Uptown Local and Other Interventions Read Online Free PDF

flesh. Not a scar. Just a place where the carver’s knife had slipped….
    “There’s a message, sir,” he said. “She says, ‘You have a day: dawn to dawn’.”
    “‘ She? ’” said Lucius, blushing and not knowing why. He was able to accept the magic far more easily than the words. Even in dreams nobody had ever called him Sir . He was just a slave, he’d never had real responsibility before. But now he was responsible for the murmillo .
    And I have to take care of him. How do I do that—?
    Back in the depths of the building, a door creaked open and Lucius flinched.
    “What’s the matter, sir?”
    “We’ve got to get away from here. Gladiators don’t work out by themselves this early, they—”
    “Hey, you!” Lucius half-turned, saw who was speaking, and felt icy sweat pop out all over him. “Yes, you two! What’s going on?”
    This can not be happening! Lucius thought desperately. Dark-skinned, massive, standing in the shadows of the Fighter’s Gate, was the Master of the Games, principal officer of the Colosseum, answering directly to the Emperor; the man responsible for every denarius and sestercius spent here, and therefore Lucius’s true master. In the comfy brown tunic he must have slept in, he looked like a casual laborer, but there was nothing casual about his expression. “Well?”
    Lucius instantly understood that the only possible response was to lie outrageously, and bowed the way he’d done to the patrician lady yesterday. “Sir,” he said, “my master sent him over to work out with the Neronians.”
    It was Hilarus’s school, the best—and the only one with a direct connection to the Colosseum through the tunnel under the plaza. That explained how a gladiator could get here without passing any gates. The Master raised his eyebrows. “He’s a little early.”
    “My master wanted him to check the sand.”
    The Master looked resigned. “Doesn’t everybody? All right…five more minutes. Then the ground crew comes in.” He turned and vanished into the darkness under the gate. Lucius nearly collapsed with relief, then heard the squeaking behind him as the murmillo went back to his practice.
    “Didn’t you hear him? We have five minutes!”
    “Five minutes is long enough to win a fight.” The murmillo began proving that on the empty air.
    Lucius watched him with a thousand questions going through his head. What do I do now? How do I hide him? What do I do with him? “When you’re finished,” he said, “follow me. I’ll find you somewhere to hi— To stay while we figure out what to do.”
    “Only until afternoon,” the murmillo said without breaking his rhythm.
    “What? Why?”
    “Because I fight this afternoon.”
    “You what??”
    “I fight. In the freestyles.”
    “Are you crazy? Who put your name on the schedule?”
    “That’s my owner’s job. You would have taken care of that. Wouldn’t you?” He went back to cutting the air.
    Lucius shivered; the swish of the sword was starting to get to him. That’s how it’ll sound when they find I lied about him, and chop my head off… Then, slowly, his panic began to fade. But wait a minute. What if he does fight? This happens every week. Documentation goes missing, some new guy turns up, nobody’s sure what he’s doing but he knows, and the fight goes ahead—
    It all started to fall into place. If he’s going to show up to fight anyway,  then we’ll go ahead and act like he’s for real. It could work, for the same reason that it had worked just now with the Master. With six thousand employees in this one facility alone, he couldn’t know them all by sight. “Listen,” he said. “Just come along with me, and whenever I say ‘Isn’t that right?’, you just nod and agree. And if I ask you to do some fighting moves—”
    “That’s what I live for,” said the murmillo . He slashed his sword up and down, then winced slightly. “I think I overdid the exercises.”
    Lucius remembered how long he had