Page 37 of Brother at Arms

“How are you?” I asked her, banishing the dream with effort. “Does Livius have his servants sleep on gilded bedsteads with silk covers?”

“No.” Cassia gave me a faint laugh. “I have a pallet. But in my own cubicle, and it is very comfortable.”

“Good.” I hoped not so comfortable she’d never want to leave.

“I am anxious to be home, though,” she assuaged my fears by saying. “Where I can attend to my studies, with my own materials.”

“You brought many tablets here. My shoulder still aches from carrying them.” I rubbed it in demonstration. “Besides, you were excited to see Livius’s library.”

“That is true, but I have had no time to myself to peruse anything in it. Livius’s servants are quite pleased to have a scribe in their midst. Yesterday, I took down four letters to family members who live outside the city, two appeals to advocates in cases involving faulty merchandise, wrote three letters in Greek for Menekrates, and helped tally a written inventory of Livius’s supplies. I was happy I had a quarter hour to choose a few scrolls from the library to take to my cubicle, which I had barely opened before I fell asleep.”

“Doesn’t Livius have his own scribe?” I asked in surprise.

“He has three, but for his official business only, and they don’t live in the house. The staff don’t have much time to go find a scribe to write for them, and they didn’t have to pay me.”

“They should,” I said darkly.

So much writing was unfathomable to me. I could write my name now and Cassia’s and tally a few simple calculations, but nothing more so far. Most servants could write even less than I did. I could imagine their eagerness to use her talents.

“They also served me lavish meals and excellent wine and let me use the library to write up all their letters. It was splendid to have such a place to work in.” Her expression turned wistful.

“Better than our apartment,” I agreed.

Cassia became brisk again. “However, at home, I am not interrupted every quarter hour to write yet one more letter before supper. This is a lovely house, but we do not own it.”

We did not even own our own lives, I could have added, though I’d been freed from the games. Cassia was still a slave, and I was expected to stay in Rome until our unknown benefactor revealed why he—or she—had put us together.

“We will go home when I’m certain Arsakes will leave you alone,” I said.

“So far, he has attacked only you,” Cassia pointed out.

I scowled. “He is the kind of man who would use someone I care about to make me behave. I will not risk you.”

“I see.” Cassia studied me, her face softening. The light breeze caught in her hair, tugging a few strands loose and sending the earrings dancing.

I realized I’d just admitted that I cared about her, but I saw no reason to be ashamed of my words. They were the truth.

“I haven’t told you about Xerxes,” I said abruptly.

Cassia leaned on a white marble pillar to listen. This marble had come from Greece rather than Egypt. Livius could afford to import from all over the world.

“You did tell me about Xerxes,” she said. “That he might have been helping Arsakes smuggle silk, or someone using his name did, continuing to do so after Xerxes died.”

“I mean about his death itself.” I drew a breath. “What if someone realized how much wealth they could make by becoming Arsakes’s go-between? Xerxes never took anything very seriously. He might have let slip information about the scheme, or someone heard of it somehow and decided it would be lucrative to take it over.”

Cassia’s eyes widened as she pushed from the pillar. “You mean you think someone deliberately killed Xerxes? So they could step into his business?”

I was grateful she didn’t immediately protest that Xerxes had died in a fight with another gladiator, nothing odd about that.

“Possibly.” I rested a hand on the stone railing and gazed across the valley to the workers on the next hill. “Perseus—the man who fought Xerxes—got in a killing blow, but he never should have. Xerxes was too good.”

“How did he then?” Cassia asked. “Xerxes did not deliberately invite it?”

“Let himself die?” I shook my head. “Xerxes was never despairing. He’d planned to buy Marcella something special with whatever prize money he won in the games and go to her. He hadn’t seen his children for weeks, and he wanted to take them their Saturnalia gifts.”

“A man with much to live for,” Cassia said. “From all that you’ve told me of him, I agree he did not seem the sort to embrace death. What do you suppose happened, then?”

“I have asked about the match. Regulus saw it, and we reenacted each move in the bout. He said Xerxes was distracted, maybe by someone in the stands. Then at the last, Xerxes lowered his sword and shield, as though he were in a daze, and Perseus rushed in and killed him.”