David Drake - Balefires

– the swordpoint broke the resisting skin beneath Menelaus's breastbone and slid swiftly upward through the old man's lungs, stomach, and heart.

Vettius grabbed Menelaus's limp wrist to prevent the man from flopping on his back. The swordpoint stuck a finger's breadth out from between Menelaus's shoulder blades. It would grate on the stone if he were allowed to lie naturally.

Dama reached beneath the old man's neck and took the weight of his torso. Vettius glanced across at him, then eased back-putting his own big form between the scene and the excited civilians spilling from the office to gape at it.

"You didn't have to do that, old friend," Dama whispered."There were other households…"

But no households who wouldn't have heard the story of what had happened here-or a similar story, similarly told by an emissary of Pyrrhus the Prophet. Menelaus had known that… and Menelaus hadn't been willing to accept open charity from his friend.

The old man did not speak. A trail of sluggish blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes blinked once in the sunlight, twice Then they stayed open and began to glaze.

Dama gripped the spatha's hilt. One edge of the blade was embedded in Menelaus's vertebrae. He levered the weapon, hearing bone crack as the steel came free.

"Get back!" the merchant snarled to whoever it was whose motion blurred closer through the film of tears. He drew the blade out, feeling his friend's body spasm beneath his supporting arm.

He smelled the wastes that the corpse voided after mind and soul were gone. Menelaus wore a new toga. Dama'd provided it "as a loan for the interview with Rutilianus."

Dama stood up. He caught a fold of his own garment in his left hand and scrubbed the steel with it, trusting the thickness of the wool to protect his flesh from the edge that had just killed the man he had known and respected as long as he had memory.

Known and respected and loved.

And when the blade was clean, he handed the sword, pommel-first, to Lucius Vettius.

There were seats and tables in the side-room of the tavern, but Vettius found the merchant hunched over the masonry bar in the front. The bartender, ladling soup from one of the kettles cemented into the counter, watched hopefully when the soldier surveyed the room from the doorway, then strode over to Dama.

The little fella had been there for a couple hours. Not making trouble. Not even drinkingthat heavy…

But there was a look in his eyes that the bartender had seen in other quiet men at the start of a real bad night.

"I thought you might've gone home," Vettius said as he leaned his broad left palm on the bar between his torso and Dama's.

"I didn't," the merchant said. "Go away."

He swigged down the last of his wine and thrust the bronze cup, chained to the counter, toward the bartender. "Another."

The tavern was namedAt the Sign of Venus. While he waited for the bartender to fill the cup-and while he pointedly ignored Dama's curt demand tohim -Vettius examined the statue on the street-end of the counter.

The two-foot-high terracotta piece had given the place its name. It showed Venus tying her sandal, while her free hand rested on the head of Priapus's cock to balance her. Priapus's body had been left the natural russet color of the coarse pottery, but Venus was painted white, with blue for her jewelry and the string bra and briefs she wore. The color was worn off her right breast, the one nearer the street.

Dama took a drink from the refilled cup. "Menelaus had been staying with me the past few days," he said into the wine. "So I didn't go back to my apartment."

The bartender was keeping down at the other end of the counter, which was just as it should be. "One for me," Vettius called. The man nodded and ladled wine into another cup, then mixed it with twice the volume of heated water before handing it to the soldier.

"Sorry about your friend," Vettius said in what could have been mistaken for a light tone.

"Sorry about your sword," Dama muttered, then took a long drink from his cup.

The soldier shrugged."It's had blood on it before," he said. After a moment, he added, "Any ideas about how Pyrrhus switched the notebook in your friend's purse?"

Like everyone else in the tavern, the two men wore only tunics and sandals. For centuries, togas had been relegated to formal wear: for court appearances, say; or for dancing attendance on a wealthy patron like Gaius Rutilius Rutilianus.

Dama must have sent his toga home with the slaves who'd accompanied him and Menelaus to the interview. The garment would have to be washed before it could be worn again, of course…

"It wouldn't have been hard," the merchant said, putting his cup down and meeting Vettius's eyes for the first time since walking behind his friend's corpse past the gawping servants and favor-seekers in the reception hall."In the street, easily enough. Or perhaps a servant."

He looked down at the wine, then drank again. "A servant of mine, that would probably make it."

Vettius drank also. "You know," he said, as if idly, "I don't much like being made a fool of with the Prefect."

"You'restill alive," Dama snapped.

Vettius looked at the smaller man without expression. The bartender, who'd seenthat sort of look before also, signaled urgently toward a pair of husky waiters; but the soldier said only, "Yeah. We are alive, aren't we?"

Dama met the soldier's eyes. "Sorry," he said. "That was out of line."

"Been a rough day for a lot of people," said Vettius with a dismissive shrug. "For… just about everybody except Pyrrhus, I'd say. Know anything about that gentleman?"

The merchant chuckled. "I know what I've heard from Menelaus," he said. "Mostly that Pyrrhus isn't a gentleman. He's a priest from somewhere in the East-I've heard Edessa, but I've heard other places. Came here to Rome, found an old temple that was falling down and made it his church."

Dama sipped wine and rolled it around his mouth as if trying to clear away the taste of something. Maybe he was. He'd felt no twinge at mentioning Menelaus's name, even though his friend's body was still in the process of being laid out.

Menelaus had always wanted to be cremated. He said that the newer fashion of inhumation came from-he'd glance around, to make sure he wasn't being overheard by those who might take violent offense-mystical nonsense about resurrection of the body.

Vettius looked past Dama toward the bartender."You there," he called, fishing silver from his wallet. "Sausage rolls for me and my friend."

To the merchant he added, as blandly as though theywere old friends, "There's something about a snake?"

"Yes…"Dama said, marshalling his recollections."He claims to have one of the bronze serpents that Christ set up in the wilderness to drive away a plague. Something like that. He claims it talks, gives prophecies."

"Does it?"

Dama snorted."I can make a snake talk-to fools-if there's enough money in it. And there's money in this one, believe me."

He bit into a steaming sausage roll. It was juicy; good materials well-prepared, and the wine was better than decent as well. It was a nice tavern, a reasonable place to stop.

Besides being the place nearest to the Prefect's doorway where Dama could get a drink.

He poured a little wine onto the terrazzo floor. The drops felt cool when they splashed his sandaled feet. Vettius cocked an eyebrow at him.

"An offering to a friend," Dama said curtly.

"One kind of offering," the soldier answered. "Not necessarily the kind that does the most good."

Dama had been thinking the same thing. That was why he didn't mind talking about his friend after all…

For a moment, the two men eyed one another coldly. Then Vettius went on, "Happen to know where this temple Pyrrhus lives in might be?"