“Not here.”
The woman turned away, finished with me. I caught her arm, which earned me a scowl and a hand raised to slap before I released her.
“It is important. Has he been here in the last four days?”
“Of course, he has. Couldn’t be rid of him, but at least he paid. He left last night.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“No.” Her kohl-lined dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why should I? Why are you asking?”
I decided not to explain. “If Ajax returns, tell him I’m looking for him and to come to me on the Quirinal.”
“I’m no one’s messenger.”
The woman turned away again. I caught her once more, but this time, I held a sestertius in front of her pinched face.
“Tell him.” I pressed the coin into her hand and let her go.
I would have asked which lady he’d spent the most time with, but the cubicles were all occupied, and from the ecstatic shouts and groans drifting from behind the curtains, busy.
I left the house, aiming for the next one.
“That was quick,” the burly man called out with a laugh. “Well met, Leonidas.” I answered him with a wave of my hand.
I had a similar result in the next lupinarius. Ajax had visited it two nights before, but no one had seen him since. Here, I was able to talk to the women who’d been with him. Ajax had been his usual robust self, the ladies told me, then declared he was going to another house when he departed, as he had plenty of energy still.
Probably he’d gone to the first house I’d checked. I thanked the women, distributing a fewasto them and to the madam who ran the place, and left them.
I continued my walk. It was fully dark now, and I had no light to guide me, except the few feeble oil lamps that flickered here and there in doorways. Pinpricks of light guided higher-born men through the area, but most of the respectable were either at home or taking supper at the house of another well-born family. Those in the Subura either were here for the brothels or hurrying through on their way someplace else.
One such party, led by a wary guard with a lantern, came up behind me. Lictors carried bundles of short spears over their shoulders, hardening their faces to all. Two plump-bodied patricians, purple stripes on their togas, walked surrounded by their retinue, talking loudly as though not afraid of passing through these streets after dark.
I had to step into a side passageway to let them by. The lane was narrow and inky, and I pressed myself into a wall to wait.
My sandal landed on something that gave a faint metal clank. It could be anything—a discarded cup, a spent lantern, a stray bit of coin.
Unusual for the Subura. Anything metal, especially coin, was snatched up, hoarded, or sold at the nearest market.
As the lantern-bearer swept by, the beam of his flame glanced across what was at my feet.
I went very still. The lantern-bearer rushed on, the lictors and patricians leaving a breeze in their wake.
I’d seen, in that brief moment, the gleam of light on the bronze helmet of a gladiator, the grating on the eyeholes dark and silent. Next to it lay an arm gripping the small shield of a secutor.Behind that, I’d seen two legs encased in bronze shin guards decorated with the reliefs of a fighting man. None of these limbs were attached to the trunk which bore a loincloth and nothing else.
The lantern light vanished, and darkness fell like a shroud. A gladiator lay here with me, but one in many pieces.
Chapter 3
Ibarreled out of the lane, shoved my way into the nearest lupinarius, snatched up the first lamp I found, and was out again before any could ask me a question.
In spite of my agitation, no one followed me. They did not want to know what I was chasing in the darkness. In the Subura, it was not healthy to be too curious.
I flashed my light over the floor of the passageway—a small space between two buildings that narrowed into a wedge shape, ending at a building on the street behind it.
The gladiator who lay at my feet was Ajax. I recognized the large round scar on the inside of his right arm, put there by a retiarius’ spear.
His body had been cut into precise pieces—arms, legs, head, torso. Those were not strewn haphazardly but had been laid neatly in the small space. His head, encased in its helmet, rested next to what had once been a man’s body.
