“Oh, here’s to adventure!” mocked Vulpes good-humoredly, thumping his wine cup loudly.
Lycon, reminded of the blue-scaled creature in Vonones’ cage, smiled absently.
“I, too, am a philosopher,” Vulpes announced loftily. “Wine and sitting on your butt all day make a good Roman as philosophic as any wander-witted Greek beastcatcher.” He raised his cup to Lycon.
“And you, my friend, you have a fascination for the killer trait, a love of deadly things. Deny it as you will, but it’s there. You could have farmed olives, or studied sculpture. But no—it’s the army for you, then the arena, and what next? Are you sick of killing? No, just bored with easy prey. So now you spend your days outwitting and ensnaring the most savage beasts of all lands!
“You can’t get away from your fascination for the killer, friend Lycon. And shall I tell you why? It’s because, no matter how earnestly you deny it, you’ve got the killer streak in your own soul too.”
“Here’s to philosophy,” toasted Lycon sardonically.
* * *
Lycon had done business with Vonones for many years, and the habitually morose Armenian was among the handful of men whom the hunter counted as friends. Reasonably honest and certainly shrewd, Vonones paid with coins of full weight and had been known to add a bonus to the tally when a collector brought him something exceptional. Still, after a long night of drinking with Vulpes, Lycon was not pleased when the dealer burst in upon him in the first hour of morning in the room he shared with five other transients.
“What in the name of the buggering Twins do you mean getting me up at this hour!” Lycon snarled, surprised to see daylight. “I said I’d come by later for my money.”
“No—it’s not that!” Vonones moaned, shaking his arm. “Thank the gods I’ve found you! Come on, Lycon! You’ve got to help me!”
Lycon freed his arm and rolled to his feet. Someone cursed and threw a sandal in their direction. “All right, all right,” the hunter yawned. “Let’s get out of here and let other people sleep.”
The stairs of the apartment block reeked of garbage and refuse. It reminded Lycon of the stench at Vonones’ animal compound—the sour foulness of too many people living within cramped walls. Beggars clogged the stairs, living there for want of other shelter. Now and again the manager of the block would pay a squad of the Watch to pummel them out into the street. Those who could pay for a portion of a room were little cleaner themselves.
“Damn it, Vonones! What is it!” Lycon protested, as the frantic Armenian took hold of his arm again. He had never seen Vonones so shaken.
“Outside—I can’t. . . . That animal escaped. The sauropithecus.”
“Well,” Lycon said reasonably. “You said you didn’t get much for the thing, so it can’t be all that great a loss. Anyway, what has it to do with me?”
But Vonones set his lips and tugged the hunter down the stairs and out onto the cobbled street, where eight bearers waited with his litter. He pushed Lycon inside and closed the curtains before speaking in a low, agitated voice. “I don’t dare let word of this get about! Lycon, the beast escaped only a few miles out of town. It’s loose in an estate now—hundreds of those little peasant grainplots, each worked by a tenant family.”
“So?”
“The estate is owned by the Emperor, and that lizard-ape thing killed one of his tenants within minutes of escaping! You’ve got to help me recapture it before worse happens!”
“Lady Fortune!” swore Lycon softly, understanding why the loss of the animal had made a trembling wreck of the dealer. “How did it get loose?”
“That’s the worst of it!” Vonones protested, in the tone of someone who knew he would be called a liar. “It must have unlocked the cage somehow—I checked the fastenings myself before the caravan left. But nobody will believe that—they’ll think I was careless and didn’t have the cage locked properly in the first place. And if our lord and god learns that one of his estates is being ravaged . . .”