Page 40 of Of Love and Treason
Titus shifted his unimpressed gaze to his centurion. This waspunishment for the tavern fire. “You intend to arrest the people’s hero and for me to take the fall for it.”
“You’re our best speculatore.” Faustus straightened. “We need this problem to disappear quietly. Find him. Get rid of him. Eventually the rumors will fade.Pax Romana.”
Titus crossed his arms, giving them both a stony stare. They stared back, not giving an inch. He sighed. “If they’re contracted marriages, we question the scribes and notarii.” Titus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps there are a few idiots unaware of the edict.” Although one would have to be deaf, blind, and live in a cave not to have heard of the edict.
“An idiot or a traditionalist willingly superseding it,” Faustus said. “Either way, he has a death wish.”
“Execution then, sir?”
Faustus nodded. “Sub rosa to the extreme. No witnesses. No burning down inns on your dead bodies.”
Titus slammed his fist against his chest in salute. “Yes, sir.”
“You will answer directly to me, and you may choose your own force from among the speculatores.”
Titus dipped his head. “Yes, sir.”
“That will be all.”
Titus left the meeting, hot and belittled. After all he’d done in the guard, risking his life to hack the cohort tribune out of the throng of Alemanni during the Battle of Lake Benacus the year before, after his success taking out Captain Petrius Convus—thiswas what they thought of him? They might as well put him on the task force to catch the delinquents chipping the fingers and noses off statues in the Portico of Pompey!
Titus set his teeth and went out to choose his speculatores. The first order of business would be to place a man undercover in the notarii office expressly to inspect the marriage license of any woman who came in to claim the widow’s right to inherit property.
He found Adonis sniffing scrolls in the record building. Named after a mythical man of great beauty, Adonis had the most hopefuland delusional mother the world had ever known. With a single tooth in his head and about as much hair, Adonis would blend in with the notarii perfectly. Looks aside, he had an impeccable memory, and if a discrepancy existed in a document, he would find it. Titus recruited two others and they got to work. The sooner they got this over with, the better. It shouldn’t take long.
XVI
BEFORE ANYONE COULD HAPPEN A GLANCE,Valens rubbed out the letters in the wax tablet the city messenger had just delivered. His mouth had gone powdery at the words inside, his disappointment over missing Iris the last two mornings forgotten. The handwriting was unfamiliar but the initials at the bottom were not.
They know. Stop before it’s too late.
GFD
“I have two announcements.”
Valens looked up. His supervisor, Orane Haldas, stood in the middle of the room mopping sweat from his neck and wearing a luxuriant auburn wig to hide the baldness he’d sported the day before. An unwigged balding man wearing canary-yellow shoes stood beside him.
“This is Adonis. He will be working in the legal claims.” Haldas pointed to a row of desks along the back wall and motioned for Adonis to join the notarii there. The new notarius moved to his department, his quick dark eyes skittering across the room, taking in everything and everyone.
As Haldas swiped his forehead, skewing the wig, Valens’s attention shifted to the three Praetorians standing behind him, gladii strapped high beneath their arms and mostly concealed by their blue tunics.They were the only ones allowed to bear arms within the confines of the city, but even then, they had to be hidden.
Valens tried to swallow and reached for the cup of water at the edge of his desk. His fingers trembled. The words of the message replayed in his mind.They know.He missed Haldas announcing the Praetorian investigator.
“He will speak with each of you privately, and you will answer his questions and go on with your work. No one is to leave the building until further notice.”
The head Praetorian stepped to the front and clasped his hands behind his back, feet wide, chest out. Valens returned his gaze to the half-written contract before him and let out a long, slow breath, his heart thudding. What did they know?Howcould they know already? Had Hector trusted the wrong legionnaire? After he’d written the initial three marriage contracts and agreed to work with Hector, word had spread like the Great Fire. In the last week alone he’d performed what, fifteen? Twenty weddings?
Calm. He needed to be calm. Haldas had mentioned nothing about marriage contracts. Or had he?
He dropped his chin and tried to concentrate on the warehouse rent adjustment in front of him. His heart beat too fast, and the stylus trembled violently in his hand. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the Praetorian investigator stop at each desk and question every notarius in turn, taking notes on a wax tablet.
Another Praetorian watched the front and rear entrances while the third snaked through the room, flipping through parchments on desks and unrolling scrolls. The investigator looked younger than Valens, though taller and powerfully built. Pinkish scars crisscrossed muscular forearms. One scar disfigured the lower half of his left ear, running in a jagged line down his neck. Valens had seen him before. In the market with Iris.
With double effort, Valens turned his attention to the contract, but the words seemed foreign. He started reading at the beginning.Lord, preserve me.A trickle of sweat slid between his shoulder blades.I amfinished.
Orane Haldas straightened his wig and intercepted the investigator before he reached Valens’s desk. Valens stood and replaced the unfinished contract in the pigeonholed half wall behind him, which separated one row of desks from the next. He kept one eye on the pair as they conferred in tones too low to hear. Haldas mopped sweat from his neck rolls as the Praetorian’s eyebrows flickered in a look of surprise. His eyes darted toward Valens, who dropped his gaze and sifted through the piles of scrap parchment tossed on top of the half wall. Valens willed his hands to stop shaking.
“May I have a few minutes?”
