Death of an Eye

by Dana Stabenow

  “Remind me to send her a fruit basket,” Apollodorus said.

  “And we’ve had a smaller influx of young Romans, as well, although I expect that number to drop once Caesar departs.” The other three men finished their tidying up and Dub dusted his hands together in approval. “The rest of us were talking over the possibility of an evening session, twice, even three times a week.”

  Apollodorus considered. “We’d have to increase the staff.”

  “We’re going to have to do that anyway,” Crixus said.

  Castus nodded. “We made our reputation on individual attention to each member.”

  “It’s why they come here babes crying for their mommas and leave fighters,” Is said in a satisfied manner.

  “Do we foresee any… problems between the different groups?”

  “The Greeks and Egyptians seem to get along well enough,” Dub said.

  “Which only means they save the drubbings they give one another for somewhere off site,” Isidoros said. “But I doubt that mixing in a few Romans is going to make the sweat smell any differently when they’re all working out together.”

  “If there were problems, we could segregate the different groups on different nights,” Dub said. “Even the days.” He winked at Tetisheri. “The way we do the women students.”

  Apollodorus shook his head. “Our charter specifically states that we are open to all citizens, all states. Let’s not draw the attention of some nosy scribe at the Palace who makes his living from imposing civil fines.”

  The other four men nodded. “And open nights?” Dub said.

  “Let’s try one and see how fast it fills up. Do any of you have people in mind to fill out the staff?”

  All four men nodded again.

  “I might have a name or two myself. Good. Anything else?”

  “Renni the Egyptian—you remember him, short, late twenties, beard like he lets the rats gnaw on it every night, enough energy to row every boat in Caesar’s fleet from here to Rome and back again? Renni dropped by this morning with a proposition.”

  “He wants to rent the front of the building to open a taverna!” Isidoros said.

  “You’re just thrilled at the prospect of not having to walk farther than the front door for your first beer,” Crixus said.

  “Not a taverna, Is, no wine and only small beer. Mostly juices, he says, and healthy snacks like yogurt and fruit and cheese, all fresh from the pomegranate or goat, respectively, designed to appeal to the man who has just sweated out half his body weight in our gymnasium.”

  “And maybe wants to brag to his friends how he took down one of us in the ring.”

  “Which would be a lie because no one ever has,” Isidoros said.

  “True.” Dub looked at Apollodorus. “What do you think?”

  “What kind of split is he offering?”

  “Split? He said straight rent.”

  Apollodorus shook his head. “Offer him a sixty-forty split, we get the forty. Let him bargain you down to seventy-thirty. If we’re partners, we have a say in what he sells, and to whom. And tell him Wozer keeps the books and divvies the take or no deal. Agreed?” He looked around the circle. “Good. All right, I’m off.”

  Dub smiled at Tetisheri. “May we come, too?”

  “No, you may not,” Apollodorus said.

  Dub winked again at Tetisheri who was, infuriatingly, blushing again. “Great, thanks, we’d love to join you.”

  And so they were a group of six as they exited through the small door at the back, just as the cleaning crew of freedwomen was coming in laden with mops and brooms and cloths. Apollodorus paused as the door closed behind them. “If we start night sessions, we’ll have to work out something with Heret. If they have to come later to clean, we’ll have to provide an escort to and from their homes.”

  Every hand went up. Apollodorus rolled his eyes.

  They walked west, laughing and chattering, the sunset casting long shadows from the columns and fountains that lined the Way. After they passed the promenade and crossed beneath the Central Aqueduct (attempts to name it for Ptolemy XII had failed utterly, as had all attempts to name it for every Ptolemy ruler since Ptolemy I), Apollodorus led the way down a side street. There they found a small taverna tucked into an alley with an unusually benevolent Dionysus over the door, clearly inviting them in for dinner, if not for debauchery. It looked less than prepossessing from the outside but once inside revealed itself to be cozy and clean and well lit by lamps that didn’t smoke, and if the scents that tickled the nose were any indication boasted a cook who knew his or her business. There were few empty tables, which also boded well, and no Romans, which was even better. Once the Romans did inevitably discover the place the prices would go up and available tables would become nonexistent.

  “Apollodorus! Come in, come in! And you brought friends! Splendid!” A large woman bustled forward. Her face was round and flushed, her luxuriant dark hair caught up in a careless knot of curls. She was tying a fresh apron over a floor-length gray tunic that was well-worn but clean. It was sleeveless and her arms bulged with muscles developed, one imagined, over years of heaving heavy pots about.

  “Edeva! Well met.” They clasped hands and Apollodorus leaned forward to give her a noisy kiss on the cheek. Edeva flushed even darker, laughed and swatted at him, and then at the other four men who kissed her in turn. Afterward, her cheeks redder than ever, she looked at Tetisheri with interest. “And who do we have here?”

  “A friend.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh ho, like that, is it? Sit, sit.” She waved them to a round table in the corner that had miraculously emptied as they walked in. “You’re just in time for the last servings of tonight’s special. I’ll send the girl out with wine. Sit!”

  They sat as she bustled into another room.

