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slavery, I am bound to act against them.’ He paused before speaking again, knowing that his wife had to know the news he had kept to himself the previous evening. ‘A gang leader, a praetorian, a senator and a gladiator: Brutus, Dorso, Pilinius and Mortiferum. We got their names from an unlikely source though.’
    Felicia frowned at something in her husband’s voice and sat up in bed, turning to look down at him in the light of the lamp burning by their son’s cot.
    ‘Unlikely?’
    Marcus looked up at her, clearly trying to gauge her possible reaction before he spoke again.
    ‘Excingus.’
    Her eyes opened wide with shock.
    ‘Excingus?! The grain officer who kidnapped me and tried to murder us both?’
    ‘The same.’
    ‘And you didn’t …?’
    ‘Kill him? He was under Senator Sigilis’s protection. And taking my knife to him wouldn’t have changed anything, although it would have prevented me from learning the identities of the men who killed my father.’
    Felicia looked back at him with a grave expression.
    ‘And if he hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t be planning to kill them all, would you? This can only end badly Marcus …’
    He smiled back at her.
    ‘I understand your fears, but I really don’t have any choice in the matter. And besides, I have Cotta and his men behind me now.’
    ‘Yes …’
    Her tone was dubious.
    Marcus laughed softly. He and Cotta had grinned at each other in the square the previous evening, both of them deaf to Albinus’s furious protests as he’d been led away, and the veteran centurion had wrapped him in a bear hug that had squeezed the breath from his body before pushing him away and looking him up and down.
    ‘I thought you were dead, boy, but look at you, scars and all! You can join my little team of lads any time you like!’
    Marcus had stared dumbly back at him, smiling through unexpected tears and was unable to reply. After a moment’s silence, Scaurus had coughed politely behind him.
    ‘Ah …’
    Cotta had straightened, throwing a salute at the senior officer.
    ‘Tribune, sir!’
    ‘There’s no need for all that, Centurion, given that you’re retired.’
    The veteran had shaken his head dismissively.
    ‘A man leaves the legion when his twenty years are up, Tribune, but the legion never really leaves the man, does it, sir? Tattoos, scars and memories of dead friends, they’re all still there until the day you die, and since me and my lads are time-served veterans for the most part, we can recognise a fellow professional when we see one. Which means that we’ll be saluting you, and calling you “sir” just as long as we’re working alongside you.’
    Scaurus had stepped forward, regarding Cotta from beneath raised eyebrows.
    ‘As long as you’re working beside us, Centurion? Whatever gave you that idea?’
    Cotta’s return stare had been utterly unabashed, the tolerant gaze of a career soldier when challenged by his less-experienced senior officer.
    ‘The fact that me and my lads know Rome a damned sight better than your boys, no disrespect intended, First Spear.’ Julius had nodded his head gracefully, a corner of his mouth lifting in a wry smile at his tribune. ‘The fact that I’ve burned my bridges with one of the most powerful senators in the city by failing to obey his order to kill the centurion there. And the fact that I’ve been beating common sense into this officer of yours since he was half the age he is now, although to little avail given the stories I’ve been hearing about him from your soldiers, once they’ve got a few cups of wine down their necks. Put simply Tribune, you need us. And I’m not about to allow that silly young bugger to get himself killed in Rome, not when he seems to have made a tolerable job of surviving everything else that’s been thrown at him up to now.’
    Once the usual dawn officers’ meeting was out of the way, Julius went to report to Scaurus as to the two cohorts’ strength, gathering Marcus and