The Blood of Alexandria by Richard Blake Page B

commissioned maps and reports showing each one of these. Every one had its merits. It was a question of whether, and if so how hard, we wanted to hit the dissenting landowners. Then, of course, there was the complicating factor of lands willed in perpetuity to the Church.
    Back in Constantinople, with officials from half a dozen ministries sitting in and everything on the record, it would have taken days. Here, it was just the two of us at my desk with a couple of clerks, and we were able to get through the complexities with nothing carried over.
    ‘Do come back a moment, if you please,’ I said to Martin as he was about to follow the clerks from the room. I’d been considering this since bumping into Priscus. Now, there was something important I needed to ask him.
    He looked significantly at the quilted leather on the door. He sat down again, just a foot or so from me.
    ‘Aelric,’ he said, speaking low in Celtic before I could make a start, ‘I don’t know exactly how to say this. But there are things that I believe you ought to know.
    ‘I spent this last night going over those subsidy payments again. The Undersecretary in the Disbursements Office didn’t want to tell me more than I asked. But he left me with enough documentation for me to work some things out for myself.’
    ‘So, what was it?’ I asked. ‘Fraud or incompetence or superstition?’ I resisted the urge to smile. Even straight up the arse, the amount of opium he’d taken was derisory. Now, he was gabbling away like a confirmed eater waking from his dream.
    ‘All of them, and more,’ he said. He pushed a sheet of his own jottings across the desk.
    I glanced at it. I then read it properly. I looked up.
    ‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘The subsidy has been located and cancelled five times in the past seventy years. Each time, it’s been carried into another budget and continued unbroken. It seems we have a heathen conspiracy going on here in the Disbursements Office. It wouldn’t be the first time, of course, this has come to light. Look at that stupid bugger of a Prefect – the one Heraclius burned to death last year for sacrificing to Apollo. If that still goes on in Constantinople, there’s no saying what happens in the provinces.’
    Martin leaned forward and dropped his voice still lower. I could smell the garlic sausage on his breath. A locked room, Celtic, whispering: these were natural precautions back in Constantinople; not here, though.
    ‘Aelric, we’re talking seventy-five pounds of gold here,’ he said, ‘seventy-five pounds of gold every year since the time of the Great Justinian. You don’t need that to keep up a clandestine temple in the back of beyond. With one year of that, Priscus could have another army.
    ‘And this subsidy isn’t the end of it. Regular fractions of spending have been creamed off whole budget items. This isn’t the usual petty corruption you expect to see anywhere. It’s too consistent, over too long a time.’
    I stopped him. ‘This is all very interesting,’ I said. ‘But it’s outside the terms of our commission. We were sent here to get the new land law into force, not reform the finances. We got the subsidy stopped because Leontius had set it in our path. Frauds in themselves on the Disbursements Office don’t concern us.’
    I looked again at the notes. There had been some very sticky fingers at work. I looked away and bit my lip. I looked for guidance at the silken hangings on the wall and the electrum water pitcher I’d bought in the antiquities market. I looked back at Martin’s heavy face.
    ‘I suggest you drop the matter,’ I said firmly. ‘It isn’t our problem.’
    ‘Aelric,’ Martin said, putting his face back into order, ‘there’s something I don’t like about this. I can’t give you evidence yet. But I know when things aren’t right. We need to be careful.’
    ‘Agreed,’ I said smoothly. ‘Egypt is a world in itself. Even Alexandria isn’t completely part of the