Page 75 of Brother at Arms

“Xerxes’s brother started sending messages to Rome,” Aulus said. “I couldn’t risk him and Xerxes comparing stories.”

If either Xerxes or Lucius realized that another man had taken over their scheme, using Xerxes’s name, they’d hunt for the false Xerxes and likely wouldn’t be merciful when they found him.

I got my hands around Aulus’s neck. “He was my friend.”

I squeezed, and Aulus gurgled, but my fingers grew slack, no longer obeying me. Aulus scrambled to his feet, breathing hard in fear, but he stood over me, watching as I lost all sensation in my body.

I’d been poisoned before, in a similar method, but that venom had worked rapidly, and darkness had come fast. With this one, I lay in a stupor, losing feeling in my limbs little by little.

Xerxes must have wondered what was happening as the numbness crept over him, beginning in feet and hands and working inward. By the time he’d realized something was very wrong, he’d have been too immobile to signal to the referees. Perseus had used that advantage to drive his sword home.

Perseus was as much to blame as Aulus for Xerxes’s death. When Perseus realized Xerxes couldn’t fight, he should have signaled to the referees and stopped the match. His ambition to best a top gladiator and greed for the day’s prize money had robbed Xerxes of his life.

Perseus had received his punishment at the end of my sword. Aulus had escaped into the shadows like the coward he was.

I wondered, as I lost all sensation in my body, if my breath would stop and my heart would cease beating. Marcianus had speculated that the dose given Xerxes wouldn’t have killed him, but who knew what concoction Aulus had smeared on his knife today?

As I gazed up at Aulus, my fury not diminishing, he spat on me. The spittle hit my neck, but I felt nothing.

Nor did I feel Aulus clamp his hands around my wrists before he dragged me deeper into the darkness of the building.

Aulus, much smaller than me, struggled to tow my large body, though the smooth marble of the atrium floor assisted him. He pulled me through an archway into a vaulted chamber I hadn’t entered before, this one piled high with boxes, probably storage for older records.

At the end of this vault was a wooden door. Aulus dropped me to unbolt and unlock it with a key on his belt.

Beyond lay a set of stairs leading downward, carved out of packed earth and shored up with stone. Aulus swiveled me around on my back at its entrance, then grasped my ankles and slid me through the door and down the stairs headfirst.

I tumbled along, my head and loosened limbs striking the stones. About halfway down the stairs, my momentum ceased, and I lay in a limp tangle, my body twisted. My head dangled over a step at an angle that would be painful if I could feel anything.

Aulus slammed the door, leaving me in absolute darkness.

Chapter 25

Lying alone, unable to move, unable to feel, unable to see, gave me much time to think. I could hear—the drip of water, the scuttle of mice—and I could also smell. The Cloaca Maxima ran beneath this building, and this cellar must have a drain to it. Its pungent odor wafted upward to perfume the chamber. I wondered if Aulus would return later and simply push me into the sewer to be rid of me.

If so, I’d end up, after a journey through Rome’s filth, in the Tiber, where I’d quickly drown. No one might ever know I’d entered this building at all.

The thoughts that came to me most readily were those of Cassia. She’d still be teaching Hadrianus at this moment, the two bending over the writing board behind the wine merchant’s shop. I pictured Hadrianus moving the stylus hesitantly, as I’d done when Cassia had first taught me the letters.

I recalled how she’d gazed uncertainly at me when Hesiodos had first introduced us, peering at me with dark eyes over a fold of her cloak. Then, how she’d confounded me by explaining she knew how to do nothing but write and do accounts.

She’d exaggerated her lack of skills. Cassia, in a few short weeks, had made our apartment comfortable, found me work, made certain we had food and drink every day, and generally made life livable. I’d not have survived without her.

I knew many believed us lovers, as we lived in close quarters day after day, but we’d come to an understanding the first night. I’d been numb, still grieving Xerxes and stunned by the loss of my former life, currently uninterested in pleasures of the flesh.

Cassia had been used by her former master, which had enraged her former mistress, who’d accused her of being a seductress and sold her. Cassia would not recover from that for a long while, if ever, and I had no intention of forcing myself on her.

So, we lived side-by-side, each of us too wounded to reach for each other.

One day, I’d thought. We’d soften enough to let what had grown between us become more. That is, if pristine Cassia ever formed any interest in a scarred, brutish gladiator.

Not that I had any experience with tender affections. I’d observed it in Xerxes, the way he’d watch Marcella when she wasn’t looking, betraying a deep joy I doubted I’d ever feel. I’d formed friendships, but two of the closest ones—the builder I’d once worked for and Xerxes—had been brutally taken from me.

Trusting and caring were dangerous things.

Fear wasn’t much better, and a wave of it surged through me. I might never regain the use of my limbs, which meant I’d lie here until I died of thirst or starved to death. The air in this cellar wasn’t stuffy, meaning the space was large and probably not sealed off. Therefore, I’d be able to breathe while I succumbed to the other two problems.

Next came anger. Aulus had robbed Xerxes of that joy I’d witnessed in him, a happiness many people never found. He’d had a woman who loved him and children he adored. Aulus had taken that happiness from Marcella as well, leaving her alone with five fatherless and fast-growing offspring.