Birds of Prey

by David Drake

  Perennius set the stone pot down on its side carefully, so that there would be no additional noise. There was a neat circle of ink on the palm of his left hand. He did not wipe it off, because the smear might be harder to hide than the ink where it now was. Working fast, the agent unhooked a skin of powerful wine from the inner hem of his cloak where it had been hidden. He tilted up Zopyrion’s face and squirted a jet of wine into the corner of the unconscious man’s mouth. The liquid drooled back down his chin. The air of the office filled with the wine’s thick, sweet odor. Perennius laid the skin, still uncorked, beside the eunuch’s outflung hand. Its contents leaked and pooled across the terrazzo, drawing whorls of ink into them.

  The agent straightened. In a voice that even he could barely hear, he said to the fallen man, “Next time you leave somebody hanging in hostile territory, make damn sure that he doesn’t make it back.”

  He threw open the office door. “Sir! Sir!” he cried as he ran toward the double office at the head of the row. “Sir, you’ve got to come here!”

  Calgurrio’s sharp-eyed aide was on his feet before Perennius completed the two strides to his door. The department head himself was far slower to react, though he did swing his heavy thighs over the edge of his couch. Startled clerks leaped from stools in the aisle to crowd around the door of Zopyrion’s office. “Get back!” snapped the aide. The group dissolved in a flurry fearfully righting the stools they had knocked over in their haste.

  Speaking rapidly, Perennius followed the aide back to the unconscious eunuch. “A banker in Antioch wouldn’t fund my mission like he was supposed to,” the agent said, “but he gave me a letter for this Claudius Zopyrion when I got to Rome. The guy was drinking when I got here—”

  The aide knelt down by Zopyrion, keeping the hem of his tunic clear of the pooled ink and wine. He picked up the open tablet and skimmed it, keeping the wax side turned away from Perennius at his elbow.

  “Ah, I looked at it after he fainted,” the agent said softly. “I was horrified. What sort of punishment could be sufficient for an embezzler like that?”

  “What happened, Anguilus?” demanded Calgurrio as he waddled into the room. The department head stared at Zopyrion in amazement. The eunuch was beginning to moan. “Isis and the Child, what is this?”

  Anguilus swung the door closed and handed the tablet to his superior. “I think we have a problem with Zopyrion, sir,” the aide said. Calgurrio began to read the document to himself with increasing astonishment. To Perennius, Anguilus whispered, “And just who are you, good sir?” The words were polite, but there was no deference in the aide’s tone. His face was as blank as a sheet of marble and as hard.

  The agent handed over the diploma with his orders. The clerks had returned to noisy confusion as soon as the door had closed them from Calgurrio’s sight—or more probably, from Anguilus’. Using the hubbub to mask his words from everyone but the aide, Perennius said, “If he were transferred to a garrison unit in the sticks—one of the little posts in Africa out on the fringe of the desert where the Moors raid every few months. He wouldn’t be able to lie about how he split the money with his department head then.”

  Anguilus closed and returned the diploma. His eyes were as chill as steel in the winter.

  “Mother Isis!” Calgurrio blurted. “Anguilus, did you read this? It says—”

  The aide put a hand on his superior’s shoulder. “Yes, sir,” he said with his eyes still watching Perennius, “but I think we can deal with the problem without it having to go beyond these walls.” He nodded toward the closed door and the commotion beyond it before he added, “This gentleman is Aulus Perennius, one of the Bureau’s top field agents, you may remember. We’re very fortunate that the situation was uncovered by someone of his proven discretion.” Anguilus flashed a tight rictus, not really a smile, toward the agent.

  Zopyrion moaned again. His eyes opened, though without any intellect behind them. The right pupil was fully dilated: the left was not. Anguilus glanced down at the eunuch. When he looked back at Perennius, his sour grin showed that the evidence of concussion only supported what the aide had known all along.

  “Sure, I trust you to clean house yourselves,” Perennius said. “Maybe the next time I’m here at Headquarters, I’ll check just how it did come out.” He nodded toward Zopyrion. “Until then, be well.” The agent turned and reached for the door’s lever handle.

