The Emperor's Knives

12

‘And you swear not to seek vengeance on this man Velox?’

Marcus looked down into his wife’s eyes and nodded.

‘I swear it. My thirst for revenge has been slaked, and with every mouthful the taste became more bitter than the last. Although I cannot say what will happen when Velox recovers from the beating that Flamma gave him.’

Felicia had examined the veteran gladiator’s body before Marcus and Cotta had dug a deep grave in the walled garden and carefully lowered the corpse into place.

‘That poor man was in agony, I can tell you that much just from the size of that part of his growth that was protruding from his body. It must already have consumed most of his lungs, and how he was able to fight a bout in that condition is a mystery to me.’

Marcus smiled sadly.

‘You should have known him ten years ago. And thank you for giving your permission to bury him here.’

She smiled, stroking his cheek.

‘Nobody will ever know, so the prohibition on burials within the city walls will never be a problem. And besides, how could I refuse you when it was clearly his intervention that saved your life. The altar looks nice …’

Sannitus had sent his men out to purchase a suitably ornate memorial, and with several hefty gladiators standing round him, the stonemason had been inspired to take up his chisel and carve the required words into the white marble without delay. Each of the fighters had vowed to return and make the appropriate sacrifice before heading back down into the city, and Julius had half persuaded and half dragged Dubnus away to the barracks, leaving Calistra in the care of the two ladies of the house. Felicia had spent an hour speaking quietly with the Dacian girl who, it transpired, had been captured in the same campaign the Tungrians had fought in the previous year.

‘That poor girl seems to have been through a lot, but I sense iron in her. She’ll need some time to get over her hardships though, she’s been raped enough times to have driven a gentler spirit to suicide. Your friend will have to demonstrate more patience than he’s known for.’

Marcus nodded, gesturing to the little dog Centurion as he gambolled around their feet.

‘And now, I think, it’s time for you to get ready. Julius and the tribune will be back soon, and you’ll have to go down to the barracks for a while.’

‘You think?’

Her husband smiled.

‘I don’t think, I know. Excingus had the look of a man with unfinished business when we last saw him, and I think that business has to do with you and I.’

The streets of the Aventine were quiet, the taverns and brothels having mostly closed for the night. The informant made his way carefully up the hill with the wine jar cradled in the crook of one arm, stepping round dark puddles of human waste poured from the higher floors of the insulae on either side, half a dozen protective figures skulking through the shadows at his back. He had purchased the container several hours before at a cut price, its contents having spoiled as the consequence of an imperfect seal between jar and plug. Pouring its contents away down the nearest drain to the highly animated disgust of half a dozen beggars, he carried the empty jar away to replace its previous contents with a different liquid altogether.

‘Here!’

The informant stiffened at the challenge, relaxing again as he realised it was the child Gaius, hidden in the shade of a doorway. The informant slid into the shadow alongside him, his whispered greeting edged with the usual sardonic tone.

‘I’m impressed. Most children of your age were in their beds hours ago.’

The boy showed his teeth in what might just have been a smile.

‘Most children of my age ain’t on the promise of a gold coin just to watch a house until you turn up. Where the fuck have you been? I’ve had to show my knife to two dirty old men while I’ve been sat here looking at nothing. And what’s in the jar?’

‘I’ve been sorting a few things out ready for going away. The jar contains one last gift from me to an old friend. Well, an acquaintance.’

The child looked past him at the man who had materialised from the shadows.

‘Hello, Dad.’

Silus grinned at his son, his teeth a slash of dull white in the darkness.

‘Hello, Son. All quiet?’

Gaius nodded.

‘All quiet. Them soldiers was up here earlier, but they only went to that shop, loaded some stuff into their cart and then buggered off back down the hill.’

Excingus frowned.

‘I still don’t see why they bothered with the whole barbering idea. Presumably they were carrying off the weapons they’d left in the shop. I hear they took the Hilltop Boys to pieces this morning.’

The child laughed without humour.

‘Didn’t do no good though. There was another gang on the street soon enough, telling the shopkeepers what’s what and putting them back in their place.’

Excingus smiled sadly.

‘It will ever be so, I’m afraid. Ah well, to business. You’re sure nobody’s been in or out of the house since the gladiators left?’

‘Nobody at all.’

‘And all of the gladiators left?’

Gaius nodded emphatically.

‘Hours ago. I counted them. All the soldiers went off down the hill too, that bloke in the toga and all his barbarians, and the officers that usually hang around with him.’

‘Which means that Marcus Valerius Aquila and his family are enjoying a quiet night after what must have been a joyous reunion. Plenty of wine taken, no doubt, which ought to make your task easier, Silus. Off you go then!’

