The damage to the creature within the net had quite clearly been fatal. In death, the thing seemed even smaller than Lycon had supposed. It probably weighed little more than ten pounds, granted the unnatural density of its flesh, and it reminded Lycon of a drowned cat. The last blow of the wand had crunched the chick’s skull, but the eye that remained open still glared with unslaked hatred. Even in death, it projected the feeling of a scorpion caught under a boot, not only lethal but strong—a mistake the universe had spawned in some black pit or poisonous desert.
Lacerta paused in unwrapping it, as he began to get a better look at what he held. There was something on his hands, colorless but slimy, like the track of a slug. His aristocratic face worked in disgust, and he thrust the burden toward one of the German troopers with a curt order.
“You killed it, beastcatcher,” the tribune accused, in anger that swelled to burn away the disgust and fear that soiled his emotions. His hands wiped themselves compulsively on the studded leather apron that hung to protect his thighs. “You were to capture the animal, but you killed it. I saw you.”
Lacerta’s eyes flicked reflexively toward the netted thing that one of the stolid Germans was trying to untangle as directed. Seeing the creature again made the tribune’s face draw up in a flinch, and he quickly looked away.
“Had to draw the mother in,” Lycon mumbled. “That’s just one of her brood. The rest are cooked by now.” Not even he could have understood his own words. Two of the guards still held him, and that was probably fortunate. Otherwise he would have fallen. Louder and more clearly, the hunter said: “N’Sumu—tell them that we had to get the adult where you could . . . you could catch her. That was the one we were after—the adult sauropithecus.”
The bronzed Egyptian squatted at the edge of the catch basin. There were spectators about him, but none of them had moved closer when he ordered them to lift the stone plate for him. Now N’Sumu balanced the slab on edge with one hand, while the index finger of his free hand seemed to point into the opening. After a moment, he waved his palm slowly over the gaping hole.
Men and women knocked down moments ago by the flashing bolts of power that had missed the escaping sauropithecus were now beginning to stir upon the cobblestones. A few of those who had escaped the swathe were kneeling beside victims, weeping and chafing wrists to raise a pulse. Those who had been too slow to get out of the lizard-ape’s path lay about where they had fallen, blood seeping in widening pools beneath them. What the crowd had made of it all was beyond conjecture.
Nothing burst out of the sewer. The gurgle of water and the waste it bore toward the Tiber was loud and alone in the pause before N’Sumu dropped the slab back into place.
He stared at Lacerta with an arrogance that made the tribune seethe. “I believe my authority has precedence here, Tribune. See to this rabble, while I give orders to my staff concerning the Emperor’s sauropithecus. I’m sure that any problems arising from tonight are entirely within my capacity to deal with.”
Down the street behind them, one wall of the burning building collapsed inward, closely followed by the remaining walls. Sparks gushed and dripped back as if the dying apartment block clawed at its neighbors. The sky-reaching inferno did not spread beyond its pyre, however, only cooled and fell away upon its dead.
Rome was fortunate, this time. That danger had contained itself.
But from beneath the lid of a catch basin hundreds of feet from where the phile had last been seen, eyes watched the mounted guards begin to clear the streets of the frightened mob. Its eyes focused upon one man out of all the crowd there, and the stone slab quivered as the clawed hand holding it ajar began to tremble with fury.
Chapter Sixteen
“The only reason you two are not lion-bait in the Amphitheater right now,” said N’Sumu firmly, “is because I said I needed you. Lacerta wanted all three of us thrown into the arena. He was not pleased when he was made to recognize that my authority from Domitian was greater than his.”