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They carry Agron back to him on a low bier, his face bruised and pale and waxen, body stiff and arms crossed in some hideous parody of sleep.

It takes three men to support the weight and size of the stretcher. Agron was a small man in neither body nor heart, and Nasir used to think, sometimes, that Agron might consume him whole, might surround him and swallow him until there was nothing left of Nasir that Agron did not possess. It had startled him, at first, how little he cared, how eager he had been to give himself, a thousand times over, until what he was, was Agron’s, and what Agron was, was Nasir’s.

Spartacus himself helps carry Agron’s body. It is an honor, Nasir thinks distantly, though of course it is no less than Agron deserved from the man he followed so willingly and loyally, almost unto the moment of his death.

He watches through clouded eyes as the men move ever closer before finally stopping beside him, placing the stretcher by his feet. In his other life, Nasir saw dead men of the Republic carried back to their wives in just this way, their bodies returned absent spark that granted life. He saw women fall to their knees in grief, their cries rising in a high, sharp death song of mournful melody.

The men give him Agron’s body as though it is his responsibility, as though there is something there still to take. Is he the widow, he wonders. Do they expect that he will sing?

It is strange. Agron is no more gone now than he was on the day that he turned from Nasir’s side to follow Crixus on doomed march to Rome. The Agron they place before him—still and pale and lacking breath—is no more lost to him than the one who was able to look in Nasir’s face, proclaim his love, and yet order him away.

It makes no sense that Nasir should mourn again a man he had believed already dead for days.

There is a black-edged wound across Agron’s side that had not been there when he left, a long jagged gash to match Nasir’s own. Agron used to splay his hand across Nasir’s scar while they fucked, the heat from his palm and fingers the only sensation that could penetrate the lifeless patch of skin. I do this as reminder, he once said to Nasir, as they lay together in the quiet darkness of the night. Of all that you are capable of, and all I might have lost.

Nasir kneels, then, and wonders if he but imagines the shadow of crucifix darkening his face, or if Spartacus has truly brought it with him, those slats of wood where Agron hung for more hours than have yet stretched in this already too-long day. Up so close, he can begin to smell how the scent of death clings to Agron, something stale and sickly, like the rotten fruit his dominus used to give to his pets.

The smell makes Nasir shudder. For a moment, he is once again in that house.

But it takes only seconds for him to become accustomed to the smell, for the sudden memory of dominus’ warm, damp hands on his skin to fade. Nasir reaches out with careful fingers to touch the edges of Agron’s wound, and realizes as he does so that he is touching his own scar, as well.

Agron’s skin is cold.

There are holes in Agron’s palms.

*

Later, he does not remember how he gets back to his tent, or how Agron’s body comes to be with him. One moment he is kneeling over Agron as hundreds of the still-living stream back into rebel camp, and the next he finds himself sitting next to Agron’s body in the tent they shared for months on end.

The last time Nasir was so near to Agron was the night he told Nasir of his resolve to follow Crixus. They lay together in this very tent, Agron so deep inside him that Nasir had thought, in his wild passion, that he could simply hold Agron there for all the remaining days of their lives.

Nasir has never placed much trust in the gods, but now he knows with bitter certainty that they must exist. There is a kind of grim intention in granting his prayer to have Agron again beside him in this tent, this place that was their home and refuge, when it can offer no comfort to either of them.

It is punishment, he thinks, and one richly deserved. Not by Agron, never that, but by Nasir—just and righteous condemnation for his failings, for his fickle eyes and his too-small love.

It has been days since Nasir has slept. It will be at least one more. The Gaul had his funeral games; Agron at least will have this small, final sacrifice to accompany the Roman shit Nasir slaughtered in his name.

He does not know how long he sits still and silent, his eyes fixed to all that remains in this world of Agron, the man he loved so deeply that it rewrote the planes of his existence, changed the very course of his fate. His eyes burn, but do not close.

And then Nasir is hit suddenly by a wave of weariness so deep that he cannot fend it off. Against his will, his eyes shutter, and he falls quite abruptly asleep.

*

He is at a wedding, like many a one he attended with his dominus, only far grander, and full of greater delight than the somber affairs he used to witness. He knows, somehow, that this marriage is made for love.

The guests are all impossibly lovely, and the bride and groom stand first among them, the beauty of their countenances overwritten with bright, shining joy. They swear their love in word and song, and when the groom sings, Nasir feels tears well up to fill his eyes. The sound is sweeter than any he has ever heard. Surely this is Orpheus himself, and this bride his Eurydice.

And Nasir knows there is something he should remember about them, something that yet lingers around the edges of his mind, but the groom’s song drives all other thoughts from his mind, and all he knows is their joy.

When Orpheus takes his bride’s face in his hands and presses gentle kiss to her full lips, Nasir almost imagines that he feels the ghost of a kiss across his own.

Then time shifts, and he is with Eurydice and her maidens, gone from the pavilion where the ceremony took place. They walk in an open field, the tall, green grass swaying about them, a final moment shared among friends before one of their number goes to new life with husband. Nasir is struck again by their loveliness, but there is something sad in it now, something that stirs fear in his heart and discomfort in his belly: such beauty cannot last.

