The Emperor's Knives (2 page)

Bassus grunted a perfunctory agreement and ushered the visitor into his private office, scowling at the room’s door as it creaked loudly on its hinges. He indicated a chair facing his desk, behind which he installed himself while the other man lowered himself into a sitting position with a slight grimace.

‘My back isn’t all that it used to be, I’m afraid. All those years on horseback criss-crossing the empire at the emperor’s behest have quite taken the spring out of me, as you can see …’

He waited a moment, as if inviting Bassus into his conversation, but the other man only stared at him in bemusement.

‘I know, not the subject you invited me in to discuss, and I apologise. A man who has previously enjoyed robust good health does have the irritating habit of sharing the smallest aches and pains with all and sundry when they eventually catch up with him.’ He smiled into his host’s darkening frown. ‘Yes indeed, to business! You are, Sextus Dexter Bassus, the brother of one Quintus Dexter Bassus, are you not?’

Bassus shook his head, his voice laced with irritation.

‘We’ve already established that!’

The visitor leaned back in his chair with a smile, steepling his fingers.

‘Forgive my unavoidable disagreement, but in point of fact, Dexter Bassus, we have
not
. When I mentioned Britannia out there on your doorstep, you promptly asked if your brother was involved, but you didn’t ever actually mention his name. Precision is a quality for which I am known, and I cannot afford to allow that reputation to be sullied by a moment’s inattention. So—’

‘Yes!
’ Bassus sat forward, slapping the desk and fixing his guest with a hard stare, his patience clearly at its limits. ‘I am the youngest brother of Quintus Dexter Bassus, who was, before you spend another lifetime working your way around to the question, the tribune and commanding officer of the Second Tungrian Cohort in northern Britannia. He died two years ago in the uprising that overran the frontier wall built by the Emperor Hadrian, and he left me, his only surviving sibling, as the owner of this house. Does that cover all of your questions?’

‘Not quite.’

Bassus sat back again with an expression of dismay that was bordering on something more than irritation.

‘I think I should have you thrown—’

The messenger spoke over him without any change in his expression.

‘Yes, I think you probably should, Dexter Bassus, but you’re not going to show me the door, not yet. For one thing, you don’t know to which of the empire’s esteemed military men, a well-regarded senator by the way, you might be giving offence, and for another …’ He smiled faintly at the big man. ‘The circumstances of your brother’s death were never made clear to you, were they? Or, indeed what happened to his wife, your sister-in-law. You’ll remember her quite well, I’d imagine, given that this was
her
house?’

Bassus looked at him with a different expression, his anger of a moment before replaced by something approaching horror.

‘No …’

The visitor pursed his lips and shrugged without any discernible sympathy for the man sitting opposite as his bad news sank in.

‘Well, as it happens, very much
yes
, I’m afraid. The lady in question survived the barbarian attack quite neatly, and as you would expect, eventually remarried. Her new husband is an officer in the First Tungrian Cohort, a nice young man, indeed in point of fact, more of a gentleman really, the son of a senator. He’s almost supernaturally skilled with just about any weapon you can name; the result, I am reliably informed, of his having trained with both a soldier and a gladiator throughout his youth. Recently, however, he’s fallen on hard times …’ The beneficiarius leaned forward to confide in his host, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. ‘His father was unfortunate enough to get himself executed for treason, you see. You might recall the excitement in the city at the time, when Appius Valerius Aquila was accused of plotting against the emperor? There was no truth in it, but since when did that ever stop an emperor like Commodus when he takes a fancy to a man’s estate? I believe the Aquila villa was even possessed of a small private arena, which I would imagine made it impossible for the young emperor to resist, given his known predilection for a gladiator.’

He sat back again with a smile that was bordering on the beatific.

‘So, to sum up, your brother dies, by his own men’s swords I should add – he seems to have been a little too keen on the stricter aspects of military discipline from the sound of it – and leaves his young wife, the legal owner of this house, a widow. She then marries a rather dangerous young man who seems to go through anyone and anything that gets in his way, like a spearpoint through tunic wool, and they manage to survive the rest of the war with the tribes. Not to mention at least one attempt by the imperial authorities to bring him to justice. And now they’re here.’

