Blood Debts

by Ashley Gardner

  “Of course,” she said. “I knew it would be something like that. Or that you’d decided to stay the night at the farm. You ought to have.” Cassia took a step back. “Why didn’t you? It was dark …”

  I shrugged. Then yawned. I was exhausted and my bed beckoned. I should be as worried as Cassia that Selenius had been found and men were searching for me, but …

  “Why are they looking for me?” I asked abruptly. “Was I accused?”

  Cassia wiped her eyes again, tucking back a lock of hair that had tumbled down. “Not yet. But another shopkeeper near Selenius’s stall said he saw you. Others observed you visit Quintus the baker before that, and Quintus volunteered that he’d sent you to Selenius to collect a debt. The shopkeeper in the macellum can’t be sure when he last saw Selenius alive. Before you went in search of him, anyway.”

  I silently called down every curse I could think of on Quintus the baker and observant shopkeepers.

  I should have felt more fear, anger, or indignation at the very least that I’d be taken in for killing a man I hadn’t. I had been worried about just this thing earlier.

  But after visiting Marcella, remembering Xerxes, I was numb—nothing penetrated the fog in my head.

  I was tired, I told myself. Cassia had awakened me from sleep too abruptly this morning, and I’d spent the day running around tunnels in the city followed by walking the five miles to Marcella’s farm and back.

  I turned away from Cassia and sought my bedchamber, stumbling in my haze of fatigue.

  Cassia stepped in front of me. “You can’t go to sleep now—we must clear you of this murder.”

  I gently brushed past her. Cassia would have to find a way to help me on her own, and I trusted that she would.

  As I more or less fell onto the bed, I thought about the tunnels Sergius had showed me, and realized that anyone who knew of them could have crept undetected into Selenius’s shop. The man who’d attacked me showed that desperate people might lurk in the tunnels, looking for a victim to rob.

  I’d tell Cassia about them. Show them to her. She’d no doubt figure out exactly how much time it would take for a man to slip through the tunnels from every part of the city and out again in any other part, drawing little maps and diagrams to explain it to those who could not understand.

  I was already half asleep by the time my reed bed crackled beneath my body. I heard Cassia let out a long sigh, then felt my sandals loosen and slide from my feet. A light blanket found its way across my legs, cutting the cool breeze that curled through the open window. Cassia hummed quietly, as she often did, but then the sound cut off.

  “Oh, Leonidas,” Cassia whispered. “Whatever will become of me if I lose you?”

  A good question. She could not return to her former mistress, and our current benefactor might find a less salubrious man to lend her to, one who might beat her or force her.

  I needed to stay alive, and free, to keep her safe. I would clear my name, and Cassia would help me.

  It was my last thought before oblivion. Tonight, I hoped, I would be able to rest without dreams.

  The dreams left me alone until dawn, and then they came swooping.

  In them, I saw Selenius, standing upright and regarding me calmly while blood flooded from his sliced throat. He didn’t seem to be aware that he was already dead—he only held out a slip of paper, demanding a huge amount of money for it. I couldn’t pay, but he offered to take the boy Sergius in lieu.

  I shouted at Sergius to run, but the lad was frozen in place, staring at me in terror across the blood-drenched floor.

  It’s all right, Marcella whispered from far away. Sergius is safe. You took him to the farm, remember?

  The voice changed from Marcella’s to Cassia’s, but my worry only rose. Cassia should not be here. Selenius’s smile when he saw her exactly matched the shape of the cut in his neck.

  I’ll take Cassia instead, Selenius seemed to say. Beautiful morsel. Proud bitch. Better on her hands and knees, I think.

  Another man had said those very words to me at one time. I’d nearly killed him. I lunged at Selenius, and his blood showered me as he fell, warm and stinking.

  “Leonidas!” A blow fell on my stomach, a strangely light one.

  The thump didn’t fit with my dream, and I swam toward light, blinking open my eyes to see Cassia standing at arm’s length, her stick tapping me just above my navel. The blanket was around my hips, tangling my legs.