He wants to warn them, but when he opens his mouth, he finds he is once again a slave, lacking voice to speak.

In that instant a cry splits the heavens, and the bride collapses where she stands. High on her side, where her ribs meet the soft, fleshy curve of her waist, the heavy white fabric of her chiton is stained with blood seeping from two close-set holes.

Under Nasir’s gaze, the bride’s dark skin goes ashen, and her dark eyes lose their focus. She goes to the underworld before her groom can even reach her side.

Nasir can only watch as they lay her body on the altar where she but moments ago plighted her troth. Her groom sings again, his voice bearing the sadness of every death-song Nasir has ever heard, and it seems that the heavens shake and clouds draw near to mourn with him.

And then he blinks, and Nasir is himself kneeling over the altar, and he is himself and he is Orpheus, and the body he stares down upon is Agron and Eurydice at once, and the grief is as fresh as ever it was.

*

Nasir jerks awake from fitful slumber to cheeks wet with tears. Inside his chest, though, his heart beats steady for the first time since Naevia looked upon him in the dim light of Spartacus’ tent, her eyes full of tears, and told him silently of Agron’s death. The memory of all that has been revealed to him yet lingers in his mind, and he knows his purpose.

Nasir is no Orpheus, able to charm the very ground open beneath him. It may be that there is but one road to the underworld, and no doubt when he finds it, it will be long. He had best be on his way.

He is gone before day breaks over rebel camp.

*

Nasir is three days’ ride into his journey before he realizes where exactly it is he is going. Until that moment, he had been riding south with resolute speed but no true direction, knowing only that if he would reverse course of awful fate, it made sense to reverse course he followed with Spartacus, as well. When realization finally dawns, Nasir feels cold sweat rise up along the back of his neck, reins slipping in the grasp of hands gone abruptly damp. Something dense and chill settles heavily in his stomach, and his horse gives a lurch, threatening to unseat him, before slowing to a stop. It is almost as though she can sense Nasir’s sudden unease.

The shame he feels at his own cowardice is a living thing. He is not the man he once was. He is no half-cowed house slave now, but a warrior, with the blood of a thousand Romans on his hands. He does not flinch from threat of pain nor death. But if there were anything, anything that could make him turn from chosen path—

But there is nothing, in the end. There is nothing he would not venture to see Agron again to his arms, nothing he would not do, and he swallows down the cowardice that for a moment threatened purpose.

Apologies, he thinks, an offering to the gods and Agron both. I will not falter so again.

He gathers the reins once more in his hands, digs his heels into the horse’s flank, and begins moving again on the road that will take him to Agron.

*

In the end, it takes the passing of some two weeks and twelve Roman lives to see Nasir to his destination. He arrives as night falls, the setting sun casting long shadows over the once-familiar walls and gates, and knows even before he enters that the place must be deserted.

There are cracks in the outer walls similar to ones Nasir remembers patching as a small boy new-arrived in this strange land, and grass growing tall where once the constant movement of slaves’ feet had worn smooth track in the dirt. The villa has the look of many of the slaves who joined Spartacus’ cause: that of something wild that has been liberated from false constraints imposed upon on it, leaving behind something shabbier and more worn, perhaps, but also truer, more itself.

Nasir stops outside the walls and dismounts, tying horse to a stake; he will have need of her, when they return. After days of moving with single-minded purpose, he finds himself once again reluctant to go forward. The cause is no longer fear, as it was when he first realized he would have to return to the villa, but something else, something Nasir cannot quite put a name to. A sense of awful completion, perhaps. It seems only fitting that he should have to seek Agron here, in this place where Agron first sought him.

At last he says, aloud, “I had sworn never to return to this place.” His voice in his own ears is rough with lack of use; he has had little cause for speech these past days. “You will owe me debt of gratitude when I pass through its walls.”

He knows the words are ludicrous even as he speaks them. Agron cannot hear them, now, and besides, there is nothing Nasir could offer that could ever begin to repay the debt he owes to Agron. There is nothing he could do to balance scale.

They will have burned the body by now, he thinks suddenly, and almost falters where he stands.

Almost.

Once inside, Nasir does not allow himself to linger. He has walked path through the halls of this house ten thousand times before. What is once more, added to that? He fixes his eyes straight ahead, a horse with blinders, and moves for the lowest point in the house. That is where it will be.

The chamber lies under the floor of what was once his dominus’ bedchamber. The entrance was under the bed itself, accessible only to those who already knew of its existence. It was a place dominus would lock away those things he did not care to have others touch.

Nasir was sometimes such a thing.

When he pulls open the latch, a musty scent like old pain and hard stone drifts up from the interminable blackness to meet him. It is confirmation that he has come to the right place, that the journey to this fucking house and all its horrors was not in vain.

For Agron, for my love, he thinks, a shadow of an old prayer, and lowers himself down into the dark.

