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accepted his votive offering, brought him some wine and a lamp and let him be.”
    “You were supposed to stay with him,” the priest said angrily, striking the youth on the head.
    “He asked to be left alone so that he might receive his vision,” the acolyte cried, wincing from the blow.
    “So what did you do?” Aculeo asked.
    “I … I fell asleep in one of the chapels,” Leto admitted. “I awoke when I heard t he supplicant cry for help.”
    “Fool,” the priest growled, striking him again
    “You know, it’s rather challenging for a man to talk when you keep hitting them on the head,” Capito said in annoyance. “Why did the supplicant cry for help?”
    “He claimed he’d been attacked by a madman in the Sanctuary,” said the youth.
    “There was a madman?” Aculeo asked.
    “I never actually saw him, sir. I came as quickly as I could, but the madman must have already escaped. The supplicant was most upset. I tried to calm him down but he was inconsolable, claimed he’d been attacked by this man. Then … then I saw her,” the boy said, glancing towards the body. “I summoned the priests and told them what I’d found.”
    “You neglected your sacred duties and the Sarapeion was desecrated!” the priest cried, striking him again. “When the High Priest learns of this …”
    “Discipline him later, please, it’s quite distracting,” Capito said irritably. “What of the supplicant? Did he say anything about the murdered girl?”
    “No Magistrate,” the boy said. “He left soon afterwards.”
    “What was his name?”
    “Cleon, sir. Cleon of Athens.”
    “Any idea where we can find him?”
    “No, I’m sorry,” Leto sniffled, wiping the tears from his eyes.
    “If Cleon shows up again, send word to my offices,” Capito said. The youth gave a sullen nod.
    A pair of temple slaves carried in basins of washing soda and horsehair brushes to scrub the blood off the stoa floor. Other slaves approached the dead woman and laid out a sheet of canvas on the floor, carefully lifting the body onto it before carrying it down the mosaic-tiled corridor towards the temple doors.
    “I need to talk with the Public Order officers before I leave,” Capito said. “I trust next time we meet it’s under more pleasant circumstances, Aculeo.” With that, the Magistrate walked away.
    Clotted clouds of pink-brown blood swirled in the rain puddles on the marble tiles as the temple slaves tried to erase any remnant of what had gone on here the prior night. Aculeo looked at the earring he’d found in the dead woman’s final grasp, with its perfect little golden grapes and finely carved jasper leaves. A pretty piece for a street porne to be carrying, he thought. The whole thing didn’t add up somehow. What did happen here last night?
    Ah well, it really is none of my concern, and it brings me no closer to finding Iovinus. Every day that passes, the trail grows colder. The man’s like a ghost. Did I truly see him at the Hippodrome that morning? His head was throbbing again – he wondered if the priests kept any sacrificial wine about.
    Aculeo made his way out of the temple and down the hundred steps. When he reached the bottom he noticed a small white shrine in the shadows, all but obscured behind a thick tangle of thorn bushes. The sculpture on the shrine was of three hideous old women with knotted hair, roaring mouths and bulging eyes. The Furies, the goddesses who sought vengeance for victims of murder. The deities stared back at him, their painted eyes unblinking. Something caught his eye in the shadows of the shrine, a stain of some sort, he thought. He crouched next to it, carefully pulling the branches of the bush aside to get a closer look. Not just a stain but a painted symbol – like a bodiless stick figure man with bent arms and splayed legs protruding from where its neck should have been.

     
    He scraped at the mark with his fingernail, then rubbed the scrapings between fingertip and thumb – they