The hired thug gathered his men to him with a grunted command, leading them across the road to the house’s wall. They paused for a moment in its shadows, then climbed swiftly over its smooth cap stones one at a time, dropping out of sight into the garden.

‘We’ll give your father a few minutes to do what has to be done, shall we, and then I’ll wander over and finish the job.’

Gaius nodded, looking with curiosity at the leather satchel on his employer’s back.

‘What’s in the bag?’

Excingus smiled at him benevolently.

‘Exactly the same question your father asked me not an hour ago. And the answer, young thief, is that it contains more money than you could ever imagine.’

The boy’s face screwed up in disbelief.

‘What, in that little satchel? Not likely …’

‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. Listen and learn, you revolting little monster. There is money in my bag, enough to pay you and Silus for your services, and a further sum by way of a reward for getting me to my ship in Ostia later this morning. But since I’m not entirely unaware of the risk that Silus, being a direct sort of man, might simply murder me here and take his bonus without having actually earned it, it is in the form of a banker’s draft.’

‘A what?’

Excingus sighed.

‘A banker’s draft. A piece of paper that details the money I have given to my banker, a man of undoubted trustworthiness as evidenced by his membership of his profession’s guild. I’m carrying two such drafts, one to give to Silus when I’m safely aboard my ship, and another which allows me access to my total fortune, which, I should add, is considerable, at any city large enough to merit the presence of other bankers. All I have to do is prove my bona fides to the banker in that far off place, and he will provide me with money against that draft. The proof is a word, something known to both bankers, which I will tell Silus once my safety from his somewhat acquisitive nature-’

‘His what?’

‘His fondness for killing people and taking their possessions.’

The child nodded, familiar with both his father’s choice of career and the enthusiastic manner in which he pursued its rewards.

‘So my old man takes this piece of paper, says this word to the banker, and he gets paid?’

‘Well done, you’ve grasped the concept. Further proof that your intelligence stems from your mother. Do your best to help Silus grasp the concept will you? I suspect he still has a yearning to knife me on the road to Ostia and claim my fortune for himself, which would be a shame for both of us. And no, since I know the way your devious little head works, I don’t know the word. It’s written on a piece of paper which I placed in my travel chest without reading it, a chest which has already been delivered to the ship in question. It really is quite foolproof, as long as you can persuade your father not to upset the apple cart and in doing so cheat himself out of his reward. And now, I think, Silus has had more than long enough to deal with a sleeping family. Stay here. He rose from the doorway’s concealment, padding carefully across the road and trying the door that led into the garden of Felicia’s house, gratified to find it unbolted.

‘You really are confident in your own abilities, aren’t you, Centurion. That must be the pride that took root just before the gods decided to punish you.’

The knock at the front door was soft, barely loud enough to be heard. After a moment, the signal was repeated, slightly louder than before, and Marcus opened the door to find Excingus standing there with a triumphant grin on his face and a large wine jar in the crook of his arm. The scene was illuminated by a small torch that had been placed in the sconce an hour or so before, its flames casting an orange tinge on the informant’s momentarily horrified face.

‘Ah … Centurion! I’ve … come to celebrate your miraculous escape from the very jaws of a slow and painful death!’

Peering over Marcus’s shoulder at the darkened room beyond, he frowned in apparent admonishment at the younger man.

‘Surely you won’t deny me a crumb of hospitality, Valerius Aquila? Can we let the past lie where it fell, and at least part company on civil terms?’

Marcus looked at him for a moment before replying.

‘My wife is asleep. Come in, say what you have to say and then leave us in peace.’

Excingus stepped into the house and Marcus pushed the door closed, the informant starting in surprise as he shot the bolts to secure it. Excingus looked about himself owlishly, unable to see very much as his eyes struggled to adapt to the room’s sudden darkness after the torch’s bright light. He tapped the wine jar with his free hand and spoke loudly into the darkness, praying that Silus and his men were close at hand.

‘Surely you’ll allow me the honour of offering a toast to your continued good fortune, for Fortuna must be looking at you with more than a little jaundice given the reliance you’ve put in her over the last few days? Fetch a pair of cups and we’ll take a drink to your long life and happiness.’

Marcus walked past him and then turned, shaking his head.

‘I don’t think the goddess would be all that impressed with the jar of rather badly spoiled Iberian red which you purchased in the market earlier, given that you spent rather less than would have been the case were it actually drinkable.’

The former grain officer’s eyes narrowed, and Marcus leaned forward to speak quietly in his ear.

