The Romulus Equation (8 page)

‘Now that your friends have left, we've got a few moments to chat,' he said, dropping to his knees. ‘Where can I find your boss?'

The man writhed in agony, spitting a globule of blood. ‘Go… to hell!'

‘Probably… but first I need some information,' said the conjuror. He snatched hold of the wooden spike and began churning it back and forth. The downed man wailed like a fox caught in a trap. ‘Let me make myself perfectly clear. I want to know where I can find the man that pulls your strings.'

‘You are… wasting your time!' snarled the man.

‘I've got plenty of it, unlike you.' Quaint wrenched the man up to his leaden feet and dragged him over to the window. ‘Do you see that bloody mess on the pavement down there? Not very attractive, is it? So, one more time: where can I find your employer?'

The man began to laugh.

‘Sorry, did I miss something?' asked Quaint.

‘You are a very tall man, Signor Quaint. Tall men never look down,' said the short man, flicking his eyes to the floor.

Quaint followed his gaze, down past the stocky man's shoulders, down past his chest, and down to the man's hand that held a dagger to the conjuror's groin.

‘Oh, very good,' said Quaint.

In a second the tables had turned, not for the first time in Cornelius Quaint's life. He slowly backed away towards the window, the glass crunching underfoot, and he had a nasty suspicion that it might be him that was to become a bloody mess on the pavement, and that just wouldn't do.

‘Look, perhaps we can talk about this,' he suggested. ‘I only need to have a few words with Romulus. It's important!'

‘Romulus? Never heard of him.' Quaint's attacker lunged.

As Quaint raised his arms to defend himself, he heard a strange whoosh of air and he was mildly confused to note that his body seemed absent of any pain. He lowered his arms and his confusion multiplied. His attacker was statuesque. As Quaint guided the tip of his attacker's knife away from him, the stocky man collapsed – and then fell, quite dead, to the floor.

‘That's unusual,' said Quaint, bending down for a closer look.

It was at that moment that he spotted another knife, embedded deep into his attacker's chest. It had entered the man's heart, killing him instantly.

‘Why do people keep dying on me?' Quaint murmured, rushing to the open window for a sight of the assassin. His eyes dropped down to the street below, where a small crowd had congregated around the two dead men. Then Quaint looked up. His hotel room was on the third floor. The angle of the knife meant the perpetrator had to have been elevated. He quickly scanned the adjacent rooftop for signs of activity, but found nothing. He was utterly baffled, and as he pondered this latest near miss, a sudden thought occurred to him, causing him to reword his previous sentence.

‘Why do people keep dying on me right before they tell me where Romulus is?'

Whatever the answer was, there was obviously more going on than met the conjuror's eye. These intruders had not known just his name, but also his place of residence and his room number. That did not bode well. But there were other complications to consider also. It stood to reason that the same assassin had killed both the stunted man at his feet as well as the youth in the marketplace, which meant that he did not seem to be the target. Or perhaps that was not this assassin's style; perhaps he took sport from killing and he liked to see the whites of his target's eyes. He was obviously a killer that took his art seriously, and evidence proved that he was very good at it too. Driven, determined, obsessive almost to the point of madness, Quaint was familiar with that sort, sharing some of the same characteristics himself.

With a mind determined to find some answers, he pulled on his jacket and packed up his things. Staying at the hotel was no longer an option. If Romulus was determined to silence anyone that dared speak his name, perhaps the easiest thing to do was to make enough noise to be heard…

Leaving his hotel, Quaint hailed a horse-drawn carriage to take him to the Gothic quarter – although it cost him double the fare after dark. The strange goings-on in his hotel room still plagued his mind, and try as he might, he could not shift the feeling that he was being watched. Every rooftop and building had become his enemy's stronghold and the assassin could have been hiding on any one of them. Quaint's keen eyes scoured the roofs as the horse trotted along the cobbled stone streets. He was nervous enough already, he really didn't need the distraction of constantly watching his back.

