her eyes, forehead puckering. “I’m sorry, Leonidas. I’ll bring the bread.” She pushed at the covers again then fell back, letting out a quick breath. “I seem to be so very tired.”
I rested my hand on her shoulder, over the dried smear of my blood. “Never mind. Rest, Cassia.”
She opened her eyes and smiled at me, then drew a long breath and drifted into a quiet sleep.
Marcianus closed his bag, his cheerfulness returning. “She will be all right. Let her sleep, and take her home.” He looked me up and down. “You’d better sleep too. I don’t want to have to carry you anywhere.”
I was too exhausted to respond to his humor. I left the bed to stretch out on the floor beside it. I curled around myself as I’d done many a night in my life, when I’d had nothing but a hard slab and no blankets. Within moments, I was fast asleep.
I woke with a grunt when something poked my side.
“Wake up, Leonidas.” Cassia stood over me, in her palla and stolla, a slender piece of gilded wood tapping me. A blanket covered my body, a pillow under my head.
While I stared muzzily up at her, Cassia let out a breath of relief.
“Thank the gods. I’ve been trying to rouse you for hours. It is long past time for us to go home.”
Our apartment was musty and stale from being shut up all morning, and noisy—the wine shop was open, with customers lined up to collect their drink for the day.
Cassia immediately lifted the water jar from its place in the corner and headed for the door, ready to fill it as she did every day. She staggered under the clay pot’s weight, and I took it out of her hands.
“You are not well,” I declared.
“A bit dizzy, yes.” Cassia pressed fingers to her temple. “Marcianus said I would be ill a while yet.”
“Rest.” I pointed at her bed. “I will fetch the water.”
She began to laugh. “You, go to the well? That’s a woman’s task.”
“Then the women will have something to talk about today.” I hefted the jar to my shoulder and strode through the door and down the stairs.
“Wait, I must tell you …”
Cassia’s voice drifted behind me. Whatever it was could wait—I’d fetch water and then bread from the bakery. She could talk to me as we ate.
I felt light as I walked, lighter than I had even when I’d been handed my freedom and departed the ludus. Then I’d been stunned, uncertain. Today I knew I’d been given a gift.
Marcianus had brought Cassia back to life. He’d done it not by the magic of my blood or his invocation of the gods, but by his expertise. I would have to find some way to repay him.
Tullius was dead, and Nero had heard his confession. Tullius would no longer threaten Priscus, and I would not be accused of Floriana’s murder. I would eat my breakfast, see that Cassia was comfortable, and we could both sleep.
The well nearest our house sat the bottom of a castellum, a tower that collected water from an aqueduct and sent it via pipes to the public fountains. The basin at the foot of the tower dispensed water through the mouth of a carved-stone Bacchus, stone leaves surrounding his scowling face.
Most people drew water early in the morning, so only one startled woman was there at this hour. She drew back when she saw me, her mouth dropping open, then she jerked her vessel from the spigot and hastened away, water sloshing in her wake.
I set the jar I’d brought beneath Bacchus’s mouth and let him spill water into it. The fountain’s basin sported a carved groove that allowed the ever-flowing water out into the gutter, where it trickled along the street, seeking escape into the sewers.
“You are Leonidas?”
I rose, lifting the full jar, now heavy and damp.
The man who addressed me was perhaps ten years older than I, with black hair in thick curls. He was tall and broad of shoulder, filling out a tunic of fine linen. He wore no toga, but his boots were well made, and a thick gold wristlet proclaimed his wealth. Three burly men stood behind him—his guards. No man wearing so much gold should walk about alone.
“I am.” I suspected he was an admirer of Leonidas the Spartan, and I waited patiently for him to tell me which bouts he remembered.
“I am Sextus Livius.”
I couldn’t place the name for a moment, then I recalled