Uptown Local and Other Interventions Read Free Page A

by the compliment, and held out the veil. But the resplendent figure just glanced over his shoulder then waved it away. “Hang onto it for a moment longer,” he said. “We’re waiting for someone. What’s your name, son?”
    “Lucius.”
    “I’m Hilarus.”
    “I know.”
    “A fan, eh?”
    Lucius put his head up, emboldened, and grinned back. “I work here,” he said. “I follow the business.”
    “Aha…a fellow professional. Don’t tell me: you want to be a gladiator someday.”
    Lucius shook his head. “No. A coach.”
    “Smart kid,” Hilarus said. “There’s money in that, if you can learn what you need to. And you don’t have to be a gladiator to learn.” Hilarus glanced quickly over his shoulder again. “So how do you like today’s card?”
      Lucius had been thinking about little else. “If I was a betting man,” he said, “I’d have something on the third fight.”
    Now Hilarus laughed out loud. “ ‘If?’ Everyone bets in Rome. The question is, which way?”
    “You’re fourteen for fourteen, with thirteen crowns for technical merit,” Lucius said. “The other guy’s two for six, and none. Looks obvious to me.”
    “To a lot of people,” Hilarus said. “And today, I wouldn’t argue. But if the fix was in—” He looked over his shoulder again and his grin moderated itself. “Here she comes. Make me look good…”

A flurry of rose and white came out of Gate Twenty-Four, a silken palla -robe stirred to a flutter by the breeze that blew around the base of the building. The woman wrapped in it wore no veil, but scurrying behind her came a gaggle of high-end slaves burdened with parasols and cushions and feathery fans and picnic hampers. They all paused as the woman did, looking around. Hilarus caught her eye and raised a hand. Behind his back, the gladiator’s other hand made a fist at Lucius, then stuck out two fingers in the Help me out here! gesture. Lucius looked at it for a moment, then put one end of the veil in that fist as it opened. He didn’t let go of the other end.
    The whole brightly-dressed crowd moved toward them, the lady foremost. Lucius bowed deeply: and Hilarus extended the hand holding his end of the veil.
    “You have it!” she said. “I thought it would be floating in Father Tiber by now.”
    “No, madam,” Hilarus said, and bowed again. “But someone should have told you that it wouldn’t go into the arena from where you threw it. This time of day, the wind’s from the west. Anything this light goes up under the east-side awnings and out. I’ve seen a hundred veils go that way…”
    “I dare say you have,” she said, giving him a wicked look. “But I’m glad not to have lost this to anyone I didn’t know.” She smiled at Hilarus, and took the veil. “And the small one helped you? You must have run very quickly!”
    “We both ran for it, Great Lady,” Lucius said, eyeing the width of the golden border on her robe. It was heavy bullion wire, and he didn’t think his honorific was going too far. “But he caught the other end, that would have gone in the mud.”
     “And I missed such a chase!” the lady said, with an attractive  pout. “Better sport than anything in the arena—especially after you ran out.” She gave Hilarus an amused look. “You should have seen the Emperor’s face.”
    “Normally his commands are my first concern,” Hilarus said, bowing slightly. “But some of us owe other allegiances: such as the one to Queen Venus.”
    The lady smiled again. “We should go back,” she said to Hilarus, “before Titus starts wondering too much. I’ll find a way to show my gratitude… Later. But as for you, young sir—”
    She smiled at Lucius, bending down to meet his eyes more closely, and reached out to take his hand. All his calculating and rather mercenary thoughts of reward left Lucius’s head in a rush, drowned in the darkness of her hair and eyes. Up close, she smelled wonderful, like roses. Then he felt