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concerned, my duty to Decimus Brutus ended when I discovered there was no plot against his life after all. My discretion would continue.
    “Still, Gordianus, it was niggardly of Deci not to pay you . . .”
    Discretion forbade me from telling Lucius that the other half of my fee had indeed been paid—by Sempronia. It was the only way I could see to save my own neck. I had convinced her that by paying the fee for my investigation she purchased my discretion. Thus I avoided the same fate as Scorpus.
    At the same time, I had requested a refund of Lucius’s wagers, which seemed only fair.
    Lucius cupped his hands around a pile of coins, as if they emitted a warming glow. He smiled ruefully. “I tell you what, Gordianus—as commission for recouping my gambling losses, what if I give you . . . five percent of the total?”
    I sucked in a breath and eyed the coins on the table. Bethesda would be greatly pleased to see the household coffer filled to overflowing. I smiled at Lucius and raised an eyebrow.
    “Gordianus, don’t give me that look!”
    “What look?”
    “Oh, very well! I shall give you ten percent. But not a sesterce more!”

IF A CYCLOPS COULD VANISH
IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

    Eco was incensed. That was all I could tell at first—that he was angry and frustrated almost to the point of tears. At such a time, I felt acutely aware of his muteness. He was usually quite skilled at expressing himself with gestures and signals, but not when he was flustered.
    “Calm down,” I said quietly, placing my hands on his shoulders. He was at that age when boys shoot up like beanstalks. It seemed to me that not long ago, placing my hands at the same height, I would have been patting his head. “Now,” I said, “what is the problem?”
    My adopted son took a deep breath and composed himself, then seized my hand and led me across the overgrown garden at the center of the house, under the portico, through a curtained doorway and into his room. By the bright morning light from the small window I surveyed the few furnishings—a narrow sleeping cot, a wooden folding chair, and a small trunk.
    It was not to these that Eco directed my attention, but to a long niche about knee-high in the plastered wall across from his bed. The last time I had ventured into the room, a hodgepodge of toys had been shoved into the niche—little boats made of wood, a leather ball for playing trigon, pebbles of colored glass for Egyptian board games. Now the space had been neatly cleared—the cast-off toys put away in the trunk along with his spare tunic, I presumed—and occupying the shelf were a number of tiny figurines made of fired clay, each representing some monster of legend with a horrible visage. There was a Medusa with snakes for hair, a Cyclops with one eye, a Nemean lion, and numerous others.
    They were crudely made but tinted with bright colors, and I knew that Eco treasured them. A potter with a shop down by the Tiber made them in his spare time out of bits of leftover clay; Eco had been doing occasional odd jobs for the man and accepting the figurines as payment. He insisted on showing them off to me and to Bethesda whenever he brought a new one home. I always made a point of admiring them, but my beloved concubine made no secret of her disdain for them. Her upbringing in Egypt had given her attitudes different—dare I say more superstitious?—than those of a Roman, and where I found the figurines to be harmless and charming, she saw in them something distasteful, even sinister.
    I had not realized how large Eco’s collection had grown. I counted fifteen figurines, all lined up in a row.
    “Why do you show me these?” I asked.
    He pointed to three gaps in the evenly spaced row.
    “Are you telling me that three of your monsters are missing?”
    Eco nodded vigorously.
    “But where have they gone?”
    He shrugged and his lower lip began to tremble. He looked so desolate.
    “Which ones are missing? When were they