Rome, 44 bc
The assassin wore a mask of the god Pan.

A slender form shrouded in a black cloak followed Jason as he left a feast at the home of a wealthy widow named Portia. It crept, cat-like,  alongside him through the narrow streets,  vaulted arches, and lush gardens of the Caelian Hill.

Jason raised his oil lamp to get a better look at his companion.
The lamp flickered over grotesque features rendered in stiffened linen. Many of the other revelers stumbling home after celebrating the Kalends of January, had donned garish disguises; worse for wear after the night's bacchanalia. Their masks were bright and comical while the stranger's made the hairs on the back of Jason's neck stand up: Pan's horns and beard on the pale, gaunt features of a dead man. Through the mask's mouth hole, the stranger blew out Jason's lamp and disappeared into the shadows.
"My lamp's gone out, " Jason said to his patron, Julian Ramirez-Arellano when he caught up with the rest of his friends. "Someone's following us. He's going about in what looks like a shroud and has the face of death itself."
Ramirez-Arellano laughed.
"It's only a merrymaker. Many are sporting disguises tonight."
Jason took a deep breath and smiled at the older man. Perhaps Ramirez-Arellano was right? He'd been out all night. The sun was rising again over the Caelian Hill, leaving pink streaks across the horizon- what Homer would call the "rosy-fingered Dawn." Night had fled to the narrowest alleys and pokiest corners but its shadows ran free. At this time of the morning, the world was a strange and fluid place: day and night, awake and asleep, reality and dreams all blurred into one another like honey in one's breakfast porridge.
Once Jason had a few hours of sleep, things would make more sense.
Portia, their hostess the previous evening, was Ramirez-Arellano's mistress. She possessed many fine qualities, the ability to throw a feast worthy of a consul among them. No expense had been spared to celebrate yet another year of Julius Caesar's consulship: Falernian wine, Lucrine oysters, the sweetest flutes and lyres, and the overwhelming perfume of countless roses.
It may have just been the febrile state that Portia's party sent Jason into, but the Pan mask poked out again at him from a poky alleyway. Jason froze in his tracks.
"There it is again," he said. "The death's head."
Ramirez-Arellano clapped him on the back. "You've had too much to drink, my boy."
That was most likely the case, or, some reveler got into their head to pull a prank on them? But just to be safe, Jason clutched the handle of the dagger he had tucked into where his synthesis tied around his waist.

Ramirez-Arellano had attended the feast at the house of Portia with a train of young men who enjoyed his patronage, Jason among them. To a man, each had seen military service, at either Pharsalus or Alexandria. He must have felt that they were sufficient protection since he brushed off Portia's insistence that some of her guards accompany him home. The streets of Rome were not safe at this hour. If some cutpurse or footpad didn't get you, a falling roof tile might.
Jason's companions were all drenched in Bacchus. Some beat arrhythmically against drums or blew into flutes, making a sound like a dying ostrich. The rest sang bawdy marching songs from their days in the army which echoed through the streets and alleys and caused Jason's head to ring like a bell. A few groggy citizens poked their heads out of their cubiculum windows and shouted "Shut up" or "keep it down, " or "some of us are trying to sleep."  The young men brushed this all  off with a "fuck you, " or an "eat shit."
One of the Stoll brothers, either Connor or Travis, it was too early in the morning and Jason was too drunk to tell them apart, nudged him.
Stoll raised his eyebrow and gave Jason a grin like a comedy mask.
"And why are you so sour tonight, Grace?" he said.
The other Stoll threw an arm around his brother's shoulder.
"He's sour because a certain lady wasn't there."
"A lady named Reyna!"
Reyna was Ramirez-Arellano's daughter, as grand and imposing as her father. All of Rome hailed her as a beauty, in the cold, regal mold of the goddess Juno. The Stoll brothers lead the rest of the company in a raunchy song full of crude compliments about Reyna's face and body and speculations as to what kind of man could strike a fire in her flinty heart. Certainly not her husband, that sniveling little weasel, Octavian.
"Reyna, o Reyna, please take off your tunic.
Show us your lovely form.
Your husband's eunuch,
And your cunny needs a warm.."
Jason once sought Reyna's hand in marriage, until her father gave it away to someone else. He told himself that she was better off where she was. 
"That's enough," Ramirez-Arellano shouted to the young men. He didn't sound pleased to hear such smut sung about his little girl.  The Stoll brothers and the rest of their band of rascals laughed and moved on to a different song.
One by one, the group dispersed as each man came upon his home. Jason's house was the closest to the Ramirez-Arellano villa, so he volunteered to see the senator safely to his front door.
Ramirez-Arellano clapped Jason on the back. "Good night, my boy." 
"Farewell," Jason replied. 
Something rustled in the shadows. A figure shrouded in black rushed out of an alley and towards Ramirez-Arellano.
"My Lord," the stranger said.
Jason's heart stopped when he recognized the ghoulish Pan mask. He fumbled at his side for his weapon.
Ramirez-Arellano turned around to see who had addressed him. The stranger raised a dagger and plunged it into his stomach. Ramirez-Arellano let out a piercing groan. Blood stained his toga. Scratching and roaring, he fought off the stranger like a dying lion in the arena.
Jason pounced on the stranger and tried to pull him off his patron. The bastard would not get away with murdering a senator in cold blood.
With what strength remained to him, Ramirez-Arellano managed to tackle the stranger against a wall. The stranger snarled and stabbed Ramirez-Arellano in the throat. A river of gore flowed down the senator's chest.
Jason caught him as he fell to the ground with a thud. Ramirez-Arellano's body was limp and heavy in his arms.
During the time it took Jason to catch him, the stranger disappeared back into the shadows. Jason looked back down at the stabbed man. Ramirez-Arellano's face was pale and vacant. His breathing came in shallow gasps. Both of their clothes were drenched in blood. 
Jason used his toga to wipe some of the blood off his face. "Hold on," he whispered as he helped the dying man to stand upright. "There's a house I can take you to."

