The Emperor's Knives: Empire VII (Empire 7) Read online

  The former frumentari shrugged, nodding equably as Sigilis replied.

  ‘That’s more or less as he’s already related to me, as it happens.’ The senator fixed Scaurus with a penetrating stare. ‘I won’t make any excuses for his previous behaviour, Tribune, but neither will I apologise for using him to my own ends. Varius Excingus is without any shred of doubt quite the most amoral man I’ve ever met, but that complete lack of any decency provides me with information that has already saved lives.’

  Marcus shook his head in incredulous disbelief.

  ‘And you trust him?’

  The senator laughed, and pointed a finger at Excingus.

  ‘Trust? Him? Do you take me for a madman?’

  The informer shrugged again and pursed his lips, nodding sagely.

  ‘I’ll answer that one, if you’ll allow me the liberty, Senator?’

  Sigilis gestured for him to continue, and Excingus smiled at Marcus as broadly as if their previous encounter had ended in vows to meet again someday, rather than with a bloodbath of the men sent to find the younger man and kill him, with the grain officer only managing to escape with his life by the narrowest of margins.

  ‘No, Centurion, the senator would indeed be most unwise to repose any trust in a man with my singular lack of principles. But I’ll remind you of a discussion we had the last time we met, when you asked me how it was that I could live with the things I do. You may not recall my answer, since I’d imagine that you had bigger matters on your mind, but I know what my response was because it’s the same one I give every time I’m asked the question. My only guiding principle, Valerius Aquila, is to make the best of this life in any way that I can. And if that eventually means that my informal provision of information to Senator Sigilis comes to an end, then so be it. For now, however, the senator’s generous rates of payment are more than sufficient to ensure my complete discretion.’

  Scaurus shook his head.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust you any further than I could see you, and even then I’d be keeping my sword to hand. But if the senator has chosen to employ your services I’ll go this far and no further: while you’re under his protection I will not seek to harm you in any way …’ He turned and played a hard stare across the men behind him. ‘And neither will any of my men. However …’ He stepped closer to the informer, until their noses were almost touching. ‘If I so much as suspect that you’re planning to sell us out, then I’ll personally see to it that you vanish without trace.’ He turned away to retake his seat with a disbelieving shake of his head. ‘I doubt you’d be missed.’

  Excingus nodded equably.

  ‘Exactly as I would have expected. And perhaps I can lighten the moment a little?’ He fished in a pouch attached to his belt and held out an iron key to Marcus. ‘Here.’

  The young centurion stared at it for a moment without making any move to accept the offering.

  ‘A key? To what?’

  The informer smiled back at him, reaching for his hand and pressing the key into the palm.

  ‘Ask your wife. And now gentlemen, if you’ve come in search of information, perhaps we can get past the initial awkwardness and get down to business. Senator?’

  He held out a hand, and the older man nodded, signalling to his butler once more. The slave reached down into a wooden box that had been concealed in the shrubbery, taking out what appeared to be a purse. Crossing the garden with the same impassivity he had displayed before, he placed it in his master’s hand with a bow. Sigilis acknowledged him with a grave inclination of his head.

  ‘Thank you. I expect you have pressing duties to attend to in the house? Please don’t allow this inconsequential matter to impede you in their completion.’

  The butler bowed again, and to Marcus’s eye it seemed that a look of relief crossed his face as he turned to make his way back through the garden and into the domus. Excingus held out a hand.

  ‘Poor man. He’s more than intelligent enough to understand the heat of the fire you’re playing with by employing my rather dubious services, isn’t he?’

  The senator dropped the purse onto his level palm with a resigned expression.

  ‘I suspect he looks askance at having to pay you to provide information to these men for which you’ve already received a substantial sum.’

  Julius frowned at the informer, still far from happy with such an unexpected turn of events.

  ‘You make him pay simply to talk to us?’

  ‘I do. And so would you, in my place. Every additional person I share my knowledge with presents an additional risk of my being betrayed …’

  The first spear barked out a laugh.

