“Maddened.” I stared up into the darkness. “Not mad.”
“What doesthatmean?”
I told Regulus, my tongue thick in my dry mouth, the theory Cassia and I had formulated that Ajax and Herakles had raped and murdered Vestalis’s family, and Ajax’s death was Vestalis’s revenge.
“Huh,” Regulus grunted when I finished. “Then why kill Rufus, and now us?”
“I don’t know,” I had to admit. “It’s one idea.”
“I spit on your ideas,” Regulus rumbled. “Take a dump on them too.”
“Right now, I’m not worried about why.” I tried to move my legs again, but only my toes obliged. “I’m more interested in how to get away.”
“At least you haven’t lost all your senses. What are your wonderful ideas on how to escape?”
“I wonder what poison he used.” I ran my fingers over the slab I rested on, finding rough-hewn stone. “Marcianus would know.”
“Yes, the chatteringmedicuswould be useful about now. Except they’d probably poison him too.”
“I plan to ask him.”
Regulus groaned. “You always did decide you were master of life and death. No matter how much someone wants to die, you spare him because you think it’s best.”
An old argument. “Do you want to die now?”
“No,” Regulus snapped. “But I don’t think we have a choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
Regulus made a growling noise and returned to muttering to himself.
He had at least relieved my mind that we’d not been put into a tomb. We were in a room in the cellars of Vestalis’s Caelian Hill home. That gave me hope. The walls might be stone, but wooden doors would break. Regulus and I were two of the strongest gladiators in all of Rome, and Regulus was skilled in picking locks. A mere door would not pen us in.
If only we could move.
Regulus had been down here longer, probably since last night after he’d slipped from the ludus and lain with Severina for a while, so the poison would wear through him first. He was a very good fighter. Even if he chose to save only himself, his engagement with any guards would give me a chance to escape with him.
But not until the feeling came back to my body.
We lay in darkness for a long time. An hour might have gone by since I’d been caught. Maybe two. When the moon set, the city would be fully dark. The lanterns of delivery wagons would light the lower streets, but no wagons would come to the top of this hill near its prestigious villas.
I had regained some movement of my feet and hands when the door scraped open. An oil lamp stabbed light into my now-sensitive eyes, and Regulus grunted a curse.
“I want to see Vestalis,” I said clearly.
The burly Silvanus’s horse-like face came out of the shadows, the lamplight mottling his skin.
“He doesn’t talk to gladiators.”
The statement wasn’t true, as I’d had several conversations with the man.
“Tell him I want to speak to him about Ajax and Herakles. The tribesmen from Pannonia.”
Silvanus went motionless, the flame sputtering in the oil. “You know nothing of Pannonia.”
His Latin was perfect, with no accent other than that of Rome. He was no foreigner, but Roman born and bred.
“I know what happened to Vestalis’s family,” I went on. “I know he blamed Ajax. I understand why. I’d have wanted to kill him too.”
