Kadous stooped and pulled the man’s shoulder, rolling him onto his back.
‘Hades!’ We both recoiled.
The dead man’s throat was cut from ear to ear. A blade had ripped through his neck so deeply that pale bone glinted in the ferocious wound. His tunic was sodden with blood as far down as his belt. I forced myself to look at his face instead. No, I didn’t know him. That wasn’t much of a relief.
I looked up at Kadous. ‘Did anyone come knocking earlier?’
‘I didn’t hear a thing.’ The Phrygian shook his head, baffled. ‘I’ve been reading in my room. But I wouldn’t have opened up to a stranger, not after dark.’
I stared at the corpse. ‘We must notify the Polemarch.’ He was the magistrate responsible for visitors to the city.
‘At this hour?’ Kadous wasn’t challenging me but he wanted to be sure that he understood my instruction. I took his point. We wouldn’t find anyone manning the magistrate’s office this late in the day.
‘We can’t leave the poor man in the lane like some stray dog crushed by a cart!’ Zosime’s shock veered into anger.
‘I’m not bringing him inside our yard.’ I was just as adamant. I wasn’t having our little household tainted by this poor bastard’s death, whoever he might be.
I looked at the corpse again. If the Fates insisted on cutting his life short, why couldn’t some punch in a tavern brawl have killed him? I cleared my throat and forced myself to speak more calmly. ‘Someone at the city prison will know what to do.’
That’s where the Scythians would be taking anyone they arrested during the festival, and I’d wager they would already be busy tonight.
Kadous handed the lamp to Zosime. ‘I’ll get my cloak and boots.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It’ll be better for everyone if a citizen reports this.’ Unexpected corpses prompt serious questions. ‘Go inside. Bolt the gate.’
Zosime looked at me, shaken. ‘And make believe nothing has happened?’
Careful of the lamp she was holding, I drew her close and gave her a quick kiss. ‘This has nothing to do with us.’
I looked up and down the lane again. I couldn’t be certain that all our neighbours were home. If Sosistratos from four doors down stumbled across a dead man on his way back from his favourite drinking den, no one would have to notify the Polemarch. Citizens on the far side of the Acropolis would hear the uproar.
‘Kadous, you keep watch out here until I bring the Scythians. We don’t want anyone else tripping over him.’
The Phrygian nodded and I offered him a reassuring smile as Zosime closed the gate behind her. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Heading back to the city, I did my best not to curse the murdered man. He hardly deserved any more misfortune, but why did he have to die on my doorstep, tonight of all nights? I shivered in the night breeze and wrapped my cloak more tightly around myself. Had I offended some god or goddess? I honestly couldn’t imagine how or who.
Perhaps these villains, whoever they were, had come creeping down the lane intending to attack someone else. Only they had unexpectedly encountered this stranger in the darkness and all but cut off his head in their panic. Then the killers had fled into the night.
But who might have such murderous enemies? Mikos who lives opposite is a bore and a bully, beating his wife and her slave girl both, but bead selling’s hardly a cut-throat business. Sosistratos and his sons can be noisy neighbours, but only at festival time and no one’s going to spill blood over that. Besides, none of that would explain who the stranger was and what he was doing so far off the beaten track.
As I was waved back through the Itonian Gate, I got a grip on myself. It had been a long day with too little food and my imagination was running riot. I forbade myself any more pointless speculation and made my way as quickly as possible to the heart of the city.
There were still a fair few people in the agora, mostly gathered around the altar of the twelve gods. Honouring the deities with sloshed libations, they passed around quart jugs of wine and drank deep. I cut across the southern edge of the marketplace before turning down the road leading to the city’s prison. To my inexpressible relief, a lamp burned beside the door. As I rapped my knuckles on the bronze-studded wood, a wave of exhaustion swept over me. I leaned my forehead against the cold stone wall and closed my eyes.
The door opened a crack. ‘Yes?’ a voice prompted.
I forced myself upright. ‘I’ve come to report a dead body outside my house.’
‘Do you know who it is?’ The door opened a little more to show me a sharp-faced Hellene with an Athenian accent.
‘No idea.’
‘Is he really dead?’ The public slave cocked his head, impatient. ‘Or just dead drunk?’
‘He really is dead,’ I said curtly. ‘His throat’s been slashed open. Someone needs to come and take him away. I don’t want to spend the festival stepping over a corpse to get in and out of my house. You’ll need to notify the Polemarch in the morning.’
‘All right,’ the sharp-faced man said mildly. ‘Kallinos!’
As he turned to call out to a colleague, I got a clearer view inside. Lamps in high niches lit an anteroom where a handful of men in plain, undyed tunics were playing dice around a table. Scythians in linen and leather body armour lounged on benches that lined the corridor flanked by the prison’s cells. There were nowhere near three hundred of them, but still more than enough to give anyone fighting in the streets pause for thought.
Four were rising to their feet and reaching for their bows. They already had short swords sheathed at their sides. A fifth man was stretched out on the floor, his head pillowed on a rolled-up cloak, snoring softly. I didn’t hold that against him.
