The Emperor's Knives (47 page)

‘I’m impressed. Most children of your age were in their beds hours ago.’

The boy showed his teeth in what might just have been a smile.

‘Most children of my age ain’t on the promise of a gold coin just to watch a house until you turn up. Where the fuck have you been? I’ve had to show my knife to two dirty old men while I’ve been sat here looking at nothing. And what’s in the jar?’

‘I’ve been sorting a few things out ready for going away. The jar contains one last gift from me to an old friend. Well, an acquaintance.’

The child looked past him at the man who had materialised from the shadows.

‘Hello, Dad.’

Silus grinned at his son, his teeth a slash of dull white in the darkness.

‘Hello, Son. All quiet?’

Gaius nodded.

‘All quiet. Them soldiers was up here earlier, but they only went to that shop, loaded some stuff into their cart and then buggered off back down the hill.’

Excingus frowned.

‘I still don’t see why they bothered with the whole barbering idea. Presumably they were carrying off the weapons they’d left in the shop. I hear they took the Hilltop Boys to pieces this morning.’

The child laughed without humour.

‘Didn’t do no good though. There was another gang on the street soon enough, telling the shopkeepers what’s what and putting them back in their place.’

Excingus smiled sadly.

‘It will ever be so, I’m afraid. Ah well, to business. You’re sure nobody’s been in or out of the house since the gladiators left?’

‘Nobody at all.’

‘And all of the gladiators left?’

Gaius nodded emphatically.

‘Hours ago. I counted them. All the soldiers went off down the hill too, that bloke in the toga and all his barbarians, and the officers that usually hang around with him.’

‘Which means that Marcus Valerius Aquila and his family are enjoying a quiet night after what must have been a joyous reunion. Plenty of wine taken, no doubt, which ought to make your task easier, Silus. Off you go then!’

The hired thug gathered his men to him with a grunted command, leading them across the road to the house’s wall. They paused for a moment in its shadows, then climbed swiftly over its smooth cap stones one at a time, dropping out of sight into the garden.

‘We’ll give your father a few minutes to do what has to be done, shall we, and then I’ll wander over and finish the job.’

Gaius nodded, looking with curiosity at the leather satchel on his employer’s back.

‘What’s in the bag?’

Excingus smiled at him benevolently.

‘Exactly the same question your father asked me not an hour ago. And the answer, young thief, is that it contains more money than you could ever imagine.’

The boy’s face screwed up in disbelief.

‘What, in that little satchel? Not likely …’

‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. Listen and learn, you revolting little monster. There is money in my bag, enough to pay you and Silus for your services, and a further sum by way of a reward for getting me to my ship in Ostia later this morning. But since I’m not entirely unaware of the risk that Silus, being a direct sort of man, might simply murder me here and take his bonus without having actually earned it, it is in the form of a banker’s draft.’

‘A what?’

Excingus sighed.

‘A banker’s draft. A piece of paper that details the money I have given to my banker, a man of undoubted trustworthiness as evidenced by his membership of his profession’s guild. I’m carrying two such drafts, one to give to Silus when I’m safely aboard my ship, and another which allows me access to my total fortune, which, I should add, is considerable, at any city large enough to merit the presence of other bankers. All I have to do is prove my bona fides to the banker in that far off place, and he will provide me with money against that draft. The proof is a word, something known to both bankers, which I will tell Silus once my safety from his somewhat acquisitive nature—’

‘His what?’

‘His fondness for killing people and taking their possessions.’

The child nodded, familiar with both his father’s choice of career and the enthusiastic manner in which he pursued its rewards.

‘So my old man takes this piece of paper, says this word to the banker, and he gets paid?’

‘Well done, you’ve grasped the concept. Further proof that your intelligence stems from your mother. Do your best to help Silus grasp the concept will you? I suspect he still has a yearning to knife me on the road to Ostia and claim my fortune for himself, which would be a shame for both of us. And no, since I know the way your devious little head works, I don’t know the word. It’s written on a piece of paper which I placed in my travel chest without reading it, a chest which has already been delivered to the ship in question. It really is quite foolproof, as long as you can persuade your father not to upset the apple cart and in doing so cheat himself out of his reward. And now, I think, Silus has had more than long enough to deal with a sleeping family. Stay here. He rose from the doorway’s concealment, padding carefully across the road and trying the door that led into the garden of Felicia’s house, gratified to find it unbolted.