‘You’re not the only person in Rome who knows how to have a man shadowed, Excingus. Our men not only saw you purchase the cheapest wine possible, they also watched you tip it out. You caused quite a commotion among the beggars, if you think back …’

His voice had taken on a confidential tone that failed to distract Excingus’s attention from the dagger that had appeared in the young centurion’s hand, and whose point was pressed against the inside of his thigh. Something moved in the shadows behind him, and the informant started as a rough voice muttered in his ear.

‘Come on, sir, spare us a sip of the good stuff!’

‘The beggars?’

Marcus nodded.

‘You’ve been using those children to watch us, Excingus, so it felt only reasonable to return your interest. We’ve had eyes on you, Informant …’

Julius stepped out of the darkness, the indistinct lines of his shadowed face resolving into hard, angry features. He nodded to Marcus, taking Excingus by the throat.

‘It was a neat enough plan. Your hired thugs slip into the house and butcher my centurion in his sleep, kill his son, rape and murder his wife, and then let you in with your jar of wine so that you can torch the place. Or perhaps you planned for your victims to burn alive, their screams telling the story of a house fire with horrible consequences?’

He gripped the informant’s throat harder, pulling him closer with inexorable strength and grinning savagely into his face, and, now that the informant’s eyes had adapted to the room’s near darkness, he realised that he was surrounded by silent figures whose armour gleamed in the pale lamplight. His skin crawled at the implications of their presence, his mouth opening wordlessly as Julius’s words sank in.

‘It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it? You’ve doubtless been trying to understand why we went to all the bother of setting up as barbers, especially after that little weasel of a child took a look at the new cellar our engineers dug under it, and told you it was just an empty room.’ He signalled to one of the soldiers, who stepped forward and handed him a tiny dog. Julius took the animal in his big scarred hands with surprising delicacy, using a finger to scratch behind one cocked ear. ‘The strange thing is, while we were digging out the cellar we found a woman’s body, recently murdered by her husband the landlord. It seems she had a little dog, a scrap of a thing which by some whim of Fortuna ended up being adopted by my wife. This little dog, in fact. And once this little dog had adapted to his new surroundings, he kept on coming back to one place in the house, scratching at the floor tiles and yapping. He was so persistent about it that we decided to take them up and see what it was that was attracting him …’

He stared at Excingus for a long moment.

‘But of course you know what we found, don’t you? You planned to slop the naphtha in that jar you’re holding … You, take it off him before he drops the bloody thing, he’s shaking like a standard bearer who’s been caught with his hand in the burial fund.’ A soldier stepped forward and took the jar from the informant’s unresisting fingers. ‘That’s better, now we can all relax. Yes, you were going to pour that stuff all over the house, except for one special spot, weren’t you? And when the urban watch came to investigate the fire, to poke in the ruins and pull out the twisted bodies, the unmistakable stench would have led them to five corpses buried under the dining-room floor, wouldn’t it? Sextus Dexter Bassus and his wife, and their slaves, the previous inhabitants of this house who you killed less than a fortnight ago. It would have been simple enough to work out, I suppose. Bassus and his household would clearly have been murdered, a crime obviously carried out by Centurion Corvus as a means of reclaiming his wife’s house, without the bother and delay of legal proceedings. The deceased centurion would have been adjudged to have buried them under the floor with a nice thick coating of quicklime to dry out their flesh and stop them from rotting.’ His voice took on a note of respect. ‘It was smart thinking, I’ll give you that. If we’d looked like getting too close to guessing what your real game was you could have tipped the Watch off to search the house at any time, and got us off your back in hours. And as a convenient means of completing your last revenge it’s brutally efficient. Worthy of me, in fact.’ His voice hardened. ‘Except, you piece of shit, and this is the bit where I get to see you sweat …’ He leaned in close and whispered savagely in the informant’s ear. ‘They’re not there any more.’

Scaurus walked forward out of the darkness, his face appearing almost demonic in the half light. He stopped in front of the informant with his hand out.

‘Give me the bag.’ He took the satchel that Excingus handed over with such clear reluctance that the nature of its contents was easy to guess, speaking conversationally as he pulled everything out and examined them. ‘The bodies were there, Varius Excingus, until just a few hours ago, and then while all that excitement down in the Flavian had everyone distracted, they were exhumed, given a blessing to ease the passage of their tormented souls, and then carried through the tunnel to the shop. My men carried them out when there was no one about and placed them in a cart under the cover of several sheets of canvas and yet more quicklime. They stank, Excingus, they smelt worse than anything you could ever imagine if you hadn’t walked a battlefield a week after the shouting was finished, which means that your neighbours will already be starting to wonder if you died a few days ago and are lying undiscovered as you rot.’

The informant started again, his eyes widening at the implications of the tribune’s words.

