Chapter 18
You are amazingly clever, my dear,” Marcianus said in admiration.
“Of course, I won’t simply use Hadrianus for information,” Cassia said quickly. “Writing will be a useful skill for the poor man to have. It will let him more easily communicate with others and give him more choices.”
Hadrianus was enslaved, so I wasn’t certain what choices he’d have, but I didn’t want to diminish Cassia’s eagerness.
Marcianus rose. “I will make my way to the ludus, now that the rain seems to be slacking, and make inquiries.”
“Out of Aemil’s sight,” I warned. “He is already unhappy with me for asking about Xerxes.”
“I can be discreet, Leonidas.” Marcianus sent me a wounded glance. “I will report whatever I discover. Good evening, both of you.”
Cassia rose and bade him a polite farewell. I accompanied Marcianus down the stairs, closing and locking both upper and lower door behind him.
The rain had quieted into a light pattering on the rooftops. I stepped out onto our balcony and watched Marcianus’s thin form weaving through the lane and on to the main street.
With sunset occurring somewhere behind the clouds, the sky darkened quickly. I lifted the heavy shutters into their slots, and Cassia lit an oil lamp.
She offered to rush out and retrieve stew from the nearest shop, but I forestalled her. I hadn’t mentioned my later meeting with Vitus in front of Marcianus, so now explained what I’d asked Vitus to do.
Cassia listened in some disquiet. “Do you trust Vitus enough to meet him in the dark?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “But if he can point me in the right direction, I’ll risk it. He hasn’t fought professionally in a long time. I can probably best him if I need to.”
I’d also reasoned that the fact Aemil hadn’t tried to persuade Vitus to stay after his retirement indicated he might not have been that good of a fighter. Aemil was very annoyed with me for deserting him, yet he continued to try to coax me back. Vitus, he’d ignored altogether.
Cassia’s expression told me that wasn’t her point, but she didn’t argue. “Perhaps I should come as well.”
“No,” I said adamantly. “I can’t fight off Vitus and protect you from every brigand on the street at the same time.”
Cassia fixed her gaze on some point behind me, as she did when thinking deeply. “Very well,” she said.
I studied her in grave suspicion, but Cassia turned back to the table, producing another loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese for a makeshift supper.
While I waited for the appointed time, I performed the Lemuria ritual. Cassia had procured dried beans for me days ago, but I’d been too preoccupied since then for the ceremony.
As I’d told Livius, it took far less time for me to stalk through our small apartment, chanting the words to appease the spirits, than he’d taken in his vast domus.
I ended up at our makeshift altar to our ancestors and regarded the papers holding Cassia’s father’s name and Xerxes’s.
“Rest easy, friends,” I said quietly. I added a silent promise to Cassia’s father that I was looking after her.
Cassia watched me, eyes shining with tears.
A little more than two hours before media nocte, Cassia, who had a knack for knowing the precise hour, day or night, alerted me that it was time for me to depart.
Our lane was quiet when I left the apartment, but carts rumbled in the streets on the lower hill, delivering goods to merchants and taverns or raw materials to forgers, weavers, or potters.
The Emporium, which lay outside the old city gates, teemed with activity, nighttime being busier than late afternoon. I’d brought a knife with me, but no more money than what I’d promised Vitus. Anyone robbing me would get very little.
Vitus did turn up, true to his word. He waited for me outside the Porticus Aemilia, the ancient building that Gallus so admired.
The warehouse I’d helped Gallus build lay beyond the Porticus, around a slight bend in the river.
I always felt a frisson of pride when I thought of it, though the building was nothing out of the ordinary.
It had been the first job I’d had since I’d been freed that had given me satisfaction and made my former life fade into mist.
Vitus nodded at me in welcome, then unfolded himself from the pillar he’d leaned against and strode with me into the massive warehouse.
The Porticus Aemilia ran lengthwise to the river but was set back from the bank to avoid the Tiber’s frequent floods.
Pillars and arches divided the space into fifty vaults perpendicular to the river, with the roofs rising in stair-step fashion up the hill.
The staggered vaults provided arched windows high on each level to admit sunlight.
The skylights did no good now, but flickering oil lamps carried by workers or waggoners, and in one place, a fire built inside a clay pot, gave us some light as we wove our way through.
Most of the men loading carts and wagons ignored us, two irrelevant bystanders in the stream of carts, donkeys, slaves, and freedmen.
“The Parthians operate over here.” Vitus led me to a vault about midway through the building, where silent men in tunics loaded up wagons that appeared to be no different from all the other wagons.
“There.” Vitus pointed to a small shed that had been built against a corner, likely used as an office by whoever rented this space. “This is where I saw Xerxes that night I followed him.”
The three men who emerged from the shed were dressed as Vitus had described. All three wore tunics that reached their knees—in one case his calves—two in yellow, with the longer tunic a brilliant green.
The two men in yellow had close-fitting leggings, while the third man’s were baggy and pleated. The flow of the fabrics told me that all were likely made of silk.
“I don’t think any of these are the man Xerxes dealt with,” Vitus said. “But he looked like the one in green.”
I wondered how to approach them. I didn’t know what excuse I’d make, but I wanted to know whether any of them had been Xerxes’s contact.
“I’ll take my money now, if you don’t mind,” Vitus said.
He’d kept his end of the bargain, so I dipped into the pouch and slid the coins into his calloused palm with as little movement as possible, so that anyone watching wouldn’t realize I was paying him. Thieves and pickpockets would mark such an obvious exchange.
Vitus, with as much canniness, folded his hand around the coins and let his arms hang at his sides.
“Thank you,” I told him.
