Night & Demons (16 page)

There were two ways for Dama to handle his response. He made the snap decision that concealing his knowledge from this big, hard-eyed soldier couldn’t bring any dividends equal to getting the man’s respect from the start.

“Yes,” he said. “A decurion in the squadron of Domestic Horse.”

Vettius was surprised enough to glance sideways to make sure that canvas still covered the gilt spikes and hearts against the blue background of his shieldface. “Right, that’s me,” he agreed mildly. “The Prefect’s bodyguard, more or less. The name’s Lucius Vettius—as I suppose you knew.”

There was no question in the final clause, but Dama nodded his agreement anyway. He’d done his homework—as he always did his homework before a major sale.

This business, because it was personal and not merely a matter of money, was the most major sale of his life . . . .

“Let me hope,” rolled Menelaus’s voice through the open door and window of the office, “that my words today can be touched by a fraction of the felicity with which all Rome greeted the news that you had been appointed her helmsman.”

“I was wondering,” Vettius said, “just how much you’d paid Sosius?”

Dama prodded the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

“The reason I’m wondering,” the soldier continued, “is that he’s taking money from Pactolides, too.” He laughed. “Vulco’s an unusually virtuous councilor, you know.”

Dama grimaced bitterly. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Vulco stays bought.”

“My words are driven out under the compulsion of the virtue and benignity which I see before me . . .” Menelaus continued in an orotund voice.

“I hadn’t thought,” continued Dama, choosing his words carefully, “that a decurion was worth bribing. Until now that I’ve met you.”

“I’d have taken your money,” Vettius said with the same cold smile as before. “But it wouldn’t’ve gained you anything. What I’d really like from you, Citizen Dama . . .”

Dama nodded his head upward in agreement. “Go ahead,” he said.

If not money, then a woman? A
particular
woman to whom a silk merchant might have access . . . ?

“ . . . is information.” The flat certainty with which the words came out of Vettius’s mouth emphasized the size and strength of the man speaking. He had black hair and spoke with a slight tang of the Illyrian frontier.

“Go ahead,” Dama repeated with outward calm.

From the office came “. . . though I fear that by mentioning any particular excellence first, I will seem to devalue . . . .”

“I can see why the old man wants to be Rutilianus’s tame philosopher,” Vettius said. “It’s getting harder and harder to scrape up enough pupils freelance to keep him in bread, onions, and a sop of wine . . . .”

Dama nodded.

“Thing is, I’m not quite clear what
your
part in the business might be, Citizen.”

This time the soldier’s smile made Dama measure in his mind the distance between him and the hilt of the sword resting against the wall. Too far, almost certainly.

And unnecessary. Almost certainly.

“Menelaus was a friend of my father’s,” Dama said. “A good friend. Toward the last, my father’s only friend. Menelaus is too proud to take charity from me directly—but he was glad to have me stand beside him while he sought this position in the Prefect’s household.”

Vettius chuckled. “Stand beside him,” he repeated ironically. “With a purse full of silver you hand out to anybody who might ease your buddy’s road.”

“. . . speak of the River Tagus, red with the blood of the bandits you as Governor slaughtered there?”

“He doesn’t know that,” snapped Dama.

“But you do, merchant,” the soldier said.
“
You take your family duties pretty seriously, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do,” agreed Dama as simply as if he didn’t know he was being mocked . . . and perhaps he was not being mocked. “Menelaus is my friend as well as my duty, but—I take all my duties seriously.”

The big man smiled; this time, for a change, it gave his face a pleasant cast. “Yeah,” he said. “So do I.”

“I can see that,” Dama agreed, feeling his body relax for the first time since his interview with this big, deadly man began. “And it’s your duty to guard Rutilianus.”

“More a matter of keeping things from hitting the Prefect from somewhere he’s not looking,” Vettius said with a shrug.
“
So I like to know the people who’re getting close to him.”

He grinned. “Usually I don’t much like what I learn. Usually.”

Dama nodded toward the office, where Menelaus’s measured periods had broken up into the general babble of all those in the room.
“
I think we’d better get back,” he said. “I’m glad to have met you, Lucius Vettius.”

And meant it.

The Prefect called, “Ah, Vettius,” craning his neck to see over his shoulder as Dama and the soldier reentered the room. “We rather like Menelaus here, don’t we, gentlemen?”