  ‘And wouldn’t that be ironic!’

  Excingus simply continued speaking, ignoring the barb.

  ‘… tortured for as long as I could stand the pain without descending into insanity, no matter what truth and lies I babbled in extremis, then summarily executed and dropped into a deep pit to rot, unmourned and most certainly unlamented.’

  Sigilis coughed as if clearing his throat.

  ‘And so, having been paid …?’

  The informer nodded.

  ‘Apologies, Senator, I was on the verge of becoming maudlin. As you say, to business.’ He turned to address the Tungrians. ‘I suggest that you abandon your prejudices, gentlemen, and pay especially close attention to what I am about to tell you, for I doubt that anyone else in Rome has either sufficient knowledge or courage to provide you with this information. There are four men who form the heart of the emperor’s policy of propping his treasury up through “confiscatory justice” …’

  He paused, waiting for any of them to comment, but none of the men sitting around him responded.

  ‘These four men bring a particular combination of skills and experience to the services they perform, not to mention their shared disregard for the humanity of their victims. They are, in different ways, intelligent, driven and successful men in their own fields, positively charming in one case, and none of them displays any overt signs of mania, and yet they are all, in their own ways, just about the most dangerous men in the entire city. Perennis gathered them to him when it became clear that the throne would not survive without financial assistance, reasoning that his own praetorian guard might be likely to draw the line at being ordered to slaughter a man and then either kill or enslave his entire familia. He gave them whatever it was that he believed would motivate them, but we can simplify that down to two things. Firstly he offered them money. A lot of money, for a relatively small amount of effort. And secondly, he extended to them the opportunity to do exactly as they pleased with some of the most respected families in Rome. Think about that for a moment, and then ask yourself how many men in the city would jump at the chance to have free licence with the women of a household like this one. Never mind the novelty of taking the mistress of the house by force while her husband’s corpse is still cooling on floor, think of the possibilities for a man with that inclination. Daughters, female slaves … more than enough helpless female flesh for everyone, eh?’

  He met Marcus’s stare of hatred with an equally frank gaze.

  ‘I won’t ask for your forgiveness for pointing out the obvious, Centurion, since I know that your own family was one of the first to suffer such a catastrophic end, but I will point out that I’m simply explaining these men’s motivation. Hate me for doing so if you like, but at least recognise the realities of what you’re dealing with. You might find that understanding of some value, once you’ve mastered your repugnance at the knowledge.’

  He shrugged in the face of the young centurion’s obdurate stare.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, there are four of them. So, where shall we start?’ He mused for a moment. ‘Perhaps with the most dangerous of them, a gladiator who fights under the name of Mortiferum …’

  The Tungrian party left the senator’s house in the late afternoon, Excingus having departed via a well-disguised and heavily built door in the garden wall that opened into the
storeroom of a shop on the other side of the wall. Senator Sigilis had stared at the departing informer’s back with the expression of a man who urgently needed to wash his hands.

  ‘I rent the shopkeeper his premises for next to nothing, on the condition that the occasional person comes and goes in a rather more discreet manner than knocking at my front door. Of course, using it to admit a man like that means that I can’t rely on it for a discreet exit myself, should the need arise, but then it’s not the only secret way out of the property, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

  The Tungrians had taken their leave of him with much to consider, and even Dubnus was uncharacteristically quiet as they made their way back towards the Ostian Gate. Less than a hundred paces from the gate’s massive archway, a pair of men stepped out onto the cobbles before them, one of them instantly recognisable as Senator Albinus, Scaurus’s former commander in Dacia and, since the confrontation in the emperor’s throne room that had ended in the praetorian prefect’s death, his sworn enemy. The other was Cotta, a muscular man with a weather-beaten face and the leader of Albinus’s personal bodyguard. A former legion centurion, he had established a small but effective team of bodyguards composed of the pick of the soldiers retiring from his legion and had been bankrolled by Albinus, to whom he therefore owed a considerable debt in both money and gratitude. The tribune stepped forward to meet them, holding up a hand to halt his men.