  “Leonidas,” Cassia repeated, sounding relieved. “Marcianus is here.”

  Morning had broken sometime when I’d been asleep. Rome was washed with golden light, the cool of the night lingering in the streets to temporarily drive out the acrid scents of smoke, food, and humanity.

  A man sat at our table, hunched in conversation with Cassia. He had a fringe of graying hair, a thin but well-muscled body, a bulbous nose, and brown eyes that in turn could be kind or stern. Kind when he was feeding me a tincture and telling me that setting my bone would hurt but he’d be swift, stern when admonishing me to rest and on no account fight for at least forty days.

  His name was Nonus Marcianus, and he was a physician, a medicus, for Rome’s most lucrative ludus. He’d been healing beaten-down gladiators for years, becoming an authority on broken bones, lacerations, wounds deep and shallow, and the chances a man had of living or not. His balms and potions, which he’d learned to mix in the East, had lowered the incidences of festering wounds and rotting limbs in our school. The gladiators, even the most brutish of them, had only good words for Nonus Marcianus.

  He was a learned man of a Roman equestrian family, though born in the Greek isles, migrating to Rome after he trained as a physician in Greece. He’d taken to Cassia right away, as though pleased he’d found an equal in understanding.

  They spoke Greek, Cassia relaxed and smiling as she chatted with him, Marcianus looking content as he answered her questions—or whatever he was saying. I couldn’t understand a word.

  Both broke off as I entered, and Marcianus rose. He wore a tunic that hung below his knees, and he’d laid his toga, the garment of a respectable citizen, across the back of his chair.

  “Greetings of the gods to you, Leonidas.”

  “And you,” I answered, trying to clear the sleep from my head.

  I’d put on a clean tunic without Cassia saying a word. I’d had enough of the stained one I’d worn all day yesterday, which had been further ripened by my walk to the farm and back. I’d be visiting the baths today—the smell of unwashed gladiator was not my favorite.

  “Your lanista rues the day he lost you,” Marcianus said as we both sat down.

  Cassia brought Marcianus a cup of wine, apologizing that it wasn’t the best. Marcianus politely accepted. A bowl of nuts had found its way to the table as well. We never had much food in the apartment, but Cassia always managed to find refreshments for special guests.

  “Does he?” I asked without much interest. I took up a handful of almonds and popped them into my mouth, enjoying their smoky flavor. Cassia bought them roasted with a touch of salt.

  “Aemilianus has taken a contract with a patrician putting on games in Ostia, I hear. The prices Aemil can ask have gone a long way down without you at the school. He toys with asking you to return to perform in special bouts.”

  I was already shaking my head. No more games, no more amphitheatres. It wasn’t fear that kept me from fighting—I continued to practice and train, even dropping in for sessions with Aemil on occasion, but I refused to take another life. Ever. For any reason.

  “I told him you wouldn’t,” Marcianus said, looking satisfied. “I will convey your answer.”

  I said nothing, only scooped up another handful of almonds.

  Cassia seated herself at the table again, opening her tablet and taking up a stylus. She made a note—I wondered if she’d marked down the exact day and time I’d turned down my old trainer’s offer to return and make him some money.

  I knew why Marcianus had come. I’
d told the man in the tunnels to seek him, and that Cassia would pay the fee, if we had any money to give Marcianus, that is. What I did not know was why Marcianus wanted to speak to me. He hadn’t come to convey the message that my lanista wanted me to fight for him again—he wouldn’t have bothered to trudge all the way across Rome for that.

  “Who was the man you sent to me?’ Marcianus asked. “It was a straightforward fracture—you twisted his wrist to block a knife thrust. Why did he try to kill you?”

  Cassia’s eyes widened, and she sucked in a breath. I’d fallen asleep before I could tell her about the man with the knife, and obviously this was the first Marcianus had mentioned it. “He attacked me in the tunnels,” I said. “They are part of the sewers, I think. It was very dark, and he must have been hungry.”

  “Hungry and terrified,” Marcianus said. “I set his wrist and gave him something to eat. He wouldn’t say his name, and he ran off as soon as I let him go. But he was impressed with you.”

