Chapter 19
My hold slipped a moment in the shock of seeing Xerxes’s face, tight with fear, above my gripping hand.
Then rage ripped through me and I pinned Lucius against the pillar.
“What in Hades are you doing here?”
Lucius gasped and wheezed, my hold cutting off his air. I eased up slightly, but only enough for him to speak.
“I was worried,” he managed. “About my cloak.” He attempted a grin.
I squeezed his throat again. “You followed me from the Porticus tonight. Why?”
“You ask many questions,” Lucius croaked. “Shouldn’t we look after the others?”
I dropped him. One moment, he was hanging from my hand, then next, Lucius landed in a heap on the marble floor. The old cloak I recognized as one Xerxes wore on the farm nearly smothered him in its folds.
I stepped over Lucius’s inert body and strode into the street, growling at a passing carter to give me his lamp, which he did without argument. I shielded the flame in the small clay pot with my hand, nearly burning the skin off my palm as I carried it to Herminius’s office.
From the tiny light, I saw Arsakes on the floor, his back against a gilded table leg, hand on his stomach. Blood seeped around his fingers, black against his pale tunic.
Gotarz lay very still, his lips gray. I put my hand on his chest and found it unmoving.
“Who did this?” I asked Arsakes.
Arsakes breathed with difficulty. “Don’t know. I sent Gotarz here to fetch something for me after everyone had gone. When he was slow returning, I came to see what happened. Found a man standing over him, then that man attacked me. He’d have killed me too, if you hadn’t arrived.”
I stepped over Gotarz, set the lamp on the floor, and moved Arsakes’s hand aside. Footsteps behind me indicated Lucius had followed me in. He lifted the wavering light and held it close.
Arsakes peered up at him. “Lucius Aelius?” His voice held amazement with a touch of disgust. “Why are you here?”
“Leonidas just asked me the same thing, only more violently.” Lucius touched his throat, which bore dark marks where I’d nearly throttled him. “Good thing I came. I just saved your life, my old friend.”
Arsakes growled. “Maybe not. This wound’s deep.”
The lamp showed me a jagged cut in Arsakes’s left side. “I will fetch a medicus,” I told him. I didn’t think Arsakes would survive a journey to the Aventine, so I’d have to lead Marcianus here.
“No,” Arsakes protested. “A medicus will bring the vigiles. They’ll blame me for Gotarz’s death, because I’m foreign.”
“Not this medicus.” I turned to Lucius. “Stay with him and find something to stop the blood with.” I stared pointedly at his cloak. “Don’t leave, no matter what.”
“As you wish.” Lucius untied the cloak and folded it into a pad, kneeling on the floor to press it against Arsakes’s side.
Arsakes made a soft noise of pain but remained still. The competent way Lucius held the pad against the wound told me he’d done such things before.
I quit the place, told the lingering carter we needed the light a while longer, and jogged toward the Aventine and Marcianus’s home.
Marcia tried to prevent me from waking Marcianus.
“He requires sleep,” she snapped at me when she opened the front door. “After you drag him all over Rome and he doctors everyone from half-dead gladiators to children who truly need him, he’s exhausted.”
“A man has been hurt. One who will die without him.”
Marcia would have retorted, but Marcianus, roused by our argument, clattered down the rickety stairs in the corner. He was wrapped in a blanket, his hair tousled, and blinked in the glare of the lamp Marcia had lit.
His eyes widened when I explained about Arsakes. He ran upstairs again, descending a short time later, settling a tunic on his shoulders. He bade Marcia fetch his things, and then dashed out, without waiting for me to lead the way.
Marcia sighed but put out the lamp, took up a bag that was apparently at the ready, shooed me out, and locked the door behind us.
We caught up to Marcianus at the now silent Circus Maximus. He hadn’t slowed, though I hadn’t told him exactly where we were going, and didn’t change his pace once I put myself ahead of him.
I took him to the offices, the streets quieting now as deliveries had been made and carters led donkeys to stables before going home to bed.
I was relieved to see that Lucius hadn’t fled while I’d been gone. He rose from where he’d been sitting in the shadows next to Arsakes when we entered.
Marcianus beheld Lucius and let out a short scream.
Marcia nearly ran into the back of Marcianus. “What is the matter?” she asked in half alarm, half annoyance.
“Minerva give me strength,” Marcianus whispered. “It is Xerxes returned to life. But no, you must be Lucius. Leonidas told me about you.”
Lucius shot me an irritated glance. “It was supposed to be a secret.”
“Except to Marcianus,” I said. “He would never betray you.”
Marcianus had already ignored us to kneel beside Arsakes. He carefully peeled the folded cloak from Arsakes’s side, slid the man’s tunic upward, and bent to examine the wound. Marcia had taken over the lamp and held it in precisely the right place for Marcianus to view the cut.
“I’ve seen far worse,” Marcianus told Arsakes reassuringly. “You will mend if the wound does not take sick, which it won’t if you do exactly as I tell you.”
Arsakes eyed him with distrust, but he didn’t argue as Marcianus wiped the wound with cloths Marcia passed him.
Lucius watched in fascination as Marcianus worked, Marcia handing him things with quiet efficiency.
Marcianus cleared the area around the injury of blood, then sewed the skin together, ignoring Arsakes grunts and twitches.
Marcia had the needle threaded when Marcianus was ready for it, snipping the threads neatly with a small knife when he was finished.
She then slid a jar into Marcianus’s hand, and Marcianus smeared the ointment within it over the closed wound.
“Don’t move too much, or you’ll tear it,” Marcianus admonished Arsakes.
“In fact, you need somewhere quiet to rest tonight.” I knew he was about to offer his own home, but Marcia glared hard at him.
