Page 56 of Brother at Arms

“Out of Aemil’s sight,” I warned. “He is already unhappy with me for asking about Xerxes.”

“I can be discreet, Leonidas.” Marcianus sent me a wounded glance. “I will report whatever I discover. Good evening, both of you.”

Cassia rose and bade him a polite farewell. I accompanied Marcianus down the stairs, closing and locking both upper and lower door behind him.

The rain had quieted into a light pattering on the rooftops. I stepped out onto our balcony and watched Marcianus’s thin form weaving through the lane and on to the main street.

With sunset occurring somewhere behind the clouds, the sky darkened quickly. I lifted the heavy shutters into their slots, and Cassia lit an oil lamp.

She offered to rush out and retrieve stew from the nearest shop, but I forestalled her. I hadn’t mentioned my later meeting with Vitus in front of Marcianus, so now explained what I’d asked Vitus to do.

Cassia listened in some disquiet. “Do you trust Vitus enough to meet him in the dark?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “But if he can point me in the right direction, I’ll risk it. He hasn’t fought professionally in a long time. I can probably best him if I need to.”

I’d also reasoned that the fact Aemil hadn’t tried to persuade Vitus to stay after his retirement indicated he might not have been that good of a fighter. Aemil was very annoyed with me for deserting him, yet he continued to try to coax me back. Vitus, he’d ignored altogether.

Cassia’s expression told me that wasn’t her point, but she didn’t argue. “Perhaps I should come as well.”

“No,” I said adamantly. “I can’t fight off Vitus and protect you from every brigand on the street at the same time.”

Cassia fixed her gaze on some point behind me, as she did when thinking deeply. “Very well,” she said.

I studied her in grave suspicion, but Cassia turned back to the table, producing another loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese for a makeshift supper.

While I waited for the appointed time, I performed the Lemuria ritual. Cassia had procured dried beans for me days ago, but I’d been too preoccupied since then for the ceremony.

As I’d told Livius, it took far less time for me to stalk through our small apartment, chanting the words to appease the spirits, than he’d taken in his vast domus.

I ended up at our makeshift altar to our ancestors and regarded the papers holding Cassia’s father’s name and Xerxes’s.

“Rest easy, friends,” I said quietly. I added a silent promise to Cassia’s father that I was looking after her.

Cassia watched me, eyes shining with tears.

A little more than two hours before media nocte, Cassia, who had a knack for knowing the precise hour, day or night, alerted me that it was time for me to depart.

Our lane was quiet when I left the apartment, but carts rumbled in the streets on the lower hill, delivering goods to merchants and taverns or raw materials to forgers, weavers, or potters.

The Emporium, which lay outside the old city gates, teemed with activity, nighttime being busier than late afternoon. I’d brought a knife with me, but no more money than what I’d promised Vitus. Anyone robbing me would get very little.

Vitus did turn up, true to his word. He waited for me outside the Porticus Aemilia, the ancient building that Gallus so admired.

The warehouse I’d helped Gallus build lay beyond the Porticus, around a slight bend in the river. I always felt a frisson of pride when I thought of it, though the building was nothing out of the ordinary. It had been the first job I’d had since I’d been freed that had given me satisfaction and made my former life fade into mist.

Vitus nodded at me in welcome, then unfolded himself from the pillar he’d leaned against and strode with me into the massive warehouse.

The Porticus Aemilia ran lengthwise to the river but was set back from the bank to avoid the Tiber’s frequent floods. Pillars and arches divided the space into fifty vaults perpendicular to the river, with the roofs rising in stair-step fashion up the hill. The staggered vaults provided arched windows high on each level to admit sunlight.

The skylights did no good now, but flickering oil lamps carried by workers or waggoners, and in one place, a fire built inside a clay pot, gave us some light as we wove our way through. Most of the men loading carts and wagons ignored us, two irrelevant bystanders in the stream of carts, donkeys, slaves, and freedmen.

“The Parthians operate over here.” Vitus led me to a vault about midway through the building, where silent men in tunics loaded up wagons that appeared to be no different from all the other wagons.

“There.” Vitus pointed to a small shed that had been built against a corner, likely used as an office by whoever rented this space. “This is where I saw Xerxes that night I followed him.”

The three men who emerged from the shed were dressed as Vitus had described. All three wore tunics that reached their knees—in one case his calves—two in yellow, with the longer tunic a brilliant green.

The two men in yellow had close-fitting leggings, while the third man’s were baggy and pleated. The flow of the fabrics told me that all were likely made of silk.