The cats keep their eyes open to hear if anything's going on regarding the eventual war that could be sailing up but so far they don't hear anything directly affecting their burdens. Tyggtass is focusing her reconnaissance activity to close to their street roof where there's been a lot of over-grown pale aggressive rats lately.
Grå takes a short tour to the bath house to check that the hole where one of the big rats came out is still plugged. It is but the uppish cats that live nearby taunt this time as well, emphasises his heritage as a plebeian cat and so forth. He jumps up on the wall of their burden's garden. They get very annoyed by this kind-of-trespassing and tells him to go away. Grå ruffles up hos fur and looks threateningly at them. They're too snotty to be afraid for him although his like 25% more cat than them and that's 25% more muscles than them so he simply quickly pushes them off the wall into the garden and goes on with his business. They hiss and shout after him as he tells them that they're quite bad at defending their territory. He tells them that if they taunt him again he will tear their fur so much they will be ashamed of showing themselves outdoors until it's replaced.
Grå scouts the outdoors area of the bath house when it opens and eavesdrops ont he humans gathering in the park areas to talk and relax. He hears some talk about some constellation of humans that has done some unintelligible human offence and now the discussion goes back and forth regarding whether the Romans should start a war with or if the other people maybe already have done that or if they should let it be. They also talks about whether it's good or bad that so many humans arrive from far ends of the empire and gather up in Rome. Some complain that they can neither read or speak latin but some say that they're hardworking and do a lot of the soldier work in the army and so on.
Later during the day Grå manage to sneak into the bath house entrance when it opens in the afternoon. It's scarily damp and suggests that there's large volumes of water nearby. A lot of the humans goes to a library next to the entrance. Several of the discussions is about the same constellation of humans Grå heard about earlier that has done something that the Roman humans maybe can't just let be. He also hear some slave owner talk about their slaves and Nincilimus. They say that the worship of Nincilimus dampens the discontent among the slaves so it's a good thing to introduce to the slaves.
Tryggtass spends the day sunbathing.
Svansglidaren spends much time at his burden's home to try catch as any rumours as possible about what's going on with the humans. It means that he has to spend times around the slaves though and he doesn't have that fine relationship with one of the three house slaves. The household has one more intellectual slave and one more worker slave plus one door guard slave. The door guard, without realising it himself as the ignorant human he is, is trespassing into Svansglidaren's territory as the guardian of the house. Hence the somewhat estranged relation between him and Svansglidaren.
The two regular household slaves have lately shown a much more positive attitude without any real reason. None in the family has given them any gifts or something lately. Svansglidaren have noticed that they have started to do some sort of shared ritual quite similar to the ritual where the household honours the forefathers. It's almost like they have started a small secret family of their own. When he starts to spy on them he finds out that they have a statuette that he hasn't seen before, here or anywhere else. As he spies further on the slaves he finds out that it's actually more like when humans worship at the temples rather than when they honour the forefathers at the family altar. The statuette is like a very thin man. He doesn't look like any of the regular gods though. He could maybe be Mercurius but he has no greek hat, not staff with wings and snakes and no winged sandals so probably not. It's not Pluto either, no attributes associating to him. It must be some smaller local spirit or being of some kind. They sacrifice some of their bread and even some of their wine which is a very scarce resource for the slaves.
One day the two slaves suddenly start to argue with each other, not a small argument either. Svansglidaren sneaks over to their bedroom where they're shouting to each other about whicever of something is the correct one, which one is the proper one, the authentic one. They seem to be arguing over which spirit being is the correct one. One is the slender man Svansglidaren has seen before and the other seem to be a very round kind of fat man. They both call their respective statuette Nincilimus and after a while the drops their representations of Nincilimus and start to wrestle in the small room until they get a little tired. They stop without really hurting each other, pant and go back to work but the shared ritual is over and the atmosphere is tense for the rest of the day.
In the evening Grå tries to track down the ferret they saved earlier when they killed the big albino rat. Tryggtass continue to "scout" the street roof and Svansglidaren spies on the guests that visit his burden's house. The guests and Svansglidaren's burden discuss the far away constellations of humans that has done something and how to convince more people that this is it. Now it has to be dealt with. It seems like the offerings to Mars is preparations for a war with those far away humans. They also disregards that Nincilimus the slaves worship.