The Jackson house stood a couple of streets over. Jason shot off like an arrow in that direction. The Jacksons were old friends of Jason's family. Their son, Percy, was Jason's oldest and closest friend. They had gone to school together and served alongside each other in the Sixth Legion. Jason knew he could go to the Jacksons in an emergency.
His legs ached when he stood, panting, in front of the thick, oak front doors of the Jackson house.

"Open up, please!" He shouted as he pounded his fist until the iron nails studded into the door had bruised his knuckles. "In the name of Jupiter, open up."
His cries were answered by two slaves heading out on their morning errands.
"Dominus ...?" One of them, a thin, red-haired Greek, said.
Jason pointed to the Greek. "You, go wake your master. Tell him that a man's been stabbed, and Jason Grace needs his help." He then pointed to the other slave, a blond, muscular German, "And you, follow me."
O Dis Pater, please don't take Ramirez-Arellano yet.
Ramirez-Arellano lay, barely breathing, in a pool of blood when Jason and the German returned to him. They lifted the senator's bulk off of the cobblestones and carried him back to the Jackson home. The dying man's body grew heavier with each step they took. Jason couldn't wait to put him down on a soft bed, where he could pass away in comfort and dignity.
The Greek held the front door of the Jackson home open for them. A drooling mastiff dozed in the vestibule on top of a floor mosaic depicting a friendly, barking hound.

The doors swung open with a bang. Jason and the German bumped against the walls of the vestibule as they carried Ramirez-Arellano into the house. Ramirez-Arellano groaned in unbearable agony. All this noise woke the mastiff, who got up and growled at them.
"Easy girl," Jason whispered to the dog. Her growling had nearly caused him to stumbled and let Ramirez-Arellano fall to the ground.
"Get down, Mrs. O'Leary!" A deep voice boomed.
Poseidon Jackson, the master of the house, and his wife, Sally, still in the tunics they wore to bed, entered the vestibule from the atrium.

The mastiff ran to her master's side.
Sally gasped at Ramirez-Arellano's bleeding body. "What happened to him, Jason?" She said.
"I'll explain later, My Lady," Jason replied. "He doesn't have much time left."
Poseidon's eyes widened as he took in Ramirez-Arellano senatorial toga and well-known features. He lowered his head and turned his eyes towards Jason. "Take him into the master bedroom."

