Part 2, Portents: Chapters 16 - 26 Summary

In chapter sixteen, Gordianus the Finder stops at a tavern called the Bleating Lamb in the small town of Narnia. There, Gordianus has a conversation with the innkeeper, "an enormously fat Etruscan man with dark yellow teeth" (p. 155). The innkeeper tells Gordianus that Roscius (pater) has family in the area and that there is bad blood between them. Gordianus learns from the innkeeper that Roscius's cousins, Magnus and Capito, hated Sextus Roscius (pater) and that the feeling was mutual. The tavern owner is convinced of Roscius's son's guilt. The younger man hated his father for loving his half-brother, Gaius, more.

Gordianus learns that Mallius Glaucia, a slave once owned by Magnus Roscius (and now his right-hand man), was drinking in the Bleating Lamb the day after Sextus Roscius (pater) was killed. Glaucia, it seemed, had in his...