place.”
“Leave me be, woman.”
Verres pushed her away. His eyes widened as he saw what he was looking for: a staircase down half a floor to the lower level of the house.
“Pelorus’s purse is heavy with coin. And I am tasked with lightening both purse and cock,” Successa insisted.
She watched in bafflement as Verres gingerly descended the stairs. The former flash of brighter light from the broken lamp was almost fading; the burning oil on the floor already reduced to low simmers of dying blue, the door to the lower level almost entirely hidden in shadow.
“That portal offers path to cells where slaves reside,” Successa said disdainfully. “You will discover nothing there of worth.”
Verres ignored her and lifted the latch, opening onto a corridor of roughly assembled brick. Torches, not lamps, flickered every ten paces. He snatched up a fresh brand, and lit it from a sputtering stub in a wall-bracket, waiting patiently as the flames licked around the tar-soaked rags until they hissed into fiery life.
Successa pulled the ankle-bells from her feet and followed.
“Gladiators and slaves,” she whispered. “Middens and storerooms. Is that what kind of man you are, Verres?”
Verres smiled to himself in the half-light.
“Do you seek the company of women at all?” Successa mused.
Verres snorted.
“Accept, Successa, that my interest simply does not lie with you. My meaning is not to offend.”
“Am I too old? Too forward?”
They walked past barred alcoves, each containing one or two dozing male bodies. Some weary heads lifted, only to fall again as Verres passed. Scattered wine flasks in each cell attested to a low-rent copy of the celebrations upstairs.
“I have learned many things,” Successa continued. “In Cyprus, the birthplace of the goddess of love. In Egypt, origin of many dark arts of the bedchamber.” She frowned at the complete lack of effect she seemed to be having. “In Rome itself, where no true man could resist these thighs…” she added petulantly.
“I simply seek something different,” he murmured.
“I can be different.”
Verres had stopped outside one of the cells.
“Now that,” he said appreciatively. “
The cell was entirely bare, lacking wine or the remains of any supper. Inside was merely a rough covering of sackcloth, drawn over a prone, shapely form. She was already awake, dark eyes glinting in the torchlight.
“Is she a gladiator?” Successa asked.
“Do not be a fool,” Verres replied. “Pelorus does not deal solely in gladiators, nor does he tender all coin for spending. This, he locks away as treasure.”
The woman in the cage stared back at him impassively, without fear. Verres lifted the slate by the entrance, reading five letters scratched onto it.
“Medea?” he said. “An ill-fated name for such a little mouse.”
She clutched the sackcloth against her chest, not carefully enough to hide a shapely breast and pointed nipple. She drew her legs toward her, as if recoiling from the light.
“There is no place to run, little mouse,” Verres breathed.
The woman in the cell shook her head in denial, as if willing Verres to disappear, in vain. There was something on her face, like the tendrils of a plant, or matted hair. It was difficult to see in the half-light.
“Suddenly she is coy,” Successa observed with a sniff.
“As well she might be,” Verres smirked, handing Successa the torch.
“She is nothing,” Successa said disdainfully. “Why trouble yourself with earth when you can be grasped by the thighs of the heavens?”
Slowly, ceremoniously, Verres unhooked the lock that lay open in the metal loop, and lifted the bolt that kept the cell door closed. He slid it slowly along its loops with a scraping of dry, old metal.
“Temptation enough for most men,” he said to Successa, tugging at his belt. “But one is never closer to the heavens than when one does the taking.”
He let his tunic fall to the ground, looking faintly ludicrous in nothing but his sandals. His left hand snaked between his own legs, rubbing gently at his hardening member. His right hand tugged at the heavy cell door, which creaked open on protesting hinges.
“I am a woman valued many times higher than her,” Successa protested.
“I do not desire two women,” Verres chuckled. “Not this night at least.”
“Why do you seek to make your life difficult?” Successa said, scowling. “She will fight you.”
“That is my very hope,” Verres whispered, moving slowly, deliberately toward the trembling figure.
The woman named as Medea backed further into her corner, her eyes wide with fear, her back meeting unyielding brick.
“You cannot escape from me, little mouse,” Verres said. He leaned forward and grabbed her hair in his fist. “So show me what you have to offer.”
He dragged her to her feet, the sackcloth falling away to display her naked body. Successa gasped in surprise as she caught sight of a network of regular scarring, at tattoos and swirls, incisions rubbed with colored dirt. The entire left-hand side of the prisoner’s body was a work of savage, Scythian artifice, slashed with a thousand knives in careful patterns, or pricked with dyed needles. The woman raised her head in the light, to display a similar pattern across one side of her face-fang-shaped zigzags across her cheek, and red ochre tendrils reaching across her face and forehead.
“What a work of art you are,” Verres breathed admiringly. “A priestess, perhaps. A seer? A valued woman among your tribe, I am sure of it. Highly regarded. Greatly esteemed. And now… here you are. Naked before me.”
Successa stared in wonder at the patterns on the woman’s body, a world away from the gentle rouges or pinched cheeks of the Roman lady. It was an entire cosmology of symbols and sigils, executed with the barbaric angles and daubs of the primitive peoples of the Euxine Sea. But Verres barely glanced at Medea’s decorations. His hands saw no ink. They cupped and caressed the taut, nervous woman’s body like any other.
“Rape is the Roman way,” Verres said in Medea’s ear. “Do you know that, little Medea? We have taken our women this way since before Rome was a city.”
Medea’s dark eyes stared unblinking into his, unfathomable. Verres felt her breath on his mouth. His hard cock bumped against the soft flesh of her stomach, leaving a gleaming trail like a snail. His free hand caressed her hip, traveling up to the curve of her breast, his fingers circling a hard nipple.
“I see you are excited, little Medea,” Verres said with some surprise. “What about me excites you, I wonder…?”
Medea’s glance darted to the doorway, where Successa the courtesan stood impatiently.
Successa let out an involuntary sigh of exasperation.
“If your company is paid for, Successa, then remain here and observe!” Verres said. “The idea of an audience amuses me.”
“I am at your command, Verres,” Successa said, trying in vain to hide a hurt tone.
“Then I command you to witness,” Verres said, smiling. “See how a true Roman man imposes his virtue upon the lower races. Watch and lea-”
Verres was cut off mid-sentence as Medea kneed him hard in the groin.
As Verres gasped in pain and surprise, his grip loosed on her hair. He folded on himself, grasping at his bruised gonads, only for his face to come into contact with Medea’s knee, forced down onto it by her hands. Verres let out an involuntary yell, keeling over onto the cell floor, but Medea had already forgotten him. Naked, she sprinted straight for the doorway, where Successa watched, frozen in surprise.
Medea grabbed Successa by the throat, her free hand clawing forward at the woman’s eyes. They spun through half a turn, until Medea kicked Successa away, back into the cell, simultaneously propelling herself out through the doorway and into the corridor.
