made me uneasy—they were a good target for a robber. Then again, the caskets were heavy, so a robber would have to bring much help to tote them away. Of course, if a gang broke into the house and killed all the inhabitants, they could take anything they liked.
Priscus grew more agitated as the days passed. He’d been calm enough when we’d arrived, but when his servants returned each afternoon telling him the ship had not yet appeared, he paced the atrium or the garden outside, or climbed to the second floor to stare from the arched window toward the harbor buildings, bright in the December sunshine.
On the third day, it rained, clouds and mist blotting out the view. The apartment was cold, barely heated by braziers Priscus would not go near.
Priscus turned to me from the upstairs window…I’d been watching to make sure no one sent an arrow through it into his brain.
“Do you think I am mad, Leonidas?”
Not a question one wants to answer if one needs to be paid. Priscus studied me as he waited, brown eyes anxious.
“I have not known you long enough to decide,” I said.
Priscus’s quick smile did not erase the worry in his eyes. “I never used to be mad, but I’m being driven to it. A great fortune is a burden, my friend. Everyone wants it, will do anything to obtain it.”
As I’d never owned more than what I’d won as prize money, which had gone very fast, most of it to Aemil, I could only regard him without expression.
“Having what you need and no more is best,” Priscus went on. “An excess of money is cold comfort when those you love are gone.”
His wife, he meant. Priscus must have been very fond of her. I wondered if he’d lavished expense on her tomb, praising her with a long inscription.
“You must be curious as to why I’ve journeyed to Ostia myself to fetch this cargo.” Priscus turned to the window, hands behind his trim back. He wore a tunic only, as usual when he was indoors, not much different from mine except for its costly fabric.
He seemed to want an answer, so I said, “Yes.”
“I’d give my life for what I’m waiting for, though I’d prefer not to.” He made a wry grimace. “Which is why I let Celnus persuade me to hire a guard. I hear your slave drove a hard bargain. Winning against Kephalos is impressive.”
I recalled Cassia haggling like the best moneylender with Priscus’s scribe.
“She is an unusual servant for a former gladiator,” Priscus went on.
“Cassia was given to me.” I hesitated. Most men didn’t want to know the true thoughts of their bodyguards, but I continued, “I’m not sure exactly what to do with her.”
Priscus laughed, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “I am pleased to hear you say so. You are not a brute, which is why I have followed your career so closely. You fight to win but not mercilessly. You use skill, not cruelty.”
I gave him another nod. I’d learned to battle without passion. Regulus let himself succumb to anger, which is why I always bested him.
Priscus returned to studying the rainy harbor. He twitched, bouncing on his toes.
I wondered—he was vastly wealthy, he’d followed my career and seemed to know much about me, and was interested in my past.
Was he the benefactor who’d given me my freedom? He’d asked for me personally when his majordomo had insisted he hire a bodyguard. A man who believed that a person needed only what satisfied basic requirements might have chosen Cassia because she was good with money, and could help me live decently on very little.
I studied the man, a well-muscled former soldier who had enough kindness to let his less-fit servants rest on a journey he could have easily made without halting. A man who mourned his wife, preferring her to the riches she’d left him when she’d died.
It was very possible Priscus had decided to bestow silent generosity on a gladiator who was destined to fight until he was killed on a day he moved too slowly.
I would have to talk it over with Cassia, but I thought it a good possibility.
In the morning, the door slave ran in excitedly to the room in which Priscus took his small breakfast of figs and cheese, to announce that the ship had arrived.
Priscus’s face changed. While he’d been calm but resolute this morning, his expression flickered with terror before settling into that of a stern general.
“I will