‘Did I forget to mention that our spies followed you back to your house pretty much straight after we set them to tailing you round the city? All that looking over your shoulder doesn’t seem to have been much use, does it? They’ve been enthusiastically hailing you from the gutter whenever you’ve come out of the front door ever since. Anyway, your neighbours are probably considering whether to kick your door in even now, given that your rooms will be squarely implicated as the source of such a revolting odour, and they’re going to find five very dead people who clearly didn’t die of natural causes. Unless, of course, you manage to get back there first and dispose of the bodies before it comes to that.’

He grinned at the horrified informant.

‘I could just release you, of course, but you’d probably only make a run for it, given the contents of this bag.’ He held up the banker’s draft, unrolling it and reading the detail with a low whistle. ‘That’s a very large sum indeed, Varius Excingus. Clearly the informing game is a lucrative one. There’s enough money here for a man never to have to worry about where his next loaf of bread is coming from ever again, no matter where in the empire he went. Where were you planning to run to, eh? Iberia? After all, the wine’s good. Asia Minor? I do hear the Greek islands are very nice though …’

‘You already know.’

Scaurus nodded sanguinely.

‘You’re right, I do. It’s amazing just how much more cooperative a ship’s master can be when the questions are being asked by a bad-tempered centurion like Julius here. So you don’t have to worry about missing your boat, since your boat isn’t really your boat any more. And yes, to answer that question lurking in the back of your mind, we do have your chest, and yes, I did find the password for your banker’s drafts. Your contribution to my cohorts’ burial funds will be much appreciated.’

He stood back and waited for the informant to speak, but Excingus simply stared back at him with hate-filled eyes.

‘And now, I suppose, you’re wondering whether this can get very much worse. Sadly, I’m afraid the answer to that unspoken question is most definitely yes.’

Senator Sigilis walked out into his garden at the hour which Scaurus had nominated with such firmness, looking about him in the starlit darkness with no more idea what he was supposed to do next than he’d had when the tribune had proposed his flight from Rome. Earlier in the day, he had dismissed the last of his staff, giving each of his slaves a statement of manumission, which had been witnessed by a judge so prominent that no one would think to challenge their freedom in his absence. Thanking his butler for the man’s devoted service, and pressing a more than generous purse upon him as a reward for his loyalty, the senator had sent him on his way with the instruction to lose himself in a part of the city where he was unlikely to be unearthed by any search for those members of the household who had been close to their master.

‘There will be men coming for me soon, perhaps tonight, and if by chance they fail to find me here, they will naturally turn to those of my staff who might have some knowledge of my whereabouts. And I fear that no amount of denial would blunt their willingness to dig so hard for the truth that your exit from this life would be a matter of some considerable discomfort.’

The bemused servant had surprised him by embracing him before turning away.

‘Farewell, Senator, may Mercury speed your flight. And I must now pass you a message that Tribune Scaurus left with me for this moment. The tribune wants you to wait in your garden once the moon has risen, and listen for a man calling your name.’

Sitting in his accustomed place within the ring of trees that sheltered the garden dining area, he waited with the patience of his years, musing on the events that had brought him to the point of imminent disgrace and execution, wondering whether his wry acceptance of looming death would survive the moment of his apprehension by the emperor’s murderers.

‘Senator! Senator Sigilis!’

The call was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, and for a moment Sigilis wondered if his overwrought imagination had conjured the sound from nothing, until it was repeated. Standing, he walked slowly towards the place from which he believed the sound had come. And then, with an abruptness which made him take a step backwards, a figure detached itself from the gloom, seeming to rise out of the earth itself. Grasping at the amulet given to him by his wife decades before for strength, he found his voice, a reedy whisper of challenge that sounded like another man’s.

‘What are you!’

The response, disquietingly, was a laugh, the earthy chuckle of a man who had seen too much of life to take very much seriously.

‘What am I? I’m tired, Senator, and keen to be away from here. Here, put this on.’ Sigilis reached out automatically to take the garment that was thrust at him, pursing his lips at the coarse material, and the anonymous man from the shadows spoke again with the same amused air. ‘Yes, sir, it’s rough, and if there were light you’d see that it’s dirty too. And it smells of sweat. Strip off that fine tunic and leave it here for the men hunting you to find, eh?’

Sigilis stripped, pulling on the rough garment as bidden.

‘So what now, stranger, now I look and smell like a working man?’

‘Now? Follow me, sir. And I ain’t no stranger. My name’s Avidus. I was here the other day, measuring up this lovely garden.’

The mysterious figure turned away, taking a few steps before seeming to literally vanish into the earth, and while Sigilis dithered, fighting to master his fear of the unknown, he called out to him again, his voice muffled.

‘Come on then, sir! Just a few steps more! Here, you, pass me that lamp!’

