Killer

Lycon stared at him for a moment. "Right," he said at last. "And don't you open your mouth again."

No one moved until Vonones reached for the bread again.

"The soup smells good," said Lycon mildly. "I think I'd like the soup."

As the slave hovering over it handed him a steaming cup, Lycon continued, "What are we expected to do now, you and I?"

Vonones sat down on the bed beside him and said, "Catch the creature, the same as before. I understand that our lord and god has become increasingly interested since the…" Vonones had not been looking at Lycon. Now he turned so that he could do so. "The whole staff in the guardroom was killed. I'm not sure Domitian knows about what we found in Mephibaal's loft, all the details, but he knows about the Amphitheater."

Vonones reached over and touched his friend's arm, pretending not to notice the tears. "Lycon," he said, "it's been three days. I've taken care of all the arrangements. There's a memorial plaque on the side of the monument I built for myself, and we can go there any time you like." He fumbled again for words. "I had over a hundred witnesses to the cremation. It was a nice one."

"We're going to kill it," Lycon said. He stood up, looking into the cup of broth, and took a deep drink from it before he tried to walk unassisted to the far wall. "I thought we should from the start, and now I think that would be a nice memorial. Better than stone."

He, too, was pretending there were no tears on his lined, weathered face. Keeping his back to Vonones made it easy for both of them. There was no one else in the bed chamber, only slaves, property with voices but no place in a computation of human beings.

"N'Sumu is still in charge," Vonones said carefully. "I don't know how he feels about your release, but I'm quite sure that he still intends to capture the sauropithecus alive."

"He could have killed it," Lycon said, staring in the direction of the wall. It was a fresco of a scene from the Odyssey-the Laestrygonians wrecking the fleet with huge blocks of stone hurled from their clifftops-but to Lycon it was simply a monochrome blur bounding his memories. "When it leaped at me that night at the fountain. He must have stu

That was not a direction in which his thoughts should have turned. He slammed his cup into the wall, denting the thick plaster and shattering the delicate vessel-a cup fashioned of porcelain ten thousand miles away, by the same folk who wove worm cocoons into silk garments.

"Pollux, I'm sorry," Lycon blurted, shocked into full consciousness by the splash and the prickling in his hands of shards of porcelain. A lifetime ago, he had killed a lizard-ape chick thus. "That was a good one, wasn't it? Probably worth more than I'd fetch on the block myself." He faced the Armenian with a crooked smile, holding a sliver of the cup between his thumb and forefinger.

"I think it's one you brought me yourself one year when you were trading on the coast of the Red Sea," Vonones said calmly. He recognized Lycon's mood and repressed a shiver. "I've got a really valuable one-a cup of hollowed out agate. If you like, I'll smash that one myself to show you how little I care about any of that now." He paused.

"Of course," he went on in the same tone, "that won't help us with what we need to do. To kill the lizard-ape ourselves."

Lycon flicked his eyebrows upward in assent. He walked to the tray of food-he was moving almost normally by now-and, ignoring the efforts of a slave to serve him, took a handful of crab paste and a wedge of bread to use for a napkin.

"All right," Lycon said, filling his mouth, "what do you think of N'Sumu?"

"I don't know what to think," confessed Vonones.

"We'd best go talk to him," Lycon said quietly. "After I've eaten. And after-" he ran his knuckles down the skin of his thigh, wrinkled and clammy with the days he had spent unconscious and unmoving "-I've had a long steaming at the bath."

He smiled at Vonones, dismissing the worry etched on the merchant's features. "You always try to get me to sit in the sedan chair with you. Well, today I won't argue."

Lycon hesitated. The brave efforts at sociability evaporated. His face had all the reassurance of a bleached skull. "Don't worry about me, Vonones," the hunter said. "I'm going to finish this one. Whatever it costs."

Chapter Twenty-four

"Gaius Cornelius Sempronianus?" asked the centurion wearing the scarlet tunic and sandals of the Praetorian Guard.

The doorkeeper who had opened the panel to an authoritative knock now blinked in amazement to see the third-floor hallway filled with troops and their servants. The Praetorians did not carry spears or shields for this assignment, but their helmets and belted swords left no doubt of what they were.

"But sirs, he's only a schoolmaster!" the slave in the doorway blurted.

The centurion gri

There were no proper doors within the small suite. The Praetorians ripped down the curtains hung over internal doorways for privacy. The lamplight and the slam of hobnails on the floor brought the inhabitants off their couches, wearing tunics and frightened expressions. In one alcove a man and a woman, the latter with an infant in her arms, babbled in Greek, "But we just rented the bed today! Please!" as the soldiers dragged them into the center of the main room. More of the Praetorians' servants moved in for the menial task of binding the captives.

Lycon caught the nearest servant by the arm, halting him, and said to the soldiers with the couple, "Let them go. They aren't covered in the order… and anyway, the baby."

There was a curtained bed in one corner of the main room. The centurion himself tore away the orange-dyed linen. The gray-bearded man on the bed was holding an embroidered coverlet over himself with one hand as if the cloth were some protection. He wore a tunic. The boy cowering beside him was of a smoothly-olive cast with only a hint of pubic hair visible when the Praetorian jerked the bedclothes down. His mouth was covered by the older man's other hand. "Cornelius Sempronianus, I'd judge," the centurion said in a tone of grim satisfaction.

"I'm a Roman citizen," Sempronianus said, his voice cracking in the middle of the clause. He clamped his thin arms across his chest in a pitiful attempt to deny purchase to the soldiers reaching toward the bed. "What are you doing to me?"

Soldiers lifted the naked, squealing boy, one by each arm, while the centurion stood gri

"Quintus," said the soldier holding the little gunsel's other arm, "this is the wrong outfit to talk about seeing how boys lasso the ram. Unless you want to see the Amphitheater from the inside yourself." He gave a meaningful nod toward their commanding officer.

Together, the Praetorians handed their slight burden to a servant to be tied. "A-arena?" whispered the schoolmaster.

"Get up, Greekling," ordered the centurion in the silky voice of a man who would just as soon meet resistance.

Lycon stepped into view around the centurion's blocky torso. "Good evening, Gaius Sempronianus," the beastcatcher said. "I heard you'd gone to spend some time with a brother in Akragas, folks in the apartment thought. I'm glad it was a short visit."