When she’d clung to me as I’d lain on the floor, I’d gathered her close, letting her softness comfort me. She’d been crying, a fact I viewed in wonder. I had command of her, life and death, yet she’d been distressed enough to pull in every favor of every person who’d promised them to me or to her, in order to find me. She had saved my life tonight.
I’d never been to the chamber we ended up in. Porphyry columns lined its length, their gilded capitals complementing the gold-touched friezes on the walls. Floor mosaics depicted a lavish garden with birds so lifelike I expected them to take flight. Lamps flickered everywhere, making the gold shimmer.
Nero stepped into the room not long after the guards halted. I’d seen theprincepsdressed in a plain tunic with purple toga, in a charioteer’s togs, and in luxurious clothes to dine with important guests.
Today, he wore the most opulent things I’d seen so far. A white silk tunic flowed over his somewhat portly body, covered with the flowing folds of a purple toga. Over that was a red silk cloak trimmed with a gold braid that caught the lamplight. A crown of gold laurel leaves sat on his light brown curls, with golden spikes protruding from the crown here and there to suggest the sun’s rays. He wore fine leather shoes rather than sandals this evening, which were turned up slightly at the toes and capped with beaten gold.
The clothes had been made for him but didn’t hang on him well, making him look like an expensive grain sack.
I tried to bow but swayed like a tree. The guard who’d brought me in held me up by the back of my tunic.
“You have found the killer?” Nero demanded. “Who is it?”
“A servant called Silvanus,” I said, my voice strained.
“Who?” Nero fixed a perplexed gaze on me. “Who owns this servant?”
“Tertius Vestalis Felix,” Cassia answered in her quiet voice.
Nero started then his eyes narrowed. “Vestalis? The proconsul nearly worshipped in the senate? His servant has been murdering gladiators? What for?”
Cassia, her head bowed, began to tell him all of it. She was much better at explaining and keeping a story straight than I was, so I remained silent while she spoke.
“All that to avenge the death of his wife?” Nero asked after Cassia concluded the tale with my adventure tonight on the Caelian Hill. “It’s heroic. Almost fit for a ballad.” His voice had begun to soften in admiration, but then he stiffened and flicked his gaze back to me. “But not inmycity, killingmygladiators, and terrorizingmypeople.”
He waited impatiently for our response, and Cassia and I agreed with him obediently.
Nero fingered the slight indentation in his chin. “But I can’t put Tertius Vestalis Felix to death. He has far too many friends and is too highly regarded. A brilliant career even I remember as a child. No, I need someone else.”
His gaze lighted on me, and for a frozen moment, I thought he’d suggest I could be executed in Vestalis’s place.
“We’ll have this servant arrested,” Nero said decisively. “After all, he is the one who committed the actual murders. We’ll have a trial so all will hear of his heinous crimes, and we’ll have his body cut up and displayed as he did the others. I will show the people of my city that they are safe from him.” He paused and drew a breath. “Excellent. It shall be written up how I discovered the identity of the killer, and this news will be read out by the criers.”
I stole a glance at Cassia, but she stood absolutely motionless, not reacting to Nero’s proclamation.
Did it matter? I pondered silently. If Nero claimed credit for finding the murderer while Cassia and I had no recognition, did it truly matter? Silvanus had been stopped, and Vestalis would be watched.
Nero couldn’t touch Vestalis without angering powerful men—men who would likely agree that Vestalis had every right to go after the barbarians who killed his wife and daughter. But Nero could make certain Vestalis had no opportunity to cause more trouble, perhaps by ordering him to retire deep into the countryside. I wondered if Severina would bother to go with him or be glad to have her tiresome husband shunted aside.
Vestalis might have his vengeance in the end, in any case. Herakles was a gladiator and could die in the arena at any time. If Aemil paired him in the next games against Regulus, who was not happy about being poisoned and imprisoned, his life might indeed be short.
Nero took on the tone of a grateful ruler. “You will be rewarded for your services to me, Leonidas. Go now.”
He waved a pudgy hand at us then turned and wafted toward the back of the room where he disappeared through a pair of silk hangings, likely forgetting all about us.
Guards closed on us once we were alone, and Cassia slipped her hand into mine.
“Time to go home,” she whispered.
* * *
Hesiodos stoodnear the large fountain in the main courtyard, staring moodily into the dancing waters. I broke from Cassia and the guards, my legs obeying me once more, if weakly, and approached him.
“Have you asked about what I wanted?” I inquired without preliminary.
Hesiodos regarded me coolly. “I have. The answer, unfortunately, is no.”
Rage flashed through me, erasing the last vestiges of the poison.