The journey into the bowels of the Gothic quarter seemingly took for ever, and Quaint was curious as to exactly how long. He pulled out his dented brass fob watch and was instantly reminded of his father, which in turn brought both sadness and irritation to his mind. Sadness as his departed father had entrusted him with that very watch, and irritation as it seemed the man might have been tied up in dark matters that he dared not visualise. Why had the Hades Consortium had him killed? Was he a threat, or was he involved with them somehow? Why had they killed his mother also? What could his father possibly have done to warrant such punishment? Adolfo Remus would have the answers, Quaint told himself, but before he could get to him he needed to find him – which was where Romulus fitted into the equation.

He depressed a button atop the timepiece and the watch snapped open like a locket. Inside, underneath the main fascia was an engraved illustration of a large oval, with four circular discs positioned at the four points of the compass. Not just a watch, this device contained a Luna-meter, a tool used by ancient astronomers for measuring the phases of the moon. Here he was in Italy, seeking a man to aid his battle against his parents' killer, and he was carrying a device named after a Roman goddess. That would have been a rare coincidence indeed, if Cornelius Quaint believed in such things. He looked up, where he saw not the moon, but a shadowy figure clambering over the rooftops, keeping pace with the coach.

Quaint felt a lump rise in his throat.

‘I'll pay you triple if you speed your nag up a bit!' he called to the driver. With a toothsome grin and a crack of his long whip, the slight man gee'd his horse and the coach rocketed along the bumpy road.

Looking over his shoulder, Quaint saw the dark silhouette fade into the distance and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He had escaped the assassin once again.

But for how long?

Within ten minutes, the driver pulled his panting horse to a stop, and Quaint hastily got out. His buttocks were tenderised by the high-speed race through the uneven (and not to mention uncomfortable) streets. The epitome of civilisation the capital might have been, but it seemed the Romans had little thought for comfort when they built their roads. He gripped the sides of the carriage as his legs wobbled.

‘I've known torture techniques less painful,' he said to the driver.

The Italian cackled at this, almost proudly.

Quaint gave him a handful of coins. The driver whipped his horse and made off into the night at speed.

‘Wait, how am I supposed to get—?' Quaint yelled after him, but there was no sound save the echo of his voice and horse's hooves fading into the distance.

The street was long and straight, with row upon row of tenement housing intersected with a crossroads. The vague light of a tavern across from Quaint's position seemed an ideal place to ask some awkward questions.

Quaint ordered some spiced rum and settled himself into a chair with his back to the wall and eyes on the front door. The tavern was barely full, but what patrons there were seemed the private sort. Absent was the usual Italian joviality; the heavy baritones, the staccato chattering like the tapping of a woodpecker. Instead the place was all whispers and restrained gestures. The ideal place to start asking awkward questions, Quaint surmised, and he sidled over to the bar.

‘I don't suppose you know where I can find a chap named Romulus, do you?' he asked the barkeeper casually, as if he were striking up a conversation about the weather.

The tavern went abruptly silent.

Quaint's nerves jangled as it took an age for the barkeeper to answer, but not before he had scowled the conjuror up and down.

‘We do not mention that name in here,' he said, his waxed moustache never budging a millimetre, his lips unmoving. ‘A smart gentleman like yourself would do well to remember that.'

One of the tavern's customers joined Quaint at the bar. He emptied his glass of red wine and slammed it down.

‘Can I buy you another?' Quaint asked him.

‘You want to know about Romulus?' said the man, leaning himself into the conjuror's shoulder. ‘Well, good luck. People around here do not speak of him, and with good reason. We are all true Romans, all of us born within the city. Shopkeepers, traders, craftsmen. Honest men with businesses and families to care for. But ever since Romulus came it is like living under a dark cloud. His reach is far, and we dare not refuse him.'

‘Refuse him what exactly?' asked Quaint, cautiously.

‘His levy,' replied the customer, his eyelids flickering drunkenly. ‘Each week he takes a quarter of our profits and if we do not pay up, he has threatened to set our shops ablaze. Then we will have nothing but ash. Some folk think that paying a portion of their money is better than having no money at all.'

