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felt rather stuffy. Half a dozen of the city prefect’s clients were still hanging around in the blue shadows among the Ionic columns by the pool there: pettifogging lawyers or men whose sole occupation was to form a court around any wealthy man, applaud his lightest utterance, and hope for an invitation to dinner. They cast covert glances at Quindarvis as the butler arranged the purple-bordered folds of his toga, hoping to have it remembered in their favor, when Varus returned, that they had not deserted his household in its hour of need.
    Quindarvis was saying, “Remind me, centurion, and I’ll get you seats at the games tomorrow. They’re in celebration of the emperor’s victories in the East”—he chuckled suddenly—“and, fortuitously, just in time for the elections next month. If I do say so myself, they’re going to be quite fine. We’ve got sixty pairs of gladiators lined up, the cream of the best schools, and we’ve arranged for a hunt of wild boars and a beast-fight, tigers against crocodiles. And”—he lowered his voice impressively—“there’s going to be a special beast-hunt. About thirty captives from the Persian front are going to be hamstrung, each given a short knife, and have a pack of hyenas turned loose on them. Pretty good, eh?” He smiled cynically. “The crowds will love it.”
    “It should make an impression,” said the centurion in a colorless voice.
    “I’ll get you a ticket, too, Marcus,” promised the praetor. “Since I’m footing most of the bill, the least they can do is give my special friends privileged seating.”
    “Thank you,” said Marcus queasily, privately vowing to pass the ticket (if Quindarvis remembered to produce it) along to his brother.
    A doorman appeared—also Syrian, his dark-green tunic sprigged with leaves of embroidered gold—and bowed them into the vestibule. Blinding sunlight smote Marcus’ eyes as he stepped out into the street.
    “When I was serving in Germany I broke my leg on patrol and had to lie out all night fending off wolves till the rest of the patrol could track me in the snow,” remarked Arrius, as the door shut behind them. “After that I never cared much for those man-against-beast shows. Some people can’t get their fill of them, though.” They turned along the narrow street, the high walls of the big houses of the rich already trapping the morning heat. As they passed the mouth of the alley down which the Christians had dragged their struggling victim, Marcus shuddered.
    “Can’t anything be done?” he demanded. “Is all anybody going to do is just talk about the Christians? Can’t a search be made? A—a general arrest?”
    They turned into the lane that ran along the ridgy backbone of the Quirinal Hill; a litter passed them, the feet of the bearers throwing a choking cloud of dust over them. Arrius regarded him with amusement in those cool greenish eyes. “Oh, give us time,” he said tolerantly.
    “Time for what?” protested Marcus angrily. “Time for the Christians to—to—” He stammered to a halt, his mind shying from the possibilities.
    “Time to make a round of my informers,” returned the centurion, unruffled. “See what and who I can smoke out.”
    They turned down another street, plunging steeply down the side of the hill. The walls of the tenements loomed up around them, the noise and the dust far worse. The lane was crowded, the voices of the idlers in the street striving against the shrill cries of hawkers in the shops and the din of mallets from a sarcophagus-maker’s shop. Soldiers in their leather armor pushed past them, Syrian immigrants in bright robes and oiled lovelocks, Jews in somber gray. Slaves on their way back from the markets on the other side of the Forum jostled them.
    Marcus stumbled along in Arrius’ wake, down streets that grew narrower and narrower. The sky vanished behind a clutter of outthrust balconies, fluttering clotheslines, and plank bridges thrown across the street