Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1 Read Online Free PDF

smile, and lay his hand on Math’s arm, and say, more steadily, ‘If you stay a moment, you’ll learn something. After that I want you to leave. Will you do that?’
    ‘If you say so.’
    ‘I do.’
    Standing, Pantera turned his face to the alley’s firelit mouth. Distinctly, he said, ‘Are you happy now? Will you come out where you can be seen, or must we come to you, like dogs to a whistle?’
    ‘If you know I’m here, what need is there to stand in the light?’ The scrawny Roman, who had offered Math more than he had ever earned for a task that had seemed as if it would be easy, stepped away from the shadow of the alley’s wall and stood in the open, cast in hazy silhouette by the torchlight from the tavern behind.
    He looked much as he had in daylight, but that his thistledown hair – what was left of it – was cast in gold rather than silver by the flame’s kinder light. His head was too big for his body. His neck made the ungainly mismatch between head and body and was ill fitted for both, so that the skin hung in wattles and his larynx stuck out sharp as a stone.
    One might laugh at such a man, but for the fact that he had tracked Math for a good part of the afternoon unseen, which was, at the very least, disconcerting.
    His attention was all on Pantera now, although he spoke of Math. He said, ‘The boy will be as good as you when he’s older, if not better. I haven’t paid him yet. He earns his coin only if we speak, you and I.’
    In a voice that made Math’s guts ache, Pantera said, ‘Then he has succeeded. You have spoken. I have replied. Pay him.’
    ‘Soon.’
    The scrawny Roman was Pantera’s senior by at least a decade, more probably two, he had a bad hip and his hearing was less than perfect, but even so, he carried an authority in his dry, harsh voice that left Math wondering whether he could actually best Pantera in the way he seemed to think.
    When he said, ‘Will you come with me? I have lodgings not far from here. We could talk properly there,’ it seemed inevitable that they should follow.
    Pantera ignored him. He opened a purse that Math had neither heard nor seen at any point on the way up from the docks.
    ‘How much did you promise the boy?’ he asked.
    The scrawny Roman did not answer fast enough. Math said, ‘One sestertius.’
    He had thought it a fortune. Pantera clearly did not. He swore in a language that was neither Latin nor Gaulish but ripe with the force of his scorn.
    ‘You were Rome’s richest man and still you pay pennies to those who would risk their lives for you?’
    The old man shrugged. ‘I am no longer rich by any measure. Nero has my fortune and I must live on my wits. And Math did not risk his life. You are not yet so damaged that you would kill a boy for following you in the street.’
    ‘Really?’ Pantera bent down to Math. ‘Have you eaten?’
    That was a foolish question. Math stared at him. ‘Yes.’
    ‘I mean tonight. Have you eaten since sundown?’
    Math shook his head.
    ‘Then take this.’ From his purse, Pantera produced a roll of white goat’s cheese, thick as his thumb and as long. ‘My father taught me this and so now I teach you. Always carry cheese in your purse – it stops the coins from chiming so the cutpurses can’t hear it, and it means you have food when you need it; you never know when you might have to stay awake until dawn. A hungry stomach craves sleep in the way a fed one may not.’
    Math’s experience was otherwise, but he had learned long since that the man holding the food was always right. With the spit already flooding his mouth, he watched wide-eyed as Pantera led him to the mouth of the alley, and in the full glare of the tavern’s torches took the roll of cheese and cut it into four pieces.
    He gave the first one to Math. ‘Eat it now. Then keep the rest in your purse. Divide the night into four by the arc of the moon. See – it’s just up above the houses, so this is the first quarter. When it’s