*

There is a long, sickening moment in which he only falls. Then his feet touch down on sheer rock, and Nasir finds himself among the dead.

It is not what he would have imagined, if he had allowed himself to imagine anything at all.

Nasir has entered a place where all the colors of the world are gone, and in their stead is an endless wash of gray, the color of winter skies before rain, or a dead man’s skin gone cold. All around him the formless bodies of the dead mill about in numbers too great for the counting. Their edges seem somehow blurry, as though they might at any moment disintegrate entirely and fade away into the rock.

They turn their blank and emotionless eyes upon him as he moves among them, watching him with detached curiosity. Nasir feels his own solidness as he never has in his life, the sharp and bounded borders of his body marking him out of place as surely as does the quickening beat of heart in chest. As a slave, he sometimes used to feel as though his body had no substance, no weight beyond collar to anchor it to earth, but it has been long since he felt so. One of many things Agron gave him: the knowledge that his body was his own, that it could take up space in the world. That there were those who would welcome its tangibility for reasons that went beyond a simple fuck.

The thought of Agron draws him back into himself, and he sets mind again to task. These dead will have to look their last on living things; he will tarry no longer among them.

Ahead of him, out of sight but within earshot, Nasir hears the gentle lapping of waves against the rock, and he follows the sound, taking care to avoid contact with the shades around him lest they claim him as one of their own. It would not do to come so far only to lose all hope of Agron here, among the throng.

And he would lose Agron, then, he thinks, lose him all over again. The presence of the living among the dead is sufficient to warrant audience with the god of Death, but the shade of yet another fallen slave would hardly draw notice. Without gods’ aid, he might wander forever in this place and never find the one he seeks.

He has just spied the far shimmering edge of the black water when there is suddenly a sound like the close rumble of thunder, as of something old and monstrous rising angrily from long-held slumber. It is loud enough to shake the foundations of stone beneath his feet. Before him, the shades melt suddenly away, and it takes Nasir’s eyes a moment to register what is before him.

How strange it is that, even as Nasir walks among the dead, he should be surprised by a dog.

Not just any dog, of course—it is Cerberus himself, and each of the dog’s three heads is fiercer and uglier than the last. He advances on Nasir in a slow, determined crawl, hackles raised and teeth bared. The reach of his jaws are equal to the size of a tall man.

Nasir should be afraid, he knows, but as he watches the great three-headed beast come closer, he instead finds himself thinking, absurdly, of Crixus and Agron, and Gannicus, too—men who moved as though a single body but with minds entirely their own, eternally snapping their own jaws at one another. I have brokered peace among those men, he thinks with sudden, sober clarity, when one was in his cups more often than not, and other two would as soon offer fists as kind words. You present far lesser challenge.

Nasir recalls little of life before being taken to his dominus’ house, but along with his brother, he knows there was a dog—a half-wild street mutt that had come at them, once, while they ran through narrow Syrian streets in search of food for evening meal. He does not remember his brother’s name, but he remembers how the boy thrust Nasir behind him and stared the dog down until it turned and slunk away. He remembers how his brother’s steady, unthreatened demeanor saved them both from the sharp clench of teeth that threatened not only meal but life itself.

Some twenty years and innumerable miles later, Nasir trains unwavering gaze on Cerberus. He meets each pair of glowing yellow eyes in turn, then bares teeth and allows a low growl to escape from his throat. He would have the thing before him know that it is not the only wild dog in this place. The name had made him furious when Agron first gave it, some barbaric German fuck helping to rob him of all he had earned through toil and sacrifice and then adding insult besides, but now he revels in it. He has learned, since then, that it is no shame to be a dog as long as he is his own master.

The dog, it seems, agrees—for as suddenly as Nasir caught its interest, he loses it. The thing ceases its advance, and the growl dies in its throat. With scarcely another glance Nasir’s way, it turns its massive, slow-footed body and fades back into the shadows, there to rest until time comes to challenge another wanderer, perhaps.

Nasir does not dare to hope all challenges in this place will be so easily met.

*

Shades do not return, and water still beckons, so Nasir begins again the long walk toward the ferryman he knows awaits. However little faith he may once have placed in the gods, he was still body-slave to a man of great name. He learned the stories of the Roman gods and their underworld as did all others who shared similar position. Had his mind not been so singularly focused on task, even the dog would not have caught him unawares.

No sooner has he set foot on the bank of the wide, dark river than a boat appears, drifting out of the gloomy haze with a tall, hooded figure standing in the stern.

“I would have passage,” Nasir says, when the figure draws near enough to hear his words. The words echo in the cavernous space, reflected back to him off the interminable expanse of stone, so that it seems a thousand Nasirs make same demand.

Nasir cannot see the face obscured by the hood, but he feels caught by its gaze all the same. “You are yet of the living,” the figure says in voice like splintered ice. “What do you seek here among the dead?”

Nasir squares his shoulders. “My business is my own.”

“And yet you must cross Styx,” the figure replies, voice growing impossibly sharper. “And I would have answer.”

