Anacrites waited until we were back in the office and had the place to ourselves.

"So that's that, Falco. We may not have heard the whole story, but the lion's death need not trouble us anymore."

"Whatever you want," I answered, with the smile I keep for butchers who sell last week's meat as fresh. "Still, it was good of you to defend my viewpoint when Calliopus was so obviously fibbing."

"Partners stick together," Anacrites assured me glibly. "Now let's finish taking the cheat apart for his financial misdemeanors, shall we?"

I stuck with the audit report like a good boy until lunchtime. As soon as my partner had sunk his jaws into one of my mother's home-cooked rissoles and was preoccupied with mopping the squidged gravy from the front of his tunic, I let out a curse and pretended Helena had forgotten to give me any fish-pickle to sauce up my cold sausage, so I would have to go and scrounge some… If Anacrites was only half a spy he must have guessed I was bunking off to interview someone else about the lion.

I really did mean to go back to auditing later. Unfortunately one or two little adventures got in the way.

Sixteen

MY BROTHER -IN -LAW Famia worked-if you can call it that-at the chariot-horse stables used by the Green team. We had nothing in common; I supported the Blues. Once, many years back, Famia had actually done something sensible; that was when he married Maia. She was the best of my sisters, whose one aberration had been her alliance with him. Jove knows how he persuaded her. Famia had made Maia a drudge, fathered four children just to prove he knew what his plunger was for, then gave up the struggle and set himself the easy target of an early death from drink. He must be pretty close to his goal now.

He was a short, fat, squint-eyed, florid-faced, devious drone whose profession was administering linctus to racehorses: the kind of disaster only the Greens could rely on. Even the knock-kneed nags who pulled their cranky carriagework knew how to avoid Famia's ministrations. They kicked so hard when they saw him approaching he was lucky never to have been castrated with his own equine ball-snipper. When I found him, a mean-looking gray was rearing up and savagely lashing out with his hooves in response to a sesame sweetie that Famia was coaxing him to take; it was no doubt dosed with jollop from a sinister black pottery bottle that had already been kicked over in the fray.

Seeing me, Famia promptly gave up. The horse whinnied sneeringly.

"Need some help?"

"Push off, Falco!"

Well that saved me from having my fingers bitten off while pretending I could whisper sweet nothings in a stallion's ear. Bluff would be wasted on Famia anyway. If I did make the gray swallow his medicine, Famia would take the credit himself.

"I want some information, Famia."

"And I want a drink." I had come prepared to bribe him. "Oh thanks, Marcus!"

"You ought to level off."

"I will-when I've had this one."

Talking to Famia was like trying to clean your ear with a very bulky sponge. You told yourself the procedure would work, but you could waste hours screwing up your fist without managing to poke anything down the hole.

"You sound like Petronius," I scolded.

"Good lad-he always liked a drop."

"But he knows when to stop."

"Maybe he knows, Falco-yet from what I hear nowadays he's not doing it."

"Well, his wife's left him and taken his children, and he almost lost his job."

"Plus he's living in your old disgusting apartment, his girlfriend went back to her husband, and his promotion prospects are a joke!" cackled my brother-in-law, his slitlike eyes becoming almost invisible. "And you're his best pal. You're right. Poor dog. No wonder he prefers oblivion."

"Have you finished, Famia?"

"I haven't started yet."

"Nice rhetoric." I had to pretend to be tolerant. "Listen, you're the fountain of knowledge about the entertainment world. Will you give me the benefit?" Famia was too busy guzzling my flagon to refuse. "What's the word about a beast importers' feud? Someone told me all the lanistae are wetting their loincloths; they all hope the new amphitheater in the Forum will mean rows of gold wine coolers on their side tables."

"Greed's all they know." That was rich, from him.

"Is their rivalry hotting up? Is there a trainers' war looming?"

"They are always at it, Falco." Some dregs of intelligence had been warmed up by the wine. He was almost capable of holding a useful conversation. "But yes, they do reckon the new arena means really big shows in the offing. That's good news for us all. There has been no word about how it will be organized though."

"What do you think?"

I had sensed rightly that Famia was bursting with a pet theory: "I reckon the damned lanistae with their carefully guarded sources for wild animals and their private cliques of fighters will be in for a big shock. If you ask me-oh of course you did ask me-"

"Enjoy your joke."

"Well, I bet everything gets taken over and run by the state."

"Vespasian's an organizer," I agreed. "He's presenting the Flavian Amphitheater as his gift to the populace: the benign Emperor affectionately saluting the Senate and People of Rome. We all know what that entails. SPQR stands for official catastrophe. Public slaves, committees, consular control."

"Vespasian has two sons, both young men," Famia said, stabbing the air with his thumb for emphasis. "He's the first Emperor in living memory to possess that advantage-he comes equipped with his own Games committee. He'll be giving the world a magnificent show-and you mark my words: the whole affair will be run from an office in the Golden House, headed up by Titus and Domitian."

"A Palace scheme?" I was thinking that if nobody had yet formulated this plan, I might do myself some good by suggesting it to Vespasian. Better still, I would suggest it to Titus Caesar, so he had a chance to propose it formally, getting ahead of his younger brother before Domitian knew what was happening. Titus was the main heir, the coming man. His gratitude was something I liked to cultivate. "You could be right, Famia."

"I know I'm right. They're going to take everything out of the hands of the private lanistae, on the grounds that the new amphitheater is too important to be left to unregulated private enterprise."

"And once the state organization is in place, you reckon it will become permanent?"

"A right cock-up." Famia's idea of political commentary tended to follow routine lines. The four charioteering factions were funded by private sponsorship, but there was always talk of them being state run; it might never happen but Famia and all his colleagues had developed fixed prejudices in advance.

"Imperial control: beasts caught by the legions and shipped by the national fleets; gladiators trained in army-style barracks; Palace clerks running it. All the glory to the Emperor. And everything paid for from the Treasury of Saturn," I foolishly mused.

"That means paid for by the hard-earned silver I had to cough up for the bloody Census tax." With luck, Famia had not yet heard how I was currently employed.

My brother-in-law was reaching the point where he wanted to confide to me the troubles of his private life. I reckoned they were all his fault; anyway, I was on my sister's side. I interrupted his moans to ask if he could tell me anything about Calliopus, or better still about Saturninus, the rival who seemed to feature rather large in my suspect's business life. Famia claimed the beast importers and gladiatorial bashers were strangers to all in his more refined racetrack sphere. I managed not to choke with laughter.