Without another word, the five of us headed toward the Aventine, Jovian in front, Lupus in the back.
“What about the litter?” I asked Lupus behind me. “Caesar may smell your family’s scent and link it back to you if it’s left at his palace.”
“We ordered the others to carry it back. Everyone is hysterical right now. No one will be able to remember what litter you arrived in.”
“Good.”
The last thing I needed was anyone else’s death on my conscience. Plus, Horatius and his sons would be necessary allies. They were cunning and formidable fighters, assets that we needed to win the coming war.
Because of their caste in the House of Griseo, they were overlooked for high-ranking positions in the army and elsewhere. But that was Caesar’s mistake. His hubris would be his undoing.
Once down the sloping hill, Jovian took a left into the Aventine, away from the docks.
“No, this way,” I called quietly.
The chaos on the hill had plebeians emerging from their homes and taverns, wondering what had happened.
Jovian shook his head and fell in beside me. “Centurions are watching the main entrance into the docks. I know a secret way.”
I smiled and nodded. We followed quickly and quietly past closed shops and raucous taverns and busy brothels. We came out near a sewage ditch that dumped into the Tiber. The stench was suffocating, but Jovian was right. No one seemed to be patrolling this entrance toward the docks. Mainly because it wasn’t actually an entrance as much as a narrow path alongside the draining ditch.
Lela never made a sound, keeping close to my side, her veil wrapped over her head, partially covering her face.
We climbed up some steps at the end of the docks and hurried close to the ship, searching for the one Koska described. But there was no need. Only one ship had a man lurking at the gangway, leaning against a barrel with crossed arms. He was watching both directions, but stopped when he saw us moving silently through the shadows toward him.
He was a rough-looking, barrel-chested man. His eyes widened when he saw the blue togas, obviously not realizing he would be smuggling nobility out of the city.
“What’s the code word?” he asked.
Lela removed her veil and answered for me. “Bloodsinger.”
XXIVLELA
The seaman kept his begrudging stance, arms crossed. “I was told three. I cannot take five.”
“We aren’t coming,” said Jovian, stepping up to the man and glaring down at him from his imposing height. “But we will remember your ship, and if anything happens to them, you will pay dearly.”
The seaman scoffed and dropped his arms, snapping back defensively, “We were paid well, and we honor our debts. We’ll get themdown the river.” He turned to Trajan and gestured toward the gangway. “Follow me.”
Lupus smiled at his brother. “Honorable smugglers. How fortunate.”
Trajan reached out an arm. Jovian grasped it in farewell. “May Neptune guide you well.”
Trajan smiled. “Tell your father I will be back, and I’ll bring news of our army.”
Lupus raised a brow. “We have an army? Father said we’d need to gather his gladiator brethren if we were to have one at all.”
“They are all welcome,” said Trajan. “But we will have an army.”
“Let’s go,” said Gaius, staring down the docks toward the main harbor entrance. “We need to set sail.”
Jovian and Lupus nodded and turned back the way we’d come by the sewage ditch. Trajan ushered me between him and his grandfather. There were other seamen hoisting sails and moving about deck, but they didn’t even spare us a glance. Professional smugglers, it seemed.
We followed the big man who’d greeted us down below deck. He walked into a large room for the cargo and to a wall lined with barrels. He rolled the one in the corner out then unlatched a hook at the bottom and a hidden door swung open.
“You have what you need in there until we’re safely out of range of the deathriders,” he told us. “Once we’re in the Tyrrhenian Sea, you can move above deck.”
Trajan’s grandfather held out his palm for me. “May I assist you?”
