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THE BLOOD THAT SMEARS the man’s tunic is mine. He is on his stomach, my knee in his back. Albius ropes his wrists together. There were three of them looting the shops. One is dead. One may well be soon. This one is unhurt, except for a broken nose. His knife slashed my arm before I punched him.
We haul the prisoner to his feet. The other two must wait until someone can fetch them. The wounded man may die first. It will save the trial.
Blood drips from my arm. “That needs seeing to,” Albius says, with a jut of his chin. I grunt. I will just wash it with vinegar. Faster than seeing the medic.
But even with keeping my hand to my shoulder as we take the prisoner to be locked up, the wound bleeds. It needs sewing up. So I go to the barracks, where the new physician works. A job he asked for, I heard. Gnaius, his name is, from somewhere in the east.
He clicks his tongue, washes the cut as I would have. Then he sews it shut. That hurts more than the vinegar, but I make no sound. He hands me wine, after. The old doctor would not have.
“Keep it clean. Take the wrappings off in three days. Come back immediately if it begins to smell or ooze. Otherwise, two weeks from now.” He eyes me. “I should order light duty, but it would be ignored.”
He is right. My captain would snort his derision and put me back on the streets. The city is restless, angry, desperate. The guard works long hours, no days off. Even so we cannot control the streets entirely. I told Marius to hire private guards, for the house and shop and warehouses.
I thank the physician for the wine. It was sour, but it helped. All the food is poor now, the bread coarse, the oil a third pressing at least. My tongue still knows. I stand, and sway a little. As if I had drunk far more than one cup of thin wine. The doctor steadies me.
“That tells me you lost a lot of blood. Sit down again.” He points to a bench against a wall. He brings me water. “Drink, and rest. The streets can do without you for another hour.”
“I have a question.” This is foolish, and maybe I would not ask except for the wine.
“Ask.”
“You delivered the prince, yes?”
His face stays still. “I assisted.”
“The Empress is well?”
“Perfectly.” He looks down at me. “Why do you ask?”
I shrug. “Her father is my family’s patron. I met her once.” Almost true.
He nods. “A fine, strong woman, and a fine, strong son.” He turns away, but I am not done.
“Why treat us? You could be a doctor to the dignitasi, yes?”
He turns back. “I learn more here. I will stay a few months, perhaps a year. Then I will ask to be sent to where there is war. I would learn little as a physician to the dignitasi, do little but treat podagra and other diseases of excess.”
He could grow rich from that. But I think this is not a man who cares about wealth. It is his work he cares for. Like Tarquin did once.
I drink the water and watch as he treats other men. He is efficient, calm. I had thought to be a doctor once, when I was a child. I did not mind nursing the general, or Marcellus. Maybe when I am too old for the streets I can assist the medics, yes? A thought.
After some time he glances my way. Tells me to stand. This time there is no dizziness. He nods. “You can go. Eat before you go back on duty.”
~
I do not eat. Albius will be somewhere in the quarter we patrol. I walk down to the river, turn left. See nothing that needs me to be involved, although there is one bridge I still do not look at. I leave the river at a street I know well. It leads to the square where my brother’s shop stands. I have not seen Marius for weeks.
He is locking up the shop, iron gates over the openings. These are new. He is tired, I think, and thinner, but we all are. There are extra holes in my belt, and worn patches on the leather where the buckle used to rest. “You have had no trouble?” I ask, after our greeting.
“Not here.” He fastens the key to his belt again. “Not at the docks, either. Not of that kind.” He gestures for me to climb the stairs to the rooms above the shop.
“I cannot stay. I am on duty.”
“I have things to tell you. We can talk over food.”
Vita sees my arm, frowns. Stops the boys from running to me. “He is hurt,” she tells them.
“A cut. It has been treated.” I crouch to speak to the boys. Ask them if they are practicing with their toy swords.
“Valens,” my brother says, “is learning to add up.” A rebuke, yes? He is to be a merchant, like his father.
I grin. “I can use a sword and do sums.” Vita shoos the boys away. Brings us bread and lentil soup. It too is thinner. “What have you learned?” I ask. The soup is good, better than what I would have eaten at the barracks. Onion in it, and some spice.
“The ships buying grain in the south are going to a harbour in Qipërta, but in the north.”
I frown. The north? “What happens to it then?”
“Zirin’s man could not find out. The ships dock only long enough to unload, and the crew are not allowed beyond the harbour. But—” He stops to take a mouthful of soup. “Once the Casilani fleet sailed north, the movement of grain stopped.”
“Maybe just weather,” I say. The fleet sailed on winter seas, rough with winds that brought no rain.
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “Not my concern.”
He does not want to be involved. I understand.
I thank Vita for the food, say goodbye to my nephews, and return to the streets. Wondering what this information means. Whether I should take it to the palace. Something tells me no, but I do not understand why.
###
THERE ARE FIGHTS, and more looters who run before they do real damage. Small fires, but not bad enough to need our help. For once, it is not windy. My arm aches when I finally untie my boots and lie back on my bed. Sleep does not come, rare for me. I think about what Marius has told me. Then about his boys, and the danger in the city. The new gates across his shop fronts. They would have been easier to hang than the gates at the pass in Qipërta, in another winter.
A warm tent, the brazier my responsibility. I poured wine for Tarquin. Marcellus was speaking about a letter from his wife, about a new appointment at the palace. One that surprised Tarquin.
“Quintus. Blaesus’s son.”
“Really? So the family is forgiven?”
“It appears so. His sister has made an advantageous marriage, too. To Flavian.”
“The governor here?”
I still do not know what this means. But when I consider too what Marius told me today, I know why I will not tell Quintus what I have learned.
###
MY COMMANDER CALLS me to him. What troops that are still here are being sent north. The guard has been allowed a number of new recruits, to compensate. “You know the docks as well as any man I have,” he says. “You’ll be in charge there, Sergeant.”
So. A promotion, and young men to teach again. And my other work. That ebbs and flows, because I cannot be seen too often in the tabernae or the alleys, whatever I am pretending to be. Much of what I report is only talk from angry men. Nothing will come of it. Sometimes it is more. Sometimes the punishments are public, and sometimes it is my knife that delivers the judgement.
I am not the only man who does this for Quintus. I know this much. But not who the others are.
~
I go to the harbour to talk to the soldiers before they leave. The sergeant is older, near retirement. So are the men. They are not happy to be returning to war. “We’re losing, if they’re sending the likes of us,” he says.
We walk among the ships and the warehouses. I speak to the private guards, study the spaces between the buildings, the narrow canals used by barges. Places men can move or hide. In the years I have been gone many more warehouses have been built. I will ask to see the insides, too, but not today.
We pass one of my family’s warehouses. Its inside I know. The racks for amphorae, the open space for bags of grain. The dark corners where the harbourmaster’s son and I met. I wonder, briefly, where he is.
I sit to share thin beer with the sergeant, quayside. Two boats tied up, traders from Sylana. They risked the winter sea, hugging the shoreline. Along one distant jetty the ships that will take the soldiers north are tied bow and stern. He looks at them, sighs, a heavy sound. “I thought I was going to retire,” he says.
I ask him where he has served. Qipërta, long before me. I tell him I was there too. We talk about the mountains, and where else we have been. “Why are you a guard now?” he asks.
I shrug. “A general arranged it. I saved an important life.” Or two. Julia’s and the general’s. Maybe. The sergeant grunts.
“You could re-enlist. Fight the Boranoi again, a young man like you.”
I have thought of this. But I will not. The city’s dark places suit me.
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