  “It won’t happen to you again, fellow-soldier,” said Cagurrio’s aide. The Bureau’s field staff was recruited from the Army, but Perennius would not have guessed that Anguilus had the right to use that particular honorific. “Don’t worry.”

  Perennius turned again to look at the aide with his silk and his smooth hands and his eyes like a wolf’s. They came from different backgrounds but the two of them recognized each other. “I don’t worry,” the agent said. “I leave that to other people.”

  As Perennius left the office, thrusting his broad shoulders through the press of clerks, he heard Calgurrio saying plaintively, “But why did he put something like this in writing?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  One of the troopers muttered in disbelief. The decurion, Ursinus, hushed the man, but Ursinus’ face showed some doubt also.

  “You don’t mean here, Mother?” asked Sacrovir. He glanced toward the building they were passing on the way to what must be a brothel. The corner building had military guards, showing it had official status of some kind. That seemed a more likely resort of the “source of power” they sought than did a whorehouse, even a whorehouse in Rome.

  Julia nodded to her son like a bird bobbing its head. She wore an enveloping gray cloak, hooded and pinned shut in front. The garment was not for warmth but to hide from view the costume she wore beneath it. The seeress’ breeches and long-sleeved shirt were a patchwork of skins from over a hundred species of animals and birds. Alone, the outfit was that of a tattered scarecrow. Those who saw Julia wearing the costume, moving in it, could not doubt that the garb had purposes beyond those of mere clothing. “I know where I am being led,” the seeress said. Her voice, though distinct, had the unworldly quality of a distant echo. The soldiers, all but Julius Sacrovir, her son, stirred uneasily.

  “Let’s go, then,” Sacrovir ordered. He was slightly the youngest of the five-man escort, but he had been born to authority. Further, Sacrovir had a familiarity with his mother’s work so that it did not make him uneasy as it did the others.

  Sacrovir himself had sung the prelude to the rites in Trier from which this mission had sprung. The youth’s clear falsetto had rung from the stone arches as dignitaries waited tensely and the Emperor Postumus shivered in the armor he wore as a public reminder of his military valor. On the feather-cushioned throne, Julia had begun to speak in a voice like the piping of birds.…

  Now the little woman followed as if drawn by the wake of her tall, powerful son. The other troopers marched to either side of the seeress, pair and pair. They kept step by habit, unremarkable in this city of soldiers and troop-guarded administrators. If the entourage was unusual, it was for the fact that it surrounded a woman afoot.

  It was too early in the afternoon for the brothel to be busy, though there was probably a back entrance and a latchbell for emergency service even during the hours the front doors were barred. Those doors were open now, however, and the madam was in her barred kiosk just within them. She looked startled by the size and ordered bearing of the party. A slave who had been mopping the gray and green terrazzo floor scampered off, perhaps to wake the bouncer. Alcoves led off the entrance hall. An open staircase led up to the rooms on the second story.

  “How can I help you, gentlemen?” the madam asked brightly as her fingers clicked shut the cash box. Cartoons frescoed over the arch of each alcove suggested a variety of possibilities. In some cases, these official displays had been supplemented by notes and still cruder drawings added by customers waiting on a full night.

  “There’s someone here we need to see,” said Sacrovir,
wishing he had more details.

  “Why of course, honey,” the madam began with her false smile.

  Julia reached out from beneath her cloak. “Up there,” she said to her son. She pointed with a hand wearing a cat-skin mitten. The fur side was inward, but it spilled out in purest white where the mitten was drawn over the seeress’ wrist. Sacrovir obeyed the direction, striding to the stairs without another glance at the woman in the kiosk. The young man was wired into another universe, though by no means as thoroughly as was his mother.

