"Can you explain what just happened?" Felix muttered.
"No." Well, I could explain it, but I wouldn't. Not until I better understood it myself.
Minutes later, as we crossed the bridge over the Tiber River, I began breathing more evenly, and Felix's knuckles around the horse's reins were no longer white. The river was wide and powerful, though I wasn't sure how deep it went. I only knew that I didn't care to find out. On the opposite side, a small brick arch was dug into the bank with dark water pouring into the river.
"That's the Cloaca Maxima," Felix said when I pointed it out to him. "Rome brings in new water from all over the land on great aqueducts above our heads, and then sends the old water out again in the sewers beneath our feet."
The very notion of sewers running below ground was amazing. One of my few memories from Gaul was having sewage accidentally tossed on me while walking down a road. I couldn't imagine a place where water freely came and went, where thirst wasn't a daily problem.
As Rome came into view, my eyes fixed upon the aqueducts, large enough that I doubted anyone but the gods could have built them. Their massive arches towered over tall brick buildings that served as homes, shops, and majestic public forums. Shoddier ones were constructed of wood, many of which had burn scars on them, and I wondered what would happen to this city if a fire ever raged out of control.
Around us, the streets bustled with people and carts and wagons, everyone with someplace to go and a job to do. I'd never seen so many people in my life. I had no idea that so many people even existed.
As we came closer to the center of Rome, the buildings grew finer and so grand they stole my breath away. Each one seemed like a palace, lining the streets with white marble walls and columns, or thick, square-cut granite, all of them trimmed with gold, silver, or copper. These were the very materials I had mined for the last five years, which meant that in some way, I had been part of building Rome all this time, and never known it.
"Is this Elysium?" I whispered to Felix, for it seemed impossible that so much beauty could exist anywhere but in the afterlife.
Felix laughed. "No, my boy. You see this place with your living eyes. It was built over hundreds of years and only grows finer. A million people live in this city, all of them engaged in the promise of what it means to be Roman. You are Roman now as well. You are part of this promise."
My eyes widened as we rounded another
corner and a building rose from the horizon, greater than anything I'd seen before in my life.
"It's stood there for two hundred years and will likely stand for eternity," Felix whispered. "We call it the Flavian Amphitheater."
I already knew the name from the men in the mines, but their description wasn't nearly magnificent enough.
The amphitheater stood four levels tall, higher than any structure I'd ever seen. The bottom three levels were a series of grand arches. The public could come and go through any of them on the ground level, but the arches along the two levels above that were only frames to display marble statues of the gods and the images of emperors who thought they should be immortalized too. The panels of the top tier alternated between bronze shields and rectangular windows. It was breathtaking, in every sense of the word.
As we drew closer to the amphitheater, I also saw a colossal bronze statue planted in front, as tall as twenty grown men. My mouth fell open just to gaze at it.
Felix laughed. "That's Emperor Nero, may he rot in peace. He nearly destroyed the empire during his reign, and then built that statue to celebrate himself for it. It took twenty-four elephants to drag that statue here after Nero's death."
I chuckled at the spectacle that must've been, but then fell silent as I continued to soak in the sights as quickly as we passed them.
Finally, we stopped right in front of the amphitheater. Felix looked over at me. "Well, Nic, what do you think?"
I only smiled back at him. Whatever my opinion of Rome had been before, I knew that I had just entered the greatest city in the world. A part of me felt that I had come home.
The city bustled around us. I would have loved to explore and discover Rome's secrets for myself, but that was not for a slave to do. Instead, once we reached the far side of the amphitheater, Felix immediately turned to me. "The griffin is for you alone. A ramp ahead of you leads to the hypogeum beneath the amphitheater. Her cage will be the first one you come to down there."
"She won't go in it," I said.
"She'll race in," Felix countered. "I had the men prepare her cage with a large nugget of gold. Griffins will never leave their gold."
Which explained why Caela had fought so hard over the gold in Caesar's cave. She wasn't protecting it for him; she wanted it for herself. That is, except for the bulla, which would have belonged to Caesar in a far more personal way. Once I put it on, our fight was over. Caela may have loved her gold, but she respected the bulla.
I jumped off the wagon while Felix shooed away some workers trying to open the back doors.
"Nic is the only one who will manage this animal," he told them. "Make sure the others know."
I didn't miss the glares from the men, but they didn't bother me either. I had the feeling that nobody spared much concern for the animals here. They weren't worthy to handle Caela. She was the emperor's gift.
Aurelia hopped off the back of the caravan as soon as she saw me. "Your bird is as dangerous as you are," she said. "Did you hear her reaction when those soldiers tried to take you?"
I grinned. "Oh, I thought that was you making such a fuss over me!"
Her face reddened. "I'd never fuss over you."