"I suppose," she said, still being direct, "you want to explain to me what went wrong about promoting you?"

"I expect you know what went wrong, lady! Domitian was of the opinion that informers are sordid characters, none of whom is worthy of inclusion in the lists for the middle rank."

"Is he correct?"

"Informers are far less sordid than some of the musty gargoyles with clammy ethics who people the upper rank lists."

"No doubt," said Caenis with the slightest suggestion of reproof, "the Emperor will bear your strictures in mind when he reviews the lists."

"I hope he does."

"Your remarks could indicate, Marcus Didius, that you would not now wish to be aligned near the musty gargoyles."

"I can't afford to feel superior."

"But you can risk outspokenness?"

"It's one of the talents that will help me screw cash from Census cheats."

She looked severe. "If I were writing minutes of this meeting, Marcus Didius, I should rephrase that as ‘recovery of revenue.' "

"Is there to be a formal record?" Helena asked her quietly.

Caenis looked even more stern. "Only in my head."

"So there is no guarantee that any reward promised to Marcus Didius will be acknowledged at a future date?" Helena never lost sight of her original aim.

I leaned forwards abruptly. "Don't worry. It could be safely written on twenty scrolls, yet if I lost favor they could all be lost in the archives by inattentive scribes. If Antonia Caenis is prepared to support me, her word is enough."

Antonia Caenis was well used to being badgered for favors. "I can only make recommendations. All matters of state are at the discretion of the Emperor."

I bet! Vespasian had been listening to her since she was a girl, when he was just an impoverished young senator. I grinned at Helena. "There you are. That's the best guarantee you could want."

At the time I really thought it was.

Four

HALF A DAY later I was called to the Palace. I saw neither Vespasian nor Titus. A silky administrator called Claudius Laeta pretended he was responsible for employing me. I knew Laeta. He was responsible only for chaos and grief.

"I don't seem to have the name of your new partner." He was fumbling with scrolls to avoid my eye.

"How unusually casual. I'll send you in a chitty with his name and a full résumé." Laeta could see I had no intention of doing it.

Acting pleasant (a certain sign that he had been leaned on hard by the Emperor) he then gave me the job I had asked for. We agreed on my percentage of the profits. Numeracy must be Laeta's weak point. He knew everything about inventive drafting and greasy diplomacy, but could not spot an inflated tender. I came away feeling smug.

Our first subject to investigate was Calliopus, a semi-successful lanista from Tripolitania who trained and promoted gladiators, mainly the kind who fight wild beasts. When Calliopus produced his personnel list I had heard of none of them. He owned no top fighters in the glamor class. No women would throw themselves at his mediocre crew, and there were no gold victory crowns displayed in his office. But I did know the name of his lion: Leonidas.

The lion shared his praenomen with a great Spartan general; that hardly endeared him to Romans like me, who had been brought up from the crawling frame to be wary of Greeks in case we became infected with louche habits like wearing beards and discussing philosophy. But I loved this lion before I even met him. Leonidas was a man-eater, a trained one. At the next suitable Games he was going to execute a repulsive sexual killer called Thurius. Thurius had been preying on women for decades, then chopping them into pieces and dumping the remains; I myself had identified and brought him to court. The first thing I had done when Anacrites and I met Calliopus was to ask for a conducted tour of the cages, and once there, I made a beeline for the lion.

Addressing Leonidas like a trusted colleague, I explained very carefully the degree of ferocious savagery I expected from him on the day. "I'm sorry we can't get it over with at the Saturnalia, but that's a festival of jollity, so the priests say doing away with criminals would pollute the event. Well this gives the bastard longer to dwell on his agony when you finally get to him. Rip him to shreds just as slowly as you can, Leo. Make him linger."

"No use, Falco." The keeper, Buxus, had listened. "Lions are kind and polite killers. One pawswipe and you're out."

"I'll make a note to ask for the big cats if I ever fall foul of the law!"

Leonidas was still young. He was fit and bright-eyed, though foul of breath from eating bloody meat. Not too much of it-they kept him starved so he would do his work efficiently. He lay at the far edge of his cage in the semidarkness. The heavy twitch of his tail was filled with contemptuous menace. Distrustful golden eyes watched us.

"What I admire about you, Falco," Anacrites commented, coming up behind me on stealthy feet, "is your personal attention to the most obscure detail."

It was better than hearing Petronius Longus constantly moaning that I became bogged down in trivia, but it meant the same: just like the old one, my new partner was telling me I wasted time.

"Leonidas," I stated (wondering what the chances were of persuading the lion to devour my new partner), "is entirely relevant. He cost a lot of money, didn't he, Buxus?"

"Naturally." The keeper nodded. He was ignoring Anacrites; he preferred to deal with me. "The problem is catching them alive. I've been over to Africa and seen it. They use a kid for bait. Getting beasts to pounce and fall into a pit is dodgy enough-then they have to extract the cats without damage, while they are roaring their heads off and trying to maul anyone who comes close. Calliopus uses an agent who sometimes snatches cubs for us-but he has to hunt and kill the mother first. And then there's the bother of rearing the cubs until they're a useful size for the Games."

I grinned. "No wonder the proverb says the first requirement for a successful politician is knowing a good source for tigers."

"We don't have tigers," said Buxus gravely. Satire was lost on him. Jokes about senators bribing the people with gory spectacles just bounced off his bald cranium. "Tigers come from Asia, and that's why so few reach Rome. We only have links with North Africa, Falco. We get lions and leopards. Calliopus comes from Oea-"

"Right. He keeps the business in the family. Does Calliopus' agent rear his lion cubs over there?"

"No point wasting the expense of shipping them-that's a game in itself-not until they're big enough to be of some use."

"So Calliopus owns a menagerie in Tripolitania as well as this one?"

"Yes." That would be the establishment in Oea that Calliopus had sworn to the Censors was in his brother's name. Anacrites surreptitiously made a note on a tablet, finally aware what I was driving at. The beasts could be as valuable as they liked; it was land, whether in Italy or the provinces, that we were tracking down. We suspected that this Oean "brother" of Calliopus was a fiction.

That had been enough for us to pursue on site the first day. We collected the menagerie records to add to a pile of scrolls about Calliopus' fighting tough men, then we slogged back with the documents to our new office.

This roost was another point of disagreement. All my career I had operated as an informer from a gruesome apartment in Fountain Court up on the Aventine. Complainants could traipse up the six flights of stairs and rouse me from bed to listen to their woes. Timewasters balked at the climb. Bad fellows who wanted to dissuade me from my investigations by hitting me hard on the head could be heard coming.