Lycon was trying to hold his cup still, but the tension in his grip set the wine adance in the shallow vessel. “True enough. We’ve found no sign of tracks, and we’ve had our noses to the ground up and down both banks of the Tiber. That’s why I’m convinced the beast must have drowned.”
“It seems reasonable that the sauropithecus stayed with the barge even after it had finished with the sailors,” said N’Sumu, as he let the lid fall with a rattle of hollow bronze. “If it had been watching other barges pass along the Tiber from its place of concealment, it is cunning enough to have understood their navigation. Whether the helmsman fell overboard in the course of the struggle or whether his body was deliberately let fall into the river by the lizard-ape is an interesting question for speculation. Since there was no report of a large splash being heard that night, I’ve drawn my own conclusion.
“Regardless of that though, the lizard-ape almost certainly manned the steering oar until it drew close to Rome. At that point it may have then left the barge, but more likely it clung to the hull for the remainder of the distance. In the darkness, it might well have even hidden within the hold—it sees very well in the dark, you understand, while the teamsters had only sputtering rushlights for illumination. Quite possibly it left the barge only at the docks. Now the sauropithecus has all of Rome to hide in—and to hunt in.”
Lycon downed half his wine. “An interesting theory. But why hasn’t the lizard-ape been seen? And even if it’s managed to hide, why haven’t we heard reports of wholesale slaughter?”
“I warned you that the lizard-ape is extremely cunning,” said N’Sumu, as his eyes returned to the mulling stove. He began scraping with one square-cut nail at the soot that coated the interior of the open cylindrical firebox.
“I think it will have found a lair—a ruin, an abandoned building, perhaps the sewers. I can’t say where. But if it hunted by night, and killed only for food instead of sport . . . Well, how many murdered corpses greet the dawn from Rome’s alleyways, or vanish forever during the night? I tell you again, these lizard-apes are very cunning.”
“Well,” said Vonones, holding in both palms the cup of warm wine from which he had not drunk. “Then we need to set up a reporting network in Rome like the one with which we’ve covered the countryside. That shouldn’t be very difficult, Lycon, should it? We’ll operate through the Watch commanders, offer rewards for any information that might be in point—mutilated bodies, or reports of disappearances that center upon one particular district. It won’t cost us all that much—and if we do manage to learn something concrete about the lizard-ape’s whereabouts, we can call in all our men from the countryside.”
The hunter spat into the firebox of the mulling stove. The gobbet of saliva struck the bright metal where N’Sumu’s finger had scraped away the soot. The spittle hissed in serpentine anger as it boiled away from the hot bronze. Lycon pointed the index and middle fingers of his right hand at N’Sumu’s chest. “So you really think the lizard-ape’s lurking about right here in Rome? I find that hard to accept, but it’s a new tack, and maybe that will impress Domitian for a while at least. You know you’re going to be standing there in the arena beside Vonones and me if this proves to be another waste of time.”
“It’s unlikely that I will end up in the arena,” said N’Sumu, and the other two understood his threat. “I know I’m right. I’d capture the sauropithecus by myself, but I need good men, and that’s why I chose to work through you. My authority from our lord and god is as great as may be required for my purposes. But you have the experience—” the smile spread across his face without showing any teeth beneath the broad lips “—of working in local conditions. And you will have the credit when we succeed.”
Lycon swallowed the last of his wine without taking his eyes away from N’Sumu’s face. “Then we’d better get started, hadn’t we.”