two younger men, he surged forward, crying “Thieves! Thieves!” at the top of his lungs.
Marcus’ hand snaked under his tunic. Eprius saw it emerge with a curiously shaped metal object. One of Marcus’ fingers twitched on it, and Eprius heard the beginning of a barking roar. Something sledged him in the forehead, and he never saw or heard anything again.
Lou Muller, who in Vesunna called himself Lucius the book dealer, stared in horror at the crumpled corpse that had been Clodius Eprius. The gun shot still seemed to echo in the room. “Jesus H. Christ, Mark!” he said, and he was not speaking Latin at all. “The patrol-”
“Lou, you can take the patrol and stuff it right on up-” Mark Alvarez tucked away the pistol and rubbed his shoulder. “The old son of a bitch damn near broke my collarbone. What was I supposed to do, let him yell until all the neighbors came? Speaking of which-” He scooped up the Aleadai and trotted into the street. His partner followed, still expostulating.
“Oh, shut up and listen to me, will you, please?” Alvarez growled. “Why do we make a good team, anyway? It’s not just because you’re the fellow who knows his way around the second-century empire and I’m the one with the pull to get a timer. I’ve got the brains to get you out of trouble when you screw up, which you did. For one thing, even I know-you’ve told me often enough-Stobaeus isn’t going to be born for a couple of hundred years yet. For another, and worse, that geezer was never going to sell us the play after you got his back up.”
“But I offered him seventy-five aurei!”
“That didn’t impress him, now did it? And it doesn’t impress me, either. What’re seventy-five aurei to us? Thirty credits for the gold (always thanking God for fusion-powered transmutation), the same for some authentic molds, and voila! Aurei! Whereas we can-and we will-get easily fifty thousand credits for a lost play of Euripides.”
“Sophokles,” Muller corrected absently.
“Whatever. And as for the Time Patrol, why are we here in the boondocks instead of at the library of Alexandria? Why do we insist on so much privacy when we make our deals? Just so they won’t run across us. And they won’t. Erasing this fellow won’t leave any clues downtime. We don’t change anyone’s ancestry, because his wife’s been dead for years. We did check him out, you know.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Did anyone see us leave?”
“I don’t think so. But my God, Mark, a bullet-”
“What about it? Nobody here will ever figure out how he died. The local yokels’ll call it the wrath of the gods or something, and then they’ll forget it. All we have to do is sit tight for three weeks until the timer recharges, and then it’s back to 2059 and lots of lovely money.”
“I suppose so,” Muller agreed slowly. “I kind of liked old Eprius, though.”
“Liked him? Lou, he was just a stupid savage, like all the other stupid savages here and now. Look around. Is there anything here but filth and disease and superstition? You couldn’t pay me to time if it weren’t for xanthomycin. Come on, let’s get back to the inn. Like the fellow said, my man, the play’s the thing, and we’ve got it.”
“What about the gold?”
“You want to go back and get it? Relax; it’ll confuse the issue, anyway.” They walked on in silence until they came to the inn. “What a dump,” Alvarez sighed. “Oh, well, at least it has a bed, and I need sleep right now. We’ve had a busy night.”
The sound of a fist crashing against his door hauled Gaius Tero from the depths of slumber. Stifling a curse, he climbed out of bed and threw on a mantle. His wife stirred and muttered drowsily.”It sounds like business, Calvina,” he said. “Go back to sleep.” A forlorn hope indeed, with his door being battered down. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” he shouted, and the pounding stopped. As tesserarius of Vesunna’s seven-man detachment of vigiles, he wondered what had gone wrong now. Had someone knocked over Porcius’ wine shop again, or had Herennius
Fundanus’ firetrap of a stable finally decided to go up in smoke? Either way, the responsibility fell on him, for the vigiles were constabulary and fire brigade both.
He threw open the door. Just as he had expected, there stood the panting figure of Larcius Afer, who had the watch that night. “Well, what is it?” Tero demanded, adding hopefully, “I don’t smell smoke.” The siphon, which was the city’s chief fire-fighting implement, was a pain in the fundament to deploy and use.
