He found her face in the dark for a quick kiss. “At least I get home nights now.”
“I’d almost rather have you away on some collecting expedition,” Zoe murmured. “I keep thinking you’d be safer off in some far wilderness, stalking the beasts you know.”
“There’s always some new beast to be found, if you go looking,” Lycon tried to reassure her. “And N’Sumu is in charge now—at least he thinks he is. He’s hunted lizard-apes since he was old enough to crawl.”
Lycon couldn’t imagine N’Sumu as a child, although the fantasy of a crawling N’Sumu suddenly conjured forth an unpleasant image of the tall Egyptian—bronze-scaled and wriggling on his belly like a monstrous man-snake.
“Have Geta bring Alexandros to the compound, once he’s had his breakfast,” Lycon said, changing the direction of his thoughts.
“Lycon! Won’t it be too dangerous?” Zoe protested. “Alexandros is just a boy!”
“Time he becomes a man, then,” Lycon told her. “Besides, there’s no danger. Vonones’ people can show him around the compound—let him get a close look at the beasts his father hunts. No more faggot schoolmasters for my son!”
“But I’m not sure Alexandros will want to go!”
“I didn’t ask about what he wants to do! See that he’s there! Chances are I’ll be sitting on my ass in the office with Vonones all day anyway. I’ll keep an eye on Alexandros. Stop worrying about the boy.”
Lycon didn’t add that the actual danger arose from just this sort of inactivity. Domitian’s patience—even with his imported lizard-ape specialist—was not going to last much longer. If they couldn’t produce a sauropithecus for the Emperor soon . . .
Well, he and Vonones had discussed it often enough. The merchant had discreetly arranged to have a ship in readiness at Portus. They might be able to flee beyond Domitian’s wrath, but Lycon didn’t like to think about having to try it. In the field he had only his own life to consider—that was quite acceptable—but if he failed here, Domitian would spare not even the lowliest household slave.
Chapter Twelve
Carretius the rent-taker climbed the stairs to the sixth level between his two assistants, Smiler and Ox. Carretius was wheezing. It was growing dark, this was the third and last building on the day’s rounds, and each flight of stairs grew longer as the day dragged on.
Besides, he’d been a fool at one of the initial stops. A cobbler rented a nice ground floor location for his shop and workroom that should have guaranteed a decent living, had the fellow not insisted on drinking all his profits—and the rent money. In a voice thick with tears and redolent of the heavy, sweet wine lees to which poverty had reduced him, he had offered the services of his daughter in exchange for the rent money. Carretius had badgered him down to an extension—a minor misjudgment for which he would have to account next month when the craftsman inevitably missed another payment, and the bailiffs were sent to seize the fellow’s chattels.
As her father had promised—saying that he should know—the girl was quite accomplished. Too accomplished for a man of Carretius’ flabbiness and years. He had only a hazy remembrance of that morning’s dalliance, and now he was not only running behind schedule, but his back ached beyond endurance.
The close weather amplified the odor of the huge waste jar at the bottom of the stairwell. It held the contents of the chamber pots—at least those of the tenants sophisticated enough to understand what a chamber pot was for. The upper levels, not only of the units Carretius serviced but of all apartment blocks in Rome, primarily held displaced country folk of one sort or another. One lot of Numidians had been found keeping a live sheep on their balcony, planning to slaughter it for a wedding feast in a day or two. They had objected strongly when the animal was removed, but that sort of discussion was what Ox and Smiler were along for.
Smiler led on the stairs as he always did. Carretius himself, with the wooden-backed wax tablets of the account clattering on waist thongs, was in the middle. Ox closed the rear. He carried the collected rents in a leather pouch hung against his chest on a neck strap. The real advantage of Ox’s size was that he literally blocked the staircases in the buildings Carretius serviced. It was impossible for a footpad or desperate tenant to reach the rent-taker from behind.