I knew the rules. Aemil kept a close eye on his provisions, and uninvited guests went hungry.
“Leonidas has a slave to get him meals now.” Herakles grinned smugly. “She’s a tender thing. Wish Leonidas would shareher.”
He barely had the last words out before I was lifting him by the tunic and dragging him across the table. The gladiators near him grabbed their bowls and wine cups and scrambled out of the way.
Herakles struggled mightily, but I transferred him to a headlock as his feet flopped over the table’s edge. None tried to help him. I didn’t often grow enraged, but when I did, the other gladiators had learned to stay out of my way.
I hauled Herakles across the floor, and when he gasped desperately for breath, I slung him against a wall and held him there. “What did you do? In Pannonia?”
“What did I …?” He trailed off, coughing.
“You and Ajax. To a woman and her daughter. Wife and child of Vestalis.”
Herakles stared at me in shock. “Vestalis?”
“Domitiana’s son-in-law.ThatVestalis. He was a proconsul in Pannonia. Did you kill his wife and daughter in a raid? The raid that got you captured?”
Herakles’s mouth hung open, but when I finished, furious scorn flashed in his eyes. “I don’t know. I did many, many Roman women. Maybe they belonged to Vestalis—who knows? I didn’t care.” His voice filled with venom. “Roman soldiers, they came toourlands, took what they wanted, violatedourwomen, and then said we must be grateful that greedy Roman bastards had bullied their way into our territory. I and the brothers of my tribe took from them what they took from us. Yes, I had Roman women under me, and I sliced their throats when I was done. But there were too many soldiers, and they captured me. Flogged me, branded me, and sold mehere.”
He tried to jerk away as he said the last word, but my grip was too strong, too practiced.
The silence from the other gladiators was heavy. They listened, none intervening.
“Ajax too?” I asked in a low growl. “He did what you did?”
“Yes.” Herakles sneered. “He gave back plenty.”
“And now he’s dead for it.”
“You thinkVestalisdid that?” Herakles’s laughter held derision. “That feeble old man? Sits and watches while I do everything but stick myself into Domitiana? He’s the kind I crushed with my bare hands—soft Roman whoreson.”
I slammed his head back against the wall. “Vestalis’s wife and daughter didnothingto you. A man who kills innocents is not a man.”
“And Roman soldiers who plow through a camp and stamp little children to death under their boots showvirtus, do they?”
I couldn’t argue with him about soldiers acting brutally, because I knew they did, all the time. Barbarians were savages to them, needing to be conquered by any means. Herakles and Ajax had taken vengeance for that, and now vengeance was visited upon them.
I swung Herakles around and tossed him away from me. By the time he regained his balance, I was out the door into the cool night, across the training courtyard, and out the gate. From there, I turned my steps once more to the Caelian Hill.
* * *
Darkness had fallen completelyby the time I reached Severina’s house. Moonlight gleamed here and there through scattered clouds, but otherwise, the night was black.
The doorman answered my impatient pounding and gaped at me when I demanded to see Vestalis.
“The master’s gone to bed,” the doorman said. “He goes early most nights. The mistress is at her mother’s.”
“It’s very important.” I barely restrained myself from simply shoving him out of my way and storming inside.
The doorman sensed this. “I can ask his manservant.”
“Yes.” I stepped swiftly past him into the huge atrium. “I’ll wait.”
If I had not been a welcome guest earlier today, the doorman would likely have shouted for help, but as it was, he simply shut and bolted the door and then pattered off into the dim recesses of the house.
I studied the opulent scenes in the atrium, paintings of people lounging on sofas or in gardens, while birds posed on trees and deer calmly grazed. Everything was serene, peaceful, manicured, bathed in moonlight from the open roof above the atrium. The perfect Roman life.
Though my fury burned at Herakles for what he’d boasted of doing, I knew he had a point. The Roman army had always pushed their way into the frontier, drawing the lines they controlled farther and farther out. Behind them came the permanent army camps and then towns, with aqueducts, amphitheatres, baths, and colonnaded markets. The barbarians were told to be humble and thankful for the civilization forced upon them, no matter how mercilessly. I could not be surprised that men like Herakles had tried to punish their invaders.