‘It sounds as if you've been indebted to him for too long,' said Quaint.

‘Just last week my friend Baroli was driven from his store because he refused to pay up. Four of Romulus's men entered his home one evening and threatened his wife and child. They broke both of Baroli's legs and he limped from the quarter the very next day, never to be seen again. So you see, stranger… the name of Romulus is not looked upon fondly around here. If you wish my advice, forget you ever heard it.'

With a loud belch, the customer pulled on his overcoat and bade the barkeeper a good night. Quaint watched the man leave, wondering how many seconds he should leave it before following him.

He lasted almost eight.

‘Wait, sir!' Quaint called, forced to break into a sprint to catch up with the drunken man zigzagging across the road.

The customer came to a stop and turned around clumsily, almost tripping over his own feet. ‘You again, eh? What do you want?'

‘You said that Romulus collects his payments each week?' Quaint said. ‘Where from exactly? He comes here? To this place?'

‘Never in person, no. We make payment in the collection box of San Vincentine's Cathedral, the place where Romulus dwells.'

‘This cathedral, is it far?' asked Quaint.

‘You see that?' the customer said, steering Quaint's eyes to a Gothic cathedral breaching the skyline, less than one hundred yards from where they were stood. ‘That is San Vincentine's.'

‘And Romulus himself… what do you know of him?' asked Quaint.

‘Most crime-lords' reputations are just stuff and nonsense. Designed to inject fear into the community,' said the customer, with a hiccup. ‘But in his case, his reputation does not even scratch the surface. So tell me, what is Romulus to you?'

‘Nothing at all,' replied Quaint. ‘It's just a passing interest.'

In a flash, the customer became a different man. He snatched at the lapels of Quaint's coat and pushed him roughly up against a shop window.

‘
Passing interest?
' he roared, his temper rising. ‘That monster destroys lives, and to you he is nothing but a
passing interest?
I'll bet I can tell what sort of
business
a man such yourself would have with Romulus! Tell me, do you want to know what my trade is? The craft that Romulus is threatening to ruin?' He pulled a large flintlock pistol from his jacket pocket and held its barrel towards Quaint's eye. ‘I make guns. Nice guns. Very powerful guns. At this range I could blow a hole in your skull so large that I could fit my fist through it.'

‘I'll take your word for it,' said Quaint, steering the pistol away from his face with his fingertip but it snapped back again as if it was on elastic.

The customer took a staggered step back, using two hands to hold the wavering gun. Quaint did not like where this was going. There was a high probability of him getting shot on his first night out in Rome, and with nothing to show for it.

‘Look, this is all just a misunderstanding,' he said. ‘When I said that I had a passing interest—'

‘Stop talking!' yelled the armed man. ‘I do not care what your
interest
is in Romulus… and neither should you, seeing as you are about to die.'

The man tightened his finger on the gun's trigger…

Quaint slowly opened his eyes one at a time – unaware that he had even squeezed them shut when he'd anticipated the bullet's impact.

What he saw once his vision stopped blurring was curious to say the least. The customer's hands were shaking like a leaf, and there seemed to be a large black shadow holding a knife to his neck.

‘Drop the gun or I take a slice,
ja
?' said the shadow in a deep voice that was heavily accented with Germanic inflections. The customer did as he was instructed and let the gun clatter to the ground. A damp patch formed at the front of his trousers as the shadow wrenched back his hair. ‘Now, run back to your kennel,
kleines Hündchen
.'

Once again, the man did as he was told and ran spasmodically down the street, as far and as fast as his legs could carry him – wailing all the way.

‘I must say, your capacity for suicide seems to have increased over the years, Cornelius,' said the shadow, as it took a step into the moonlight and was given form. The broad man pulled back his hood, and teased the wheat-coloured moustache that exploded from his upper lip like a chimney-sweep's broom. ‘Why do you stare at me like that? Have my handsome features struck you dumb?'