Free Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth by David Drake

speak enough Latin to know ‘right foot’ from ‘left foot.’”
    The younger Singiri held themselves very still. The old one smiled more broadly.
    “Corylus?” Varus said. “Look at their collars.”
    “Hercules,” Corylus murmured. “Those are thumb knives. Well, ring knives. There seems to be one for each finger.”
    What Varus had first thought were ornate necklaces of dark bronze were, when viewed the correct way, loops from which short, curved knife blades protruded. The points were needle sharp; Varus supposed that the sharpened inner curves were razors, though he couldn’t tell for certain without coming a great deal closer to the Singiri than he had any intention of doing.
    “How d’ye suppose they get the links apart?” Pulto said, frowning deeply.
    He had edged back, as had Varus and Corylus. Varus didn’t know what his companions were thinking, but for his own part he remembered what Veturius had described happening to the attendant who shirked his duties on the voyage down the Nile.
    “Like a conjuror, splitting and joining rings right in front of you, I suppose,” Corylus said. He looked at Varus and went on, “Gaius, this isn’t a monkey jabbing a stick into a bee’s nest to get out the honey. These are tools. Your Singiri aren’t animals.”
    “No,” said Varus, “they’re not. Which makes me wonder why they stayed locked up except to solve the problem they had coming down the river. And even then they came back as soon as they’d found their dinner.”
    The points of the ring knives could turn the wards of the massive padlock fastening the cage. That assumed the person using the points knew what he was doing, of course, but Varus didn’t have any doubt that the Singiri—these Singiri, at least—were competent.
    “Let’s head back to the entrance,” Corylus said, nodding up the passageway.
    Varus lifted his chin in agreement and stepped off. Corylus matched him stride for stride, and Pulto brought up the rear.
    When the hyena cage was between them and the lizardmen, Varus said, “Do you think we should do something? I mean, the Singiri aren’t animals. They shouldn’t just be shot in the arena.”
    Corylus chuckled. “I don’t imagine they will be,” he said. “They’ve proved they can get out anytime they want to, so unless they want to be killed.…”
    He shrugged.
    “I saw Singiri fighting big horse-headed men that the Sibyl called Ethiopes,” Varus said. “In my vision.”
    The images he’d seen were sharper than they could have been if he were watching with his real eyes as far away as the battle had seemed to be. “The Sibyl didn’t say that they were a danger to us.”
    “And they aren’t the sort that make me think I’d like to fight them if they aren’t enemies already,” Corylus said in a reasonable tone. “Besides—”
    He looked back over his shoulder to formally include Pulto in the conversation.
    “—Veturius isn’t stupid, so I don’t think we’d be telling him anything he didn’t know already. If the lizardmen wanted to come to Italy in a cage, then nobody seems to have lost anything by it. Except that Egyptian attendant, I guess.”
    The entrance to the compound was in sight. Corylus’ father and Veturius were just inside the open gate. They spoke to each other occasionally as they watched what was going on. Cispius saw his son and they exchanged nods. Hedia and Saxa were in the street; Alphena wasn’t with them.
    Varus took a deep breath. He’d finally answered the question he had been deliberating ever since his friend had asked it.
    “If Mother asks me what happened,” he said, “I’ll tell her. It may be that Alphena has talked to her or will; that’s fine. But I’m not going to volunteer what I saw because I don’t really know anything. And she makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know what she’s thinking, ever.”
    “Your mother is very self-contained,” Corylus said, looking toward the gate instead of meeting Varus’