“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I couldn’t begin to, any more than I could begin to tell you what killed Eprius.”
Something almost clicked in Tero’s mind, but the thought would not come clear. “Say that again!” he demanded.
Kleandros repeated.
He had it. “Look,” he said, “where did we find this strange thing?”
“Is this your day to do Sokrates? Very well, best one, I’ll play along. We found this strange thing in a hole in the wall.”
“And what was all around the hole in the wall?”
“Clodius Eprius’ brains.”
“Very good. Bear with me one more time. How did Clodius Eprius’ brains get there?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here pretending to be Euthyphron,” Kleandros snapped. “I’ve seen a fair number of dead men, but never one like this.” He looked at the piece of metal in his hand, and his voice grew musing. “And I’ve never seen anything like this, either. You think the one had something to do with the other, don’t you?”
Tero nodded. “If you could somehow make that thing go fast enough, it would make a respectable hole-it didn’t make a bad hole in the wall, you know.”
“So it didn’t. It probably used to have a tip shaped more like an arrowhead, too; that lead is soft, and it would get smashed down when it hit. See what a brilliant pair we are. We only have one problem left: how in Zeus’ holy name does the little hunk of metal get moving so fast?”
“Two problems,” Tero corrected. “Once you get the little piece of metal moving, why do you use it to blow out Clodius Eprius’ brains?”
“Robbery, perhaps.”
“Maybe. Titus should know if anything is missing. Until he can figure that out, I think I’m going home and back to bed. Wait a moment; what’s this?” Almost out of sight under one of the couches was a small leather bag. Tero stooped to pick it up and exclaimed in surprise. It was far heavier than he’d expected. He knew of only two things combining so much weight with so little bulk, lead and- He opened the bag, and aurei flooded into his hand.
“So much for robbery,” Kleandros said, looking over his shoulder. The images of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius looked mutely back, answering none of the questions the two men would have put to them. The only time Tero had ever held so much gold at once was when he’d gotten his mustering-out bonus on leaving his legion.
He looked up to find Kleandros still studying the coins, a puzzled expression on his face. “What now?” Tero asked.
It was the doctor’s turn to have trouble putting what he saw into words. “Does anything strike you as odd about this money?” he said at last.
“Only that no robber in his right mind would leave it lying under a couch.”
“Apart from that, I mean. Is there anything wrong about the money itself?”
“An aureus is an aureus,” Tero shrugged. “The only thing wrong with them is that I see them too seldom.”
Kleandros grunted in exasperation. He plucked an aureus of Trajan from the pile in Tero’s hand and held it under the vigil’s nose, so close that Tero’s eyes started to cross as he looked at it. Tero shrugged again; to him it seemed like any fresh-minted goldpiece. He said so.
“To me, too,” Kleandros said. “And that is more than a little out of the ordinary, since Trajan has been dead-what is it? Thirty years now, I think. I was somewhere in my teens when he died, and I’m far from a youth now, worse luck. Yet here is one of his coins, bright and unworn. More than one, in fact,” he said, picking out three or four more. They lay in his hand, alike as peas in a pod.
And that was wrong, too. No coin had the right to be identical to its fellows; they were stamped out by hand, one at a time. There were always differences, sometimes not small ones, in shape and thickness. Not here, though. Both men noticed it at the same time, but neither was as disturbed as he would have been a few hours before. “Everything we’ve found here is impossible,” Tero said, “and this is just one little impossibility among the big ones.”
It was growing light outside. Tero swore disgustedly. “I might as well stay up now. Care to join me for an early cup of wine?”
“Thank you, no. But if you don’t mind, I’ll cadge a meal from you and Calvina this evening. We can talk more then, and maybe squeeze some sense from all this.”
“I doubt it, truth to tell. But I’ll expect you a little past sunset.”
“Fine.”
Tero swallowed his last morsel of ham, wiped his fingers, and sighed loudly. “Why did I ever quit the legions?” he said. “I’d twenty times rather fight the German lurking in his gloomy forest than face another day like this one.”
“That bad?” Kleandros asked between bites of apple.
“You should know-you started me on it.” The vigil did not feel right about dropping all his troubles on his friend, but he had had a bellyful. The story of Clodius Eprius’ death had raced through Vesunna, gaining fresh embellishments with each teller. It did not take long for people to be saying that all the Twelve Immortals had visited the town, destroying not only Eprius but his house and those of his neighbors, too. More than one panicky citizen hastily packed up his belongings and headed for the country.
None of that sat well with Vesunna’s two duumvirs, and both of those worthies came down heavily on Tero, demanding that he find the murderer at once. “What will this do to the name of our city?” one said, though Tero knew that what he meant was: “I do not want my year in office recalled only for a gruesome killing.” He promised to do his best, though he had few illusions about how good that was going to be.
Late in the afternoon Eprius’ servant Titus came in with two more bits of depressing news: first, the gold the vigil had found was definitely not Eprius’; and, second, as far as he could tell after a quick search, nothing was missing from his late master’s home. Larcius Afer was there to hear that, and his superior smile made Tero want to kick him in the teeth.
That he did tell Kleandros; it galled him too much for silence. The doctor pursed his lips and said judiciously, “If a fool laughed at me, I’d take it for a compliment.”
“So would I, were I sure he was wrong. But what do we have here? A murder committed for no reason with an impossible weapon that produces an incredible wound. I think I’d rather believe in an angry god.”
“Who leaves behind a purse full of counterfeit aurei? No god would do that.”
“No person would, either,” Tero pointed out. “And they aren’t counterfeits, either; they’re pure gold. Rusticius the jeweler checked them for me this afternoon.”
“Did he? How interesting. Yes.” Kleandros said nothing more, but a look of satisfaction spread across his face.
“You know something!” Tero accused.
“I have some ideas, at any rate. Did I ever tell you that I studied medicine under Diodoros of Alexandria?”
There were times when Tero found his friend’s evasiveness maddening. This, it seemed, was going to be one of them. “No,” he said, “you never did. Why do you see fit to impart this bit of information to me now?”
“I am coming to that, never fear. You see, Diodoros himself was learning his skill in Alexandria when Heron son of Ktesibios was at the height of his fame.”
Tero had to admit he did not know the name.
“Do you not? A pity; he was a remarkable man, probably one of the finest machine makers the world has ever seen. Diodoros was fascinated by his contraptions, and he never tired of talking about them. Really amazing things: a device for dispensing sacramental water that worked only when a copper was inserted, a trumpet made to sound by opening a nearby door, bronze animals that moved like live ones, and many other things.”
“He sounds like a sorcerer.”
“No, he was an artificer and nothing more. One of the things he made, not really more than a toy, was what he called an aeolipile.”
“All of this must lead somewhere, I suppose. What might an aeolipile be?”
Kleandros explained: a water-filled cauldron was fitted atop with a hollow ball mounted on a hollow tube. Directly opposite the tube’s entrance into the ball was a pivot, which was attached to the cauldron’s lid. The ball itself was fitted with bent nozzles; when a fire was lit beneath the cauldron, steam traveled up the hollow tube and out through the nozzles, making the ball spin merrily. “Do you see what I’m getting at?” the doctor asked. “In this device the force of the steam escaped continuously, but if some way were found to block it up for a time and then release it all at once, it could give a little metal pellet a very strong push indeed.”