Nasir feels himself bristle. “Am I mistaken, or is it not your fate to take souls across the river?” he asks, feeling twist of anger in his belly and challenge in his voice.

The figure flexes its gloved fingers around the oar it grips. It seems somehow a threat. “Souls, yes,” it answers. “Souls of the dead. That is my purpose. But you—you are not
one of the dead.”

Not yet, it does not say.

Nasir swallows, hard, and forces a deep, steadying breath into his abruptly too-tight lungs. He had not thought to share his purpose with any but the lord of the dead himself. Even the thought of speaking the words aloud more than once, of giving them form and acknowledging them as truth, sits heavily in his chest.

Yet he must cross the river, and Charon must be paid.

“I am for the King of the Underworld,” Nasir says. “I have lost one who should never have been gone from my side. I will have him returned.”

The figure is silent for what seems to Nasir to be a very long time. “You risk much for this man,” it says at last.

A strange statement, Nasir thinks, and spoken like one who has never loved. For what else is love, after all, but risk? Why should it be any wonder that Nasir goes to fetch Agron from the dead, when Agron himself saw Nasir restored to life after long years of murder at his dominus’ hands? “It is no more than he has done for me.”

If the figure is not satisfied by Nasir’s words, it at least makes no further complaint. “Have it as you would,” it says. “Present coin, then, and board. I will take you across.”

Triumph Nasir feels at the figure’s words is short-lived. For of course Charon cannot be paid in words, be they of love or death, and Nasir, traveling alone and avoiding all paths that might see him exchange words with another living creature, has no coin.

“You bring no coin?” the figure challenges him, momentary thaw that had descended on its words disappearing in wake of insult.

“Apologies—” Nasir begins, but the figure cuts short his words.

“Then see yourself remain where you are,” it says, already beginning to steer the boat away, “and spend next hundred years among those who share similar fate.”

And Nasir realizes with a cold dawning horror that as they have talked, the shades of the dead have returned. They are pressing ever closer, their thousand depthless eyes trained on him with something like hunger, as though they would seek to devour him in pieces and keep him here forever, among the damned.

“Wait!” he cries, and something in his voice halts shades and Charon both. “I can offer payment.” He fumbles at his arm, removing one of his armbands, and holds it aloft, its usually dull sheen seeming to glow in the dim light. “Take this,” he says, desperate, “and see me safe to Hades’ throne.”

It is no great offering, merely an armband forged of brass and worn always—of little worth in itself, but one of Nasir’s dearest possessions, treasured gift from Agron, the first he ever gave. Nasir aches to part with it, remembering the half-shy cast of Agron’s eyes as he proffered the thing. It had not been plundered from some slaughtered Roman, but made specifically for Nasir by a freed blacksmith who joined their cause, and presented to him when first they took up quarters together. It was the first gift Nasir ever received that was not mark of ownership from his dominus’ hand.

“That is worth more than single coin,” the figure tells him, lingering still too far from Nasir. “I can feel its value in your heart.”

“I will be returning,” Nasir says, “and there will be another with me. I pay for more than just myself.” He can almost hear the shades’ hunger at his back.

For a long moment, the figure pauses, as though weighing bargain in its mind. Then it places its oar back in the black waters, and moves the boat once more toward Nasir.

*

Charon ferries Nasir across the river as promised. “I cannot wait for your return,” Charon says as Nasir sets foot on far bank, “but I make this passage for all eternity. If you find what you seek, whenever that may be, know that I will honor payment.” It pauses. “For you and your man, should quest prove successful.”

“Gratitude,” Nasir replies. “It shall.” He will accept no less.

Nasir realizes too late that he has forgotten to ask Charon which way he should go. In place of certain knowledge, he follows his feet. They have not yet led him astray, and he thinks now he has come too far to be turned aside by something as small as geography. It is as Charon said. Nasir does not belong here; he will not long pass unnoticed. The lord of the dead will draw him near sometime. Nasir is only impatient that it should be soon.

“Then cast your eyes around you, boy, and cease to wander.”

The words come from behind him, and when Nasir turns, he finds himself looking not at the barren wasteland of stone he passed through moments ago, but at a great room—still cold and gray, but housing an enormous dais of steel and wood on which sit two high thrones of shining silver and black.

Nasir sees the woman first, eyes drawn by the shock of seeing color again after what seems like ages spent in the dark. Her smooth brown skin bears roses in her cheeks, and woven through her thick honeyed curls are a riot of blooming flowers, all the green things of the earth coming together to weave a gown around her body. This is Proserpina, then, queen of the underworld, the first to find herself trapped in this place meant for things already gone to death. And beside her—

Beside her the man who trapped her, who is of course no man at all, but a god bested in power only by mighty Jupiter himself. Hades, king of the dead, he who claims all human lives in his time.

He does not look like any Roman Nasir has ever seen, and for that, Nasir is glad. The Romans may have power of life and death in upper world, but it cheers heart, as much as anything not Agron can, to know they are no masters here.

“Well, boy, what is it you seek?” the god asks.