Bassus jerked bolt upright in his chair.

‘Here?
’

‘Well not here, as such, but they are less than a mile away, living in the military transit barracks on the Ostian road. And yes, I can only imagine what must be going through your mind …’

A loud crash echoed through the house followed by the sound of a woman’s voice raised in protest from the room above them. The beneficiarius raised his eyebrows, tipping his head to the study door.

‘Trouble in the kitchen, from the sound of it! Mind you, I expect your wife will be on top of the problem. Probably better if we leave her to it?’

The sound of footsteps sounded on the floorboards above them, and then down the stairs as the woman of the house evidently came from whatever she had been doing to investigate. Silence fell, and the beneficiarius leaned forwards again with his eyebrows raised in question.

‘So, Sextus Dexter Bassus, the question is this: what do you think we should do about this change in your circumstances? After all, it probably isn’t going to be very long before this rather excitable young man appears at your door with his wife and demands that you vacate
her
property …’

Bassus looked down at his hands for a moment.

‘I’m not like my brother … he was always the forceful one. Do you think …’

‘Do I think what, Dexter Bassus? Do I think I could help? Possibly. You want this whole problem to go away, I presume? It wouldn’t be cheap.’

The answer was instant.

‘I have money! Not enough to buy a house like this, but enough to reward you generously for any help that you could provide in … relieving me of this problem. Would five … no,
ten
thousand sestertii be enough?’

The beneficiarius shook his head with a hint of sadness.

‘More than enough to employ a man like Silus, much more, but then a man like Silus isn’t going to be capable of dealing with this problem. This will require a team of men, and one in particular with the cunning to lure this young man into a carefully designed trap. A man like me, to be precise.’ He inspected his fingernails for a moment. ‘And I have a sum more of the order of twenty-five thousand in mind.’

The room was silent for a moment while Bassus digested the offer, and silence hung over the house beyond the study’s stout wooden door. When he answered his voice was edged with incredulity.

‘
Twenty-five thousand sestertii?
But that’s—’

‘Everything you have? Not quite. At this point in time, you have this lovely town house, and your good health to boot. There might well come a time not far in the future when you have neither, unless this young man is stopped from carrying through his plans to dispossess you of his wife’s property.’

Bassus nodded disconsolately.

‘Very well, half now and half when the job is complete and proven to my satisfaction.’

He stood, shaking his head and muttering under his breath, going round the desk and stooping to prise a floor tile up from its place, reaching into the gap beneath it to pull out a good-sized purse. To his surprise the visitor stood up, stretched with a grimace and then called out in a loud voice.

‘Very well, Silus, we’re in here!’

With the same slow creak of hinges in need of oil, the study’s door opened, revealing the bodyguard standing stock-still in the frame. His face and tunic were spattered with blood, and a long dagger dangled from his right hand in an almost nonchalant manner. Bassus gaped at him, finding his voice after a long pause.

‘You …’

Words failed him, and the nameless messenger nodded helpfully.

‘Killed your cook, her husband the butler, their daughter the kitchen servant and lastly your wife? That does seem to be the inescapable conclusion. And yes,
obviously
you’re next, now that you’ve paid to have young Marcus Valerius Aquila murdered. Your desire for the problem to go away will be honoured in full, but just not for your benefit. More for mine, really.’

Bassus shrank back against the wall behind him, his face twisted in terror as Silus advanced into the room, looking to his master for the signal to make the last kill.

‘You … you were just waiting for me to show you where the money was!’

The anonymous visitor smiled again, shaking his head with a sad smile.

‘Not really. Did you not wonder how my price just
happened
to coincide precisely with the amount of money you have left from that which you inherited when your brother died? There actually was enough there to buy you a nice place, wasn’t there? Not quite this pleasant, but good enough and in a respectable area. Greed got the better of you, I’d imagine. Why buy a house when you already had one, since your brother’s wife showed no sign of returning home, eh? I’ve known what you’re worth down to the last sestertius for a while now, and where you hide the money, but robbery was never my aim. I didn’t want to steal your money, I wanted you to pay me to deal with the Aquila boy, a job which I can assure you I’ll carry through to the full extent of your rather heavy purse and beyond, if need be.’

