.” Her smile widened. “It’s always wonderful to find someone else who’s like us.”

“Us? Then Master Angelus –” Dael remembered himself and scrambled to catch up to Flavia.

“Don’t ask,” she said. “But yes. We aren’t so different, you and I.”

“I suppose you’re never cold in winter,” Dael said.

“And you are never ill.”

Dael nodded. “It’s true. But...why do you need me to protect you, if you can do that?”

“Because we’re not omnipotent, no matter our gifts. After all, look at you.”

Forward, Back

Dael believed her. There was something in her ringing tones, in her fierce golden eyes - he knew she could protect him. Just as he would protect her.

Then he said, “You won’t tell Master Angelus about what I can do,” he said.

Flavia turned and started toward home. “If you don’t want me to. I suspect he already knows.”

Dael stood rooted to the spot, shocked. “What? How?”

“Because he knows what I can do.”

“What you can do?”

Flavia smiled over her shoulder, and fluttered her fingers at him. Flames danced on her fingertips.

Dael fell back a step.

Duties and Promises

“Anything, Flavia,” Dael said.

She eyed him shrewdly, and for the first time in a long time Dael knew it was right to lift his head, draw himself tall.

“You must be willing to keep my secrets, even from Master Angelus,” she said.

He nodded. Was she going to overthrow her own cousin?

“And you must learn to become a fighter, better than any petty Roman soldier,” she said.

He nodded again. She’d been teaching him. He could learn, right? Of course, those soldiers were professionals, had gone to wars, slaughtered his people --

“I will keep you safe,” she said.

With Anything

As they walked home, Flavia told Dael a wonderful tale about an orphan boy raised in a forest like a half-wild animal who became a king after he was chosen by a magical gladius planted in a stone plinth. Just as Flavia was getting to the good part, where the boy’s former tormentors were forced to bow and confess him king, she paused.

“Dael,” she said, and she was still one of the few who could say his name right, bothered to say his name at all. “Will you help me?”

“With anything, my lady.”

“Please, call me Flavia.”

Grateful Tales

“I’ll heal,” Flavia said, ducking away from his hand, but Dael caught her chin and dragged her close.

“Let me,” he said again. Blue power sparked at his fingertips.

Flavia jumped, but she didn’t pull away, and Dael let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“Everyone heals,” Dael said. And he smiled tentatively. “Maybe some people ought to heal faster.” He pushed the power into her gently, and her eyes fluttered closed.

“Thank you,” she whispered when it was done. Then her eyes opened, and she said, “Have you ever heard the tale of the sleeping king?”

All Right, Fine

A bugle sounded across the city, and the soldiers cursed, turned. They flung insults over their shoulders at Flavia and then fell into formation, marched on the double. Dael watched them go and wished Flavia let him carry his training gladius with him.

Not that he’d have been a match for any of the soldiers.

Once they were gone, Dael turned and helped Flavia to her feet.

“Are you all right?” he asked in broken Latin.

“Fine,” Flavia muttered, but her words were slurred from her wound. She pressed a hand to her mouth gingerly.

“Let me see,” Dael said.

Only So Powerful

Angelus wasn’t so powerful that Dael didn’t find himself standing between Flavia and four young men dressed as soldiers. Flavia pushed herself up, pressed a hand to the corner of her mouth where it bled. Her eyes blazed.

Dael knew that fury. He’d felt it himself the first time he realized he was property in this land.

The soldiers laughed, flung the word “stranger” at Flavia. Dael wasn’t sure what they were saying, but he knew it was rude from the way Flavia’s mouth tightened.

Dael held his arms out to shield her, and one of the soldiers stepped closer.

Stranger, Powerful

He didn’t have a chance to ask her about it for nearly a week, and then it was after they’d sparred beyond the fields again (he was getting minimally better, he thought), and he was out of breath.

Flavia looked barely stirred by the exhaustion.

“You don’t like the other women, do you?”

“They would marry my cousin and displace me from my own house,” Flavia said. “It is not easy, being a stranger in this land, and it is dangerous, being a powerful stranger.”

“You’re not citizens?”

“No, but Angelus is too powerful for anyone to complain of it.”

Somehow He Knew

What was more exhausting than sparring and shopping was dinner parties where Angelus’s soldier friends and their wives or sisters came to lounge around the house all day eating, making conversation, and listening to musicians play.

Dael was assigned to wait on Flavia, who was apparently assigned to make everyone happy. Dael couldn’t understand the words being flung rapidly back and forth between the cushioned benches everyone reclined on, but he knew these people were wealthy from the way they were dressed and their own servants cowered, moving among Angelus’s own.

And somehow he knew Flavia was angry at everything.

All Again

After sparring with Flavia beyond the fields, following her through the markets as she ordered food for the household, and waiting on Flavia and Angelus at supper (under Tertius’s watchful eye), Dael was exhausted. He fell onto the pallet beside Quintus’s and was asleep before he took his next breath.

When he awoke, Quintus shoved a bowl of gruel at him and attempted to ask where he’d been the day before. Dael didn’t know how to explain, and he suspected he shouldn’t tell anyone about the gladius, so he shrugged - and groaned at the thought of doing it all again.

What's In It For

“You bought me to...set me free?” Dael narrowed his eyes. “What’s in it for you?”

