The Assassin Who Lost More Than His Target

Drusco was a solid man, broad of back and with hands capable of cracking a walnut between two fingers. In a city where gladiators were worshipped like gods of sand and blood, he preferred the quieter trade: killing for hire, taking gold, and vanishing before anyone remembered his face. That afternoon awaited the cleanest job of his career, or so he believed.

A woman in a dark cloak had sought him out three nights earlier. She gave no names, only coins: a heavy pouch, still warm from the body where she had hidden it. She wanted a man dead, and she wanted him dead in the baths, where no one carried weapons or distrusted a stranger amid the steam.

—It’ll be easy —Drusco told himself as he crossed the marble portico—. He’s alone. I get paid, and tonight I’ll tour every brothel in the lower quarter.

The air inside was thick, white, heavy with oils and sweat. The marble slipped beneath his sandals. He advanced without haste, measuring each step, letting the murmur of water cover his own. At the back, in the hot baths, his target was rubbing down his body with his back to the entrance, oblivious, vulnerable, suspecting nothing as death already breathed three steps from the nape of his neck.

He was not a big man. Thin, narrow-shouldered, with the pale skin of someone who spends life under a roof. Drusco almost felt contempt. Too easy. Almost an insult to the price I charge.

He came up behind him. He let the steam wrap around him one moment longer. Then he closed his arm around that thin neck and squeezed.

—It’s nothing personal —he murmured by his ear—. It’s only a matter of gold.

The man convulsed. He flailed at the air, clawed at the forearm choking him, kicked at the water. Drusco dragged him backward until he was forced to his knees on the edge of the pool, feeling the body slowly lose strength, seeing the face turn purple in the reflection off the water. He squeezed harder. It was almost over. He could see it in the trembling legs, in the way the fingers stopped clawing.

Then those pale hands, instead of continuing to pull at the arm, dropped. They groped blindly between the assassin’s legs and clamped around his testicles with the last strength he had left.

The pain was a white shock that shot straight up to his throat. Drusco loosened his arm for half a second, only half a second, just enough time to let out a grunt. It was enough. Air rushed back into the thin man’s lungs, and with the air came rage. He pulled. He pulled on the assassin’s balls like someone uprooting a root, and Drusco howled, a scream that bounced off the marble vaults.

He tried to land a punch to break free. It never made it. The hand squeezed again, twisted, and the giant collapsed onto his side over the wet flagstones, folded in on himself, unable to breathe for a very different reason than suffocation.

***

The guards arrived before he could crawl into the water. The thin man, drawing breath between coughs, spat out an order in a rough voice, and only then did Drusco understand the magnitude of his mistake. That insignificant body belonged to Senator Aulus Verenus, one of the richest and most vindictive men in the city. He had not chosen an easy target. He had chosen his own grave.

They chained him without effort. Drusco, who had brought down men twice his size, could not even stand. The pain had him nailed to the floor like a spear.

***

Several streets away, in the shaded courtyard of a villa, Lucilia drank wine with other women of high birth. She was beautiful in a cold way, with her blond hair gathered in braids and her eyes always calculating. She had paid well for a death and awaited the news with the calm of someone who never doubted her money.

One of her friends came running, breathless, cheeks flushed.

—Come, quickly! There’s a spectacle in the square, they say it’s a good one.

Lucilia smiled. She was used to those spectacles: public orgies, sweaty bodies, gladiators showing off before the arena. She set down her cup and followed the group amid laughter. But when they came out into the square, the laughter froze in her mouth.

Tied between two columns, naked, broken down, was her assassin.

—He apparently tried to kill Senator Verenus —a guard commented, amused—. His calculation was off.

Lucilia brought a hand to her lips. Not out of pity. Out of fear. Because a bound man could speak, and what he knew could drag her to the very same pillar.

What she saw next turned her stomach and, at the same time, left her rooted in place, unable to look away. Between the giant’s legs there was no longer anything left of what he had once boasted: the senator’s executioner had torn away his manhood, and all that remained were the reddened, swollen testicles, hanging useless over the marble. A soldier paraded the rest like a trophy, lifting it so the matrons could see. The women laughed, bared their breasts, and hiked up their tunics to show the assassin all the things he would never touch again.

