The Gift

by Bryan M. Litfin

  “To be feared,” he growled.

  After waiting a few more seconds, Borja finally released his grip. The Overseer gulped air and tried to clear away his dizziness. Now he understood the situation. He began to prepare himself for what lay ahead.

  The Iron Shield brought a table and set it beside the Overseer’s chair. Borja laid three objects on it: a parchment, a quill, and an inkwell. “It is time to renegotiate our agreement,” he said.

  “Why should I bargain with you?”

  Borja smirked. “I shall provide you with motivation soon enough.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  Eyes flaring, Borja pointed an accusing finger in the Overseer’s face. “You’ve been proselytizing! You think I don’t see what’s going on? We have eyes in every head! We see what you’re up to. You and your ‘Papa’ aren’t content to carry out your rituals in your dead temple! No! You must spread your filthy cult among the people. Handing out favors they haven’t earned . . . filling their heads full of lies . . . consorting with Defectives like they’re actually human! You’re disgusting, priest! That scar on your forehead makes you one of them.” Borja leaned close again, thrusting his finger under the Overseer’s chin. “Before this day is over, there will be even more reasons to call you defective,” he snarled.

  The Overseer swallowed and blinked his eyes, taken aback not only by the words but by the visceral hatred emanating from his adversary. It was like a solid force—a malignant fist of malice that pummeled the Overseer and threatened to overcome him. He prayed to Deus for the strength to resist it.

  “You may not like it, Borja,” he said, gathering his courage, “but we have a legal right to exist. You can’t prove that any of us has violated the treaty. Some of the aristocrats won’t want you upsetting the balance we’ve achieved here. If you don’t release me, there will be legal consequences.”

  “Ha! So you wish to appeal to the law, do you? Perhaps you forget: your right to exist is dependent on not proselytizing! You have broken that law.” Borja poked the parchment on the table with a stubby finger. “When you confess to it, your rights will be altered.”

  “I will confess to no such thing.”

  “Oh, I think you can be made to do so.”

  Borja nodded to the Iron Shield, who approached with a slim knife and a pair of pliers. The Overseer grimaced when he saw the fearsome tools. Beads of sweat broke out on his brow. Deus, grant me endurance!

  “I’ll do it myself,” Borja said, taking the knife and pliers from his bodyguard. The Iron Shield’s hand clamped down on the Overseer’s left wrist, which was strapped to the armrest of the chair. Smiling, Borja set the point of the knife against the Overseer’s fingertip.

  “Cruelty is strength,” he said.

  He shoved the blade forward.

  The Overseer could not help but scream as Borja pried up his fingernail. Pain like molten fire erupted from his hand and exploded up his arm. Every nerve in his body was seared by the agony. He threw back his head and writhed in the chair.

  The Iron Shield laughed. “Nicely done, my lord. May the next nine be just as proficient.”

  The Overseer panted, unable to breathe because of the intense pain. He could feel sticky blood on his hand but did not dare look at it. Dizziness engulfed him. He thought he might faint.

  Borja held up the quill. “Perhaps you are ready to sign?”

  “Never,” said the Overseer through gritted teeth.

  Shrugging, Borja handed the torture implements to the Iron Shield. “Continue until you have obtained the confession. I will see if our guests have arrived.”

  As the dark warrior approached with the knife and pliers, the Overseer’s stomach tightened.

  Help me . . . Deus . . . help me . . .

  The knife touched the tip of his middle finger. The Overseer clenched his jaw and steeled himself. And then the excruciating pain came again.

  On the third nail, he bit his tongue so hard it began to bleed.

  On the fifth, he passed out.

  A slap across the face awakened him. His head hung low, and his vision was blurred. A throb like a million hammers pounded his hand. The Overseer felt as if a swarm of wasps were stinging his fingertips.

  “Look here, priest.” It was Borja’s voice. “We have some of your friends.”

  The Overseer squinted through the haze. Sweat stung his eyes. His mouth tasted like blood.

  Three figures dressed in ragged garments stood across from him, making whimpering sounds. Their facial features were deformed, their movements jerky. The Overseer could sense the confusion in their childlike minds.

