44

INTERVENTION, MAYBE NOT DIVINE

RECORDER EMPRA McCARTHY SAT IN THE bleachers of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, her pregnant belly round as a globe under her indigo stola. The Colosseum was a frenzy of life around her. Everything had the sheen of a fever from the moment Empra had awoken in her bunk; the entire day felt warped. She’d been in such a daze walking here from the Ab Aeterno she thought she saw Edwin Marin, her tailhat of an ex-fiancé, studying the games’ red-letter edicta munerum announcement on the side of a building. She’d even paused, Marin’s name on the tip of her tongue, before realizing it was the wrong year, and this man was the wrong age. Silver temples, some twenty years Empra’s senior.

So much seemed off. Her thoughts were fuzzy, spinning her head into itself. Empra wasn’t sure if it was a side effect of pregnancy or heartbreak or the crowd’s chanting. The three were a trifecta for misery as she stared at the sands below.

Empra didn’t register the newcomer on the bench beside her until he spoke. “Cruenti sunt ludi. Oculo intimo spectare non sapiat.”

Translation: Bloody are the games. With the inmost eye to watch would not be wise. It was a strange thing to say, in even stranger-sounding Latin. Empra frowned, but didn’t break her gaze into the arena. Conversations with ancient Romans went against her Recorder training, and even though she’d already shattered these rules—off-record interview with a gladiator x 320—none of her felt like talking. She was here for one reason alone.

“I’m placing my bet on Gaius. What about you?”

Empra’s heart rate spiked. She wondered if Doc would notice—connect the reaction with the name. More pressingly, she wondered how this young man knew to say it. One look and Empra knew she was sitting beside a fellow time traveler. Plenty of others in the amphitheater had skin as dark as his, but her neighbor’s toga virilis was dated by over a century. Besides, how else would he know about Gaius? Or want her to know that he knew…. A whole new meaning slid into his greeting: With the inmost eye to watch would not be wise.

She cut off her feed. “Who are you?”

The teenager frowned, his silence carrying until Empra began to second-guess herself. Maybe he was from this time, unable to understand her Central dialect. Maybe this was all some fever-haze coincidence.

“I’m not recording,” she tried again. “You can speak freely.”

“I’m a friend. Call me Gram.” These words fit the newcomer’s tongue much better than his Latin. A learned language, not one cobbled together by translation tech. “I’m here to take you back to the Ab Aeterno.”

Again, her heart seized. “You don’t understand. I can’t leave—”

“Gaius isn’t fighting today.” Gram gazed down at the imperial box, where the emperor was arriving to a lash of cheers.

Empra wanted this to be true, which made the lie even worse. Gaius’s match was among the day’s first—he’d told her at the banquet last evening, unable to veil the fear in his voice.

“He is. And I—I have to watch.” The sob surprised Empra. Usually she was better at hiding things. She’d kept her pregnancy a secret from the Ab Aeterno’s crew for six months thanks to loose stolas. “I need to know how his fight ends.”

“We came to an arrangement with Gaius’s lanista. He’s free, and he’s waiting to say good-bye near the Ab Aeterno. I’m here to take you to him.”

“Free?” Empra’s dizziness was growing worse. Her hands fell from belly to bench, clutching through its splinters. “The Corps would never allow that.”

“We’re not with the Corps,” Gram explained. “How do you think I’m sitting here talking with you?”

“If you’re not with the Corps, then who are you with?”

“That answer would take far more time than we have. Your water’s going to break soon, and if you don’t get back to Central before your son arrives, things are going to get very hashed up. Er, pardon my language.”

It wasn’t the profanity that had startled Empra. Son. Her palm flew back to her stomach. Despite Doc’s offer to reveal the child’s gender, she’d refused, because that was a secret she could not keep from Gaius, and it would expose far more than she could afford.

“Hashed up how?”

“Come with me.” Gram stood, extending his arm. “I’ll explain as much as I can on the way.”

The Porta Sanavivaria was going to open soon. Empra studied its latticework. Standard Roman design—composed of triangles or Xs, depending on how one stared. The rest of the crowd watched the door, too, shouts growing hot with restlessness. Her baby—her son—began kicking to their beat.

“Gaius?”

“He’ll be there,” the other time traveler promised. “The sooner we leave, the longer you have to say good-bye.”

That was the farewell Empra wanted—unmarred by blades and bars.

She took Gram’s hand. The steps were steeper on the way down. Empra’s shifted center of gravity didn’t help things, but Gram was as strong as he looked, and held her steady all the way to the exiting arch. She did not miss how often he glanced at her belly. Nor did she miss his pause in the passageway, his last over-the-shoulder look at the sands.

Gaius’s son kept kicking inside her.

This is a miracle. Intervention, maybe not divine, but just as effective.

She couldn’t help but wonder what it cost.