Yes yes/Well-spoken indeed/Seems solid for a pagan
—

“Well, being able to spout a set speech doesn’t make him learned, sir,” crabbed Vulco.

He fixed Menelaus with a glare meant to be steely. Vulco’s head was offset so that only one eye bore, making him look rather like an angry crow.

“Tell me, sirrah,” he demanded, “who was it that Thersites fed his sons to? Quick, now—no running around to sort through your books.”

The philosopher blinked in confusion. Dama thought for a moment that his friend had been caught out, but Menelaus said, “Good sir, Atreus it was who murdered the sons of his brother Thyestes and cooked them for their father.”

Dama suppressed a laugh. Menelaus had paused in order to find a way to answer the question without making his questioner look
too
much of a fool.

Vulco blinked. “Well, that seems all right,” he muttered, fixing his eyes on his hands and seeming to examine his manicure.

“Yes, well,” Rutilianus agreed. “But you, Lucius Vettius. What information do
you
have for us?”

Everyone else in the room looked at the tall soldier: Menelaus in surprise, the Prefect and his companions with a partially concealed avidity for scandal; Dama with a professionally blank expression, waiting to hear what was said before he decided how to deal with anything that needed to be countered.

Vettius glanced at Dama. “I’d suggested to His Excellency,” he said, “that he let me see what I could learn about the learned Menelaus.”

“Of course,” Rutilianus agreed, raising his eyebrows. “After all, we need to be sure of the man who’s going to be responsible for the moral training of my children.”

His companions bobbed and muttered approval.

Vettius took a bi-fold notebook of waxed boards from the wallet in the bosom of his toga, but he didn’t bother to open the document before he said, “Menelaus comes from Caesarea in Cappadocia where his father was one of the city councilors.”

Like Dama’s father.

“Was schooled in Gaza, then Athens. Returned home and taught there for most of his life. Moved to Rome about five years ago. Gives lessons in oratory and philosophy—”

“Epicurean philosophy,” the subject of the discussion broke in, before Dama could shush him.

“Epicurean philosophy,” Vettius continued, giving Dama—rather than Menelaus—a grin that was not entirely friendly. “In the Forum of Trajan; to about a dozen pupils at any one time. Doesn’t get along particularly well with the other teachers who’ve set up in the same area. For the past three months, he’s been attacking one Pyrrhus the Prophet in his lectures, but the two haven’t met face to face.”

Dama was ready this time. His finger tapped Menelaus’s shoulder firmly, even as the older man opened his mouth to violently—and needlessly—state his opinion of Pyrrhus.

“Well, we
know
he’s a philosopher!” Caelius said. “What about his personal life?”

“He doesn’t have much personal life,” Vettius said. He betrayed his annoyance with a thinning of tone so slight that only Dama, of those in the office, heard and understood it. “When he’s a little ahead, he buys used books. When he’s behind—”

Menelaus winced and examined the floor.

“—which is usually, and now, he pawns them. Stays out of wineshops. Every few months or so he visits a whore named Drome who works the alleys behind the Beef Market.”

“These aren’t,” Vettius added dryly, “expensive transactions.”

Dama looked at the philosopher in amazement. Menelaus met his gaze sidelong and muttered, “Ah, Dama, I—thought that when I grew older, some impediments to a calm mind would cease to intrude on my life. But I’m not as old as that yet. I’m ashamed to admit.”

Macer opened his mouth as if about to say something. Lucius Vettius turned toward the man and—tapped his notebook, Dama thought, with the index finger of his left hand.

Dama thought the soldier’s gesture might be only an idle tic; but Macer understood something by it. The councilor’s eyes bulged, and his mouth shut with an audible clop.

“Last year,” Vettius continued calmly, “Menelaus moved out of his garret apartment at night, stiffing his landlord for the eight days’ rent.”

“Sir!” the philosopher blurted in outrage despite Dama’s restraining hand. “When I moved there in the spring, I was told the roof tiles would be replaced in a few days. Nothing had been done by winter—and my books were drenched by the first heavy rains!”

“The pair of Moors sharing the room now—” said Vettius.

“If you want to believe—” Vulco began.

“—say the landlord told them when they moved in that the roof tiles would be replaced in a few days,” Vettius continued, slicing across the interruption like a sword cutting rope. “That was three months ago.”

