She looked ironic. She would be used to compliments, he realized. ‘The association with power is attractive, isn’t it?’ she murmured dryly.
Crispin laughed aloud. ‘Jad’s blood! If all the women in Sarantium are as clever as the ones I’ve already met
‘Yes?’ she said, looking up at him slantwise. ‘What follows, Caius Crispus?’ Her tone was deliberately arch, teasing again. It was effective, he had to concede.
He couldn’t think of a reply. She laughed. ‘You’ll have to tell me about the others, of course. One must know one’s rivals in this city.’
Crispin looked at her. He could imagine what her bird would have said to that. He was grateful it was silent. Otherwise-
‘Oh, gods! You are a disgrace! You bring shame upon . . . everything!’
Crispin winced, covering it with a quick hand to his mouth. Not silenced, obviously. It was evident that Zoticus’s daughter had her own methods of controlling her bird. She’d been toying with both of them, he thought. Shirin turned, smiling privately to herself, and led the way back down the corridor to the front door.
‘I’ll call again,’ Crispin murmured, turning there. ‘If I may?’
‘Of course. You must. I’ll assemble a small dinner party for you. Where are you staying?’
He named the inn. I’ll be looking for a house, though. I believe the Chancellor’s officials are to find me one.’
‘Gesius? Really? And Leontes met with you at the baths? You have powerful friends, Rhodian. My father was wrong. You couldn’t possibly need someone like me for . . . anything.’ She smiled again, the clever expression belying the words. ‘Come and see me dance. The chariots are finished, it is theatre season now.’
He nodded. She opened the door and stood back to let him pass.
‘Thank you again for the greeting,’ he said. He wasn’t sure why he’d said that. Teasing. Mostly. She’d done enough of it, herself.
‘Oh, dear,’ Shirin of the Greens murmured. ‘I’m not to be allowed to forget that, am I? My beloved father would be so ashamed. It isn’t how he raised me, of course. Good day, Caius Crispus,’ she added, keeping a small but discernible distance this time. After her own gibes at him, he was pleased to see that she had reacted a little, however.
‘Don’t kiss him! Don’t! Is the door open?’
A brief pause, then, ‘No I do not know that, Shirin! With you I am never certain.’ Another silence, as Shirin said whatever she said, and then in a very different tone Crispin heard the bird say, ‘Very well. Yes, dear. Yes, I know. I do know that.’
There was a tenderness there that took him straight back to the Aidwood. Linon. Remember me.
Crispin bowed, feeling a sudden wave of grief pass over him. Zoticus’s daughter smiled and the door closed. He stood on the portico thinking, though not very coherently. Carullus’s soldiers waited, watching him, eyeing the street . . . which was empty now. A wind blew. It was cold, the late-afternoon sun hidden by the roofs of houses west.
Crispin took a deep breath then he knocked on the door again.
A moment later it swung open. Shirin’s eyes were wide. She opened her mouth but, seeing his expression, said nothing at all. Crispin stepped inside. He himself closed the door on the street.
She looked up at him.
‘Shirin, I’m sorry, but I can hear your bird,’ he said. ‘We have a few things to talk about.’
The Urban Prefecture in the reign of the Emperor Valerius II fell under the auspices of Faustinus the Master of Offices, as did all of the civil service and, accordingly, it was run with his well-known efficiency and attention to detail.
These traits were much in evidence when the former courier and suspected assassin, Pronobius Tilliticus, was brought to questioning in the notorious, windowless building near the Mezaros Forum. The new legal protocols established by Valerius’s Quaestor of the Judiciary, Marcellinus, were painstakingly followed: a scribe and a notary were both present as the Questioner set out his array of implements.
In the event, none of the hanging weights or metal probes or the more elaborate contrivances proved necessary. The man Tilliticus offered a complete and detailed confession as soon as the Questioner, gauging his subject with an experienced eye, elected to suddenly clutch and shear off a hank of the man’s hair with a curved, serrated blade. As his locks fell to the stone floor, Tilliticus screamed as if he’d been pierced by the jagged blade. Then he began to babble forth far more than they needed to hear. The secretary recorded; the notary witnessed and affixed his seal when it was done. The Questioner, showing no signs of disappointment, withdrew. There were other subjects waiting in other chambers.