Vestalis did not argue with Silvanus’s logic, which chilled me. Vestalis stepped toward me, his expression one of great sorrow.
“Must Leonidas die too?” he asked Silvanus. “He is a good man.”
Again, Regulus snorted, but the sound was softer this time.
Vestalis halted very close to me. I’d regained control of my arms now—I could reach out and trap him in a death grip, use him as leverage to free us.
But if I did so, Silvanus would have time to draw a weapon. I saw nothing in his hands, but he might have another poison-dipped comb with him, or some other thing he could scratch us with. I had no doubt another dose would kill us.
“The more gladiators found dead, the less likely you will be blamed,” Silvanus explained to Vestalis.
Except people had noticed Silvanus with his distinctive face and hair, and it was only a matter of time before a vigile or a cohort matched Silvanus with the description the basketmaker had given Vatia. The apprentice, Albus, of the good memory, and Volteius the armorer, and the family who’d lived across the landing from Chryseis, would know him too.
I kept this to myself because I did not want Silvanus, a loyal servant and merciless killer, to hunt those innocents down.
“Did you cut them up in Chryseis’s warehouse?” I asked.
Silvanus started, surprised I’d realized that. “It is a large space, not much used.”
“And you’d have an excuse to be in the area, as Vestalis is having a warehouse built there.”
“My wife is,” Vestalis rasped.
I wondered why, but that was beside the point. “An easy place to lug things in and out of with a cart or large baskets—no one would question such a thing at a warehouse. But why leave Ajax in the Subura?”
Silvanus shrugged, his eyes glittering in the lamplight. “He loved the whores there. Why not give him to them? Besides, there was a shrine to Juno at the end of that lane, on the other side of the wall. It was an offering.”
I hadn’t known about the shrine, but it made a sort of twisted sense. “How did you lure Ajax here? He wasn’t fond of patrician women.”
Silvanus took on a smug expression. “He came readily enough when I explained my master had taken a fancy to him and wanted to reward him for his prowess in the games.”
“Ajax.”Vestalis spat on the floor. “It is an abomination that he used such a name. Silvanus thought that if I took a rich wife, I could live out my days in comfort, but it has not been a comfort. I am still alone and grieving. Then, at this past Saturnalia, when Domitiana persuaded me to join her at the games at the Circus Gai, I saw them. The men who’d broken into my house and dragged out my wife and daughter. Parading proudly through the sand, lauded and cheered as champions, given the names of heroes. Ajax and Herakles. It was monstrous.”
“So you took your revenge,” I said quietly.
Vestalis had moved even closer to me, and Silvanus edged behind him watchfully. They believed me immobile, which was to my advantage.
“Silvanus explained how I could,” Vestalis said. “We would do it for them. Those two, killed and offered at Feralia to appease the spirits of my poor wife and my beautiful daughter. She would have married the next year.”
I understood his grief and his outrage. Ajax and Herakles had come to the ludus full of anger—at the Romans for invading their territory and then capturing them, at Aemil, at all of us. Then they’d realized they could release their aggression in the arena and be cheered and acclaimed, which had rendered them arrogant and conceited. Herakles even now showed no remorse for what he’d done to Vestalis’s wife and daughter.
I flicked my gaze to Silvanus. “Why would you kill for him?”
Silvanus answered with scorn. “I have worked in the house of my master since I was born. His family raised me, then he freed me. I will avenge his lady wife and daughter as I would my own mother and sister.”
“I had no sons,” Vestalis said, as though this explained things. Silvanus, the loyal freedman, had done what a son would do.
“Then you aren’t truly alone,” I said. Throughout the man’s loss and grief, Silvanus had been at his side, looking after him. Going so far as to murder for him.
Vestalis shook his head. “It is not the same.”
Silvanus would never be anything more than a servant, he meant, no matter what the man had done for him.
Silvanus did not seem upset by Vestalis’s statement. He nodded, as though Vestalis spoke wisdom.
Vestalis now stood very close to me. I felt the brush of his tunic, woven of the finest linen, smelled the expensive oils on his skin.
I lunged for him. As I’d hoped, Silvanus immediately sprang forward. He shoved Vestalis out of my reach, and I closed my hands around Silvanus’s shoulders and jerked him down to me.
