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Logan gri
Well, he couldn't have just walked the other way, could he? That mealy-mouthed, silk-suited piece of slime would have killed her if Logan hadn't been there to stop him. And no seven-digit bank account or scowling judge would ever convince him otherwise.
Logan glared at his fire. Street people had no business playing knight-errant to rich men's wives. He'd been military long enough to know that survival was what counted. Dead heroes were just assholes too stupid to duck. Next time he saw a man beating his own wife to death in their own driveway, he'd just shuffle on by in the night and pretend he hadn't seen a thing.
Right. And birds flew north for the winter.
Logan grunted. It wasn't easy, being crazy.
Chapter Two
Late afternoon sunlight glinted across the Tiber's murky surface, transforming it into a broad stream of painful golden sparks. River stench assaulted Charlie's nostrils well before he limped out through the gate behind the house. The stink of filthy mud, human waste, slaughterhouse reek, and dead fish permeated his life so completely, he'd almost grown accustomed to it.
Almost.
Charlie negotiated the path down to the dock slowly, using extreme caution on marble steps set here and there in the hillside. River yachts under sail and oar drifted past to a rhythmic creaking sound and the slap of water on wood. Rich men, bound for unknown destinations. Seaside villas, perhaps, where constant breezes made the summer heat bearable. Charlie wiped sweat from his face with the back of one arm and limped awkwardly down the next switchback of the path, leaning heavily against his crutch.
Downriver, wharves at the long, long reach of the Porticus Aemilia's warehouses attracted barges like flies. Some were heavily loaded with amphorae of oil, olives, wine. Others were empty, headed back downriver, their goods disgorged for the Emporia's marketplace. Rome didn't export much, except soldiers. They didn't even send back the empty amphorae.
A few thousand more broken jugs for the Mons Testae. An entire hill, made of nothing but broken clay amphorae. Helluva trash heap. Somebody ought'a teach 'em about recycling. The Mons Testae was nothing, of course, to the mountains of garbage that New Jersey seagulls covered in flocks thick enough to block the sunlight, but it was impressive nonetheless, for an entire hill made from just one kind of trash.
Charlie followed one of the empty barges with his gaze until it vanished around the river's bend, hating the men on it for their freedom to leave, then shook himself slightly and made the next turn of the path with a thump of crutch and a drag of his left foot. After a long two years (after two years of slavery in the Imperial Gladiatorial School), he'd grown accustomed to the sound, but not to the harsh reality of his crippling injury—which had, at least, ended the two previous years of forced "performance" in the games. To a Roman, the fight-and-die "game" was as addictive and enjoyable as playing dice.
The sole good he could find in having been crippled for life was that it had brought the slaughter to an end, at least for him. Every limping step he took, however, was a reminder of things he might have sold his soul to forget, had he been another sort of man.
Charlie Fly
Memory chilled Charlie, despite the heat. The sunlight was blistering, the air sultry. Sweat clung to his skin, sullenly refusing to evaporate. A few cloud shadows raced ahead of the barges, their momentary chill passing across Charlie as he limped and hobbled down the last switchbacks of the path.
Raucous city noises, so alien from the scream of traffic and sirens he'd grown up with, all but drowned out the sound of slow-moving river craft. Barking dogs, the distant din of hammer on metal, rasping saws, chisels on marble and other clatter, much of it from a workshop district down the river, floated on the oddly quiet wind. No sirens, no choppers or jets, no blaring car horns, no sound of high-speed boats in Biscayne Bay, screaming past at nearly sixty miles per hour, despite "No Wake: Manatee Zone Maximum Speed 15 mph" signs posted every few yards.
No radios or boom boxes, either, or joggers in CD headphones, not even the distant rumble of a television left on as white noise to drown out the rest of the ruckus.
The only sounds floating on today's wind were the distant sound of hand-powered tools, dogs, and above it all, the sound of voices: arguing, shouting, endlessly yammering in a dozen foreign tongues.
Charlie Fly
He tightened one hand around the handle of the heavy bucket he carried and the other around his crutch. Ancient history, Fly
Charlie limped onto the dock, careful the tip of his crutch didn't slip on mossy stone. Xanthus' household steward had kept him so busy this past week, he hadn't found time to scrub the dock. If he didn't clean it before Xanthus Imbros Brutus—the Lycian Roman—returned, he'd probably catch another beating.
Charlie muttered under his breath and carried the smelly contents of the household's slop bucket to the end of the dock. Ordinarily, such waste would've gone straight into the house's privy; Xanthus' villa perched so near the river, it had its own sewage outflow, rather than co
Most of Rome flung its filth into the street to be washed away by rains or Imperial slaves charged with street cleaning. Anything that ran into the great cloacae ended as raw sewage dumped straight into the Tiber. The huge Cloaca Maxima poured its filth into the river just a little ways upstream, between the Pons Sublicius and the Pons Aemilius farther upriver, just visible past the little round Temple of Hercules (the one all his childhood textbooks had called the Temple of Vesta) and the squarish Temple of Fortuna Virilis. And just hidden from sight behind them—
Charlie muttered under his breath and dumped the contents of his bucket. The sharp stink of ammonia and feces arced outward, then foul liquid splattered against the golden water and stained it dark, like ink. A passing yacht's wake caught the dark water and churned it into white froth, shot through with golden light. Charlie felt a grim kinship with the waste he'd thrown into the river. Out of place, swallowed up alive...