  The madam paused with one hand on the door of her cage. Her mouth was open to cry out. Ursinus rang a coin on the travertine counter, silencing the alarm before it was uttered. “Won’t be any trouble,” the soldier said in his Gallic accent. He waved the other troopers by with his left hand. “Kid’s a little strange, you know, but it won’t be any trouble.” Ursinus followed the rest of the group up the stairs, his hand close by the hilt of his cloak-covered sword. In the kiosk, the madam was looking with surprise at the face on the coin she had just been given.

  Two girls were arguing over a bracelet in the upper hall. Their shrill voices softened quickly into overtures as the men and Julia pushed by. One of the troopers paused a half-step when the blond prostitute caught his eye and stroked her bare breast. A snapped command from Ursinus moved him on again.

  “Here,” said Julia. She reached out and tapped a door. The usual price marker had been removed from its peg, leaving a lighter square on the door panel.

  “Hey, you can’t go in there,” called the blond girl who had tried to accost them. “That’s a special rental, sort of.”

  Sacrovir knocked louder.

  The latch snicked, allowing the door to open a crack. It would have closed again if one of the troopers had not blocked it with his foot. “Go away,” rasped an indescribable voice. “I am not to be disturbed.”

  “We offer you help for help,” said the seeress. She shrugged and her cape dropped away. The different sheens and patterns of the costume beneath blended into an odd unity. Perhaps that was a trick of the uncertain light. “The power of our Emperor, for the—power you control.”

  The bouncer, naked except for breeches and a three-foot cudgel, pounded up the stairs. The oil with which he had been being massaged shone on his bunched shoulders. Ursinus motioned one of his men to his side, though neither Gaul drew a weapon for the moment.

  The door opened fully. The figure within the room was short, caped and cowled as the seeress herself had been. It wore a veil. The features beneath the shadowing veil were so still as to belie their appearance of flesh. “Come,” said the figure in its harsh voice that did not move its lips. Something bright as jewelry, too bright for a weapon, winked from a fold in its garment. “What is it that your Emperor thinks he allies himself with?”

  Julia moved like a sleepwalker. She followed the figure back into the chamber. On the other side of the room was a door open onto a balcony. Daylight blurred and haloed the other figure. Sacrovir paused on the threshold and looked back to the other men of the escort.

  Ursinus clenched his fist with the thumb displayed in a gesture from the amphitheatre. “We’ll keep our friend company out here,” the decurion said. He nodded toward the bouncer. “Convince him that there’s nothing going down that he needs to worry about.”

  Sacrovir jerked his head in assent. He slipped into the private room after his mother. The door latched behind him.

  “With your help,” Julia was whispering, “there can be an Empire united again on Trier. I have seen it, seen armies melting away before Postumus like trees struck by summer lightning.… What do you wish of Postumus, then? We are sent to make it yours.”

  Sacrovir backed without noticing his own motion until his shoulders pressed against the door panel. His eyes jumped around the room like sparrows in a bush. The youth did not let them light too long on either his mother or on the sunlight-shimmering figure his mother had journeyed so far to meet.

  “You know nothing,” the figure said in wonder. The object it held was no longer so clearly not a weapon.

  “We know you have the power to destroy armies,” the seeress replied without emotion.

  “These others are fighters?” the figure asked abruptly. Its gesture rumpled but did not pass the enveloping cloak.

  “My son, yes, and soldiers,” Julia said. “There are thousands more soldiers for the Emperor Postumus to lead at your bidding—and with your aid. There are infinite futures, but I have seen…”

  “No,” the figure said, the word alone without the gesture of negation to be expected with it. “Not thousands. I have hired certain fighters here … but yours might serve me yet tonight. Then later, there is a—treasure—to guard. For a year.”

  “You pledge your support to the Emperor, if we help you tonight and guard a treasure?” Sacrovir demanded. He spoke to release the tension which the figure’s grating voice raised in him.

  “The treasure is in Cilicia,” Julia said, neither a question nor a demand. “We would have gone there, but you in Rome were closer.” In her present state, the seeress had little connection with the immediate world. She did not note the way the glittering object shifted toward her when she spoke. Her son noticed. His general tension focused on a tighter grip on his sword.

  “That is correct,” the figure said. “How did you know?”

