Uptown Local and Other Interventions Read Free

edges like a huge beast’s roar. The place would come alive, and the music would start, and the men who made it all happen, the fighters, would parade in. They would give everyone who sat in the place a single purpose: to be part of the fight, part of the glory, by backing a winner.
    Lucius turned away and headed across the hot plaza toward the Forum. Work left him little time to see the games, though he lived to hear every scrap of news about them, and could recite the stats of nearly every first-string fighter who walked out on the sand. He’d stolen time enough to see perhaps twenty fights since he started paying attention to them three years ago. It was annoying to be at liberty right now, because there would be no major fights until after the lunch break, when the crowds had had time to get enough wine in them to improve the bookies’ odds. There were three fights this afternoon that he’d have liked to see: two pairs of professionals who hadn’t fought since early spring, and the third—
    A shadow flickered over him and Lucius looked up, expecting to see a bird. Instead a strange twisting shape came floating slowly down: something red. It was a veil.
    Probably somebody up there dropped it, he thought, glancing back up at the Colosseum. A breeze pushed the veil slightly sideways as it fell, and Lucius realized it was going to land on the eternally muddy road where the animal-carts came up. Lucius could tell from the sheen and gleam of the veil as it turned in the hot sun that it wasn’t the cheap kind of silk that he’d been sent for, but something expensive, blown off of some rich lady up there.
    Rich people weren’t anything Lucius cared about one way or another…but still, the silk was really beautiful. It drifted lower, blowing toward the wet claggy mud of the cart path. Lucius went after it as the breeze gusted around the building, leaping up to catch one end just before it landed in the mire. Then he stared at it.
    Now what? How do I find out whose this is? There could be ten thousand women up there, freeborn, slave or noble, and probably all of them would say it was theirs. Lucius stood there irresolute, trying to decide what to do.
    He turned to look at the first-floor gates, and from Gate Twenty-Four came a subdued glow that resolved into a glitter of golden armor, a white tunic, a kilt of white and gold, high-laced white leather sandals as their wearer strode out into the sunlight. The big burly red-haired man stood there for a moment, craning his neck to see around or over the crowd that was starting to gather around him.
    Then he saw Lucius with the veil, and headed straight toward him.
    Lucius stopped breathing. Some of the crowd that had come out after the man were still following him. He turned as he walked, waving them away, laughing, and the sun glanced off the polished helmet under his arm with a blinding flash like a star fallen to earth.
    It can’t be, Lucius thought. But he knew the white ostrich-feather wings on that helmet’s griffin crest, and the multiple bands of white enamel just above the broad brim. Everybody who followed the Games knew the trademarks of the Neronian gladiator school’s most famous superstar. But what’s he coming at me for? Unless... The veil! Did I do something wrong? But what—?
    Lucius stared at his face. It really is him! There was the scar from last year, one of the very few he’d ever gotten: he was that good. “Boy,” the man said as he got closer, “where’d you find that?”
     “It fell from the top level, sir,” Lucius managed to say, and then instantly blushed hot. He was in a sports fan’s dream, but had no idea how to act or even speak to a top-level gladiator if one spoke to you.
    The gladiator looked over at the mud of the nearby cart-track and his eyes widened a little. All Lucius’s worries vanished when he saw how broadly the man grinned at him. “You saved it from landing in that mess? Nice catch.”
    Lucius swallowed, overwhelmed