Nasir knows his answer. “I seek one who came to you too soon,” he recites, and recognition flickers in the god’s eyes.

“You place trust in better outcome than the last, I hope,” Hades says.

“I place trust in Agron, as I always have,” Nasir answers. “In all things.”

“Yet not in us?” Hades quirks an eyebrow at Nasir. “Does your way not lie through our pleasure?”

“Agron was taken from me,” Nasir replies, and he does not, will not, tremble before these immortals, standing firm and straight and sure of purpose. “I will have him returned.”

Hades inclines his head. “You speak with much certainty,” he says, not a question, but a warning, perhaps, and one Nasir would do well to remember. He has come into this place full of conviction but lacking strategy; he had felt it wrong, somehow, to plot out what he might say or do to persuade the god. Standing here now, he is not so certain.

It is only when the god reaches out for his wife’s hand that plan springs fully formed into Nasir’s mind, and it is so obvious that he wonders he had not thought of it before.

He looks between the gods, imagining for a moment what it must be like for Hades here, trapped eternally in this prison palace of darkness and chill, where even to rule Death is still to be always among it. And then one day to have the warmth of life beside him, and to convince her to stay, and to know still that every day of joy is but one day closer to coming day of loss—

Nasir clears his throat and begins again. “I speak with certainty of one whose heart knows same grief as your own.”

Hades looks briefly confused. “I do not take your meaning.”

“It will be spring soon,” Nasir answers. “The world above begins to wake.” And there it is, what he had hoped to find—a flicker of pain across the god’s ages-old face. “You know what it is, do you not?” Nasir presses. “To be the one left?”

Before him, Hades drops Proserpina’s hand and leaps to his feet, seeming suddenly to grow as large as the very foundations of the earth. When he speaks again, his voice has grown hard and cold like the stone beneath Nasir’s feet. “I allow you into my kingdom, and you respond with threat?” the god hisses.

Nasir cannot help it—he laughs. He has not laughed in all the weeks since he and Agron parted ways, but now he cannot contain it. It is as though his body has forgotten how to make the sound, the noise that escapes his throat emerging fractured and painful, mere dim reflection of act he once knew well.

“What threat could I make that could offend the gods themselves?” Nasir asks, voice bitter in his own ears. “I but offer reminder, in hope that I may move your heart to pity.”

For a moment Hades looks as though he would respond with further anger. Then Proserpina reaches out from her throne and closes fingers around her husband’s wrist. The touch seems to draw Hades’ rage back into himself; he turns eyes upon her, and sight visibly calms him. It was always so with Nasir, as well. Even to lay eyes upon Agron was balm to wound. He feels now the jealousy of such reassuring touch in every corner of his heart.

Hades again turns toward him, and this time his face is calm. “A dangerous thing,” he muses, “to place trust in the pity of the gods. But even if my heart were so moved, what reason have you to think your man would follow you back? He died alone, and far from your arms. Was this not his choice?”

For almost the first time in this journey, Nasir cannot stop the uncertainty from rushing in. “I—no,” he says, cursing his faltering tongue. “Agron would not—you misunderstand his intent. He made me promise, and—”

“I know what he promised,” the god interrupts. “That my fool brother should tremble if he laid hand upon you.” His eyes turn shrewd. “And yet in the end, I laid hand upon him, first. Do you seek to make me tremble, boy?”

Nasir stiffens at his words, feeling the old familiar anger rise up inside him. That is the third time the death-god has called him boy, as though it is only his right—as though Nasir has not, through work of his hands and sweat of his brow, earned better title. Mighty as he is, what war has Hades fought?

“I seek only what I am owed,” Nasir answers, fierce. “His life was not yours to take.”

Hades looks surprised at that. “Whose, then, if not mine?” he asks. His voice betrays genuine interest, and some distant part of Nasir feels proud that he has for a moment matched wits with a god.

“The boy’s, of course,” Proserpina cuts in, speaking for first time since Nasir entered their presence. Her voice is like music, beautiful and sad. She turns her large, mild eyes from where they have rested on her husband back to Nasir, and he thinks that if her words carry weight, Nasir may again hold Agron in his arms. “Is it not so?”

Nasir nods, once, around the sudden tightness in his throat, then addresses himself again to Hades. “Agron’s life belongs to me,” he says, “as mine to him.” This was their bargain, sealed in the blood of ten thousand Romans and in the countless nights of passion they shared. Nasir holds to it still.

The god remains standing, studying Nasir for long enough that Nasir begins to feel sweat rise up along the back of his neck, despite room’s chill. When at last Hades re-takes his throne, he brushes kiss to the back of Proserpina’s hand before he speaks. “And if I should refuse?”

If he should refuse.

In all the days Nasir spent coming to this place, he did not allow himself to consider the possibility that he might fail. He thought he might die in attempt, to be sure, but he could not allow the thought that he might stand before Hades, make request, and be denied.

But now, of course, he sees what foolishness it was, to walk before the lord of the dead and demand he yield up one he has already claimed his own. Orpheus at least offered song as payment. Nasir has nothing but his heart, and that belongs already to Agron.

