Page 60 of Brother at Arms

Lucius watched in fascination as Marcianus worked, Marcia handing him things with quiet efficiency.

Marcianus cleared the area around the injury of blood, then sewed the skin together, ignoring Arsakes grunts and twitches. Marcia had the needle threaded when Marcianus was ready for it, snipping the threads neatly with a small knife when he was finished. She then slid a jar into Marcianus’s hand, and Marcianus smeared the ointment within it over the closed wound.

“Don’t move too much, or you’ll tear it,” Marcianus admonished Arsakes. “In fact, you need somewhere quiet to rest tonight.” I knew he was about to offer his own home, but Marcia glared hard at him. “Leonidas, can you impose him on Cassia for the night?” Marcianus asked meekly. “We should watch him for a time.”

“What about him?” Lucius pointed to Gotarz, still inert on the floor.

“The vigiles will have to know,” I said grimly.

“I agree with Arsakes,” Lucius said. “They’ll haul us outsiders to the Tullianum and declare us guilty.”

“I’ll report it once you are safely indoors,” I said. “I know a few vigiles who will listen to me.”

I’d have to think of a reason I’d been visiting Herminius’s offices so late at night to stumble across the dead Gotarz, but I’d come up with something. Or Cassia would. For a very honest person, she was good at inventing tales.

Lucius and I hauled Arsakes to his feet and assisted him from the room, while Marcianus and Marcia cleared up their accouterments behind us.

The night had turned refreshingly cool, wind pushing aside the clouds above us. It was a pleasant time for a walk but not for helping a hurt man hobble through the streets, thieves and brigands lurking to take advantage.

I returned the lamp to the startled carter then told him he’d earn an extra as tonight if he lugged Arsakes to the Quirinal. The carter complied, though whether out of compassion or for the coin, I never learned.

I thought Marcianus would return home, but he followed us, Marcia with him. It was a slow journey around the forums and up the Quirinal, the carter driving as carefully as he could.

After paying and thanking the carter, I unlocked the outer door of our apartment. Somehow, Lucius and I would have to get Arsakes up the flight of stairs.

Cassia opened the door for us at the top—she hadn’t gone to bed. She regarded us in alarm but quickly spread out the pallet on my bunk while we helped Arsakes to it.

I left the others to settle Arsakes and ducked out again into the night, making for the nearest house of the vigiles. I wanted to report the death before someone near the Horrea Agrippina mentioned that they’d seen Leonidas the Spartan coming out of the offices where a dead body lay.

The captain of the house on the Quirinal had been replaced in the last year by a man named Gaius Celsus. Celsus credited me for his promotion, so he greeted me heartily when I came banging in.

Celsus lost his cheerfulness when I told him about Gotarz. I stuck as close to the truth as possible—I’d heard a scuffle in the offices near the Horrea Agrippina, fought with an assailant inside, and the assailant had run off, leaving a dead man behind.

“Would you know the killer if you saw him again?” Celsus asked.

I thought about it, but had to say no. “It was too dark. He was strong but not tall. Fought more like a legionnaire than a gladiator. We might have injured him, but he ran away too swiftly for it to have been a serious one.”

Celsus nodded as though he understood what I meant by all this. “Let us go and fetch the body. Do you know who the dead man was?”

“Bodyguard for the silk merchant called Herminius.”

Celsus heaved a sigh. “Silk merchants are sticky men to deal with. I hope this Herminius doesn’t complain to the highest of the high. Everyone wants to keep the men who bring in their precious luxuries happy.”

“I think Herminius is in Florentia,” I said. “Another man in the offices there says he rarely comes to Rome.”

“Even so. Thank you for telling us, Leonidas.” Celsus gave me a nod. “Go on home. It is the problem of the vigiles now. And the cohorts, when we pass him on in the morning.” The thought of shoving the problem of the dead man onto the urban cohorts seemed to perk Celsus up, and he herded his men out the door.

I left them to it and returned to our apartment.

Arsakes was lying flat on my bunk when I entered, his hands on his sewn-up wound, his breathing ragged.

I knew that he’d live. Marcianus was the best surgeon in all of Rome, and if he said Arsakes would survive, then he would.

Lucius sat on the visitor’s stool, as Marcia had taken mine. Marcianus leaned against a wall, probably having refused the remaining seat that Cassia had offered him. She perched on that stool now, in her usual place behind the table.

“Why did you come back to Rome?” I demanded of Lucius as soon as I’d locked the door. “Is Marcella all right? If you’ve done anything to her, I will kill you.” I stated this bluntly, without heat.

“No, no.” Lucius rose in consternation. “Marcella is fine and well, as are all the family. She told me to go. Said you were risking your life for me, and I needed to solve these troubles myself. She is right. Beautiful woman, isn’t she?”