“I’m not setting you free - you’re earning it,” Flavia said. “What’s in it for me?” She paused, considered, and Dael had a moment to study her face properly, clear of the wariness she wore around the other Roman citizens. And she was - young. Perhaps younger than him.

And she was lovely.

And then she began to move, made the blade sing through the air, and Dael felt his heart leap into his throat.

“What’s in it for me is a sparring partner. Guard up!”

Almost Gods

“People aren’t property,” Dael spluttered. “You can’t treat me like –”

“I own you? Because I do. Paid good money, too. And we clothe and feed and house you,” Flavia said.

“I’m a person!”

“As am I. And yet I can be bought and sold, same as you. For me they’ll call it marriage, for you it’s called servitude.” Flavia looked at him steadily. “Now, learn to use that gladius well, and perhaps one day you can buy your freedom.”

Dael took a deep breath. “Really? How?”

“In the colosseum. The best gladiators are almost gods. You could earn the money.”

Neither Man Nor Protector

“Should you be out here alone with a man?” Dael accepted the sword warily.

“You’re a slave, not a man, so no one will care. Usually Angelus sends Tertius with me, but he let me buy you for my own purposes, so as far as Rome cares, you’re my new chaperone and protector.”

“Not a man?” Dael spluttered. “How dare you –”

“Not that I really need protecting.” Flavia poked around in a cluster of bushes on the side of the path and came up with another sword. She unsheathed it, brandished it. “Are you ready to learn some more Latin?”

Bad Habits

A gladius was a sword, a short, broad thing Dael had seen the soldiers wield, different from the sleek spears. Flavia shrugged off her cloak and hung it from a bough, and she wore a sheath at her waist.

“Women here are soldiers?” Dael goggled. It made some sense - her master (brother? Husband? Surely not father?) was a soldier.

“No,” Flavia said, “which is why we’re out past the farmers.” She added, “Agricolae,” for good measure. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

“I was a farmer,” Dael said flatly.

“Good. Then you won’t have any bad habits.”

New Words

Oddly enough, Dael learned a lot by doing. Flavia took him walking first.

(“Ambulare, to walk.”

“So we’re...ambulare?”

“No. Ambulas. You walk. Ambula. I walk.”

“What’s the word for I?”

“Well...ego, sort of.”

“So...ego ambula?”

“No, just ambula.”

“But if ego means ‘I’ –”

“Ambula all on its own means ‘I walk’.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Shut up and keep walking.”)

Dael tried to remember all the new words, but it wasn’t going well. Flavia tried refusing to talk to him in his own language, but he knew so little it was hopeless.

“You’ll like this word - gladius.”

By Doing

“I’m sure they do.” Flavia looked amused, and Dael suspected she knew about how the maidservants would coo over him and pet his hair. He really was a baby lamb, wasn’t he?

“First things first,” Flavia said, “you could do with a Latin lesson or two.”

“Latin,” Dael said. “That’s what they call their tongue?”

Flavia tilted her head to the side. “What do you call yours?”

“You speak it. What do you call it?” Dael shot back, and Flavia’s golden eyes sparked.

Dael remembered himself and ducked his head, terrified, but then Flavia said,

“Come on. Learn by doing.”

Special

Dael lifted his head again, and he was startled to find Flavia almost nose to nose with him. Her eyes were truly golden, like that of a hawk or a wolf, and something in them glimmered - like laughter.

“Yes, Angelus really did choose well,” she said. She sat back, smoothed down her skirts, and she was smiling fondly at Dael the way some girls smiled at newborn lambs.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, wary. “What are you looking at?”

“You.” Flavia sighed happily. “You’re special, aren’t you?”

“Lots of people have hair this color where I come from.”

Properly

Tertius, who really must have been able to read minds, nudged Dael in the spine and growled, and Dael bowed his head, the gesture a token of respect but really to hide the hatred in his eyes.

He was a person, and he was being treated little better than a horse.

“Have fun with him, Flavia,” Angelus said, and he stood up, swept out of the room.

“I will, My Lord,” Flavia said. Something about the way she uttered ‘My Lord’ was dry. Then she spoke rapidly to Tertius, who grumbled but left.

“Now,” Flavia said, “look at me properly.”

Consequences and Fury

“Dael,” he said, emphasizing both syllables.

“I am Flavia, though Tertius and the others may expire from righteous indignation if you call me anything but ‘Mistress’,” she said. “His name is Angelus, but you should probably call him ‘Master’.”

“I want to go home,” Dael said.

Tertius smacked him upside the head.

“Your home is gone,” Angelus said easily.

“You mean you –”

“Not us. Another one of the kings in your land, I suspect.” Angelus shrugged. “Never you mind. You belong to Flavia now. You’ll do as she says, or you won’t like the consequences.”

Dael choked back his fury.

Answer, Slaughter

Tertius jabbed Dael in the spine again, and he lifted his head, twisted around with a snarl - and there was a hand on his chin, tugging him around to face –

Her.

The woman from beneath the red hood, Dael was sure of it. Belatedly, he realized she, too, had been speaking his language. She had dark skin, different from the other servants in the house, different even from the master’s, and her eyes were bright, golden, and fierce, like a wolf.

“You picked well,” she said to the soldier, and then to Dael, “What’s your name?”

Tertius answered, slaughtered it.