Page 63 of Brother at Arms

The room stilled. Cassia ceased her writing and stared at Lucius, as did Marcia. Marcianus didn’t hide his shock, and even Arsakes lifted his head.

“Whoever was pretending to be Xerxes got the message instead,” I stated. “And worried that he was about to be exposed.”

“So, he somehow arranged for Xerxes to be poisoned,” Cassia concluded softly. “Xerxes would die in the games before he could find out Lucius was trying to communicate with him.”

Lucius groaned and covered his face once more. “I thought we were so clever. A gladiator and a slave newly made a freedman, making a fortune. Well, Fortuna had other ideas, didn’t she?”

We were silent again, while Lucius kept his face buried, his shoulders shaking the slightest bit.

“How did the Roman silk merchant you worked with not realize he wasn’t dealing with the real Xerxes?” Cassia asked gently. “Or did he, and he went along with it?”

Lucius lowered his hands, his eyes red-rimmed and wet. “He might not have known. Xerxes would have the shipment left in the warehouse and receive payment from an assistant. He never spoke with Xerxes directly.”

Which was what Vitus had observed the night he’d followed Xerxes. Xerxes had paid the Parthian shipper and then collected another pouch from the Roman he’d pointed out the pallets to further along the Porticus Aemilia.

“Who was the merchant?” I asked Lucius. “Do you know?”

“Of course I do. Manius found one most likely to deal with us and not ask questions. His name is Marcus Flavinus Mena.”

Chapter 21

Cassia sucked in a breath. “Mena? You’re certain?”

“Of course I am,” Lucius answered, wiping his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Marcus Flavinus Mena was the man who’d taken me for wine at the popina outside his home after I’d saved him from falling on the steps of the Horrea Agrippina.

“Mena,” I repeated. “Did he never meet Xerxes face to face?”

“I have no idea,” Lucius said in puzzlement. “Manius never mentioned it, but he could have, I suppose. Manius picked him out as our go-between in Rome, while I chose the Parthian shipper.”

Mena had been affronted when the guard in the Horrea Agrippina accused him of smuggling, but maybe Mena had only been upset that he’d been caught.

If he’d been assisting Xerxes and Lucius, then he might have had similar arrangements with others. There had to be a reason Xerxes had thought of Mena as their go-between in Rome.

Mena had spontaneously invited me to take wine with him. Had he done the same with Xerxes on his last day alive?

I imagined Xerxes receiving Lucius’s message telling him he wanted to begin the silk shipments again and seeking out Mena to find out if he was still interested in his end of the scheme. If Mena had willingly been dealing with the false Xerxes—or had become the false Xerxes himself—he might have panicked.

He would either fear Xerxes’s wrath or become convinced Xerxes would report him to the magistrates. I doubted Xerxes would have run for the nearest urban cohort, but Mena could not be sure of that.

Or, the false Xerxes had intercepted the message and alerted Mena, who made certain Xerxes ate or drank something dosed with poison before he went into the arena.

There was one way to find out.

It was the middle of the night, and I couldn’t bang on the door of a domus on the Palatine without being arrested. I’d have to wait until morning, and Arsakes had taken my bed.

“You must all sleep here,” I said to the gathering. “To be safe until dawn. Then I will visit Mena. Lucius, you will come with me.”

“I’m not certain I—” Lucius began.

“He might have killed Xerxes,” I told him. “I want your face there, to scare him into confessing.”

Cassia and Marcia found blankets for us all, the two women sharing Cassia’s pallet, while Arsakes stayed on my bed and the rest of us bunked down on the hard floor. Marcia slept soundly and had a bleary-eyed Marcianus out the door first thing in the morning, before I could open the apartment’s shutters.

Cassia, always alert in the early hours, fetched water and breakfast and served it to me and Lucius, with an equal portion for herself and thin stew for Arsakes, as instructed by Marcianus. Arsakes would remain in our apartment, as Marcianus had said he could not yet be moved.

I did not like to leave Cassia behind with him while I questioned Mena, but nor did I want her coming with me to the house of a potential killer.