“Leonidas, can you impose him on Cassia for the night?” Marcianus asked meekly. “We should watch him for a time.”
“What about him?” Lucius pointed to Gotarz, still inert on the floor.
“The vigiles will have to know,” I said grimly.
“I agree with Arsakes,” Lucius said. “They’ll haul us outsiders to the Tullianum and declare us guilty.”
“I’ll report it once you are safely indoors,” I said. “I know a few vigiles who will listen to me.”
I’d have to think of a reason I’d been visiting Herminius’s offices so late at night to stumble across the dead Gotarz, but I’d come up with something. Or Cassia would. For a very honest person, she was good at inventing tales.
Lucius and I hauled Arsakes to his feet and assisted him from the room, while Marcianus and Marcia cleared up their accouterments behind us.
The night had turned refreshingly cool, wind pushing aside the clouds above us. It was a pleasant time for a walk but not for helping a hurt man hobble through the streets, thieves and brigands lurking to take advantage.
I returned the lamp to the startled carter then told him he’d earn an extra as tonight if he lugged Arsakes to the Quirinal. The carter complied, though whether out of compassion or for the coin, I never learned.
I thought Marcianus would return home, but he followed us, Marcia with him. It was a slow journey around the forums and up the Quirinal, the carter driving as carefully as he could.
After paying and thanking the carter, I unlocked the outer door of our apartment. Somehow, Lucius and I would have to get Arsakes up the flight of stairs.
Cassia opened the door for us at the top—she hadn’t gone to bed. She regarded us in alarm but quickly spread out the pallet on my bunk while we helped Arsakes to it.
I left the others to settle Arsakes and ducked out again into the night, making for the nearest house of the vigiles. I wanted to report the death before someone near the Horrea Agrippina mentioned that they’d seen Leonidas the Spartan coming out of the offices where a dead body lay.
The captain of the house on the Quirinal had been replaced in the last year by a man named Gaius Celsus. Celsus credited me for his promotion, so he greeted me heartily when I came banging in.
Celsus lost his cheerfulness when I told him about Gotarz. I stuck as close to the truth as possible—I’d heard a scuffle in the offices near the Horrea Agrippina, fought with an assailant inside, and the assailant had run off, leaving a dead man behind.
“Would you know the killer if you saw him again?” Celsus asked.
I thought about it, but had to say no. “It was too dark. He was strong but not tall. Fought more like a legionnaire than a gladiator. We might have injured him, but he ran away too swiftly for it to have been a serious one.”
Celsus nodded as though he understood what I meant by all this. “Let us go and fetch the body. Do you know who the dead man was?”
“Bodyguard for the silk merchant called Herminius.”
Celsus heaved a sigh. “Silk merchants are sticky men to deal with. I hope this Herminius doesn’t complain to the highest of the high. Everyone wants to keep the men who bring in their precious luxuries happy.”
“I think Herminius is in Florentia,” I said. “Another man in the offices there says he rarely comes to Rome.”
“Even so. Thank you for telling us, Leonidas.” Celsus gave me a nod.
“Go on home. It is the problem of the vigiles now. And the cohorts, when we pass him on in the morning.” The thought of shoving the problem of the dead man onto the urban cohorts seemed to perk Celsus up, and he herded his men out the door.
I left them to it and returned to our apartment.
Arsakes was lying flat on my bunk when I entered, his hands on his sewn-up wound, his breathing ragged.
I knew that he’d live. Marcianus was the best surgeon in all of Rome, and if he said Arsakes would survive, then he would.
Lucius sat on the visitor’s stool, as Marcia had taken mine. Marcianus leaned against a wall, probably having refused the remaining seat that Cassia had offered him. She perched on that stool now, in her usual place behind the table.
“Why did you come back to Rome?” I demanded of Lucius as soon as I’d locked the door. “Is Marcella all right? If you’ve done anything to her, I will kill you.” I stated this bluntly, without heat.
“No, no.” Lucius rose in consternation. “Marcella is fine and well, as are all the family. She told me to go. Said you were risking your life for me, and I needed to solve these troubles myself. She is right. Beautiful woman, isn’t she?”
Marcella was fairly ordinary looking, far from the beauties that beckoned to men from lupinari, but I knew what he meant. Marcella had an inner fire that lifted her from the plain. Cassia had the same fire, though she was quieter about it.
“You decided to solve your troubles by following me?” I asked.
“I arrived tonight, just before the gates were shut.” Lucius lifted his hands, as though ready to fend me off.
“I thought to come here, but then I saw you in a popina, having wine with a rough-looking fellow. I decided to wait and discover what you were up to, but you only went home and locked everything up tight. Your wine merchant downstairs was in the street, and I didn’t want him to see me and fear more amphorae would be broken.
So, I thought I’d speak to you in the morning.
Then out you come after dark to stride off who knew where. Of course, I had to follow.”
“I heard you behind me,” I said. “You were clumsy.”
“Yes, well, I’m not used to being stealthy. You went to the Emporium with the tough man you’d spoken with before. And then you approached Mihrdat, one of the wealthiest and most dangerous silk merchants in the business.” Lucius sounded aghast.
“You know him?” I asked.
“Everyone in the trade knows him. He has warehouses from here to Antioch, and caravans that go as far as Barigaza, south of the Scythian lands, even all the way to Seres, if you believe the rumors. We never did business with him. Too risky.”
“We.” Cassia gave him a sharp stare. “You and …?”
“Oh.” Lucius flushed. “You know. My business associates.”
“He doesn’t mean Herminius,” Arsakes put in from the bunk.
“No.” Cassia fixed Lucius with her assessing gaze, and Lucius turned even more scarlet. “He means Xerxes. You were smuggling the silk together, weren’t you?”