Page 12 of Brother at Arms

Chapter 4

The sun had set, the yard lit by a nearly full moon high in the sky. Stars shone out in the blackness above, a very bright one hanging in the east. Cassia and Marcianus knew the names of all the stars we could see, though I never recalled them.

Marcella stood in the center of the courtyard, her arms folded, her gaze on the closed gate. She did not turn when I approached, though I knew she’d have heard my heavy tread.

I stopped next to her and tilted my head back to study the heavens. Marcella said nothing, the silence stretching between us.

“I am sorry I could not warn you,” I said.

“I understand why you could not.” Marcella’s voice was brittle. “You could not risk a message being intercepted or a messenger betraying you.” She let out a breath. “But yes, it was a shock.”

“I felt the same, when I saw him in the Forum Romanum. I thought he was Xerxes come back to life, or his ghost.”

Marcella’s brows went up. “Lucius feared being caught by assassins, yet strolled into the most public place in all of the Roman world? Juno defend the idiot. He is very like Xerxes. No sense of danger at all.”

Xerxes had died in a moment of carelessness. He’d never believed himself vulnerable, not until that final sword thrust.

“Like him and not like him,” I said.

Marcella faced me, her arms still tight across her chest. “Do well to remember that, Leonidas. He is not Xerxes. Lucius seems to have the same fascination for life as his brother, but Xerxes had a generosity of spirit that I have never seen matched.”

She spoke the truth. Xerxes had been good to his friends, his wife, and his children, because he cared for them. Deeply.

Again, something he’d never admit, but I’d observed it in him. For all his pranks and wildness, Xerxes had shown a gentleness for his children, and even for his plodding friend Leonidas.

I returned my focus to the sky. “I miss him.”

“So do I,” Marcella said softly. “It is a wound that will never heal.”

Marcella had a way of putting things. That was it, exactly. Losing Xerxes had carved a pain into me that I’d always carry, even if life had bestowed more on me since then. Freedom. A purpose. Cassia.

Marcella had her children, who adored her, and her farm, which had always belonged to her. We both had life, and we’d live it. But we’d never be rid of the hole Xerxes had left when he departed.

“Find a way out of this mess,” Marcella admonished me. “Then take him away again.”

“I’ll do whatever I can,” I promised.

Even I heard the uncertainty in my voice. Marcella chuckled.

“You mean Cassia will. I trust her to find a solution to Lucius’s problem, and quickly, while you guard her every step.”

“I always do.”

Marcella laughed again. “I have come to know this. But do take care, Leonidas. If the best thing we can do is float Lucius out to a lonely island and leave him there, then that is what we will do. Do not let him coax you into believing he is the man his brother was. Xerxes did tell me about Lucius. He was cunning and duplicitous even as a lad. Why do you suppose he was sold to a silk merchant who freed him while Xerxes ended up in the games?”

She had a good point, and I nodded.

“You must also remember that he is not Xerxes,” I warned her.

Marcella shot a dark glance toward the open door of her home. “Oh, I will. Never fear for me, Leonidas. I will make certain Lucius behaves himself. I vow that to you.”

We spent the night at Marcella’s farm, as it was too dangerous to travel back to Rome in the dark. Also, the gates would be closed to us, admitting only the delivery wagons that came from the warehouses to deposit goods throughout the city.

The loft held us all. The children, Marcella, and Cassia slept on one side, I bunking with Lucius on the other. Lucius rolled himself in the blanket Marcella gave him, bade us all a cheery good night, and quickly dropped off to sleep.

I lay awake much longer, like a guard dog watching over his charges. The children snored softly, curled around each other under blankets, and I heard Marcella’s even breathing.

Cassia was awake. I’d come to distinguish between the sound of her sleeping and the sound of her lying wakefully on the far side of our apartment.