Chapter 14
Cassia and I followed Servius through the large open space to a deserted peristyle garden. I’d taken Cassia’s hand and did not release it. Anything could happen inside Nero’s domus.
Servius folded his arms and rested his backside against a marble plinth that held a statue of a faun.
“He’s very angry at you, Leonidas,” Servius said. “I don’t know what about, but I heard him snarling unflattering things about you. Are you certain you want to face him?”
Cassia, who usually remained mute when we were here, spoke up. “The information we have might help him,” she said. “We’d not come if it weren’t important.”
Servius lifted one brow. “I was going to advise you to leave Rome entirely. Maybe go all the way to Egypt, or someplace equally remote.”
I agreed with him. No one did well when Nero was in a temper. He was likely enraged because we hadn’t yet delivered the conspirators to him, ready for execution. He’d said we had until Cerealia, five days away now, but Nero wasn’t known for either his patience or keeping a bargain.
“Tell him …” I trailed off. I wasn’t certain what to say, or how much we should let Servius know of what Nero had asked of us. No place was more thick with plots than the home of the princeps itself.
“Tell him I enjoyed our dice game,” I finished. “I will be ready for another challenge when he is.”
Servius’s second brow joined the first. “We barely got him home that night. He was too drunk to bother hiding his identity, but most people we passed thought he was raving, in his cups.”
“He won fairly.” For some reason I thought this an important point.
“Thanks to you, he wasn’t cheated.” Servius began to grin. “Very well. I’ll give him your message. But my advice is to go and don’t let him see your face today.”
Servius could be genuinely concerned about us, but I’d been betrayed by one of the praetorians before. I shrugged, as though it didn’t matter whether we spoke to Nero or not.
“We will return home,” I said neutrally. “Good day.”
Servius regarded me closely, searching for more meaning in my words, then he heaved himself up from where he lounged.
“Come along, then. I’ll show you out.”
He took us from the garden back to the large courtyard, which gave us a view across the valley south of the Forum Romanum to the Oppian Hill. Sextus Livius lived on the Oppian Hill—Cassia had discovered this about him. I’d never seen his villa, and I wondered if he’d fight Nero’s ambitious plans for his Domus Transitoria if they threatened his home.
I bade Servius another farewell as he ushered us out of the gate. The guards watched us curiously, but Servius offered no explanation to them and faded back into the domus.
Cassia remained silent as we picked our way down the hill. Not until we’d wound through the soggy Forum Romanum and headed up the Quirinal did she speak.
“My father told me that Alexandria is a beautiful city.”
I paused in the street and stared at her. “You think we should go to Egypt?”
She sent me a quick smile over the fold of her cloak. “I know our benefactor does not wish us to leave Rome.”
This was true. We continued home, where I unlocked our door and pushed it open. Once Cassia had started up the stairs, I bolted the door and joined her at the top of the steps, locking that door behind us as well.
“Our benefactor—” I broke off, wanting to curse the man’s name then remembering I didn’t know it. “May he have boils on his rod. Why should we have to stay if the princeps goes on a murderous rampage? I wish I’d never seen that blasted ring. Vibius would be the one hunted down, not us.”
“Nero worries for good reason.” Cassia hung her cloak once more it on its peg. The folds of cloth lined up precisely. “The Senate reviles him. They preferred his stuffy stepfather, Claudius, who sat in his chambers writing histories and didn’t interfere in their business. There might be other descendants of Augustus or Tiberius floating about, waiting for a sign of weakness in Nero. That an ancient king would come to contest Nero’s power, as described on the ring, is not so farfetched.”
“I don’t care if the senators want to dance around a stage with him,” I exploded. “I don’t want Nero’s attention, and I don’t care any longer about this blasted benefactor who does nothing for us. I say we go to Alexandria.”
The light in Cassia’s eyes showed me she wanted to. I imagined the pair of us riding over the sea, wind coming across the prow of our ship as the gleaming marble city of Alexandria caught the sunlight before us.
Never mind that ships were perilous contraptions, which sank at least half the time, and that I got seasick. Anything was better than waiting for the temperamental Nero to decide whether he wanted to execute us or not. If we left Rome, he might forget all about us.
“Our benefactor is why you are not in the custody of the urban cohorts, or in the Tullianum,” Cassia said in her quiet way.
I halted my angry stomping back and forth in the small room as her words penetrated my rage.