  “I like this place,” Tetisheri said. “Who is Edeva?”

  “She is from far to the north,” Dub said.

  “From a large island known for druids,” Crixus said.

  “And warrior queens,” Is said, waggling his eyebrows and his tongue, for which he was promptly elbowed by both Crixus and Castus.

  “And fighters who paint themselves blue,” Castus said. “For the gods alone know what reason.”

  “Britannia?” Tetisheri said.

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve read Caesar’s memoir.”

  “There’s a copy in the Library?”

  “In Greek?”

  “There are many,” Tetisheri said dryly, “in any language you choose. Our queen saw to that before he ever arrived. There was something of a last-minute rush on the various translations. Crispinus was… eloquent on the subject.”

  “Ah,” Dub said. “Yes, of course. His own name is undoubtedly the first thing Caesar would have looked for in the Great Library.”

  The girl arrived with a pitcher of wine that Dub deemed palatable, and everyone settled in over their cups with a palpable sigh of relaxation.

  “To be fair,” Tetisheri said, “he’s a better writer than most.”

  “To hear him tell it, Caesar is an entire legion unto himself.”

  “He certainly goes through women as if he were,” Is said, and the conversation took a turn for the bawdy at Caesar’s expense, including a verse declaimed by Crixus with the utmost severity and joined in in full voice by Dub, Is and Castus on the last line.

  Home we bring our bald whoremonger

  Romans, lock your wives away!

  All the bags of gold you lent him

  Went his Gallic tarts to pay.

  Everyone else in the taverna from patron to cook laughed and applauded. Tetisheri laughed, too, but she also cast a quick glance around the room. “Good thing there aren’t any Romans present. They might take exception.”

  “My poor sweet innocent,” Dub said, grinning, “who do you think we learned it from?”

  Is couldn’t contain himself. “It’s every Roman legion’s favorite march
ing song! Caesar himself has probably sung along to it!”

  She looked at Apollodorus for confirmation.

  “Never mind expecting a laugh out of him at a rude poem,” Dub said, “he’s by far too big a prude.”

  Apollodorus pretended not to hear, and under cover of dinner arriving Isidoros whispered earnestly, “He isn’t really, Sheri.”

  “It wasn’t exactly an insult, Is,” she said, but indulged her curiosity anyway. “He doesn’t—well, he doesn’t visit Joy Street?”

  Is shook his head. “It’s not his way.”

  He rubbed the back of his hand where a crust was forming over a new wound. She nodded at it. “What happened?”

  The impish satyr grinned. “A moment of carelessness.” He looked past her at Apollodorus. “I should know better than to test that one on the net and trident. He is definitely his father’s son.”

  This was more than Is had ever said about the Five Soldiers’ lives before they came to Alexandria and Tetisheri said, as indifferently as she could manage, “Indeed? His father was a retiarius, then?”

  “The best who ever raised a trident or threw a net,” he said. He gave her a shrewd look that told her she hadn’t sounded as indifferent as she might have wished. “All of our fathers spilled blood on the sands of the arena.”

  “I thought the five of you came to Alexandria with Antony’s cavalry.”

  “We did, but that was after.”

  “Why the change of profession?” She tried to say it lightly but his somber expression forbade humor.

  “To be a soldier is one thing. To kill other men, brothers they came to be, equally skilled at arms, for no reason other than the entertainment of an arena full of Romans screaming for blood? It didn’t matter whose.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want that for the boys, and their fathers definitely wouldn’t have wanted it, either.”

  “Their fathers?” she said, startled.

  He let out a bray of laughter. “Oh no, no, no, Sheri, you dear sweet girl, I was never that ambitious. I stand as father figure to them all, yes, in all but blood.”

  “Then how—”

  He gave her an odd look. “Shall we say their fathers commended them to my care, and leave it at that?”

  Edeva interrupted further confidences with an enormous bowl of seasoned lamb stew plonked down in the center of the table, and surrounded it with a pile of fresh baked bread, and conversation died. A refill of the stew came before it was called for, along with a resupply of the bread and wine. Edeva was familiar with these particular customers, it seemed. At any rate, they ate heartily and swabbed up the last of the gravy with the last chunks of bread. The serving girl brought a bowl of grapes and Edeva followed her with an assortment of cheeses on a platter and another pitcher, this time of chilled fruit juice. There were no complaints, and Tetisheri realized that in all the years she had known the Five Soldiers, she had never seen any one of them the worse for drink. Something else she’d never noticed. She wasn’t entirely sure she was comfortable with this newly revealed ability to see what had not been seen before. It was almost as if she had grown another eye.

  Crixus belched and shoved back from the table. Since Castus shared his bench he perforce moved back with him. Crixus overrode his protest and gathered up Dub and Is as well, which would have been fine if he hadn’t winked at Apollodorus on his way out.

  Apollodorus selected a grape. “Shall we run through the evidence gathered thus far?” She raised her eyes and found him looking at her with a steady gaze, expression bland, to all appearances totally unconscious of the not so subtle meaning of Crixus’ wink.

