“Loud.” Septimus supplied the word.“He’s going to be screaming, even with a gag in hismouth.”
I did find it a bit surprising that Demeterclearly had not thought about this, judging from the look ofembarrassment that flashed across his features, anyway.
“You are right,” he admitted. “But Ipromised the men.”
“What matters is that he dies, isn’tit?” I asked. “And do we really want the entire Rhakotis descendingon us? Because they’re not going to know that it’s a Romanscreaming in pain, which means it could be one of their neighbors,and it’s going to attract attention. They,” I indicated area aroundus, “are going to be coming from every direction by thenoise.”
“And they’re not only going to findstrangers here,” Alex said quietly as he pointed at the room,“they’re going to find more money than any of them have seen intheir lives.”
It was easy to see that it was Alex’s pointthat carried the day as Demeter gave a frustrated groan, then fellsilent as he thought for a moment.
Suddenly, he nodded and said, “This iswhat we will do. I will give you enough men to carry the chestsback to the Persephone, andthe rest will stay here with me and have our vengeance. Once we aredone,” he promised, “we will return to the ship.”
It was a sensible compromise…and Iimmediately cut it down, saying flatly, “We’re not splitting up.You won’t have enough men left to stop these Egyptians from tearingyou apart when they come to investigate the noise and find youhere.” I saw the startled looks from Septimus and Alex out of thecorner of my eye, and I saw Alex opening his mouth, which I cutoff. “No, you and your men have honored your word, and we’re notgoing to abandon you. So,” I shrugged, hoping I was convincing,“you do what you need to do, Demeter, and we’ll deal withthose cunni when they try tostop us.”
Later, when Septimus and Alex confronted meabout this, I swore that I knew what Demeter would do and that ithad not been a gamble at all; now, he is glaring at me as he writesmy words because he just learned I was lying. In fact, I was fairlycertain that the Rhodian would fulfill his promise to his crew. Butwhat mattered was that Demeter, although he spent severalheartbeats stroking his beard in thought, suddenly spun around andreturned to his men.
“Brothers, the Centurion is correct.As satisfying as it would be, we cannot afford to take propervengeance now, not without risking our own lives evenfurther.”
To my eyes and ears, the crew did notseem all that disappointed, but without another word, Demeterturned and entered the next room. As we hurried to join everyoneelse, I heard the scraping sound of something being dragged, andDemeter reappeared, lugging Aviola, still tied to the chair intothe larger room. Our prisoner clearly knew what was coming, becausehe was moaning with fear, thrashing his head about wildly as hetried to evade Demeter’s grasp as the Rhodian reached out to grab ahandful of hair. Finally, he was successful, and in one motion, hedrew the gladius acrossLucius Aviola’s throat, sending a spray of blood that spatteredonto the men of the Persephonewho were nearest, though none of them seemed to mind at all.Instead, as Aviola went through the death throes that begin in afrenzy and quickly subside into slow twitches of muscles no longerunder control, the men spat on Aviola, calling out curses andoffering jeers and mocking laughter to send him to the afterlife.Then, there was nothing but a corpse hanging limply from where itwas tied to a chair, in a pool of slowly spreadingblood.
“Now we have some work to do,” Demeterannounced, and without another glance at Lucius Aviola, led thecrew into the room.
The sky was beginning to lighten when thelast pair of men, each of them holding a handle on the chest,exited the building. Every chest was locked, but as we suspected,the same key unlocked them; finding the key, however, proved to bea bit more difficult, and messy, it being sewn into a secret pocketinside Aviola’s tunic, which was completely soaked with his blood.Before we left, we unlocked every chest, finding that the coinswere predominantly silver, although there were items made of gold;some coins, but mostly jewelry and a couple of ingots. The EgyptianTymnes never regained consciousness, while Flaccus and Pulcher hadobeyed my order, sitting against the wall, watching without sayinganything, but as we got closer to being done, I could see themgrowing increasingly nervous. To quell their fears, I opened one ofthe boxes, then plunged both hands in to grab as many coins as Icould, which I dropped into their laps.
“You probably don’t want to be herewhen the sun comes up,” I told them. “So you’re welcome to comewith us when we leave here.”
Not surprisingly, they bothenthusiastically agreed this was a splendid idea, and I drewmy pugio to slice through thebonds around their ankles. When Flaccus held his hand out in asilent request, I did not understand until he nodded at the stillunconscious Tymnes. Thinking that he was going to sever his bondsin the event he awoke, which I found a bit odd given what the pairhad said about him, I quickly learned differently when Flaccus bentdown and drew the blade across the Egyptian’s throat in onemotion.
Hopping out of the way of the spurtingblood as, for the last time, the man’s eyes opened wide as his bodyspasmed then toppled over, the former ranker wiped the blade on thedead man’s tunic before handing it back to me as he said, “Asuseless as he may have been, I don’t want to spend my days lookingover my shoulder for that cunnusbecause he got it in his head I had something to
