Chapter 22
I thought Lucius and I would be taken into the shed in the corner, but instead we were dragged all the way to the back of the Porticus Aemilia and out a small door. Mihrdat easily kept up with our brisk pace.
Beyond this exit lay marshy ground between the Aventine and the river. A large mound rose in the distance, not a natural hill. It was made of broken amphorae, the vessels stained with oil and no longer usable, which had been discarded in a pile there for more than sixty years.
To my right was the new warehouse Gallus had constructed for Sextus Livius. I doubted my captors would be interested if I pointed out its solid design and elegant brickwork.
They shoved us away from the Porticus Aemilia and to the left, down a narrow lane at the base of the Aventine Hill.
This area of the Aventine was not as populated as the slopes closer to the main part of the city. I saw a few small warehouses, one crumbling apartment building, and not much else.
Mihrdat’s ruffians pushed us into one of the low-roofed brick warehouses at the end of the lane.
Little was stored here, and I assumed this was where Mihrdat kept his overflow of goods before they were shipped out.
Mihrdat risked more damage to his clothes from all the dust his men kicked up on the floor, but he didn’t appear to notice.
He pointed at the far wall. The captors holding Lucius pulled him there then turned him upside down, pinning him to the wall with hands on his ankles. Lucius flailed, but his struggle did little but bang his own head into the bricks.
A third man held a knife to Lucius’s throat. He ceased moving, eying the blade in worry.
Mihrdat strolled toward me, halting well out of my reach.
“You are Leonidas the Spartan,” he stated. “Or used to be.” He flicked his forefinger at Lucius. “He is a second-rate dealer who works for a Roman called Herminius. He should not be here, interfering in my business.”
“He is Xerxes’s brother.”
Mihrdat studied me without surprise. “A fact I already knew. The resemblance is uncanny.”
“You knew Xerxes then,” I continued. “You shipped silk for him.”
“Now you are interfering in my business,” Mihrdat said in his flat tone. “Are you here on Lucius of Antioch’s behalf?”
“No.” Words tangled in my head. I wished Cassia was here to explain everything clearly, but I was also glad she was nowhere near this warehouse. Mihrdat wouldn’t hesitate to use her to make me obey him.
“The real Xerxes is dead,” I said, trying to speak evenly. “The man you are dealing with now took his name.”
Mihrdat regarded me with eyes that were as cold as winter skies. “I care nothing for names. I only care that you question me about something that is none of your affair.”
“You killed my brother, you arrogant bastard!” Lucius spluttered.
Mihrdat signaled Lucius’s captors, and the knife nicked Lucius’s throat, drawing blood. Lucius gulped ragged breaths and went silent.
“No, I don’t think he did,” I stated to Lucius.
Mihrdat hadn’t moved while Lucius made his accusation, only fixed me with his deadly stare.
If Mihrdat had decided that Xerxes compromised his shadowy business, he’d have had Xerxes brought into this out-of-the-way warehouse, sliced to pieces, and thrown into the river. I saw that in his stone-faced expression.
Not for this man a surreptitious poison to make Xerxes miss a stroke and possibly be killed in a fight. That method was too uncertain—Xerxes might have defended himself and walked away from the bout, recovering from any poison he’d ingested.
No, Mihrdat would have killed Xerxes mercilessly and finally, and we might never have found his body.
“Did you threaten Xerxes, when you first took over from your predecessor?” I asked.
Mihrdat’s brows twitched upward. “When a man who looked much like Lucius of Antioch walked directly to me in the Porticus Aemilia and demanded to know what I’d done with his silks?
I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t want to have any dealings with him.
When I told him I didn’t have his shipment, he tried to threaten me. He soon realized he should not.”
“What did you do to him?” I asked.
“I had him taken out of my sight and taught to respect me.”
“You threatened his family,” I stated.
“He had no family, except his brother, but I made it my business to find out all about him. I summoned him back to me once I knew more and told him his association with my predecessor was at an end. Xerxes tried to persuade me to continue the importing scheme with him, but I refused. He was too cocksure, too careless, and dealing with a gladiator is risky. They might be killed in the games, and the money they owe one could be taken by their lanista or wasted on drink or women. I want nothing to do with gladiators.”
“You threatened him somehow,” I said with certainty. Vitus had related that Xerxes had been spooked when he’d brought Vitus his last payment. Very little had frightened Xerxes, so the warning must have been dire.
“I couldn’t reach his brother to kill him,” Mihrdat said.