  ‘Senator Albinus. Centurion. To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’

  The big man stared back at him in silence for a moment before waving a hand and calling out a command that rang out down the suddenly empty street.

  ‘Bring them.’

  As he strode off down a side street, ten or so men emerged from the shops to either side and behind the Tungrians, another half-dozen strolling out into the street behind Cotta and blocking the road to the gate. Each of them was carrying a tight role of cloth, and Julius raised a hand waist-high, waving it downwards in a clear signal to his men to refrain from reaching for their knives. Cotta smiled easily at Scaurus, gesturing to the side street.

  ‘Best if you come with us, Tribune. The senator wants a word with you, and it’s probably best not to have the plebs gawping at us while he’s doing it, eh?’

  He shot Marcus a knowing glance and then raised a questioning eyebrow at Scaurus, who looked appraisingly at the men encircling his command.

  ‘Your men are armed, I presume, Centurion Cotta?’

  The retired soldier snapped out a terse order.

  ‘Swords!’

  Each of his men pushed a hand into their roll of cloth, pulling a short infantry gladius from the fabric. Scaurus shrugged, his glance at Marcus eloquent, then turned to follow Albinus up the street. Thirty paces brought them out into the shade of a small square surrounded on all sides by insulae, and the burly senator waited silently in its middle until his hired swordsmen had herded the Tungrians into the enclosed space, grinning as Julius and Dubnus looked about them with expressions promising swift violence, clearly restrained only by the weapons that hemmed them in on all sides.

  ‘Perfect, isn’t it? I own the buildings around us, of course, which is why there aren’t idlers dangling out of every window!’

  Scaurus looked about him with thinly disguised amusement.

  ‘Always one for the theatrical, aren’t you Senator?’

  The big man smiled broadly back at him, revelling in his domination of the situation he had so clearly engineered.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t call this theatrical, Rutilius Scaurus, I’d be using the term gladiatorial.’

  The tribune shook his head in bemusement.

  ‘Gladiatorial? What, do you intend to turn your men loose on us in some sort of pitched battle? What do you think the urban cohorts will make of that? I’m sure they’ll be along soon enough, given the spectacle you made back there with so much illegal iron on the street.’

  Albinus shook his head, his smile widening.

  ‘Oh, I doubt it. The local tribune has managed to get himself rather deeper into debt than might have been sensible, so once I’d purchased that debt it was relatively easy to persuade him to keep his men clear of the area for rather more time than I need for this carefully constructed scenario to play out. Centurion?’

  Cotta stepped forward, dropping a sword at Marcus’s feet with a clang of iron on stone, and shot him another pointed glance that narrowed Julius’s eyes with a sudden suspicion. The senator pointed to the weapon, his voice taking on a triumphant tone as he barked out an order.

  ‘Pick up the sword, Valerius Aquila! Pick up the sword, and prepare to fight for your life!’

  Scaurus stepped forward, his expression hardening, and a pair of Albinus’s ex-legion bodyguards moved swiftly to block any attempt to approach their master.

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at, Decimus?’

  Albinus grinned back at him from behind his protectors.

  ‘Nice try, Rutilius Scaurus, but no amount of impudence is going to distract me from delivering this lesson to you. Perhaps the death of your pet centurion will teach you to exercise a little more humility with your betters. Now, pick up the sword, boy, or I’ll have my man here kill you anyway, defenceless or not.’

  Marcus smiled tolerantly in the face of the insult, bending to take the sword by its hilt.

  ‘Be warned, Roman …’ Martos stepped forward to stand beside Scaurus and raised a finger to the senator, his expression murderous. ‘If this man is harmed here while you hide behind those swords, I will find you and tear your heart from your body with my bare hands!’

  Albinus raised his eyebrows in mock terror.

