Shops were closing abruptly. Like the upper-class woman, they were obvious targets for the mob that would at other times comprise their clientele. The manager of the wineshop in the alcove next to Perennius slammed down his shutter without even delaying long enough to tug in the cups chained to the counter. His three patrons kept an eye on the approaching tumult as they slurped their mixtures of water and powerful African wine. In a bread shop on the ground floor of the building across the street, a lounger tried to snitch a roll. He squawked as the counterman caught his wrist and pinned his forearm to the limestone counter with the iron-edged shutter. The hasp of the padlock within must have had enough reach to close despite the impediment, because the loafer continued to scream even as the mob boiled past him.
The counterman was almost certainly a slave, perhaps not even the person responsible to the absentee owner for management of the shop. He had acted not from necessity or even from personal involvement. In frustration and ah anger more general than the immediate impetus, he had lashed out against the closest permissible target.
Perennius felt a rush of fellowship for the counterman as he watched the thief screaming. His palm sweated on the worn bone hilt of his sword.
The mob streamed past with the ragged implacability of the tide on a strand. The front ranks were of husky men who probably had a purpose. They were shouting, “Down with Baebrio!” The slogan meant little to Perennius and perhaps less to the jeering multitude following those leaders. This was simply entertainment for most of the crowd, the landless and jobless, the helpless and hopeless. They would pour on, shouting and smashing, until a company of the Watch was mustered to block them. Perhaps by that time, their numbers would have grown so that it was the Watch instead that scattered in a hail of bricks and roof tiles. If the riot went that far, it would last a day or more before squadrons of imperial cavalry arrived from Milan to wash the streets clear with blood.
Thugs with cudgels were running down the sidewalks like outriders, banging on doors and shutters. Gaius and the agent were hidden by their dark cloaks and the shade of the pillar-supported sidewalk covering. A thug who had just bellowed something back at his companions recoiled in surprise from the alcove. He was young and burly, with a touch of Germanic pallor to his face. The cudgel that had halted in surprise he now cocked back with a snarl and a curse. He did not know the pair of them or care about them as men, but license faced control and reacted to it like acid on lime.
As the cudgel rose, Perennius grinned and spread his cloak with his left hand. His sword had been slung centurion-fashion from the left side of his equipment belt. It was that sword rather than the ball-pommeled dagger in the other scabbard that poised to respond to the club. But it was the grin that froze the thug, not the twenty inches of bare steel in Perennius’ hand. The fellow dropped his weapon and rushed on.
“Let him go,” Perennius ordered as Gaius lunged to catch the man. He was nothing but flotsam on a dirty stream. Perennius, a cloaked figure in the shadows, would be forgotten by nightfall. The death the agent had been so willing to offer would be forgotten also, until it came calling again in a tavern brawl or a drunken misstep. The thug did not matter to the world, and to Perennius he was only the latest of the hundreds who, for one reason or none, had considered killing him.
More interesting than that exchange was the head of the cat which was both banner and probable occasion for the mob. The great canines winked like spear-points from the upper jaw. Perennius had seen cats as big, but he had never seen one similarly armed. The folk surging down the street past the agent were inured to strangeness by the beast shows of the Circus, but this was to them also a unique marvel, an omen like a cow which spoke or thunder from a clear sky. It was reason enough for riot; it, and the barren wasteland of their lives.