The Emperor's Knives (19 page)

‘Get your backs into it boys, I’m working to a schedule here!’

One of the older men shot him a jaundiced look as he trowelled plaster onto his section of the wall, his raised eyebrows revealing just how aware he was of the veteran’s ability to turn a profit from almost any situation.

‘Got a bet on it, have you, Morban?’

His sally was met with a knowing look from the standard bearer.

‘No, but I know something you don’t. If we have this place working by first thing tomorrow then there’s a share of the profit available to us.’

He smiled smugly as the soldiers turned to look at him with new interest.

‘What sort of share?’

‘Thirty per cent, and the rest to the burial club.’ The men nodded to each other at the mention of the fund that would ensure that each of them would receive the proper rites and commemoration at the end of his life. ‘Which means that given there’s eight of you, you lot get three per cent apiece of everything we earn.’

One of the swifter brains among them worked the numbers.

‘Which means you’re taking six per cent?’

Morban raised an eyebrow at him.

‘And …?’

The man in question, a standard bearer from another century, shook his head in mock confusion.

‘So we does all the work for three coins on the hundred apiece, and you does sod all for six? Doesn’t seem straight to me.’

The standard bearer shook his head pityingly.

‘All you’ve got to do is clean this place up, slap on some plaster and paint a flying prick on the wall for luck, carry in a few chairs and then laze about until we actually have hair to cut. I, on the other hand, have to keep you idle bastards working, make sure you do it right, go and find customers, take the money, count the money … Do I need to go on?’

Another man spoke up sardonically.

‘They’re letting you count the money as well?’

Morban smiled happily back at him.

‘Oh yes. My counting skills will be well employed here and that’s a fact.’

The soldier turned back to work.

‘Better resign yourselves to
two
per cent lads, old sticky fingers is back in the saddle.’

‘The fat one went off round the neighbourhood asking questions, and he bought a pot of quicklime as well. And later on, when it was quieter, they carried something out to the cart, wrapped in a sheet, and it looked wet, or at least the sheet did. Smelled rotten too.’

Excingus stroked his chin, taking a sip of his drink before responding to the child’s story.

‘So they were digging, and in the course of that excavation they found a body of some nature. I find the corpse of little interest, but the digging by which they discovered it is a good deal more fascinating. Why would they be digging a basement for a barber’s shop, I wonder?’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Find out what they’re up to down there, will you, Gaius?’

The child looked back at him with something close to incredulity.

‘How am I supposed to do that? Just wander up and ask for a look in the new cellar?’

The informant waved a hand, dismissing the question.

‘As you get older –
if
you live long enough to get older, given your constant urge to question the instructions of your betters – you will learn that the most important question a man can ask is not “
how
”. If I have to tell you how you are to achieve this simple task then I might as well do it myself. I don’t care how you do it, only that you do it. You don’t imagine that these soldiers have rented a shop, and have redecorated it at their own cost, for the simple fun of commerce do you? They have a reason for setting up this establishment, whatever it is that they plan to sell as a cover for their real activities, and I want to know what it is, because not knowing is making me a good deal more nervous than you can imagine.’

He stood, tossing a coin onto the table.

‘Off with you, and don’t come back without a detailed picture of what it is that they have down there or I may be forced to find someone else to do the job. You have a meeting with my good friend Julius today?’ Gaius nodded. ‘And you remember the story I gave you for him?’

‘You met with Senator Albinus yesterday, and agreed to sell him information about where and when he can set a trap for the soldiers.’ The child frowned. ‘But I still don’t see why—’

‘Why I would allow them to learn such a thing?’ He reached forward, putting a hand over the child’s eyes. ‘Tell me, what can you see?’

‘Well I can’t see fuck all, can I?’

‘Exactly. There is a city in front of your eyes, but all you can see is my hand.’

He removed the hand, and Gaius looked up at him with an expression of dawning comprehension.

‘You want the soldiers looking at the hand?’

‘And not the much bigger picture that it conceals. Exactly. Now be off with you, I too have a meeting to attend.’

