Page 23 of Brother at Arms

“You can’t,” I said at once. My chest tightened, as it always did when Livius joked about taking Cassia away. “Our benefactor will not release her.”

“So you have told me.” Livius turned to the door attendant. “Have Cassia and Leonidas brought refreshment.”

“I won’t stay.” I patted the heavy bag Cassia had given me to take to Marcianus. “I have many errands to run. But please keep Cassia safe.”

“It will be my pleasure. I have heard of Julius Herminius in the course of my own business ventures. A man to be avoided.”

“I agree,” I said.

Livius waved Cassia to a stool near his desk, and she eagerly unwound her cloak and took the seat, craning to peer at the scrolls. The attendant took the cloak as though she were a patrician matron and disappeared to fetch food and drink.

Both Cassia and Livius bent over the accounts, as though ready for me to be gone. I departed, rubbing at the burn in my chest.

Nonus Marcianus was in his consulting rooms on the Aventine. He sent me a distracted glance when I appeared, then resumed binding the wrist of a boy in a dusty tunic, while the lad’s mother watched anxiously.

Marcia, who’d become Marcianus’s assistant, competently trimmed the bandage when Marcianus finished. She said nothing to either woman or boy, but the woman seemed reassured by her quiet skill.

Marcia sent me a sharp stare once the mother and son headed home, then turned her back to tidy up the room where Marcianus doctored his patients.

Marcia had once been a girl in a lupinarius, a life she’d firmly put behind her. She had no more need to be pleasant to men in general and was gracious only to Marcianus, who’d rescued her.

I lowered the bag of tablets to a table with a clatter. “Cassia needs you to look after these.”

Marcianus, a thin man with a prominent nose and dark hair he sometimes remembered to comb, wrenched open the bag and peered inside.

“She is trusting me with her records?” Marcianus gazed at me in astonishment. “What has happened? Is Rome being sacked?”

I ignored his attempt at humor. “I don’t want her at the apartment,” I said impatiently.

I prepared myself to explain our situation once more, but before I could begin, we were interrupted by Aemilianus, the lanista of my former ludus.

“I’ve been looking for you, Leonidas,” Aemil growled the moment he spied me. He stamped into Marcianus’s front room, his sandals puffing up dust that had blown across the tiled floor. “Why was my ludus nearly invaded by Parthians today? They mowed down Plinius at the gate, who was almost useless against them. I barely stopped them storming inside.”

Aemil glared at me with his mismatched eyes, one blue, one hazel. His light brown hair was shaved close to his head, and his bulky body ensured that anyone assaulting him would come out the loser.

“They came to the ludus?” My alarm rose, along with relief I hadn’t taken Cassia there.

Aemil’s glare intensified. “You know who they are?”

“They are seeking a man I am trying to protect. You didn’t tell them where I was, did you?”

Aemil’s belligerence took on some confusion. “What are you talking about? They weren’t searching for you at all, or whoever you think you are guarding.”

I regarded him in similar bewilderment. “Who then? Why did they try to get inside the ludus?”

“They were looking for Xerxes,” Aemil snapped. “I came to find out what in all Hades you know about that.”

Chapter 7

I gaped at Aemil, and Marcianus looked on in shock.

I didn’t want to blurt out the obvious response: But Xerxes is dead. There was no point.

“What did you tell them?” I managed to ask.

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Aemil growled. “Regulus and I pulled them off Plinius and sent them on their way with bruises for their trouble. Plinius told us they’d commanded him to open the gate and let them have Xerxes. He swears he explained that Xerxes was long gone, but they didn’t listen.”

“They must have meant his brother.”