Free Second Act by Marilyn Todd Page A

again, the unmistakable scent of the hunter.
    ‘Any chance of a box?’ he asked mildly.
    ‘I presume you’re not raising my hopes by asking for a coffin?’
    ‘My health is perfectly sound,’ Orbilio replied. ‘But your concern is most touching. I was referring to a ringside seat at the show.’
    ‘What a shame we’re fully booked.’
    Bowing reverently backwards from the open temple doors, white-robed acolytes passed round platters piled high with strips of chargrilled sacrificial lamb. Inside the tiny sanctuary, the bronze statue of two-faced Janus gleamed from the reflection of the firelight. Both profiles were positioned so that they could watch across the city’s gates and doorways, and around the statue stood twelve minute altars, one for each month of the year. December’s was hung with shiny, aromatic, dark green myrtle, symbolizing the love and peace appropriate for Saturnalia, and sprigs of the shrub lay wreathed at Janus’s feet. The god of new beginnings, Claudia reflected, selecting a sliver of crispy lamb. The god who, because he could see the past, watched for the future. She wondered what he was looking at when he saw her with the Security Police.
    ‘I thought you might be interested to know we’re holding a man prisoner,’ Orbilio said. ‘A sea captain called Moschus. Ring any bells?’
    Funny how, even inside a fur cloak and squirrel-lined boots, she still felt the tramontana’s icy bite. ‘Moxer, you say?’
    ‘Moschus.’
    ‘Sorry, Orbilio, don’t know any Mushers.’
    In front of her, the bronze-clad doors ground shut. They would stay closed until the next Festival of the Lambs came round in January. By which time, of course, Claudia’s own future would be assured. One way or another.
    ‘The good captain’s keeping his counsel at the moment, but the fascinating thing about this case is that Moschus isn’t a Roman name.’
    ‘My, my, you Security Police are a mine of information,’ she trilled. ‘But if you want my advice, Orbilio?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Eat your lamb before it gets cold.’
    ‘The thing about non-Romans,’ he continued, ‘is that the same rules of interrogation don’t apply. Unlike citizens, they can be put to the torture to extract information.’
    ‘You have my undivided indifference.’
    ‘My grapevine informs me that Moschus has a very low threshold of pain.’
    Claudia swallowed. One day you’ll wake up to the fact that I’m the best friend you have. Was he warning her, she wondered? Or was the spider more likely spinning a web for the fly…? About to toss out another flippant retort, she suddenly noticed something different about him this morning. Wrapped in a heavy woollen toga over a long patrician tunic and with the wind baffled by the high buildings all round the Forum, his face should not be white and pinched, his expression should not be frozen. His eyes should not be dead. Jupiter, Juno and Mars, I’m going to regret asking this, I know, but—
    ‘Marcus, is everything all right?’
    He hadn’t so much as looked at the sacrificial roast. Just held it between his fingers, spots of grease congealing on his nails.
    ‘I suppose that largely depends on your definition of all right,’ he said, tossing the lamb to a shaggy wolfhound, whose beseeching eyes had been on him for several minutes. ‘The halcyon rapes have started again.’
    Claudia shivered. ‘But the man confessed. H-he was executed in the arena.’
    ‘A man confessed,’ Orbilio corrected. ‘A man was executed, but—’
    ‘But nothing,’ Claudia said.
    Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was renowned for his near-perfect record. Not because he was cleverer than the rest of the Security Police, although he was certainly better educated. But because his patrician training made him thorough to the point of pedantry. Even in those instances where he could not bring the perpetrator to book—itinerants, for instance, and those protected by High Society and the government—he nevertheless