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

high, at midnight, eat the next piece. At half-set eat the third and at dawn, when the moon is down, eat the fourth. That way the night seems less long. Do you understand?’
    Not understanding at all, Math said, ‘Yes.’ He had no purse. He slipped the precious cheese down the front of his tunic until it lay at his waist, above his belt, feeling the warmth of another’s body through it. The fragment in his mouth was rich and ripe and exploded on his tongue.
    Pantera was already walking away. ‘Good. We’ll come with you some of the way home. Will you show us which way we go to the horse barns?’
    Math hadn’t planned to go home yet, but there wasn’t the slightest chance he was going to leave Pantera before he had to. He nodded, and walked between the two men away from the light of the tavern and into the dark thread of streets that made the upper part of Coriallum.
    They were in full dark, with only the moon to light them, when he heard the footsteps behind them and knew they were no longer alone.
    His own steps faltered. Pantera caught him a brief shove in the small of his back and dipped down to breathe in his ear. ‘Only one. He’s in the shelter of the tannery to our left and behind. Don’t stop.’
    They walked on, talking together softly, like son to father, with the scrawny Roman trailing behind. The chunks of cheese in Math’s tunic began to sweat.
    They came to the end of the town, at the top of the shallow hill half a mile or so along from the magistrate’s residence. Here, the villas and workshops stopped and the great flat grassy plain began, in the middle of which was the wooden hippodrome and the complex of paddocks and horse barns around it.
    The moon was high now, flooding the plain with silver ghost-light. Making sure they were in profile to the watcher, Pantera knelt before Math and ruffled his hair, taking his leave as any other man might of the boy he had hired and might wish to see again.
    ‘Seneca was right,’ he said. ‘You were not risking your life when you followed me this evening, but then you were not paid enough to do that. If I offered you a denarius, would you risk your life for me – really risk it – now?’
    Seneca. A denarius.
    The two facts collided in Math’s mind. A denarius: a silver coin four times the worth of a brass sestertius, sixteen times the worth of the copper that Ajax paid his grooms for a month’s work.
    And Seneca. The scrawny old Roman was Seneca : the man who had ruled Rome in all but name for most of Math’s short life. Seneca, who had been deposed, and permitted to retire when all around him had died in a bloodbath of Nero’s making. Seneca, who had paid him in brass, when Pantera was offering silver.
    A denarius. Math would have risked his soul for Pantera for nothing at all.
    Swallowing, he said, ‘You want me to follow the man who is following us?’
    He said it more loudly than Pantera had done. Hearing him, Seneca’s head snapped round.
    ‘Yes,’ Pantera said. ‘Watch him, find out who he reports to and why, and then come back to Seneca’s lodgings with the news – you know where they are? Good. But if you are caught by this man or his master, you’ll have to tell them everything you know – my name, Seneca’s name, where we met and how, and all that happened this evening. Don’t hold anything back. The emperor’s men don’t ask nicely if they think they’re being lied to, but if you tell the truth, they might leave you alone and come after us. Math …?’ He caught Math’s cheek and turned his head. ‘Are you listening? You are following one of Nero’s servants and it will serve nobody if you are stubborn and die. You will not be protecting us. Is that clear?’
    Math nodded. ‘They won’t catch me.’
    ‘Good. The man who’s following us is currently hiding behind the house with the gold on the roof tiles and the marble lions outside. In a moment, we’ll turn away. You will seem to run home. When we have gone out of