The senator paced forward slowly, his eyes widening as the light revealed the nature of his apparent salvation.

‘Ahhhh. I see.’

Almost an hour after his father had jumped over the garden wall into the centurion’s garden, an increasingly impatient Gaius heard voices from the other side of the street. The garden gate opened, allowing a single figure to exit onto the darkened street with the quick, uncontrolled steps of a man who had been pushed. He stopped, looking about himself with swift, jerky movements, cradling something in his hands as if he were reluctant to put it down.

‘Oi, Excingus!’

The furtive figure started with the child’s whispered challenge, backing away with what sounded disturbingly like a muffled whimper. Gaius rose from his hiding place, crossing the road on quick feet as the informant backed away in apparent terror, still holding whatever it was that he was so unwilling to relinquish.

‘What’s that you’ve got th-’

The child’s question died in his throat as he stared down at the round object in his employer’s hands, shaking his head in shocked disbelief and reaching out to pull the knife from the informant’s belt. Excingus, his mouth bound with a tightly tied gag, shook his head frantically as the boy lifted the blade over his head with a shout of rage.

‘You cunt!’

He slashed at the reeling informant, whipping the blade back up over his head ready to strike again in a scatter of blood. Excingus staggered, his bellow of pain muffled by the gag, dodging the blow with a frantic sidestep before taking to his heels with the desperate speed of a man who knew that he was facing his death. Gaius ran after him, the knife held ready to strike again, his child’s voice raised in a piping shriek of rage.

‘Come back, you bastard! Come back and face me!’

Marcus opened the door the next morning in response to a firm knock, finding a quartet of men in praetorian uniform waiting in the small garden, the foremost of them wearing the plumed helmet of a centurion.

‘Marcus Tribulus Corvus?’

He nodded, looking at their faces one at a time until he found the man who had put his spear through Horatius’s neck the previous evening.

‘You’re to come with us.’ The speaker looked at him levelly for a moment. ‘By the order of the emperor.’

Scaurus stepped up alongside his centurion.

‘I presume this invitation also requires my presence?’ His only answer was an imperturbable nod. ‘Very well, in which case I suggest we go?’

The two men walked down the hill towards the Great Circus and the Palatine’s sprawling palaces in silence, their escort ignoring the inquisitive glances of the pedestrians who cleared from their path willingly enough when they laid eyes on the soldiers’ grim faces and glinting spear heads.

‘All in all, Centurion, and whatever it is we’re walking into, I’d have to say we did the right thing. You spent an untroubled night, I presume?’

Marcus smiled wearily.

‘Untroubled by my family’s ghosts? Yes, Tribune. The doctor tells me that my acts of revenge have in some way assuaged my guilt at being my family’s only survivor …’ He sighed. ‘All I know is that where I expected exultation and the joy of bloody revenge, I found only emptiness and self-loathing.’

The tribune put a hand on his shoulder.

‘You did what you had to do. And now my advice would be to let the whole thing go. Put any thought of completing your revenge from your mind.’

Marcus stared up at the looming bulk of the imperial palaces.

‘I have. Although I doubt that Velox will take the same attitude …’

They were escorted through the ring of iron that protected the Palatine, the officers supervising each successive praetorian checkpoint deferring to the dagger-shaped emblems on their escort’s dangling belt ends with an alacrity that made Scaurus smile quietly.

‘As ever, Cleander seems to have taken Perennis’s informal expedient and turned it to his own ends.’

The four soldiers guided them through a waiting room filled with supplicants waiting their turn to speak with the chamberlain, many of whom shot them the venomous glances reserved for those who pass unchecked where others are forced to wait their turn. Walking through the door into the chamber beyond, they were greeted by the sound of the chamberlain’s unmistakable voice.

‘Justice? If you want justice, Senator, you know what the price is. And now, I’m afraid, your time is at its end. You choose, either make the necessary payment or wait for the wheel of imperial justice to finish its slow and unpredictable revolution. Who knows, you may be lucky enough to draw a magistrate who will sympathise with the injustice that appears to have been dealt out to you …’

He gestured to an aide, who took the senator in question’s arm in a firm grip, leading the man away while he continued to protest his innocence in whatever matter it was that he had come to bring to the chamberlain’s attention.

‘And now … Ah, good, I’ve been looking forward to this all morning. Tribune. Centurion. I see you’ve made your acquaintance with the Emperor’s new Knives? I say “the Emperor’s”, of course, where in point of fact I mean “mine” …’

He smiled at them, encouraging them to join in his joke, and Scaurus smiled wryly back at him.

‘And of course, our pursuit and murder of their predecessors was only ever possible with your active assistance.’

The chamberlain nodded, his expression sanguine.