“No, sir,” Afer agreed. He paused to wipe sweat from his face. The night was warm, and he had plainly run some distance. Tero, who was not the most patient of men, glared at him until he continued. “Clodius Eprius has been killed.”
“What do you mean, killed? Has he been murdered?”
“Killed, sir,” Afer repeated stolidly. “Kleandros is with the body now. He’ll be able to tell you more than I can, I’m sure.”
“Obviously,” Tero snapped. Still, he was glad the Greek doctor would be there. They were old friends, though they argued constantly.
The tesserarius ducked back into his house for sandals, then accompanied his fellow vigil to the dead man’s home. It was a couple of hours before dawn, and a waning crescent moon shed a wan light over the town. Nevertheless, it was dark enough to make Tero glad his companion carried a torch.
Eprius lived (or rather, had lived) at the opposite end of town from Tero’s home. He and Afer tramped through Vesunna’s central forum, silent save for the sound of their footsteps. At its very heart was the temple dedicated to the city’s tutelary gods. Its huge circular cella made it currently the biggest structure in Vesunna, but the amphitheater being built not far away promised to dwarf it and everything else in the town.
Tero wondered idly what the old Petrocorii, the Celtic tribe that had founded Vesunna, would have thought of such an incredibly huge edifice. Magic, without a doubt: Anything was magical to someone who did not know how to do it.
His thoughts turned back to Eprius. Why would anyone want to kill the old fool? Tero knew him fairly well, and also knew he had not a single enemy in town. Had some footpad done away with him? Tero tried to pump Larcius Afer, but Afer shook his head, saying, “You’ll have to see for yourself. “With a small shock, the tesserarius realized his subordinate was frightened. That was very strange. Before settling in Vesunna, the two of them had served together on the Rhine, and Tero knew full well that the skirmishes there had thoroughly inured Afer to the sight of gore.
It seemed as if most of Eprius’ neighbors were gathered outside his front door. Well, Tero thought, that’s scarcely surprising. They all started talking at once when they saw him, raining questions down on his unprepared head. “I don’t know a damned thing yet,” he said, pushing his way through the crowd. “If you’ll let me by, maybe I’ll find out something.”
Kleandros met him at the entrance. Tero liked the sharp-tongued physician. They had worked together before, and once or twice a month they would meet for wine, a friendly game of draughts, and much good talk. Still, the doctor’s elegant slimness always made the squarely built Tero feel like a poorly trained dancing bear. Just by standing before him, Kleandros made him suddenly and acutely aware of his own uncombed hair, the patches and stains on his cloak, and the ragged bit of leather hanging from one sandal. As usual, he disguised his feelings with raillery. “Hello, quack,” he said. “What do you have for me today?”
An opening like that would normally make Kleandros sputter and fume, but today he did not rise to the bait. Under the curling black ringlets he combed low on his forehead, his face was grim as he answered, “Hello, Tero. I’m glad to see you. You’d best come look for yourself.” He was speaking Greek instead of Latin, something he did only when very upset. Tero began to worry in earnest.
The physician led him down the dark entry hall to the dining room. Someone had refilled and lit all the lamps there; the flames cast multiple dancing shadows. Three couches had been grouped together in one comer of the room. One was overturned, and the wall behind it bore a sinister stain. The vigil looked a question at Kleandros, who nodded. “Poor Eprius is behind the couch,” Kleandros said. “Tell me what you make of him.”
“Why me? You’re the doctor,” Tero said, but he walked around the couch.
Both on the Rhine and as a vigil in Vesunna, Gaius Tero had seen the results of more violent deaths than he liked to remember. Yet the corpse in this quiet room shook him in a way none of the others, however grisly, ever had. He was in the presence of the unknown, and little fingers of ice crawled up his back as he viewed its handiwork.
Eprius’ body lay on its right side; its right hand still clutched a stick. Tero barely noticed, for his gaze was fixed
