I took a roundabout way, so that it would not be too obvious that I was following Zeno. There was enough movement among the guests and the serving slaves that I attracted no attention.
They had disappeared through a doorway that opened off one of the colonnades. The doorway led to a long, wide hallway. I walked quickly, glancing into the rooms on either side, seeing no one until I came to the far end of the passage, which opened onto yet another courtyard, this one much smaller and more intimate than the one where the dinner was being held. The courtyard was dark and deserted; or so I thought, until I heard hushed voices. They came from the shadows beneath the opposite colonnade.
I held my breath and listened, but the voices were too low for me to make sense of them. They might have been arguing, and one of them was almost certainly a man's voice; beyond that I could only speculate. At last I cleared my throat and spoke. "Zeno?"
There was a long pause. Then I heard the voice of Zeno: "Who is it?"
I stepped from the shadows of the colonnade and into the faint starlight of the open courtyard. "My name is Gordianus," I said.
A longer pause. Then: "Do I know you?"
"No. I'm a Roman. A guest of your father-in-law." This was not entirely untrue.
"What do you want?" He emerged from beneath the opposite colonnade and took a few steps toward me. His cape obscured his silhouette, but I thought I saw his right hand move to his waist, as if to reach for a dagger in a scabbard. He took another step toward me.
For a brief moment I was struck by the irony, should my lifeless body be found in this place. How many times had I been called upon to make sense of a corpse discovered in a courtyard, to ferret for clues to the killer's identity, to make sense of the crime? What a jest of the gods if Gordianus the Finder should meet his end as just such a victim as those he had spent his life puzzling over! A slave would find my body, an alarm would be raised, and the First Timouchos's dinner party disrupted. The stab wounds would be noted and the identity of the victim a mystery until someone-Domitius, Milo, Davus, Apollonides himself?-identified me. But from that point it seemed unlikely that anyone would spare much time or effort trying to solve my murder, except perhaps poor Davus.
Unless…
For the briefest of instants, perhaps no longer than the blink of an eye, I entertained a most peculiar fantasy: Meto was still alive and in Massilia, and this was his story, not mine. I was the one destined to die, not he; and he was the one destined to grieve for me and search for my killer. I was merely the victim in someone else's story, mistakenly thinking myself to be the protagonist! This fantasy was so powerful that I was wrenched out of the moment, abruptly disengaged from reality, cast into the world where sleepwalkers dwell. It was a foreshadowing of death, such as all men must occasionally feel, especially as they grow older. What is it to be a lemur, after all, but to be written out of the world's story, to become a name spoken in the past tense, to mutely watch from the shadows while others carry on the tale of the living?
I shivered. Perhaps I lurched a bit, for Zeno stepped forward again and said, "Are you unwell?"
"Quite well," I managed to say. "But I couldn't help but notice that you walk with a slight limp."
He stiffened. From guilt, or merely in response to a stranger's rudeness? "A battle wound," he finally answered.
"From today's battle? Or have you had that limp for several days?"
He had drawn so close that even by starlight I could see the frown on his handsome face. "Who are you to ask me such a question?"
"In Rome they call me the Finder. Even here, some of your fellow citizens have heard of me. One of them came to me the other day, a man named Arausio. He was grieving for his daughter. Her name was Rindel."
Beyond Zeno, a figure moved from behind one of the concealing columns. The deep shadows of the colonnade still obscured her, but the misshapen silhouette of Cydimache was unmistakable.
"What do you want?" asked Zeno sharply, whispering. "Why are you telling me this?"
I lowered my voice to match his. "Does the name Arausio mean nothing to you? Or the name Rindel?"
Again he reached toward his dagger. I felt a tremor of fear, but his agitation emboldened me. "Listen to me, Zeno. Arausio thinks he knows what became of his daughter, but he can't be sure-"
"What concern is this of yours, Roman?"
"When a father loses a child, he needs to know the truth. The pain of not knowing gnaws at a man, robs his sleep, poisons every breath. Believe me, I know! Arausio believes that only you can tell him the truth of what happened to his daughter." I glanced at the figure of Cydimache, which remained in the shadows. "If you have nothing to hide, then why have we lowered our voices to keep your wife from hearing?"
"My wife-" Zeno seemed to choke on the word. "My wife has nothing to answer for. If you dare even to speak her name, I swear by Artemis that I'll kill you where you stand!"
He had killed men already that day. I couldn't doubt that he would kill one more. Did I dare to push him any harder? If he saw me reach into the little pouch at my waist, he might misinterpret the movement and draw his dagger; so I moved very slowly and said very softly, "I have something I want to show you, Zeno. It's in this pouch. Here, I'm pulling it out now. Can you see it between my fingers?"
I found myself wishing that the light was stronger, the better for him to see the ring and for me to study his face. Did he recognize the ring or not?
Darkness obscured his face, but I heard him make a strange choking noise between a swallow and a gasp. He drew back. Alarm, or the lameness of his right leg, caused him to stumble. Cydimache lurched forward out of the deep shadows, clutching her robes to her breast; for all she knew, I had struck him a blow.
Zeno looked over his shoulder. "Stay back!" he cried, with a sob in his voice. He turned back to me and drew his dagger. The blade gleamed in the starlight.
His ears were sharper than mine. He suddenly stiffened and lowered his arm. Keeping his eyes on something behind me, he stepped back into the shadows of the colonnade. He slipped an arm around Cydimache, brought his face close to hers, whispered. The two of them withdrew into deeper darkness. "Father-in-law, here you are!"
I gave a start as Davus stepped up beside me. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn't sure whether to thank him or curse him. Had he spoiled the moment when Zeno might have weakened, or had he saved my life?
I let out a long sigh and stared at the darkness into which Zeno and Cydimache had vanished.
XVIII
"After tonight, three things are clear," I said, raising a finger to tick the points off one by one. Had there been space in the tiny room I would have paced. Instead, I sat on my narrow bed with my back against the wall, idly tapping the floor with one foot. Davus sat across from me, knocking his cramped knees together.
"First, Zeno recognized this ring." I rolled it between my fingers, studying the strange stone by the feeble lamplight. "His reaction was powerful and immediate."
"Then the ring did come from Rindel, and somehow got left on the Sacrifice Rock when Zeno pushed her off," said Davus. I shook my head. "That doesn't necessarily follow. We don't know for certain that this ring belonged to Rindel; we still don't know for certain that it was Rindel, or even Zeno, we saw on the rock that day; and we don't know, despite your certainty, that the woman we saw was pushed."
"But it must have been Zeno! We saw him limping tonight."
"His limp could have another explanation. He told me it was from a battle wound."
Davus snorted. "I'll wager he had that limp long before he sailed off to battle this morning. That should be simple enough to find out. His fellow officers would know how long he's been limping. Apollonides would know."
"That's easily resolved, then; I'll just interrogate the First Timouchos at my convenience, shall I? But you're right that his lameness isn't something Zeno could hide from his comrades. It would be instructive to know just how long he's exhibited that limp."