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faces of the Ileni men who had come to trade that day. Men he’d known. Men he’d trusted. Men who’d turned a routine interaction into a fight for their lives.
    Betrayed.
    The word was branded on his soul.
    The carnage of the arena had drained him of compassion, of civility, of patience. Now the least little matter could send the animal within him into a rage. It had taken months after gaining his freedom to learn how to control the urge to strike out when his anger was sparked. He was not always successful.
    Bran inhaled slow, steadying breaths and sent a sideways look to his friend. How Menw, who had also been enslaved, mutilated and treated like the lowest dog could argue against the obvious escaped him. But his friend seemed determined to believe that their enslavement had been a random misfortune, a simple matter of their trading party being in the wrong location at an inopportune time. He leveled a hard look at Menw’s complacent expression. “Someone that I offered this virtuous hospitality to betrayed me...betrayed us .”
    “As you say,” Menw replied mildly.
    He clamped his jaw tight against the desire to knock some sense into Menw’s stone head. They’d argued about this countless times since he’d found Menw, emaciated and barely alive, laboring on a farm in a coastal province of Egypt. He’d been the only one of their original trading party save Bryna that Bran had been able to locate and free. Three others, all members of his clan, all friends, had disappeared into the hell of the Empire. One, Gair, had been as a brother to him from their days as boys. The other two, cousins visiting from the western clans.
    A fine chieftain he would have made, he thought bitterly, when he’d not been able to keep his men safe.
    Pushing the dark thoughts away he turned on his heel and headed toward the jeweler’s market gaining a measure of satisfaction at the curse muttered behind his back.
    Bran followed the narrow lane for a half-dozen blocks until it opened into a secluded section of the Forum known as the saeptia-Campus Martins . Only the most prominent Romans shopped in this exclusive area. The common folk of Rome knew better than to cross the invisible lines from their hovels to the enclave of luxury shops.
    Even with the fine weave of his tunic, the quality of his boots, the solid gold bands circling his wrists hiding the scars from his chains, Bran stood apart from the bustling crowd of patricians and wealthy equestrians. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. These privileged Romans reminded him too much of the crowds who had flocked to watch him in the arena, the same haughty bastards who had screamed demands that he finish off the opponents bleeding at his feet. The same ones who’d cheered wildly when he’d lifted the defeated men by their hair and swiped his blade across their throats.
    By Danu, he hated them.
    If there had been any other, viable, choice he never would have ventured into this part of Rome. Choice. He scoffed to himself. That was a right he’d been denied these past years. A slave had no choices and a gladiator only one; kill or be killed. He’d made that one in his first match, a Nubian who had died clutching the hilt of Bran’s sword buried in his neck.
    But even as a freedman his choices were limited. Determined to stand on his own, he’d needed a way to earn coin. Jared had advised him that this was the best place in the city to sell the intricate pieces of jewelry and other adornments he crafted. He hadn’t been convinced, arguing that the arrogant patricians would turn up their noses at his trinkets. But his brother-in-law was a consummate tradesman and the merchant he had introduced him to was impressed—and greedy enough—that he could overlook the fact that the jewelry was made by a foreigner.
    Working with his hands, molding and shaping gold, bronze and silver into items of beauty had once been Bran’s passion. He would spend hours in the beehive hut he’d built at