By the time the Cornelii feast slid into its softer hour, the wine had loosened tongues and posture. Torches painted slow fire across marble, and the crowd broke into clusters—dice and boasts in one corner, poetry and gossip in another, a few quiet games of latrunculi left like abandoned campaigns on small stone fields.
Only three remained by the last finished board: Lucius, Octavius, Livia. The pieces still held the final shape of the dwarf's victory—clean, inevitable lines.
"I must withdraw," Livia said with a gracious smile that fooled no one paying attention. "I am required elsewhere."
She drifted only a few paces, positioning herself near a knot of young nobles, back angled to them, eyes occasionally slipping back to the table she'd just left. She wanted the space, and she wanted every word said in it.
"She's intrigued," Octavius murmured, following Lucius's glance. "Senator Cassius's daughter isn't used to her company being neglected. Least of all by me."
"Exclusivity is the only coin many of them understand," Lucius said. "They want what they can't order."
Octavius studied him, catching the iron under the tone. The room's noise fell away for a moment. He wasn't often at ease anywhere; beside this man, the air felt simpler.
"May I ask you something direct?" Lucius said at last, his voice low.
Octavius nodded.
Lucius gestured with two fingers, taking in the bright hall and its practiced youth. "If you stripped these boys of name, coin, and a father's shadow—what would remain? How many would keep breathing on their own? They think the world is made to hold them up."
Octavius blinked. The mask of conversational ease shifted. Lucius didn't wait for an answer.
"And you," Lucius said, the edge of his gaze sharpening. "Take away your household, your books, the deference that comes and goes with your family's seal. Could you keep yourself whole in a city that eats soft things first?"
Truth rose in Octavius like bile. He could have reached for a quote as shield. He didn't. "No," he said quietly. "I wouldn't last a week."
Lucius only nodded, as if that was the key he'd wanted turned. "You have a disadvantage. Not a death sentence," he said, voice gentler. "You have two hands. Two feet. Levers to learn."
Octavius frowned, thrown by the turn.
"You admire your philosophers," Lucius went on. "They kept the body like they kept the mind—ordered, ready. I'm not shaming you. I'm asking how you plan to defend your dignity if the frame carrying your thoughts gives out at the first shove."
The words hit with the weight of blows. Octavius had made a home in his head; he had treated his body like a badly built shed behind the villa.
"My condition—"
"Is a circumstance," Lucius said. "Not identity." He held Octavius's eyes. "You're one of the sharpest men I've met. Sharpness without a grip is a blade you can't use."
Silence held—alive, not empty. Octavius looked at the board he'd won on, seeing patterns he hadn't considered.
"No one has ever told me I could be more than this," he said at last.
"They've defined you by the smallest word that fits," Lucius said. "It suits them. An intelligent dwarf is a pet. A capable one is a problem."
Octavius swallowed. "What are you suggesting?"
Lucius's smile this time was real, a fraction predatory. "That you can build a body that serves your mind. Not to match a Murmillo's reach, but to survive, to force respect that isn't begged for. There are ways to make leverage, timing, and precision do the lifting."
"How?" The word came out before Octavius could smother it.
"Start by accepting that your body—your body—is a tool," Lucius said. "There are methods to concentrate strength where you can use it. Holds, angles, balance. You'd be surprised what small men have done when taught properly."
Octavius's suspicion flared and faded. "Why tell me this? What do you want from me?"
Lucius considered how much to spend. "I value what others miss," he said simply. "And I prefer alliances that make both sides more dangerous."
"Alliance," Octavius repeated, tasting it. "Not a simple word to use lightly in Rome."
"Nothing in Rome is simple," Lucius said. "Especially between men who want more than wine and middling verse."
A real smile broke on Octavius's face. "You offer instruction?"
"A possibility," Lucius said. "The rest is will. Freedom belongs to the man who refuses to wear someone else's limit."
Something old and sealed shifted inside Octavius—hunger rediscovered. He had made peace with the shadows and the scraps of control available to him. Suddenly that peace felt thin.
"Tomorrow's games," he said. "You mentioned watching together."
"I did."
