Then they both caught sight of the dead slave.
“Get dressed,” Batiatus said, suddenly deadly serious. “This is no drunken brawl.”
Successa ducked back inside the room, only to scream in shock.
A man was climbing through her window, sword in hand.
Batiatus followed her into the room. He swiftly snatched up a blanket, throwing it over the new arrival. He grabbed Successa and guided her quickly to the stone steps that led to the upper floor.
Their pursuer charged after them, throwing off the blanket, and revealing the squat, black, scarred face of a Numidian warrior. Even as Batiatus flinched from him, he leapt through the air, sword outstretched toward Batiatus’s neck-
Only to stop suddenly and smack to the ground, hard.
Someone had grabbed his ankles mid-flight. The Numidian kicked savagely with his legs at his new assailant: a Thracian, newly clambered through the same window.
“Spartacus!” Batiatus cried in surprise and relief.
Spartacus did not pause to greet his master, instead he dragged the Numidian down the stone steps and back into the central atrium.
In the distance, Barca and the Teuton punched each other on the floor, still neither had the upper hand.
The Numidian seized the fallen mop, jabbing it up at Spartacus like a spear. The assault threw the Thracian off-balance, affording the Numidian a vital chance to kick himself free and clamber back to his feet, sword in hand.
Spartacus and the Numidian eyed each other warily for a moment, before the laughing Numidian lunged at the gladiator with his sword. Spartacus lunged forward, too, to the side, snatching the Numidian’s sword-arm behind the wrist, and tugging him forward.
The Numidian lost his purchase on the wet floor, tumbling a second time. His head cracked with a sickening thud against the stones of the hearth. He lolled, his arms and legs twitching, as blood and gray brain matter seeped out onto the flagstones. Spartacus turned to the other side of the hall, where Barca and the Teuton wrestled.
The Teuton had gained the upper hand, hefting Barca by the waist and throwing him toward the hearth. Spartacus leapt over the fallen Carthaginian, grabbing the Teuton by his long hair, a foot sliding out to trip him up.
The Teuton snarled in anger, whirling to snatch up his own fallen knife, not seeing the great dangling cauldron hook behind him as the Thracian dragged him by the hair, shoving him with irresistible force, inch by inch, toward the piercing, sharp prong.
The room was suddenly silent, but for the creaking of the chains that held the cauldron hook, and the gentle pattering of the Teuton’s blood on the floor and table, as the dead body swayed gently, his feet dragging on the flagstones.
Spartacus helped Barca to his feet, and their hands clasped in momentary unspoken brotherhood.
“Gratitude,” Batiatus said, stepping forward. “I owe you-” He stopped himself suddenly, remembering his father’s folly with enslaved bodyguards. “I owe you gratitude,” he finished carefully.
“Two sicarii,” Successa said, trembling as the reality only now began to take hold. “Did they come for you, or me…?” She sat down on the floor, shaking in shock.
“Or one each,” Spartacus said, “as one was sent to kill Cicero, and another to kill Medea.”
“Are they-?”
“Both are safe. I made sure of that.”
“This place is not secure,” Barca said.
“Gratitude, Barca, for observations unrequired,” Batiatus said. “Absent a confession extracted from one of the killers, we must work with what we have.”
“Your meaning?” Spartacus asked.
“Someone seeks to kill a select group, or perhaps merely to silence us. All the targets are presences usefully absent from the magistrate tomorrow…” He looked at the rosy light of dawn beyond the balcony. “… or rather, later this morning.”
“This is Verres’s doing?” Successa said tentatively, willing it not to be so.
“Verres? Timarchides? Perhaps the pair,” Batiatus replied.
“Absent proof, you might as well be accusing the winds,” Spartacus said. “They have the protection of freedmen against idle accusations.”
“I seek not proof, I seek safety,” Batiatus said. “Ilithyia is already on her way to Atella. Lucretia should take litter and join her to place herself beyond harm.”
“Someone must stand guard over her,” Spartacus said.
“Barca. He has ties to the ludus that he would not dare sever with flight,” Batiatus said, meeting his bodyguard’s eyes.
“Dominus,” Barca responded curtly.
“Rouse Lucretia now!” Batiatus instructed. “There must be no delay. Return with her to Capua!”
“You, too, should flee,” Spartacus said. “There is nothing left here for the House of Batiatus.”
“Cicero and I have business to attend with the magistrate this morning, with Varro as our protector. And you will stand guard over the witch. My witch.”
XVI
Varro walked without complaint by the side of the litter, along the morning road, unheeding of the birdsong.
Batiatus left the curtain open so that he might speak to his prize as the slavers carried him along the hill road. Cicero sat upright by his side, his brow furrowed in concentration, his lips moving silently as he practiced imaginary rhetorics.
“We pause at the undertakers on the road,” Batiatus said to Varro, “seeking testimony as to the manner of Pelorus’s death.”
“Dominus,” Varro said.
“Evidence to further good Cicero’s suit today against the boy-loving Timarchides.”
“I doubt his predilections,” Varro said.
“He never ceases to speak of them,” Batiatus said.
“Yes dominus, but it occurs to me that he might overstate his interests?”
“For what reason?” Cicero asked, pausing in his mutterings to join the conversation.
“Timarchides’ motivatation seems to be antipathy toward Romans, rather than love of men,” Varro said carefully.
“Why tell such falsehoods?” Cicero said.
“For the forging of a chain of deceit,” Varro said. “A chain that links him to Pelorus in a more intimate fashion than truly warranted, to smooth the passage of the inheritance.”
“I would need proof for that,” Cicero said.
“Before the primus, I was witness to Timarchides bidding farewell to his brother gladiators from House Pelorus,” Varro said.
“Warm embraces all round no doubt,” Batiatus laughed.
“They were less than kind?” Cicero asked.
“I imagine so!” Batiatus said. “To the gods-favored bastard who gained his freedom but hours before all the slaves within the house were condemned to die. And all because he happily sat on the master’s cock!”
“Perhaps not,” Cicero said.
“Come now, good Cicero. Verres all but proclaimed it at the funeral. Timarchides was beloved to Pelorus more so than any woman.”
“Was he, dominus?” Varro put in. “Spartacus and I heard the insults of the gladiators as he departed. They called him many names. They accused him of cowardice and theft. But not once of being the lanista’s lover. Surely, if a gladiator wished to cut another with words, such obscenity would be made prominent abuse?”
“The hearsay of dead men,” Batiatus said dismissively, “attested by gladiators in my employ. Such testimony is of no use.”
“Indeed, dominus. But Timarchides himself refuted it.”
“Go… on…”
“He swore to them that he purchased his freedom. And that the price of his purchase was recorded upon his wooden sword.”
Batiatus looked expectantly at Cicero, who nodded enthusiastically.
“It would be,” Cicero said. “And such evidence that Timarchides dare not destroy, lest any citizen in the future question his manumission. This is useful. As is the news that the first victim that Medea’s violence claimed that night was Verres himself.”