Vita Brevis Read Free

about.
    “Friends …” His voice grew quieter, so that they had to strain to listen. “I’m not one of these so-called healers who wastes his time criticizing his rivals. I’m not part of some fancy school of philosophy that I have to defend because I have a book to sell. You deserve better than that! And that’s why I’ve spent years of study and travel finding out for myself what works .”
    Ruso felt his teeth clench. Like the most pernicious lies, the man’s claims had a superficial coating of truth and an appeal to common sense.
    “You saw it for yourself, friends! Let us see if we can help you like we helped this young lady. Every medicine I will give you is guaranteed blessed by the goddess Angitia, every treatment taken from the genuine writings of Hippocrates himself! No problem is too large or too small! We’re only passing through, so seize your chance—don’t go home today without speaking to me!”
    “Stay away from him!” Ruso shouted. “He’s dangerous!”
    He was aware of a silence falling on the crowd. People were turning to stare as the showman offered him an even broader smile.
    “Might you be a medical man, my friend?”
    Vaguely aware of the distant tramp of marching boots, Ruso took a deep breath. Leaving out the word former , he called, “Medical officer with the Twentieth Legion.”
    The showman extended an arm from on high as if to present Ruso to the crowd. “My friends, you see how it is! Jealousy! Your own doctors don’t want you to come to me and be cured. And why not? You know why not! Because they’d rather keep taking your money!”
    The sound of boots on stone was louder now. Someone had called out the troops of the urban cohort to keep order. Ruso yelled, “If you’re so good, why don’t you stay in—” But one place? was lost under the relentless rhythm of sword hilts beating on shields and the cries of the crowd. The men of the cohort charged. The people fled. In moments Ruso was standing alone in an empty expanse of paving with only a scatter of debris and the stink from a trampled dog turd to indicate that anyone had been there.
    Having averted the riot, the cohort was reassembling under the deserted sun god. Ruso leaned against the plinth to rub his grazed knees and pull his tunic straight.
    “You there!” roared a voice, its owner striding toward him. “You deaf or what? Clear off home!”
    Eyeing the centurion’s raised stick, Ruso chose not to argue. He had barely taken ten paces when a voice from a shadowed doorway across the street said, “I see you’re still causing trouble, Ruso.”

3
    Brown hair, average height, faded tunic, battered sandals … had it not been for the voice, Ruso would never have noticed him. How long had he been standing in that doorway?
    Metellus, looking faintly amused, nodded a greeting to the centurion. Then he took Ruso by the elbow as if they were old friends and steered him toward the clatter that had resumed on the demolition site across the road now that all the excitement was over. “I heard you were in Rome.”
    Anyone who did not know Metellus would have taken this to mean someone happened to mention you. Anyone who had served in Britannia during Metellus’s time as security advisor to the governor would interpret it as I have an informer at the port who sends me lists of disembarking passengers.
    “So,” Ruso said, because it was best to be the one asking the questions, “what are you doing these days?”
    “Oh, this and that,” said Metellus. “Fortune has been kind. You?”
    “I’ve made some useful contacts,” Ruso assured him, wondering if Metellus wanted to know anything in particular, and for whom, and how to avoid telling him.
    “Really?” Metellus sounded surprised. “Who?”
    “I can’t say anything just yet,” Ruso told him. “You know how it is.”
    “Indeed.”
    Ruso hoped he didn’t. “Sorry I can’t stop and chat,” he said, waving past the sun god in the direction of the emperor