He strode out into the street, ignoring the beggars who hailed him vociferously from the gutter, and walked away towards the spot he had detailed in his message to Albinus. Arriving to discover that the senator was already in his place, he dropped into a chair beside him, waiting until the guards who had accompanied Albinus to the gardens had withdrawn out of earshot. Since Cotta’s sudden departure from his service, the senator had taken to surround himself with former gladiators, any of whom Excingus suspected would be happy enough to cut his throat just for the simple pleasure of watching a man die.

‘You seem very keen, Senator. I thought I was early for our meeting, but I find you already here.’

The other man replied in a soft tone of voice, but with clear irritation.

‘And I thought you and I had a bargain, Informant? Me to pay you in gold, and you to provide me with the opportunity to take Scaurus and his man Aquila unawares? And now I discover that one of the emperor’s band of killers is dead? I suppose you’ll try to fob me off with some story of suicide, but I—’

‘Far from it, Senator.’

Excingus waited for a moment, allowing Albinus to speak again if he so wished, but the other man simply fixed him with a hard stare and raised his eyebrows.

‘Continue.’

‘As I said, this was no suicide. Aquila and that brute of a centurion who accompanies him everywhere jumped Centurion Dorso and his men on the street, killed the bodyguards, and dragged Dorso into his private residence. They murdered him in a most gruesome way, dousing him with oil before setting light to him.’

Albinus raised his eyebrows in horror, staring up at the trees above them.

‘I heard that his cremated corpse was found in the ruins of a private house, but to have burned him alive? This Aquila has sunk to the level of the barbarians who follow him around! I’ll serve him up some good old-fashioned Roman justice when I get the chance!’ He shook his head, then turned back to the informant. ‘So why is it, given our agreement, that you gave me no forewarning of this opportunity to snap them up?’

Excingus raised an eyebrow.

‘I would have thought that was obvious, Senator. Our deal is for the delivery of both Aquila
and
Tribune Scaurus, is it not? Were I to have set you in motion to have your revenge last night, then you would only have taken one of the two. Not only would the man who has caused you the greater offence still be alive, but he would also be forewarned, and in command of fifteen hundred men, many of whom, I am informed, feel great loyalty to this Aquila.’ He looked about him at the senator’s ragtag bodyguard. ‘I doubt that your few men, who seem rather better muscled than they are equipped for swift action, would have much hope of holding them off if they came for you in numbers.’ He shook his head and wagged an admonishing finger at the surprised Albinus. ‘No, if this is to be done then it must be done correctly, and last night offered no such opportunity. When the opportunity presents itself, you will be the first to know.’

He smiled at the senator.

‘
Trust
me.’

Morban looked about him at the shop’s renewed decoration, the paint still drying on parts of the walls while the air was filled with the aroma of fresh plaster. A neatly painted winged phallus adorned one wall, and the chairs in which their customers would sit to receive their barbering were lined up in two ordered rows.

‘Lovely.’ He glanced around the group of soldiers, all of whom had changed into clean tunics, clapping his hands together and rubbing them gleefully. ‘Right then! You lot, brace yourselves for business. I’ve got an idea how we can drum up some custom nice and quickly.’

Strolling out into the sunshine he waddled across the street, filling his lungs with a deep breath before bellowing at the top of his voice, cutting through the hubbub with the practised ease of a man who was used to making himself heard.

‘
Half-price haircuts! Half-price shaves! Today only, get your hair cut in the latest fashion by trained barbers! Half-price haircuts! Impress the ladies with a smooth chin and be the envy of your friends! Half-price shaves! No more looking as if you’ve cut your hair with a knife, we’ll leave you looking
…’

He grinned broadly at a man who had stopped in his tracks.

‘Haircut is it, sir? Or perhaps you’d like to find out just how good you’d look after a shave from one of our expert tonsors? Walk this way, and prepare to be astounded!’

He led the bemused customer into the shop, pointing to the soldier he judged least likely to cut their first customer’s throat by accident.

