Vitus fell to his knees and clutched at the hem of Magnus’ toga. ‘Please Magnus, don’t report me to the aedile; I’ll lose a hand. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.’
‘Too fucking right you won’t do it again; I won’t have it in my area, it will give us all a bad name.’ He turned to the thief. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tigran, master.’
‘Where’re you from?’
‘Armenia, master.’
‘No, I meant: where are you from in Rome?’
‘Oh, I live in the shanty town amongst the tombs on the Via Salaria.’
‘You’re not a citizen are you?’
‘No master. I arrived here a few months ago.’
‘Then I’ll give you a warning: you don’t steal here. Next time you’re cheated in my area come and see me, I won’t have people taking the law into their own hands. Explain that to him, Sextus.’
With a sharp jab, Sextus rammed his right fist into Tigran’s stomach, doubling him over with a loud exhalation of breath.
Magnus put the counterfeit coins back into their bag and tucked it into the fold of his toga. ‘Get me two loaves of bread, Vitus.’ As the baker rose to his feet and scuttled to a shelf Magnus removed four asses, the equivalent of one sesterce, from the money box and gave them to Tigran, who still struggled for breath. ‘Give him the bread as well, Vitus.’
Vitus quickly handed over the loaves.
‘Now get out of here and don’t come back unless you plan to behave honestly,’ Magnus said cuffing Tigran around the ear.
‘Thank you, Magnus.’ Tigran turned quickly to go, clutching the loaves to his chest with one hand and clasping his money in the other. He pushed through the crowd of onlookers and disappeared.
‘As for you,’ Magnus growled, pulling Vitus by the collar so that their faces were nose to nose, ‘I want a list of everyone that you can remember passing that shit on to, plus the name of the person who supplied it, with me by morning, or it will be your last, if you take my meaning?’ He brought his knee sharply up into Vitus’ testicles and then walked away leaving the baker to crumple to the floor, eyes bulging, unable to breathe and with both hands grasping his damaged genitals. The crowd parted for him voicing their approval having witnessed justice well done.
Magnus and Servius sat at a table in the shadowy, smoky confines of the small room behind the tavern that they used to conduct business. A jug of steaming hot, spiced and honeyed wine stood between them next to a single oil-lamp. ‘So we need to kill a Praetorian Tribune in a way that doesn’t look like an accident and doesn’t look like an obvious murder but is suspicious enough for Sejanus to recognise it as a warning from Antonia,’ Servius summarised.
Magnus looked gloomy. ‘That’s about it, Brother. How the fuck can we do that?’ He took a swig from the cup of that he held in both hands and scalded his tongue.
Servius looked on with amusement as his superior called on various gods to curse or strike down the obviously half-witted slave who had prepared the wine. ‘I think that was a good lesson,’ he observed once the tirade had subsided. ‘Drink the wine before it’s ready and it will hurt you; drink when it’s just right and it will please you. So let’s not rush into this…’
‘But we have to rush into this,’ Magnus interrupted — the burn had not helped his temper. ‘Antonia wants this done in the next couple days.’
Servius raised a calming hand. ‘Yes, and it shall be. All I’m saying is that at the moment we don’t know how to approach it. The difference between an accident, death in suspicious circumstances and murder is the situation in which the body is found. A man may die falling from a horse that he rides every day; he may genuinely have fallen off, in which case it is an accident; or the horse may have been spooked on purpose by someone in order to get it to throw the man off, in which case it’s murder. However, if a man is found dead having fallen from a horse but it’s known that he never goes riding, then that’s death in suspicious circumstances; it would be highly unlikely to be an accident because what is he doing on the horse in the first place? And yet you can’t prove that it’s not; nor can you prove that it was murder because people die all the time from falling off horses.’
Magnus’ face brightened; the pain from his burnt tongue forgotten. ‘Ah! So you’re saying that if we stage an “accident” whilst Blandinus is apparently doing something that he never normally does then Sejanus will suspect it was murder but be unable to prove it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So we need to use the rest of tonight and tomorrow to find out all that we can about the unfortunate tribune.’
‘Precisely, and then we will have to somehow lure or force the poor man into that unusual circumstance in which he will be found dead.’
‘Tricky but not impossible. Get the lads onto it immediately.’
‘I will Brother,’ Servius confirmed as a knock sounded on the door.
‘Yes?’ Magnus called.
Marius stuck his head into the room. ‘Magnus, they’re here waiting outside, them Albanians, and a strange fucking sight they are too.’
‘I don’t care what they look like, so long as they’ve got the boys.’
‘Yeah, they got them all right.’
‘Good. Go and tell Cassandros to bring the boy into the tavern, I’ll send for him when I need him.’ Magnus rose to his feet. ‘Shall we go and do business, Brother?’
‘I think we should,’ his counsellor agreed following him out.
Magnus surveyed the four bizarrely attired easterners waiting in the moonlight by the tables outside the tavern. Two pretty youths in their early teens, one with blond hair and one dark, stood next to them, staring at Magnus with frightened eyes, knives held to their throats.
‘Who speaks for you?’
‘I do,’ a middle-aged man said stepping forward. He wore a long-sleeved, saffron tunic, belted at the waist, that came to just below his knees, half covering a pair of dark-blue baggy trousers bunched in at the ankle to expose delicate, red-leather slippers. His oiled hair was jet black and fell to his shoulders framing a lean, high-cheek boned face dominated by a sharp, straight nose. Two dark, mirthless eyes stared back at Magnus; his thin mouth was just visible beneath a hennaed red beard that came to an upwards-curling point.
‘And you are?’ Magnus asked, trying to keep the contempt that he felt for this outrageous-looking whore-boy master out of his voice. Behind him Sextus and Marius led half a dozen brothers, armed with knives and cudgels, out of the tavern
‘Kurush,’ the Albanian replied resting his right hand on the hilt of a curved dagger hanging at his waist. ‘And you must be Magnus?’ His Latin was precise and with little trace of an accent.
‘I am. Let’s get this over with; show me the two boys.’
‘They have not been harmed or even interfered with; I can assure you of that with my word.’
‘I’m sure you can but, nevertheless, I wish to see them closer.’
‘A man who won’t take another man’s word is not worthy of trust himself. Let me see my boy. His condition will determine the state of the other two.’
‘Sextus, tell Cassandros to bring him out,’ Magnus ordered, keeping his eyes locked on Kurush.
They waited in silence, staring at each other, for the few moments that it took Cassandros to appear with his charge.
‘Bring him here,’ Magnus said as the Greek dragged the struggling youth through the tavern door.
‘This man raped me,’ the whore-boy shrieked at Kurush, pointing an accusatory finger at Cassandros, ‘and paid nothing.’
Magnus spun round. One look at Cassandros’ face confirmed that the boy was telling the truth: he could not meet his eye.
‘It would seem that we have a problem,’ Kurush observed. ‘I don’t take kindly to people making free with my property.’
Magnus grabbed the youth from Cassandros’ grasp with his left hand and cracked his right fist into the Greek’s face, felling him. ‘I’ll take care of it once we’ve done the exchange; he’ll be punished, I give you my word.’