“How much blood was there?”
“A little in the room, and some in the hallway to the stairway and down.” He started to whine again. “What will happen to us?”
I said: “I’ll do what I can.”
I left them there, the big man and Pigeon-Chest. The vigiles would come, and they’d take them and hold them, and torture them, and then not believe them, and then kill them and the women and the bar man. Any crime that smacked of even a possibility of slaves killing a master-no matter how vile the master might be-the Romans were always eager to see through to the end. There were no innocent slaves in Rome.
I walked back to Urien’s house. Gwyna wasn’t crying. The shock was protecting her. They’d laid Urien on his bed, dressed in his best clothes, a moth-eaten robe with a mink fur edge wrapped around him. They stood and stared at him, the old man and his wife and the daughter. There was no comfort I could give her. There was no comfort in death.
We walked home in silence. When we opened the door, Brutius handed me a message. It was from Corvus. I read it, quickly. Then I took Gwyna to see Stricta, who was waiting for her in Bilicho’s room. The dark Egyptian held the blonde woman, while they both cried together in a bond of shared pain that is a wholly feminine thing. I shut myself in my bedroom, and opened the chest.
I kneeled, and let the gold coins I’d found on Maecenas trickle through my hands. I looked at the scrap of message I pried from his stiff fingers. I rolled around the broken point of Apollo’s crown on my palm. The latrunculi game was almost over, and all the moves were blocked except one.
Four people dead. Only two of them deserved it.
A man driven mad. A bravely foolish one in jail.
A cracked skull, a black eye, some broken ribs. A soldier’s punctured gut.
An injured dog. A woman in mourning.
And now, six more people-slaves-to be killed. More death. It had to end now.
There was a scratch on the door and it was Bilicho. He’d been told.
“Caelius and Maecenas were partners in the mine.”
I nodded, absentmindedly. I was writing out two messages. Bilicho waited, as I rolled and sealed them with wax and my ring, and he watched me, puzzled.
“Deliver these for me.”
He raised an eyebrow when he read the names.
“Are you sure? Arcturus, have you-have you figured all this out? Who’s behind it? Who the third man is?”
My smile was painful, and a little twisted. “Rome, Bilicho. Rome is the third man.”
He looked at me with worry on his face.
“I’ll explain later. Just go.”
He left, and I lay in my bed for a while, staring at the ceiling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was dark when I got up, and I wondered where Gwyna was. She was sitting in the triclinium, her hands still and simple in her lap, staring at the fire.
“I have to go.”
She turned to look at me, and asked the question as if she didn’t care about the answer.
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter. This business.” I sat next to her and held her hands. “I want you to know something. Your father was trying to protect you. That’s why he was killed.”
A spark of life came into her face.
“You think so?”
“I know so. He had some sort of plan against Caelius-him letting you marry him was part of it. He was trying to take care of you. He always did.”
She looked at me, and her eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, Ardur.”
I held her hand to my lips and left. I wasn’t sure whether it had happened that way, but it didn’t matter. Urien changed his mind-that’s why Caelius killed him. It didn’t matter to anyone when he’d changed it-anyone except his daughter. So the record would stand like I said it did.
The streets were empty, and the air was cold. The last day of the year. Vale, a.u.c. 836. Ave, 837: morituri te salutamus. The guard at the procurator’s palace let me in immediately. The entrance hall was as still as the city. Except for Domitian. There he was, gloating quietly, the man behind it all.
I turned left toward the large record room. It was the heart of Roman bureaucracy, a center of the palace. Four doors, one on every wall, opened to other pathways, even to the apartments, in case someone felt the need to file something in the middle of the night.
Standing in front of the room, waiting for me, was the procurator, Numerius Sallustius Lucullus.
“Arcturus-I got your message. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Even if you have proof, do you know what you’re doing? The Emperor won’t believe you. Agricola is one of his best generals-it doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t expect him to believe me. That’s why I need you. You deal with him directly. If I have to take down the governor-my patron, my friend, the man who’s been like a father to me-I need someone powerful to back me up. I don’t like this any more than you do.”
He nodded, the lines around his mouth grim. “Let’s go in. What are we looking for?”
“A piece of the document. It was brought in today-one of the temple soldiers found it with Narbo’s things. He must’ve been holding on to it like an insurance policy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s from the message Maecenas was carrying-and proof that the governor had Narbo kill him. Agricola would do anything to stay in power-and the Emperor was going to remove him, send him packing. This paper proves it. And Narbo will talk, if we confront him with it.”
Lucullus shut the door carefully behind him, and walked to the center of the room, his brow wrinkled, shaking his head.
“How do you know it’s in here, in my records room? If it’s so dangerous to him, why wouldn’t the governor destroy it immediately?”
“Can you tell me a better place to hide a record than a record room? Not even you could find it, if you didn’t know where to look. I had my man plant it earlier today. I haven’t seen it yet. The governor doesn’t know-no one knows except us and the soldier who found it, and neither he nor my slave can read. But we need to get it before the soldier talks. I’ve only got so much money.” I licked my lips and tasted sweat. “ I made sure of everything before I got you involved.”
The little man’s face crumpled, while his eyes searched the rolls of documents.“I don’t like it, Arcturus. Not at all. And before I agree to anything, I want to see this paper. Where is it? Where do we start?”
I waited a minute, while his eyes flicked back and forth, and made my voice soft. “A long time ago. With a little boy playing soldier, a little boy who always dreamed of leading an army.”
He stopped then, and turned to me, a funny look on his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Or maybe six years ago. When Agricola was made governor, and year after year after year went by, and he stayed on. While you watched.”
Lucullus’ eyes got harder and he forgot about the document.
“Or maybe the day when Domitian appointed you procurator. You, born a senator, to a lowly equestrian job. No armies for you, Lucullus. You got to push around numbers. And you hated it.”
His hand went toward his sword. I pretended not to notice.
“Of course, that was before you realized how much money you could make as a procurator. Money was almost as good as an army command. Because money let you buy things. It let you control things. People, for instance. You collected them … along with your weapons.”
He tried to bluff. He wasn’t sure how much of it was a guess. “What is this, Arcturus? A game?”
I wiped my head across my forehead. It was hot in the room. He gripped the sword hilt tighter.
“Yeah, A game. A game of ambition and greed called your life. You figured you’d studied battles for long enough. It was time to lead one for a change. But the gutless Emperor didn’t listen, did he, Lucullus? He wouldn’t give you what you deserved. So you decided to take it for yourself.”