Petronius TELESPHORUS’ HARSH EYES flickered over him once. “It’s the centurion’s little clerk,” he said. “I am not one of his informers!” Dorcas had gone over to lay the folded blankets beside Churaldin’s discarded armor. She straightened up. “Of course you aren’t,” she said warmly and brushed back the thick curls of her black mane from her face. Like a man speaking around the pain of a wound, Churaldin said, “Why don’t you go, Marcus? Sixtus knows nothing of any of this. It kills me to deceive so good a master—so good a man—but he wouldn’t understand.” “You could get him killed,” whispered Marcus. “If you were caught...” He looked over at Alexandras, enormous and awkward in the white light of the slit window. It came to him suddenly why the other servants had worked so hard to give him the impression that the young Briton was a womanizer-—a reputation he had never quite understood. What better reason for those nightly excursions, he reflected bitterly.
