rather die. You need to realize that the locals have no fear of death. That's why we have so much trouble with them. They would rather go to the next world than live dishonored in this one.'
'I think they may have a point.'
'You see, Tilla? Even your medicus thinks it is shameful to live without honor. Just one little bite, and you can be free.'
'Tilla, please! Trust me.'
'The two of us can come to an understanding, Ruso.' The twitch in Priscus's cheek had begun again. 'For the sake of the medical service.'
Ruso felt something touch the palm of his hand. His fingers closed over three smooth warm shapes.
'It's your duty to support me, Ruso!' cried Priscus. 'They were just slaves! They were of no importance!'
Ruso took Tilla by the arm and helped her to her feet. When he turned back, Priscus was clutching a kitchen knife. Ruso backed away, cursing his carelessness and snatching at the empty space where his own weapon should have been. 'Stay back, Tilla!'
Instead, Tilla pushed him out of the way and stepped forward, her good arm pointed toward Priscus. In her hand was Ruso's knife, still stained with the blood of the birth.
'Careful, Priscus,' Ruso warned, suddenly inspired. 'Her tribe train all their left-handed people to be warriors.'
'I'll have you arrested and sold!' Priscus shouted at Tilla. He waved the kitchen knife at Ruso. 'He signed the documents!'
'You could do that,' agreed Ruso, moving toward the foot of the bloodstained bed, 'but it wouldn't keep me quiet, would it?'
He opened his hand and placed the poison on the bedcovers. Still defended by Tilla, he made for the door. 'Perhaps you're the one who needs to think about it overnight, Priscus,' he said. 'Shut the door behind us, will you, Tilla?'
77
Ruso, hunched in his room with his spare cloak around his shoulders and his feet warmed by a sleeping dog, reached for another tablet of the Concise Guide. He flipped it open and squinted at the lettering in the lamplight. Then he breathed on the wax to warm it and ran the flattened end of the stylus across the sheet to wipe away the writing he had spent so many hopeful hours composing.
Stacked at a safe distance from the lamp were the final plans of the Concise Guide and a couple of tablets full of notes. These were the only parts he intended to keep. The rest was being finally and irrevocably scrapped. He was never going to finish it: he realized that now. Even if he had not been as tired as he was-and it had taken a lot of night duty to pacify Valens for being left alone on payday-he knew he was not blessed with the powers of concentration that a real author needed. A real author would not have sat for hours in front of an uncompleted work, pondering the answers to irrelevant questions like what had happened to his former servant and whether she was safe. Wondering if she might think of him occasionally. Wondering whether he would ever find out where she was. Wondering whether, if he had been more insistent, she would have stayed. And if she had stayed, what might have happened.
Ruso picked at the twine tying the two leaves of the next tablet, tugged at the end, and scowled as it tightened into a knot. He had managed without Tilla before she came. He would manage without her now that she was gone. In time-and it was obviously going to take longer than the thirty days he had so far been without her-she would become no more than an interesting memory. In time he would stop feeling a fool for having offered her a choice in the hope that she might want to stay Perhaps in time he would forget the whole business. Perhaps in time he would even be able to walk the streets of Deva without feeling tainted by the human misery that he now knew lay behind the entertainment of the legion he served.
He glanced across at the damp stain that had blossomed beneath his bedroom window. Of course she wouldn't have wanted to stay. Even Valens would have had trouble enticing a woman to stay in this moldering excuse for a home. Ruso, the man who had considered selling Tilla for a profit, had not stood a chance. No wonder the last he had heard of her was a message saying she had gone north and taken Phryne with her.
He sliced the tip of his knife through the knot and breathed warmth onto the next sheet. The stylus scraped across the surface, filling the scratches and catching up the misted droplets where his breath had condensed on the cold wax. His careful thoughts on 'where a broken bone is suspected' sank into the past.
He had signed the death warrant of the Concise Guide three weeks ago, when the camp prefect had called him and Valens in separately for 'a chat.' The chat had not been a cozy experience. Evidently the camp prefect knew more than Ruso would have wished about his performance since joining the Twentieth. There was nothing to be gained by explaining that he was normally very reliable and that the downhill slide was the result of his colleague eating a dish of bad oysters. When the prefect had said, 'And if you were in charge of the medical service, what would you change?' he had come up with the brightest idea he could think of at the time, which was that practical first-aid training for every man in the unit would mean faster treatment of injuries, less time off sick, and less pressure on the hospital.
The chief medical officer had been appointed the following day. He was a Greek medic from the Second Augusta, based farther south. He was generally agreed to possess connections, competence, and no charm whatsoever. Unfortunately, though, Ruso's bright idea had not died with his ambitions. The prefect passed it on to the new CMO, who congratulated Ruso on his initiative and gave him the job of organizing the training. Since no legionary would pay for something the army would give him for free, Ruso found himself organizing the destruction of the market for his own work.
Valens's response to being overlooked was to announce that he was glad to be able to carry on practicing real medicine, instead of being mired in administration like the CMO. Apparently the second spear's daughter was very impressed with his devotion to his calling. Ruso was impressed too: not with Valens's devotion but with his ability to weave a useful lie in with the truth. The new man had indeed taken over the reins at a difficult time, following the suicide of the hospital administrator.
It was a month since Priscus's manservant had gone to wake him and found him dead in his bed. A doctor was called. According to Valens, the sight of the administrator's ghastly grimace of pain beneath his beautifully combed hair was the stuff of nightmares. The note on the bedside table had given typically detailed instructions for his funeral-Priscus was an administrator to the last-but no reason for the taking of his own life. The second spear, charged with investigating both this death and a murder on the same night in the adjoining bar, dismissed Ruso's suggestion that the two were connected with, 'You again! I suppose you're going to tell me you saw him do it?'
'No, sir.'
'Then don't come bothering me with any more of this rubbish. The pen-pusher from the hospital killed himself for reasons I know but you needn't, and from what I hear, the doorman was a nasty piece of work who could cheerfully have been knifed by a couple dozen suspects. And since the woman who owns the place has run off, it's pretty bloody obvious which one of them did it.'
'Sir, with respect-'
But the look on the face of the second spear told Ruso that respect was not required. What was required was to shut up, go away, and stop being a nuisance.
It occurred to Ruso that only he, Tilla, and possibly Merula would ever know the real story behind Priscus's suicide. Ruso had been ignored, Tilla had gone away, and Merula, wherever she was, was certainly not going to say anything that would reveal her own failure to protect the Roman citizen whom they had all known as Saufeia. As for Asellina, the slave put to death by her owner for having a fit of the giggles-Ruso tried to find something comforting to say to Decimus, and failed.
In the absence of fact, speculation was both rife and confident. Even Albanus could not resist hinting to Ruso that irregularities had been found in the hospital accounts and in the Aesculapian Thanksgiving Fund. 'And when you hear what's in his will, sir, you'll see what I mean.'
At Priscus's request the funeral had been attended by all the hospital staff. As instructed, a clerk read the will
