He turned his horse to face the south and waved on the first rank of guards. To Seneca’s private fury, they turned to follow him and the column began to move once more. As he matched his pace to the ranks around him, Seneca realized that he would spend the next week staring at the rear of the horse.

In the soft light of morning, Julius paced the length of Marius’s old entrance hall, watched by the generals he had summoned. He looked exhausted and pale, a man made older by the news.

“It’s not just that the betrayal will hurt our standing with the remaining senators,” he said. “We could keep that quiet if we say he was sent away on some private task. But he has with him the knowledge of our strengths, our weaknesses, even our methods of attack! Brutus knows the details of every battle we fought in Gaul. He practically invented the extraordinarii as we use them. He has the Spanish secret of hard iron. Gods, if he gives all that to Pompey, we will be beaten before we begin. Tell me how I can win against that sort of knowledge.”

“Kill him before he can reach Pompey,” Regulus said into the silence.

Julius glanced up, but did not reply. Domitius frowned in bemusement, wiping clammy sweat from his face. His thoughts were still heavy from a wild party in a house off the forum. The sweet smell of drink was on all of them, but they were steady. Domitius shook his head to clear it. They could not be discussing Brutus as an enemy, he told himself. It was not possible. They had taken salt and pay together, shed blood and bound each other’s wounds. They had become generals in hard years and Domitius could not shake the thought that Brutus would return with an explanation and a joke, with a woman on his arm, perhaps. The man was practically a father to Octavian. How could he have thrown that away for his stupid temper?

Domitius rubbed his calloused hands over his face, looking at the floor as the angry conversation continued around him. They had come into the city only the morning before and already one of them was an enemy.

Mark Antony spoke as Julius resumed his pacing. “We could spread the word that Brutus is a spy for us. That would undermine his value to the forces in Greece. Pompey won’t be willing to trust him as it is. With just a little push, he might reject Brutus altogether.”

“How? How do we do that?” Julius demanded.

Mark Antony shrugged. “Send a man to be captured on the Greek coast. Give him your ring or something, to show he spies for us. Pompey will torture it out of him and then Brutus will lose his value.”