People are crowded around the base of the building. We shoulder our way through.

A few bystanders huddle around Verina and the smashed cart. She’s bleeding badly, a leg twisted at an unnatural angle, and her movements are sluggish and weak.

Drusus and Lucius, however, are gone.

“Where are they?” Arabo looks around. “They couldn’t have—”

“The others,” someone says, pointing frantically down a side street. “They went that way!”

Arabo and I both run in the direction we’re pointed. The crowd is thinner here, as the road leads farther away from the marketplace and into the less savory parts of the city, but still we don’t see any sign of Lucius or Drusus.

The road splits. Arabo goes left, I go right. It’s narrower here, with shadows and crevices in all directions where the men could be fighting, nursing their wounds, waiting to ambush us, dead.

Gods, show me Drusus. Please, please, take me to him . . .

They fell from a second floor. If they’re able to outrun us and get this far from the cart that broke their fall, they can’t be seriously wounded. Not yet, anyway. I don’t imagine they’re running away from each other.

The narrow road spills out into an intersection, and from here, roads and alleys fan away like spokes on a wagon wheel. I skid to a halt, panting as I try to figure out which way they might have gone.

Arabo jogs out from one of the side roads. “Did you find him?”

I shake my head. “Lost them both.”

“Curse it.” He looks back, then turns to me. “If they can move, they’re going to keep moving. And we’re nearly out of daylight, so—gods, Saevius!”

I blink. “What?”

He cranes his neck. “Your tunic. It’s a bloody mess.”

I reach back with one arm, and my fingers meet soaked linen. When I draw my hand back around, my fingertips are red.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“I’m fine.” I moisten my lips, my head suddenly lightening as the loss of blood catches up with me. “Just reopened wounds.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “We need to get you back to the ludus.”

“What about Verina? And Drusus?”

“The gods know where Drusus has gone.” He purses his lips. “Let’s go back and see about Verina, but then you need to see the medicus.”

I nod, and we hurry back down the side street to the chaotic scene beneath the gaping hole in a second story wall. A frantic crowd has formed around the cart and the bloody, twisted woman who’s now completely motionless beside it.

Arabo grabs my arm. “We have to get out of here.”

I gesture at the cart. “But what about Verina?”

He glances past me, shaking his head. “She’s dead. And this place is probably going to be overrun with Vigiles before long.” He shoves me toward another alley. “Let’s go.”

I throw one last glance toward Verina, but she’s deathly still and as ghostly white as her dress. What little of her dress remains white, that is. There’s nothing more I can do for her, so I follow Arabo out of the marketplace.

“Where would Drusus have gone?” I ask.

“If he’s alive, he’ll come back to the ludus,” Arabo says “Nowhere else he can go.”

“Unless he thinks they’ll come looking for him.”

“Who?” Arabo looks at me. “Who is behind this?”

I hesitate. “I don’t know for certain.”

“And Lucius was involved.”

“Him and Iovita.”

Shaking his head, Arabo mutters, “Bastards.” He turns to me. “Do you think there are more of them? Among the familia?”

“I don’t know.”

Arabo says nothing for a moment. As the ludus comes into view up ahead, he lowers his voice. “The men cannot know Drusus is missing. The whole familia will fall into chaos.”

“And they’ll likely kill me if I set foot in the ludus.”

“Where else can you go?”

I blow out a breath, but don’t have an answer.

“It’s getting dark,” Arabo says. “We’ll go in the back, and I’ll make sure no one sees you.” He glances at my back, one eyebrow raised. “You’ll be going to the infirmary instead of your cell anyway.”

“Do you really think I’ll be safe there?”

“You will be if I pay off the medicus.” He glances at me, then adds, “Under the circumstances, I think Drusus would forgive us for using the ludus treasury.”

“Let’s hope so,” I mutter. “What will you tell the men about Drusus?”

Arabo’s quiet again. Then, “That he’s attending to a matter in the city, and that the men are to continue their training in his absence.”

“Will they believe you?”

Arabo walks a little faster. “Gods, I hope so. But it depends on how many of them are in on the plot to kill him and Verina.”

“And if he turns up dead?” The thought sends a sickening shudder through me.

“Then there’s little we can do.”

I wince and curse as the medicus’s needle pierces my back once again.

“Don’t move,” he says.

“Then put some more of that tincture on it,” I grumble.

He dabs a damp cloth against the wounds. I suck in a breath through my teeth.

“You wanted more,” he points out, and removes the cloth. As he begins suturing again, the pain isn’t as fierce.

“Still working on him?” Arabo’s tone is a mixture of concern and amusement. When I look up at him, his brow is knitted with far more of the former than the latter.

“I’ll be fine.” I glance back at the medicus. “I hope.”

“Your own fault for not letting him sew it up last night while it was still fresh, you fool,” Arabo says with weak amusement.

“I didn’t want to wake him.”

The medicus says nothing, just jabs the needle in with a bit more force this time.

Arabo winces when I do, but doesn’t speak.

Once the medicus has finished suturing and bandaging my back, and Arabo and I are alone, I whisper, “Any news?”

“Lucius just returned.” He gestures at one of the windows looking out at the training yard below us. “On an undertaker’s cart. Beaten and bruised, just like the lot of us, but the side of his head’s smashed in and he took a blade across the throat.”

My heart beats a little faster. “Think Drusus killed him?”

“I hope so,” Arabo mutters. “Question is, where is he now?” He drums his fingers rapidly on the table. “He’s either been arrested or killed. Otherwise he’d have come back by now.”

“There has to be more we can do.” I rake a hand through my hair. “Something other than waiting here for another cart to bring him back.”

“I know,” Arabo says quietly. “In the meantime, the men have accepted my insistence that Drusus is in the city handling business matters, but they’ll only buy that for so long. If they catch wind he might not be coming back . . .”

I exhale, but say nothing.

Down below, whistles and catcalls replace the usual sounds in the training yard.

“What in the name of the gods . . .” I stand, with Arabo’s help, and we both go to the window to look outside.

One of the gate guards dwarfs a young woman as he escorts her across the yard. Her eyes are wide, her tiny shoulders bunched, and she watches the men warily. Rightfully so: she’s dressed and painted like a whore, and a yard full of dangerous brutes is no place for her.

“Who is she?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Arabo says. “Stay here. I’ll go check it out.”

He leaves, and it’s only a few moments later when he returns, the young woman walking timidly behind him.

“She’s here to see you,” he says.

“Me?” I look at her.

She nods. “My name is Sidonia. I was sent to summon you.”

“To where?”

“My madam’s brothel.”

I pick up the clean tunic Arabo brought me earlier. “I’m in no condition to service anyone. Take someone else.”

Sidonia doesn’t move. “I was ordered to bring you and no one else. Mother Lucretia says you must come immediately.”

I chew my lip. The same brothel where I’ve serviced wives, but also reported to Ataiun and, on one occasion, Calvus himself. Surely one or the other is waiting for me now.