Page 51 of Brother at Arms

“Always a pleasure to see you, my friend.” Gallus was a small man with dark hair just going gray. He beamed at me as though we hadn’t worked side by side for days inside a freezing building in the Subura this winter, in cramped spaces with tempers short.

Gallus had been the first man who’d looked past the gladiator in me and been interested in my experience as a builder. He’d taken a chance and trained me as an assistant while he constructed the warehouse in the Emporium and then the smaller building in the Subura, both owned by Sextus Livius.

“Cassia says you should speak to Livius about a new structure on the Aventine,” I said without preliminary.

Gallus’s bushy brows went up. “On the Aventine? Interesting. Likely he’s pulling down something rickety he’s got his hands on, and it will be tricky work. But lucrative. I will of course need your assistance if I land such a project.”

I nodded my thanks. “I have also met with a man called Marcus Flavinus Mena, who wants to renovate his house on the lower Palatine.”

Gallus’s enthusiasm dimmed. “A patrician, eh? Always difficult to work for. They hover and change their minds a dozen times, waiting until you’ve cut the stone or beam precisely before they want it a tad lower or higher or in a different place altogether.” He sighed. “Though it couldn’t hurt to speak to him.”

“I’m not sure he’d pay you much,” I warned. “He seems a bit careless about money.”

“So many in the old families are. Ah, well. Still, having my name associated with a patrician’s, especially if he likes what I do for him, can help bring more commissions.”

I nodded. I’d delivered my messages and could simply go, but I lingered, liking the calming effect of Gallus’s tools on the walls and the clutter of his worktable.

Gallus sensed my uneasiness. “The prospect of a new building project usually cheers you, Leonidas. Is anything wrong? Young Cassia is well, I hope?” He was fond of Cassia.

“She is,” I assured him. I hadn’t meant to tell him anything, but under Gallus’s sympathetic gaze, I found myself sinking to a stool and spilling out the tale to him, beginning with me spying Lucius in the Forum, believing he was Xerxes.

Gallus listened with attentiveness, changing from surprise, to indignation, to deep interest as I went on.

“Hence, why I never have much to do with merchants and trading,” Gallus said when I’d finished. He now sat near me, a cup of wine in his hands—somehow, he’d pressed one into mine as well. “Too dangerous. Buildings and stone never betray you. At least, they won’t if you prepare correctly.”

“I can make no sense of anything,” I said. “How could Xerxes have been a smuggler? Now Cassia thinks someone killed him to take over his business. She’s trying to work out who and how.”

“It is quite a tale,” Gallus said. “Let me see if I have the right of it. Your friend Xerxes, long ago, decided to pay a group of Parthians to send him, out of sight of the excise men, silk to sell in Rome, using his connections to patrician matrons to earn some extra cash. Some unknown person decided to take over this trade, making certain your friend was killed—I am sorry about that, Leonidas, I truly am—and assuming his name, at least with the Parthians. The Parthians have now come to Rome, incensed that this man calling himself Xerxes insists they pay him a large sum of money to keep quiet about their involvement in the affair. They followed you, believing you knew where he was, unaware that the real Xerxes is deceased.”

“Yes,” I said glumly.

“What about the brother?” Gallus asked.

“Lucius?” I spread my hands across my knees. “I don’t know what to make of him.”

“Could this Lucius himself not have taken his brother’s name? So he could continue selling the silk? Or at least continue receiving money from others for promised delivery? Forgive me, I’m not certain how merchants work. I only know it is difficult to get an answer from them whenever my order of marble or tufa is delayed, and delayed again. They talk about ships going down, when I know the material comes over the road from the mountains.” Gallus shook his head in disbelief.

“Lucius was surprised by Xerxes’s death,” I said. “Or so he claimed. I can usually tell when a man is lying.”

Lucius was indeed liar, I’d recognized, and Cassia had as well. But not about Xerxes.

“He might not have realized his brother was dead,” Gallus offered. “But perhaps he was the front man for this operation all along, using a famous gladiator’s name as entree to the patrician world. Or he and Xerxes were working it together.”

The last possibility could be the true one. Would Xerxes have colluded with his estranged brother at a distance to sell silk to women who adored him?

Yes, the Xerxes I’d known possibly would, though once he’d met Marcella, his visits to the matrons ceased.

What bothered me most about any solution was that Xerxes had never told me any of this. He hadn’t talked about his brother, nor about the silk trade, nor even who he’d dined with the night or day before his final match.

He’d been with me at the cena libera, the supper given to gladiators the night before the games began, but Xerxes had died in the bouts three days later. He’d been elusive when we weren’t at the Circus Gai, and I didn’t know who he’d seen or what he’d eaten or drunk.

I growled low in my throat, unable to contain my frustration.

Gallus regarded me in sympathy. “Perhaps you and Cassia ought to speak to the brother again.”

“Yes.” I rose, my head nearly brushing the low ceiling.

“I did not mean this instant, dear boy.” Gallus came to his feet to stand beside me, his expression reassuring. “I am certain you and Cassia will clear up the confusion and discover what truly happened to your friend.”