Page 27 of Brother at Arms

“Then who have we been dealing—” The second man began, but the first man held up his fist, cutting him off.

I studied them both in puzzlement. “Do you mean you’ve been dealing with someone claiming to be Xerxes? For two and a half years?” I thought of Lucius, who looked so like him, but these men would have known Lucius, or at least of him, if they worked for Herminius.

The first man heaved a deep sigh. “We’ve been fools.”

“You didn’t come to Rome at Herminius’s order, did you?” I asked with new conviction.

“No.” The first man shook his head. “We came to find Xerxes ourselves, to keep him quiet. He was going to betray us, or so he told us, if we didn’t pay him five thousand aurei.”

Chapter 8

Five thousand …”

I gaped at the man. I could barely contemplate that amount of money, and the Xerxes I’d known couldn’t have either.

The second man nodded. “We don’t have it, no matter how much silk we sell.”

I snapped my attention to him, and the first man let out a snarl of disgust. “Gotarz, your mouth is why we are in so much trouble already. That and your fear of water. We could have gotten everything out of this man and gutted him, if you and Haman hadn’t flailed like babies in a stream.”

“I almost drowned once,” Gotarz said petulantly.

“The place we come from is very dry,” the first man explained to me. “When we decided to work for Romans, we had to get used to bathing. Gotarz and Haman are not good with it.”

“Is the place you come from Parthia?” I asked.

“From a town near Edessa,” the man answered without hesitation. “Which was named by Seleucus after Alexander bequeathed it to him but is now under the protection of the Parthians.” He shrugged. “But the Romans will have it one day, so why not work for them now? We know the routes through Parthian lands to the trading oases. Men will pay much for our knowledge.”

“Now who talks too much, Arsakes?” Gotarz growled.

Arsakes shrugged again. “If this man knew Xerxes, maybe he is the one we have been dealing with for the past few years. He’s trying to find out about Herminius, isn’t he?”

“Did you ever meet Xerxes?” I asked.

Arsakes shook his head. “We communicated through messages. Xerxes, as a gladiator, had the ear of rich matrons who wanted the best of silks and didn’t much care where they came from. If I could supply the silk, he said, he could supply the clients.”

“You’ve killed us, Arsakes,” Gotarz said, aghast.

“No, I haven’t. If Leonidas has been pretending to be Xerxes to continue the trade, then he knows all about it. If not, he’s not leaving this room alive, so it doesn’t matter.”

I could kill both of them now, without making much effort. This was not an idle boast—I knew exactly how to separate them, pin them, and strike quick, killing blows.

They might counteract me by treachery, but these were simple men. The leader was a little more learned, evidenced by spewing the history of the city of Edessa, but they weren’t strategists.

“It hasn’t been me you were dealing with,” I said. “Xerxes never told me any of this.”

“Well then.” Arsakes fingered the hilt of the knife on his belt.

“Xerxes has a brother,” I stated.

Arsakes nodded. “Lucius Aelius. He works for Herminius, and Herminius is put out with him. Lucius the one who told us about Xerxes in the first place. Boasted of him. But Lucius isn’t in the arrangement with us. He ran off to do errands for Herminius in Parthia.”

“Lucius believes you were sent by Herminius to kill him, because he was accused of embezzlement.”

“It is true that Drusus Fulvius convinced Herminius that Lucius was stealing from him,” Arsakes said impatiently. “I knew he wasn’t—Fulvius likes to dip his hands in the funds and needed someone to blame it on. He hates Lucius for becoming Herminius’s favorite. We used Herminius’s orders to find Lucius as our excuse to come to Rome, but I don’t actually care about carrying out those orders.”

“You sent the silk here,” I said, trying to understand the process. “And then Xerxes sold it on and split the profits with you?”

“Something like that.” Arsakes smiled. “You’re clever, for a gladiator.”