Chapter 8
Five thousand …”
I gaped at the man. I could barely contemplate that amount of money, and the Xerxes I’d known couldn’t have either.
The second man nodded. “We don’t have it, no matter how much silk we sell.”
I snapped my attention to him, and the first man let out a snarl of disgust. “Gotarz, your mouth is why we are in so much trouble already. That and your fear of water. We could have gotten everything out of this man and gutted him, if you and Haman hadn’t flailed like babies in a stream.”
“I almost drowned once,” Gotarz said petulantly.
“The place we come from is very dry,” the first man explained to me. “When we decided to work for Romans, we had to get used to bathing. Gotarz and Haman are not good with it.”
“Is the place you come from Parthia?” I asked.
“From a town near Edessa,” the man answered without hesitation.
“Which was named by Seleucus after Alexander bequeathed it to him but is now under the protection of the Parthians.” He shrugged.
“But the Romans will have it one day, so why not work for them now? We know the routes through Parthian lands to the trading oases. Men will pay much for our knowledge.”
“Now who talks too much, Arsakes?” Gotarz growled.
Arsakes shrugged again. “If this man knew Xerxes, maybe he is the one we have been dealing with for the past few years. He’s trying to find out about Herminius, isn’t he?”
“Did you ever meet Xerxes?” I asked.
Arsakes shook his head. “We communicated through messages. Xerxes, as a gladiator, had the ear of rich matrons who wanted the best of silks and didn’t much care where they came from. If I could supply the silk, he said, he could supply the clients.”
“You’ve killed us, Arsakes,” Gotarz said, aghast.
“No, I haven’t. If Leonidas has been pretending to be Xerxes to continue the trade, then he knows all about it. If not, he’s not leaving this room alive, so it doesn’t matter.”
I could kill both of them now, without making much effort. This was not an idle boast—I knew exactly how to separate them, pin them, and strike quick, killing blows.
They might counteract me by treachery, but these were simple men. The leader was a little more learned, evidenced by spewing the history of the city of Edessa, but they weren’t strategists.
“It hasn’t been me you were dealing with,” I said. “Xerxes never told me any of this.”
“Well then.” Arsakes fingered the hilt of the knife on his belt.
“Xerxes has a brother,” I stated.
Arsakes nodded. “Lucius Aelius. He works for Herminius, and Herminius is put out with him. Lucius the one who told us about Xerxes in the first place. Boasted of him. But Lucius isn’t in the arrangement with us. He ran off to do errands for Herminius in Parthia.”
“Lucius believes you were sent by Herminius to kill him, because he was accused of embezzlement.”
“It is true that Drusus Fulvius convinced Herminius that Lucius was stealing from him,” Arsakes said impatiently.
“I knew he wasn’t—Fulvius likes to dip his hands in the funds and needed someone to blame it on.
He hates Lucius for becoming Herminius’s favorite.
We used Herminius’s orders to find Lucius as our excuse to come to Rome, but I don’t actually care about carrying out those orders. ”
“You sent the silk here,” I said, trying to understand the process. “And then Xerxes sold it on and split the profits with you?”
“Something like that.” Arsakes smiled. “You’re clever, for a gladiator.”
I wouldn’t ask them if they stole the silk or legitimately purchased it. They’d never tell me the truth. Arsakes wasn’t telling me all of the truth even now, but I didn’t expect him too.
“Xerxes died, and you didn’t know,” I went on. “Someone continued the enterprise, claiming to be him. So, if it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Lucius, who was it?”
“How are we supposed to know?” Gotarz demanded.
“I could find out,” I offered. “If this person has been taking the money Xerxes should have had for two and a half years, and using his name to do it, I want to find him.”
From what I understood, luxury goods like silk or expensive spices or gems had to go through certain merchants given permission to trade in such things, regulated so that the princeps and the patrician families had first access to them.
Covertly trading in silk, stolen or not, could have gotten Xerxes executed.
Why Xerxes had risked that, I didn’t know. But Xerxes had been very certain he’d win at anything he did in life, so he must have believed he could get away with this as well.
“If you find this man, you’ll take the money or betray us,” Arsakes said with certainty. “Easier for us to kill you now.”
“You keep talking about killing me, but here I stand.” I spread my arms as though I wasn’t worried about Arsakes leaping across the room and stabbing me in the gut.
“Do you want to know who this person pretending to be Xerxes is? It might be an excise man, perhaps ordered by the princeps to draw you into a snare.”
Both men’s eyes widened. If they were caught at this endeavor, they faced a terrible death, possibly without much of a trial.
“They’ve taken a long time to ensnare us then,” Arsakes said, as though reassuring himself.
“It is only one possibility,” I admitted. “Has whoever it is been paying you regularly?”
Gotarz flinched, but Arsakes became less stiff.
“Not as regularly as we’d like, which is another reason we are here.
He’s threatened to betray us, and we are not pleased by this, especially thinking he can demand money from us.
We came to find Xerxes and end the partnership. With his death, I mean.”
“This man could still betray you before you find him,” I said. “I will discover who he is, and then we can decide what to do with him.”
Arsakes’s eyes narrowed. “Why should we trust you? You’re only a gladiator. We trusted Xerxes, and see what happened?”
