Felis came away from the house of Verrius Valerius with the distinct suspicion he had been used, and not only to fill in a few hour’s entertainment for the wealthy Roman. However he had no complaints, since he was accustomed to being treated as an object of lust or as a means for other men to achieve their own objectives, and he was pleased enough with the afternoon’s events. If Verrius’s slave did indeed turn up at the gladiator barracks, then Felis would stick to his agreement, but he wasn’t going to worry about it either way. It had always been in his nature to just take things as they came.

      When he got back to the barracks he found the lanista, Spiculus, waiting for him impatiently, not best pleased that one of his most valuable assets had first been injured that morning and then simply taken himself off for the day. Felis took his nagging with a good-natured shrug and only started paying attention when Spiculus said, “There was a man here earlier today asking about you.”

      “Who was he?” Felis, who had been about to stroll off, paused and glanced at the lanista with interest, “What did he want?”

      “Some rich-cat patrician down from Rome who’s throwing a swanky private party. He wants to match his pet gladiator from the Capua school with you as part of the entertainment.”

      Felis grimaced, though there was nothing too unusual in the request. Between the four or five times a year he could put his gladiators up for the sponsored games, it was lucrative business for a provincial lanista to rent them out to wealthy patricians wanting to impress their guests and clients by offering a private fight as entertainment. He expected the paria would be a staged performance, since prized fighters were too valuable to squander on some patrician’s whim, but Spiculus’s next words disillusioned him of that assumption.

      “I guess he wants to impress someone real bad, since he’s prepared to pay handsomely for a fight to the death.”