Calgurrio’s sharp-eyed aide was on his feet before Perennius completed the two strides to his door. The department head himself was far slower to react, though he did swing his heavy thighs over the edge of his couch. Startled clerks leaped from stools in the aisle to crowd around the door of Zopyrion’s office. “Get back!” snapped the aide. The group dissolved in a flurry fearfully righting the stools they had knocked over in their haste.
Speaking rapidly, Perennius followed the aide back to the unconscious eunuch. “A banker in Antioch wouldn’t fund my mission like he was supposed to,” the agent said, “but he gave me a letter for this Claudius Zopyrion when I got to Rome. The guy was drinking when I got here – ”
The aide knelt down by Zopyrion, keeping the hem of his tunic clear of the pooled ink and wine. He picked up the open tablet and skimmed it, keeping the wax side turned away from Perennius at his elbow, “Ah, I looked at it after he fainted,” the agent said softly. “I was horrified. What sort of punishment could be sufficient for an embezzler like that?”
“What happened, Anguilus?” demanded Calgurrio as he waddled into the room. The department head stared at Zopyrion in amazement. The eunuch was beginning to moan. “Isis and the Child, what is this?”
Anguilus swung the door closed and handed the tablet to his superior. “I think we have a problem with Zopyrion, sir,” the aide said. Calgurrio began to read the document to himself with increasing astonishment. To Perennius, Anguilus whispered, “And just who are you, good sir?” The words were polite, but there was no deference in the aide’s tone. His face was as blank as a sheet of marble and as hard.
The agent handed over the diploma with his orders. The clerks had returned to noisy confusion as soon as the door had closed them from Calgurrio’s sight – or more probably, from Anguilus’. Using the hubbub to mask his words from everyone but the aide, Perennius said, “If he were transferred to a garrison unit in the sticks – one of the little posts in Africa out on the fringe of the desert where the Moors raid every few months. He wouldn’t be able to lie about how he split the money with his department head then.”
Anguilus closed and returned the diploma. His eyes were as chill as steel in the winter.
“Mother Isis!” Calgurrio blurted. “Anguilus, did you read this? It says – ”
The aide put a hand on his superior’s shoulder. “Yes, sir,” he said with his eyes still watching Perennius, “but I think we can deal with the problem without it having to go beyond these walls.” He nodded toward the closed door and the commotion beyond it before he added, “This gentleman is Aulus Perennius, one of the Bureau’s top field agents, you may remember. We’re very fortunate that the situation was uncovered by someone of his proven discretion.” Anguilus flashed a tight rictus, not really a smile, toward the agent.
Zopyrion moaned again. His eyes opened, though without any intellect behind them. The right pupil was fully dilated: the left was not. Anguilus glanced down at the eunuch. When he looked back at Perennius, his sour grin showed that the evidence of concussion only supported what the aide had known all along.
“Sure, I trust you to clean house yourselves,” Perennius said. “Maybe the next time I’m here at Headquarters, I’ll check just how it did come out.” He nodded toward Zopyrion. “Until then, be well.” The agent turned and reached for the door’s lever handle.
“It won’t happen to you again, fellow-soldier,” said Calgurrio’s aide. The Bureau’s field staff was recruited from the Army, but Perennius would not have guessed that Anguilus had the right to use that particular honorific. “Don’t worry.”
Perennius turned again to look at the aide with his silk and his smooth hands and his eyes like a wolf’s. They came from different backgrounds but the two of them recognized each other. “I don’t worry,” the agent said. “I leave that to other people.”
As Perennius left the office, thrusting his broad shoulders through the press of clerks, he heard Calgurrio saying plaintively, “But why did he put something like this in writing?”