‘Of course. As I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, Varius Excingus was my creature from the very start, the agent of my helping you on to the scent of each of them in turn. How long did it take you to make the realisation?’

‘It was the moment that I found Senator Albinus waiting for us outside Pilinius’s villa. We already knew that Excingus was feeding information to him, but despite his having every opportunity to give us up to his apparent sponsor, he seemed reluctant to do so. Why, I wondered, would he not complete his betrayal of us, unless there was some bigger dog with his throat in its jaws? And what bigger dog could there be than a Roman senator with more than enough gold to buy the loyalties of a single informant? I didn’t have to look very far for the answer.’

Cleander conceded the point with a smile.

‘You’ve played quite a game, haven’t you, Tribune? While it seemed to all appearances as though you were simply supporting this man’s revenge-crazed rampage through the ranks of the man who killed his father, you were in truth once again dabbling in Roman politics, weren’t you?’ Scaurus looked back at him with a nonplussed expression, drawing a reluctant laugh from the chamberlain. ‘Come now, you’re not going to expect me to be taken in by your silent protestation of innocence?’

Cleander sat back in his chair, waiting for the tribune to answer.

‘You do me too much credit, Chamberlain. I am no more than a simple-’

The other man guffawed loudly, shaking his head in amusement.

‘A simple soldier? I don’t think so. I sent my new Knives out yesterday evening for their first task, with orders to remove a substantial problem from my already heavy burden of difficulties. They attended the residence of Senator Gaius Carius Sigilis who, as I’m sure you know, has recently been under something of a cloud for his pronouncements in the senate glorifying the former republic and demonstrating grievous and unforgivable disdain for the imperial cult. Expecting to find the senator in residence at his domus, since his movements have been tracked for the last few weeks to ensure that he didn’t attempt anything foolish to further undermine imperial rule, they were disappointed to find him absent, and the house completely empty.’

He fell silent, playing a hard stare across the two men’s faces.

‘I trust your men managed to recover the senator’s estate as some means of reparation for his crimes?’

The chamberlain nodded slowly, clearly unable to fault the concern in Scaurus’s voice.

‘For the most part, Tribune, although the fugitive seems to have escaped with a significant fraction of his wealth, which he appears to have been quietly converting into liquid assets for the past few weeks.’

Scaurus’s tone hardened, a note of disgust entering his voice.

‘And presumably he’s been doing that in such a way as to make it untraceable? These people leave me speechless, seeking to undermine the throne and then running away with their money when an attempt is made to bring them to heel!’

Cleander stared at him for a moment longer before speaking again.

‘A more detailed investigation of the senator’s domus this morning revealed the means by which he escaped, a tunnel that had been dug from a shop in an adjoining street, and which ran a full one hundred and ten paces into the senator’s garden before coming to the surface. A tunnel which, I’m told by those that know what to look for, displayed all the hallmarks of military engineering …’ He allowed the silence to play out, waiting for some response from Scaurus. ‘Nothing to say, Tribune?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘There’s nothing I can say, Chamberlain, without sounding disrespectful to the emperor’s own legions, and therefore I shall say nothing.’

Raising an eyebrow, Cleander resumed his story.

‘And so we come to the facts surrounding a man with whom we’re both well acquainted, our mutual associate Tiberius Varius Excingus.’ He waited in silence again, but Scaurus made no more attempt to comment than before. ‘Excingus was found on the street in the Aventine district this morning, close to death as a result of several knife wounds of varying severity, apparently delivered by his own weapon since it was missing from the scene. Held in his hands …’ One of his aides leaned forward and whispered in his ear. ‘I stand corrected. Nailed to both of his hands was a severed man’s head, that of one of several men who were also found dead in the same area at much the same time. They had, apparently, been killed with long bladed weapons of the type used by your Tungrians. The head in question has been identified as belonging to one of Excingus’s closest associates, a man by the name of Silus, and it seems that it had been secured in place by means of the type of nails usually used for military crucifixions, two of which had been driven through each of his hands and into the dead man’s head in an X-shaped pattern, making it impossible for him to pull them out without assistance.’

Scaurus shrugged.

‘I won’t pretend that the man was any friend, Chamberlain. Let his family mourn for him, I have no tears to waste on the man.’

Cleander’s voice hardened.

‘Excingus was at the point of death when he was discovered, having been mortally wounded by some street scum or other, but he did manage to say one thing before expiring.’

The tribune smiled slowly.

‘Killed with his own knife? That seems poetic …’ He shrugged. ‘Did he say anything of note?’

Cleander stared at him for a long moment.

