Second Act by Marilyn Todd Page A

made her gasp as she opened the shutter. There was damp in the atmosphere. Below her balcony, the street was a blaze of light from the torches of householders and slaves who had streamed outside to see what was going on.
    What was going on was that the linen merchant over the way had called out the army. There had been two men loitering in the street all day, he reported, and after dark they remained in his doorway. Any other time and he would have moved them on, he insisted, but his steward had noticed two more round the corner, all four armed with daggers and cudgels.
    Not now they weren’t. One large bruiser was being held in an armlock by a tough-looking legionary with a scar down his cheek, while the second suspect was being chained hand and foot.
    ‘It’s a damn lie, this rumour that I keep my life savings in a wine jar down in the cellar,’ the merchant told the sergeant. ‘I use the temple depository like everyone else, but thieves don’t always believe what they’re told, do they, officer, and I have my wife and five children to think of, not to mention my mother-in-law living with us, as well as the wife’s sister and her three young nippers and a cousin up from the country.’
    As he paused to draw breath, another group of soldiers came tramping round the corner, dragging two more heavies between them. Blood poured from one of the men’s heads, its bubbling stream blinding him as it poured over one eye and dripped off his chin. The other one was missing a boot.
    ‘Got ’em, sarge,’ one of the legionaries puffed, prodding one of the prisoners in the small of the back with his fist. ‘They tried to make a run for it, but we got ’em.’ He was proud that years of hard physical training had given his footsloggers the edge.
    ‘Are these the men you saw earlier?’ the sergeant asked the linen merchant’s steward.
    ‘Definitely. I remember that one, because of the birthmark.’
    ‘Then you four are under arrest for intent to burgle and rob. Take ’em away, corporal.’
    ‘But we wasn’t—’ That was as far as Bleeding Head’s protest got. One of his companions landed a sound kick on his shin, which silenced him immediately, just as Missing Boot growled a warning which Claudia couldn’t hear.
    ‘Is it safe, do you think, officer?’ the linen merchant whined. ‘Only there are four women and eight children inside and—’
    ‘Perfectly safe,’ the sergeant assured him. ‘But just in case there’s more in the gang, I’m leaving two men here to stand guard for the next couple of nights.’
    ‘It’s not true about my savings down in the cellar,’ the linen merchant called after him. ‘I don’t know where these rumours come from.’
    Probably because it wasn’t a rumour, Claudia thought, staring down at the now empty street. The old miser begrudged paying the temple a fee for holding his valuables safe, no wonder people were always trying to rob him. There had been at least five previous attempts that she knew of.
    Except this was no bungled robbery.
    She’d recognized Bleeding Head and Missing Boot immediately. The scum from the slum. The thugs whose paws had mauled at her flesh. Whose stale breath had been forced into her nostrils.
    Butico, goddammit, had posted a warning.
    Only a fool would ignore the message.
    Pay up or I’ll take my eight grand in kind, he was saying. The bastard wasn’t bluffing. Like a shark, he sensed blood in the water and was moving in for the kill. Claudia saw him sending in his thugs to strip her house of its rare woods and marble, trashing whatever they liked in the process, raiding the storerooms, pillaging artworks, and with a bailiff to legitimize the process by undervaluing the goods as they went along.
    That he was able to do this was because he had the backing of the Guild of Wine Merchants. With the Widow Seferius bankrupt and humiliated, her business would go down the sewer with her.
    Bastards, bastards, absolute bloody bastards.
    Still. First