Wagers of Sin: Time Scout II (27 page)

She was lying-it was actually more like thirty-five. Chuck said diffidently, "Er, isn't that a bit light?"

"Oops, sorry, these are the ones I reserve for the zipper jockeys. Let me get the real ones." She opened a drawer behind her, and pulled out another set of counterweights, and continued measuring out hundredweight's until she'd finished with the pile. It was a big pile.

"You probably think it's odd that I happen to keep this much gold around. But I went through the big crash after the Accident, and I don't trust banks, not anymore."

Chuck rubbed the side of his nose and murmured sympathetically. "My dear lady, you are a life saver. A fortune saver," he added with a small laugh. "But I still have one problem." He gestured to the bags of dust and nuggets laid out across the top of the counter. "I can't very well go walking through the Wild West Gate with that in plain sight. I've got to look like someone who's been in the field for months, accumulating it. Do you have a period-style leather satchel, perhaps, that I could carry everything in?"

Goldie smiled in what she probably considered her most winsome manner. "I have just the thing. A set of saddlebags brought uptime by one of my agents, for you, no charge. I'll just go and get them."

She vanished into the back of her shop yet again.

Chuck was tempted to steal back his bills, just lying there on the counter, but he didn't want to risk being arrested when he came back. His fake ID was good but why take unnecessary chances? Besides, getting caught by his boss for his little extracurricular activities on TT-86 would be bad for his health. Permanently.

He and Goldie concluded their business with a handshake, and Farley headed for the nearest public restroom to ditch his clothes, settle the heavy bags of gold into his carrying harness, and don his toga for the Roman gate. He rejoined Marcus, who waited quietly with his luggage. He smiled at the younger man, then headed up the ramp with the other tourists.

By the time Goldie discovered the scam and reported it, he'd be long gone. Chuck laughed aloud, softly, drawing a curious look from the slave he'd purchased all those years ago. Yes, he'd have given a great deal to see the look on her face under all that purple hair. Amateurs. Still chuckling, he slid his time card with its fake identification into the reader, had his departure time and date duly logged, and gestured to Marcus. The young man hoisted the baggage and followed silently through the gaping portal in the concrete wall of Time Terminal Eighty-Six.

Unable to leave his apartment, he felt so ill, Skeeter-in looking for ways to make some illegal profit during his convalescence, hit quite suddenly on the answer. Something Marcus had once said brought new inspiration when Skeeter needed it most. He was still hung over and hurting, a particularly nasty throb where Farley had struck the back of his skull. Or whoever it had been. He was also, however, running out of time. So he quietly bought up a supply of small glass bottles, corks, and paper labels from various outfitters, ordering them over the computer and asking to have them delivered immediately to his apartment. When everything arrived, Skeeter got busy, diligently gluing handwritten labels onto each filled, corked bottle of tapwater, tinged just slightly with a drop of ink. The longer he counted the potential profits to be had in the patent medicine business, the more cheerful he grew, despite headache and hangover from too much alcohol combined with too much chloroform. Each label exclaimed in gorgeous, "antique" script (Skeeter could, among other odd skills, forge just about any signature he'd ever seen): MIRACLE WATER-DIRECT FROM DOWNTIME IMPORTER! FAMOUS SPRINGS OF CAUTERETS! OWN A BOTTLE OF MYSTIC HISTORY FROM GALLIA COMATA, AD 47! A THOUSAND PASSIONATE NIGHTS GUARANTEED WITH ANCIENT WORLD'S MOST SOUGHT-AFTER LOVE POTION

He hadn't spent much and the uptime tourist crowd was just as gullible as any nineteenth-century Iowa farmer. The descendants of twentieth-century new ager crystal mystics, in particular, ought to be "medicine show" pushovers. As Ianira Cassondra's little booth on the Commons had proved, they'd buy anything even moderately wacky-particularly if he hinted that the stuff had not only been bottled in Gallia Comata, but that the water from the famous spring actually bubbled up from the sacred rivers of lost Atlantis. He pasted another label, wondering how much he could get per bottle? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Shucks, some fools might go as high as a hundred.

Gingerly humming a little ditty Yesukai the Valiant's aged mother had taught him, the tune warlike and lighthearted, Skeeter was as happy as any exiled Yakka tribesman in a lot of pain could be. He had several bottles left to label when someone buzzed his doorbell frantically. Curious, he peered through the peephole.

"Huh?" Skeeter opened to the door to find Ianira Cassondra outside his apartment, literally wringing her hands in the folds of a pretty, Ionic-style chiton. "Ianira! What are you doing here?"