‘Not really, on the face of it. He was rambling, it seems, unmanned by loss of blood. Apparently his only discernible statement before he died was a single word. The word “impossible”. Having mused in the subject for a short while, I found my thoughts wandering back to the tunnel through which Senator Sigilis was spirited away under the noses of the men who were watching all of the exits from his property, including the two previously secret doors in the walls of his domus. A tunnel to the senator’s estate, which it seems was dug by men who had the gall to pose as workers refurbishing a shop. And it struck me that our mutual acquaintance, for all of his cunning, might have been tricked by something as simple as just such a tunnel? Perhaps, I mused, in overzealous pursuit of the centurion here, and in defiance of my orders, he led this collection of street thugs in seeking furtive access to the house in which your colleague’s wife has taken up residence, only to find several heavily armed men waiting for him? A tunnel would have been an excellent way for your men to take up their positions to wait for his intrusion without their presence being obvious to anyone watching the property on his behalf?’

‘A tunnel?’ Scaurus shrugged. ‘It’s a little far-fetched, Chamberlain. We’re infantrymen, not engineers. And besides, a tunnel from where?’

The chamberlain leaned forward with a hard smile.

‘From a certain recently opened barber’s shop, perhaps? I forgot to mention that the landlord of the property whose tunnel abetted Senator Sigilis’s escape from justice is the very same man who owns, or rather owned the shop in which your men have been practising the tonsorial arts for the last week or so. A landlord who appears to have sold up his properties for a bargain price and vanished, quite possibly on the same ship which I think it safe to assume carried Sigilis away on this morning’s tide. And by some strange coincidence, it seems that the entire block in which this shop of yours was located collapsed this morning, rather fortuitously without any loss of life. It seems that the occupants heard the structure creaking and fled the building before it caved in.’

He shook his head at the two men.

‘Doubtless, were I to order a sufficiently thorough investigation, my men would find some form of evidence as to your involvement in the senator’s escape and my informant’s regrettable demise. The former occupants of the collapsed insulae will doubtless surface soon enough, having spent whatever coin they were given in return for their absence when the block was pulled down by the same engineers who dug the tunnel in question as a means of disguising its presence. Were I to order this collapsed apartment block to be removed, piece by piece, I suspect that my men might well find its remnants, running from that shop straight to the house owned by Centurion Corvus here. Further, were I to order the fleet at Misenum to sea, with orders to overhaul and search every ship that left Ostia in the last day, I suspect that both senator and landlord would be back in Rome and awaiting their eventual punishments within another day or two. And were I to have you tortured, Tribune, or you, Centurion, or better still your doubtless wholly innocent wife and child, I expect the whole clever little deceit would be laid bare with remarkable speed.’

He sat back, waiting in silence for a response.

‘And the reason why we’re not being tortured at this very moment is …?’

The chamberlain nodded.

‘I thought that might provoke some comment from you, Valerius Aquila. The reason you’re not being tortured for your tribune’s transparent scheming — yet — is twofold. Firstly, I’m grateful for the brutally efficient manner in which you personally performed a series of badly overdue executions on my behalf. The Emperor’s Knives were an embarrassment waiting to happen, too secure in their positions for any other solution, given the need for their depredations to remain a closely guarded secret. And, to be frank with you, Excingus’s death is no more than the tying up of another loose end which would otherwise have required the attention of the men standing around you. So let me turn your question around, Centurion, since you’ve found your voice at last. Why is it, do you suppose, I haven’t ordered my men to slit your throats and dump you in the city sewer?’

Marcus shook his head in dark amusement.

‘That’s easy enough to work out. In less than a month, we’ve been instrumental in the death of the one man who was standing in the way of your absolute grip on power, destroyed a cabal of assassins who still owed some degree of loyalty to the emperor himself, and opened the way for you to replace them with your own men. We’re useful to you, aren’t we, Chamberlain?’

Cleander nodded.

‘Exactly. You’re resourceful, cunning, and, it has to be said, you take a rather more direct approach to whatever gets in your way than most of the men in my service. But as my father used to say to me, a man needs to be careful what he wishes for, given that wishes are rarely granted in exactly the form that we hope for. You came seeking the destruction of the men who killed your family, to release you from the unbearable pressure of your wounded honour, but was the end result really to your liking?’

He turned his attention back to Scaurus.

‘You leave me with only two alternatives, Tribune, given that I won’t be the only person with the wit to connect the events of the last few days and come to an accurate conclusion. I can wrap the protection of the state around you, and make you part of the organisation that runs the empire for a ruler who is, to be brutally honest with you both, far more interested in the contents of his bed than the incessant demands of governing one hundred million people. Or I can unearth your conspiracy to murder imperial officials and assist a known traitor in evading justice, with the inevitable result that you and your officers, and their families, will all be subjected to the full weight of the emperor’s justice. What do you think?’

