Kesseph sat across from me, oiling the edge of his blade with movements too precise to be casual. His back was to the fire, his eyes on the ground. We hadn't spoken in nearly an hour. Not because there was nothing to say.
Because he knew I'd answer in my own time.
"How long were you a slave?" I finally asked.
He didn't look up. Just wiped the cloth down the spine of the metal, slow and even.
"Seven years."
"Arena the whole time?"
"No. First two years I hauled bricks. Then I broke a man's jaw when he tried to use me for sport. They moved me where my pain would make them coin."
"And before that?"
He stilled. Set the blade aside. His knuckles cracked.
"I was a trader's son in Baalbek. We sold glass and linen. My mother taught me to read in three tongues. My father died owing more than we had, so I paid the debt."
He looked at me now.
"Not all chains are iron."
I hadn't known the weight beneath his silence.
I'd known him as a scarred blade-keeper in Pulcher's ludus. Silent, sure-footed. The kind of man who never stepped where he hadn't first checked for blood.
Now I saw the mind behind it.
The memory.
"And now you follow me," I said.
"I don't follow you."
He picked up his blade again. Spoke without lifting his gaze.
"I stay near you because I've seen the inside of a dozen leaders. And you're the only one who looks like the end of something."
"The end of what?"
"Hope," he said. "Or gods. Or time. I don't know yet."
I didn't answer.
But I remembered the first time I saw him fight. How he didn't swing for spectacle. Only precision. Like he knew he wouldn't get a second chance.
He still fought like that now.
Except now he fought next to me.
Laelia – Day Seven in the Siege Camp
She'd been ordered into the Umbra perimeter that morning.
Not for punishment. Not for recognition.
Just logistics.
"They eat twice a day, like the rest," said the quartermaster. "But if they ask for things, give it to them. Don't argue."
"Why?"
"Because they're not like the rest."
She didn't ask more.
But she packed the grain carts herself.
Walked them in with the oxen.
Watched the men shift when they saw her approach.
No catcalls. No hands. Just eyes — sharp, quiet, waiting.
Like wolves trained too long to bite without command.
She met Kesseph first.
He took the supply list from her without words. Checked it. Handed it back.
"You can leave it at the central pit."
"You ration by centralisation?"
"We don't trust personal storage. Easier to poison."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Has anyone tried?"
"Once."
"What happened?"
Kesseph looked at her for a long moment.
"He didn't finish chewing."
That night, she sat outside the perimeter, beside a cook fire shared by scribes and runners. She was halfway through eating when a shadow passed behind her.
She didn't hear him coming.
Only felt it.
"You write?" came the voice.
Low. Rough. But not unkind.
She turned. He stood there.
Not close. Not looming.
Just there.
Like gravity.
"I do," she said.
"You've delivered clean manifests. The numbers match. Water's been fresh."
"You're welcome."
"That wasn't gratitude."
"I didn't say it was."
He stared at her.
She stared back.
"I'm Laelia."
"Tenebris."
"That's not your real name."
"No."
"But it fits?"
"Fits what?"
He crouched beside the fire. Picked up a burnt olive and rolled it in his palm.
"The silence before things break."
They sat there for a while.
Neither pushed.
Neither left.
The fire burned low.
She didn't ask what he was.
He didn't ask why she hadn't run yet.
And in the air between them, something unspoken settled. Not desire. Not even curiosity.
Just recognition.
The earth held its breath as we passed under it.
The tunnel wasn't wide. Two men at most. The ceiling low enough that even the shorter legionaries ducked. Timber supports groaned with each step like old men being asked to kneel again.
I led first.
Not because I was braver.
Because I remembered what collapse feels like.
We were nineteen that night.
Not the whole cohort — only those trained in silent steps and fast exits. Every man handpicked. No shields. Just gladius, belt dagger, black wool wrappings over the armour to muffle movement. Oil-rubbed boots. Faces streaked with soot.
Our black sun standard didn't fly in this dark.
But one man carried it rolled under his arm, just in case we needed to remind the enemy who was bleeding them.
