Page 47 of Brother at Arms

Cassia took away her soothing touch. “Would you prefer I lied to you? All my sources say that this concoction should help very much. It will dry the wounds and keep the skin from swelling, possibly even prevent the cuts from taking sick.”

“I never take sick,” I said grumpily.

“Then there is nothing to worry about, is there?” Cassia gave my shoulder a light pat, placed a lid on the pot she’d mixed her paste in, and wiped her hands. “I will try to clean Servius’s cloak for him as well. It was kind of him to lend it.” She lifted the folds of wool and examined the bloodstains.

It had been kind, which for some reason made me even more irritated.

“How did the princeps know we went to see Samorix?” I demanded. “Marcianus goes to that shop regularly, and he wasn’t dragged in to be questioned.”

I shivered, which did not make my back feel better. Cassia had told me not to don another tunic until the salve dried, so of course the breeze coming through the windows had turned cold.

Cassia was usually uncomfortable with so much of my unclothed flesh, but though I sat in only a loincloth, she puttered about as though not noticing my nudity.

Because she’d been doctoring me, I realized. At the moment, I wasn’t a frightening gladiator with a bared body. I was a pathetic creature, needing to be tended.

“Marcianus’s business takes him to all sorts of apothecaries,” Cassia reasoned. “However, we had no obvious cause to visit Samorix at all.”

“I don’t like that he has people following us,” I growled.

I only wanted to get on with my life, without being plucked from the street by Nero at will and threatened with all kinds of mayhem. I preferred to remain beneath the notice of powerful men. Things were quieter that way.

“I’m not certain we were actually followed.” Cassia seated herself at the table. “I suspect Samorix himself reported our visit.”

I jumped, making my back twinge. “Why should he? He told us never to mention he’d given us the information.”

“True, but Samorix seems very well set up. He had many valuable scrolls in those boxes, which he is careless with.” Cassia made a note on an open tablet, her hand stiff with disapproval. “No one collects that many scrolls without having extra money to spend or a benefactor to provide them. Also, why didn’t the princeps demand we tell him the name of the poison seller? That should have been the first thing he’d want to know.”

“Because he employs Samorix himself,” I said.

“Exactly what I conclude. The princeps must have been more alarmed that we’d discovered his source than fearing we’d use Samorix’s mixtures against him. I could tell that he was very afraid.”

“All I saw were his boots as he relieved his pique on me.”

I knew I’d recover from the whipping, which hadn’t been much worse than Aemil’s beatings, but I thought I’d put such things behind me. I was a champion gladiator and a freedman, not a slave subject to the whims of a bad-tempered owner.

I also realized that my foul mood stemmed from more than pain and humiliation.

Nero had threatened to take Cassia away from me, and it was a thought I could not face.

“Samorix must be instructed to report any unusual inquiries or requests to the princeps,” Cassia said. “What we asked was certainly unusual.”

“And now we must solve Xerxes’s murder and report to the Palatine.” I drummed my bare feet on the floor, trying to work out my restlessness. “If Xerxes even was murdered. We could be wrong about that. He might have allowed the blow to reach him for another reason—illness, distraction. Something.”

“We’ve already decided that was unlikely,” Cassia reminded me. “Xerxes was a robust man, from all accounts, and skilled enough to ignore distractions during a bout.”

She was logical, and that made me even more annoyed.

“Which poison was it?” I demanded. “How will we ever know, now that Xerxes is ash in the earth? And who, from Hispania to Parthia, gave it to him?”

“That is what we will find out,” Cassia said.

I leapt up, impatient with her serenity. “And once we do, the princeps will take you away from me. For your own good, and he is probably right.”

“He is not.”

I’d begun pacing the small space, but at Cassia’s adamant tone, I halted in surprise. “What?”

Cassia laid down her stylus and regarded me steadily. “It is not for my own good, and I will not be joining the princeps in his domus. I live here now, and I am not leaving.”