The sheets on Poseidon and Sally's bed were in disarray after their sudden departure from it. Ramirez-Arellano's blood, gushing from his neck and stomach, stained the white linen crimson. Whenever he breathed or coughed, more spilled out.
Jason took deep breaths to steady himself. It wouldn't do to faint or vomit up his dinner onto the Jacksons' fine marble floor.
Poseidon had sent for his physician but in the meantime, some of Sally's maids tended to Ramirez-Arellano's wounds. Ramirez-Arellano bellowed and thrashed about like a fatally mauled lion in the arena as the maids undressed him to the waist and tried to stop the blood with wads of rough wool and strips of linen. Sally held a goblet of wine mixed with milk of the poppy to his lips. "The only thing we can do is make him comfortable," she said.
Half the wine splashed down Ramirez-Arellano chin, washing off the dried gore.
"Reyna..." he groaned.
Jason wiped the blood and wine off of Ramirez-Arellano's face with a towel. "Should I send for her?" He replied.
"No..."
Perhaps it would be more merciful to spare Reyna the sight of her powerful father brought so low?  Reyna was one of the strongest women Jason knew but her heart couldn't handle it. She'd prefer to see her father laid out for burial with all the pomp and dignity he deserved and think of him as being at peace among the shades of their ancestors.
"Tell...her..." the dying man croaked.
Jason understood his meaning: tell Reyna what had happened. He took Ramirez-Arellano's hand and gave it a slight squeeze. "I will, my lord," he said.

Julian Ramirez-Arellano was dead an hour later. Jason kissed Ramirez-Arellano's forehead, a final goodbye to the great man's spirit as it left the body, before closing his eyes. He did his best not to shame himself by crying but a few rebellious tears rolled down his cheeks.
Please, Jupiter, don't let anyone see me.
When Poseidon's physician arrived, the red-haired Greek informed him that his services were no longer needed. The blond German was then dispatched to find an undertaker. Jason left the bedroom so the undertaker and his assistants could get to work on preparing the body for burial.
Sally was in the atrium, arranging tuberoses in a vase.

"I just cut these from the garden," she said. "I'm going to send them to the Lady Reyna with my condolences."
"That's kind of you," Jason replied. "She'll appreciate the gesture."
Reyna adored flowers and the rooms of her villa were heavy with the scents of roses, lilies, and jasmine. Her gardens were some of the most celebrated in Rome.
"Poor girl..." Sally's voice quavered.
Jason put a hand on her shoulder. "Knowing Reyna, she'll hunt down her father's killer like a she-wolf avenging her sire."
He almost pitied the monster for the fate that awaited him.
A pretty slave girl with ginger curls and a delicate-featured face entered the atrium with a large serving dish. She bowed her head slightly to Sally and placed the serving dish on a table near the pool in the center of the atrium.

Sally gestured for Jason to sit with her on a bench near the table. "I thought you might be hungry," she said.
Jason hadn't eaten in six hours at least. Everything that happened since then had distracted him from this fact. Now, his head spun and his stomach rumbled. The warm porridge and freshly baked bread in the serving dish released their seductive perfume and beckoned to him.

"Thank you," Jason said
Throwing good manners to the wind, he broke off a piece of bread and dug into the layers of porridge, goat cheese, and olives as ravenously as a wild animal.

The slave-girl returned with a cup of wine for Sally, who sipped from it while staring in the direction of the master bedroom, where Ramirez-Arellano's body was being cleaned and anointed with oil.
"Sweet Juno," she said. "How glad I am that Percy had nothing to do with this whole mess. Jason, did see or hear from him last night? With a murderer on the loose, I won't rest easy until he's home safe. If anything's happened to him, I swear I'll tear apart whoever's responsible for it with my own hands and teeth."
Such sentiments were natural in a mother and to Sally's credit. A Roman matron's greatest treasures were her children and woe to anyone who tried to harm them.
Jason rose from the benched and walked over to the pool in the center of the atrium. "Lady," he replied. "Percy left the banquet at the Ramirez-Arellano house before the rest of us."  Jason washed the porridge and crumbs off his hands in the pool. "I assumed he went home."
This was a bald-faced lie but Sally wouldn't want to hear where her son actually was.
The morning sun shone in through the skylight above the pool and illuminated the busts and death masks of Jackson ancestors which lined the atrium's vermillion walls. Soon a bust or death mask of Ramirez-Arellano would adorn the walls of his daughter's home.
Jason walked back to where Sally was seated, took her hand, and kissed it. "Don't worry. I have an idea where he is."