I didn't speak as we moved.
Only gestured.
Twice-back curl for halt. Flat palm twist for split. Fist open for silence.
Kesseph brought up the rear.
Which was unusual.
He always stayed close to me, just behind my shoulder, like a second breath.
Tonight, he'd insisted.
"I'll know if something follows," he said. "And you'll know I'll handle it."
The tunnel veered left. Then again. Then opened into the cistern chamber — the one I'd found four nights before. Square-shaped, stone-lined, the remnants of a public well above sealed now with dirt and Carthaginian brickwork.
But the passage beyond was not sealed.
Because they thought no one would come this far under.
They thought wrong.
The moment we breached the far wall, I felt the stone change.
Roman masonry was precise, interlocked. Carthaginian? Different rhythm. Larger blocks. Fewer joins. Less concern for subtlety, more for speed.
That meant we were close to the exterior eastern quarter.
Exactly where we needed to be.
The kind of place where grain carts were stored. Where water was drawn. Where guards grew lax from routine.
We moved like the dusk itself.
Not full night — too sudden.
We moved like the hour where colour fades, and silence stretches.
Ahead, torchlight shimmered against damp walls. Two Carthaginian guards at a small service grate — maybe for air, maybe for a smuggler's path once. One was seated, dicing with a chipped cup. The other leaned against the stone, rubbing his eye.
They didn't see us until the fourth man was already past them.
By then, it was over.
Two muffled sounds. Then blood. Then silence again.
The dice never stopped rolling.
We surfaced in a collapsed storage house, half-eaten by ivy and war.
Slats of moonlight cut the space like blades. Dust floated where once flour had been milled.
I raised a hand.
The others stilled.
We were in Agrigentum.
Inside her.
Inside the enemy.
Then Kesseph moved past me.
Fast.
Low.
A blur of black across broken stone.
He grabbed a rat-skin curtain hanging in one corner and pulled a man out of it like a magician producing a bird.
Not a guard.
A scout. Young. Terrified. Wearing Roman armour.
No — not Roman.
Roman-stolen.
"He's a spy," Kesseph said.
"Ours?"
"No. But he speaks Latin."
"Let him."
I knelt beside the boy.
Seventeen, maybe. Breathing too fast. Sweat leaking from his neck.
"You know who we are?" I asked.
He shook his head. Slowly.
"Umbra," he said. " all they told me… if I saw someone… to run."
"Good advice," I said. "But you didn't."
"I couldn't. You were already behind me."
I stood.
"Bind him. Not gagged. He may still be useful."
"For what?" Gaius muttered.
"For showing us how scared they are."
Outside Agrigentum – Roman Command Tents
They knew we were gone.
They didn't like it.
"He's vanished again," said one tribune.
"Into the ground, like some cursed mole," another sneered.
"He's not a soldier," said Legate Vitulus. "He's an idea. And ideas don't report to centurions."
"He takes results," said Megellus.
"But doesn't ask permission," Vitulus countered. "And men like that don't build empires."
"They win wars," said a younger officer, voice unreadable.
No one replied.
Because no one wanted to admit the truth.
That we were fighting a war Rome wasn't ready for.
And that the man they'd buried under black wool and blood-red cloth might be the only one who didn't bleed the same color as the rest.
Back Beneath the City
The scout told us of three grain houses under fortification. Of a command post near the amphora depot. Of a latrine path leading toward the inner wall.
All things I'd guessed already.
But his confirmation?
It mattered.
Because it meant they felt watched.
We left him unconscious. Not dead.
Let them find him. Let them wonder what he saw.
Let the fear feed forward.
When we returned through the tunnel, I touched the arch as I passed.
Felt the chill of stone not warmed by sun.
Not ancient.
Not young.
Like something waiting to remember.
Like me.
At camp, the banner was already flying.
Lit by torchlight.
The black sun didn't glow.
It absorbed.
And when men looked at it now, they didn't cheer.
They just stepped back.
Even the ones who had sewn it.