The third floor—above the shops and the dwellings of the shop keepers—seemed to be given over to the suites of the wealthy. At that level, a loggia was corbelled out over the street. Planting boxes on the tiled roof of the loggia indicated that the inhabitants of the fourth story drew some benefit from the structure as well. The fountain serving the area was built against the wall of the apartment building, between the two doorways, instead of being sited in the center of the plaza. The fountain was something over eighty feet from the doors of the temple across from it.
N’Sumu looked around again, his eyes opaque, and hugged himself in what was clearly a response to the shudder which did not appear on the surface of his rich bronze skin. “You’re unbalanced,” he said aloud in angry wonder. “It could attack at any time—from anywhere—and you stand here in the open.”
Lycon’s helmet turned to the Egyptian. “It had a chance to kill me under the Amphitheater,” the beastcatcher said softly. “It passed me by. I think I’ll have to give it a reason to change its mind about leaving me alive.”
“It didn’t pass me by,” N’Sumu snapped. He hugged himself again, and the agitation which never seemed to enter his tone showed itself in the sudden volume with which he spat out the words. “It knows that it’s safe if it can kill me!”
“Does it know that?” asked the voice from the bronze grillwork. “Then you’d best get out of danger, hadn’t you?” The helmet nodded toward the leaves of the sanctuary door, behind Vonones and the bronze man.
Vonones reached for his friend, hesitated, and then transferred the whip to his left hand to grip Lycon with his right. “Goddess Fortune be with you, my friend,” he said, and he sounded as if he wished that he could truly believe in any god, even Chance.
Lycon chuckled, and it might have been the helmet’s constriction which made the sound that of a drowning man. He clasped Vonones’ arm, hand to wrist, then released the merchant and shook himself. The bronze and the iron armor had the same pale sheen in the colorless moonlight. The beastcatcher touched the net slung over his left shoulder, but he did not transfer it to his hand for ready use as he stumped off across the plaza.
N’Sumu watched the armored Greek with a stride as careless as that of a male lion at the height of his powers. The eye Vonones watched in profile flickered from sandy opaqueness to the abnormal, glittering clarity which was nonetheless normal for N’Sumu. “Do you know what he intends to do?” the Egyptian demanded without looking away from Lycon’s back. The beastcatcher was nearing the apartment building opposite.
“I think so,” said Vonones. “I’m afraid I do.” Then he added, “Let’s get inside.”
There was a large party of animal-handlers in the courtyard of the apartment block; most of them trained in the arena rather than the field but the best that could be assembled in Rome on the present schedule. Vonones had as little confidence in their ability to capture the lizard-ape in time as he did in the hope that Lycon’s armor would preserve him for more than one swipe of the beast’s talons. A creature which could unlock a cage with its claws was unlikely to be seriously deterred by protection which did not cover the throat or the great arteries of its victim’s thighs.
Such benefit as the sword could bring would be effectively posthumous; and even that was doubtful.
N’Sumu opened the sanctuary door whose corroded hinges had proven more of an obstacle than the padlock which Lycon had struck off in preparation for this night. Temples were centers of ceremony, not worship. In all likelihood, this sanctuary had not been opened in eighty years, ever since the Emperor Augustus had refurbished and rededicated it and scores of similar temples in superficial homage to the ancient values which his programs were undermining.
The door had double leaves which pivoted inward. Before they had swung open a hand’s breadth—too narrow a slit to pass even a creature as lithe as the sauropithecus—the Egyptian paused. A beam of light, tinged slightly with blue and seemingly as palpable as a jet of water, gushed into the sanctuary and flooded the walls, floor, and ceiling. Only then did N’Sumu open the door leaves the rest of the way so that he and the Armenian could enter. The light appeared to have come from somewhere on his chest; but his toga was unmarked and unremarkable, and Vonones had only memory and the afterimage to assure him that the light had existed at all.