Anthony Riches - The Emperor's Knives

Marcus nodded, folding his fingers around the heavy metal disc.

‘Your son wrote something on the ice before he died, using his own blood. Something he wanted me to remember …’

Sigilis raised an incredulous eyebrow.

‘With his blood ?’

Marcus nodded soberly.

‘As I said, Senator, he was a strong-willed man. He was dying, he knew that much, but he was determined that I should act upon something he had told me a few days before. It was-’

The senator’s voice was suddenly cold.

‘Did this by any chance involve a group of imperial assassins who call themselves “The Emperor’s Knives”?’

‘Yes sir.’

Sigilis pursed his lips.

‘I didn’t intend for him to overhear my discussions on the subject of the revival of that most despicable of imperial habits: the murder of wealthy men under the pretext of their having betrayed Rome, followed by the confiscation of their assets.’ His lip curled. ‘Confiscatory justice. I feared — and I still fear — that my estates would eventually attract the attention of the men behind the throne, and I wanted to spare him from having to live under the shadow of that threat. But, with all the persuasive power of an only son, he somehow managed to convince me that he should hear what it was that my informant had to say-’

Scaurus interrupted.

‘Your informant ? I believed that you had employed an investigator?’

The senator shook his head slowly.

‘You’ve evidently been away from Rome too long, Tribune, and paid too little attention to your history lessons as a younger man, I suspect. There is a ruinous state of affairs that is forever waiting its time to flourish under the absolute power of imperial rule. It happened under the emperor Tiberius, when Sejanus came to dominate the city, it happened twice more, under Nero and Domitian, and now we see the same bloody horror rear its head once more under this dissolute fool Commodus. It is rule by the informant, gentlemen, a rule that terrorises the worthy man of good character who commits no other crime than to be wealthy, when the empire is as near to bankruptcy as it can be without actually collapsing. We invaded Dacia back in Trajan’s day, and the failed attempts before that, simply because it had enough gold to sustain the empire for a century or more, enough to allow five emperors to rule equitably because they had the riches of the Dacian mines to support their rule, and therefore had no need to indulge in underhanded methods to support their budgets.’

He sighed, shaking his head.

‘And now? Now the empire has fallen prey to the eastern plague, and the population is reduced in size so drastically that tax revenues are falling too fast for the mines’ output to compensate. Add to that an emperor who spends gold on his own pleasure like water, and the recipe was almost complete. All that was needed then was for someone in a position of high power to realise that the only thing standing between the emperor and anything he wanted were the limits of that man’s conscience.’

His gaze flicked up to Marcus, an apologetic grimace playing across his face.

‘Your father was a man of such impeccable character as to have earned his passage to Elysium several times over, and yet he was one of the first victims of that unrestrained absolute power, as Perennis started down the path of blood that has led us to where we are now. His wealth was well known, and besides that Commodus openly coveted his villa on the Appian Way. After all, it had its own baths, water supply by aqueduct, even a hippodrome. What more could any emperor want from a country residence!’

His laugh was bitter.

‘And now we members of the senatorial class live in fear that we will be the next to face false accusations, to find ourselves blinking in the torchlight in the middle of the night when Commodus’s hired killers come for us and our families. Yes …’ He nodded at the look on Marcus’s face. ‘The Knives. So you pull a face when I say the word “informer”, Tribune, and yet that is what Rome has become once more, a city in the merciless grip of the informers. There are more than enough men of this craven nature within the Senate itself for me to be utterly confident in predicting that this emperor has sowed the seeds of his own downfall, creating a monster that must eventually eat itself. And so I have suborned one such man, a well-placed individual who spends most of his time listening for the tiny whispers of dissent that can be used to accuse an innocent citizen of treason for a crime no greater than discussing the days of the republic, before that misguided genius Octavian declared himself Caesar Augustus because he saw no other way to liberate Rome from its apparently endless cycle of civil wars than by concentrating absolute power in the hands of a single man. I pay my informant well, and in return he ensures that I know exactly where the Knives will make their next visit.’

He signalled to the butler, who in turn made his way back to the house and opened a door behind which a hooded figure had been waiting. As the informer made his way across the garden, Sigilis turned back to the Tungrians with an apologetic grimace.

‘I didn’t want to introduce you to him until we had the rest of our business out of the way. He tells me that you parted on less than ideal terms when you last met.’

Marcus’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as the informer stopped before them, his face almost invisible in the shadow beneath the hood.

‘You? ’

Arminius started as he realised who the senator’s man was, surging off the bench with a snarl only to find himself face-to-face with Scaurus.

‘You are a guest in this man’s house, Arminius, and still my slave to command! You will respect his hospitality!’

The hooded man laughed softly.

‘How very decent of you, Tribune Scaurus. It seems that the senator’s trust in your sense of Roman manners was justified …’

The voice was unmistakable in its lazy drawl, and Marcus was shocked to find his thoughts snapped back to a woodland clearing two years before, in the wake of a victory over the fearsome Venicone tribe. He looked at the informer in disbelief as the man reached up and pulled back the hood to reveal a face that Marcus had never expected to see again.

‘Well now, centurion, are you Tribulus Corvus or Valerius Aquila today?’

The young centurion spat out the man’s name through bared teeth, seething at the sight of the man.

‘Excingus!’

‘Let’s make one thing clear, shall we?’

The gladiator put a finger firmly on Brutus’s chest, prodding him hard enough to put a scowl on the other man’s face.

‘Keep your bloody hands off me! You want to be a bit more careful who you-’

‘No, I really don’t. ’ Mortiferum leaned in closer, his voice pitched low so that his words were only barely audible, and the praetorian took the senator by the arm and drew him away until they were well out of earshot. ‘Don’t imagine that just because your thugs have scared a few shopkeepers and pimps into submission I wouldn’t go through you and your muscle like a hot poker though a week-old corpse.’ He prodded the gang leader’s chest again, the smaller man’s body jerking with the force of his gesture. ‘Try me, and find out just how many of your men are willing to stand against me and my followers. The people of this city worship me and my brother, and I reckon that they’d tear a man to pieces just for raising a blade against us outside of the arena. I might be wrong, of course, but that’s a calculation for you to make. You two, come here!’

The guard centurion strolled up with the senator following slowly behind him, and the gladiator looked about him at the three of them.