He stumbles back a step, but quickly rights himself.

“Hey!” I grab his arm. “Watch yourself.”

“Out of my way,” he snarls, jerking out of my grasp. He starts toward Verina again.

“Out of your way?” I grab his arm again and pull him back toward me. “You hit me, citizen.”

He swings his arm to get mine away from him, and I throw a balled fist at his covered face. He ducks, whirls around, and punches my gut, doubling me over. Sunlight flashes on metal, and someone gasps as the blade slices through the air toward me. My forearm deflects his wrist. The blade clatters to the ground, and I grab his arms.

He tries to jerk away. “Hey, what is your—” The hood slides back.

Our eyes meet.

I shove the hood off his head and stare in disbelief. “Iovita?”

“Fucking fool,” he snarls. “You’ll get us both killed.”

“I’m not the one with the dagger.”

He glares at me. “Let me go, gladiator. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Doesn’t it?” I growl. “What’s an auctoratus doing in the market with a dagger like that?”

“Protecting myself.” He tries to shove me, but gains little ground. “From fucking plebs who see danger where it doesn’t—”

I laugh dryly. “Of course. Danger where it doesn’t exist, except at the hands of armed auctorati roaming the streets.”

He scowls. Then he glances past me and curses. I tighten my grip on his arm and glance back myself in time to see Drusus emerging from the building.

Iovita grabs the front of my tunic and hauls me into a nearby alley where we’re no longer visible to people on the street, especially our lanista. He slams me up against the wall and presses a second blade against my neck. “I said, this doesn’t concern you, gladiator. Go back to the ludus, get back to your training, and never speak of this, or I will open your throat while you sleep.”

I swallow, which pushes my throat against the sharp edge. “Why are you pursuing him?”

“Drusus?” Iovita laughs. “You think I’d come all the way out here to pursue him?”

“The woman, then.”

Iovita’s humor instantly vanishes, and he presses the dagger harder against my flesh. “This is your last chance, Saevius. Walk. Away.”

“Tell me what—” I cut myself off and knock his arm away from my neck. The dagger drops to our feet, and I punch Iovita in the mouth. He recovers quickly and shoves me back against the wall. Then he hits me in the gut. Again. He draws back, but I bring my knee up between his legs, and he grunts in pain. I swing at him, and when I’m off balance, he throws an elbow into my chest, and we both topple onto the cobbled ground.

Fists, feet, elbows, knees; anything that can inflict damage does so. And somewhere in the melee, Iovita gets his hand on the weapon he dropped. I realize it just before the blade would have bitten into my hip. I pin his wrist with one hand and throw three rapid, violent punches into the side of his face. While he’s still stunned, I grab his other wrist, but he doesn’t let go of the dagger.

He tries to head-butt me, so I push myself up and force him over onto his stomach. I twist his arm behind him, and still he tries to swipe at me, but when I grab his wrist again and bend it backwards, he releases a roar of pain, and the dagger falls from his fingers.

“You’re a dead man, Saevius,” he snarls, and manages to free his arm. As he tries to get up, I pin him down again, this time with an arm around his neck.

“I don’t think so,” I reply as he continues trying to fight for an advantage. I tighten my arm around his neck. Iovita chokes and sputters, struggling under me.

Then he shifts to one side, freeing one of his arms, and I realize too late he’s gotten hold of the weapon again. He swings it back at me, the blade glinting as it narrowly misses my elbow.

Quickly, I wrap my arm around his head and jerk it to the side. With a sickening crunch, Iovita stills, and then goes limp.

Panting, heart pounding, I scramble up off him. There’s no one around, no one who might have seen or heard, so I get as far from his body as I can, hurrying out of the other end of the alley, then make my way through the streets until I’m a safe distance from Iovita’s body and hidden behind a row of crumbling apartments.

Once I’m certain I’m alone, I stop to catch my breath.

What was Iovita’s intent? Kill Verina? Kill both Verina and Drusus? And did Calvus send him in? For that matter, if there are others, am I the only one tasked with collecting information? Who else has orders to kill? And why don’t I have those orders? Or perhaps I just don’t have them yet?

And how long, I wonder with a shudder, before word gets back to Calvus that one of his men within the ludus—assuming Iovita was one of Calvus’s men—is dead? Then what?

What happens to Verina? To Drusus? To me?

If there’s one man within the familia interested in doing harm to Verina, then there are likely more. Perhaps others who were ordered only to gather information, as well as those ordered to kill. Presumably they’re working for Calvus just as I am. Who else would have any interest in Verina or her affairs? I have to warn Drusus, even if I’ll rouse suspicion when I see him alone again. I have to warn Drusus, even though any move I make now, especially with Iovita dead, will only deepen the familia’s suspicions.

I have no choice. None of the other men in the familia can be trusted. Drusus and Verina are in danger. Threats be damned, I have to warn him.

“Saevius, what’s the matter with you?” Titus picks up my sword off the ground and hands it to me hilt-first. “This is why you don’t stop your training for days at a time, you fool. You’re going to wind up in the pit if Drusus sees you fight like that.”

“If I live long enough to go to the pit,” I mutter. I returned shortly after my encounter with Iovita this morning, and it’s now well past noon. Drusus hasn’t yet returned. To avoid rousing suspicions, I rejoined the men in the training yard as soon as I came back, but I’m worried now. I need to speak to Drusus and soon.

Titus taps his sword against his shield. “Come on, now. Let’s try this again, maybe without fighting like a woman?”

“Like a woman?” I scoff and assume my defensive stance. “You’re asking to lose a limb, lad.”

He takes his stance as well and gestures at me with his shield. “I’d like to see you try.”

We begin another match, but we’ve barely put blade to blade when the squeak of the gates on their hinges turns both our heads.

A stranger strolls in. From behind him, one of the guards gestures at a novice gladiator. “Get the master at once. Go!”

The novice sprints across the yard and disappears around a corner. Moments later, he returns, barely keeping up with Drusus and his pair of massive bodyguards.

My heart jumps. Gods, he’s here? When did he come back?

“You Drusus?” the stranger asks.

“I am,” Drusus replies, folding his arms across his breastplate. “Who wants to know?”

“Just dropping off something that belongs to you.” He turns toward the gate and whistles. Immediately, a slave jogs into the yard, pulling a cart, and my throat tightens around my breath.

Heads turn and bouts stop, and as weapons fall silent, the only sound is the creaking of the wagon’s wheels.

And the buzzing of the flies swarming above the wagon.

The slave lifts the cart’s shafts, and the body tumbles out along with some filthy straw, head lolling on its broken neck as it hits the ground in a cloud of dust.

“Tag says it’s yours,” the undertaker says. The slave unceremoniously shoves the body all the way off the cart with his foot, then rights the cart. As they turn to go, the undertaker says, “Good day, sir.”

“What?” Drusus gestures at the body. “You’re just going to dump a corpse in my training yard?”