Page 19
She turned to Claudia, bowing.
‘Empress? Princess?’
‘It is yet to be decided.’
‘Then I shall call you, my lady,’ she said, taking Claudia’s hand to kiss in a sweeping bow.
Gia scowled at her but said nothing.
The other gladiator copied Dido’s lead by bowing, though she did not seem as enamoured.
‘How do you know each other?’ Claudia asked Celadus.
‘We met… at another party, would you believe?’
They all exchanged a strange, furtive glance, seemingly unwilling to provide any further information.
‘Livia has been competing here in Rome for the past few months, and she and Dido have fought each other before too.’
‘This is Gia,’ said Dido, ‘the one I told you about.’
‘Your legend precedes you, Viatrix the Victorious,’ said the shorter woman. ‘But you have yet to encounter Livia the Legendary.’ She flexed her arm, showing off her toned muscles despite her petite stature.
‘Is that right?’ said Gia.
‘Rome already has a famous woman gladiator,’ said Livia, ‘so don’t get any ideas above your station.’
Claudia tensed, fearing the party would go further downhill if it erupted into violence.
‘Rome is a big city,’ said Gia.
‘Sounds like a challenge to me.’
‘You bet it is.’
They smiled at each other, and only then did Claudia realize that Livia was joking. It was just friendly comradery. She’d never had many friends as the emperor’s daughter, only handmaids whose duty was to serve her. Sometimes she found it difficult to understand the rules.
‘Maybe Lady Emperor over here can arrange for us to show everyone what we’re made of,’ said Livia. ‘Women fighting women at the Colosseum, just like we should’ve been doing since the beginning.’ She looked to Claudia. ‘What do you say?’
‘If I become empress, I guarantee it,’ she said – a task for future Claudia, should she be so lucky.
‘More wine?’ A doe-eyed handmaiden popped up at Claudia’s side, holding a richly decorated amphora.
‘Oh no, I shall want a clear head for tomorrow morning,’ said Claudia, holding up one hand. ‘Thank you, though.’
‘We’ll take that,’ said Cassius, delicately removing it from the girl’s hands. Dominic declined, but Cassius poured some for him and Gia, clinking their glasses.
The more time Claudia spent in their company, the more alike she found the siblings to be. They had the same smile, the same light in their eyes when they were amused. They communicated without words, always on the same page. She had never known that kind of family.
She wiped her hands on her robes as she tried not to think about her own brother. His lifeless eyes flashed through her mind, making her as cold as stone.
‘Sharing is caring,’ said Livia, eyeing the amphora. ‘You’d better have some of that left for me.’
The evening dragged on, bringing a few more latecomers to pledge their allegiance, including the wife of Senator Cornelius. Cornelius had been her father’s ally, and sometimes her own. Claudia and Gia had first met at his birthday party. They might never have come together if not for Gia intervening to prevent his lechery in the shrine of Venus, but he’d met a grisly end as one of her brother’s many victims.
His wife was having a second wind now that her master was gone, having formed a friendship with her husband’s former mistress. They were going travelling together, she said, to see the pyramids.
When the crowd had dwindled down to less than ten, Marcellus made an appearance. He was visibly jolly and trailing an entourage – a posse of men who applauded his every sentence.
