Wolf Whistle

‘Yes, piss off, you two.’ Sargon unceremoniously dumped his girl on to the floor, where she promptly demanded her money. The Babylonian ignored her. ‘Whichever way you look at it,’ he said to Dino, ‘my father is not a well man.’ He grabbed the whingeing whore by her arm and thrust his face into hers. ‘You’ve earned nowt, you’ll get nowt,’ he snarled. ‘So shut the fuck up.’

‘I let you have a feel, didn’t I?’

Exasperated, Sargon fished into his purse. ‘Yes, madam, you did. Here’s what it was worth.’ He spun a copper quadran, the lowest denomination, into her lap. ‘Now sod off and leave us alone.’

Humiliated and outraged, she flounced away to complain to the management. The management laughed.

‘We’d better go,’ Dino said, pointing out that it was time to link up with Tryphon. ‘It’s already past midnight.’ Neither he nor Sargon had enquired what the Captain planned to do with his day off, he was quite an enigma, was Tryphon, he’d only have growled that it was none of their business. Which was true. So long as he was back in time to collect the child of the praetor’s wife (which he had been), what he did in his own time was his affair. Yet it was strange, Dinocrates thought, that he never mentioned the one subject which had set the city alight this afternoon. The girl they’d found up in the Lupercal. They weaved their way through the convoluted maze of lanes towards the Collina Gate. Maybe he and Sargon ought to have a word with the Captain? Make sure they got their stories straight before reporting to Arbil? Yes, indeed, a quiet word would do no harm. He was always reliable, was Tryphon.

‘That’s another thing,’ Sargon said, stepping aside to let a wagon piled with bales and fleeces lumber past. Silverstreak, grumpy at leaving the fire, bared his fangs at the mules. ‘When I’m in charge, we’ll send some other bugger to go searching the middens. It’s no job for you and me.’

‘We’re the only ones your father trusts to do it properly, you know that, but we’re slipping from the point, are we not? Granted your father’s had a bad run of late, but he’s hardly dying, Sargon. There’s nothing wrong with his…his physical health.’

‘Ah, Dino, we grew up together, remember? Shannu might be my baby brother, but,’ Sargon grimaced, ‘no amount of dancing round the subject can alter the fact.’ His voice took on a harsh note. ‘Shannu is insane.’

The Greek sighed. No beating about the bush, then. ‘You fear Arbil’s treading the same path?’

Calling for a torch bearer, Sargon shrugged. ‘He’s deteriorating fast, you’ve seen it yourself.’

‘Are you not worried for him?’

‘I’m more worried for me,’ he said sharply. ‘That it’s hereditary, and who knows when it might strike. That’s why I live life for today, Dino. You never know what lurks around the next corner.’ They ducked to avoid a cartload of cedars. ‘So what do you say? You and me, running the business side by side? Your expertise on the sales side combined with my-’

‘Expertise on backing chickens?’

‘Ability to increase our income,’ he corrected. ‘Oh, that makes your eyes light up. Well, Arbil thinks he knows the slave trade, my friend, but I’ve discovered a way of doubling our turnover. No extra work. No risks. Just this.’ He tapped his head. ‘Brainwork.’

The Collina Gate loomed out of the swirling mist. The cries of the alms-seekers grew closer, the shouts from the toll booth, the stink of the hovels beyond. Over to the west, the sky danced orange from a tenement which had caught fire, but the screams did not carry this far, there was no indication of the devastation and bereavement it would leave in its wake. Instead, the smell of salt fish mingled with freshly sawn timber, and with dung and hot pies and hemp.

‘Are you in, Dino?’ Sargon persisted. ‘We’ve grown up like brothers, trust each other, know one another inside out-’

‘Apart from the fact you sneak off now and again,’ Dino said amiably. ‘Are we talking a fifty-fifty split?’

‘Sixty-forty, you greedy bastard. But I need to know. Are you with me on this?’

By “this” Dino assumed Sargon meant the silent takeover of Arbil’s empire. Evidently he was planning to have his father restrained as insane sooner rather than later, and now he was being asked to join the connivance. Dionocrates thought of Rome, and what impelled him to come with such regularity, and that thought stirred his loins as well as his young blood. Rescued from Chios, all he’d known was the slave farm up in the hills.

Until recently.

What he’d found here went beyond his wildest fantasies, and the funny thing was, for all the wealth that had been showered upon him, the pleasure he’d discovered in the city came for free…

He weighed up the risks of plotting against the powerful Babylonian versus what he’d discovered in Rome. Risk he enjoyed, though. He ran his hand over the stubble which was forming on his chin. No doubt there was a flaw in Sargon’s arguments, one which could ultimately prove fatal, but for the life of him, Dino couldn’t think of what that flaw might be.