The heat of the bathhouse did nothing to soothe me, and I soon plunged into the pool in the empty frigidarium, swimming to relieve my tension.
That also did not help, because someone came upon me while I glided through the water and tried to hold my head under.
Chapter 14
The greatest lesson Aemil had taught me was not to panic in a dangerous situation.Trying to raise my head from the water against the strength of the man’s hands would do me no good.
Lungs burning, I dove farther down into the pool, swimming away with a powerful pump of arms.His hold broke, and I was free.I surfaced at the far end of the small pool, gasping for breath.
I made sure to come up with my back to a tiled wall, so he couldn’t get behind me.A large bronze fish poked out of the wall beside me, spilling clear water from its gaping mouth.
The room was empty.The waves I’d created sloshed over the pool’s sides to wet floor mosaics depicting fish, seaweed, and Neptune’s chariot.
I saw no one, heard no one, the sound of the fountain beside me loud in the stillness.The baths didn’t fill up until afternoon, and my assailant had caught me alone.Which meant the man, whoever he was, had been following me.
The vigile?No, the hands that had held me were thick and strong, and the vigile was spindly.My attacker was a professional, though, knowing exactly where and how hard to push to keep me under.
I scrambled from the pool, cascading more water over the floor, and snatched up my towel, which I’d left high on a shelf, drying off quickly.Even the frigidarium’s attendant had vanished, and I wondered if he’d been bribed.
I changed my mind about the attendant when I saw him asleep on a stool just outside the room.He had big hands, like my attacker, but they hung limply on either side of him as he snored hard.
I retrieved my clothes in the changing room and dressed, keeping a wary eye around me.I shared the room with an aging patrician, surrounded by his servants, none of whom paid the slightest attention to me.
Avoiding the deepest crowds, I walked quickly home.An assassin’s knife could find my back in a throng, with no one being the wiser, including me.
This was the second time in a short while that someone had tried to kill me.I’d been attacked the night before I’d escorted Priscus to Ostia.Who wanted me dead?
Regulus, of course.He’d vowed to kill me.But I knew Regulus’s fighting grip, and the man who’d tried to drown me today hadn’t had it.Nor had the assailant on the street possessed Regulus’s tread and movement.Also, Regulus would want to face me, to jeer at me when he drove his blade home.
Baffling and unnerving.
Cassia was in the apartment when I entered.I liked that.
I halted in the doorway, startled by the feeling.It was an ease, a relief almost, to find her puttering about, making her notes, sorting out food and utensils, or whatever else she did.
Today she busily decorated a new table under the shelf that held therudis.She’d set out a spray of flowers, a few candles, and a sketch on a thin board of an older man with a small, wise face.
Cassia didn’t turn when she heard my step.“We had no shrine,” she said, as though feeling the need to explain.“We ought to honor our ancestors as much as any great family does.This is my father.”She touched the picture.“I had a better one of him, but I wasn’t allowed to bring anything with me, so I sketched another.Do you mind?”
She glanced over her shoulder, eyes holding trepidation.
I drew near the small table.“The ancestors can make life hard for us if we don’t appease them.I think it’s the cause of all my misfortune.”
I joked, but only partly.I’d never known my father and barely remembered my mother.However, they could reach from Elysium, or wherever they’d ended up, to torment me if they wished.
“I’ll add your parents,” Cassia said.“What were their names?”She returned to the eating table and took up her ever-present pen, opened her ink jar, and rolled out a bit of papyrus.
“I don’t know.”I edged closer.“Will you add Xerxes instead?”
Cassia’s pen scratched, she not questioning my choice.“You told me about him—close as a brother, you said.What was his full name?”
“Who knows?We took our names when we entered theludus, and that’s who we became.He was Xerxes.I was Leonidas.”
She looked up at me, the tip of her pen touching her chin.“What was your name before?”
I shrugged.“I don’t remember any other now.”
Cassia cocked her head as she sometimes did when contemplating.“The one thing all of us never forget, deep inside, is our own name.”
