Medicus

62

The house felt chilly as he entered. The dog offered him the briefest of greetings and then dodged past his legs and out the door. Ruso sniffed and glanced around at the floor. The puppies must have been locked in for hours.

The kitchen hearth was a blackened void where the fire should have been. Ruso sniffed again and crouched to inspect the floor. Beneath the table was a small brown turd.

Outside, he heard Valens whistle for the dog. Moments later there were footsteps on the gravel. The main door slammed and Valens appeared in the kitchen, surveying the empty shelves and the dead fire.

"Where is she?"

"I don't know. The dogs haven't been let out."

"So where's our dinner?"

Something in Ruso's expression must have told Valens that this was the wrong question.

"She's probably gone shopping," suggested Valens. "Met up with a friend or something. You know how women talk. Perhaps she's dropped around to Merula's."

"I'd be amazed if she'd gone there. Anyway, she'd know to come back by now."

"Well, I can't wait till she turns up. If you get the fire going, I'll go and talk nicely to the kitchen staff. See if they can sneak something past Priscus." Valens paused. "I wouldn't worry, old man. She's bound to show up before long."

"It's getting dark. Something's wrong."

"Then she'll be back any minute, won't she?" Valens grinned. "Cheer up. You'll be able to give her a good spanking."

"Thanks."

"I'll do it if you like."

Ruso scowled. "Just disappear, will you?"

By the time men, dog, and puppies had eaten Valens's gleanings from the hospital kitchen ("This is just like old times, isn't it?"), it was time to light the lamps. Leaving Valens to cover his on-call duties, Ruso put a lead on the dog and went out to look for his servant.

It was not as dark outside as it had seemed in the house. As he waited for the dog to finish sniffing around the shadowy nettle patch, Ruso's eyes adjusted to the gloom. He could pick but the rectangular shape of the next barracks block, the roof of the hospital, and, turning, the outline of the main wall at the end of the street across the perimeter road. As he watched, he heard the tramp of guards. Two shapes moved steadily toward each other along the top of the wall, crossed, and continued in opposite directions.

A breeze plucked at the fabric of his spare cloak and suggested there was rain on the way. "That's enough, dog," urged Ruso, eager to move but not sure of his direction. He did not want to imagine what might have happened to Tilla, but imagination was his only tool in deciding a sensible pattern for the search. If she had run into the wrong man-and the gods knew, he had tried many times to warn her-she could be anywhere. Alive or dead. Inside the fort or out. Inside, he felt, was less likely. The men's lack of privacy and propensity to gossip would serve as some protection.

He stopped at the hospital in case there was a message, but there were no notes at the desk. Decimus's assurance of "I'm sure she'll turn up soon, sir!" was bright rather than confident, and Ruso wondered how many people had said the same thing to him about Asellina.

"Decimus, what do you know about a builder called Secundus-century of Gallus?"

Decimus frowned. "Nothing, sir. Gallus's men haven't been back long."

"Where from?"

"I don't know exactly, sir. Somewhere in the north."

"When did they get back here?"

"Last week sometime, sir. They brought a couple of wounded in for treatment."

"Oh."

"I could find out which day if you like, sir."

"No," said Ruso, "last week is good enough."

In the end he headed toward the east gate. A couple of times along the way he called her name experimentally into the night air, as if he were calling a lost pet. There was no reply.

There was a brief flash of hope at the gate when one of the guards said, "Ah, you mean Tilla, sir!" He and his comrade had seen her leave clutching a shopping basket at her usual time in the morning. He sounded as though they looked forward to these morning sightings. Disappointingly, they had been elsewhere since then and had only just come back on duty.

"Have you lost her, sir?"

"No," said Ruso. "She's just very late. If you see her, tell her to report directly to my house."

He passed through the gates and made his way across the open area that separated the fort from the civilian buildings. At this time of night the town was little more than a huddle of angular shapes illuminated by the occasional glimmer of a torch. Somewhere among the buildings, a dog barked. There was the faint sound of a baby crying. He heard the approach of voices and stepped sideways onto the road's shoulder. Three men ambled past, too deep in a disagreement about horse racing to notice him. When they had gone, the street was empty. Ruso stepped back onto the paved surface and tried not to imagine what might be happening to a girl who was wandering the streets at this time of night.

The entrance to Merula's was lit by the usual pair of torches. Someone was playing twittering flute music inside but a quick glance from the safety of the shadows across the street confirmed what Ruso suspected: There were few customers tonight. He wondered whether the security raid had frightened them off, and whether Merula had guessed as much as Bassus had.