  “I have seen,” Julia replied simply.

  “For one year?” repeated Sacrovir. He knew that the tension must break in one fashion or the other.

  “In Cilicia,” the figure said. “For one of your years. After that, there will be no need of guards.”

  “We agree,” said Julia in her dreamy, half-human voice.

  “Then,” said the figure, “we need only to determine the details.” A rippling of its cloak offered them seats on the broad, low couch. “I will have food and drink brought if you require it while we plan.…”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The peristyle court in the center of Headquarters had been converted into a clerical pool like most of the areas which had been open when the building was a residence. As Perennius returned to the ground floor by a rear staircase, he was amused to see that the back garden was just that again. Flowers and several fruit trees including a cherry were now growing where more ranks of file clerks had squatted two years ago, the last time Perennius had been at Headquarters. Navigatus had been complaining then that he missed the sight and smells of the garden he had had when he was a District Superintendent in Trier. Apparently he had done something about the lack, though Perennius could not imagine where the displaced clerks had gone. The agent had for years believed that the Bureau could accomplish its tasks better with only half the Headquarters personnel; but he knew the system too well to doubt that if half of the clerks were eliminated, it would be the incompetent ones who somehow were retained.

  The Director’s office was what had been the large drawing room between the peristyle court and the back garden. Eight men of the Palatine Foot lounged in the side passage where the door was placed. Several of them were dicing without enthusiasm. Clerks and a pair of bored-looking ushers in civilian dress mingled with the guards in the passage and spilled back into the court. There they jostled the seated copyists. The large windows in either end of the drawing room were pivoted open to encourage a cross draft from the garden to the court. Through the window from the latter, Perennius could see Navigatus on his couch. Standing with him in the room were a dozen other men: functionaries, personal attendants, and suppliants for the attention of the Director. Navigatus looked very much like a private magnate holding his levee.

  Marcus Optatius Navigatus was a plump man of sixty whose primary affectation was the black, curly wig he wore even to the baths. Perennius had known him for almost twenty years, from the days when Navigatus had commanded the battalion of the Rhine Army to which Perennius had been assigned. They were both Illyrians. The younger man had an intelligence and drive which brought him early to Navigatus’ attention. F
ar more rare in a man of his caliber, Perennius had none of the personal ambition that would have made him as potentially dangerous to his superior as he was immediately useful.

  Perennius had followed Navigatus to three more line commands, jumping in rank each time. When the older man had transferred to the Bureau of Imperial Affairs, itself a part of the military rather than the civil establishment, Perennius had accompanied him again. Oddly enough, it was then that their paths had begun to diverge again. Perennius’ trustworthiness, his intelligence, and his ruthless determination to accomplish a task at whatever cost, would have made him even more valuable to his superior than he had been while in uniform. Four months of staff duty in Trier had driven Perennius to insist on either a field assignment or a return to uniform.

  The pettiness, the dishonesty ineradicable in a system built on secrecy, the filth he must know about the Empire which it was his life to protect … all of those factors had put the Illyrian on the edge of eruption. The eight following years in the field were at least seven more than he could have survived in a Headquarters billet. By now, however, Perennius had come to the gloomy conclusion that nothing would save him from himself much longer.

  There was a guard at the window on the peristyle court. He was there to make sure that no one slipped in that way in a desperate attempt to get the Director’s approval of a plan or document. Perennius nodded to the soldier. The man laid a brawny arm across the opening as the agent stepped toward it. “Keep clear, buddy,” the guard snapped. “Go see them if you need to get in.” He nodded toward the ushers in the passage. They were already hedged about by men who felt they had to talk to Navigatus.

  “Calm down,” Perennius said. He felt unusually calm himself, now that he had taken care of his business with Zopyrion. It was a state almost like that following orgasm, the relaxation which follows the draining of all the self’s resources into a single triumphant moment. It took the edge off the sword of his temper, though the iron baton which remained could be nasty enough in all truth. Perennius reached out to the stone frame, holding his orders closed in his hand.