Free Rome 2: The Coming of the King by M. C. Scott Page B

meant that he had to turn back, cursing, and retrace his steps along the silent street and up the inn’s shallow stairway, had to step over the four outriders who had drunk until late in the main room and slept there on bedding rolls, had to reach the door to the slaves’ quarters from which he had stolen the tunic, and lift the door catch and let it fall a fraction less softly than before, and step back, less carefully, over the sleeping men and scuff his bare foot on the edge of a bedding roll and bite back a curse, before he heard a catch in one man’s breathing, heard it stop and start again in a stiffer rhythm. An opened eye gleamed in the room’s faint light, but he couldn’t tell whose.
    Leaving the inn for the second time, he felt his way forward slowly, as if the starlight were not enough to find his way along the wide, rule-straight streets.
    Out here, the air was tense, as of a city holding its breath. Small fires smouldered and there were fresh signs of violence, but the gangs of youths had gone to their beds and only slaves were up now, few and sleepy, running morning errands.
    To give his pursuer time to make his own way out of the sleeping room and down the stairs and out into the market square, he stubbed his toe and lost time hopping and swearing until he saw a shadow move on the lower stairs.
    Still somewhat lame, Pantera led his follower, or followers, across the square and into the streets beyond. For a while, he thought there might be two of them, but it became clear that there was only one, making more noise than he should have done. Not Rasul, then; Rasul was as quiet on his feet as any man you could wish to meet; it was what made him a likely spy.
    A foot scuffed on stone at the inn’s corner. Pantera cut through between two tall houses, past a garden of anemones, and turned south, towards the barracks. Twice, he passed men of the morning Watch come, yawning, to take their places on the tented podiums that filled each street corner. Some replaced night watchmen although they were fewer and stood only on the major intersections; the streets around them were clear of damage.
    The follower hung back when the Watch was near, and had to be induced closer, step by slow, seductive step. At a corner where a wine merchants’ row crossed with some money-lenders, Pantera let himself slide too close to the night Watch lanterns and jerked away again. His shadow sliced a wide arc across the greying ground. Dawn had come a shade closer; he and his pursuer no longer walked in the night.
    Some time later, he turned left, eastwards, towards the wall and, later still, the man following him made the same turn. And stopped. And turned in a slow circle on his heel and cursed aloud, in Greek.
    Pantera lay in one of the storm ditches less than fifty paces away with his face pressed to the cold stone, his chin on his balled fist. The man who was not a spy stood near the light-wash from a window nearby. The rays of a single tallow lamp bled out, muffled, through a thin muslin curtain; not a vast light, but in the grey pre-dawn it carved valleys across a creasedforehead, brightened the line of cheek and chin and temple, made a scimitar of a hooked nose so that Pantera, who had spent a month in the desert riding at this man’s left flank, recognized Kleitos, the big, black-bearded Cypriot who had been the outriders’ second bowman.
    In the quiet of his mind, he apologized to Rasul, a man he liked and did not want to have to kill. He didn’t want to kill Kleitos, either; not because he liked him, but because a living spy was more useful than a dead one. He lay still in the culvert, breathing dust and old sea water and an occasional sharpness where someone had thrown a citrus rind.
    Kleitos stood longer than most men, proving that he had patience to make up for his clumsiness, but he left before the sun splashed colour on the day and Pantera eased his knife back into its sheath. Standing slowly, he dusted himself off and