When my own heart had stopped pounding I slowly stood up. Helena's garden.
One day, however long it took, I would give her another garden, where there would be no ghosts.
I dragged my feet to the street door, feeling stiff and sour-spirited. Fumbling, I got the key in the lock and fell out into the sunny glare of the street. A small curly dog with a stump of a tail was nosing the sheet which some neat-minded Quirinal steward had flung over the bodies of the two German mercenaries while the refined people of the district sat in their houses complaining.
I clucked at the little dog; he wagged his rump like a conspirator.
'Falco!'
A hired chair stood in the shade of a portico. Beside it, sitting on a step, was the barmaid Tullia.
'Good of you to wait!' Not entirely altruistic on her part: I still had her marriage certificate stuffed in my belt. I handed over the contract and told her I had left her new husband conveniently dead.
'Take this document to my banker. The money I promised is a legacy left to his freedman Barnabas by Atius Pertinax; as the freedman's widow it's yours. If the banker should query the signature on the contract, just remind him slaves adopt their patron's names when they are liberated formally.'
'How much is the money?' Tullia demanded briskly.
'Half a million.'
'Don't joke about it, Falco!'
I laughed. 'Truth! Try not to spend it all the first week.'
She sniffed, with the wariness of a natural businesswoman. This petal would clutch her cash with a sure grip. 'Can I take you somewhere?'
'Corpse to dispose of-'
Tullia smiled gently, pulling me by the arm to her sedan chair. 'I was his wife, Falco. Leave me to bury him!'
I let a small puff of laughter crease past my throat. 'Duty's a wonderful thing!'
She took me where I asked, to my gymnasium. She leaned out and kissed me goodbye.
'Careful-too much excitement will finish me, princess!'
I watched her settle back inside the chair, with all the gravity of a woman who knew exactly how she would order the remainder of her life. There would be, I thought, very few men.
She leaned out as the chair pulled away. 'Cashed your bets yet, Falco?'
'Ferox lost.'
'Oh, the bets were on Little Sweetheart!' Tullia informed me laughingly, drawing the curtains to hide her-now she was a wealthy lady-from the crowd.
I staggered in to let Glaucus patch me up, while I dismally remembered my last sight of those white bone disks…
'What in Hades happened to you?' demanded Glaucus, ignoring the sword cut and considering my glum face.
'I just won a fortune-but my niece has eaten it.'
Glaucus my trainer was a sensible man. 'Then put the child on a chamberpot-and wait!'
We had a discussion about whether bone dissolves in stomach acids, but I won't bother you with that.