Free Furies by D. L. Johnstone Page B

gentlemen like, for a modest fee I would be pleased arrange his funerary services.”
    “What – so you can pocket our money while you toss him in a ditch outside the western gates?” Trogus growled, then started coughing again.
    “If you’re that lucky,” the thrattia said with a bitter laugh. “A man tastes much like pork if he’s prepared right. Or so they say.”
    “An outrageous lie!” the tavern-keeper howled, raising a hand to strike her again, only to drop it when she shot him a look, daring him to try. Aculeo glanced down at the smoking brazier below, the sizzling chunks of meat being tended to by a slave. He and Gellius glanced uncomfortably at one another as they recalled their meal at the Little Eagle the other day.
    “What now?” Bitucus asked.
    “Now nothing,” Trogus said after his coughing fit ended. “Whatever Iovinus was up to is lost with the man himself.”
    “But what about…?” Gellius whined.
    “Enough! Any dreams of recovering our stolen fortunes are just that! Foolish dreams for halfwit children. Think about it, Gellius! If Iovinus had stolen our fucking fortunes, why would he have returned to the city only to take his sad excuse of a life in a shithole like this?”
    “Shithole?” the tavern-keeper protested. “I’ll have you know …”
    “Oh shut the fuck up!”
    “We should take his body to the Necropolis,” Gellius said at last.
    “A noble thought. And who’ll pay for his funeral?” Aculeo said.
    “Who d’you think?” Trogus said.
    Aculeo glared at him. “And why should I do that?”
    “What would you suggest we do instead? Dump him outside the city walls with the dead slaves and street scrapings for the jackals to dispose of?”
    “Of course not,” Gellius said firmly. “Thief or not, Iovinus was still a Roman. He still deserves some semblance of virtue on his final journey.”
    Aculeo glowered at the other men. “Fine!” he cried at last. Even in death Iovinus had found a way to cut his purse.

 

     
    Rhakotis, a ragged sprawling district of the city built across the barren delta behind the shipyards in Epsilon, was the original fishing village around which Alexandria had been built three centuries ago. The native fellahin still comprised the majority of the quarter’s population. The clean, even gridlines and pristine colonnades of the city’s broad boulevards were replaced here by cart paths, heavily rutted, thick with weeds and clods of animal dung. The air hung with the sweet, pervasive smell of baking bread and fermenting barley from the little breweries that dotted the area. Bronze-skinned fellahin men and women sat cross-legged on reed mats in what shade there was, pots and cups, idols and other crafts laid out before them for sale. They met Aculeo with guarded stares as he followed the hired slave pushing the barrow with Iovinus’ shrouded corpse along the hot, dusty street – Romans coming to their part of town rarely meant anything good.
    The Necropolis lay outside the Gates of the Moon where the Eunostos Canal branched from the Egyptian Sea. Aculeo followed the slave down the road that led from the gates to a row of simple houses on the edge of a marshy section of the canal. The houses there, made of plastered mud-brick with small pens out back for their animals, had been built on high ground well above the floodplain amidst a grove of palms.
    “How much further is it?” Aculeo asked irritably.
    “We’re almost there,” the slave replied, steering the barrow down a narrow laneway towards the fellahin buildings. He finally turned up a walkway towards a single-storied hovel with a small ivory carving of Isis framed by a few Egyptian pictograms set in a niche over the doorway. The slave slapped his open hand against the door a few times. The door opened with a creak a moment later and an old woman stuck her head through the crack, scowling at them.
    “Greetings, Sekhet,” the slave said in Greek, bowing his head in deference.
    “What