Fighting Fit by Annie Dalton Page A

was convinced that the triplets’ mother had offended the gods, so she made up her mind to free herself and her son from this bad luck. She bought a live chicken and took it to the shrine of a particularly unsavoury underworld god. A Dark agent, posing as a priest, accepted her offering. She started to weep and wring her hands, so he made her tell him what was wrong, and after he’d heard her story, this fake priest told her that he knew a way to divert the bad luck from her son’s house.”
    “Don’t tell me - with a curse,” said Reuben in disgust.
    Orlando nodded. “Exactly. Since the old woman was illiterate, he promised to help her word the curse to make it binding.”
    Orlando described how the fake priest scratched the words on a special curse tablet made of lead, and watched with a strange eagerness as the triplets’ grandmother placed it in the bloodstained shrine.
    “What did the curse say?” I whispered.
    “That these unnatural babies must be taken from the house and abandoned in three different areas of the city, where they would be exposed to the elements and left to die. If the old woman did everything exactly as she was told, then she and her son would prosper in all their dealings. But if the girls were ever reunited, not only would their good fortune end, Rome itself would fall.
    “While her son was sleeping,” Orlando went on, “the grandmother took the new-born girls out of the house under cover of darkness and abandoned them in three different areas of the city, just as she’d been instructed. By this time, the local Light agents had finally got their act together. With a little celestial help, two of the triplets quickly found new families. But despite our agents’ best efforts, the third baby - Star - was left crying in an alleyway for three days before any human noticed.”
    I was horrified. “It’s a wonder she survived.”
    “You’d be surprised. New-born humans are surprisingly tough,” said Orlando.
    He went on to describe how Star was eventually rescued - if you can call it that - by the owner of a sleazy public house called The Pomegranate. But when she was three years old, this same charmer sold her on to a slave dealer. After that, Star basically spent her childhood running away from various abusive owners, and being recaptured.
    It’s hardly surprising that she grew into a little female hooligan, who hit first and asked questions afterwards. Yet like her sisters, Star had a strong spiritual side. She had vivid dreams and saw strange visions. But she quickly learned that it was unwise to talk about such things, deciding that it was better to be laughed at for being a feisty tomboy, than stoned as a witch.
    “When she was ten years old, Star decided to take her destiny into her own hands and stowed away on a ship bound for Carthage, to seek her fortune,” Orlando told us.
    Carthage . How weird was that? It’s like when I made up my fictional life-story for Aurelia, I was actually tapping into Star’s real life-story.
    And Star did find her fortune; kind of. Orlando described how soon after she arrived, a sharp-eyed local lanista noticed a wild-haired ragamuffin defending herself in the street from some older boys. He was impressed by her spirit and thought it would be amusing to train her for the arena.
    Reuben shook his head. “Putting a ten-year-old girl in the arena? That’s sick.”
    “Star doesn’t see it that way,” said Orlando. “She says it was the first time anyone ever believed in her. Festus Brutus saw her fight a few weeks ago and decided to buy her for his ludus . To begin with he was just exploiting her like everyone else, but now I think he genuinely wants to help Star to buy her freedom.”
    “Who gave her that name?” I asked curiously.
    “Star was called dozens of different names while she was growing up, but none of them were her own. So when she needed a stage name, she decided to call herself Star. That was her private name for herself when