The Emperor's Knives (48 page)

‘You already know.’

Scaurus nodded sanguinely.

‘You’re right, I do. It’s amazing just how much more cooperative a ship’s master can be when the questions are being asked by a bad-tempered centurion like Julius here. So you don’t have to worry about missing your boat, since your boat isn’t really your boat any more. And yes, to answer that question lurking in the back of your mind, we do have your chest, and yes, I did find the password for your banker’s drafts. Your contribution to my cohorts’ burial funds will be much appreciated.’

He stood back and waited for the informant to speak, but Excingus simply stared back at him with hate-filled eyes.

‘And now, I suppose, you’re wondering whether this can get very much worse. Sadly, I’m afraid the answer to that unspoken question is most definitely
yes.
’

Senator Sigilis walked out into his garden at the hour which Scaurus had nominated with such firmness, looking about him in the starlit darkness with no more idea what he was supposed to do next than he’d had when the tribune had proposed his flight from Rome. Earlier in the day, he had dismissed the last of his staff, giving each of his slaves a statement of manumission, which had been witnessed by a judge so prominent that no one would think to challenge their freedom in his absence. Thanking his butler for the man’s devoted service, and pressing a more than generous purse upon him as a reward for his loyalty, the senator had sent him on his way with the instruction to lose himself in a part of the city where he was unlikely to be unearthed by any search for those members of the household who had been close to their master.

‘There will be men coming for me soon, perhaps tonight, and if by chance they fail to find me here, they will naturally turn to those of my staff who might have some knowledge of my whereabouts. And I fear that no amount of denial would blunt their willingness to dig so hard for the truth that your exit from this life would be a matter of some considerable discomfort.’

The bemused servant had surprised him by embracing him before turning away.

‘Farewell, Senator, may Mercury speed your flight. And I must now pass you a message that Tribune Scaurus left with me for this moment. The tribune wants you to wait in your garden once the moon has risen, and listen for a man calling your name.’

Sitting in his accustomed place within the ring of trees that sheltered the garden dining area, he waited with the patience of his years, musing on the events that had brought him to the point of imminent disgrace and execution, wondering whether his wry acceptance of looming death would survive the moment of his apprehension by the emperor’s murderers.

‘
Senator! Senator Sigilis!
’

The call was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, and for a moment Sigilis wondered if his overwrought imagination had conjured the sound from nothing, until it was repeated. Standing, he walked slowly towards the place from which he believed the sound had come. And then, with an abruptness which made him take a step backwards, a figure detached itself from the gloom, seeming to rise out of the earth itself. Grasping at the amulet given to him by his wife decades before for strength, he found his voice, a reedy whisper of challenge that sounded like another man’s.

‘
What are you!
’

The response, disquietingly, was a laugh, the earthy chuckle of a man who had seen too much of life to take very much seriously.

‘What am I? I’m tired, Senator, and keen to be away from here. Here, put this on.’ Sigilis reached out automatically to take the garment that was thrust at him, pursing his lips at the coarse material, and the anonymous man from the shadows spoke again with the same amused air. ‘Yes, sir, it’s rough, and if there were light you’d see that it’s dirty too. And it smells of sweat. Strip off that fine tunic and leave it here for the men hunting you to find, eh?’

Sigilis stripped, pulling on the rough garment as bidden.

‘So what now, stranger, now I look and smell like a working man?’

‘Now? Follow me, sir. And I ain’t no stranger. My name’s Avidus. I was here the other day, measuring up this lovely garden.’

The mysterious figure turned away, taking a few steps before seeming to literally vanish into the earth, and while Sigilis dithered, fighting to master his fear of the unknown, he called out to him again, his voice muffled.

‘Come on then, sir! Just a few steps more! Here, you, pass me that lamp!’

The senator paced forward slowly, his eyes widening as the light revealed the nature of his apparent salvation.

‘Ahhhh. I
see.
’

Almost an hour after his father had jumped over the garden wall into the centurion’s garden, an increasingly impatient Gaius heard voices from the other side of the street. The garden gate opened, allowing a single figure to exit onto the darkened street with the quick, uncontrolled steps of a man who had been pushed. He stopped, looking about himself with swift, jerky movements, cradling something in his hands as if he were reluctant to put it down.

