"Because unbeknown to you, Quadratus was lurking up ahead."

"He had left in a carriage with two others."

"He'd stopped it, pretending he wanted to throw up. The girl—"Aelia Annaea—"was distracted, looking after the youth, who really was chucking his heart up. Quadratus had walked back slowly along the track as if he was getting some air, but it looked to me as if he was expecting somebody. That was why I flung the stone, to stop you before you blundered into him. I thought he was waiting for a meeting with Selia; I wanted to overhear what they said."

"I never saw you and I never saw him."

"You never saw Selia either! She was creeping up behind. In fact, Falco, the only one who wasn't hiding in the dark from you that night was Selia's sheep!"

"Did Selia make contact with Quadratus?"

"No, the girl in the carriage called out and he had to go off with her and the youth."

"I thought it might have been you dressed up as the shep-

herdess?" I suggested. No chance of that: Perella could not compete with the dead girl's glorious brown eyes.

She laughed. "No fear. Can you imagine trying to get Anacrites to sign an expenses chit for the hire of a sheep?"

So she still thought he was in operation, then.

 

"Let's talk about Rome," I suggested. "Double dealing is afoot; that's clear. It's in both our interests to explore who's doing what to whom, and why two thoroughly reasonable agents like ourselves have ended up in the same province on two different missions involving the same racket."

"You mean," mouthed Perella, "are we on the same side?"

"I was sent by Laeta; I'll tell you that for nothing."

"And I was not."

"Now that raises an interesting question, Perella, because I had worked out you were a staffer for Anacrites—but the last time I saw him he was lying in my mother's house with the fare for the ferrymen to Hades all ready in his outstretched paw."

"The Praetorians have got him in their camp."

"I arranged that."

"I saw him there."

"Oh so I'm dealing with a girl who mingles with Guardsmen. Now that's a real professional!"

"I do what I have to."

"Spare my blushes; I'm a shy boy."

"We all work well together." That's usually a pious lie.

"How fortunate," I said. Still, the intelligence service was attached to the Guard. "Did the Praetorians tell you he was with them?"

"I tracked him down myself, after you told me he had been beaten up. It was hard going, I admit. In the end I came to ask you where he was—" I remembered giving her my address. "You'd just left Rome, but someone put me on to your mother. She didn't tell me where he was, but she had a big pot of soup bubbling, and I guessed it was for the invalid. When she went out with a basket, I followed her."

"Ma's still taking Anacrites broth?" I was amazed.

"According to the Praetorians she regards him as her responsibility."

I had to think about that. "And when you took your own bunch of flowers to his sickbed, exactly how was your unlikable superior?"

"As tricky as ever." This was a shrewd lady. "He croaked and moaned as sick men always do. Maybe he was dying. Maybe the bastard was rallying and fighting back."

"And Ma's still nursing him? I don't believe it! In the Praetorian camp?"

"The Praetorians are great lumps of slush. They adore the maternal virtues and such old-fashioned tripe. Anyway, Anacrites is safe with them. If he survives he'll think your mother's wonderful."

I experienced a swooning dread that I would go home to Rome and find my mother married off to the Chief Spy. Never fear; she would have to divorce Pa first. They would never sort out arrangements while neither was on speaking terms.

"And you talked to Anacrites? What did he say?"

"Nothing useful."

"How like him!"

"You saw the state he was in. It was only a couple of days after you left."

"So who sent you here?"

"Own initiative."

"Do you have the authority?"

"I do now!" Perella laughed, fished down inside her satchel and held something up for me to see. It was a seal ring; rather poor chalcedony; its cartouche showing two elephants with entwined trunks. "Selia had it. I found it when I searched her. She must have stolen it when she clonked Anacrites."

"You searched her?" I inquired politely. "Would that be before or after you squeezed very hard on her pearly throat?" I received a sideways look. "I knew the ring was missing, Perella. Knowing Anacrites, I assumed he heard Selia and her heavies creeping up behind him, so he swallowed it to safeguard public funds."

Perella liked that. After she finished laughing she spun the ring in the air, then threw it as far as possible across the road and into a copse opposite. I applauded the action gently. I always enjoy a rebel. And with Selia dead, the ring was no longer useful evidence. "I'll tell Anacrites you've got it, Falco. He'll be on at you about it for the next fifty years."

"I can live with that. What are you doing here?" I demanded again.

Perella pursed her mouth and looked sorrowful. I was still trying to reconcile in my mind that this dumpy fright in her frumpish wrappings was a highly efficient agent—not just a damsel in a short dancing frock who listened in at dinners to earn herself a few denarii, but a woman who worked alone for weeks on end, who traveled, and who when she felt like it mercilessly ended lives.

"What's going on, Perella?"

"Did you know Valentinus?" she asked.

 

As her voice took a lower note, I felt a chill. For a second I was back in the Second Cohort's fire engine house, with Valentinus swinging stiffly in a hammock and that gruesome bucket beneath his head to catch his blood. "Hardly. I met him once, at that dinner; I really missed my chance to talk to him. The second time I saw him he was dead."

"He was a nice lad."

"He seemed so to me."

"We had worked together a few times. Anacrites had us both on the Baetican case. It was all mine to begin with, but Quinctius Attractus must have twigged that we were on to him, and he arranged for me to be pushed out by that girl. So Valentinus had to do duty that night instead of me. When he was killed, I decided to follow up. I owed him that. Well, Anacrites too. He does his job in his own way—and it's better than the alternative."

"Claudius Laeta?"

Perella let her eyes narrow. "Obviously I have to watch my step, Falco—I know you're thick with him."

"He paid my fare, but I'm not in his pocket."

"You're independent normally?"

"Freelance. Like Valentinus. That's why I wasn't weeping when I found Selia dead. I recognized your pictogram too—Valentinus had one on his apartment door... I gather you share my skeptical attitude to Laeta?"

Perella hunched her shoulders. She was choosing her words carefully. The result was a colorful character appraisal, the kind he would not want to have read to the Emperor at birthday bonus time: "Laeta's a cheating, dabbling, double-dealing, swindling jumped-up clerk."

"A gem of the secretariat," I agreed with a smile.

"It was Laeta who told Quinctius Attractus I was keeping an eye on the Society; I'm pretty sure of it. You know what's going on among the palace bureaux?"

"Laeta wants to discredit Anacrites. I hadn't realized he was stirring the pot so actively, but the word is he wants to get the spy network disbanded so he can take over. The hidden power in the Empire. The watcher we love to fear."

"You could get a job with him, Falco."

"So could you," I retorted. "Decent operatives never lack work. There are too many duds out there messing up chances; the new work rotas will contain ample spaces. Laeta would welcome both of us. But do we want to embrace his slimy charms, Perella? It's still our choice."

"I'll probably stick with the dog I know."