Rome, August, AD 182

The first of the young senator’s bodyguards died slowly, choking to death on the cobbles with his sword only half drawn from its scabbard. He stared up at his killer with bulging eyes while the assassin turned away from him and drew his gladius, facing the younger of the two men with a grim smile. He had stepped out of a side alley in a street whose sudden quiet should have been enough of a warning to an experienced man, punching a half-fist into the veteran soldier’s throat before the bodyguard had the time to realise that he was under attack. The senator and his remaining protector fell back a few paces, both men staring in amazement at their companion as he writhed and kicked in the throes of his death spasm.

Another man stepped from the alley’s shadows in the killer’s wake, and leaned against the wall of a shop in the late afternoon’s warmth, his face set in an expression of boredom. Where the bodyguard’s murderer was heavyset, with arms that rippled with hard muscle, the man that accompanied him was tall and thin. His voice, when he spoke, was agreeable, and almost soothing in the softness of its tone.

‘Greeting, Tiberius Sulpicius Quirinius. Forgive me, but I can’t help thinking that you’ve made something of a blunder in your choice of protection today. Hiring retired soldiers is all very well, but they do tend to know more about throwing spears at barbarians than the dangers of the streets, as your man here is so noisily demonstrating. And the savings to be had from hiring a boy to do a man’s work are so often outweighed by the resulting costs. Wouldn’t you agree, Senator Quirinius, given that you chose to chance a district as rough as the Subura with only these two innocents for protection?’

The prostrate bodyguard shuddered in one last desperate effort to breathe through his ruptured throat, and then sagged back to lie still on the stones. Quirinius drew himself up, staring at the taller of the two men with an air of confidence that he was a long way from feeling.