Roman citizens were allowed the dignity of execution by sword or strangulation. Those not citizens could be killed in varied and horrific ways.
I did not want to see two men I’d known well and trained with torn apart by wild beasts or made to choke on a sword or molten metal. Aemil knew I would not. As I said, he was a master of coercion.
Aemil held my gaze. “As a favor, Leonidas. To me, and to them.”
Cassia made a soft sound in her throat, one quiet enough for Aemil to ignore, but I understood exactly what the tiny noise meant.
“Not as a favor,” I said. “For a fee.”
Aemil’s mouth turned down. “So said your slave.”
Cassia kept her head bent over her tablet and remained silent.
I lived in this small room, an L-shaped apartment with an alcove that held my bed and shutters that closed off the balcony at night, and paid rent to the wine merchant downstairs for the privilege. I had been freed by a benefactor who’d provided me Cassia and found this place for us, but I had to earn my own keep. According to the go-between for this unknown benefactor, I was to await instructions about what he or she wanted from me.
I’d been freed near the end of December, and it was now the second month of the year, Februarius, a day after the Nones. So far, we’d had no word.
Cassia spent the time finding jobs for me, mostly bodyguard work for merchants or patricians. She made certain the fee was reasonable and that I was paid. Often those who hired me tried to stall on payment, but Cassia, soft-voiced and modest, could pry coins from the most reluctant of clients.
“We must eat,” I told Aemil bluntly.
Aemil studied the sparsely furnished room. We had a table and three stools, a bed for me, a pallet for Cassia near the balcony doors, and another table that held a shrine to those gone before us. A long cupboard near the table contained our meager possessions, and a rickety shelf above the table held a wooden sword inscribed with my name. Therudis, which symbolized my freedom.
Cassia had brought in a third stool recently, explaining that if clients came to us, they’d need a special place to sit while we negotiated. That stool rested at the end of the table, but Aemil had chosen to take mine.
“I don’t think much of your benefactor, Leonidas.” Aemil folded his arms across his barrel of a chest. “You should be lounging in silk, bathing in milk, and eating pastries and apricots coated with spun sugar. Not plopped on a rough stool gobbling down lentils.” His eyes took on a cunning I recognized. “Come back to the ludus and work for me. You can live in a far nicer home and have whatever women and food you want. I’ll even split prizes won by the gladiators you teach. If Leonidas the Spartan is training the men, I can command an even higher price for them.”
He’d suggested this to me many a time in the last months. I continued to refuse, as I did now.
Instead of arguing, I simply shook my head.
Aemil did not appear discouraged. “One day you will accept my offer. For now, find those Hades-spawned gladiators and drag them home by their balls. I’ll pay you a sestertius for each.”
“A denarius,” I countered. Cassia’s faint nod told me I’d chosen correctly. “A sestertius only buys a flask of wine.”
Aemil’s gaze went flinty. “Fine. A denarius. But only if they’re standing upright and ready to fight. If you bring them back dead drunk and unable to move, the fee is half.”
In other words, he’d hold me responsible for sobering them up once I found them.
I shrugged my agreement.
“Good. Start right away.” With this last order, Aemil heaved himself to his feet, sent me another sharp look, and stomped out.
I waited until he was down the stairs and into the street, the outer door banging behind him, before I closed the door at the top of the stairs to shut us in.
Cassia had stepped onto the balcony, a flat space that was the roof of the wine shop below. I joined her, and we watched Aemil stride down the narrow lane to the Vicus Longus at its end. Romans on errands melted out of the way of his angry bulk.
I rubbed the top of my shaved head. “I suppose I’ll start at the ludus. The gate guards will know better than most where those men would go. Hopefully, I’ll run them to ground before too long, and we’ll be three denarii richer.”
Cassia was pleased by this, I could see, but she only gave me a quiet look.
I studied her a moment, her light-brown skin, her all-seeing dark eyes, the curling black hair she caught in a tail at her nape to keep out of her way. Her tunic was the plain garment of a slave, bound at the shoulders and falling to feet clad in neat sandals, but she kept it clean and wrinkle-free, as dignified and tidy as any matron.
When my stare went on too long, Cassia’s brows rose the slightest bit, as though wondering why I lingered.
I ducked inside, made certain I had coins and a knife in the pouch slung around my waist, and departed to join the teeming masses of Rome.
* * *