‘You, here’s a customer. Give him the closest, smoothest shave you can, and as our very first customer we’ll make it gratis as long as he promises to tell his friends just how good our bargain prices are!’

The customer in question beamed happily, quickly taking his place in the chair indicated. Nodding seriously, the ‘tonsor’ in question whipped out a military dagger and set to stropping its edge against a leather strap. Taken aback by the weapon’s unexpected appearance, the man in the chair took on an uneasy look and started to rise from his seated position only to find a powerful hand pushing him back while the soldier addressed him in a gruff voice.

‘Keep still mate. I won’t cut you unless you move, but if I do cut you then it’ll be right nasty …’

He smeared a handful of olive oil around the customer’s chin, quickly coating the now terrified man’s beard with the slippery fluid before setting to with his blade. After a few deft strokes his potential victim began to realise that he’d not actually been cut yet, and that each pass of the knife was painlessly removing a section of what had hitherto been a stubborn growth of stubble. The soldier grinned down at him, seeing the relaxation slowly soften his tensed features.

‘Yeah, good isn’t it? This knife’s a fucking beauty, the best I’ve ever had, holds an edge easy and it’s good for the toughest work. I even did a barbarian with it in Dacia last year, when I lost my sword in a goat-fuck of a fight …’ He paused, shaking his head in irritation as a trickle of blood ran down the now thoroughly terrified customer’s cheek. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do! I
told
you not to move!’

Cotta walked into the barbers’ shop shortly before dusk, nodding a greeting to Morban. His men, having shaved and tonsored the day’s last customers and swept away their clipped hair, were waiting for the command to be on their way with the eagerness of men who were planning a full night’s entertainment.

‘On your way boys, and remember, you’re all back on duty here at dawn. And no getting so pissed up that your razor hands are still shaking when you get here, eh?’

The soldiers made their exit without having to be asked twice, heading out into the city with respectful nods and half-salutes to the veteran. Morban waved a hand at the chair in front of his desk.

‘Have a seat, Centurion, take the weight off while I finish cashing up.’

Cotta sat, fixing his eyes on the standard bearer and watching with interest as his hands moved deftly over the piles of coins arrayed in neat piles on the desk.

‘My old man always used to say, when he wasn’t face down on his bed from too much wine or chasing recruits and thrashing them with his vine stick, that the way a man looks at things will tell you a lot about him.’

Morban looked up momentarily, feigning a curiosity that Cotta could see through with ease.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, he did. And the older I get, the more I respect the old bastard’s opinion …’

He deliberately went quiet, until the silence got to the other man in exactly the intended manner. Morban looked up, a sudden hint of disquiet in his swift glance, then looked back down at the money.

‘There it is. Just like he said, it’s in the eyes. So, Morban, you came recommended to me as a man with a magical touch with money.’

The standard bearer smiled in an attempt at self-deprecation.

‘Really? That was kind of—’

‘Yes.’ The centurion’s voice hardened. ‘I was told that any money that was put in front of you would, if you were left alone with it, magically start to vanish.’

The other man reared back with an indignant expression.

‘Just a minute! I—’

‘Resemble that comment?’

Morban’s eyes narrowed at the time-honoured put-down.

‘I’ve counted all this money three times now: thirty-three shaves and seventy-five haircuts, which comes to …’

‘So that’s fifty-eight customers, is it?’

The veteran soldier’s eyes narrowed as the deceptive lightness of Cotta’s tone sank in.

‘Ahhh … no. In fact it was seventy-two.’

He met the centurion’s stare with his most impassive mask and waited for a response. Cotta shook his head slowly, and something in his impassive stare sounded a warning in the standard bearer’s mind.

‘Once an officer always an officer, eh? Alright it was seventy-eight …’ The veteran centurion held his gaze steady. I’m telling you, seventy-eight customers. And that’s it.’

Cotta nodded.

‘Very good. I do so like it when I come to an accommodation with an experienced senior man like you.’

He held out a hand, and Morban opened the desk drawer, pulling out a purse and sweeping the money arrayed across the flat wooden surface into it before dropping the purse into the outstretched palm.