He ushered her in, shocked by the tears sparkling on pale cheeks and ashen lips. The door clicked softly behind him, the latch catching, but he was so distracted he didn't bother with the deadbolt. Ianira had clutched at his arm.

"Please, you must help him!"

"Who? Ianira, what's happened?"

"Skeeter, he's going with that terrible man, and I don't trust him, and it's your fault he's going at all-"

"Whoa, slow down. Now. Who's going where?"

"Marcus! To Rome!" The words were torn from her.

Skeeter blinked. "Rome? Marcus is going to Rome? That's crazy. Marcus would never go back to Rome."

Her nails dug painfully into his arm. "His cursed master came back! You know his pride, his determination to pay that man his purchase cost, to be free of the debt!"

Skeeter nodded, wondering what on earth had happened. "He should've had plenty, I'd think. I mean, I know the new baby was expensive, and all, and what with little Artemisia getting so sick from the fever that idiot tourist brought back they had to quarantine her, but there's that bet money I gave him-"

"That's just it!" she cried. Her nails drew blood. "He found out how you got it and gave it back!"

"He ... gave it back?" Skeeter's voice hit a squeak. "You mean ... he just gave it back?" Then: "Oh, shit, that means he knows how to find that maniac that's been-"

"Yes, yes," Ianira said impatiently, "Lupus had been staying with us, because he needed help and we didn't know it was you who had stolen the money he needed to start a new life away from the blood and the killing!" Harsh accusation rasped along Skeeter's nerves. After that fight with Marcus, this new accusation felt like Ianira had just dumped a whole shaker of salt into an open wound.

"Okay, I really screwed up with that gladiator. I've known that a while, Ianira, and I'm sorrier than you know. But, what does that have to do with Marcus going to Rome?"

Ianira gave out a strangled sound like a sob. "How can you be so blind? That man came back, the one who bought him. Marcus didn't have quite enough money to pay him back. Not after all the medical bills. So Marcus agreed to carry his luggage to Rome to finish paying off the debt."

Skeeter relaxed. "Is that all? He'll be back, then, in a couple of weeks, free and clear."

"No, he won't!" Petite little Ianira, snarling like an enraged wolverine, backed Skeeter into a corner. He'd seen that look in a woman's eyes before-more than once and usually when Yesukai's new bride had vented her temper on some hapless victim in her imprisoning bridal yurt.

"Can't you see it, idiot?" Ianira demanded, raising the fine hairs on his neck and arms. "He's made Marcus keep records of certain people who come and go. The man who calls himself Farley, a name which does not match the soul-darkness in his eyes, steals things, downtime. Expensive things. Artwork. Some of it sexual and very rare. Once they're in Rome, Marcus will be just another expendable bit of profit to be auctioned off! That horrible Farley man has tricked him. I can feel it-and I was trained in such arts nearly three thousand years before you were born!"

A touch of coldness settled in Skeeter's belly. Chuck Farley was Marcus' old master? That put a whole, new-and utterly terrifying--wrinkle on the situation. After his own experience with Chuck Farley, Ianira had to be right. Hell, Ianira was never wrong. The lump on the back of his head still ached, making rational thought nearly impossible. Torn by helplessness, he asked quietly, "What do you want me to do? I can't afford the price of a ticket to Rome."

Dark eyes flashed rage. "You mean you can't and still save enough to win your horrible wager!"

Skeeter groaned. That damnable wager, again. "Ianira, the man kidnapping Marcus robbed me, of almost everything I had left. And Brian Hendrickson is holding every red cent of what I've accumulated for that stupid wager."

"So steal it back. Before it's too late! There are still a few minutes before the Porta Romae opens! Marcus is in line, Skeeter, looking confused and scared, just standing there guarding that miserable man's luggage." Her nails dug even deeper into his arm. Skeeter winced.

"I've got The Found Ones out there, but we don't have the money between us, and he won't listen to them if he can't pay off that debt. Please, Skeeter, he is your friend. Help him!

"I-" He stopped. He didn't have many resources at the moment and if he were going to stop Marcus from stepping through the Porta Romae, he'd have to come up with some fast cash to pay off Farley before the gate opened. "Oh, hell!"

He switched on his computer and searched out the listing he needed, then picked up the telephone and dialed. The elderly Nally Mundy answered a bit testily.

"Yes, yes, hello?"

"Dr. Mundy? It's Skeeter Jackson. I-I know you're going to think this is a scam, because of that damned wager I made with Goldie, but a friend of mine, Marcus, the bartender from Rome, he's in trouble and I need money to keep him from doing something stupid. Dangerous and stupid. If-if you still want to do that interview with me about Yesukai and the Khan's boyhood," he swallowed hard, "I'll do it. I swear. And Ianira Cassondra's here to witness it."

