Furies (49 page)

Gellius looked mortified. “Please, Pesach, this is not the time. Sir, this is a matter of public record. We beseech you as citizens of Rome …”

“Oh, well then, since you’re citizens of Rome …”

Gellius looked rather pleased with himself. The fool even moved towards the shelves to start digging through the records. Lycarion struck the floor in front of him with his cane, and laughed to see Gellius jump back. The man nearly shit himself! “For a citizen of Rome the price is only thirty sesterces.” Gellius’ eyes went wide. “And you can take me in your mouth out back.”

“I … I don’t understand.”

“Then why don’t you come back when you have things figured out, you stupid fuck.”

“I could use your little thing to pick my teeth if I wasn’t afraid it would get lost in there,” the skinny fellow said with a sneer.

“Let’s start with you then,” Lycarion said, running the tip of his tongue across his lips, tightening his grip on his cane.

“You should watch that tongue of yours before I rip it out of your mouth, shithead.”

“Pesach, please, now is not the time,” his friend whispered.

“You’re going to let him talk to us like that?” Pesach demanded.

“Talk to you like that?” the Harbour Master roared. “Who do you think you are speaking to me that way? Get out of here the both of you before I knock you into the harbour and let the fish feed on you!”

“Sir, calm yourself,” Gellius pleaded. “We must have got off on the wrong foot somehow. We only want to look at some old shipping records you might …”

“You’re speaking to Roman fucking citizens, you fat stupid fuck!” Pesach yelled, his face red as a boiled beet, spittle flying from his mouth.

“Pesach, let me handle this. Don’t mind my friend, sir, he means no harm.”

“Maybe you should tie him to a post somewhere and beat him then!” Lycarion growled. “He’s like some sort of mad dog!”

Gellius winced. “Oh. You really shouldn’t have said that.”

The Harbour Master barely had a chance to react as Pesach wrenched the cane from his hand and jammed the end of it hard into the man’s stomach. Lycarion doubled over in pain, gasping for breath, and could only watch as Pesach swung it across his head with a sharp thwack. He crumpled to the floor in a broken heap.

“What have you done?” Gellius sighed.

Pesach casually kicked the Harbour Master in the head. “Let’s just look at the damned records, alright?”

The sun had climbed high into the hazy spring sky, the clouds rolling back to reveal great swaths of blue, the sweltering air drenched with the smell of fertile mud as the barge headed through the dark channels cut between the high green walls of reeds. Dryton moaned and twisted in agony on the floor of the barge, the front of his chiton dark with blood, his face grey, greasy with sweat. Sekhet talked to him in soothing tones, but she looked worried. Callixenes lay trussed up in the bottom of the boat, silently watching the healer as she worked.

“You work for Ralla then,” Capito asked Callixenes. The freedman met him with a cold stare and returned his attention to Sekhet. “You want to be tried for murder yourself? Executed?”

“They should sew him into a sack of scorpions and toss him in the Nile,” the soldier Machon growled.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Aculeo offered. “Not if you help us. We know it wasn’t you who arranged all these killings.” The freedman glanced back at him, a smirk on his pocked face, then looked back at the healer, licking his lips. “Who else came to the rituals?”

“He’ll die, you know,” Callixenes said.

“Who’ll die?”

“Your soldier there. He’s a dead man.”

“Shut your damned mouth,” Machon said. Callixenes met him with a grey-toothed grin.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Sekhet. “He’ll be fine.”

“I doubt that. I dipped the arrowheads in pigshit,” the freedman said. “The poisons have seeped into him already – he’ll be dead in a day or two if he’s lucky. A week or more if he’s not.” He laughed so hard he began to cough.

The soldier grabbed the freedman by the throat, punched him in the face over and over, sending the boat rocking wildly. “Shut your cursed mouth, or I’ll shut it for you, you freedman shit!”

“Enough!” Sekhet barked. “You’ll tip the boat!”

Capito grabbed the soldier from behind in a bear hug, pulling him off. “Machon, stop, we need him! We’ll deal with it later, alright?”

Machon sat there, straddling Callixenes, his breathing ragged, angry, before finally climbing off. The freedman gave a wheezing laugh, his nose gushing with blood, his left eye swollen and pink, his lip split. He spat a thick wad of bloody phlegm at their feet. Aculeo and Capito gagged him tightly, blindfolding him as well to prevent him from infecting others with his murderous gaze.

Sekhet dipped a length of cloth over the side of the boat, wrung it out and laid it on Dryton’s forehead to try and cool his fever. He’d fallen asleep at least, as had Machon and Capito. Aculeo sat in silence, watched as fellahin fishermen along the shore swept their nets through the water.

Sekhet slid over then to examine Aculeo. “Your nose is broken.”

“Is it?”

