Anthony Riches - The Emperor's Knives

The slave nodded.

‘I am Arminus, Senator. I was taken prisoner by the tribune in battle, and he saw fit to spare my life and bind me to his service. Now I guard his back when he is foolish enough to leave it uncovered … which is often.’

Sigilis snorted a laugh.

‘A slave with a sharp tongue in his head, and yet unmarked by any sign of the lash. Either your master is a gentler man than I’d imagined, or your service to him has value that outweighs such minor irritations. And beside you, a one-eyed man with more scars than I’ve ever seen on a warrior, looking back at me as if I am the subordinate in our brief relationship. Royalty?’

His question was directed at Scaurus, but Martos answered the question directly, gesturing to the tribune.

‘I was a prince, before I was betrayed to this man by a mutual enemy who took my throne and abused my people. The tribune spared me from the execution that was my fate by rights, and now I am an ally of Rome.’

‘And the eye?’

‘I ran amok among my enemies when we recaptured my tribe’s capital, and I lost my reason to an unthinking rage for their blood. When I regained the ability to think clearly I was painted from toe to hair with the blood of a score of dead and mutilated men. My eye was the price that my god exacted for that revenge, it seems …’ He paused for a moment, shaking his head sadly. ‘I would have traded every life I took to have found my son alive, but my betrayers had already thrown him from the highest rock to feed the crows, and caused my woman to take my daughter’s life to spare her the indignity of their abuse. She killed herself …’

‘And you felt unable to remain in the place where your family was destroyed as a consequence of your having trusted this betrayer?’

Martos nodded.

‘I have entrusted my future to these men.’

The senator nodded, turning his attention to the last of them, taller than either of the other two barbarians by a head and whose body was almost a parody of the human frame, such was its size and musculature.

‘And you, the giant. Who are you?’

The big man’s voice rumbled a one-word reply.

‘Lugos.’

He pondered Scaurus’s turned head and raised eyebrow for a moment before speaking again.

‘My pardon. Lugos, Lord .’

Sigilis chuckled, the flesh around his eyes crinkling with the pleasure.

‘There’s no need to call me “Lord”, barbarian, I do not expect you to obey the formalities of our society since you are so clearly a newcomer to our city, although a simple “Senator” would suffice if you feel such a need.’

Sigilis returned his attention to Scaurus.

‘And now, with our introductions made, perhaps you will indulge the wishes of a grieving father and tell me how it was that my son came to die in Dacia? I received the official communication, of course, and my senatorial colleague Clodius Albinus was able to fill in a few of the gaps given that he was in command of the Thirteenth Legion in Dacia, but you are the first men I’ve met who were actually present when he died. Tell me all about that day, if you will, and provide me with some feel for the way in which my Lucius went to meet our ancestors?’

The second of the audience chamber’s two doors opened, on the other side of the wide airy room from which its four occupants had entered. They had been ushered one at a time into lamp-lit opulence by the stony-faced praetorians who had escorted them through the palace, then left to their own devices with the politely delivered, but nonetheless firm instruction to wait for their host. A single man dressed in a formal toga stepped inside, glancing around the table at which they were sitting waiting for him. All four stirred in their seats at his entrance, even the gladiator who prided himself on his self-proclaimed imperturbability shifted his position minutely, and the newcomer smiled at their reaction, opening his hands in greeting.

‘Gentlemen, my apologies for keeping you waiting. Affairs of state, you know how these things are …’

The squat, ugly man sitting at the table’s far end cracked a slow, lazy smile.

‘We know, Cleander. There’s not one of us that hasn’t kept a man waiting for one reason or another, to make him nervous or to piss him off.’ He gestured to the man beside him. ‘Even our gladiator here has been known to toy with a man for a while before taking him down with a single sword blow. The old tricks are the best, eh?’

The imperial chamberlain smiled back at him.

‘Indeed, although I’m not exactly here to have one of your fingers cut off for refusing to pay your protection money, am I Brutus?’

The other man shrugged, but before he could answer another of them spoke, his voice crisp with authority, clearly used to issuing commands and having them obeyed without question. He had removed his armour when he received the summons to attend the gathering of the Knives, but his red praetorian tunic and the vine stick lying on the table before him told their own story as to his role in the palace.

‘He’s right though, isn’t he, Chamberlain? My tribune, the praetorian prefect above him, you, you’re all in the game of imposing your will on other men. We used to work for the praetorian prefect, but now that the Emperor’s stuck the blunt end of a spear through him and left him to bleed to death in the dark, we work for you . That’s the point you’re making, I assume?’

Cleander dipped his head in a sardonic acceptance of the truth in the centurion’s statement.

‘You assume correctly, Fabius Dorso, since I will certainly be the man keeping your new prefect waiting from now on, when I feel the need to impress him with my authority, since I shall be his master in all but name.’

The praetorian dipped his head in return and kept his mouth shut, wisely deciding to let his fellow conspirators mount any further challenge to the chamberlain’s apparently unquenchable ambition. Unsurprisingly, it was the man sitting opposite him, resplendent in a spotless toga of the very finest quality wool, who took up the unspoken challenge. His voice was acidly sardonic, a weapon perfected over years of debate.

‘However will you find the time to manage the detail of such a large and important role, Aurelius Cleander?’

‘Ah, well you know how it is as well as I do, don’t you, Senator?’ The chamberlain smiled back at him with a shrug. ‘Some men, Asinius Pilinius, have a talent of making a life’s work out of something that needs nothing more than a swift decision and the right delegation. There’s always someone with the right skills and motivation to carry out your orders, if you look hard enough for him, and I seem to have the skill of finding that man and putting him to work. I’ll answer the big questions and leave the people that I select to enact them to work out how best to achieve my desires. A bit like the way we’ll be working from now on, in fact. I’ll decide which men are deemed to have committed treason, and you four can deal with them in the usual fashion, take your share of the spoils, have your fun and make sure that the throne receives the condemned man’s assets. Speaking of which …’

He unrolled a scroll, stretching out the silence as he read down the items listed. At length he looked up again, gazing around the table at each man in turn, his stare level and direct.

‘Gentlemen, I think it’s important that we have a clear understanding at the start of this new relationship. It seems to me that you may have become used to taking a little more than your agreed share under Prefect Perennis, to judge from this inventory of the proceeds of his estate.’ He raised the scroll. ‘There’s nothing really valuable missing of course, all of the major assets are accounted for, but there seems to be a disappointing amount of portable wealth that has, for want of a better term, gone for a walk.’ He looked up at the four men around the table, pursing his lips in amusement at his own joke, although not one of them had showed any sign of reaction. He shrugged. ‘Here’s an example. There seems to be a suspiciously small number of slaves available to sell, and none of them, it appears, the prefect’s family members. Which is disappointing since, as we all know, the children of the rich and famous command such high prices from the men who appreciate that sort of thing.’