Goldie shook off too many memories and watched intently the tourists taking in the exuberant display, complete with a Victorian kid-sized railroad that began at Victoria Station and quickly picked up steam to circle the entire, lavishly decorated Commons. Many parents had vidcams with them to record junior or their darling little miss, eyes aglow and their laughter sparkling like Christmas bells.
Goldie snorted under her breath. Truth was, she hated children as much as she hated that tinkle-winkle noise of thinly silver-plated brass bells.
Goldie shrugged. She couldn't help being cynical. She'd seen it all before, year in and year out, as relatively poor uptimers with their big families took advantage of the special "one-cycle-pass" tickets to step through Primary and absorb as much of the holiday spirit as possible in the Wonderland of La-La Land before the Primary cycled again. But she'd put up a few requisite lights and bows around her shop and counted it time wasted. And speaking of time wasted...
Where was Skeeter's Nemesis?
Ordering herself to remain patient and seem the very picture of innocence, she sat regally on her bench in Victoria station, watching the crowds surge past, many pausing to take pictures of overhead decorations. Goldie noted they were tattered a bit in places by the prehistoric birds and pterosaurs that tended to roost in the girders.
One camera-bedecked geek got more than he had bargained for. An offering from one of the leather-winger screechers above splattered hideous across camera lens and body, the photographer's , the eye not on the eyepiece, both cheeks, mouth and chin, never mind the mess running down into his hair. Laughter, most of it sympathetic, with the delighted, devilish kind coming from the kids in their mothers' tow, broke out across Victoria Station.
Goldie, chuckling along with everyone else, almost missed him. A pair of cow-chaps caught her attention. Her field of visual acuity narrowed as she looked this man over. Someone staying in the Wild West section, out to see the rest of the station's gilt offerings. Oddly enough, he wasn't laughing with the rest. Then he turned and Goldie looked straight into his face. Ahh ... yes, that was him, all right. The dark scowl, the shock of short-cut reddish hair, the play of muscles as he moved, all confirmed the identity of the man with the knife. Just where he was sleeping was not immediately obvious; he looked tired, like a man who hasn't eaten enough in the past few days, and somehow frustrated. She didn't know his name yet-but this very much the worse-for-wear gladiator was going to solve all of Goldie's problems and rid Time Terminal 86 of that weasel Skeeter Jackson forever.
With a wave of her hand, Goldie signaled. Two very large, very muscular downtimers in her employ casually moved in, then grasped the astonished gladiator's arms-pinning them behind him (probably a career record for sudden, brutal defeat)-then steered him over to Goldie. A moment later, a young lad slid across the cobblestones on in-line skates, sending showers of sparks as he moved on the sides of his wheels rather than the bottoms. He did an impressive sliding stop on the bench rail, earning admiring looks from uptime kids on a tighter leash.
Born showman, Goldie thought. It was a very good thing that he'd ended up adopted by that downtimer couple Goldie'd run into. The pair had been running from taxes they couldn't pay and, in their terrified flight from slavers, accidentally ran straight through the Porta Romae into La-La Land. They'd had coins she'd been able to "help" them with.
"That him?" he asked.
"Yes," Goldie said, ginger-honey in her voice. `Would you please tell him that all I want is to talk to him about what he wants most. Tell him if he will make a promise not to run, I will deliver his enemy into his hands."
Young Julius spoke, his Latin pure and flawless, in a quiet, dignified manner that would have pleased even Claudius himself. (Goldie suspected Imperial Blood in him, because he hadn't been left on the city's heap of dung to be taken into adoption or, far more often-slavery, but had been exposed, instead, outside the gates of the Imperial palace, with a little placard around his neck that read, "So all shall know, this is Julius, son of a concubine who has died in childbirth. It is fit that her issue die also.") Goldie watched the gladiator's face as Julius translated her offer. His expression changed drastically in the space of five seconds. First, incredulity, closely followed by suspicious disbelief, then his glance darted this way and that, searching for nonexistent station security squads, from that to puzzlement, and finally very cautious acceptance of the truly odd situation in which fate had placed him.
"Please, Julius, ask our guest to sit beside me."
Julius didn't particularly get along well with the plebeian parents who'd raised him he found them clinging and mindless-but he thanked all the gods for having landed them here. He absorbed more in one day in La-La Land than he'd ever learned from his adoptive parents. They didn't want to adjust (Jupiter forgive them if they attempted something new and radical, like flipping on a lightswitch rather than filling the apartment with smoke from candles and lanterns scattered here and there, too dim to see much of anything except shadows dancing on the wall).
Goldie Morran drew him out of deep thought. "Julius, would you be so kind as to explain to this man the location of the enemy he seeks?"
Julius grinned. Then turned to the big man beside him and started speaking rapidly in Latin.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Marcus turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving the gladiator to gape after him. He was aware that Lupus tried to follow, so he dodged through Victoria Station, only half aware when Julius' Lost and Found Gang hijacked Lupus Mortiferus' for Goldie Morran, of all people. By the time he returned to the Neo Edo, Skeeter had abandoned his attempt at theft and had long since gone. Marcus took the stairs, pounding angrily so the noise echoed up and down the stairwell, an emerged on the third floor, his meticulously kept records and depleted money box tucked under one arm.
"Curse him!" Marcus spat to the empty corridor.
He pounded on the door to room 3027 with a closed fist and wondered what he would say to the man whose debt he could not now pay. The door opened with alacrity. Marcus swallowed hard and faced down the man who'd bought him out of a filthy, stinking slave pen and brought him, fainting with terror, to La-La Land.
"Marcus," the man said with a tiny smile. "Come in."
He didn't want to go into that room.
But he stepped across the threshold, fingers white around the metal money box, And waited. The click of the door closing reached him, then a tinkle of ice against glass came in the silence. Liquid splashed.
Marcus recognized the label. His one-time master had a taste for expensive liquor. He did not, Marcus noted, offer a second glass to him. Cold and angry, Marcus waited while the man sipped and studied him.
"You've changed." The Latin rolled off his tongue as neatly as it had that day in Rome.
"That is your doing," Marcus replied in English.
One brow rose toward a greying hairline. "Oh?"
Marcus shrugged in that Gallic gesture which had survived the centuries. "You brought me here. I have listened and learned. I know the laws which forbid slavery and the laws which forbid you to bring men like me into this world."