Someone had come up behind me; I glanced round and saw Calliopus. He must have just arrived for the day. Still in his outdoor cloak, he pushed past me, lifted the bird's head, dropped it, and swore. Buxus kept his own head down, looking cowed.

"That bastard!" Calliopus must be referring to Saturninus. Furious, apparently he did not care what I overheard. He strode inside the menagerie. Buxus then leapt up and followed him. The bestiarii hung back, but I was hard on the keeper's heels.

"It's the grain, I think," I heard Buxus mutter in an undertone. "The new load. That's where I found him foraging. Before I could shoo the silly brat away, it was too late. The sack split when they delivered it-"

Calliopus brushed him off, rampaging past the cages and on into the second area. Borago the bear growled at the commotion, so did the new lion Draco who was now in the cage where his predecessor died. He prowled about, but seemed quieter, no doubt calmed by a few choice cuts of Leonidas.

The second room with the sea lion's pit was empty now that Draco had been moved out. Even the eagle was gone from his perch. Beyond it again lay a short corridor which led to a store. There stood a modest grain bin-with a wooden cover on it-and on the ground in front of that lay a hempen sack. It had burst open at one seam, spilling corn onto the ground. Calliopus took a cursory look round, then seized a scoop. He caught up a good panful of the grain from the broken sack, then shoved out past us again. Buxus and I trotted after him like children playing hide-and-seek. In the yard, Calliopus spread the grain in a patch on the ground. He whistled. "Watch the pigeons!" he commanded. Without a word more to Buxus he marched off to his office. I might as well have been invisible.

Buxus looked up to the roof, where one or two scrawny pigeons were always making a nuisance of themselves. He went and squatted in the shade of the building, waiting to see if any of the flying vermin would come down and commit suicide. Still carrying Nux to keep her out of harm's way, I walked up to him.

"When was that sack delivered?" I assumed it was recently. This place was well run. The spilled grain would normally have been cleared up fairly soon after the accident happened.

"This morning," Buxus consented to tell me in a mournful voice.

I had seen a cart unloading when I walked in. "Half an hour ago?" He nodded. "So there wasn't much chance it was tampered with here? And where is it supplied from?"

He looked furtive. "I don't know about that. You'll have to ask the boss."

"But you have a regular arrangement?" Buxus still looked guarded, but he said yes. "And how often do they make a delivery?"

"Once a week."

Crouching on his haunches, he put his head down on his arms. It was either a good imitation of a very depressed man, or a strong hint for me to move along.

I went back inside the menagerie and took another look at the grain sack. Where it was slit two long ends of the seam binding were dangling; their ends looked neatly cut rather than frayed. Tampered with, apparently. I heaved up one end of the sack and peered at the underside. It was labeled with abbreviations that said it had come from Africa Proconsularis, the grain basket of the Empire nowadays. I nearly left it at that, but luckily I turned up the other end too. That carried in red lettering " Horrea Galbana," which would have been where it had been stored in Rome, plus the peculiar label " ARX: ANS." Nux was straining to get at the spilled grain, so I gripped her more firmly and let her lick my neck while I tried to decipher the abbreviated note. It looked like an address. Not the address of the barracks here.

I returned to the office, churning over the possibilities.

"Calliopus, am I right that you suspect your grain has been poisoned by Saturninus as part of your feud?"

"I have nothing to say," said Calliopus coldly.

"You ought to have," commented Anacrites. I could at least rely on him to back me up if it meant annoying someone else.

"Who supplies your corn?" I croaked, as my sore throat gave out on me.

"Oh… one of the big granaries. I'll have to look up the requisition-"

"Don't bother," I rasped. "I think you'll find it's the Granary of the Galbae."

Judging by his frown, I had managed to annoy Calliopus myself. If "ARX: ANS" meant what I suspected, I knew exactly why.

I tipped the wink to Anacrites. Rather to my surprise he said nothing, but simply rose from his stool, collected our equipment, and told Calliopus we were finished here; he would hear either from us or from the Censors' Office in due course. As we hopped down the outer stairs with Nux happily scampering ahead of us, two pigeons made a feeble attempt to flutter up from the grainy bait laid in the yard, but collapsed into tattered gray clumps with their beaks in the dirt. I called the dog to heel. A few flies were already inspecting the dead ostrich as we walked out through the gate.

Twenty-five

ONCE WE REACHED the road, Anacrites expected me to tell him what was on my mind and began annoying me with his usual questions. I said he could do something useful by finding out about the house Calliopus had bought for his mistress. I would meet him later at our office in the Saepta. First, it would do no harm for me to visit the Granary of the Galbae. I only had to cross the Tiber and I was there.

He looked suspicious, thinking that was the last he would see of me. It had not escaped him that the Granary of the Galbae lay at the back of the Emporium and the Porticus Aemilia, just below the Lavernal Gate. From there it was just a short, steep hike up to the crest of the Aventine-and a long lunch at home with Helena. I reassured him that since I was going out to dinner I would not be needing lunch. Feeling evil, I made it sound as unconvincing as I could.

The Horrea Galbana was a whole palace of commerce. By the time I had struggled from the river wharf through the battling crush of stevedores and porters who were unloading barges and boats for the Emporium I was in no mood to be lightly impressed. It grated to enter this monstrous establishment, built by a rich family as the shortcut to even greater wealth. The rental potential had always been enormous, even though the Sulpicii Galbae were probably unwilling to come down here themselves and haggle over grain prices. They had been persons of great status since Republican times; one of them became Emperor. He only stuck it for six months, but that must have been long enough to bring the Granary under state control.

I had to admit this was an astonishing place. It contained several great courtyards, each with hundreds of rooms on more than one floor, run by military-style cohorts of staff. At least that gave me half a chance of finding out what I was after. There was bound to be documentation for everything, if I could find the relevant scribe before he bunked off for the local caupona. Anacrites was right; it was mid-morning: dangerously near the time when skivers had their lunch.

Not only grain was stored and sold here. Space was rented out for everything from wine cellars to strong rooms. Some of the single booths were leased to working tradesmen: woven goods, expensive architectural stoneware, even fish. But mostly the buildings were specially constructed corn-stores. They had raised tiled floors, set on dwarf walls with ventilated thresholds to allow good air circulation through the tunnels underneath. They were plaster-lined, with only a louvered vent at the back for light. The great quadrangles were lined with rows of these dim, cool rooms, sealed with tight doors against dampness, vermin and theft, the triple enemies of stored grain. Most of the staircases turned into ramps after a few steps, to facilitate life for the porters as they struggled around with the heavy sacks on their backs; many of them were permanently bent in the spine and bowlegged. Cats were allowed to run everywhere as a countermeasure to rats and mice. Fire buckets stood at frequent intervals. Maybe it was my cold, but to me that day the air seemed thick with annoying dust.