  She cleared her throat and sipped at her juice. “Very well,” she said, and raised her eyes, determined to maintain her composure even as he stared so. “Someone other than you, the queen, Sosigenes, and Captain Laogonus knew of the shipment, and all of its details. The theft was far too well planned to be otherwise.”

  “You rule out Laogonus as a suspect, then?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t, but you obviously do, which means the queen does as well. I want to get this—this task done and over with as soon as possible, and I prefer not to waste my time investigating a suspect who doesn’t exist.”

  He popped a chunk of hard cheese in his mouth, and chewed ruminatively. “Someone in the palace, do you think?”

  “Or someone in Lemesos. Or one of the deckhands. Oh, I know what the good captain said, that his crew has been with him forever, but anyone can be tempted by enough coin.”

  “As this surely is,” he said, his mouth grim. “Even so small a share as he would be offered, it would be enough.”

  “Where are the deckhands?”

  His eyes widened in mock innocence. “You heard Laogonus. On leave.” She snorted, and he smiled. “All right. They are under guard in a house near the Palace.”

  “We will go there and question them following our meal.”

  “We will go there and question them tomorrow morning,” he said firmly. “What of Khemit?”

  “Khemit,” she said, leaning back against the wall. “I find it interesting that Khemit was killed not two full days after she had an altercation with a customer in her own shop, and most especially that the employee who saw him most nearly was fortuitously dowered and whisked out of the city the very next day.”

  She looked around the room again and dropped her voice. “But I also find it almost too much to believe that someone entrusted with the Eye of Isis could be so maladroit as to allow a suspect to follow her home.”

  “Still,” he said.

  She sighed. “Still. I would like to know who that gentleman was, and why he was so upset that day.”

  “Possibly, no matter what Tarset says about the perfect satisfaction Khemit’s business delivers, he was in fact there to complain of the quality of the length of linen he had bought there.”

  She smiled faintly. “Possibly.”

  “But not likely,” he said. “And we are no closer to finding who stole the new issue right out from under the queen’s nose, or where it is now. Thebes, probably. If not Meroe.”

  “Oh no, the coin is still here in Alexandria.”

  He sat back and regarded her with a quizzical expression. “You seem very certain.”

  “It’s heavy, which makes it hard to move. It’s new, which makes it impossible to spend. And the best place to spend it will be a large port, where its newness will be at least somewhat less obvious mixed in with all the other coins from around the Middle Sea. Oh no, the new coins are still here in the city.” She looked around the room, which had emptied out while they were eating. “And I’m not altogether certain that this was a theft motivated by greed.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What else would such a theft be motivated by?”

  She reached into her purse, pulling out a handful of money and spreading it on the table. Coins of various denominations and nationalities stared up at them. The largest was of bronze, and Apollodorus touched it with a fingertip. “He’s a long way from home. That’s Saladas I. I was born in the third year of his reign.” He turned it over. “And look, on the other side, the double-headed eagle of Thrace.”

  The smallest was also bronze, a lepton from Judea. Other coins of bronze and a few silver ranged in size in between the first two. “Uncle Neb just got back from upriver,” Tetisheri said. “He said it was getting harder to buy anything outright for the lack of coin in hand, that he was having to resort to barter. While he was gone, I, too, noticed there is more Roman silver than Egyptian bronze in circulation.” She remembered what the queen had said that morning. “Fewer coins in circulation increases the value of those coins still in circulation, giving them a higher value than what shows on the face of the coin. People naturally turn to more and smaller coins of lesser value, like Greek stater or—”

  “Roman denarii?”

  “Or Roman denarii. Or even gold. You won’t believe it, but last week someone paid with a Persian daric. It had an image of a crowned lion eatin
g a bull.” She reflected for a moment. “Or mating with him, I couldn’t tell for sure.” When he shouted with laughter she said defensively, “Yes, but it was an old coin, Apollodorus, and the surface worn near smooth.”

  “Old coins can be very valuable,” he said, still chuckling. “People collect them, and often pay well over their face value to acquire them.”

  She gave him a reproving look. “I am aware. I have it safe for Uncle Neb to deal with. He has several acquaintances who have him watch for such rarities as come through our hands.” She paused. “It was very old, Apollodorus, perhaps from the time of Alexander himself. Who knows, it may have passed through his very hands.”

  “Be careful or you’ll be starting your own coin collection before long.”

  She laughed. “No chance of that. I’m much more interested in coins being used for what they are made for, changing hands for goods and services. Much more fun than putting one on display to be admired.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “What?”

  “The coins were made in Cyprus.”

  “And?”

  “And… should you perhaps go there?”

  This was something she had not considered in the course of the investigation thus far. She did so now. “I won’t rule it out,” she said at last, “but it seems to no purpose.”

  “And why is that?”

  She shrugged. “The coin was stolen in Alexandria, not in Cyprus. Remember Laogonus said he knew it was valuable because it was heavy.”

  “Those chests could have been loaded with rocks for all Laogonus knew.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “And certainly, information about the shipment could have been sold as easily from Lemesos as from Alexandria.” She thought for a moment. “If the shipment is not quickly found, then, yes, I suppose a trip to Cyprus might be in order.”