Read Online The Emperor's Knives by Anthony Riches - Free Book Online Page A

through gritted teeth. ‘And you’ll have me what? Killed?’ He laughed down into the senator’s face. ‘Hah! I’ll disembowel any man you send after me, and then I’ll strangle you with the bastard’s guts!’
    Scaurus strolled forwards, patting Cotta on the arm.
    ‘I think your point is made, Centurion.’
    Albinus staggered back, propelled by a push from Cotta’s broad hand, pointing a trembling finger at the former soldier.
    ‘If I can’t buy you, I’ll buy your men! Ten gold aurei for the man that puts his iron through that treacherous bastard’s guts!’
    There was a moment of silence as the former soldier stared at him with naked disgust, until at length he spat bloody phlegm across the coins scattered at his feet. When he spoke his voice was cold, as if his anger had burned out and been replaced by something harder and more implacable.
    ‘You could offer them fifty apiece and I doubt you’d have any takers. We’ve something in common, these men and I, which is that we’ve all faced the empire’s enemies together, and bled, and lost our mates, while all you’ve ever done is sit on the back of a horse and come up with a succession of good ways for us to risk our lives to bring you glory. So I’ll give you two choices, Senator. You can leave now, with an escort of my men to protect you from the kind of scum who’ll take your purse and slap you about if you’re lucky, and drag you away never to be seen again if you’re not. Or you can open your mouth to say any words other than “ thank you, Cotta ” and then you’ll find out what it’s like to walk home alone with me following ten paces behind you, making sure every pimp, thug and murderer on the street knows just how vulnerable you are.’
    He stood and stared at the white-faced Albinus, his expression still taut with anger.
    ‘Just three little words. Any fucking time you like, Senator …’
    As the silence stretched out, Dubnus turned to a grinning Julius with a look of confusion, shaking his massive head in puzzlement.
    ‘Am I missing something here?’

2
    ‘Was it the dream again, my love?’
    When Felicia awoke the next morning she found Marcus sitting by their quarter’s window, his eyes fixed on the lights burning on the walls of the city, the impending dawn still no more than a smudge of grey on the eastern horizon. She had lived with him for long enough to know what would have awoken him early, and the answer to her whispered question was already clear in her mind even as she asked it. He nodded, smiling across the room at her in the light of the single lamp burning in the corner, although his expression was more haunted than happy. She beckoned him with a crooked finger.
    ‘Come back to bed then, before Appius wakes up.’
    He padded softly across the room and slid in behind his wife, warming his feet on her calves despite her quiet protests, pulling her to him and cupping her breasts in one hand.
    ‘Our meeting with Lucius Carius Sigilis’s father yesterday seems to have inspired the ghosts of my family to greater efforts. Twice last night and again this morning they came to me in my dreams, showing me their injuries and entreating me to take revenge for our family’s slaughter.’
    She snuggled back against him, reaching a hand up to stroke his face.
    ‘My darling, you know that this is just—’
    ‘Just my sleeping mind, working on the events of the day and tortured by my guilt at having survived such horror?’ Felicia turned to face him, her expression growing more troubled as she realised that he was staring at the wall behind her. ‘That may well be the case, but I cannot live the rest of my life haunted by these dreams, whether they be my family’s ghosts or simply my mind’s way of coping with the reality of their horrific murders while I escaped from their killers. And now that I have the names of the four men who murdered my father, my brother, my sisters, and probably sold the rest of our household into