‘
Oi, Excingus!
’

The furtive figure started with the child’s whispered challenge, backing away with what sounded disturbingly like a muffled whimper. Gaius rose from his hiding place, crossing the road on quick feet as the informant backed away in apparent terror, still holding whatever it was that he was so unwilling to relinquish.

‘
What’s that you’ve got th—
’

The child’s question died in his throat as he stared down at the round object in his employer’s hands, shaking his head in shocked disbelief and reaching out to pull the knife from the informant’s belt. Excingus, his mouth bound with a tightly tied gag, shook his head frantically as the boy lifted the blade over his head with a shout of rage.

‘You
cunt
!’

He slashed at the reeling informant, whipping the blade back up over his head ready to strike again in a scatter of blood. Excingus staggered, his bellow of pain muffled by the gag, dodging the blow with a frantic sidestep before taking to his heels with the desperate speed of a man who knew that he was facing his death. Gaius ran after him, the knife held ready to strike again, his child’s voice raised in a piping shriek of rage.

‘Come back, you bastard! Come back and face me!’

Marcus opened the door the next morning in response to a firm knock, finding a quartet of men in praetorian uniform waiting in the small garden, the foremost of them wearing the plumed helmet of a centurion.

‘Marcus Tribulus Corvus?’

He nodded, looking at their faces one at a time until he found the man who had put his spear through Horatius’s neck the previous evening.

‘You’re to come with us.’ The speaker looked at him levelly for a moment. ‘By the order of the emperor.’

Scaurus stepped up alongside his centurion.

‘I presume this invitation also requires my presence?’ His only answer was an imperturbable nod. ‘Very well, in which case I suggest we go?’

The two men walked down the hill towards the Great Circus and the Palatine’s sprawling palaces in silence, their escort ignoring the inquisitive glances of the pedestrians who cleared from their path willingly enough when they laid eyes on the soldiers’ grim faces and glinting spear heads.

‘All in all, Centurion, and whatever it is we’re walking into, I’d have to say we did the right thing. You spent an untroubled night, I presume?’

Marcus smiled wearily.

‘Untroubled by my family’s ghosts? Yes, Tribune. The doctor tells me that my acts of revenge have in some way assuaged my guilt at being my family’s only survivor …’ He sighed. ‘All I know is that where I expected exultation and the joy of bloody revenge, I found only emptiness and self-loathing.’

The tribune put a hand on his shoulder.

‘You did what you had to do. And now my advice would be to let the whole thing go. Put any thought of completing your revenge from your mind.’

Marcus stared up at the looming bulk of the imperial palaces.

‘I have. Although I doubt that Velox will take the same attitude …’

They were escorted through the ring of iron that protected the Palatine, the officers supervising each successive praetorian checkpoint deferring to the dagger-shaped emblems on their escort’s dangling belt ends with an alacrity that made Scaurus smile quietly.

‘As ever, Cleander seems to have taken Perennis’s informal expedient and turned it to his own ends.’

The four soldiers guided them through a waiting room filled with supplicants waiting their turn to speak with the chamberlain, many of whom shot them the venomous glances reserved for those who pass unchecked where others are forced to wait their turn. Walking through the door into the chamber beyond, they were greeted by the sound of the chamberlain’s unmistakable voice.

‘Justice? If you want justice, Senator, you know what the price is. And now, I’m afraid, your time is at its end. You choose, either make the necessary payment or wait for the wheel of imperial justice to finish its slow and unpredictable revolution. Who knows, you may be lucky enough to draw a magistrate who will sympathise with the injustice that appears to have been dealt out to you …’

He gestured to an aide, who took the senator in question’s arm in a firm grip, leading the man away while he continued to protest his innocence in whatever matter it was that he had come to bring to the chamberlain’s attention.

‘And now … Ah, good, I’ve been looking forward to this all morning. Tribune. Centurion. I see you’ve made your acquaintance with the Emperor’s
new
Knives? I say “the Emperor’s”, of course, where in point of fact I mean “mine” …’

He smiled at them, encouraging them to join in his joke, and Scaurus smiled wryly back at him.

