Page 28 of Brother at Arms

I wouldn’t ask them if they stole the silk or legitimately purchased it. They’d never tell me the truth. Arsakes wasn’t telling me all of the truth even now, but I didn’t expect him too.

“Xerxes died, and you didn’t know,” I went on. “Someone continued the enterprise, claiming to be him. So, if it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Lucius, who was it?”

“How are we supposed to know?” Gotarz demanded.

“I could find out,” I offered. “If this person has been taking the money Xerxes should have had for two and a half years, and using his name to do it, I want to find him.”

From what I understood, luxury goods like silk or expensive spices or gems had to go through certain merchants given permission to trade in such things, regulated so that the princeps and the patrician families had first access to them. Covertly trading in silk, stolen or not, could have gotten Xerxes executed.

Why Xerxes had risked that, I didn’t know. But Xerxes had been very certain he’d win at anything he did in life, so he must have believed he could get away with this as well.

“If you find this man, you’ll take the money or betray us,” Arsakes said with certainty. “Easier for us to kill you now.”

“You keep talking about killing me, but here I stand.” I spread my arms as though I wasn’t worried about Arsakes leaping across the room and stabbing me in the gut. “Do you want to know who this person pretending to be Xerxes is? It might be an excise man, perhaps ordered by the princeps to draw you into a snare.”

Both men’s eyes widened. If they were caught at this endeavor, they faced a terrible death, possibly without much of a trial.

“They’ve taken a long time to ensnare us then,” Arsakes said, as though reassuring himself.

“It is only one possibility,” I admitted. “Has whoever it is been paying you regularly?”

Gotarz flinched, but Arsakes became less stiff. “Not as regularly as we’d like, which is another reason we are here. He’s threatened to betray us, and we are not pleased by this, especially thinking he can demand money from us. We came to find Xerxes and end the partnership. With his death, I mean.”

“This man could still betray you before you find him,” I said. “I will discover who he is, and then we can decide what to do with him.”

Arsakes’s eyes narrowed. “Why should we trust you? You’re only a gladiator. We trusted Xerxes, and see what happened?”

“Xerxes never planned to die.” He’d been more full of life than anyone I’d known, in love with it. The fact that he’d made a misstep in his last bout still puzzled me. “I’m a gladiator no longer, and I know people who can find things out.”

“And then what? You help us kill him?”

I wasn’t certain, in truth. Someone in Rome had decided to impersonate Xerxes to make money from these bodyguards, who’d been running a dangerous trade. I wanted to know who’d been using Xerxes’s name, who’d been keeping the money Xerxes would have made for Marcella and his family.

When I found him, I might borrow Arsakes’s knife and gut him. What I’d do about Arsakes and his friend, I wasn’t certain yet.

Lucius had to know more about this than he let on. I needed to lay my hands on him again.

For answer, I shrugged. Let Arsakes decide what I meant to do.

“Swear a pact with me,” Arsakes said. “That you will find this man who has been leading us on and help us destroy him. Swear on your life.”

“No.” I held Arsakes with a hard gaze. “I will find him without having to make any vows to you. When I stop him, consider yourselves fortunate and go back to Parthia. Forget you ever met Xerxes.”

“How do we know you won’t betray us to the cohorts or magistrates?” Arsakes demanded.

“You don’t. But I will learn what has happened and tell you.”

Arsakes eyed me with uncertainty, but finally he sighed. “Return here to give us word. One of us will be waiting. Don’t give the door guard any messages—speak to us directly.”

I promised him nothing. Already Arsakes and his friends had tried to kill me, and I couldn’t take their word that they would leave Lucius be.

I couldn’t take their word for anything, I reminded myself, but they’d given me knowledge I hadn’t had before, and a place to start.

I deliberately turned my back and walked away, out into the May afternoon and rising heat.

Neither Arsakes nor Gotarz followed me. They didn’t trust me, but possibly they were desperate enough to find answers that they’d let a gladiator blunder around to discover things for them.

I wasn’t interested in their troubles. What beat through my brain was that Xerxes had decided to become a smuggler and had never told me, but must have confided in someone else, who’d taken over after his death.