A long silence at the other end ticked away precious seconds. "Put her on the phone, Skeeter."

Ianira took the instrument and spoke rapidly to the elderly historian--in Archaic Greek. Then she handed the telephone back to Skeeter.

"Very well, young rascal. I should probably be committed to an asylum for such folly, but I'll authorize the transfer. You can pick up the money from a cash machine in five minutes. If you cheat me on this one, Skeeter Jackson, I swear to you I will make certain. you get tossed off this station into the highest security uptime prison I can land you in!"

Skeeter winced. He'd pledged his word-and besides, the elderly and utterly harmless Dr. Nally Mundy was an 'eighty-sixer. "Thank you, Dr. Mundy. You don't know what this means."

If he could just get to the Porta Romae departure line with that money in time ...

The door imploded.

Skeeter swung around, shocked, even as Ianira gasped with fright. Lupus Mortiferus stood in the shattered remains of his door, face flushed with murderous anger.

"Now," he growled in Latin, "now we will settle accounts!"

The unnatural quiet, broken at regular intervals by a high, beeping sound, convinced Goldie she was neither in her shop nor her apartment. Confused, disoriented, she turned her head- and found an IV bottle hanging near her head and a heart monitor beeping softly beside her. The slight movement tugged at monitor leads placed at seeming random about her torso. Then Rachel Eisenstein came into her frame of view and smiled.

"You're awake. How do you feel?"

"I-I'm not sure. What am I doing in the infirmary'

"You don't remember?"

Goldie frowned, but nothing came back to explain this.

"You collapsed in the library. Brian thought you were dead, started hollering for help." Rachel smiled. "I was afraid you'd had a heart seizure or a stroke, but it seems you simply fainted for some reason."

Fainted? Why in the world would she have...

Memory returned, shocking and brutal. Farley had conned her. There was no such mine-the article had been a fake.

Rachel uttered a little cry and fumbled for something, then injected it into Goldie's IV lead. The room stopped spinning as drowsiness tucked itself around her awareness like a woolly blanket, but memory remained, harsh and inescapable.

Rachel had found a chair. "Goldie?"

She managed to look up.

"Goldie, what is it? What happened?"

She started to laugh, high-pitched and semi-hysterical. Laughter gave way to hiccuping sobs as the reality of her loss sank in. Nearly her entire life's savings, gone. All of it, except for a few coins and the odd gem or three. And, thank God, her precious parakeets, which were safe at her apartment. She'd have to raise cash to live on by selling what little was left-except for her beautiful birds, which she'd sell only after she'd sold everything else she possessed-including her soul. She found herself blurting it all out between sobs, mortified yet strangely comforted when Rachel eased her up and put both arms around her, letting her cry it out. By the time she'd told it all, Goldie realized that whatever Rachel had slipped into that IV line was more potent than she'd realized. Drained of tears and energy, the drug took hold with triumphant strength. The last thing she was aware of was Rachel's hand on hers, comforting. Then she was asleep, face still wet with tears she hadn't shed in many, many years.

Skeeter barely had time to think, Aw, nuts ...

Then the enraged gladiator dove at him. Skeeter lunged across the bed, scattering labelled and corked bottles as he went. He ducked as the gladiator threw something. The mirror above his dresser shattered. Skeeter scooped up a couple of water bottles and hurled them back in the gladiator's general direction. He heard a meaty smack and a roar of pain and anger, but didn't wait to see what damage he'd done. He scrambled for the door, shoving Ianira aside as gently as he could. She shrieked behind him and he heard a loud curse in Latin, then he was around the corner and running hard.

Damn.!

Lupus Mortiferus' voice roared out behind him. The chase was still on. A swift glance over one shoulder revealed the gladiator, shirt dark and wet with inkstained water, face contorted with murderous fury, gaining ground. Skeeter put on a burst of speed and skidded around a corner into the corridor leading toward Commons. He caught his stride and shot into the midst of a packed crowd gathered to watch gate departures. He slithered between tourists and 'eighty-sixers who'd gathered to watch the usual antics of a gate departure unfold.

Cries of dismay and anger in his wake told Skeeter Lupus was still back there, dogged as a cursed snow leopard after its favorite prey. Skeeter vaulted over a cafe table in Victoria Station, startling screams from the diners and scattering glassware and lunches in several directions. A bull's roar and more screams accompanied the crash of the whole table. Skeeter raced and dodged through Victoria station, whipping around iron lamp posts, jumping park benches whether they were occupied or not, flinging himself past gaping tourists and residents while his mind raced in several directions at the same time.

