Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

escape. Instead of quietly turning back, as circumstances recommended, strangers were suddenly pushing in from all sides, smelling the prospect of violence and afraid they might miss seeing it. They were not disappointed.
    The embalmer was a short man, pot-bellied, wrinkled, and balding. He rose to his full height and a little beyond, straining on tiptoes. He shoved his face, twisted with rage, against the gladiator’s. He wrinkled his nose at the gladiator’s breath – even from where I stood I caught a whiff of garlic and stale wine – and hissed at him like a snake. The sight was absurd, pathetic, alarming. The huge gladiator responded with a loud burp and another slap, this one knocking the embalmer backwards against the cart. There was a sharp crack of bone or wood, or both; the embalmer and the cart collapsed together.
    I tightened my grasp on Tiro’s sleeve. ‘This way,’ I hissed, indicating a sudden opening in the crowd. Before we could reach it the breach was filled with a crush of new spectators.
    Tiro made a peculiar noise. I wheeled around. The noise was less peculiar than the expression on his face. He was looking downwards. There was a hard, heavy nudge against my ankles. The cart had spilled its contents onto the street. The body had rolled face-up against my feet, its gauzy shroud unwinding behind it.
    The corpse was that of a woman, hardly more than a girl. She was blonde and pale, the way that all corpses are pale when drained of their blood. Despite the waxiness of her flesh, there was evidence of what had once been considerable beauty. The tumble had ripped her gown, baring a single breast as white and hard as alabaster, and a single nipple the colour of faded roses.
    I glanced at Tiro’s face, at his lips parted with spontaneous, unthinking lust, yet twisted at the corners with an equally spontaneous revulsion. I looked up and spotted another opening in the crowd. I stepped towards it, pulling on Tiro’s sleeve, but he was rooted to the spot. I pulled harder. There was sure to be real trouble now.
    At that instant I heard the unmistakable metallic slither of a dagger pulled from its sheath and glimpsed a flash of steel from the corner of my eye. It was not one of the gladiators who had drawn the weapon – the figure was on the opposite side of the cart, in the midst of the embalmers. A bodyguard? One of the dead girl’s relatives? An instant later – so quickly there was no sense of motion at all, only of displacement – both figure and glint of steel were on the nearer side of the cart. There was a strange ripping noise, tiny but somehow final. The gladiator bent double, clutching his belly. He grunted, then moaned, but the noise was submerged in a loud collective shriek.
    I never actually saw the assassin or the crime; I was too busy trying to push through the crowd, which scattered like kernels of grain from a ruptured sack the moment the first drop of blood fell to the paving stones.
    ‘Come on!’ I shouted, dragging Tiro behind me. He was still staring over his shoulder at the dead girl, unaware, I thought, of what had happened. But when we were safely away, well beyond the scuffling and confusion that continued around the upset cart; he drew up alongside me and said in a low voice, ‘But we should stop and go back, sir. We were witnesses.’
    ‘Witnesses to what?’
    ‘To a murder!’
    ‘I saw nothing. And neither did you. You were looking at the dead girl the whole time.’
    ‘No, I saw the whole thing.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I saw a murder.’
    ‘You don’t know that. The gladiator may recover. Besides, he’s probably just a slave.’ I winced at the flash of pain in Tiro’s eyes.
    ‘We should go back, anyway,’ Tiro snapped. ‘The stabbing was just the beginning. It’s still going on, see? Half the marketplace has been pulled into it now.’ He raised his eyebrows, struck by an idea. ‘Lawsuits! Perhaps one of the parties will be needing a good advocate.’
    I