Grå follows the track of the ferret to another insula more to the centre of their region until it suddenly stops dead as if it had taken one giant leap up to the stars. Confused Grå asks some other cats if they've seen a ferret. They don't really know it but they have seen a ferret now and then lately so they assume that a ferret has moved into the area. As Grå continues to sniff around he finds out that the scent track goes all the way very close to the wall as if it would have flown up to the roof whic would make some sort of sense if it could do some strong magic. After all they did meet it on a roof last time. Grå climbs around trying to get up on the top roof but fail and he doesn't find any new trails of the ferret. Grå tries to get some help from two cats he meet e g if there's any way up onto the roof but they obviously are the jokers and clowns of the area and Grå slowly but steadily builds up frustration as he tries to get something that's not a joke from them. Finally after a lot of jokes and misadventures one of them shows the way up to the roof.
Grå walks to the edge of the roof where he would expect a flying magic ferret to arrive if he would have flown up to the roof from where the tracks on the ground stopped. As he walks around he finds the scent of a ferret. He turns to the two cat jokers and asks what that scent is. "Weasel?" one of them says. Grå sighs and annoyed tells them that there lives a ferret in their house and they don't know about it. They don't seem to take that too seriously though. It is strange though because it's on the fourth floor and it's a closed apartment door without any hatch in it. Grå leaves and decides to come back tomorrow and talk to the ferret then, hopefully without the cat jokers.
The two household slaves in Svansglidaren's household is still not too friendly to each other and manage to sleep surprisingly far away from each other in the very small room where they sleep and live when they don't work.
During the night the three cats; Svansglidaren, Tryggtass and Grå shares information with each other and discuss what has happened lately. They speculate that the ferret and the rats are in direct feud with each other and that the weird big rats is after the ferret and that's why they come directly here every time. Also they assume that the ferret knows magic since that would explain why it can disappear and reappear. Maybe the magi ferret has driven the rats from it's own area and now has followed them here to their street roof.
The next day they all go to the insula where Grå followed the ferret. They meet one of the clown cats which Grå presents for the his friends in the most satirical way. The other cat can't be seen until they notis that the parapet on the fourth level has a pair of cat ears almost as if a cat was hiding very badly behind it. Grå presents them as "Clown 1" and "Clown 2". Outside a door they recognise the smell of the ferret. There is a glitch under the door that might be wide enough for a ferret. Tryggtass sniffs at the glitch and don't find much ferret smell at the floor but the door in itself also smells somewhat of ferret at it's lowest part although there's no hatch in the door.
A ferret jumps out through the door and stops dead staring at the three cats outside the door. Grå tries to wrestle the surprised ferret to the ground to stop him from running away. Something weird happens. Grå catches the ferret but still doesn't. It's if they were in the same place at the same time bt without relating to each other and the ferret disappears through the solid door leaving the three surprised cats outside.
"Hey" Tryggtass shouts "we just want to talk to you", "We want to talk about the rats". The ferret is understandably suspicious of them. It takes a lot of diplomacy to get it to crawl out from under the door. It sits warily outside the door, ready to jump away. They explain about the rats and how weirdly big they are and that they break through Svansglidaren's wards. Svansglidaren asks the ferret why a rat would run all over the Capitoline hill to attack him. After some confusion the ferret says that they're probably thinking of his daughter. After some discussion back and forth the ferret agrees that it was he who was there the first time and was sarcastic about the cats not being able to keep the rats at bay. They discuss the rats somewhat and hope that it's just a minor amount of rats that has grown and learnt how to break through wards. The ferret is very reluctant to let them talk to his daughter though. It promises to talk to his daughter though. They prepare to wait in the meanwhile when it says "See you in a while" and are almost gone when they manage to stop it and decide to meet just before the evening and the ferret promises to talk to his daughter until then.
As they leave Svansglidaren feels someone gnawing at his ward at the hole down to the sewers under Grå's insula. He focuses on the ward to stop whatever it is. He stops it, probably a rat, from breaking through. They return home to patrol their burdens homes. The two slaves in Svansglidaren's house has started to break up the mosaic int he hall. They work in the two ends of the hall though and sometimes just happen to spurt a piece of plaster at each other.
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