He had to save Marcus. To do that, he had to get that money and stop Farley from taking Marcus through the gate. To get the money, he'd have to stop running. That meant Lupus the Murderous back there would chop him into minced Skeeter. He skidded into Urbs Romae, splashed straight through a shallow goldfish pond scattering a flock of Ichthyomises with a flapping of wings and shrill, toothy screams of protest and risked a glance back.

Lupus was still coming, inexorable as a Mongolian sandstorm.

Skeeter passed a cash machine without time to stop.

Shit! Now what? Maybe he could sprint around the waiting area, double back somehow, grab the money, and snatch Marcus? Even as the thought formed, the klaxon for a gate departure sounded.

"Your attention, please-"

Skeeter ignored the loudspeakers and concentrated on the crowd waiting to step downtime to Rome. Maybe if he just burst up to the pair of them and offered an IOU? Yeah, right. Cash deal or nothing, buddy. Your credit's no good. It was a bitter pill to swallow. The line had already started to move up the long ramp as returning tourists exited the gate. Skeeter caught sight of Marcus, but was too winded to call out. He and Farley were near the front of the line, almost to the portal already.

With no time to stop for cash, no breath to call out anything-much less the deal he'd made with Dr. Mundy-Skeeter did the only thing he could do. He jumped the roped-off waiting area's steel fence, caught a ramp girder, swung himself up and around, and landed on his feet next to a Time Tours guide so shocked she actually screamed. More screams behind him told Skeeter that Lupus, curse him, was still back there. He put on a burst of speed, clattering up the steel meshwork ramp, trying to catch up to Marcus before he could step through the portal.

"Marcus! Wait!"

His heart plummeted to his toenails.

Just ahead of him, Farley and Marcus vanished into the distortion of the open gate. Skeeter would've sworn in a court of law that Farley had bodily dragged Marcus through after hearing Skeeter's desperate shout.

Skeeter had two choices. He could jump off this platform and elude Lupus yet again, leading him another merry chase through the station, or he could crash the gate and find a way to get Marcus back through. Time Tours, Inc. was going to fine him something dreadful.

Skeeter drew a deep breath and threw himself bodily through the portal. He landed in the familiar wine shop, momentum hurtling him past shocked tourists. Skeeter crashed into a rack of stacked amphorae and knocked the whole thing over. Wine, like foaming seawater against rocks, spread out in rushing waves across the entire floor. Tourists screamed and tried to dive out of the way. He couldn't see Farley anywhere in the confusion.

"Marcus!"

No familiar voice answered. He grabbed the nearest guide he spotted and gasped out, "Farley! Where'd Farley go with Marcus.

The man shook his head. "They just left, in the first group. For the inn."

Skeeter laughed semi-hysterically. "If Farley ends up at the inn, I'll eat your shoes."

He was just about to dodge into the street when, a heavy hand closed on his shoulder. Someone spun him around with brutal force. Screams of panic rose all around. Lupus Mortiferus' visage loomed enormous in Skeeter's vision. He had just enough time to think, "Oh, shit-"before a massive fist and darkness crashed down.

Sights and smells overwhelmed Marcus from both past and present the moment the door to the wine shop's warehouse opened onto the street. A tremble hit his knees. Farley glanced around.

"Stop dawdling," he said irritably in Latin.

Marcus clutched the man's luggage with sweating hands and followed the rest of the group toward the Time Tours inn on the far side of the Aventine Hill from the great Circus. They headed down the Via Appia toward the hulking edifice of stone bleachers, rising in tiers to the arches high overhead. When the rest of the group turned left to skirt the Aventine, Farley surprised him by heading the other way, toward the Capitoline Hill.

"Mr. Farley-"

"Be quiet and follow me!" Farley snapped.

Marcus glanced once at the tour group disappearing into the crowd. Then, hesitantly, he followed Farley. He'd given his word. And he needed to clear this debt. But the longer they walked, passing the Capitoline Hill and moving through the great Forum, where the rostrum towered with its glittering trophies of war, the battering rams of ships taken in battle, the greater grew Marcus' sense of wrongness.

"Mr. Farley, where are you going?" he asked in English as they left behind the Forum.

"To a place I've arranged," Farley answered carelessly.

"What place?"

Farley glanced over his shoulder. "You ask too many questions," he said, eyes narrowed.

Marcus stopped dead in the street, setting down the man's bags. "I believe I'm entitled."

Farley's mouth twitched at one corner. "You? Entitled?" He seemed to think this outrageously funny. "Hand me that bag. That one."