Scaurus pursed his lips, looking back at the chamberlain with a steady gaze.

‘If it were my choice, I’d be tempted to take the hard way out.’

Cleander nodded.

‘I can see it in your eyes. But it isn’t simply your choice, is it, Rutilius Scaurus? And even you, seemingly without dependents, still have a sponsor whose eminence in Roman society might be more than a little dented were I to make it my business to take an interest in his doings.’

‘No, it isn’t my choice.’ The tribune shrugged. ‘What is it that you want from us, Chamberlain? I think I can speak for my officers when I tell you that we won’t be party to any “confiscatory justice”.’

The other man smiled wryly.

‘Oh no, I have something rather better suited to your particular collective skill set in mind.’ He held out a hand to his secretary for a pair of scrolls. ‘Here.’

Scaurus took them, opening the first and staring at it for a moment before looking up in genuine amazement.

‘Legatus?’

Cleander smirked at him.

‘It’s a strange feeling, I’d imagine, to have your life’s impossible ambition offered to you as an alternative to execution, and by a man for whom you feel nothing better than contempt? And the other scroll?’ He waited while Scaurus opened and read the second order, grinning at the look that the tribune shot him after a moment’s perusal of the contents. ‘And I think your young colleague’s somewhat charmed life as a fugitive from his father’s crimes should be put on a slightly more regular footing. I’ve therefore decided to appoint him to the tribunate, under your command of course, Legatus Scaurus, and by doing so to confirm that Marcus Tribulus Corvus is a trusted servant of the throne. Or rather, of mine. His previous life shall be our little secret, and shall remain so just as long as you both provide the emperor, and more importantly myself, with the appropriate combination of loyalty and effective service. He will be formally elevated to the Equestrian order, and thereby enabled to act as a military tribune under your command. As long as the pair of you perform effectively, you will be under my personal protection. Fail to do so, or display even the slightest sign of biting the hand that has chosen to protect you, and your falls from grace will be spectacular.’

‘What …’

‘You? Lost for words, Legatus?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘No, Chamberlain. I’ve long since passed the point of amazement, I was simply gathering my thoughts. What is it that you want from us?’

‘There is a legion, Rutilius Scaurus, in a distant and rather warm part of the empire, that needs a firm grip on its collective neck. You are to relieve the current legatus, take command, and act as you see fit to restore Roman authority to that legion’s operational area without delay. Our frontier is being disregarded, Legatus, and I want those men who find it entertaining to display their contempt for us stamped flat, as an example for their kindred that won’t be forgotten for the next fifty years.’

Legatus and tribune stared back at him for a moment before Marcus found his voice.

‘And my family?’

‘Your family, Tribune Corvus, will stay here in Rome under my personal protection. And in any case, I wouldn’t have thought you’d want them with you, not where you’re going.’ Cleander stood, smoothing his toga out with his hands. ‘As to your men, Legatus, you can decide what to do with your Tungrian cohorts. Send them home, take them with you, it makes no odds to me, although I think having some friendly faces at your back might be a sensible idea, given the depth of venality to which your new command has succumbed of late. Who knows what form their resistance to your assumption of command will take? And now, gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. The emperor does so hate it when I’m late for our meetings. I’ll be sure to stress to him just how pleased I am to have delegated this small matter to such consummate professionals.’ He nodded to the leader of his freshly assembled group of assassins. ‘Escort the legatus from the palace.’

Scaurus and Marcus were led back through the palace’s maze, finding themselves on the steps of the Palatine Hill once more. Both men stared out over the Great Circus’s grandstands with mutual bemusement for a moment before Scaurus spoke, his voice flat and emotionless.

‘Legatus.’

Marcus looked at him, seeing the disgust in his face.

‘You do have a choice.’

The older man laughed, his amusement hollow.

‘Do I? Think about it for a moment, and you’ll come to another conclusion. If I refuse this honour, this pinnacle of a military man’s career, this impossible honour for a man of my class, then I make hostages to fortune of every man under my command. You will be executed, be under no illusions about that. Your family …’ He shook his head, unwilling to speak the words. ‘And the fifteen hundred men we brought here? I can imagine numerous ways to make every last one of them wish he’d never volunteered, and none of them will ever see their homeland again. Nor can I leave them here, at the mercy of every officer with a gap to fill in his ranks. There’s no choice for either of us, Tribulus Corvus. I must accept this position, and smile at the taste of ashes it will leave in my mouth, and you must accept the reality that you may never again use your family name in public.’

Marcus nodded, looking up at the sky above them.

‘In which case, Legatus, I suggest we go and break the good news to my brother officers. What was it that Cleander said? “Distant, and rather warm?”’