I was still on the floor, flat out, ready to roll over with my arm up, but knowing it was probably too late. Helena Justina had been standing so still we were both forgetting her. Her uncle came running with his sword high, letting out a terrifying screech. As he rushed, even though she was bound, Helena flung all her weight against a barrel I had at one point pushed her behind. The keg toppled. Its contents gushed out, bouncing and skidaddling for yards across the hard-baked warehouse floor.

No time to thank her. I got one knee under me and pushed myself to my feet. Splaylegged, I swarmed across the stricken keg. Meto exclaimed. He faltered as the tiny iron-hard balls beneath the tender arches of his well-kept feet rocked him over on his insteps. My own horny pads wore boots with triple soles a good inch thick. I kicked out to scatter the nutmegs as I scrambled forwards, then before he could recover I ducked under his guard and smashed the pommel of my knife against his wrist. He dropped the sword. To make sure, I barged him with my shoulder away from it.

Helena Justina immediately captured the sword.

“Stay!” The bastard moved. “Over!” I choked. “Don’t move. It’s all over—” I freed Helena.

“Not bad,” he gasped, “for a…tousled tyke from the Subura slums!”

“Nothing to lose—don’t move!” I knew the type. This one was going to give me trouble right to the slamming of the door to the cells. “Don’t push me, Camillus!”

Helena demanded quickly, “Falco, what now?”

“The Palace. Vespasian can decide.”

“Falco, you’re a fool!” Publius exclaimed. “Share the silver with me; the spices too, and the girl, Falco—”

I was angry then. Once he had disposed of her to suit his own low purposes, when he had married her to Pertinax. Never again.

“Your nice niece has terrible taste—but not as terrible as that! The play’s over. The Aventine watch are blocking the Ostia Road searching everything that moves there from a grandmother’s shopping basket to a camel’s hump. Petronius Longus won’t miss an illegal waggon train. That silver’s your death warrant—”

“You’re lying, Falco!”

“Don’t judge me by your standards. It’s time to go.”

Sosia’s father—and he was Sosia’s father; I think he knew I could never forget that—made me a wry gesture, open palmed, like a gladiator who has lost his arms acknowledging defeat.

“Let me choose my own way.”

“What,” I scoffed, “death with that high moral tone you so despised in life? A middle class traitor—too honourable to hang?”