Marcus stooped without thinking, handing it over automatically. Farley opened it

And the next thing Marcus knew, his face had slammed into a brick wall and Farleys fist into his left kidney. He gasped in agony and felt his knees begin to go. Farley held him up with a fist twisted through his tunic. The next moment, Marcus' hands were manacled in iron chains.

"Now listen, boy," Farley hissed in his ear, "you're not in La-La Land any longer. This is Rome. And I am your master. I paid good, goddamned gold for you and I intend to do with you as I see fit. Is that clear?"

Marcus tried to struggle, knowing even as he did that any fight was hopeless. Farley put him on the ground with another punch to his kidney. He groaned and lay still at the man's feet.

"Get up."

Marcus fought to catch his breath.

"I said get up, slave!"

Marcus glared up at him through a mane of fallen hair across his eyes. "Bastard!"

"Get up, slave, or l'll have you branded as a runaway"

Marcus blanched. The letter F burnt into his cheek ... He struggled and lurched, but finally made it to his feet. Curious onlookers shrugged and returned to their business. Farley fastened a long rope to Marcus' chains, then signaled to a couple of idle fellows at a wine stall, their sedan chair leaning against the wall.

"You, there! Is your chair for hire?"

"It is, noble sir," the broader of the two said eagerly, setting aside a chipped earthenware mug of wine. "You have merely to tell us your destination."

In a daze of disbelief and growing terror, Marcus watched Chuck Farley climb into the sedan chair and accept his luggage, which he balanced on his lap. The porters struggled and grunted to get him airborne and settled onto their shoulders. "Come here, slave!" Farley snapped. "I don't want you getting tangled up in traffic and causing me to fall!"

Marcus stumbled behind the sedan chair, wrists weighted by the heavy cuffs. Chains clanked with a sound of buried nightmare. He remembered being chained ... chained and worse. Ianira! he cried silently. What have I done, beloved? If opportunity had presented itself, he would cheerfully have plunged a dagger through Chuck Farley's black heart. But he knew opportunity would not present itself.

The porters carried Farley to an imposing villa, where one of them pounded on the door. A slave chained to the interior wall of the entryway opened the door and bowed low, asking their business.

"Tell your master the man he was told to expect has arrived," Farley said, his Latin flawless. "With the goods, as promised."

The slave bowed and passed word to someone deeper in the house. A moment later, the porters had set down their burden, sweating and gasping for breath as though they'd just carried five men, rather than one. Farley paid them and sent them away with a wave of his hand. Then he turned to Marcus, an unpleasant smile lighting his eyes.

"This way, if you please, young Marcus. You are about to meet your new owner."

He wanted to run. Everything in him shouted the need. But in broad daylight, with hundreds of Romans to take up the cry "Runaway!" trying to bolt now was tantamount to suicide. He swallowed down a dry throat. Farley jerked him off balance with the rope, dragging him forward into the villa. He said in an ugly whisper, "You'll have to work a few years to pay off this debt, boy."

Marcus felt sick-sick and trapped. He knew in his soul that no man had the right to own him, but that was in a world two thousand years away. Here, now, to gain his freedom and satisfy the law and his sense of honor, he would have to obtain his purchase price, somehow. Or compromise the values he'd come to believe in so highly and simply run.

It was even money at the moment which he would choose.

Then he was stumbling into the presence of a wealthy, wealthy man. Marcus actually went down, catching himself on hands and knees. Gods ... He had seen this man many times, at public functions, on the Rostrum, in the law courts. Farley was selling him to ...

"Farlus, welcome! Come in, come in."

"Your hospitality is gracious, Lucius Honorius Galba. Congratulations, by the way, on your election to curule aedileship."

Tremors set in, chattering his teeth. Lucius Honorius Galba had been elected curule aedile? As powerful as his hated first master had been, Galba was a thousand times more so. Escape this man? Impossible. Galba glanced down at him.

"This?' the man said, disdain dripping from his voice. "This cowering fool is the valuable scribe you offered for my collection?"

Farley jerked on the rope. "Get up, slave." He said to Galba, "He didn't wish to be sold from my household. And he doubtless knows your illustrious reputation very well." The smile Farley gave Marcus was cool as a lizard's. "I assure you, he knows his job well. I purchased him some years back when the estate of one of the plebeian. aediles was being disposed of due to the man's death. As to the terror, his desire to make a good impression has left him shaking like a virgin."

Galba chuckled. "Come, boy, there's nothing to fear. I'm a fair man. Get up. I have need of a new scribe and your master, here, has offered a fine trade, a very fine trade. Come, let's see a demonstration of your skills."