If Hades should refuse—

Spartacus is yet in the world. Naevia, too, her grief for the fallen Gaul a mirror of Nasir’s own. There is wild, kind Lugo, rival turned truest friend, and even Castus, who Nasir cannot truly blame for Agron’s fall. There are still slaves that may yet be freed. There is still fighting to be done.

But Nasir is tired of fighting.

“If you should refuse,” he says, then stops himself. If he is to say this, he will say it right. “I am no goddess of spring,” he begins again. “I have no loving mother awaiting my return. If you refuse my prayer, my lord, I would sooner stay than go.”

The god does not look surprised this time, and no wonder; the last to make such request, Nasir knows, spoke similar words. “And what of your cause?” Hades asks.

“There is no cause without Agron. He was all my reasons.” Nasir knows even to give breath to such words is betrayal—of Spartacus, of all the rebels who yet strive for a world more free and just than the one they have toiled in all their lives—but it makes them no less true.

Hades considers Nasir’s words, then nods once, decisively. “I can make no answer so quickly,” he proclaims, “but such devotion in one so young deserves some reward, does it not?” He does not wait for answer before loudly clapping his hands together, the sound echoing vividly through the chamber. “You must not touch him,” Hades warns, incomprehensibly, for there are only the three of them in the room—

And then there is Agron, and Nasir falls to his knees.

*

Agron stands once more before him, not the broken, lifeless husk Nasir left behind at rebel camp, but Agron as Nasir knew and loved him best: tall and proud and smiling. He is no shade like those Nasir passed by, empty and insubstantial, but solid flesh and sinew, and Nasir does not know why he is surprised. Of course Agron, greatest of men, warrior to rival Mars himself, could fight off the effects of death, if not death itself.

“Nasir,” Agron breathes, sweet surprise in his tone, and Nasir feels tears gather in his eyes. In darkest moments, he thought never again to hear words spoken from Agron’s tongue. “Why are you here?”

Nasir does not know how to even begin responding to such a question. What answer can he give that will wash out all his sins? “Agron,” he starts, heart caught in throat.

But before he can complete another word, Hades again claps his hands, and Agron disappears.

“No!” Nasir cries out, unable to control his tongue. All the joy of seeing Agron again vanishes as quickly as did the man himself, leaving behind only newer, fiercer pain in its place.

Nasir had not imagined anything could be worse than never seeing Agron again, but gods’ cruelty again makes mockery of all his imaginings. It is worse, far worse, to have been granted glimpse of Agron once more, only to have him immediately stolen from grasp, than it would have been to have lived out remainder of his days absent sight of the man’s beloved face. Even to have the cold and death-touched corpse as final memory would have been kinder.

If there were a way to kill Death itself, Nasir thinks in that moment he would try.

“You make demands but offer nothing in recompense,” Hades says, staring down dispassionately from atop his throne. “Consider that proper motivation.”

Yes, Nasir would try.

He pushes himself slowly to his feet once more, and the hot sting of tears has become heat of anger. “What price do you ask?” Nasir asks, all but spitting out the words.

The god has nerve to look amused, sighing heavily as though Nasir is no more than temperamental child. “Entertainment, boy,” he chides. “The hours here are long, and little changes one to the next. Even I grow tired of gazing always on the dead.”

“Husband,” Proserpina says, a single word, and her voice holds gentle rebuke. Hades does not look at her, though, his keen eyes remaining fixed on Nasir.

“What would you have me do?” Nasir asks finally, but the answer is almost immaterial. There is nothing he would not do. There is no price he would not pay.

“A test,” Hades answers promptly.

The words come so quickly that Nasir comprehends suddenly that this moment has been planned since first he set foot in this room. Or even longer—since he entered the underworld, perhaps, since dream-vision first set him on long path toward Hades’ throne.

He had thought the dream a gift from Venus herself, she who does all things for love. What folly.

“A test,” Hades repeats, “and we shall see how you fare.”

“You have not tested me enough?” he cannot help but challenge, and Hades again looks amused, shaking his head.

“No, boy, not nearly enough.”

His words stir long-forgotten memory of dominus making similar claim about some abuse he rained on Nasir when he was a child not yet of years to fuck. Strange that he should think of it now, for dominus was no god and this god no Roman, though Nasir begins to understand why the Romans worship him.

He puts the memory away again, where it cannot distract him, and refocuses attention where the god and his wife await. “Very well,” he says. “I agree to your terms.”

No sooner has he said the words than Hades appears before him, suddenly near enough to touch. Up so close he seems to shimmer with something visibly more than mortal—not beauty, but a kind of immensity of power. If Nasir met this man in the marketplace, he would stay well clear. “Very well,” he says, an echo of Nasir’s own words, and smiles a smile that freezes the blood in Nasir’s veins. “Let us see into your heart.”

He reaches out with surprisingly gentle intent and places large-palmed hand over Nasir’s heart. For a moment, the touch is almost soothing.

