He smiled at Vonones, dismissing the worry etched on the merchant’s features. “You always try to get me to sit in the sedan chair with you. Well, today I won’t argue.”
Lycon hesitated. The brave efforts at sociability evaporated. His face had all the reassurance of a bleached skull. “Don’t worry about me, Vonones,” the hunter said. “I’m going to finish this one. Whatever it costs.”
Chapter Twenty-four
“Gaius Cornelius Sempronianus?” asked the centurion wearing the scarlet tunic and sandals of the Praetorian Guard.
The doorkeeper who had opened the panel to an authoritative knock now blinked in amazement to see the third-floor hallway filled with troops and their servants. The Praetorians did not carry spears or shields for this assignment, but their helmets and belted swords left no doubt of what they were.
“But sirs, he’s only a schoolmaster!” the slave in the doorway blurted.
The centurion grinned and knocked the door-keeper aside as he strode within. Some of the servants behind him were carrying lamps, others held lengths of rope. The first three of the soldiers following the centurion simply trampled over the doorkeeper, but the next pair paused long enough to pinion the fellow’s arms behind him. A servant trussed the doorkeeper wrist to wrist with one of the cords he carried already cut to length.
There were no proper doors within the small suite. The Praetorians ripped down the curtains hung over internal doorways for privacy. The lamplight and the slam of hobnails on the floor brought the inhabitants off their couches, wearing tunics and frightened expressions. In one alcove a man and a woman, the latter with an infant in her arms, babbled in Greek, “But we just rented the bed today! Please!” as the soldiers dragged them into the center of the main room. More of the Praetorians’ servants moved in for the menial task of binding the captives.
Lycon caught the nearest servant by the arm, halting him, and said to the soldiers with the couple, “Let them go. They aren’t covered in the order . . . and anyway, the baby.”
There was a curtained bed in one corner of the main room. The centurion himself tore away the orange-dyed linen. The gray-bearded man on the bed was holding an embroidered coverlet over himself with one hand as if the cloth were some protection. He wore a tunic. The boy cowering beside him was of a smoothly-olive cast with only a hint of pubic hair visible when the Praetorian jerked the bedclothes down. His mouth was covered by the older man’s other hand. “Cornelius Sempronianus, I’d judge,” the centurion said in a tone of grim satisfaction.
“I’m a Roman citizen,” Sempronianus said, his voice cracking in the middle of the clause. He clamped his thin arms across his chest in a pitiful attempt to deny purchase to the soldiers reaching toward the bed. “What are you doing to me?”
Soldiers lifted the naked, squealing boy, one by each arm, while the centurion stood grinning, arms akimbo. One of the Praetorians pinched the boy’s buttocks with his free hand. “Hey,” he said cheerfully, “save this one out. Be a crime to send him to the arena.”
“Quintus,” said the soldier holding the little gunsel’s other arm, “this is the wrong outfit to talk about seeing how boys lasso the ram. Unless you want to see the Amphitheater from the inside yourself.” He gave a meaningful nod toward their commanding officer.
Together, the Praetorians handed their slight burden to a servant to be tied. “A-arena?” whispered the schoolmaster.
“Get up, Greekling,” ordered the centurion in the silky voice of a man who would just as soon meet resistance.
Lycon stepped into view around the centurion’s blocky torso. “Good evening, Gaius Sempronianus,” the beastcatcher said. “I heard you’d gone to spend some time with a brother in Akragas, folks in the apartment thought. I’m glad it was a short visit.”
“You were condemned,” Sempronianus said in a voice choking with awe and dawning awareness. “To the arena.”
The centurion kicked away one leg of the bed. The frame scrunched down, tipping the schoolmaster onto the floor. “I thought I said get up,” the centurion grated.
“You know,” Lycon said, “for a while there, I really wanted to talk to you about the education you were giving my son . . . but one thing and another came up, and now there isn’t much point in that after all. It made me think you might be the perfect man to serve our god and lord in a special way, though.”