  I shrugged. “I hurt him pretty badly. I didn’t want him to die.”

  Marcianus acknowledged this. “The wound didn’t bleed much. As I say, it was clean. Very professional.”

  I shrugged again. I didn’t admit how much the blood on the man’s tunic, put there by me, had unnerved me.

  Marcianus gave me a keen eye, as though he knew what was going on in my head. “I heard the vigiles were looking for you last night. They must have given up.”

  “They sleep during the day,” Cassia said sourly. “I have no doubt they or the urban cohorts will try again later.”

  “I didn’t kill Selenius.” I spoke in a firm voice. I didn’t think Marcianus would be sitting here so calmly if he thought I’d murdered a man, but I wanted to make certain he knew the truth. “I don’t know who did.”

  “Tell me about his body,” Marcianus said, interested. “I’ll look at it if I can—who is his family?”

  “I only heard of him yesterday,” I began with a growl, but Cassia pulled another wax tablet to her and opened it.

  “Gaius Selenius was unmarried,” she said as she consulted her notes. “His house is on the Esquiline, where he lived with his sister, Selenia, and his nephew, who is also called Gaius Selenius—he adopted this nephew. The sister collected Selenius for burial, so I imagine his body is still at the house. Selenia and her son will inherit the business. I believe young Gaius is already having the shop cleaned.”

  Marcianus snorted. “He wastes no time.”

  Cassia did not look as disapproving. “Selenius’s rivals will waste no time taking his customers. If the Selenia and Gaius need the business to live, they will have to make sure they don’t lose too many punters to the taint of Selenius getting murdered in his own shop. You know how superstitious Romans are.”

  Marcianus’s smooth face split into a smile. “So are Greeks, dear lady. But in a different way, I grant you. The sister and nephew will have to appease Selenius’s spirit, yes, and any other spirits who took the opportunity of the violent death to flock in. And you are right. Such a thing should not be delayed. However …” Marcianus returned his attention to me. “If I cannot convince the poor woman to let me have a look at her brother’s body, we have only you, Leonidas, who can tell me of him. So please describe what you saw. Leave nothing out.”

  I didn’t want to revisit the room awash with blood, even in my mind, but did want to hear what Marcianus made of the death.

  I closed my eyes.

  If I concentrated on a thing I could remember it in its entirety. I don’t know whether this came from my training to always know where an enemy stood, or simply something in my humors, but I could picture a scene vividly for some time if I tried. Probably why I had so many nightmares. A curse from the gods, I thought it. Maybe one day I’d assuage whatever god I’d offended and be granted the blissful ability to forget.

  “Selenius’s shop,” I said. “Ten feet on a side, and in height. Light came through the open wall above his counter, from the atrium in the center of the macellum. He was lying under the counter, head bent against the wall, feet spread. His right sandal had one thong broken. His tunic must have been recently laundered, or it would not have been so white. That made the blood on it so much more vivid.”

  I broke off, bile rising. If I hadn’t been so worried about Sergius as I’d stood at the edge of the pool of blood, I’d have been out in a back lane, vomiting until there was nothing left.

  Marcianus’s tone gentled. “Can you describe the patterns the blood made? Think of it as paint—where had it been stroked?”

  I swallowed. Paint and blood might look similar, but paint smelled clean in comparison.

  “A line around his neck,” I said. “A stream down his throat, though some had dried and was caked. His tunic soaked with it, like it had caught a wave from the sea.” I swallowed again. “It spread from under his body, past his feet, to collect in a pool. It lapped almost all the way to the walls to either side of him. Only a small patch was left bare.” I’d used that patch to step around the room to Sergius.

  “Hmm.” I heard Marcianus’s interest but didn’t open my eyes. “What else?”

  I didn’t want to mention Sergius. I trusted Marcianus with my life, but he was a conscientious man. If he decided Sergius had killed Selenius, or at least had witnessed the death, he’d hunt the child down and take him to a magistrate.