  Defectives.

  Borja loomed over the Overseer with his hands on his hips. “If your own torment will not cause you to relent, perhaps the deaths of these twisted specimens might make you change your mind.”

  “Leave them alone, you fiend! They’re innocent!”

  Borja snapped his fingers. The Iron Shield sprang into action. His mace flashed, and one of the Defectives was knocked across the room. The other two men started to wail. Though they tried to get away, guards held them fast.

  “There is no limit to how many I will exterminate,” Borja said. “I will keep going until you sign.”

  The Overseer dropped his chin and closed his eyes. Though the confession might alter the Christiani’s legal status, he could not watch the children of Deus be slaughtered one by one.

  “Hand me the quill,” he said.

  Borja turned to the Iron Shield. “Summon the clerks from the League of Merchants. They must witness it.”

  The Midnight Glider did not dock in the port of Roma but anchored off a tiny fishing village nearby. Two crewmen rowed Teo and Ana ashore, along with Liber, who had agreed to leave Hahnerat with his new friends since he could no longer obtain food from Drake. Vanita rode in the little boat as well. She had volunteered to watch over Liber while Teo and Ana made contact with the Papa.

  All things considered, Teo was in a good mood. Though the plan to translate the diary had been delayed, he felt he was back on track. Ana was at his side. Things were as they should be. Soon they would discover the New Testament together.

  They spent the night at an inn on the village’s central square. The next morning, the foursome met for breakfast in the common room. Teo marveled at how much food Liber was able to put away. After his isolation on the island, the new tastes were an obvious delight to him.

  Teo and Ana departed after breakfast and made their way to the placid river that flowed from Roma to the coast. A riverboat company operated regular trips between the city and the port. Teo purchased two seats under an awning on the rear deck. The boat shoved off, propelled upstream by its crew of rowers. For two hours the forests and cultivated fields slipped by. Eventually, however, the remains of ancient civilization became more frequent.

  “We’re entering the old city limits of Roma,” Teo observed. “Soon we’ll reach the modern settlement.”

  Ana sat up in her seat and craned her neck to look ahead. “I’m so excited to see it!” She glanced over at Teo. “A little afraid too.”

  “Afraid? Why?”

  Ana hesitated, fingering a lock of her hair. “Remember when we had dinner on Fisherman’s Isle?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “I made you swear to find the New Testament that night.”

  “I know. I’ve thought of that vow every day since.”

  “Well, now we’re here. This is the culmination of it all. We’ve waited so long, gone through so much. What if it doesn’t turn out like we hoped? What if we never find the book?”

  “You’re usually so optimistic, Ana. How come you’re worried? It isn’t like you.”

  She sighed. “I stayed up last night reading the Old Testament. Not all of it, but a lot. It’s obvious there’s more to the story. Creation, Abraham, King David, the prophets—they were all building to something incredible, but now it’s been lost. I feel a lot of pressure to recover it.”


  “Me too,” Teo said.

  “Yet you’re not afraid to fail?”

  “I am,” Teo admitted, “but that’s where faith comes in, I think.”

  “How so?”

  “To me, faith is when you’re scared or uncertain about something, but you keep going because you trust the one who’s in charge. That’s what we have to do here.”

  Ana nodded. “I’ve prayed for deeper faith like that. I want to trust Deu. But it’s hard! What if we make a wrong decision and blow our chance to find the book? What if the book isn’t what we expect it to be? Then do the bad guys win?”

  “The bad guys aren’t going to win. The New Testament describes the Promised King. He had power from Deu—power we can learn to use too.”

  “If he was so powerful, why did his servant Iesus die?”

  “I guess Iesus didn’t tap into the power that the king had.”

  “But we can?”

  Teo smiled as he arched his eyebrows and held up his palms. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. It’s all in the book.”

  “I hope so,” Ana said. “Everything’s riding on that.” She settled back into her seat.

  The riverboat’s oars continued to dig into the river. Soon the travelers reached the modern city. Very old buildings, now refurbished, mingled with structures of a more recent vintage. Ana marveled at Roma’s ancient grandeur. Teo sensed it too. Roma was different from the cities in Ulmbartia or Likuria. Somehow it felt . . . eternal.

