Julius shrugged. “He’ll set the prices at what he thinks he can get, just as he would have before coming down here, though he might ask fifty for me, out of spite.”

“Caesar’s right,” Gaditicus said, “he was just playing with us.” He chuckled suddenly. “Fifty! Did you see his face? That was Rome in you, lad.” His laughter broke off into coughing, but he still smiled.

“I think you were wrong to bait him,” Suetonius continued, and one or two of the others muttered agreement.

“He killed Romans and sank Accipiter and you think we should play his little games? I’d spit on you if I had any,” Julius snapped. “I meant it too. Once I’m free, I will find him and cut him down. Even if it takes years, he will see my face before he dies.”

Suetonius scrambled at him, raging, but was held by Pelitas as he tried to get past.

“Sit down, you idiot,” Pelitas growled, shoving him back. “There’s no point fighting amongst ourselves and he’s barely recovered as it is.”

Suetonius subsided with a scowl that Julius ignored, scratching idly under his splint as he thought. His eyes took in the sick men lying in damp, stinking straw.

“This place will kill us,” he said.

Pelitas nodded. “We know they guard the top of the steps with two men. We’d have to get past them. Now we’re docked, it might be worth a go?”

“Maybe,” Julius said, “but they’re careful. Even if we could dig the hinges out of the door, the deck hatch is bolted from above every time someone comes in here, even Cabera. I don’t see how we could break it fast enough to get out before there’s a crowd waiting for us.”

“We could use Suetonius’s head,” Pelitas said. “A few sharp blows and one of them would give way. Either way, we win.” Julius chuckled with him.

The following night, one of the sick men died. The captain allowed Cabera to drag out the body and dump it over the side without ceremony. The mood of those left sank toward complete despair.

CHAPTER 8

I am surrounded by women,” Tubruk said cheerfully as they entered, bringing life and energy into the quiet triclinium. In the weeks that had followed Fercus’s bringing him inside the gates and passing the bill of sale into his untied hands, Tubruk had regained much of the peace he had lost in the city. Coming together each morning to eat had become a ritual for them, and Tubruk had begun to look forward to the light breakfast. Aurelia was always at her best in the mornings, and if he was any judge, there was true friendship between Cornelia, Clodia, and herself. The house had not seen laughter since before the slave riots, and they lifted Tubruk’s spirits.

His face had healed with time, thought he bore a new scar over his left eye to remember the ordeal. He recalled the relief he’d felt when he first saw the legionaries dressed in black on the city streets, a uniform the city would see for a full year of mourning at the Dictator’s death. Even then, the dark cloth had seemed inappropriate to the mood of Rome. Fercus had told him there was a fresh breeze blowing through the Senate, with Cinna and Pompey working to restore the old Republic and once again lay the ghosts of kings that Sulla had brought back to the streets.