  ‘And how will you make that happen, when a word from me will see you dead on the cobbles beside him? Would anybody else like to consider volunteering for a place in the closest refuse pit? No? Let’s be about it then! Centurion!’

  Cotta stepped forward, reaching forward to tap Marcus’s blade with his own with an evil grin.

  ‘You ready to fight, youngster?’

  Marcus looked at Scaurus with a helpless shrug, discarding his toga on the square’s cobbles for one of the senator’s bodyguards to remove.

  ‘This has been coming ever since this man and I laid eyes on each other that night on the Palatine Hill, Tribune.’

  Scaurus nodded in reply, and the two men dropped into fighting crouches, each of them watching the other as they circled slowly. Cotta looked his opponent up and down, nodding reluctant approval at the younger man’s muscular frame.

  ‘You’re a fighting soldier, from the look of you. Britannia, was it?’ Marcus nodded, focusing intently on the other man’s eyes as Cotta shook his head in apparent disgust. ‘Full of tunic lifters and arse pokers, Britannia. It’s a shame your old man didn’t send you somewhere character-forming before they murdered him.’

  The younger man feinted forward with the point of his gladius, watching in cold amusement as his opponent stepped back and parried easily.

  ‘What, somewhere like Dacia?’

  Cotta snorted his ridicule.

  ‘Dacia? Land of cock suckers. And don’t bother telling me about Germania either, the whole province is riddled with queers. No boy, if you want to be a real soldier then you need to get sand in your crack!’

  He advanced swiftly, testing Marcus’s defence with half a dozen swift strokes, grinning as the Tungrian retreated closer and closer to the men guarding the exit from the square. As his seventh cut sliced in low, aimed at Marcus’s left thigh, the younger man tossed his sword into his left hand and parried it wide, stepping quickly forward and twisting to punch a half-fist into Cotta’s right bicep and then straightened his body, using the momentum to swing a vicious back fist at the grimacing centurion’s face. Cotta barely managed to duck out of the blow’s path, giving the younger man all the time he needed to swivel to his right and hook the veteran’s leg with his extended left boot. The older man fell back onto the cobbles with a grunt of expelled breath, the sword falling from hi
s nerveless fingers.

  ‘Get at him! Kill him while he’s down!’

  Ignoring Dubnus’s bellowed encouragement, Marcus bent to pick up the fallen weapon, watching as Cotta recovered his footing and took a sword from each of the two nearest men. The veteran stood out of sword’s reach for a moment, breathing hard and appraising his opponent with a new respect.

  ‘I heard you were taught to fight by a soldier and a gladiator. Which one of them taught you that little move?’

  Marcus closed the distance between them, scraping the soles of his boots across the cobbles.

  ‘The soldier, as I recall. He wasn’t up to much when it came to swordplay, but he knew more than enough dirty tricks.’

  Cotta raised his blades.

  ‘Sounds like my kind of man. The gladiator must have been a faggot if he taught you to fight with two swords.’

  Marcus shrugged again, his eyes locked on the points of Cotta’s blades, stepping closer still until the tips of their swords were touching.

  ‘He made a start. I perfected the style in a few battles that you might have heard of while you were lazing around Rome protecting fat-arsed politicians from their own stupidity.’

  Both men lunged forward at the same time, their swords meeting each other and pushing wide as the soldier snapped his head forward to butt Marcus in the face, but the younger man was ready for the attack, ducking his head and then wrenching it back up to deliver a heavy blow to Cotta’s chin. The former soldier staggered backwards, spitting blood from his bleeding tongue and spluttering with laughter.

  ‘You cheeky young bastard!’

  Marcus held his swords out ostentatiously wide of his body, then dropped them onto the ground with a clatter of iron on stone.

  ‘Shall we go to bare knuckles then, Cotta, or have you had enough?’

  The older man shook his head, tossing his own weapons aside and feeling his jaw.

  ‘Fuck that, I think you’ve already broken one of my teeth.’

  Albinus bridled, pointing at Marcus with a face contorted with rage.