  After disembarking at a pier along the riverbank, Teo led Ana toward a distant bridge. The Christiani basilica was on the opposite side of the river. As they wandered past shops and markets, Teo made a point of stopping periodically to let Ana rest her sore foot. The wound Drake had given her had healed well thanks to a honey poultice, so Ana hardly needed the rest, but stopping also gave Teo an opportunity to take note of their surroundings.

  After one of the breaks he stepped close to Ana. “Don’t be obvious, but do you see that beggar back there?”

  Ana slyly glanced over her shoulder. “Yes, I see him.”

  “He’s following us.”

  “Following us? How do you know?”

  “He’s been behind us since we got off the boat. When somebody reached out to put a coin in his cup, he ignored it. No beggar does that.”

  “Who do you think he is?”

  “I’m pretty sure underneath those old rags is a shaman.”

  Ana sucked in her breath. “Those men are awful.”

  “I don’t think he’ll try anything in the open, but you never know. What do you say we give him the slip?” Teo leaned close to Ana with a brash grin.

  She smiled back. “Lead the way, Captain,” she said.

  Teo took Ana’s hand and darted into a pottery shop. Ignoring the storekeeper’s protests, he dashed through a back room and exited into an alley. The pair dodged through the maze of streets, but to Teo’s surprise, the beggar managed to keep up. In fact, other figures in similar disguises joined the chase. Teo picked up his pace. Ana stayed right behind him. Rounding a corner, they paused to catch their breath.

  Ana peeked around the edge of the building. “They’re still there,” she said.

  “We’ll lose them. Come on!”

  The land began to rise as Teo and Ana ascended a hill. They changed course at random in an attempt to evade their pursuers. Teo had no idea where he was now. As he emerged from an alley he found himself staring at an immense palace surrounded by gardens. Guards with red armbands stood at attention near the entrance. Though pedestrians milled around the plaza in front of the palace, Teo didn’t think he could blend into the crowd before his pursuers caught up with him.

  “Teo, look where we are!” Ana’s face wore an expression of horror as she pointed at a sign above the palace gate: Nikolo Borja, Lord of the Pincian Hill.

  “In here, quick!” Teo ducked into a shed in an out-of-the-way corner. It was filled with bulky objects under tarps. A lavish house stood across from the wooden structure. Ana put her eye to a knothole.

  “Unbelievable,” she said, turning back to Teo. “It’s a brothel.”

  Teo looked through the hole. A courtyard beside the house centered on a fountain with statues of naked figures in various erotic poses. Overdressed courtesans wearing thick makeup and tall, curly wigs lounged around the fountain or chatted in the courtyard. Delicate, round-bodied eunuchs with pomaded hair ferried the women back and forth to the palace in two-wheeled rickshaws. Teo lifted one of the tarps in the shed. More rickshaws.

  Ana peered through a crack in the opposite wall. “The shamans have arrived. How are we going to get out of here?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “If we go out now, they’re sure to spot us.”

  “We just need a diversion.”

  As Teo glanced around the shed, his gaze fell on a large water main with a wheeled valve. He instantly recognized what it controlled. Grinning, he caught Ana’s attention. Their eyes met. He pointed. A slow smile spread across her face.

  “You wouldn’t,” she said.

  “Oh, I would.”

  Ana came over to Teo and cocked her head as she looked up at him. Her expression was mischievous. “Actually I would too.”

  Together they began to turn the wheel, opening the valve all the way.

  High-pitched screams exploded from the courtyard. Staring through the knothole, Teo saw the decked-out courtesans scrambling for cover as the fountain’s heavy spray rained down on them. Their soggy wigs fell to the ground, and their mascara ran down their cheeks as they fled. Rickshaws careened around as the eunuch slaves tried to escort their mistresses out of harm’s way. Rough men from the streets added to the pandemonium by teasing and obstructing the courtesans, whose expensive services were the stuff of their wildest dreams.