“Xerxes never planned to die.” He’d been more full of life than anyone I’d known, in love with it. The fact that he’d made a misstep in his last bout still puzzled me. “I’m a gladiator no longer, and I know people who can find things out.”
“And then what? You help us kill him?”
I wasn’t certain, in truth. Someone in Rome had decided to impersonate Xerxes to make money from these bodyguards, who’d been running a dangerous trade. I wanted to know who’d been using Xerxes’s name, who’d been keeping the money Xerxes would have made for Marcella and his family.
When I found him, I might borrow Arsakes’s knife and gut him. What I’d do about Arsakes and his friend, I wasn’t certain yet.
Lucius had to know more about this than he let on. I needed to lay my hands on him again.
For answer, I shrugged. Let Arsakes decide what I meant to do.
“Swear a pact with me,” Arsakes said. “That you will find this man who has been leading us on and help us destroy him. Swear on your life.”
“No.” I held Arsakes with a hard gaze. “I will find him without having to make any vows to you. When I stop him, consider yourselves fortunate and go back to Parthia. Forget you ever met Xerxes.”
“How do we know you won’t betray us to the cohorts or magistrates?” Arsakes demanded.
“You don’t. But I will learn what has happened and tell you.”
Arsakes eyed me with uncertainty, but finally he sighed. “Return here to give us word. One of us will be waiting. Don’t give the door guard any messages—speak to us directly.”
I promised him nothing. Already Arsakes and his friends had tried to kill me, and I couldn’t take their word that they would leave Lucius be.
I couldn’t take their word for anything, I reminded myself, but they’d given me knowledge I hadn’t had before, and a place to start.
I deliberately turned my back and walked away, out into the May afternoon and rising heat.
Neither Arsakes nor Gotarz followed me. They didn’t trust me, but possibly they were desperate enough to find answers that they’d let a gladiator blunder around to discover things for them.
I wasn’t interested in their troubles. What beat through my brain was that Xerxes had decided to become a smuggler and had never told me, but must have confided in someone else, who’d taken over after his death.
It might be anyone, I reflected in some despair. Possibly Marcella herself, though I couldn’t envision her threatening to betray Arsakes and his friends unless they paid her five thousand aurei. I didn’t think such an idea would even occur to her.
If Xerxes had brought someone else in on his lucrative scheme, it must have been someone in Rome, who’d be in place to accept the shipments. I turned my steps westward, toward the Tiber and the Pons Aemilius.
Maybe Xerxes hadn’t taken me into his confidence, because he’d known I’d only make a mess of such a business. I’d open my mouth at the wrong time—I’d been drunk often when I was with Xerxes. He’d probably been wise to keep me in the dark.
At the same time, the knowledge that he hadn’t trusted me burned like a hot ball in my gut.
I’d known Xerxes better than anyone, had drunk with him, joked with him, fought with him, enjoyed women with him until he’d met Marcella.
He’d been the brother I’d never had, and I’d assumed I’d been the same to him.
In the last few days, I’d learned he’d had a brother in truth, was dealing in goods that could have meant his execution, and had been slain before he could warn me of what trouble might be coming.
It took great skill to kill a gladiator, but, as I’d mused when facing Arsakes and Gotarz, it could be done by treachery.
I halted in the middle of the bridge, annoying those trying to push past me, the thought taking root.
Xerxes had been the best fighter in the ludus until I’d surpassed him. He hadn’t minded when I’d become primus palus, telling me it took pressure from him to drop to secundus. He could spend more time with Marcella and be out from under Aemil’s thumb.
Only I should have been able to best Xerxes. I’d always wondered how Perseus—the gladiator who’d opposed him that afternoon—had slipped past his guard and taken him by surprise. Xerxes had taunted and mocked his opponents, laughing at them, but he’d been very, very careful.
I couldn’t ask Perseus what had happened, because I’d killed him in the next bout. He’d seemed surprised to have made it past Xerxes to take me on, and he’d also been terrified.
I’d done it quickly, with a sword straight into his neck.
What if Perseus had felled Xerxes not with skill or great luck, but with trickery? Or what if someone else had weakened Xerxes beforehand, making his death inevitable?
A woman balancing a full water jug on her shoulder shoved past me, snarling invective. I made myself rejoin the stream of humanity crossing the bridge to the Transtiberim, my thoughts spinning.
Septimius was in place as guard when I tramped to the ludus’s gate. I wanted to talk to him about Lucius, but later. He quickly opened the gate for me, and I stormed inside.
The practice ground was empty, the portico that surrounded it quiet.
The gladiators would have finished training by now and be eating a meal or headed for the baths.
Aemil used the relatively peaceful interlude to retreat to his tablinium and go through his accounts, which could be a painful process for him.
I entered the cool vault that held the cells. The few gladiators there studied me in curiosity but did not bother to stop me.
I stepped up into Aemil’s sanctuary without requesting permission and came to a towering halt in front of his desk. Aemil glanced up with a start.
“What do you want, Leonidas? I’m busy.”
I leaned over the desk, planting my fists on it.
“How did Xerxes die?” I demanded. “He should not have, not against a second-rate fighter like Perseus. Who truly killed him, and why?”