Chapter 24
I never recalled how I got down the Esquiline. The lanes were thronged, but I wove through them mindlessly. I landed on the Clivus Suburanus and hastened toward the Forum, shouldering people out of my way.
The crowds were thickest near the basilicas, but finally, I managed to make my way to the Vicus Tuscus and the offices near the Horrea Agrippina.
All was quiet when I entered the building, a sharp contrast to the streets outside. Even the large man who guarded the place was absent. Herminius’s cubicle was dark and silent, as was the one where the merchant called Cassius Tatius worked.
I burst into Tatius’s empty office, wishing I had a way to light a lamp. A skylight dimly illuminated the place, but I needed to explore every inch of it.
I opened a box on the cluttered desk, spilling out scrolls, tablets, and scraps of papyrus. I wasn’t certain what I searched for, and if I could read what I sought if I found it, but I wanted anything I could take to a magistrate.
A sound interrupted me. I didn’t really think this building would be abandoned during the busiest part of a workday—Aulus, Tatius’s assistant, must have stepped out briefly on an errand.
A man stilled in the doorway, the left side of his face twitching.
“Aulus,” I greeted him. “Or do you like to be called Xerxes?”
I assumed he’d run. He’d flee into the bright afternoon, and I’d never see him again, losing him among the multitudes of Rome. Instead, he reached into his tunic and unsheathed a knife.
I came around the desk at him, ready to break the hand that held the flimsy knife. As I rushed him, he drew back his arm and let the knife fly in a perfect arc to thunk into my shoulder.
The knife was small, biting like an insect’s sting. I pulled it out with a snarl of rage and leapt at him.
Aulus did try to run then. I caught him in the doorway, our momentum carrying us out to grapple on the smooth marble of the atrium.
He wrestled free of me to land a few punches on my injured shoulder. I lifted him and slammed him against one of the Carrara marble pillars, quarried by someone like Hadrianus.
I recognized now that it had been Aulus I’d fought in Herminius’s office, after Aulus had killed Gotarz and half-gutted Arsakes. He was handy with knives, this man. While much smaller than me, he was agile and skilled, his blows effective.
He managed a few more hits on my wounded shoulder, but I could fight dirty too. I released my hold but kicked his legs out from under him, and he splayed face downward on the floor.
I seized the back of his tunic, ready to haul him up and drag him to a magistrate, one of whom would even now be dealing out justice in the Forum Romanum. I’d see him in the Tullianum before the end of the day.
As I pulled him upright, my knees buckled. I noticed then that my feet were numb, the sensation sneaking up my calves to weaken my legs. I stumbled back, dazed, my arms falling to my sides, as Xerxes must have done that faraway day when he’d met his end.
Even my rage did not let me remain upright. I fell, but I dragged Aulus down with me.
“You killed him.” My voice was so guttural I didn’t recognize it as my own. “You murdered Xerxes so you could keep making money on your gods-poxed silk trade.”
An assistant to a prominent merchant would be well-placed to oversee such a project.
I’d suspected Cassius Tatius himself, or Herminius, or Herminius’s manager who hated Lucius, but a quiet clerk with access to records could easily receive shipments and divert them elsewhere to collect and sell on himself.
The shipment Tatius blamed Herminius for stealing might, in fact, have been purloined by Aulus.
Aulus must have begun worrying when Cassia and I turned up asking about Herminius, and again when Arsakes had taken over Herminius’s office and started searching for the false Xerxes. Little had Arsakes known that the man was right next door.
“Xerxes’s brother started sending messages to Rome,” Aulus said. “I couldn’t risk him and Xerxes comparing stories.”
If either Xerxes or Lucius realized that another man had taken over their scheme, using Xerxes’s name, they’d hunt for the false Xerxes and likely wouldn’t be merciful when they found him.
I got my hands around Aulus’s neck. “He was my friend.”
I squeezed, and Aulus gurgled, but my fingers grew slack, no longer obeying me. Aulus scrambled to his feet, breathing hard in fear, but he stood over me, watching as I lost all sensation in my body.
I’d been poisoned before, in a similar method, but that venom had worked rapidly, and darkness had come fast. With this one, I lay in a stupor, losing feeling in my limbs little by little.
Xerxes must have wondered what was happening as the numbness crept over him, beginning in feet and hands and working inward. By the time he’d realized something was very wrong, he’d have been too immobile to signal to the referees. Perseus had used that advantage to drive his sword home.
Perseus was as much to blame as Aulus for Xerxes’s death. When Perseus realized Xerxes couldn’t fight, he should have signaled to the referees and stopped the match. His ambition to best a top gladiator and greed for the day’s prize money had robbed Xerxes of his life.
Perseus had received his punishment at the end of my sword. Aulus had escaped into the shadows like the coward he was.
I wondered, as I lost all sensation in my body, if my breath would stop and my heart would cease beating. Marcianus had speculated that the dose given Xerxes wouldn’t have killed him, but who knew what concoction Aulus had smeared on his knife today?
As I gazed up at Aulus, my fury not diminishing, he spat on me. The spittle hit my neck, but I felt nothing.
Nor did I feel Aulus clamp his hands around my wrists before he dragged me deeper into the darkness of the building.
Aulus, much smaller than me, struggled to tow my large body, though the smooth marble of the atrium floor assisted him. He pulled me through an archway into a vaulted chamber I hadn’t entered before, this one piled high with boxes, probably storage for older records.
At the end of this vault was a wooden door. Aulus dropped me to unbolt and unlock it with a key on his belt.
Beyond lay a set of stairs leading downward, carved out of packed earth and shored up with stone. Aulus swiveled me around on my back at its entrance, then grasped my ankles and slid me through the door and down the stairs headfirst.
I tumbled along, my head and loosened limbs striking the stones. About halfway down the stairs, my momentum ceased, and I lay in a limp tangle, my body twisted. My head dangled over a step at an angle that would be painful if I could feel anything.
Aulus slammed the door, leaving me in absolute darkness.