Chuck rubbed the side of his nose and murmured sympathetically. "My dear lady, you are a life saver. A fortune saver," he added with a small laugh. "But I still have one problem." He gestured to the bags of dust and nuggets laid out across the top of the counter. "I can't very well go walking through the Wild West Gate with that in plain sight. I've got to look like someone who's been in the field for months, accumulating it. Do you have a period-style leather satchel, perhaps, that I could carry everything in?"
Goldie smiled in what she probably considered her most winsome manner. "I have just the thing. A set of saddlebags brought uptime by one of my agents, for you, no charge. I'll just go and get them."
She vanished into the back of her shop yet again.
Chuck was tempted to steal back his bills, just lying there on the counter, but he didn't want to risk being arrested when he came back. His fake ID was good but why take unnecessary chances? Besides, getting caught by his boss for his little extracurricular activities on TT-86 would be bad for his health. Permanently.
He and Goldie concluded their business with a handshake, and Farley headed for the nearest public restroom to ditch his clothes, settle the heavy bags of gold into his carrying harness, and don his toga for the Roman gate. He rejoined Marcus, who waited quietly with his luggage. He smiled at the younger man, then headed up the ramp with the other tourists.
By the time Goldie discovered the scam and reported it, he'd be long gone. Chuck laughed aloud, softly, drawing a curious look from the slave he'd purchased all those years ago. Yes, he'd have given a great deal to see the look on her face under all that purple hair. Amateurs. Still chuckling, he slid his time card with its fake identification into the reader, had his departure time and date duly logged, and gestured to Marcus. The young man hoisted the baggage and followed silently through the gaping portal in the concrete wall of Time Terminal Eighty-Six.
Unable to leave his apartment, he felt so ill, Skeeter-in looking for ways to make some illegal profit during his convalescence, hit quite suddenly on the answer. Something Marcus had once said brought new inspiration when Skeeter needed it most. He was still hung over and hurting, a particularly nasty throb where Farley had struck the back of his skull. Or whoever it had been. He was also, however, running out of time. So he quietly bought up a supply of small glass bottles, corks, and paper labels from various outfitters, ordering them over the computer and asking to have them delivered immediately to his apartment. When everything arrived, Skeeter got busy, diligently gluing handwritten labels onto each filled, corked bottle of tapwater, tinged just slightly with a drop of ink. The longer he counted the potential profits to be had in the patent medicine business, the more cheerful he grew, despite headache and hangover from too much alcohol combined with too much chloroform. Each label exclaimed in gorgeous, "antique" script (Skeeter could, among other odd skills, forge just about any signature he'd ever seen): MIRACLE WATER-DIRECT FROM DOWNTIME IMPORTER! FAMOUS SPRINGS OF CAUTERETS! OWN A BOTTLE OF MYSTIC HISTORY FROM GALLIA COMATA, AD 47! A THOUSAND PASSIONATE NIGHTS GUARANTEED WITH ANCIENT WORLD'S MOST SOUGHT-AFTER LOVE POTION
He hadn't spent much and the uptime tourist crowd was just as gullible as any nineteenth-century Iowa farmer. The descendants of twentieth-century new ager crystal mystics, in particular, ought to be "medicine show" pushovers. As Ianira Cassondra's little booth on the Commons had proved, they'd buy anything even moderately wacky-particularly if he hinted that the stuff had not only been bottled in Gallia Comata, but that the water from the famous spring actually bubbled up from the sacred rivers of lost Atlantis. He pasted another label, wondering how much he could get per bottle? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Shucks, some fools might go as high as a hundred.
Gingerly humming a little ditty Yesukai the Valiant's aged mother had taught him, the tune warlike and lighthearted, Skeeter was as happy as any exiled Yakka tribesman in a lot of pain could be. He had several bottles left to label when someone buzzed his doorbell frantically. Curious, he peered through the peephole.
"Huh?" Skeeter opened to the door to find Ianira Cassondra outside his apartment, literally wringing her hands in the folds of a pretty, Ionic-style chiton. "Ianira! What are you doing here?"
He ushered her in, shocked by the tears sparkling on pale cheeks and ashen lips. The door clicked softly behind him, the latch catching, but he was so distracted he didn't bother with the deadbolt. Ianira had clutched at his arm.
"Please, you must help him!"
"Who? Ianira, what's happened?"
"Skeeter, he's going with that terrible man, and I don't trust him, and it's your fault he's going at all-"
"Whoa, slow down. Now. Who's going where?"
"Marcus! To Rome!" The words were torn from her.
Skeeter blinked. "Rome? Marcus is going to Rome? That's crazy. Marcus would never go back to Rome."
Her nails dug painfully into his arm. "His cursed master came back! You know his pride, his determination to pay that man his purchase cost, to be free of the debt!"
Skeeter nodded, wondering what on earth had happened. "He should've had plenty, I'd think. I mean, I know the new baby was expensive, and all, and what with little Artemisia getting so sick from the fever that idiot tourist brought back they had to quarantine her, but there's that bet money I gave him-"
"That's just it!" she cried. Her nails drew blood. "He found out how you got it and gave it back!"
"He ... gave it back?" Skeeter's voice hit a squeak. "You mean ... he just gave it back?" Then: "Oh, shit, that means he knows how to find that maniac that's been-"
"Yes, yes," Ianira said impatiently, "Lupus had been staying with us, because he needed help and we didn't know it was you who had stolen the money he needed to start a new life away from the blood and the killing!" Harsh accusation rasped along Skeeter's nerves. After that fight with Marcus, this new accusation felt like Ianira had just dumped a whole shaker of salt into an open wound.
"Okay, I really screwed up with that gladiator. I've known that a while, Ianira, and I'm sorrier than you know. But, what does that have to do with Marcus going to Rome?"
Ianira gave out a strangled sound like a sob. "How can you be so blind? That man came back, the one who bought him. Marcus didn't have quite enough money to pay him back. Not after all the medical bills. So Marcus agreed to carry his luggage to Rome to finish paying off the debt."
Skeeter relaxed. "Is that all? He'll be back, then, in a couple of weeks, free and clear."
"No, he won't!" Petite little Ianira, snarling like an enraged wolverine, backed Skeeter into a corner. He'd seen that look in a woman's eyes before-more than once and usually when Yesukai's new bride had vented her temper on some hapless victim in her imprisoning bridal yurt.
"Can't you see it, idiot?" Ianira demanded, raising the fine hairs on his neck and arms. "He's made Marcus keep records of certain people who come and go. The man who calls himself Farley, a name which does not match the soul-darkness in his eyes, steals things, downtime. Expensive things. Artwork. Some of it sexual and very rare. Once they're in Rome, Marcus will be just another expendable bit of profit to be auctioned off! That horrible Farley man has tricked him. I can feel it-and I was trained in such arts nearly three thousand years before you were born!"
A touch of coldness settled in Skeeter's belly. Chuck Farley was Marcus' old master? That put a whole, new-and utterly terrifying--wrinkle on the situation. After his own experience with Chuck Farley, Ianira had to be right. Hell, Ianira was never wrong. The lump on the back of his head still ached, making rational thought nearly impossible. Torn by helplessness, he asked quietly, "What do you want me to do? I can't afford the price of a ticket to Rome."