Marcianus requested that we take Rufus to his office so he could examine him. Aemil growled that there was no point, but Marcianus, in his quiet way, won the argument, as usual.
Aemil and I carted Rufus there, Marcia coming out to meet us. She cleared the space in the back room where Marcianus examined patients and helped Marcianus position the body parts without a qualm.
Marcianus pointed out that Rufus too had been struck down from behind, before he ushered us out unceremoniously and began shuttering his windows for the night.
Aemil rested an arm on his cart outside, disconsolate. “How do we stop this, Leonidas? Most madmen run about tearing at their hair and shrieking, and you step aside to avoid them. But this murderer is secretive and brutal. How do you avoid a person you can’t see?”
Not waiting for an answer, Aemil lifted the handles of the cart and prepared to trundle it back to the ludus.
“Is every man locked in?” I asked him as he started off.
“They are. Snarling and foul-mouthed, but yes. Except for Regulus.” Aemil shot a glare back at me. “Find that bastard, Leonidas. Beforeheends up a stack of bones.”
Aemil stamped away, pulling the cart behind him, its wheels grating on the street.
Cold wind swirled around me. I very much feared that Regulus was already dead, my old comrade and now my enemy the next victim in the killer’s crazed vendetta.
* * *
When I reachedMerope’s rooms in the Transtiberim, Cassia came down the stairs and out into the darkness to meet me.
“They are asleep,” she murmured. “I mixed herbs in the wine to tire them. They’ll rest at least.”
“Probably easier than Chryseis will.” I peered toward the river, wondering if the vigile captain had locked Chryseis in a room in his house or taken her to the Tullianum. “I am certain she did not kill Rufus. Her shock when she saw him was too great.”
“Then we will have to find out who did.” Cassia’s voice held confidence, but then that confidence ebbed. “If we can. They are very cunning, whoever they are.”
“They?”
“It must be more than one person, don’t you think? Quite a task to kill a man and saw up a body and then carry it to another part of the city.” Cassia shivered and drew her cloak closer about her. “It’s horrible. How can they?”
“If the murderer has paid men to help him or her, those men will be hardened brigands or mercenaries. Used to anything, I imagine.” I glanced down the empty street. “Let’s get indoors.”
The walk home was disquieting. I didn’t like moving around dark Rome at the best of times, but tonight I felt additional unease. The open spaces of the city were treacherous at night, but the inky-dark lanes behind them were worse, so I pulled Cassia through wide streets, keeping well away from the pillars and dark doorways.
We reached the Quirinal in safety. The wine shop was shut up and our door was bolted, courtesy of the wine merchant.
Upstairs, we divested ourselves of cloaks, and Cassia laid out a cold meal, which we ate in silence. I knew I should be out scouring the streets for Regulus, but at the same time, I realized such a search would be futile. Either he was holed up in a lupinarius or with a lover and relatively safe, or he was already dead.
Sleep usually crashed upon me easily, as though my mind drew a cloak between myself and the world. Tonight, however, as I lay on my pallet, I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing Rufus’s blank stare behind the grated holes of the helmet.
Again, the question haunted me—why dress him as a Thracian instead of a myrmillo? Did the killer truly not know the difference? Or had he dressed the body in what he had on hand?
Cassia’s clear thinking could help me, but I heard her soft, even breathing from her pallet across the room and knew she slept. As we’d eaten, she’d written down everything that had happened tonight, continuing to write even as she yawned uncontrollably. She was exhausted, and I didn’t have the heart to wake her now.
At last, I drifted to sleep. In my dreams, I saw Regulus, his body in pieces like the others, but his eyes full of life as he snarled at me.
“I once told you to kill me,” he sneered. “And now you can’t save me.”
I jumped awake to dim morning light and a banging on the outer door. Cassia stirred under the covers across the room, sunlight trickling through cracks in the shutters.
I dragged on a tunic and shuffled down the stairs. I opened the door at the bottom to find a very annoyed Hesiodos on the threshold.
He stared up at me, his dark hair perfectly combed, his tunic straight and unsoiled, elegant shoes of fine leather on his feet.
“You’ve been sent for,” he said sharply.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “By our benefactor?”
