The pursuer charged straight at me. I slammed the lantern into him, with a quick, hard smack, pushing him into an alley. He stumbled but was quickly up again, lithe and agile. The light of the lantern, before it fell and flickered out, showed me the face of Avitus.
He tried to get around me, but I blocked the way. Avitus knew the city well, and the way he danced from foot to foot, trying to move past me, told me that this tiny lane had only one outlet.
I caught Avitus and threw him into the wall. I crowded him, grabbing his hands before he could go for a knife.
“Leave off,” Avitus cried. He struggled mightily, trying to kick me, but he was slow, and I anticipated and stopped every move. “Let me go.”
“Not until you cease trying to kill me,” I growled.
“I’m not trying to kill you.” Avitus’s breath smelled of garum, which did not improve my temper. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“You paid Floriana to send me to the gods while I slept.” I pressed my hand around his throat when he started to protest. “Don’t deny you were there—Lucia saw you. Which is why you’re after her too.”
Avitus’s bulging eyes shone in the moonlight. “Never. I’d never …”
Cassia’s voice came from behind me. “Did you meet Floriana at the river, and murder her because she’d failed? And knew your plans?”
“No!” The choked word was adamant. “I’d never hurt her.”
“The mud near where her body was found was marked with the imprints of hobnails, like those on your caligae,” Cassia said.
Avitus stopped struggling and glared at both of us. “Well, they weren’t mine.”
I ground his head against the wall. “You knew Floriana, but you weren’t a customer. You never worked for her either. So why were you there the morning she was poisoned?”
“Of course I’d go when she took sick.” Avitus grunted for breath. “She was my mum.”
In my surprise, I loosened my hold. In the arena, that would have been fatal, but Avitus only hung in my slackened grip, terrified and angry.
“Floriana was your mother?” Cassia asked in surprise. “Is there a record of this we can check?”
“I dunno. Suppose.”
I pictured Floriana, with her angular body and too sharp face. Did I see the same features on Avitus? I couldn’t be certain in the darkness.
“If she was your mother, why did none of her ladies know?” Cassia asked. “Lucia would have told us if she’d known you were her son there to visit.”
“It was a secret.” Avitus’s face was streaked with the sweat of fear. “You can’t tell anyone—please, by all the gods, tell no one. I can’t be a vigile if it got out I’m a slave.”
“Floriana was a freedwoman,” Cassia pointed out.
“Not when she had me. But she gave me to my father, who was a legionnaire, and he pretended I was his son by another woman, a free citizen. He invented her. I didn’t know until a few years ago that Floriana was my true mum. My father finally told me when I wanted to join the vigiles. It was never exactly clear whether or not I was a freedman.” He trailed off into a mumble.
“A legionnaire took you in and raised you?” I asked, incredulous. “By himself?”
“He wanted a son.” Avitus glowered in defiance. “He looked after me. He married when I was about ten summers, and she became my mother. She was wonderful. She’s gone to Elysium now.”
His sadness tugged at me. I remembered the boy I’d been, when the only mother I’d known had slipped away in the night. They’d had to pry my hand from hers, and then I was alone.
“So you went to find Floriana,” I prompted.
“Yes, I did. She was happy, once she believed my story. But I never went near the night she was sick, and I never, ever killed her. I wouldn’t. She was my mum.”
His adamance rang of truth. When Avitus had lost his beloved stepmother, he might have tried to find his real mother to help fill the hole the stepmother had left.
Then again, Avitus might have gone to see Floriana to make certain she never told anyone he’d been slave born and possibly never freed by law. His father probably hadn’t filed official documents if he’d simply told everyone Avitus was his freeborn son.
My idea that Avitus had murdered Floriana hadn’t quite fizzled away—he still had a motive. But if he wasn’t a killer, he might be a