  “Now’s our chance,” Teo said, encircling Ana’s waist as they peeked out the door. “Let’s go!”

  They dashed from the shed into the hubbub outside. The bewildered shamans looked for them, but Teo used a passing rickshaw to hide from their view. He spotted an alley and scurried into it. After a few more turns he stopped to listen but heard no pursuit. Ana panted next to him.

  “There. I told you it wouldn’t be difficult,” he said. “Have a little more faith in me next time, okay?”

  “I did have faith,” Ana replied with a smile. “Faith is when you keep going because you trust the one who’s in charge.”

  Teo chuckled. Though he liked Ana’s clever quip, he didn’t have a quick response. She walked close to him and pointed over his shoulder. Teo turned. The Christiani basilica stood in the distance, its great dome rising into the sky.

  “I think that’s where our faith will truly be tested,” Ana said.

  Nikolo Borja pulled the last dormouse from a pot of boiling oil and released the tongs so the morsel would fall onto a plate. Although a slave would finish preparing the rodents and distribute them to the guests from the League of Merchants, Borja felt it was good theater to do the actual cooking himself. It gave the appearance of refinement and hospitality. Besides, he liked to watch the dormice squirm when he speared them with his fork.

  As the slave served the fried snack to the gathered merchants, Borja stepped behind a podium to deliver the keynote address. The businessmen had been discussing financial matters all day; now it was time for something else. The carefully planned speech began by laying a foundation of patriotic fervor. Then, after the greatness of Roman society had been extolled at length, Borja launched into a withering critique of the Christiani religion. He cast it as the single greatest threat to the culture and morals of Roman civilization. Nods of agreement circulated around the room as Borja mocked the ancient faith.

  A plague, he called it.

  The ominous word caught everyone’s attention. A hush descended on the crowd as each businessman stopped crunching the little bones of the dormice delicacies and considered the ramifications of what had just been said. Borja waited until the
tension was at its highest, then spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “My friends, listen to me. The plague has begun to spread.”

  The spacious hall burst into an uproar. Curses ricocheted back and forth as the audience called for action. Though the shouted solutions were chaotic, everyone agreed on one fact: something had to be done.

  The voice of one of the leading bankers rose above the din. “Lord Borja, what makes you say this? How do you know the disease is spreading?”

  Borja quieted the crowd with a wave of his hand. Removing a scroll from his embroidered tunic, he unrolled it and showed it to his guests. “The Christiani have been proselytizing! Look here: I have a signed confession.”

  Again a tumult broke out in the room. The banker stood up from his seat. “Is the document valid?”

  Borja signaled two clerks from the League of Merchants to come forward. When they confirmed that the confession was signed by a leading Christiani overseer, the listeners were incensed. The fact that it was signed under physical duress made it all the more legitimate, for it was assumed that torture would force a man to tell the absolute truth. Now there could be no doubt. The Christiani had broken their part of the bargain. Outrage filled the room. Everyone called for punishment.

  Borja seized the opportunity. “My brothers, now is the time to crush this corrupted faith. We have let it fester in our midst for too long.”

  “Tell us what to do!” cried a voice.

  “Let us revoke the legal privileges we so foolishly granted to the Christiani. Let us exterminate them from our realm!”

  Another merchant raised his hand. “Lord Borja, we should consider all factors before we make a move. A few aristocrats favor the Christiani. They might use their wealth and influence to defend the cult.”

  “That is true,” Borja acknowledged, “and that is why I have called you together today. With the combined resources represented in this room, we could hire the kind of army needed to make any resistance futile.”

  “That would be costly!” shouted a man in the back. “What’s in it for us?”

  Borja felt his face flush. Though he tried to hide his fury, he couldn’t help but adopt an angry tone. “Forty years I have lived with this bur under my saddle. No more! This confession is all the evidence we need to dissolve the treaty with the Christiani. Gentlemen, I am seeking your support. I ask you to send me mercenaries on the day I cancel the pact. Our troops will seize the Christiani temple and kill anyone who tries to stop us. If some of the local gentry protest, we’ll label them conspirators and confiscate their lands. You stand to grow rich off this deal!”