‘And of course, our pursuit and murder of their predecessors was only ever possible with your active assistance.’

The chamberlain nodded, his expression sanguine.

‘Of course. As I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, Varius Excingus was my creature from the very start, the agent of my helping you on to the scent of each of them in turn. How long did it take you to make the realisation?’

‘It was the moment that I found Senator Albinus waiting for us outside Pilinius’s villa. We already knew that Excingus was feeding information to him, but despite his having every opportunity to give us up to his apparent sponsor, he seemed reluctant to do so. Why, I wondered, would he not complete his betrayal of us, unless there was some bigger dog with his throat in its jaws? And what bigger dog could there be than a Roman senator with more than enough gold to buy the loyalties of a single informant? I didn’t have to look very far for the answer.’

Cleander conceded the point with a smile.

‘You’ve played quite a game, haven’t you, Tribune? While it seemed to all appearances as though you were simply supporting this man’s revenge-crazed rampage through the ranks of the man who killed his father, you were in truth once again dabbling in Roman politics, weren’t you?’ Scaurus looked back at him with a nonplussed expression, drawing a reluctant laugh from the chamberlain. ‘Come now, you’re not going to expect me to be taken in by your silent protestation of innocence?’

Cleander sat back in his chair, waiting for the tribune to answer.

‘You do me too much credit, Chamberlain. I am no more than a simple—’

The other man guffawed loudly, shaking his head in amusement.

‘A simple soldier? I don’t think so. I sent my new Knives out yesterday evening for their first task, with orders to remove a substantial problem from my already heavy burden of difficulties. They attended the residence of Senator Gaius Carius Sigilis who, as I’m sure you know, has recently been under something of a cloud for his pronouncements in the senate glorifying the former republic and demonstrating grievous and unforgivable disdain for the imperial cult. Expecting to find the senator in residence at his domus, since his movements have been tracked for the last few weeks to ensure that he didn’t attempt anything foolish to further undermine imperial rule, they were disappointed to find him absent, and the house completely empty.’

He fell silent, playing a hard stare across the two men’s faces.

‘I trust your men managed to recover the senator’s estate as some means of reparation for his crimes?’

The chamberlain nodded slowly, clearly unable to fault the concern in Scaurus’s voice.

‘For the most part, Tribune, although the fugitive seems to have escaped with a significant fraction of his wealth, which he appears to have been quietly converting into liquid assets for the past few weeks.’

Scaurus’s tone hardened, a note of disgust entering his voice.

‘And presumably he’s been doing that in such a way as to make it untraceable? These people leave me speechless, seeking to undermine the throne and then running away with their money when an attempt is made to bring them to heel!’

Cleander stared at him for a moment longer before speaking again.

‘A more detailed investigation of the senator’s domus this morning revealed the means by which he escaped, a tunnel that had been dug from a shop in an adjoining street, and which ran a full one hundred and ten paces into the senator’s garden before coming to the surface. A tunnel which, I’m told by those that know what to look for, displayed all the hallmarks of military engineering …’ He allowed the silence to play out, waiting for some response from Scaurus. ‘Nothing to say, Tribune?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘There’s nothing I can say, Chamberlain, without sounding disrespectful to the emperor’s own legions, and therefore I shall say nothing.’

Raising an eyebrow, Cleander resumed his story.

‘And so we come to the facts surrounding a man with whom we’re both well acquainted, our mutual associate Tiberius Varius Excingus.’ He waited in silence again, but Scaurus made no more attempt to comment than before. ‘Excingus was found on the street in the Aventine district this morning, close to death as a result of several knife wounds of varying severity, apparently delivered by his own weapon since it was missing from the scene. Held in his hands …’ One of his aides leaned forward and whispered in his ear. ‘I stand corrected.
Nailed
to both of his hands was a severed man’s head, that of one of several men who were also found dead in the same area at much the same time. They had, apparently, been killed with long bladed weapons of the type used by your Tungrians. The head in question has been identified as belonging to one of Excingus’s closest associates, a man by the name of Silus, and it seems that it had been secured in place by means of the type of nails usually used for military crucifixions, two of which had been driven through each of his hands and into the dead man’s head in an X-shaped pattern, making it impossible for him to pull them out without assistance.’