  I wiped Sergius from the picture in my head. “There was a door on the other side of the room. I thought it led to the shop next to Selenius’s, but it didn’t. It went to tunnels that came out on a street not far from the fountain of Orpheus.”

  “Hmm,” Marcianus said again.

  “Hmm, what?” Cassia asked. “Your hmms have me most intrigued.”

  “It was a warm day,” Marcianus said. “And yet you say the cut on his neck was black, the blood there dried. I can’t be certain until I see this man myself, but I would guess he died somewhere in the fourth hour. Possibly close to the fifth, but no later.”

  Cassia gave a little victory hop in her chair. “Ha! Leonidas was asleep—sleeping quite soundly—until nearly the fifth hour yesterday. It took me the longest time to wake him. He left at a few minutes past the fifth hour—I made a note of it.” She pulled out a tablet filled with scratches to show Marcianus.

  Marcianus had seen Cassia’s records before, but he still looked awed upon viewing them. By habit, every day, Cassia noted every single time I came and went from the house, and every time she did, every place we walked, every coin we spent, and on what. She claimed she did this to keep us from running out of money, but I suspected she simply enjoyed it. A person can make a note of an expense without writing a lengthy record of every moment of the day.

  “If your notes can convince a magistrate, then Leonidas has nothing to worry about,” Marcianus concluded. “A witness to Leonidas’s sleep or Selenius’s death would be better though.” He meant a witness to my sleep other than Cassia. A slave’s testimony was not always regarded as relevant.

  “Our neighbors,” Cassia said in perfect seriousness. “They likely heard Leonidas snoring.”

  Marcianus chuckled. “You will have to ask, my dear. Leonidas, let me see your hands.”

  I frowned a bewildered moment, and then held them out, palm-up. Salt from the almonds sparkled on my skin. I hadn’t had time to bathe, so I carried the dirt from walking through the tunnels, my journey to Marcella’s farm, my ride on the merchants’ wagon, and whatever I’d touched between the Porta Capena and home last night.

  Marcianus clasped my wrists and dragged my hands to him, bending close to examine them.

  His strength always surprised me. Marcianus was a small man, but he could yank a reluctant gladiator around with ease. I didn’t like others touching me—I’d been pushed, shoved, and manhandled since I was a boy—but I’d learned to put up with Marcianus.

  He leaned over my right palm until his nose nearly touched it, and then ran a fingernail over the crease between my forefinger and wrist. “N
o blood there. Even if you wash carefully, blood can linger in the tiniest grooves in the skin. If you’d killed Selenius, you’d have had it all over you.”

  Marcianus released me with satisfaction. He rose with his usual vigor, lifted his bunched toga, and looped it around his arms. He’d need more help to position it correctly, but Cassia remained seated. Draping togas, she’d told me, was no more one of her talents than dressing hair.

  Marcianus drained his cup of wine, dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand, and headed for the door.

  “I will visit the man’s sister and try to examine the body,” he said, pausing on the threshold. “Don’t worry, lad. I’ll make sure you aren’t taken for it.”

  I’d stood up to see him out, though Marcianus was already halfway down the stairs before I reached the door. He waved up at me, turned the corner of the landing, and was gone.

  Cassia remained on her stool. She studied her tablet, her smiles gone, her expression troubled.

  I sat down on the stool Marcianus had vacated. “What?”

  Cassia let out a sigh. “Nonus Marcianus will do his best, but the only thing that will clear you for certain, Leonidas, is finding out who truly did this.”

  I agreed with her, but there was no use restating it. “Why didn’t you mention the forged vouchers?” I asked. When she hadn’t, I didn’t bring them up either, because I knew she’d have a reason why not.

  “They may have nothing to do with the murder, and Marcianus might have asked why I hadn’t alerted a magistrate about them right away. He is a stickler for the rules.”

  I reached into the bowl of almonds and closed my large hand around its remaining contents. “So are you.”

  Cassia gave me a prim look. “Only when it’s expedient. Ah, well, I suppose we’d better make a start.”

  I dumped the handful almonds into my mouth and chewed. “You make a start,” I said. “I’m for the baths.”

  Chapter 6