Quietus laughed. 'You see, my father realized that, while your sort can kill in hot blood, in the irrational fury of the moment, you could never understand the cold, slow process of true Roman severitas. No matter that you dress in a toga, learn Latin, marry a Roman wife, no matter what civilized titles you are given, you will never be a Roman. You will always remain what you were – an ignorant herdsman from the forests of barbaricum; a northern barbarian weakened by an irrational sentimentality.'
Leaning back against the balustrade, Quietus again looked into Ballista's eyes. 'My father was right. You did not have the stomach for persecution, you lacked the disciplina. Despite doing all you could to hinder the investigations of that useful fool Flavius Damianus, the prisons are full of Christians. Yet you could not bring yourself to kill them. My father sent you here to fail, and you have. Your failure opened the way for my appointment.'
Quietus turned the ring bearing Alexander's likeness on his finger. 'I will not fail. The cells will be empty soon enough. I will kill the Christians in droves, and in the most diverting ways. While I triumph here in Ephesus, you must run back to Antioch in disgrace, like a dog with its tail between its legs, dreading the beating you will surely get.'
Complacently, the young Roman turned in his hands the gilded ivory of his letter of appointment. 'If I were you, I would run back as fast as you can to Antioch. Now that hot-looking wife of yours has whelped another half-breed barbarian bastard, she looks more than ready for fucking again. I am sure the whore will find any number of men to fill her cunt while you are away. If I were there myself…'
Forcing himself not to move, anger choking his words, Ballista stared at Quietus – at his weak chin, the pouched eyes, the lascivious mouth. Momentarily, the northerner had a vision – grabbing the voluminous folds of that fucking Roman toga, heaving the venomous little bastard off his feet; one heave and he was over the balustrade, pouched little eyes wide in realization and fear, filthy little mouth open in a despairing scream, arms and legs flailing hopelessly as he scrapped and smashed down the rocky slope and on to the hard, unforgiving stone seats of the theatre.
Ballista mastered himself. Three angry words are three too many if spoken to a bad man. Lose control now and it would be the end – of him, of his familia, and of the last bold stroke he would pull as he left Ephesus.
Ballista stepped very close. His voice was very low. 'One day, not today, maybe not soon, but one day, I will kill you.'
Involuntarily, Quietus took a step back. Then his fury brought him up sharp. 'Oh no, you barbarian bastard, one day I will kill you,' he spat. 'When my father decides your usefulness is at an end. Then I will kill you. I will not need assassins. I will just order your death.'
Ballista laughed in his face.
Quietus' face flushed with rage. 'Laugh while you can, you barbarian cunt. Our beloved emperor Valerian is old. He is a fool. He relies on my father. Valerian's life hangs by a thread. And when that is cut…'
Ballista laughed again. 'Valerian has a son. No one would follow a cripple like your father if he seized the throne.'
Now Quietus laughed. 'Gallienus is far away on the Rhine. The east will welcome the dawn of a new golden age when my brother and I are invested in the purple.'
Ballista was shocked. 'Your father is malevolent, but you are mad. When I tell…'
'Tell who you like,' Quietus crowed. 'No one will believe you.' A couple of things surprised the telones as he stood in the lamplight outside the customs house on the quay. But it did not show. A customs official of the city of Ephesus, beloved home of great Artemis, had to deploy tact when dealing with the coming and going of the officials of the imperium.
It was not in the least surprising that the ex-vicarius should sneak away like a thief in the night, and on the very day his successor arrived. He had not done well. Not one incestuous atheist had been burnt for months. Soft-hearted, some said. Barbarians were like women or children, soft-hearted, not fit for man's work. Others whispered worse things. Conversion. The big barbarian had been seen going into the prisons, talking to the atheists alone. It was all too easy to imagine – there, in the gloom, the Christian preachers whispering their seductive, empty platitudes into the witless, childlike ears of a barbarian. Was it not always the children and the women they preyed on first? Whatever, the ex-vicarius had not done well. He had not even managed to punish anyone for that disgraceful riot in the stadium, and that breaking out at the Saturnalia too.
No, what the telones found worthy of comment lay in two other, lesser areas. He had a prosaic mind, filled as it was day to day with bills of landing and counting amphorae. This ship, the aptly named Tyche, The Fortune. It must have cost an emperor's ransom to hire the big 400-tonner. She was enormous. Gods below, when she had come in laden with grain from Egypt, there had barely been enough water under her keel at the jetty. Why squander money when the ex-vicarius could have travelled overland for free with the cursus publicus? Still, there was no explaining the whims of rich barbarians, or high Roman officials either, come to that.
And then there was the staff. The telones had been on duty that day last year when the ex-vicarius had arrived. Seventeenth day of August it had been, the festival of the Portunalia. And a serious nuisance too, him turning up on the day of the dock-hands' traditional holiday. The telones had a good memory, it was vital in his line of work. Not like most of the young men these days, hardly remember their own names, buggered if they were going to work on the Portunalia. But he had been there that night, keeping the drunks away from the official reception, standing at a respectful distance, listening to what he could hear of the speeches. Flavius Damianus, now there was a proper eupatrid: loved his Polis, openhanded, honoured the gods, could make a fine speech, maybe not as fluent as they said his ancestor the great sophist had been, but he had been on form that night, the high Attic pouring out of him like wine from a jug. The telones remembered it like yesterday. And what had struck him was that the big barbarian travelled light, no more than fifteen, twenty at most staff and familia lined up behind him. But watching them go on board just now, hoods up, muffled against the chill of a spring evening, there must have been at least twice as many. It was odd, since rumour had it that, in the seven months he had been in Ephesus, the ex-vicarius had not bought so much as one bum boy.
The telones watched as the Tyche slipped her mooring. He had said nothing when the ex-vicarius had come to hand over the customary tip, just wished him a safe voyage. Only a fool got mixed up in the doings of those connected to the imperial court. This Ballista might be under a cloud now, but who could tell what the future held? Like Ixion bound to his wheel, one moment these people were down in the depths of disgrace, the next they were carried aloft on the emperors' favour. If you thought about it, the whole story of Ixion was a warning not to stick your prick where it was not wanted. Ixion had been eating at the table of the king of the gods himself, then he tried to fuck Zeus' wife and, before he knew it, he was spending eternity bound to a fiery wheel. No, the telones had not said anything then, and he was not going to in the future. It was a fine night: a bite to the air, a myriad stars wheeling overhead. Ballista watched as Maximus made his way to the stern of the Tyche. In the near dark, the tip of the Hibernian's bitten-off nose was strangely white against the deep tan of his face. They stood together in silence for a time, looking at the famous fifty lamps of Ephesus that lit the road up from the docks to the theatre slip away astern.
'The gaoler?' Ballista asked.
'Safely on a ship bound for Ostia, a big purse of our money at his belt, dreaming happy dreams of a new life in the eternal city. Sure, no one will ever find him in Rome. It is a city of strangers.'