“Thank you, Praxus,” I said. “You’ve helped much.”
He’d known about Domitiana in the first place, I remembered. I observed his ingenuous expression, the man young and confident, believing himself ready to take on the toughest gladiators.
Did he know more than he was saying? Hadhesent gladiators to the house where they were given opulent meals and then slain? Was I looking into the eyes of a merciless killer?
I had no idea. Cassia read people far better than I could. Praxus was very likely exactly what he appeared to be, a young man ready to take on the world, using the fact that people dismissed him as a barbarian to his advantage.
Praxus’s face split with a grin. “How about you give me that bauble as a reward?”
I closed my hand around it. “Regulus would kill you to get it back. I’ll keep it safe.”
Praxus brayed with laughter. “Of course, the great Leonidas will keep it safe for his friend. He is honored among men.”
The other gladiators laughed with him. They liked Praxus, I could see, even if they underestimated him.
“If you’re right about where Regulus is, Praxus, I’ll give you a better reward,” I said.
Praxus made some very lewd suggestions for this reward to the glee of the men as I left them and headed for the gate.
Aemil strode beside me. “Want me to go with you to pull him out?”
Aemil would be a formidable ally if I had to storm Severina’s fortress, but the two of us could be arrested for bursting into the home of a well-respected former consul and his wife.
“I’ll look first,” I said. “Regulus might just be rutting her and in no danger. I was at that house last night, and no harm came to me.”
Aemil poked a blunt finger into my chest. “If he’s there, you drag him out and bring him home. Understand?”
“I do.”
Aemil held me with his gaze, then he growled and jerked his hand away. “I’ll be ready to help if you need it. They will be as well.” He waved at the men, who’d taken the opportunity to have a rest, talking in clumps or stretching out on the ground to enjoy the sunshine.
Even a killer of gladiators would be no match for all of them together. However, if I led an army of gladiators to storm a patrician’s home on the Caelian, we’d be the ones gutted. I needed to alert the cohorts and vigiles, not bring in a horde of Aemil’s fighters. Spartacus’s revolt had occurred more than a hundred years ago now, but the fear he’d engendered still lingered in Roman imaginations.
Clutching the earring in my fist, I left the ludus, striding past the pillar of Septimius, back at his post. Plinius, the other guard, had taken advantage of my arrival to disappear, away from Aemil’s beatings.
I turned my steps not toward the Aventine to find Cassia, or to the Caelian, but to the workshop of Volteius the armorer.
* * *
“Willyou lend me Albus for a time?” I had to raise my voice over the sounds of hammers on metal in the courtyard when I entered the shop.
Volteius ceased scowling at a bronze helmet with a large crack on its crest and stared at me incredulously. “Albus? What for? He can’t pound out a nutshell. I’ll be reduced to using him to keep accounts.”
“I’d like him to help me,” I said. “He has an eye for detail and a good memory.”
Volteius grunted. “I’ll give him that. Yes, take him away for an hour or two. I might have a little peace and quiet.”
The hammering around us increased, theclang, clang, clangdeafening.
Albus joined me with the energy of youth. He was probably sixteen summers, ungainly and thin with tangled brown hair, but he was old enough to begin a profession. Maybe hewouldend up being Volteius’s accountant.
“Where are we off to? A bout? Do you want me to fix a sword? An arm guard?” He exuded eagerness.
“We’re going to the Caelian Hill,” I said.
I couldn’t tell him more than that as we made our way through the crowded Transtiberim and across the river to the Aventine, where I fetched Cassia from Marcianus’s. I told Marcianus to keep an eye out for Regulus, then I led Albus and Cassia around the end of the Circus Maximus and up the Caelian Hill.
About twenty paces from Severina’s large home I found a popina that was cleaner and less crumbling than those on the lower streets. I ushered in Albus and Cassia for a cup of wine and fetched pastries from the shop across the street.
