“Because I wanted to ask you a question.Why are you in this part of Rome?”
“I’m doing my job—what did you think?I’m supposed to patrol the streets at night.Searching for fires or disturbances.”
“You were spying on me and trying to sneak away with the group of patricians.I ask again, why?”
“Because you probably killed that woman.”The vigile tried to draw himself up, but with me crushing his ribs and holding a knife to his throat, he failed.“I only have to prove it to the magistrates.”
“The last time I was accused of murder, no one went to the trouble of making sure they could prove it before dragging me to prison.”
The vigile’s eyes took on new fear.“They say it’s hard to touch you, since you’re so protected.”
“Protected by who?”I asked before I could stop the words.
His brows rose in confusion.“Don’t you know?”
No, I didn’t.I had no idea who my benefactor was, which was maddening.I shook him again.“Who is accusing me?”
“How should I know?I do what my watch master tells me.Find out if Leonidas killed Floriana and bring proof, he says.”
He was lying.I’d lived with men who lied about every detail in their pasts until I could siphon truth from a good story.His watch master had given him no such orders.The vigile was after me himself, or perhaps he was Floriana’s murderer and was trying to cover that fact by using me as a convenient scapegoat.
“I didn’t kill her, and you won’t find proof I did,” I said in a hard voice.“I was traveling out of Rome the morning she was killed, surrounded by witnesses.I had no reason to go to that point of the river so early.”
“Eh?”The vigile shot me a triumphant look.“How doyouknow where she was killed?”
“I asked.I was chasing you this morning to ask the same question of you.”
His expression told me he was certain I lied.We’d get nowhere while neither of us believed the other.
“Who are you?”I asked.“What is your name?”
“Avitus.”His eyes flickered.
“I doubt you work in this quarter,” I stated.“It would be a large swath to patrol from your watch house near the Esquiline.”
He did not try to deny this.“You were there when Floriana was poisoned.What’s to say you didn’t dothat?”
I’d had this same argument with Regulus.“Why should I send for the best physician in Rome if I didn’t want to save her?”
Avitus shrugged.“You might have wanted her to be sick.As a warning.”
“A warning for what?”
“For what she’d get if she crossed you.She didn’t like you coming there, and everyone knew it.”
I gazed at him in amazement.“What are you talking about?I’d been going for years, and Floriana never complained.”
Avitus glared defiantly.“She wanted you out.Floriana hoped that when you were freed and had to pay your own way, you’d cease coming, but you didn’t.Did she threaten you?”
“No.”Floriana had told me I needed to pay, but in her straightforward, businesslike way.“How do you know so much about what Floriana wanted?”
Avitus struggled anew.His face was a pale smudge in the darkness but I saw the flood of outrage in his eyes.“Never you mind!”
“Were you a customer?”I studied him dubiously.“I doubt you could have afforded it.”
He started to thrash so furiously that I nearly cut him by accident.“You are filth.Gladiator.Infamis.”Avitus spit on me.
More surprised than angry I pressed the knife to his throat.He gulped and went still.
