It crossed the distance as certainly as an arrow pierces the sky. Its claws easily locked into the porous substance of the vessel’s hull, and for a moment the phile rested and let its senses explore the craft. There were many bipeds here, and there was not one whisper of alertness from them. That was good.
That was very good.
As silent—and as fleeting—as a shadow of a bat against the moon, the phile lifted itself over the rim of the surface conveyance, and part of the rage it felt toward the hunter who had stalked it was quickly slaked as the phile had its will with those it found on board.
Chapter Five
As he grew older, Vonones found solace in the creature comforts his slowly accumulated wealth could now furnish him. While the heavyset body of his youth might now be taking on a veneer of softness, nevertheless Vonones had not forgotten that he had attained his wealth through hard work. Thus Vonones made a point of being at his office in the main compound at dawn, whether or not a new shipment was expected.
The escape and destruction—Lycon swore it was destroyed—of the sauropithecus a few nights before had been an ordeal. But Vonones had suffered worse, and thanks to Lycon he had avoided real disaster—though he would have to increase his prices on this shipment to offset the losses for the lizard-ape and the tiger, not to mention payments to Lycon, Galerius and his men, and bribes all around. He’d come out of it with a whole skin and would still turn a good profit, and that was what really mattered, although Vonones knew he would see the lizard-ape in nightmares for the rest of his life.
What happened when Vonones reached his home on the Caelian only proved how badly that near-disaster had shaken him. The messenger Vonones had sent ahead from Portus had given his house slaves hours to prepare for his arrival. Vonones had bought a new mistress, an Egyptian, just before he left to meet the shipment at Portus. She had used the time in preparation to make Vonones’ first trial of her particularly memorable.
Having quite forgotten her after the business of the lizard-ape, Vonones was not thinking of anything but bed when he walked into the bedchamber, stiff with dust and fatigue. She was waiting with one hand poised on the inlaid headboard and the other arm raised to balance the curve of the first. Light from the twelve-wick oil lamp glittered on a headdress of silk and sapphires—the only garment the woman wore. She had also donned a set of long false fingernails and dusted her limbs with lapis lazuli, thinking the blue shadowing would increase her exotic air.
Vonones screamed and ran.
Sleep had been long in coming that night, and the equally startled Egyptian—Vonones had summarily ordered his servants to wash and scrub her till her skin was a shade lighter than when he bought her—decided she would never understand the eccentric ways of Armenian merchants.
When Vonones’ litter stopped in front of his office, his staff were in the midst of the job of unloading. The wagons had been brought into the courtyard by the main gate. It would remain closed until the last of the beasts had been transferred to their holding cells. Any other technique chanced the escape of a predator and bloody chaos in the streets of the neighboring Ceronian District. The dealer wanted no more such escapes, not even of a peacock. At the moment, a hundred or so ostriches that made up a major part of this shipment were being transferred to the corral in a flurry of wings and curses.
The deputy compound manager swirled toward Vonones with an entourage of clerks poised over waxed tablets of accounts. “Excellency,” the deputy called, “there’s a serious discrepancy here! A tiger, according to the bill of lading . . .”
“Yes, I know about the damned tiger. Cross it off,” Vonones said with a scowl. “And the other one too—the sauropithecus. They both died in transit.”
“The what?” said the deputy. Clerks flipped pages to find the unfamiliar term.
“Pollux, give me a moment to look the compound over before you bother me with the accounts,” Vonones snapped to change the subject.