We peered about, but Florius had vanished. Dim figures, hunched, covering their heads as best they could, scurried away in different directions through the rain and mist. Petro tried asking them, but they shook him off. If Florius had found or grabbed a cloak from someone, we would never pick him out.

Lightning still careered across the pitch-dark skies, illuminating our stark faces. Petronius flung an arm in one direction, then he hurried off. I turned right. I would be heading toward open country, a fool's errand. Another appalling roll of thunder cracked all around. If there had been a doorway, I would have rushed for shelter and abandoned everything.

The track that led from the arena hit a road. I jarred my knee when I first pounded on the metaled surface, but I limped on, as the rain increased. I hated this place. I hated the weather. I hated the damned badly run, vulnerable society that had let Florius in, and the administration that did nothing to control his antics. I hated the planners who positioned arenas in remote locations. I hated life.

Didius Falco, ever the cheery one in a gathering.

???

I turned south, making for a built-up area. The first place I reached seemed to be an industrial premises, with what sounded like machinery working. I half opened a door. There must be a treadmill. It was pitch-dark but I could hear the rackety clatter of its paddles, with the dribbling kiss of the water being raised then sloshed into a collection chamber. It sounded rather tentative.

I could have sheltered, but it might be hours before the rain let up. I still entertained faint hopes of catching up with Florius. I called out, but nobody answered, so I plunged back outside into the storm again.

Exhausted by the effort of running through such weather, I then found somewhere more promising: glimpsed through the darkness stood a cluster of buildings. As I approached, head down against the storm, fortune for once smiled. The place had a commercial look. Someone was standing in the open doorway, staring out, but he drew aside to let me in. Warmth hit me. Civilization awaited. I understood: visitors to the arena had been provided with a set of public baths.

Ever cautious, I searched for a nameboard. There was a pale fresco above the table where they took the entrance fees. It was called Caesar's. Well, that sounded just fine.

XIV

No swords!"

"In the name of the governor; I have to search this place!"

I wanted to bathe. I wanted to shed my drenched garments, drop my weapon from my wet fist, peel off my leaden, sodden boots, then sit on a hot ledge, letting insidious steam wrap around me while I drowsed off If my conscience allowed me to give up, I could happily stay here for days.

"Is this official? Got a warrant?" No one had warrants in the provinces. Hades, no one had warrants in Rome. If the vigiles banged on anybody's door, anxious to have a look around, the proprietor would let the roughnecks in and start saving up to pay for breakages.

I waved my sword angrily. "This is my warrant. You want to argue, you can send a runner to the procurator's residence."

"What-in this weather?"

"Then shut up and show me around like a bathkeeper who wants to retain his license."

They were probably so keen to have bathhouses built in Britain that no license system operated either. Who would police it, if there were no vigiles? Legislation without enforcement is a bad principle.

Licensing of commercial premises was something we did have at home, with pompous baby senators prancing around as aediles, deadly keen to shift their togate backsides upward on the cursus honorum, and meanwhile concerning themselves with nosy checks on opening hours, plebeian licentiousness, and fire precautions. A bribe to their escort usually moved the irritation up the street to the next victim.

Here, where bureaucracy had yet to grow taproots, the simple power of language seemed to impress. I can't say I was led around like a hygiene inspector, but I was allowed to wander through the hot and cold rooms undisturbed.

My life as an informer seemed to be spent in constant searches of wet-floored baths; they were treacherous when one was in a hurry, wearing boots. It was hard to concentrate while skidding across slippery tiles face-first into a ridged wall that was shot through with hot-air tubes. At least the din of thunder from outside was muffled by thick masonry roofs. Here, apart from routine tricklings and gurgles, was a cocoon of warmth and silence.

Silence was not what I expected. This was a spacious suite of hot rooms, yet there were no customers. This dark establishment lacked the sociability the Roman baths are intended to offer. Nobody at all was debating philosophy, discussing the Games, swapping gossip, or biffing beanbags for exercise. It was another failure for the British judicial legate's citizenship lessons. Come to that, the body oils smelled rancid.

"Are you always deserted? This is a big place!"

"There is supposed to be a new fort coming."

"Who knows when! How do you make a living? Who uses your baths?"

"Soldiers mainly. They like the bar next door. They were in earlier. They all got called out on an exercise." That would be the governor, ordering the troops to search for Splice.

A thought struck me. The barkeeper who had helped me entertain the centurion, Silvanus-it felt about six weeks ago-had talked about fetching his water from a bathhouse. "Does a military drinking den use your water?"

The owner nodded. "We have a well with a treadmill and a water-wheel," he informed me proudly. "There is nothing like our system anywhere north of Gaul-"

"Indoors?"

He gestured in the direction I had come from. "We had to build the well where the water is."

"Oh, I saw your wellhead premises." That was behind me in the storm; I lost interest. "So which way is the bar?" I demanded.

"Right next door," replied the bathkeeper, as if surprised I did not know. "Caesar's. Same as us." Well, that saved the drunks having to remember two names.

I left Caesar's Baths and hurried a few strides through a large, spreading puddle, to Caesar's Bar. When I walked in, who should I see gloomily supping a flagon but my dear pal Lucius Petronius.

He half rose, looking anxious. Immediately all my pain over Chloris resurfaced. "You all right, Falco?"

"No."

He called for another beaker and pushed me onto a bench. "Grieve. Do it now." He meant while I was here with him, not with Helena. Bad enough that she had seen me distraught, red to the elbows with the blood and intestines of a past lover. I glanced down at my clothing. At least the rain had washed away some of the mess. As for grief, that decides its own timing.

Petronius had his elbows on a table, his boots off on the floor to dry, and his big bare feet in a towel. He looked depressed, yet oddly comfortable. He had lost his quarry in the teeming wet, and he had bunked off. I couldn't argue, because so had I.

"You found him, of course?" I challenged, shaking water from my hair.

"I will," Petro croaked: he was obsessive.

I drank, then wiped my mouth. "He looked a bit different! That was a shock. I remember him as a soggy lump with hangnails and lanky hair, dreaming he would open his own racing stable-which he never would have done."

"Power sharpened him up," growled Petro. "Now he goes for snappy clothes."

"Those bloody Parthian trousers!"

Petronius allowed himself a wry smile. If anything, he had more conservative taste than me. "The leg casings had a raffish style. They'd look quite good on a smelly muleteer in Bruttium."

"So would a goatbell around his neck… I noticed his equestrian ring was three times the size of mine." I spread my hand and looked at the slim gold band that signified I had been dragged into the middle class. Florius had worn a bar that covered a whole finger joint.