—Look well, dog —one of them told him, opening her dress—. This is the last thing you’ll ever see of a woman.

Drusco barely lifted his head. The man who terrorized alleyways was now crying like a child, tied up and exposed before the entire city.

***

And the punishment had only just begun. By order of the senator, the guards formed a line behind the prisoner. One after another they took him, profaning his body amid mockery and slaps on the back, taking turns like men waiting for their ration at market. Each thrust tore a muffled groan from him, each laugh from the soldiers reminded him that he was no longer a man, but a broken beast exposed to public scorn. Drusco, who had lived by inflicting pain, was finally learning what it meant to receive it with no possible defense.

Lucilia watched from the edge of the crowd, pale, calculating. She felt no pity. She felt urgency. That wretch knew her name, her face, the exact weight of the gold pouch. As long as he breathed, she was condemned.

—If I had hired a woman —she muttered through clenched teeth—, no one would have been able to grab him by the balls. Useless.

That night, they left Drusco tied in the punishment courtyard as a warning to future assassins. And that same night, wrapped in her dark cloak, Lucilia returned. She carried a short knife hidden in the fold of her belt.

***

She found him collapsed against the pillar, shaking with fever and cold. At the sight of her, he had no strength even to raise his eyes.

—You failed —she whispered, crouching to his level—. You’re a fucking useless piece of shit.

—My… my manhood… —he stammered, lost—. It’s gone…

—Yes, it’s gone. And you won’t be around much longer either.

She stuffed a rag into his mouth to smother the screams. Drusco, too weak to resist, felt the woman’s cold hands close around the only thing they had left him. Then came the pain, sharp, unbearable, and his howls died against the gag. He saw, through tears, how she raised the knife, ready to empty him out completely.

—You’ll bleed out —Lucilia smiled—. That’s what you deserve for failing. Goodbye.

But the blade never came down.

***

A thunder of hooves and torches flooded the courtyard. Soldiers everywhere. In the center, calm and well accompanied, Senator Verenus raised a hand and ordered the woman seized and the prisoner treated.

Lucilia did not understand until it was too late. The assassin had spoken hours earlier, when they ripped away his manhood: he had given a name, hers. But an accusation was not enough before a tribunal. They needed proof, and the senator knew the only way to get it was to set a trap. He left the hitman tied outdoors as bait, certain the culprit would try to silence him. And she, faithful to her fear, had fallen to her knees in the trap with the knife in her hand.

—I didn’t expect you to be this clumsy —Verenus commented as they dragged her away—. Or this cruel.

***

Drusco was treated. He survived, though emptied out, condemned to serve as a eunuch in a nobleman’s house, forever surrounded by a desire he would never again be able to satisfy.

Lucilia awaited a fate even more merciless. They stripped her of her titles, her lands, her name. From powerful lady she became nothing more than another slave, a mare for the pleasure of whoever paid —or of whoever simply ordered it. They tied her in the same punishment courtyard, naked, her blond hair now caked with dust, her breasts and sex exposed to everyone’s view. Soldiers, nobles, and even other slaves used her body in turns, unhurried, like someone using a public fountain.

Days later, Drusco returned to the courtyard. He saw her like that, broken down, being mounted by a broad-shouldered soldier, and for an instant their eyes met. She clenched her teeth. She would have spat if she could have reached him. Instead, she formed a single word with her dry lips, a word loaded with all the venom she had left.

—Eunuch.

And then she laughed, a broken, crazed laugh, the result of the countless hands that had used her until they emptied her of sanity.

She tried to take her own life more than once, but the senator kept her watched day and night. He was not going to grant her the mercy of a quick death; that slave belonged to him, and her suffering was part of the price.

So their fates remained, forever tied by the same mistake. She, mounted by anyone who desired it, nameless and without rank. He, walking among the most beautiful women in the house, condemned to look and never touch again.

Life knows how to be cruel. And in those times, when punishment rivaled existence itself in savagery, no mistake came cheaply.