‘You really are confident in your own abilities, aren’t you, Centurion. That must be the pride that took root just before the gods decided to punish you.’

The knock at the front door was soft, barely loud enough to be heard. After a moment, the signal was repeated, slightly louder than before, and Marcus opened the door to find Excingus standing there with a triumphant grin on his face and a large wine jar in the crook of his arm. The scene was illuminated by a small torch that had been placed in the sconce an hour or so before, its flames casting an orange tinge on the informant’s momentarily horrified face.

‘Ah … Centurion! I’ve … come to celebrate your miraculous escape from the very jaws of a slow and painful death!’

Peering over Marcus’s shoulder at the darkened room beyond, he frowned in apparent admonishment at the younger man.

‘Surely you won’t deny me a crumb of hospitality, Valerius Aquila? Can we let the past lie where it fell, and at least part company on civil terms?’

Marcus looked at him for a moment before replying.

‘My wife is asleep. Come in, say what you have to say and then leave us in peace.’

Excingus stepped into the house and Marcus pushed the door closed, the informant starting in surprise as he shot the bolts to secure it. Excingus looked about himself owlishly, unable to see very much as his eyes struggled to adapt to the room’s sudden darkness after the torch’s bright light. He tapped the wine jar with his free hand and spoke loudly into the darkness, praying that Silus and his men were close at hand.

‘Surely you’ll allow me the honour of offering a toast to your continued good fortune, for Fortuna must be looking at you with more than a little jaundice given the reliance you’ve put in her over the last few days? Fetch a pair of cups and we’ll take a drink to your long life and happiness.’

Marcus walked past him and then turned, shaking his head.

‘I don’t think the goddess would be all that impressed with the jar of rather badly spoiled Iberian red which you purchased in the market earlier, given that you spent rather less than would have been the case were it actually drinkable.’

The former grain officer’s eyes narrowed, and Marcus leaned forward to speak quietly in his ear.

‘You’re not the only person in Rome who knows how to have a man shadowed, Excingus. Our men not only saw you purchase the cheapest wine possible, they also watched you tip it out. You caused quite a commotion among the beggars, if you think back …’

His voice had taken on a confidential tone that failed to distract Excingus’s attention from the dagger that had appeared in the young centurion’s hand, and whose point was pressed against the inside of his thigh. Something moved in the shadows behind him, and the informant started as a rough voice muttered in his ear.

‘
Come on, sir, spare us a sip of the good stuff!
’

‘The
beggars
?’

Marcus nodded.

‘You’ve been using those children to watch us, Excingus, so it felt only reasonable to return your interest. We’ve had eyes on you, Informant …’

Julius stepped out of the darkness, the indistinct lines of his shadowed face resolving into hard, angry features. He nodded to Marcus, taking Excingus by the throat.

‘It was a neat enough plan. Your hired thugs slip into the house and butcher my centurion in his sleep, kill his son, rape and murder his wife, and then let you in with your jar of
wine
so that you can torch the place. Or perhaps you planned for your victims to burn alive, their screams telling the story of a house fire with horrible consequences?’

He gripped the informant’s throat harder, pulling him closer with inexorable strength and grinning savagely into his face, and, now that the informant’s eyes had adapted to the room’s near darkness, he realised that he was surrounded by silent figures whose armour gleamed in the pale lamplight. His skin crawled at the implications of their presence, his mouth opening wordlessly as Julius’s words sank in.

