Anthony Riches - The Emperor's Knives

‘Keep nice and still mate. It’ll be a lot quicker and less painful if you do.’

Bassus looked about him frantically for a way out of his predicament, but before he could make any move the knife man stepped forward quickly, whipping his dagger up and thrusting it deeply into the point where his cowering victim’s neck and shoulder met in the classic street executioner’s stroke.

‘Ah! You bast …’

Clutching reflexively at the wound with blood squirting between his fingers, he tottered, stepped forward one seemingly drunken pace, and then stopped, swaying on the spot. Eyes rolling upwards as consciousness failed, he slumped to the floor and lay still, a puddle of blood spreading from the wound with one small rivulet trickling down into the underground hiding place from which he had taken the purse. The beneficiarius looked down at him with an expression of pity.

‘How disappointingly stupid. He fell for the beneficiarius story the moment he saw this meaningless piece of silver.’ He lifted the belt end, smiling down at the faked symbol of patronage. ‘Even when whatever it was that broke during your struggle out there hit the floor, he still wasn’t bright enough to realise what was happening until you came through the door.’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. Clearly we perform a service to the gods on days like these, ridding this world of the more credulous of our fellow citizens and leaving more room for clever fellows like you and I, eh Silus?’ He slapped the blood-spattered murderer on a relatively clean section of his arm. ‘And well done for a neatly concluded job! Let’s get all that blood washed off the floor and walls shall we, and decide what to do with the bodies?’

The gory bodyguard stood and looked at him for a moment before speaking.

‘Doesn’t it worry you to be alone with a murderer and more gold than I’ve ever seen in my life, with no one else to hand or even knowing that we’re here?’

His employer raised a sardonic eyebrow, half his face shadowed in the dim evening light filtering through the study’s high window.

‘You only ask from curiosity, of course?’

Silus looked down at his bloody knife.

‘That’s right, only my curiosity.’

‘Well in that case I shall enlighten you as to the source of my boundless confidence with regard to your continued flawless execution of my orders. And it really is very simple. Once a day, every day, I report to a very, very important man. I provide him with the information I glean as I go about my job, information which is particularly important to him. He expects results from me, Silus, and I expect that he would be more than vexed if the admittedly small matter of my death were to get in the way of my achieving those results. Be assured that he knows all about you, and indeed all about the seemingly immeasurable number of family members whose main breadwinner you would appear to be — how many children is it that you have?’

‘Seven.’

His employer clapped his hands together softly.

‘Seven indeed, and they all survived the plague the last time it stalked the city? That really is quite astonishing good luck! I know of whole families that were wiped out in less than a week. You’re a lucky man, Silus, but it might just be that you’ve used up all that luck. Were I to go missing, even for a day, this man is the type to assume the worst and set investigators on my trail. A trail which I have ensured will lead straight to your door. So, were you to make this simple and entirely understandable mistake, you would soon enough find yourself and every one of your seven children, and that fat wife of yours and her brother, and his wife and children too, all enjoying a brief unscheduled trip to dark rooms buried far beyond any thought of rescue. There are men who ply their trade in those badly lit places, Silus, who make a simple schemer like me and a murdering thug like you appear to be men of the highest virtue. Your family, once in their power, would be abused, degraded and tortured in ways that even a man with your broad experience of the world cannot begin to imagine, since these men’s depravity is limited only by the bounds of their particularly savage imaginations.’

He stared at the killer for a moment, opening his arms wide.

‘So if you’d like to play through that possible future for your family, you go right ahead and put the knife into me.’

Silus shook his head.

‘No, my curiosity is quite satisfied. Funny though …’

His employer raised an eyebrow.

‘What is?’

‘I was just thinking that you’re not quite right in the head, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

The other man smiled at him broadly.

‘Many men have tried to offend me Silus, it’s in the nature of my business to attract insults, but very few of them have ever succeeded. After all, none of this is personal, it’s simply business. And trust me, there is a method in my apparent madness. I have a plan that will bring this man Aquila to justice at last, and in doing so more than likely perform the other task that my rather impatient sponsor wishes to see completed. So, let’s be about it shall we? These bodies aren’t going to bury themselves.’

Rome, September AD 184

‘Close your mouth, Dubnus, or something will fly into it.’

The heavily built and bearded soldier walking alongside Julius, senior centurion of the First Tungrian Cohort, gave his superior officer a disparaging look before resuming his perusal of the inhabitants of the Aventine district through which they were progressing. When he spoke his voice was awestruck, as if he could barely believe the scene before him.

‘But they’re bloody everywhere, Julius! Bar girls, shop girls, girls on the street, girls on the corner, girls writing graffiti on the wall about how their clients made them scream with pleasure!’ He pointed to a prostitute leaning against the door of a house, her pitch marked out by several lewd and enticing statements as to her abilities and offerings scrawled on the wall behind her. ‘That one will even …’

He swallowed, and shook his head in amazement at the debauched act that was apparently on offer for the price of a decent meal.

‘Yes, the city can be rather overpowering for the first-time visitor, but then you would insist on accompanying us. Perhaps you should concentrate on the architecture instead?’

Julius turned and nodded to his tribune who was walking a few paces behind the two centurions, resplendent in a pristine toga and with his hair cut and combed to glossy perfection, even if his clean-shaven face was in defiance of the latest fashion. Dubnus drew breath to speak again, managing with some reluctance to drag his attention away from the prostitute who was so enticingly crooking her finger at him while lasciviously teasing the digit’s end with her tongue, but was rudely interrupted by Julius before he could open his mouth.

‘That’s a good idea, Tribune. That way he won’t embarrass the rest of us by walking round with a damp spot in the front of his tunic. You’re not wearing armour now Dubnus, look to your decency man!’

The big Briton gave his friend a hard look before gazing up at the buildings on either side of the road along which they were walking, craning his neck to stare up at the five- and six-storey insulae towering over them.

‘You’re the funny man today, are you Julius? As it happens, I was just thinking that I still can’t get used to the idea that people actually live in those things. Imagine having to climb all the way up there and then discover that you’ve forgotten something. And what happens if there’s a fire on the ground floor, and you’re all the way up there?’

Tribune Scaurus laughed grimly.