Rome 2: The Coming of the King by M. C. Scott

predecessors.
    Governor Florus ordered silence from his trumpets. The milling camels settled and returned to their hay. The crowd that ringed the market place fell to an uneasy silence in which both the Greek-speakers and the Hebrews waited to hear the governor’s reasons for disrupting their afternoon.
    ‘Who owns these camels?’ A steward called the question, not Florus himself.
    ‘I do.’
    Ibrahim stepped forward to stand before the governor, who looked past his right shoulder, pressing his lips together.
    The steward said, ‘Who is the buyer?’
    ‘I am contracted to sell to Demokritos of Rhodes, who trades here in the city.’
    Mergus knew this not to be true. All through the desert, the Saba brothers had spoken with reverence the name of their contractor: Yusaf ben Matthias, Hebrew counsellor andmerchant. Unless that man had taken a Greek name, then Ibrahim was lying.
    The crowd was made of youths, and many of them, from both factions. They murmured their surprise, not yet moved to action.
    Under that sound, barely moving his lips, Mergus said to Pantera, ‘You told Ibrahim of the governor’s new taxes?’
    ‘When we watered the horses, yes. Demokritos owes him two talents of gold. If anyone asks, he’ll swear before any god that he’s buying the entire train.’
    ‘Even so, Florus doesn’t believe him.’
    ‘No. So there is definitely a spy among us.’
    ‘Rasul.’ Mergus spat. To Pantera, he said, ‘If Ibrahim fights …?’
    ‘No risk of that. He won’t decorate a cross for the price of a dozen camels. Watch now, Florus has decided on a figure.’
    The steward shifted on his feet. He met no man’s eye. ‘The governor believes you speak untruly, that the true purchaser of these beasts is a Hebrew. He therefore levies twenty of the beasts as his tax. You will cede their ownership to him.’
    ‘ Twenty? ’ The gasp rolled around the crowd. Ibrahim was the rock on which it broke. Set man on man, Mergus would have laid all his life’s wealth on Ibrahim to win; he could have torn Florus’ ears off and used them to choke him. But the governor owned the Watch and suddenly there were a great many watchmen around the square, sweating in their mail and helmets. Half bore javelins. The other half had drawn their swords.
    Ibrahim said, ‘My lord, of the twenty-six beasts who survived our journey, five are not in calf.’
    ‘Then we shall leave you those five, plus one.’ Florus’ voice had the unfortunate timbre of a eunuch. Which, given that he had a wife, was impossible, or at least unlikely.
    Ibrahim said, ‘If my lord wishes that the Saba take their future trade to Damascus, he has only to say so. We would not have come at all had we known we were so unwelcome.’
    Mergus eased his blade in his belt. He was sworn to this man, who had just threatened a Roman governor. The Saba were the best – at times the only – camel traders east of Alexandria. Caesarea needed them more than they needed it.
    Florus smiled as a toad smiles, his eyes lost in his fat face. ‘You may trade where you will,’ he said. ‘But now we shall take all twenty-one in-calf camels as our tariff.’
    ‘One denarius each, as we agreed.’
    It was evening, and they had eaten in the inn’s hall down below, feasting on fish, because they could, and bakheer because they must show how honoured they were to have been offered it. It had been made by Ibrahim’s wife in her tent, and she was the most beauteous woman of the entire Saba tribe.
    While the Hebrew and Syrian youths began their nightly riots outside, they had stayed in relative safety by the fire and had toasted Ibrahim’s beautiful wife and each other and their horses, living and dead, and the horses they had once owned and would own in the future and the dead men whose spirits lay quiet under the sand of the desert. They had not mentioned the camels or their losses or whether any of them would make any money for the trip.
    But there was money. Ibrahim doled out the