He gave me a nod. “If you ever want to reminisce, I’m often in that popina. Good night, Leonidas.”
His task finished, Vitus turned and strolled away, his broad back telling me he didn’t much care what I did with the information he’d just given me.
I remained, watching the Parthians. I wondered if Arsakes would know who they were, and whether he’d tell me if so.
After contemplating the three men a moment, I concluded that the two in yellow were assistants or workers and the man in green was in charge. All three had hard faces, but the men in yellow were deferential to the one in green, who carried himself with the arrogance of the wealthy.
I found myself walking toward them. I reasoned that Cassia would want all the information I could give her, and I could only do that if I got closer.
The three men paid no attention as I approached—I was one more Roman in a freedman’s tunic.
When I halted nearby, the two men in yellow snapped their focus to me. I couldn’t decide if they were guards or only assistants, but they eyed me in great suspicion.
“What do you want?” one of them asked in thickly accented Latin.
“I wondered if you had any jobs for me,” I said. “I’m a former gladiator, very strong.”
“Go,” the man in yellow growled, but the man in green held up a slim-fingered hand.
“Why do you want to work for Parthians?” he asked with some amusement. His accent was not as pronounced as his fellow’s.
I shrugged. “Coin’s coin.”
“True.” The man in green looked me up and down. “I will think on it. Where can I find you to send word?”
“Nowhere.” I didn’t want to lead a man who might have had Xerxes murdered to my home or anywhere my friends might be. “I will come back tomorrow.”
“As you please.” The Parthian studied me once more then turned away, finished with me.
The two in yellow eyed me belligerently until I turned from them and headed out of the Porticus Aemilia.
I fell in with the carts that were making their way into the city, trundling the goods from the warehouse to various parts of Rome. The wagons and men stayed close to one another, because even during the busy delivery time, thieves would await those alone and unwary.
I followed the procession around the wall of the Forum Bovarium to the Vicus Tuscus and the Horrea Agrippina, which also swarmed with activity. Thick bundles of silk lay in carts, ready to be taken to those who’d purchased them.
This warehouse was guarded by men with breastplates and swords, more former legionnaires. I also noted vigiles hovering nearby, making certain the expensive fabric remained safe.
I knew someone followed me. I’d felt them behind me since I’d left the Porticus Aemilia, in the same way I’d been able to track an opponent in the arena, when I was all but blinded by my helmet.
My tail wasn’t Cassia. She’d attempted to follow me before, and while she was brilliant with accounts and understanding complicated texts, she was unskilled at tracking. I’d always spied her at once.
This shadow was up to no good. Whether it was a thief who’d noticed I’d given Vitus the sestertii and reasoned I’d have more, or someone who didn’t like me talking to the Parthians, I couldn’t be sure.
I continued up the street until I reached the building where Herminius, Cassius Tatius, and his assistant, Aulus, did business. There I ducked under the portico and waited.
I heard no footsteps behind me, no one hurrying to see where I’d gone. Instead, a grunt and then the sound of fists on flesh came to me from deep inside the building.
Cautiously, I drew my knife and moved toward Herminius’s tablinium, from where the noises emanated.
By the light of one tiny oil lamp, I saw Arsakes fighting for his life.
Another man lay on the floor, blood on the front of his tunic.
I recognized Gotarz, the man I’d shoved into the frigidarium and who’d stood by while I questioned Arsakes in this very room.
Whether he was dead or alive, I didn’t know.
Arsakes fought a cloaked man whose back was to me. The two slammed into the small table with the oil lamp, which smashed to the floor, extinguishing the light.
I’d pinpointed the two before darkness erased them and grabbed for Arsakes’s attacker. My knife pricked him between the shoulder blades before the man swung around and started battering me.
Fists came at me rapidly, one catching me in the jaw. I wasn’t used to being struck on my bare face, but I moved with the punch so it wouldn’t send me to the ground. My hand went slack, however, and my knife clattered to the floor, lost in the darkness.
I regained my balance and smashed blows into the fighter’s gut.
He elbowed me in the neck, which made me stagger, but again, I used all the skills Aemil had hammered into me to stay on my feet.
Arsakes grunted again, and I realized the attacker had returned to him. I seized the unknown man by his cloak, pulling him from Arsakes, but he easily twisted from me. A professional fighter, I decided, though not a gladiator. He didn’t have bulk, but he had plenty of strength and skill.
I heard a body hit the floor—Arsakes. The attacker turned on me, that distraction gone.
Abruptly we were joined by a new combatant. There was a rush of footsteps, a yell, and the squishing thunk of a knife in flesh. My attacker let out a short sigh, the only sign he’d been hurt.
I used that diversion to get my arm around the attacker’s throat and squeeze.
He threw me off once more with unnerving strength. He shoved aside whoever had come to my aid and moved rapidly toward the entrance.
I ran after him. I could see nothing, the arches of the portico outlining only faint starlight and distant torchlight. Clouds blotted out the moon, and the shadow of my attacker blended into the gloom and vanished.
I growled in frustration and headed back inside to aid Arsakes and Gotarz.
I entered the office to find a dark figure bending over Arsakes. I only saw him because a chance beam through the high window caught on a knife blade.
I tackled the man, tangling myself and the assailant in a cloak made of course wool. It smelled of rain and the goat the wool originally came from.
The man fought me, and we grappled, banging into Arsakes and Gotarz, who might both already be dead. We rolled from the office to the central atrium, where there was marginally more light.
I heaved the man off me, got my hand around his throat, and lifted him up against a marble pillar.
And found myself looking up into the face of Xerxes, in the form of his brother, Lucius.