ment's throat-pin was arranged so that the cloak hung closed.
"Sir, pleased to meet you - " Sabellius began, extending a hand toward the agent.
Perennius reached past the preferred hand and gripped the throat of Sabellius' drab brown tunic. Sabellius screamed. The centurion shouted in anger and tried to seize Perennius' wrist with both hands. The agent used Sestius' weight and his own strength to jerk the tunic down. The blend of wool and linen tore as Sabellius' knees banged against the deck. The breasts displayed behind the cloak and torn tunic were large-nippled - flat for a woman, but a woman's beyond any question.
Perennius released his prey. "All right, soldier," he demanded grimly as he turned to Sestius, "what the fuck do you think you're playing at?"
The dice game had broken up with a cry of interest. The shooter had raised his eyes from the board to call on Fortune and had caught a glimpse of tit instead. Gaius shifted between the agent and the Marines. His instinct was to give Perennius room to handle the situation whichever way he chose. Help against one man, even an armed soldier like Sestius, was not something the agent would need or want.
"Look, buddy," the centurion blustered, "we agreed that I'd bring a friend, and Sabellia's - "
Sestius still held Perennius' right wrist and forearm, though his grip was loosening as the soldier drew back in embarrassment. Perennius locked the other's elbow with his right hand. He cracked Sestius across the face with the callus-ridged fingers of his left hand. The shock would have put Sestius among the threshing oars had not the agent held him simultaneously. "Don't give me that shit!" Perennius shouted. "You were hiding her, weren't you? Do you think I'm stupid? Do you think everybody aboard's blind so they won't notice the first time she takes a shit over the side? There's a hundred and fifty of us on this tub. That's pretty close quarters for a bit of nookie, don't you think?"
"Sir," the centurion said. All the hectoring arrogance was gone from his voice. "It's not that, it was for after - "
Perennius released him. The man slid a heel back for balance. His boot thudded on the coaming. "And you thought if I didn't catch on before we left port that I wouldn't put her ashore at the first landfall, is that it?" the agent demanded in a quiet, poisonous tone. Voice rising again, he added, "That I wouldn't dump her over the side?"
"Sir," repeated Sestius, grimacing.
Perennius turned his back on the other man. What he saw behind him was a chilling surprise. Not the raucous Marines, not the back of tall, capable Gaius as he acted as a buffer. Calvus was frozen in the concentration which the agent had mistaken for fear that night in the alley. Sabellia was quiet also. She knelt where Perennius had thrown her down in ripping her tunic. The knife in her hand was short-bladed, but it looked sharp enough to have severed ribs on its way to the agent's heart.
"I don't think that's necessary any more," Perennius said very softly. He did not reach for the knife or the woman, though the weight came off his right boot minus-
culy.
"Bella," Sestius said in a strangled voice. "Put that
away!"
The sheath was inside the waistband of her trousers, where the fall of the tunic hid the hilt. Sabellia looked at Perennius, not the centurion, as she slipped the weapon away again. "I should have put it in you," she said. Her throaty contralto was actually deeper than the masculine tone she had tried to counterfeit in greeting. "Then we'd see how tough you were." She rose to her feet with a sway of cloth and flesh. Calvus relaxed visibly.
One of the Marines had enough Latin to call, "Hey Legate - save me sloppy seconds!"
Perennius looked at the soldiers. His smile sent the speaker flinching back while the others quieted. "Tell you what, boys," the agent said in Greek, as being the closest thing to a common language for the unit, "why don't you all go back to your game? We're short-staffed for the work anyhow, and I'd hate to lose some of you."
The hint was too clear and too obviously serious for the troops to ignore it. The dice rattled in the palm of a short
man with a beard like the point of a knife. The other Marines looked at him, then hunkered down on the forecastle again with only a glance or two back toward Perennius and his companions.
Gaius turned. "Look, Aulus," he said, "we don't even have to turn around. We can put her aboard one of the Customs - "
Perennius laid a hand on the younger man's elbow to silence him. The agent looked from Sestius to the woman, then back. The centurion had struck a brace. His face was as still as dicipline could make it. The Eagle was leaving the inner harbor now. The constriction between the column-headed moles caused the swell to dash itself into whitecaps. Sestius appeared queasy, but he did not move forward from the edge of the deck.
Now that she had been exposed, literally and figuratively, Sabellias looked obviously to be a woman in dumpy clothes. Her hair had been cut short. Her face was broad and her small nose turned up, giving her almost a Scythian look which her Gallic accent belied. She glared eye to eye at Perennius. One hand clasped her cape across the torn front of her tunic, while the other hand was still obviously on the hilt of her knife.
"Sestius," the agent said, "you acted like a fool, and it could have gotten you killed." The agent's tone was flat, his words neutral enough to leave doubt whether the implied slayer was an enemy or Perennius himself in an access of rage. Perennius' hand was on the courier's arm, as if the older man were drawing some support from the contact.
"Yes, sir," the centurion said. His eyes stared across at the shore. He had sense enough not to add anything to the minimum required. Sestius had seen men like the agent before, and it was only need that had put him in the Illyrian's path.
"You told me what you planned to do after the operation," Perennius continued in the same flat voice, "and that was all right; I could plan for it. But I can't plan for what I don't know, can I, soldier?"
"No sir." Sestius' cheek was red and swelling with the print of the agent's fingers. Sabellia glanced at her companion and sucked in her breath. The slap had been lost to her in the wave of her own confusion.
"And would you like to guess how I feel about people who think they've fooled me, soldier?" the agent went on. His fingers tensed, only momentarily but hard enough that Gaius winced.
"Sir," said Sestius to the air, "I didn't think we'd fool you, but I was desperate. Having Bella with me was the only way I was willing to, to settle. I'm sorry."
Perennius looked at the woman. She was younger by a decade than Sestius, but that was normal for a soldier with some rank on him. She edged closer to her man. The agent remembered another Gallic girl who had not been willing - or able, but it was all the same to love's victim - to stand by a soldier. "All right, Quintus," Perennius said softly, "she can stay until I hear some reason why she shouldn't. But don't ever try to play me for a fool again." He turned abruptly. "I'll show you our cabin," he threw over his shoulder. "You can get your gear stowed properly." Calvus was with him, a half step toward the stern before even Gaius realized what was happening. To the tall man, Perennius muttered, "Thanks. I was so mad about what the fool had done that I forgot it wasn't a thing he'd tried to smuggle aboard, it was a person. Spunky bitch."
They were striding between the ventilator grating and the starboard edge of the deck. Though the span of deck was as wide as any sidewalk in Rome, Calvus stumbled badly enough to make the agent nervous. Perennius crossed behind the taller man to walk outboard of him, just in case. The coxswain had shifted stroke to the lower bank of oars, endeavoring to exercise the raw company by thirds before trusting them to keep time in synchrony. The principle was all well enough, but it did not wholly prevent clattering and lurches of the hull as rowers caught crabs. "You noticed immediately that the companion was female," Calvus remarked. His hand brushed the agent's shoulder to save his balance. Gaius was directly behind them, with the couple a pace further back. Though it did not appear to matter, the traveller spoke no louder than Perennius alone could hear.