Ten for Dying

Chapter Twenty-one

Dedi pressed back against the shadowed wall of the Hippodrome as a gang of Blues erupted from an archway, cursing and laughing.

“So much for that!” one grunted.

“A rope necklace solves a lot of problems,” laughed another.

Dedi had halted abruptly just beyond the light from the torch beside the entrance. His attention shifted instantly from his own quarry to fear that he might spotted by the Blues and become a quarry himself.

Not that he would escape them for long.

Fortunately one of the beggars who clustered around the archway at night extended a grubby palm. Either he was blind or his humors were deranged, Dedi thought. Nobody begged from a Blue.

A Blue kicked the beggar’s legs out from under him. The pack moved in and the man was reduced to a bloody heap in scarcely less time than it took them to cross the street singing a ribald song after they’d finished.

Suddenly there was a figure bending over the moaning beggar. It had appeared from nowhere, as if precipitated out of the thick, rank night air by the evil Dedi just witnessed. The figure straightened up and with a thrill of horror Dedi recognized the face of the hellish being for which he had been keeping a watch, the thing that had taken the form of Antonina’s servant Tychon.

When the thing set off at a rapid pace parallel to the Hippodrome, it had two shadows. One its own, the other Dedi.

Its destination proved to be Baths of Zeuxippos. Why not? A creature mimicking a human would mimic human habits, Dedi reasoned as he stayed close on its heels. The creature paid the small fee to enter the baths and disappeared into the echoing portico.

Dedi, delayed at the entrance, finally located his quarry again near a fountain in the vast atrium. It was talking to two men seated on a curved bench. Dedi pretended to study the inscription on the base of a nearby statue of Demosthenes. From what he could overhear, the men were discussing palace scandals and whether the Green team had a chance of beating the Blues in the next round of chariot races.

“If the Blue charioteers are as savage on the track as their partisans are on the streets, the Greens don’t stand a chance,” the thing passing as Tychon said, and went on to describe what the Blues had done to the beggar. “He had a few coins on him. Enough to pay my way in here and buy me a drink.”

The bronze orator looked on, tight-lipped, as if expressing disapproval of the artless conversation.

At last the demon set off again. Turning down one corridor after another, he came to a cold pool, deserted at this time of night.

Dedi lurked beside its entrance. Venturing a peek around the corner of the doorway he saw the thing begin to strip off its clothing. He held his breath. Perhaps it hadn’t bothered to retain a semblance of humanity beneath its garments, nor would it bother to do so with no one, so it seemed, around.

Dedi braced himself for some vision of horror, hooves, a scaly tail.

There was only a pair of buttocks, paler than twin moons.

The cunning creature padded off to the pool. Dedi saw the thing dangle its legs into the water, which did not sizzle and boil at the touch of the infernal flesh as Dedi half expected.

Moving quickly Dedi crept into the changing room, pushed aside the tunic left crumpled on a bench, grabbed the woven belt underneath, and slipped silently away.

Unseen.

He hoped.