Stichus was leaning back against the bar with his arms folded, looking bored. Behind him, Daphne paused from pouring drinks to press her hands into the small of her back and stretch her expansive belly. A girl whom Ruso vaguely knew as Mariamne emerged from the kitchen with a loaded tray She carried it across to the table in the corner where Merula was mercifully busy with a couple of customers whom Ruso recognized from the early-morning officers' briefing. There was no sign of Tilla.

A pair of heavy boots appeared on the stairs. Bassus made his way down to the bar, ordered a drink from Daphne, and emerged to drink it outside under the torch. Ruso crossed the street and stood beside him, out of sight of the bar.

Bassus frowned. "I thought you weren't going to show your face 'round here?"

"I came to ask if you'd seen Tilla."

Bassus slapped at something on his neck. "Bloody gnats. You'd think they'd be gone by September. She's not run out on you, has she?"

"Is she here?"

Bassus took a long pull on his drink. "She was here," he said. "Dropped by this morning. Just before our visit from the lads. We had a nice little chat. You know what? I think she fancies me."

"Did she say where she was going?"

"You haven't gone and lost her, have you? What about our agreement?"

"Not lost," promised Ruso. "Just-temporarily mislaid. Did she meet anyone here that she would have gone off with?"

"You told us to keep her away from the customers, remember?"

"Do you have men from the century of Gallus in here?"

"Not at the moment."

"Recently?"

"Had a bunch of them in a few days ago. Just got back from the north. Celebrating."

Ruso scratched his ear. Bassus had confirmed what he already suspected: Secundus could not have been involved with the death of Saufeia. Valens was right: He had been off-balance. The accident with the trowel had been a simple coincidence. As for the fire-he did not have time to worry about the fire now. He said, "Would any of the girls know where she was going?"

"The girls didn't see her. I did. And then she left. And if you don't want to get me into trouble, you'll do the same."

Tilla had still not returned when Valens and he went to bed. Ruso heard the third and fourth watch sounded. Once he got up to investigate a noise that might have been someone knocking, but when he opened the door there was nobody there. He called her name into the darkness. The only reply was a blustery spatter of rain.

He woke with an uneasy feeling that there was something he should remember. When he remembered it, the unease blossomed into an anxiety that lifted him out of bed before dawn to pace about in a house where her absence was almost tangible. He tried to silence his imagination by telling himself she had chosen to leave. Her arm was recovering: She didn't need him anymore.

Instead of being worried, he should be pleased. He owed it to his family to sell her, but he had not been looking forward to it. Now she had solved his dilemma by running away. The tale about Phryne had been a cover for some sort of primitive good-luck potion she was cooking up for herself. Tilla had fled from Deva and was safely on her way to the hilly lands of the Brigantes.

Valens came wandering into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. "No breakfast, then?"

Ruso shook his head. "Can you manage without me this morning?"

Valens's eyes squeezed shut and his mouth widened in a lopsided and unstifled yawn that displayed a couple of missing teeth and distorted his agreement into something like, "Yuhhhh."

Ruso wished the girls who called him "the good-looking doctor" could see him now.

"Wretched girl might have bothered to send a message," remarked Valens.

"I think she might have run off," confessed Ruso.

"Even so."

Ruso nodded. His relationship with the girl had been awkward, hesitant, and frequently bad tempered, but he thought they had developed some level of mutual respect.

"You did fix her arm for her," Valens continued, voicing Ruso's own thoughts.

"And paid money for the privilege," he grumbled. Damn it, if he hadn't rescued her from Innocens there might well have been a third dead girl found in Deva.

Immediately he wished he had not brought to mind the image of those bodies: the one strangled and bloated and the other barely recognizable as human. Why would Tilla have chosen to leave before her arm was healed? He had no evidence that she was on her way back to the Brig-antes. Her soul could already have begun the journey to a darker place. If that was true, then he wanted to know. He wanted to bury her himself. And then he would not only hunt down whoever had killed her: He would seek out the people who should have investigated the previous deaths, and hadn't. The trouble was, he was one of them.

He turned abruptly. "I'm going out," he announced.

In the gloom of his bedroom, he pulled on his overtunic without thinking once about scorpions. He flung his old cloak around his shoulders and paused to run a finger over the smooth, cold hilt of his knife.