“But Xerxes had become fond of a younger gladiator, one raw, brash, and much more vulnerable. I told Xerxes that if I saw him near me again, I’d have that gladiator gutted and his entrails delivered to him in a box.
” Mihrdat pinned me with his icy gaze. “I would have, depend upon it.”
Mihrdat’s stare told me he knew exactly who that gladiator had been, sixteen years old, hiding his terror under snarling belligerence.
For that scared, young, unskilled gladiator, barely more than a boy, grieving for the master he’d been accused of murdering, Xerxes had given up a lucrative trade and withdrawn from the field.
A heaviness formed in my chest, but I gazed straight at Mihrdat, trying not to let anything show on my face.
“You started the trade again,” I said doggedly. “With a different man.”
“Now, you are straying into my business again. I will answer you with one word. Yes.”
“Who is he? I need to find him.”
Mihrdat’s chill turned to anger. “Only the fact that my association with him is now finished keeps me from slicing your throat and your friend’s on the spot.
I don’t know who he is. He took Xerxes’s name, but he was much more adept at the trade and more discreet, so I agreed to deal with him.
But as I say, that association has ended. ”
“What does he look like?” My desperation kept me asking.
“A Roman.” Mihrdat let cold humor creep into his eyes. “They all look the same to me. Now, take your friend and go. Never cross my path again.”
He gestured once more to the men who held Lucius. They dropped him.
Lucius flailed, barely stopping himself from falling on his head. He rolled to his feet, sent his captors an evil glare, and hastened to my side.
I said nothing, didn’t nod or thank Mihrdat for sparing us. I let Lucius stride out ahead of me, then I followed him, not looking back.
I expected a knife to land between my shoulder blades at any moment or for Mihrdat’s men to swarm after us to cut us down.
We made it to the end of the lane and out to the busier area without anything so dire happening. A cloud drifted across the sun, chilling me.
“Are you much hurt?” I asked Lucius as he wiped at the blood on his neck.
“No.” Lucius sounded angry about that. “They knew exactly how much to cut to terrify me but not injure me. Jupiter’s balls, I’ve met desert tribesmen who will slice off a man’s head and toss it around, but they didn’t frighten me as much as Mihrdat and his boys did.
He has a fierce reputation in Antioch. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he decided to base himself in Rome. ”
Which meant our paths might cross again. I’d do my best to avoid that.
Lucius subsided as I led him around the Aventine Hill and away from the Tiber, turning at the fountain of the three fishes to Marcianus’s home.
Lucius peered past me to the open door of Marcianus’s shop, where we could see him with a patient, a slight man in a threadbare tunic. Marcia stood beside Marcianus, holding a bronze bowl.
“Ah, you are taking me to the medicus,” Lucius said. “No need, though I won’t mind being next to Marcia again. She’s a pretty thing.”
“She will eat you alive,” I said tersely. “And she’s devoted to Marcianus.”
“Ever my lot.” Lucius sighed dramatically.
I ignored him. Xerxes had been prone to overblown declarations, but while his were amusing, Lucius’s only irritated me. I wasn’t certain of the difference, but I would work it out later.
Marcianus gently led his bandaged patient, a too-thin slave, out of the door, refusing the as the man tried to give him. Marcianus spied us standing in the street outside, and his mouth popped open in concern.
“A shallow cut,” I told Marcianus, waving a hand at Lucius. “But make sure it doesn’t take sick.”
I turned abruptly and left Lucius there. He did not protest, and I heard Marcianus, used to my brusque ways, inviting Lucius inside.
I hurried down the hill and through the city, which was at its busiest, my breathing ragged by the time I reached the Quirinal. I climbed the stairs to our home, heart straining, burst into the apartment, and halted.
Hadrianus, the large former quarry slave who worked for the potion mixer, Samorix, sat at our table, awkwardly fitting a stylus into a board carved with the Latin alphabet.
Cassia had taught me the letters at this very board, similar to ones used by every schoolmaster on street corners all over Rome. She was quietly explaining the sound of the letter D and the words it began, when I stomped inside.
Arsakes, who’d been snoring on my bunk, came awake. He started up instinctively, then groaned, pressed a hand to his side, and sank back down.
Cassia glanced up in concern. “Leonidas, are you all right? What has happened? Where is Lucius?”
“With Marcianus.” I answered the last question first then gave her a truncated version of our encounter with Mihrdat, not wishing to explain fully in front of Arsakes and Hadrianus.