‘It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it? You’ve doubtless been trying to understand why we went to all the bother of setting up as barbers, especially after that little weasel of a child took a look at the new cellar our engineers dug under it, and told you it was just an empty room.’ He signalled to one of the soldiers, who stepped forward and handed him a tiny dog. Julius took the animal in his big scarred hands with surprising delicacy, using a finger to scratch behind one cocked ear. ‘The strange thing is, while we were digging out the cellar we found a woman’s body, recently murdered by her husband the landlord. It seems she had a little dog, a scrap of a thing which by some whim of Fortuna ended up being adopted by my wife. This little dog, in fact. And once this little dog had adapted to his new surroundings, he kept on coming back to one place in the house, scratching at the floor tiles and yapping. He was so persistent about it that we decided to take them up and see what it was that was attracting him …’

He stared at Excingus for a long moment.

‘But of course you know what we found, don’t you? You planned to slop the naphtha in that jar you’re holding … You, take it off him before he drops the bloody thing, he’s shaking like a standard bearer who’s been caught with his hand in the burial fund.’ A soldier stepped forward and took the jar from the informant’s unresisting fingers. ‘That’s better, now we can all relax. Yes, you were going to pour that stuff all over the house, except for one special spot, weren’t you? And when the urban watch came to investigate the fire, to poke in the ruins and pull out the twisted bodies, the unmistakable stench would have led them to five corpses buried under the dining-room floor, wouldn’t it? Sextus Dexter Bassus and his wife, and their slaves, the previous inhabitants of this house who you killed less than a fortnight ago. It would have been simple enough to work out, I suppose. Bassus and his household would clearly have been murdered, a crime obviously carried out by Centurion Corvus as a means of reclaiming his wife’s house, without the bother and delay of legal proceedings. The deceased centurion would have been adjudged to have buried them under the floor with a nice thick coating of quicklime to dry out their flesh and stop them from rotting.’ His voice took on a note of respect. ‘It was smart thinking, I’ll give you that. If we’d looked like getting too close to guessing what your real game was you could have tipped the Watch off to search the house at any time, and got us off your back in hours. And as a convenient means of completing your last revenge it’s brutally efficient. Worthy of me, in fact.’ His voice hardened. ‘Except, you piece of shit, and this is the bit where I get to see you sweat …’ He leaned in close and whispered savagely in the informant’s ear. ‘They’re not
there
any more.’

Scaurus walked forward out of the darkness, his face appearing almost demonic in the half light. He stopped in front of the informant with his hand out.

‘Give me the bag.’ He took the satchel that Excingus handed over with such clear reluctance that the nature of its contents was easy to guess, speaking conversationally as he pulled everything out and examined them. ‘The bodies were there, Varius Excingus, until just a few hours ago, and then while all that excitement down in the Flavian had everyone distracted, they were exhumed, given a blessing to ease the passage of their tormented souls, and then carried through the tunnel to the shop. My men carried them out when there was no one about and placed them in a cart under the cover of several sheets of canvas and yet more quicklime. They
stank
, Excingus, they smelt worse than anything you could ever imagine if you hadn’t walked a battlefield a week after the shouting was finished, which means that your neighbours will already be starting to wonder if you died a few days ago and are lying undiscovered as you rot.’

The informant started again, his eyes widening at the implications of the tribune’s words.

‘Did I forget to mention that our spies followed you back to your house pretty much straight after we set them to tailing you round the city? All that looking over your shoulder doesn’t seem to have been much use, does it? They’ve been enthusiastically hailing you from the gutter whenever you’ve come out of the front door ever since. Anyway, your neighbours are probably considering whether to kick your door in even now, given that your rooms will be squarely implicated as the source of such a revolting odour, and they’re going to find five very dead people who clearly didn’t die of natural causes. Unless, of course, you manage to get back there first and dispose of the bodies before it comes to that.’

He grinned at the horrified informant.

‘I could just release you, of course, but you’d probably only make a run for it, given the contents of this bag.’ He held up the banker’s draft, unrolling it and reading the detail with a low whistle. ‘That’s a very large sum indeed, Varius Excingus. Clearly the informing game is a lucrative one. There’s enough money here for a man never to have to worry about where his next loaf of bread is coming from ever again, no matter where in the empire he went. Where were you planning to run to, eh? Iberia? After all, the wine’s good. Asia Minor? I do hear the Greek islands are very nice though …’