Bassus shook his head in disbelief.

‘So why …?’

He waved a hand at the bloody knife, his mouth opening and closing silently.

‘Why kill you all? Because I need this house as part of the plan to fulfil your last orders, that’s why, and you and the rest of your household would at best have been inconvenient loose ends.’

A waved hand set Silus in motion, walking slowly around the desk with his dagger held ready. He raised the knife, speaking to Bassus in a matter-of-fact tone that was clearly calculated to soothe the panicking victim in his last moments.

‘Keep nice and still mate. It’ll be a lot quicker and less painful if you do.’

Bassus looked about him frantically for a way out of his predicament, but before he could make any move the knife man stepped forward quickly, whipping his dagger up and thrusting it deeply into the point where his cowering victim’s neck and shoulder met in the classic street executioner’s stroke.

‘Ah!
You bast …’

Clutching reflexively at the wound with blood squirting between his fingers, he tottered, stepped forward one seemingly drunken pace, and then stopped, swaying on the spot. Eyes rolling upwards as consciousness failed, he slumped to the floor and lay still, a puddle of blood spreading from the wound with one small rivulet trickling down into the underground hiding place from which he had taken the purse. The beneficiarius looked down at him with an expression of pity.

‘How disappointingly stupid. He fell for the beneficiarius story the moment he saw this meaningless piece of silver.’ He lifted the belt end, smiling down at the faked symbol of patronage. ‘Even when whatever it was that broke during your struggle out there hit the floor, he still wasn’t bright enough to realise what was happening until you came through the door.’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. Clearly we perform a service to the gods on days like these, ridding this world of the more credulous of our fellow citizens and leaving more room for clever fellows like you and I, eh Silus?’ He slapped the blood-spattered murderer on a relatively clean section of his arm. ‘And well done for a neatly concluded job! Let’s get all that blood washed off the floor and walls shall we, and decide what to do with the bodies?’

The gory bodyguard stood and looked at him for a moment before speaking.

‘Doesn’t it worry you to be alone with a murderer and more gold than I’ve ever seen in my life, with no one else to hand or even knowing that we’re here?’

His employer raised a sardonic eyebrow, half his face shadowed in the dim evening light filtering through the study’s high window.

‘You only ask from curiosity, of course?’

Silus looked down at his bloody knife.

‘That’s right, only my curiosity.’

‘Well in that case I shall enlighten you as to the source of my boundless confidence with regard to your continued flawless execution of my orders. And it really is
very
simple. Once a day, every day, I report to a very, very important man. I provide him with the information I glean as I go about my job, information which is
particularly
important to him. He expects results from me, Silus, and I expect that he would be more than vexed if the admittedly small matter of my death were to get in the way of my achieving those results. Be assured that he knows all about you, and indeed all about the seemingly immeasurable number of family members whose main breadwinner you would appear to be – how many children is it that you have?’

‘Seven.’

His employer clapped his hands together softly.

‘Seven indeed, and they all survived the plague the last time it stalked the city? That really is quite astonishing good luck! I know of whole families that were wiped out in less than a week. You’re a lucky man, Silus, but it might just be that you’ve used up all that luck. Were I to go missing, even for a day, this man is the type to assume the worst and set investigators on my trail. A trail which I have ensured will lead straight to your door. So, were you to make this simple and entirely understandable mistake, you would soon enough find yourself and every one of your seven children, and that fat wife of yours and her brother, and his wife and children too, all enjoying a brief unscheduled trip to dark rooms buried far beyond any thought of rescue. There are men who ply their trade in those badly lit places, Silus, who make a simple schemer like me and a murdering thug like you appear to be men of the highest virtue. Your family, once in their power, would be abused, degraded and tortured in ways that even a man with your broad experience of the world cannot begin to imagine, since these men’s depravity is limited only by the bounds of their particularly savage imaginations.’