One With the Darkness Read Online Free PDF

accountants, galley slaves for your barge, men to till the fields of your estates, orfemales to be hairdressers, laundresses. Of course Romans also bought slaves used for more intimate activities, such as bathing and sex. In Rome anything was possible.
    “There’s a likely seller.” Titus pointed. He had gathered his toga over one arm. “He specializes in combatants for the arena.”
    Livia cast her eyes over the stock, brawny men with dead eyes. Not barbarians. These were likely from the provinces to the east, Judea or Syria. Roman men and women clustered around, prodding muscle, asking about their training. A shivery feeling wafted through her. What she was looking for wasn’t here. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name. “I want more than muscle, Titus.”
    Titus sighed. “I doubt you’ll find one who can slaughter at your command and play the lute into the bargain.”
    “I don’t want a lute player.” But intelligent, a core of strength and courage … maybe she was looking for character. One couldn’t judge those qualities in a slave market. But she knew she would recognize the one when she saw him.
    They kept going. The slaves all seemed alike, none what she wanted. She glanced to Titus. He didn’t relish shopping. But she vowed she would see every slave in the market until she found the one she wanted. He was here. “Why don’t we split up? I’ll scout ahead,” she offered.
    “I’m not leaving you alone. Your enemies are everywhere.”
    “Give me a couple of your bodyguards as escort. Look out for any slave that seems like he has a brain in his head as well as a ribbed belly.”
    Titus nodded brusquely, pointed at one of his slaves, and started off to the left. Livia looked around. She felt so strange. It seemed as if she had done this all before. She moved through the crowds. The electric energy of her Companion made people part in front of her like waterbefore the prow of her barge. Let the bodyguards keep up if they could.
    “New shipment!” she heard a vendor yell. The cry sent shivers down her back. She knew that cry. “Fresh from Britannia.” She pushed through the clot of onlookers.
    Somewhere in her mind she registered the barbarians who sat half-naked with slumped shoulders and hunted eyes, chained to posts. Even in the brisk January night, the scent of men unwashed and the lime used to kill their vermin hung in the air, along with the sweet aroma of blood from half-healed wounds and the astringent smell of the acetum used to disinfect them.
    But all that receded. Her eyes were drawn to a giant of a man in the back. His wrists and ankles were shackled to two posts by chains of only two or three links so that, though standing, he was spread-eagled and unable to move. His hair was dark like any good Roman’s, though long and tangled, held away from the sides of his face by some tie at the back. His beard was rough and untrimmed. He wore only a scrap of cloth about his loins, the better to reveal his muscled shoulders, chest, and corded thighs. Those muscles had not been acquired in some gymnasium but were created by hard work. His flesh was paler than a Roman’s, though he had spent time in the sun. He had a light dusting of dark, curling hair over his chest and belly. A wound in his left shoulder still seeped. No one could say he wasn’t attractive. Yet it was his eyes that riveted her. They were light: translucent green like the shallows of the Mediterranean. They burned with hatred. She felt she had known him always, though her rational mind knew this was the first time she had ever seen him. Her throat seemed to close. She had done all this before. She swayed as something inside her seemed to be trying to get out. A thought? A memory? She squeezed her eyes shut.
    She took a breath. That was better. She’d pushed down whatever weakness assailed her. Her eyes returned to the barbarian.
    A gaggle of three men clustered around him. They were talking….
    “You can’t want