“It took time and gold and the lives of four good men to track you down, but the filth you employ gave you to me in the end. I’m told you’re building a beautiful estate in the north, far from this hovel. Built on my blood. Did you think I would forget about my daughter’s killer?”

The man coughed, his breath overlaid with the sweet perfume he used to cover the rot.

“It was not my knife that—”

“It was your order. Who gave you the name? Whose gold did you take? I know it anyway, but speak it before witnesses, so that I can have justice.”

For a long moment their gazes locked, and then the assassin’s eyes dropped to the blade that Pompey held so casually. His daughters looked on, their tears drying. They didn’t understand the danger and he could have cried for their innocence as they watched their father so trustingly. They were not appalled by his sores. In fact, without the gentle bathing they administered to their father, he knew he would have taken his own life a long time before. They had none of the disease, their skin perfect under the dirt they used to hide themselves from the predators of the alleys. Who would care for them when he was gone? He knew Pompey well enough to see his own life was finished. He’d had no mercy in him since the death of his daughter, if he ever had.

“Let my daughters go and I will tell you,” the assassin wheezed, his eyes pleading.

Pompey grunted softly, then reached out to the youngest one, holding her tightly by the hair. With his other hand, he drew the dagger across her throat and dropped her as she twisted in his grip.

The assassin screamed in unison with his daughter, straining to break the grip of the men that held him. He began to weep then, sagging in their arms.

“Now you know,” Pompey said. He wiped the blade between two of his fingers, the blood falling in heavy soundless drops to the earthern floor. He waited patiently until the assassin had subsided into choking sobs.

“The other one will live, perhaps. Last time of asking. Whose gold did you take?”

“Cato . . . it was Cato, through Antonidus. That is all I know, I swear.”

Pompey turned to the soldiers around him. “Did you men hear?”

They nodded, grim as their commander. “Then we are finished in this place.” He turned to leave, only a slight stain on his hands showing he had ever been there.

“Kill them both, the girl first,” he added as he went out into the alleys beyond.

*                                                      *                                                      *