Most Wanted by Kate Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

direction. My innards began to churn in panic. I knew the city well, and I could read the signs. Something big was happening. And if Little Boots was behind it, as he was behind everything that happened in Rome, it meant that no one was safe.
    My instinct was to bolt, but if I returned to the bakery without the cart, I was going to find myself in a different kind of trouble. So I grabbed the handles again and started trundling the stupid, clumsy thing along the street.
    And still the consul Incitatus followed me.
    There was a shout from behind. I turned and saw the English slave who had left me holding the horse. He was running down the street toward me, but my initial sense of relief didn’t last longer than a heartbeat. He was being pursued by a soldier, and the soldier was winning.
    â€œSave him!” the boy yelled at me, and they were the last words he ever said, because at that moment the soldier caught him and ran him through with his sword.
    There were other soldiers in the street and they had seen me. It was impossible to miss me, in fact, with the horse’s big purple blanket blazing out like a flag. There was only one way now for me to save my life, and I have to admit that I didn’t stop to think about the consequences. They could be no worse than staying where I was. So I jumped from the ground to the handcart and from the handcart onto Incitatus’s purple-coated back, and I dug my heels into the consul’s sides as hard as I possibly could.

Chapter Three
    E verything had been fine at first. Little Boots did some great things for Rome when he first came to power. But then he became ill.
    I was young at the time, but I still remember it well. My parents and grandparents paced the floor with worry. They joined the crowds at the temples, spending huge sums of money on sacrifices to the gods, pleading with them to spare the life of our young Caesar.
    Be careful what you ask of the gods, because they might grant your wishes. In this case they did, and many’s the person who has lived to regret the prayers and sacrifices he or she made at that time.
    Little Boots survived his illness, but most people will tell you that he never recovered from it. It changed him entirely. He began to say that he was a god, and he had the heads removed from all the statues of Zeus and replaced with his own likeness. He spent all the money that was left in the treasury on crazy things like floating palaces, and then he came up with ways to take everyone else’s money so he could keep on indulging himself.
    My grandfather was one of his first victims. He was a respected figure in Rome, and our bakery was the biggest and the best. So when Little Boots closed the granaries one day and wouldn’t let out any grain for making bread, my grandfather went to see him to ask why. It wasn’t only our business that would suffer. Without bread the people of Rome would be hungry.
    Later that day my father and mother received an invitation to go to the palace for dinner. They always refused to tell me what happened, but my brother, Lucius, found out and he told me. My parents were made to watch my grandfather being executed, and afterward they had to sit and have dinner with Little Boots and pretend to make small talk and laugh at his jokes. And they had, because if they hadn’t there was a good chance that their heads would have rolled like my grandfather’s, and what would have become of us children then?
    If there is one thing to be thankful for, it is that my grandfather’s death was relatively quick and painless. Since those days Little Boots has become ingenious at finding new ways to kill people. The longer it takes and the more painful it is, the better he likes it. And that’s why when I got up on that horse’s back, it wasn’t for a lark. I was more frightened than I had ever been before. I was relying on the consul Incitatus to save my life.

Chapter Four
    W hen I was small, before