“Hold still,” she said, kneeling before him, positioning her thumbs on either side of his nose.

“Watch it, what are you …? Fuck!”

“Your gratitude overwhelms,” she said, sitting wearily next to him. “So the one behind all this, Ralla. He’s a man of wealth and influence?”

“Yes. A great deal of both.”

Sekhet sighed, quietly watching the fishermen at work as they took care not to tangle their nets in the reed thickets. “And you think you can stop him?”

“We have Callixenes. He was linked to four of the victims at least. We have the remains we found at the farm. And I have the documents proving he owns the land where the murders took place that I can provide the Magistrate. He has everything he needs to go after Ralla. Though he doesn’t seem so pleased with the prospect.”

Sekhet looked him in the eye, unsmiling now. “Nor should he be. Egyptians have a saying about such things, you know. When you hook too big a fish you should start worrying who’s caught who.”

Aculeo returned home, exhausted and apprehensive at the same time. Sekhet’s right, he thought. A man like Ralla likely has a thousand ears and eyes about the city – if he learns what we have on him, he’ll try to crush us before we can act on it. This is not my battle anymore, it never truly was. I’ve done what I can. It’s for men like Capito to finish it. I need to gather Calisto and the girls so we can flee the city while we still can.

As he stepped through the door of his lodgings, Pesach practically attacked him. “Where’ve you been?” the man demanded.

“It’s a long story.” Pesach’s stay had become increasingly difficult to tolerate of late. He never ventured outside, never bathed, spent most of his time drinking Aculeo’s wine, eating his food and sleeping and had become as clinging and wheedling as an old woman. “Where’s Gellius?”

“How should I know? He got himself shitfaced drunk and stormed out of here.” Pesach scowled and slumped back into the slingback chair that had become his permanent headquarters of late. He belched and scratched absentmindedly at his crotch. “Tell me again what happened between you and Corvinus.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Aculeo said irritably. He tried to walk past him but Pesach stood up suddenly, blocking his way.

“Tell me again about you and Corvinus,” he slurred, his breath stinking of fermented fish paste and sour wine.

“Pesach, I’m tired, and I’ve many things to do, so if it’s all the same to you …” Aculeo pushed his way past the other man. “Xanthias,” he called.

“Yes, Master?” Xanthias replied, emerging from Aculeo’s cubiculum, rubbing his eyes.

“Were you sleeping in my bed again?”

“Master, I would never even consider such a thing!” the slave said, visibly shocked.

“Pack our things. We’re leaving.”

“Of course, Master. An easier task each time we do it, might I say, given how dramatically our possessions have diminished. Where are we running off to this time?”

“As far as we can go,” Aculeo said. “Oh, and set aside Posidippus’ documents. I’ll need you to take them to Capito before we go.” Xanthias grumbled vague complaints but set to work all the same.

“And what of Gellius and me?” Pesach demanded. “Where shall we go?”

“Stay here if you like,” Aculeo said. “Or go. I’ve done what I can for the both of you. I need to care of myself now.”

“I see. That’s a new thing, then, is it?” Aculeo ignored him, heading towards his cubiculum. “You know I used to think you were just a fool,” Pesach called after him as Aculeo changed into some fresh clothes.

“Oh did you?” Aculeo said, weary of the game.

“Yes. The way you lived. You were always such a rich, pompous prick. All the parties you threw, your ostentatious villa, and that fine wife of yours, Titiana. She really was lovely by the way, such a fine ass, and those beautiful milky tits.”

“Shut your mouth, Pesach.”

The other man ignored him, just closed his eyes, lost in his recollections. “Yes, you were a very lucky man. The way you spent your fortune, throwing money away like flower petals cast upon the water. You must have thought yourself a god.”

Aculeo glanced around at his shabby little flat. “There’s not much casting of flower petals now, is there.”

“No indeed,” Pesach cackled. “Then, when it all fell apart and the money started to disappear, and we all lost our fortunes while you continued to live your life in that fine villa of yours, I assumed you must have been a thief. That you stole it from us. It was the only explanation I could think of.”

“My Master’s no thief!” Xanthias cried indignantly.

“He’s a poor one if he is,” Pesach acknowledged. “Now just today, I’ve come to realize I was right in the first place. You’re just a simple fool,” he said, his bleary eyes blinking, his words so slurred they were barely intelligible. Xanthias offered no defense this time.

“I’ve things to do,” Aculeo said, bristling.

“Yes, Aculeo, you’re just a fucking idiot. It wasn’t you who was the thief – it was Corvinus.”

Aculeo’s irritation suddenly boiled over into a red hot fury. All the hurts, fears, insults and resentments that had formed his life of late congealed at once. Corvinus, a good, kindly and generous man who had been like a father to him, to be called a thief by this stinking drunk? He moved in fast, his fist raised to strike the man.