Then he thrusts his hand into Nasir’s chest, a sudden and tearing pain, and wraps long fingers around Nasir’s heart.

*

Nasir is Tiberius, still, and he stares at these intruders with all the hatred he could never allow himself to feel for dominus. They have stolen his life from him, taken the pieces he had put together and shattered them across tile as easily as one might break plate, and with as little care.

He takes dagger in hand and tries to kill their leader, and he might even have succeeded, were it not for leader’s woman crying out. Instead, they haul him before assembled gladiators, the man Spartacus and his uneasy Gallic brother—and the other, too, the one who objected to arming the slaves, the one who boasts of Germania and carries wildness in his eyes.

Nasir is Tiberius, still, a clean and pampered thing that has never turned eyes toward any but his dominus. It shames him, to look upon this blood-stained beast mired in filth, and to feel something stir within him, something like want

and

Nasir is Tiberius no more, has killed Romans and been glad of opportunity, but robbing a man of life felt small next to what it is he does now: breaking new-made trust with Agron, telling the Gaul that his woman yet lives. He has grown too quickly used to the warmth in Agron’s gaze as he turns eyes toward Nasir. To be without such feels like terrible risk to Nasir, he who but weeks ago did not even know the man existed.

Despite Nasir’s betrayal, there is blessed smile on Agron’s face when they part ways before the mines. Nasir carries it with him each step of the way

and

Nasir is going to die, here in these woods, and he never told Agron, he never said

and

Nasir is weak, but he is alive, and the look on Agron’s face would be enough to make him want to go on living, even if it were not for the sudden warmth of the man’s hand on his face, the softness of his mouth on Nasir’s. For such a small touch, it feels monumental, declarative, and it is all Nasir can do to let Agron go when he does not know when—if—Agron will return

and

Nasir is at last healed enough that Agron consents to place hands upon him, and Nasir-who-was-Tiberius, body slave, possession, has never known touch of any except dominus. His body shakes where Agron touches it, blood rushing up wherever Agron lays hands, and how was anything ever accomplished, music written or cities built, when there was this to be known, to be felt?

Will Agron know, he wonders wildly, that Nasir has never lain with any but dominus? And if he knew, would knowledge please? He cannot think of stopping long enough to ask. Whether it would or no, Nasir finds himself glad, fiercely so, to know that whatever else he might have done, Agron will be first in every way that counts

and

Nasir is wrapped so tightly in Agron’s arms that he cannot think, cannot breathe, and there is no space left in his body that Agron has not claimed, no corner of his heart that does not beat for Agron and Agron alone.

Agron is a jealous man, but Nasir can only laugh. What could the Cilician offer, even with his kind eyes and his honeyed words, that could compare to this? For Agron swore it, and Nasir believes it: not even the gods could part them now

and

Nasir is watching as though from outside himself as Agron tells him that decision has already been made. Agron will leave, and Nasir will stay, and no words Nasir could speak can change his mind.

It was only days ago that Agron held Nasir in his arms and spoke words of love and faithfulness, and now you fucking cast me aside—

“Aha,” Hades says quietly, and lets him go.

*

Nasir returns to his body with a great gasp of air, the pain in his chest flaring hot and then fading, leaving behind only memory of its ache. His face is wet, and he realizes with a start that he has been crying, is crying still.

Hades has returned to throne, and Proserpina watches Nasir from beside him with a face that seems suddenly very old, despite its eternal youth.

“What was the meaning of that?” Nasir asks, dashing the tears from his cheeks with a rough hand. He intends for his words to come out as demand, but instead he finds they sound choked and sorrowful in his own ears.

The god ignores question. “So that is what you most fear,” he says ruminatively, “in the deepest caverns of your heart? That you will be cast aside for another?”

“He would not,” Nasir says, but even as he gives voice to words, he feels the old doubt stir within him. “Agron made vow."

Hades nods, but it is only acknowledgement of the words, not agreement. “That no one would take you from him, yes. But for a man of ill speech, how carefully he chose the words. Tell me, boy: did he say he would never be glad to see you go? Did he ever swear that he would stay?”

How much is the god’s doing and how much the product of his own treacherous heart, Nasir cannot say. But before his eyes, he then sees visions that before had haunted only darkest dreams: Agron turning from him again, not for promised battle, but for the arms of another—some boy more like the boy Nasir had been, delicate and pretty, lacking rough scars and callused hands—some boy who knew nothing of blood and killing, who might not remind Agron of all he has lost. And Nasir is shamed that Death has found him out, laid bare his deepest secret—that this is what he has feared most all along, a loss from which he never could recover: the end not of Agron’s life, but of Agron’s love for him.

You said that you would never let them take me from you, nor you from me, he thinks, against his will. You never promised you would not choose to go. You never promised you would stay.

“And if that were the price,” the god says, whispering in a voice that slithers across the stone and coils in Nasir’s ears. “To see him returned to life but absent love, his heart again to beat but grown cold toward you?”