"Then we talk there," Octavius said. "Away from these ears."
"Good," Lucius said. "The amphitheater tells truths loud."
Octavius absently moved two pieces, arranging something new. "You've woken something I thought dead," he admitted. "Ambition, maybe. Or just… anger."
"The real hungers don't die," Lucius said. "They wait."
Livia returned then, curiosity having outrun patience. "Pardon me," she said lightly, eyes bright. "Your conversation looked… intense."
"Practical philosophy," Octavius said, sliding his usual mask into place. "Your guest has opinions about bodies and minds."
"Does he indeed?" Livia's look at Lucius was half flirt, half study. "He is… gifted in both."
Octavius watched the dynamic with a scholar's interest. Livia used innuendo like a fan—gesture as power. Lucius didn't bend toward the game, which made the air shift around them.
"Domina Livia honored us at latrunculi," Lucius said, gracious without fawning. "A sharp eye."
"Not sharp enough," she said easily. "Octavius taught me not to lay wagers on appearances."
"A lesson Rome could use," Octavius said.
They stood a breath in a balanced quiet. Each felt the shape of something new between them without naming it.
"You'll attend the games, domina?" Octavius asked.
"Always," she said. "I enjoy watching men display their… primitives."
Her gaze stayed on Lucius just long enough to make the word mean two things.
"Octavius and I will sit together," Lucius said, polite and firm. "Technical observation bores most crowds."
It was a refusal with a bow on it. Livia's eyes narrowed briefly, then smoothed. "Men and their specifics," she said. "I suspect you would benefit from my perspective on certain… techniques."
"Always," Lucius said with a measured smile. "After."
She let it stand. "The hour runs," she said. "We should think of leaving. Tomorrow will be busy."
Octavius rose. "It has been a rare privilege," he said, and meant it. "The game. The talk."
"The privilege was mine," Livia answered, surprising him with sincerity. "I learned a useful lesson tonight."
Lucius did something neither of them expected—he offered Octavius his hand like an equal. "Until tomorrow," he said. "Adaptation."
Octavius took it, a clean clasp. Equality, unfeigned, landed in his chest like relief and ignition at once. "Until tomorrow," he said, and heard strength in his own voice.
As he moved away, Livia watched him go, then turned the same long look on Lucius. "I've never seen Octavius talk like that to anyone," she said. "He keeps to the edges."
"Perhaps no one has spoken to him," Lucius said. "Only about him."
"You are strange, Lucius Thracius," she said. "You give a twisted little scholar the regard most men save for consuls. And you stand indifferent to the kind of status that makes other men froth."
"Value rarely matches rank," he said.
"A dangerous creed here," she said.
"Danger is a tool if you know its weight," he answered.
She tried to read him and did not pretend she could. "I may have brought home something far more interesting than I intended," she said at last.
"What would that be, domina?"
"A man who doesn't fit the shelf he's meant for," she said. "Not slave. Not lord. Something else."
He only smiled and offered his arm. They walked the torchlit hall while guests shifted to let them pass. Lucius glanced once back into the house—a last look at white stone, flickering light, and a mind in a small body standing straighter than before.
Outside, the Cassian carriage was already drawn up. Livia stepped in like a queen stepping onto a stage. Lucius paused at the threshold and took the measure of the night.
He had come for names and angles. He was leaving with both, and with a spark lit in a man most had decided to ignore. Octavius could carry news, and he could carry secrets. More importantly, he could carry resolve—if someone taught him how.
Livia's fascination had changed color too. It wasn't just possession anymore. Curiosity had teeth. She had found a man she couldn't easily predict. In Rome, that was fear and appetite at once.
He climbed in. The curtains fell. Wheels turned. The city's lamps slid by like a second sky.
Behind them, somewhere in the Cornelii corridors, a dwarf rearranged the pieces of a game that had nothing to do with stone counters. Ahead, the small arena at the private games would set its own board: flesh and sand, wagers and whispers. Lucius counted moves not by the next strike, but by the tenth.
Like latrunculi: you win by seeing the line no one else has drawn yet—and walking it before anyone believes you can.