It was a beautiful night and silhouetted against the moon I could see the banner drooping from the high pole above the old fort. We hardly slowed when we reached the house. The door was bolted, but with a single coordinated kick Balbus and Hermes turned it to firewood and we passed on through. I told the lictors to stay at the door and let nobody out.
“Gupta!” I yelled, “Ashthuva! Come with me to the praetor!” There was no answer. We proceeded room by room. We found them in the rear of the house, crouched over a chest, drawing out bags that clinked. It seemed a sordid activity for such an exotic pair, but I suppose some things are the same the world over.
“I arrest you,” I said, “for the murder of the astronomers Demades and Polasser and suspicion of complicity in the death of Postumius.”
Gupta smiled, his teeth startlingly white in his dark face. He uncoiled to his full height as smoothly and bonelessly as a serpent.
“You arrest me, Roman?” he said in his strange, singsong accent. “Do you arrest my sister, too?” The lady herself stood as well, her clothing somewhat disarrayed. Balbus made a strangled noise somewhere high in his nose. He was seeing her for the first time. I was having a hard time keeping my attention on Gupta myself. I hoped Hermes was keeping his head about him, but I doubted it.
“Your sister, is she? You must be close. You killed three men for her on your sea-voyage here.”
“You learned about that?” he said. “I had thought Romans were far too stupid to deduce such things.”
“Don’t feel too bad,” I told him. “I’ve been known to underestimate barbarians in my time. Now, you have little life expectancy left to you, but I can promise you a quick, easy execution if you will answer my questions. I’ll clear it with the dictator. Otherwise you’ll answer those questions under torture and your death will be in no way easy.”
He kept smiling. “Torture. You Romans know so little of torture. Come to India some day. I will show you what torture is really like.”
“I’m afraid you are all through with India,” I told him. Ashthuva was fiddling with something at her waist. “What are you doing, woman?” she took her hands from her waist and in an instant her singular gown unwound and fell to the floor, leaving her as naked as a statue of Aphrodite and ten times as enticing. Balbus made another noise and so, I fear, did I. She was completely covered with intricate tattoos, and while I was stupidly studying these Gupta made his move.
When I regained my senses somewhat, he was almost on me. No scarf this time. He had a long, curved dagger in his hand and he was moving as fast as any human being I had ever seen. He had quite sensibly chosen to attack me instead of Balbus or Hermes. I looked older and easier and, indeed, I was. I blocked his dagger hand with my cestus and thrust at him with my own dagger, but he snaked around it with an ease that was positively insulting. He cut again and I would have died then, but Balbus was on him and swift as the Indian was, Balbus was almost as fast and he was bull-strong to boot. He got both hands on the assassin’s arms and Hermes clouted him over the head with a small table. No sense taking any chances with this one. Seeing her brother down Ashthuva whirled and darted for a back door but found herself facing Callista, who had dropped her shawl there and stood as serenely as if she were about to address a gathering of academics.
To my amazement and horror, the tattooed woman leapt high into the air and her right foot lashed out in a kick of neck-breaking force. I thought to see Callista dead in an instant, but this was a night for surprises. Leaning back slightly, she slapped the leg aside with her open palm. Ashthuva came down lightly, but she was slightly off-balance. Callista stepped in and with a dainty foot swept the Indian woman’s leg aside and she toppled. She scrambled to get up, but in that instant Callista was on her, cracking her beneath the ear with the edge of a palm, gathering both her wrists into one hand, the other pulling back on the long, black hair. One knee was pressed into the small of the woman’s back with Callista’s full weight upon it. Ashthuva was going nowhere. Callista knelt there easily, crouched in a position that would have appeared awkward in another woman, her shapely, white left leg bared to the hip. She took no more notice of it than of her slightly disarranged hair.
“I knew some Greek women learned athletics,” I said, “but I never heard of one training at the pankration.”
“My father insisted that I be fully educated,” she said.
I turned to Gupta, now held tightly by Balbus. I nodded at Hermes and he grasped the man’s hair and jerked his head back so that he was looking up at me. I laid the point of my dagger just below his left eye. “Now, Gupta, some answers, if you please.”
An hour later we were closeted in one of Cleopatra’s personal chambers, guards on the door, the sounds of the still lively party muffled in the distance. The queen was there, as was Caesar. Hermes and Balbus we had left outside to enjoy the festivities but Caesar had insisted that Julia and Callista be present to hear my report.
The chamber was unusually modest for this place and its inhabitant, but I supposed Cleopatra put on the extravagance as what people expected from a queen of Egypt. Her personal tastes were more modest. Caesar now wore a simple tunic and synthesis and he had set aside his wreath of golden laurel leaves. He was very tired and looked every one of his years.
“It was what Julia suggested at the outset,” I said. “The infighting among the great ladies of Rome over who is to be heir to Caesar. That and your scheme to change our calendar.”
Caesar frowned slightly. “How did I bring this about?”
“You brought the astronomers to Rome, and among them was Polasser. Gupta came on his own and joined them because he really was an accomplished astronomer, with a sideline in astrology. As I’ve said before, one rogue will know another, and they were joined by the confidence man Postumius. It doesn’t take three such men long to begin hatching plans. First they tried the grain scheme. Fulvia was a client of Polasser and he steered her to Postumius, who got her to talk to the grain merchants and use her patrician prestige to convince them to buy or not as Postumius directed. They made a killing that way, but it was too small. By that time Polasser had tumbled to the big-time money game here in Rome, and with his connections among the highborn ladies, he had the means to exploit it.” I sipped at my wine. “Incidentally, Fulvia had the house that had belonged to Clodius. She let Gupta and Ashthuva stay there while their much more impressive house was being built on the Janiculum.”
“That was where Postumius was killed,” Caesar said. “Was that Fulvia’s doing?”
“I believe so,” I told him. “You can’t trust a thief. I think he tried to cheat her of her share of the grain scheme takings.” I looked at Julia. “You were right in observing that his torture bore the marks of wounded patrician pride.”
“Was she in on the rest of it?” Caesar asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “They made use of her in the grain scheme, but she was too volatile even for men like those three.”
Caesar pondered a while. “It isn’t worth alienating Antonius. I need him too sorely.” He glanced at me wearily. “Don’t look at me like that Decius Caecilius. Some day, if you’re ever dictator, a great many things that seem serious now will take on a new perspective.”
“What about poor Demades?” Cleopatra asked. “Why did he die?”
“Big ears,” I said. “He hated Polasser and detested the astrologers as a group. He was snooping around, trying to get any kind of dirt on Polasser that he could gather, and I suspect he got an earful, but Gupta saw him snooping. Then he was eliminated.”
“And this Domitius person?” Caesar asked. “Where does he tie in?”
“He was an acquaintance of Postumius from his horse racing days. They wanted someone reliable to spy here in the queen’s house where you spend so much time. Polasser had been here at the queen’s gatherings and he bribed the steward to hire the man.”