Nasir’s thoughts go blank. Of all the prices he thought to have to pay, this one had never crossed mind: to lose Agron’s love not because of his own failings, but for the amusement of the gods.

“If you leave here alone,” Hades continues, not waiting for answer, “I swear to you that you will survive these coming days, never again to know the bonds of slavery. You will live a life long in years, filled with great happiness and comfort. And your man will await you here to offer glorious reunion when you return again to the afterlife.”

A sweet life, perhaps.

“And if I do not?” Nasir manages, eventually.

Hades smiles again, and it is not vicious, perhaps, but neither is there anything of kindness in it. “Then you return, and I make no promise that either of you will live, or that he will ever be what he was to you, either warrior or lover. And he is a creature of blood and battle, little man. Would he not hate you, if you condemned him to a life absent purpose? Consider well before you speak,” he warns, “for bonds forged in the underworld are not easily broken.”

“Think on it, boy,” Proserpina says then, her voice still full of sadness but lacking its former beauty, “and consider my husband’s words. Do not speak in haste.”

She is silent for long enough that Nasir thinks she will speak no more, but then she adds, in voice so soft that he is sure it is meant for only him, “You may know what it is to be left, but you have no idea what it means to return.”

To succeed in his quest, only to have meanest fears realized—to have Agron again in the world, but lacking the love that made him Agron—

“Then I will have him hate me,” Nasir says at last, and in speaking the words, he finds that they are true, that he can do this thing, after all. “I will bear his hatred, and gladly, only to know that he yet draws breath.”

The gods regard him for long moments, their face betraying no emotion. “You are certain of this?” Hades asks finally.

“If that is price,” Nasir answers, the sole living thing in the world of the dead, “then I will pay.”

“Very well,” Hades says, and the mockery is gone from his voice. He turns to face his wife.

A bargain well-struck, Nasir thinks, and waits for them to bring Agron to him.

But he waits in vain, it turns out. For just then Proserpina nods, and Hades repeats again, “Very well,” and the last thing Nasir hears in the underworld is the clap, thunder-loud, of the god’s hands.

*

Agron, where is Agron—

It is too loud. That is the first solid thing Nasir notices—that noise around him is deafening after the seamless quiet of the underworld. It is so loud that he seems almost to see the noise moving around him in heavy, jagged lines, and so it is some moments before he realizes his eyes are shut tight.

When he opens them, he sees it is already falling night, but remaining beams from setting sun prove strangely bright and painful. He winces back from even that small light.

Agron, he thinks again as vision slowly adjusts to surroundings. Why can he not find Agron?

He is, he realizes, back in rebel camp, standing among countless freed slaves. He has been in such place a thousand times, but there is something about this scene that looks more particular, more horribly familiar, than any of those thousand thoughtless days.

These are the five hundred resurrected. This is the day Agron died.

So it was only a dream, after all. Knowledge of Agron’s fate, death on cross and not in battle, was the real vision, not Nasir’s foolish dreams of gods and rescue. That is most Nasir has deserved.

Nasir cannot even disagree.

He reaches for his armband, thinking at least to find comfort in still retaining that small treasure, but it is not where he expects it to be, nestled snugly high up on his arm.

It is gone, and that is how he knows: it was no dream. No dream, but no covenant either, as he had foolishly let himself believe, thinking he could strike bargain with Death. No dream, no bargain, but a test—a test, just as Hades had warned him.

It was a test, and he failed, and he sees now with perfect and terrible clarity that this is his punishment: to live again the moment when Agron’s body was revealed to him through parted crowd, the cold and death-touched thing a mockery of Agron’s fire.

“Nasir,” he hears Castus say from behind him, voice gentle, and Nasir knows already what the man will say, but he turns anyway. This is his punishment, meted out in gods’ judgment of his worth, and he will bear it with all the strength they have left him.

But the look on Castus’ face is not as he remembers. There is no horror in it, no guilt. Instead, the man looks beyond him, and his face is only resigned, and perhaps slightly relieved, as though a burden has been lifted from him. And whatever Nasir might have felt for the man in these past weeks, whatever words he might have spoken in anger, he does not truly believe that Castus would rejoice in Agron’s death. Not like this.

Nasir braces himself for whatever he might see, then follows Castus’ gaze through the crowd.

There is Spartacus, face solemn, to be sure, but not carved with the grief Nasir remembers from last time he stood in this place.

And there beside him, beaten and bloody and bruised but standing, walking, breathing, is Agron. Alive.

Later, Nasir will remember almost nothing of his walk to Agron, his whole mind and body united in a single thought: Gratitude. He will remember only that as he drew near, it did not seem so very hard a thing to go on living, after all.

In that moment, though, he thinks of nothing but Agron, Agron real and alive and before him once more, and the look in Agron’s eyes is not cold at all, but full of all the love that ever was there, and more besides.

“Gods return you to my arms,” Nasir says, amazed, taking Agron’s face between his hands and giving the words their full weight of meaning in his heart.

And all around them, the air that should smell of death and rot holds instead the lingering scent of something sweet, like ripe pomegranate warmed by summer sun.