Page 68 of Brother at Arms

“I couldn’t reach his brother to kill him,” Mihrdat said. “But Xerxes had become fond of a younger gladiator, one raw, brash, and much more vulnerable. I told Xerxes that if I saw him near me again, I’d have that gladiator gutted and his entrails delivered to him in a box.” Mihrdat pinned me with his icy gaze. “I would have, depend upon it.”

Mihrdat’s stare told me he knew exactly who that gladiator had been, sixteen years old, hiding his terror under snarling belligerence.

For that scared, young, unskilled gladiator, barely more than a boy, grieving for the master he’d been accused of murdering, Xerxes had given up a lucrative trade and withdrawn from the field.

A heaviness formed in my chest, but I gazed straight at Mihrdat, trying not to let anything show on my face.

“You started the trade again,” I said doggedly. “With a different man.”

“Now, you are straying into my business again. I will answer you with one word. Yes.”

“Who is he? I need to find him.”

Mihrdat’s chill turned to anger. “Only the fact that my association with him is now finished keeps me from slicing your throat and your friend’s on the spot. I don’t know who he is. He took Xerxes’s name, but he was much more adept at the trade and more discreet, so I agreed to deal with him. But as I say, that association has ended.”

“What does he look like?” My desperation kept me asking.

“A Roman.” Mihrdat let cold humor creep into his eyes. “They all look the same to me. Now, take your friend and go. Never cross my path again.”

He gestured once more to the men who held Lucius. They dropped him.

Lucius flailed, barely stopping himself from falling on his head. He rolled to his feet, sent his captors an evil glare, and hastened to my side.

I said nothing, didn’t nod or thank Mihrdat for sparing us. I let Lucius stride out ahead of me, then I followed him, not looking back.

I expected a knife to land between my shoulder blades at any moment or for Mihrdat’s men to swarm after us to cut us down.

We made it to the end of the lane and out to the busier area without anything so dire happening. A cloud drifted across the sun, chilling me.

“Are you much hurt?” I asked Lucius as he wiped at the blood on his neck.

“No.” Lucius sounded angry about that. “They knew exactly how much to cut to terrify me but not injure me. Jupiter’s balls, I’ve met desert tribesmen who will slice off a man’s head and toss it around, but they didn’t frighten me as much as Mihrdat and his boys did. He has a fierce reputation in Antioch. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he decided to base himself in Rome.”

Which meant our paths might cross again. I’d do my best to avoid that.

Lucius subsided as I led him around the Aventine Hill and away from the Tiber, turning at the fountain of the three fishes to Marcianus’s home.

Lucius peered past me to the open door of Marcianus’s shop, where we could see him with a patient, a slight man in a threadbare tunic. Marcia stood beside Marcianus, holding a bronze bowl.

“Ah, you are taking me to the medicus,” Lucius said. “No need, though I won’t mind being next to Marcia again. She’s a pretty thing.”

“She will eat you alive,” I said tersely. “And she’s devoted to Marcianus.”

“Ever my lot.” Lucius sighed dramatically.

I ignored him. Xerxes had been prone to overblown declarations, but while his were amusing, Lucius’s only irritated me. I wasn’t certain of the difference, but I would work it out later.

Marcianus gently led his bandaged patient, a too-thin slave, out of the door, refusing the as the man tried to give him. Marcianus spied us standing in the street outside, and his mouth popped open in concern.

“A shallow cut,” I told Marcianus, waving a hand at Lucius. “But make sure it doesn’t take sick.”

I turned abruptly and left Lucius there. He did not protest, and I heard Marcianus, used to my brusque ways, inviting Lucius inside.

I hurried down the hill and through the city, which was at its busiest, my breathing ragged by the time I reached the Quirinal. I climbed the stairs to our home, heart straining, burst into the apartment, and halted.

Hadrianus, the large former quarry slave who worked for the potion mixer, Samorix, sat at our table, awkwardly fitting a stylus into a board carved with the Latin alphabet.

Cassia had taught me the letters at this very board, similar to ones used by every schoolmaster on street corners all over Rome. She was quietly explaining the sound of the letter D and the words it began, when I stomped inside.