Page 79 of Brother at Arms

She then told Lucius to drag the grating back over the drain. Hadrianus had helped him with that before he’d hurried up the stairs to the Aventine.

The grating had a lock that joined the grill to the iron frame it rested in. Aulus had left the key in it, and Lucius now relocked it and slid the key into his belt pouch. He started to do the same with the knife he’d taken from Aulus, but Cassia held out her hand for it. Lucius reluctantly handed it over.

Cassia tucked the knife into her tablet bag, which she’d apparently brought with her when she’d come to rescue me.

Marcianus returned with Hadrianus not long later. Marcianus, once he’d made certain that I would live, was, as usual, more interested in the nature of my ailment than my suffering.

“The feeling is returning,” he announced, mercifully putting away his pin. “You say it began in your hands and feet? Your extremities? Then worked its way inward?”

“Yes.” I could barely speak, my jaw stiff as I forced out the words. I still lay on my back, where I’d come to rest after Aulus’s fall, though Cassia had straightened me before she’d covered me with the warm cloak.

“You are fortunate Cassia found you.” Marcianus turned a curious gaze to her. “How did you know to seek him here?”

“Hadrianus told me.” Cassia waved a hand at Hadrianus, who’d folded up to hunker in a corner. “I decided I’d teach him how to write the names of the men who might have benefitted from Xerxes’s death, knowing one of them would have purchased the poison. He grew excited when I sounded out the name of Cassius Tatius but then denied he was the man who’d purchased the poison. Between my next questions and his gestures, we concluded that it was Tatius’s assistant who’d bought the poison, though whether for Tatius or his own purpose, we didn’t know. Leonidas had gone to the Esquiline to find someone who might have seen the poisoner, and I decided I ought to seek Aulus and ask him a few questions.”

I grunted between my teeth. “Foolish.”

Cassia ignored me. “I thought it better not to rush in through the front door and demand to know whether Aulus or Cassius Tatius had poisoned Xerxes. I rather thought it was Aulus, because Cassius Tatius is well known in the silk trade and wouldn’t have had to take part in illegal importation schemes. He could have, but it was more likely Aulus, who would have to be secretive and willing to kill to keep his secrets.”

“Wise of you,” Marcianus said with approval. “So, if you didn’t rush in through the front door, how did you find Leonidas?”

“The tunnels,” Cassia said brightly. “They are for maintaining the sewers, but many are disused. Leonidas and I found them long ago, and we’ve been mapping them ever since. One led right under this building.”

“You are a marvel, my dear” Marcianus said, and I agreed. “Also, you were quite right about the poison Aulus used. By Leonidas’s symptoms, it was indeed hemlock. Very clever of you.”

Chapter 27

The skies had opened, and rain pooled in the streets by the time I was able to walk enough to leave the cellar.

We journeyed out through the tunnels, which Cassia and I had spent many a day in, she making marks on walls and me stretching cords between hooks I’d jammed into old masonry.

I didn’t mind the rain on my face when we emerged. I was too happy to be in the open air, Rome’s sewers tucked safely away under the holes that drained the streets. I decided it would be a long while before I went underground again.

We left the tunnels near a bridge to the Transtiberim, so Hadrianus could return to Samorix before Samorix reported him as a runaway slave.

“We will continue the lessons another day,” Cassia promised him.

Hadrianus nodded at her then loped away through the rain, back to his servitude.

“Can we trust him?” Lucius asked as he watched Hadrianus’s large body move across the wet bridge.

“Oh, yes,” Cassia said. “Once he learns to communicate, I will try to find him better employment.”

“Samorix will have to agree to sell him,” I warned. My voice was still hoarse, my throat aching.

“I’ll find a buyer who will give Samorix a price he cannot resist,” Cassia answered. “Hadrianus is resourceful and quick-witted, which is more than Samorix deserves.”

So declaring, Cassia turned from the bridge to begin our journey home.

Marcianus and Marcia broke from us when we reached the Aventine. “Drink plenty of wine mixed with water,” Marcianus instructed me. “It will flush any lingering poison from your blood. Eat only bread and eggs for a few days and visit the latrine often.”

With that, he lifted his hand in a cheery wave and led Marcia away.

Lucius, his silk-lined cloak restored, escorted us the rest of the way home.

Once there, I shed my wet sandals—Cassia had rescued the one that had fallen off—and approached the altar to the ancestors on bare feet.

I touched the scroll that held Xerxes’s name. “I found him,” I whispered to it. “I avenged you.”