He turned to the philosopher and said coldly, “Do you have anything to add to
that,
Faustus Menelaus?”

Menelaus blinked.

Dama bowed low to the soldier and said, “My companion and I beg your pardon, sir. He did not realize that the life of an exceptionally decent and honorable man might contain, on close examination . . . incidents which look regrettable out of context.”

“Well, still . . .” Rutilianus said, frowning as he shifted on his couch. “What do you fellows think?”

All four of his civilian companions opened their mouths to speak. Macer was fractionally ahead of the others, blurting, “Well, Severiana certainly won’t be pleased if an opponent of Pyrrhus the Prophet enters your household!”

“Didn’t I tell you to leave my wife out of this?” Rutilianus snarled.

Macer quailed as though he’d been slapped. The other civilians froze, unwilling to offer what might not be the words the aroused Prefect wanted to hear.

Vettius looked at them with cool amusement, then back to Rutilianus. “If I may speak, sir?” he said.

“Of course, of course, Lucius,” Rutilianus said, wiping his forehead with a napkin. “What do you think I should do?”

Dama squeezed Menelaus’s shoulder very firmly, lest the old philosopher interrupt again—which Dama was quite sure would mean disaster. The soldier wasn’t the sort of man whose warnings, voiced or implied, were to be ignored without cost.

“I can’t speak to the fellow’s philosophy,” Vettius said.

He paused a half-beat, to see if Menelaus would break in on him; and smiled when the philosopher held his peace. “But for his life—Citizen Dama stated the situation correctly. The learned Menelaus is an exceptionally decent and honorable man, fit to enter your household, sir—”

Vulco started to say something. Before the words came out, the soldier had turned and added, in a voice utterly without emotion, “—or your council. From a moral standpoint.”

Vulco blanched into silence.

Dama expressionlessly watched the—almost—exchange. This Vettius could go far in the imperial bureaucracy, with his ability to gather information and his ruthless willingness to use what he had. But the way the soldier moved, his timing—thrusting before his target was expecting it, ending a controversy before it became two-sided—those were a swordsman’s virtues, not a bureaucrat’s.

Dama’s right palm tingled, remembering the feel of a swordhilt. In five years, he’d turned his father’s modest legacy into real wealth by a willingness to go where the profits were as high as the risks. He knew swordsmen, knew killers . . . .

“Even with the . . . ?” the Prefect was saying. His eyes looked inward for a moment. “But yes, I can see that anyone’s life examined closely might look—”

Rutilianus broke off abruptly as if in fear that his musings were about to enter territory he didn’t care to explore.

“Well, anyway, Menelaus,” he resumed, “I think we’ll give you—”

“Gaius, dearie,” called a silk-clad youth past the scowling nomenclator, “there’s somebody here you just
have
to see.”

Rutilianus looked up with a frown that softened when he saw the youth—the boy, really—who was speaking. “I’m busy, now, Ganymede. Can’t it wait . . . ?”

“Not an eentsy minute,” Ganymede said firmly, lifting his pert nose so that he looked down at the Prefect past chubby cheeks.

“Oh, send him in, then,” Rutilianus agreed with a sigh.

The nomenclator, his voice pitched a half-step up with scandal and outrage, announced, “The honorable Gnaeus Aelius Acer . . .” he paused “. . . emissary of Pyrrhus the Prophet.”

“That
charlatan!” Menelaus snapped.

“It ill behooves a pagan to criticize a Christian, you!” Macer retorted.

“Pyrrhus is no Christian!” said Menelaus. “That’s as much a sham as his claim to know the future and—”

Dama laid a finger across his friend’s lips.

A young man whose dress and bearing marked his good family was being ushered in by the nomenclator.

Rutilianus glanced from the newcomer to Menelaus and remarked in a distant tone, “A word of advice, good philosopher: my wife believes Pyrrhus to be a Christian. A belief in which I choose to concur.”

He turned to the newcomer and said, “Greetings, Gnaeus Acer. It’s been too long since you or your father have graced us with your company.”

Instead of responding with a moment of small talk, Acer said, “Pyrrhus to Gaius Rutilianus, greetings. There is—”

There was a glaze over the young man’s eyes and his voice seemed leaden. He did not look at the Prefect as his tongue broke into singsong to continue: