by J. G. Willem
In truth, he was the only one to blame. Him, and no one else.
When Pistrus realised he wasn’t going to pursue the absurd line of inquiry, he said, “It’s a good deal. You get what you want. Absolution for your crimes and the girl of your dreams, which was the point of all this anyway, right? Plus you won’t be looking over your shoulder, waiting for me to get my revenge. It actually works out better for you than before.”
Pistrus laughed, as if he couldn’t quite believe how well it turned out for the sociopathic social-climber across from him.
Still, Belbus did not speak.
“Why do you even want her back?” Ursa interjected. “It’s clear that you don’t love her.”
Pistrus put a hand over his heart. “You offend me, Ursa. Of course I love my daughter. She’s going to ensure me a seat in the Senate.”
A grin peeled his face.
Ursa frowned. “What?”
“I’ve promised her to a one Senator Immussilus. When I retire in a few years, I’ll be making my way into politics. Senator Immussilus can make that happen. It’s fortunate that he has a certain weakness I can indulge.”
Ursa forced down bile. “Young girls...”
“Young girls,” repeated Pistrus. “You’re lucky I want her back at all. If it wasn’t for the good senator, I’d be happy to let you chop her up and sprinkle all the little bits of her into the Tiber.”
Ursa looked away, barely able to stomach the sight of him.
“So...” Pistrus turned to Belbus. “Do we have a deal? One girl for another?”
The bookie worked his jaw.
“It’s what you want, Belbus. It’s a better deal than you were going to get originally.”
“No it’s not,” Belbus said, breaking his silence.
Pistrus looked to Ursa in surprise. “He talks.”
“It’s not a better deal than before. It’s not even the same deal. You saw what I did to your men. You think I’m fucking worried about you coming after me down the road? No. I’ll slaughter them like I slaughtered your other guys. I’ll use their skulls like wine goblets, hang their skin for curtains. This is a worse deal and you know it. It’s a worse deal because, while I get Chimera, I don’t get the money. And I need the money. Not just to buy Chimera. I need it to set us up outside the city. I’ve got some money stowed away, but not enough to live on.”
“Maybe you’ll have to get a job?” Pistrus offered. “Although who will want to hire a lying, cheating, opium-addicted cripple is beyond me.”
He had dropped all pretence now and was openly glaring at the bookie.
“You little fucking worm,” he spat. “You think you can get away with this? This is my life you’re screwing with here. Unlike you, once I die, I will actually be remembered. I am someone worthy of remembrance. In a generation or two, your bones will be dust and someone will speak your name for the last time and then you will be forgotten. It will be as if you never existed, so insignificant was your mark on this world. Do you understand me?” He looked between them. “You two are nothing. Nothing. Do you understand? I will live forever. I will leave a legacy, first in the circus and then in the Senate. People will carve statues of me. My name will be written in the history books. My feats will be spoken of until the end of time. Even if I don’t become emperor, I will stake my place in the human chronicle. Be sure of that. You want to run off and buy your little farm? I’ll tell you something, Belbus: once a slave, always a slave. You can free her if you want, but it’ll still be in her. In her blood. You? You’re not quite a slave, but you walk the line. You want to go off and buy a farm so you can fuck your slave wife and have a couple of slave kids? Be my guest. You want the money? I’ll give you the money. And Chimera. Just give me my fucking daughter back.”
Belbus almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had to look at Ursa to see the same shock plastered on her face.
She said, “You’re going to give us Chimera and the money and no reprisals?”
Pistrus held his arms wide, palms open, in a magnanimous gesture. “It’s my final offer.”
Belbus was silent for the better part of a minute. Weighing his options. Examining the situation from every possible angle.
The other two waited.
Finally, the bookie opened his mouth.
“No,” was all he said.
Then he left.
He got up, and limped out.
There were a few moments of silence behind him as both Pistrus and Ursa came to terms with his decision.
“Just... wait there,” he heard his partner say to the charioteer. “I’ll speak with him.”
*
Ursa caught up to Belbus in the hallway, grabbing his arm and spinning him around.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Belbus shrugged her off. Limped on.
She kept pace alongside him, waiting.
“You heard him, Ursa. He’s gonna sell that girl to one of the most depraved, corrupt sons of bitches to ever sully the Senate with his presence.”
Ursa creased her brow. “That’s why you said no?”
“Of course.”
“This from the man who asked me if I wanted to kill Agnina in the event of her father failing to throw the race, or if he should.”
“People change.”
“People don’t change that quickly.”
“Just what is it you’re accusing me of?”
“I’m accusing you of doing exactly what I thought you were doing. I knew this was about you getting back at him. I fucking knew it. He offers you Chimera and the money and no reprisals on a silver fucking platter - a platter! - and you say, ‘No thanks.’ No thanks? Are you fucking kidding me? After everything I’ve done for you, everything you’ve kept from me, you’re going to drag me down with you for a goddamn ego trip?”
“I’m not dragging you anywhere. You want out? There’s the door.”
He gestured to a random doorway as they passed it.
“That’s a door. The door is the one he just offered.” Ursa took a deep breath in and out to calm herself. “You can’t handle not getting the better of him, can you? The fact that he’s resolving this on his terms is driving you nuts.”
Belbus said nothing. Kept limping. Kept his shoulders up and his head down and kept limping.
“He’s giving us an out. Just like that. You get everything you wanted. You get the farm. You get Chimera. You get enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your miserable life. The only thing you don’t get is to twist the knife. That’s the only thing. I get that he hurt you, Belbus.” She put a hand over her heart. “I get that. I do. Believe me, I know what it’s like to hate someone so much you’d give your final breath just to hear them scream. But you have it inside you to walk the higher path. To resist that impulse. If you can walk away from that right now, we’ll be fine. All of us.”
“Not the little girl,” Belbus reminded her.
Ursa sighed. “No. Not the little girl. But I don’t recall you having the same crisis of fucking conscience when that reptile drowned a boy not much older than her right in front of us. Tell me, how is that any better?”
“It’s more merciful.”
Ursa shook her head. Suddenly, she was talking to a complete stranger. “Drowning him? That’s your idea of mercy?”
“He’s not here right now. We are. I’d call that mercy, wouldn’t you? Like it or not, the boy was a slave. You wanna change the law? You wanna abolish slavery in our time? Run for office.”
“I can’t. I have a vagina.”
Belbus took that one in stride. Fair enough. “Agnina isn’t a slave. She isn’t property. She’s his daughter.”
“What’s the difference?”
Belbus took that one in stride too. “The difference is, we can do something about this.”
“What can we do about this? Even if you pull this off, and get everything you want, and you get to twist the knife by making Pistrus throw the race... you’ll still ha
ve to give him back his daughter, and she’ll still get married off to the senator. Agnina is your leverage. Once he throws the race, you give her back. That’s the deal.”
“Maybe that deal’s off the table now.”
Ursa ran her hands through her hair, eyes bulging. “Have you lost your mind? You can’t fucking re-negotiate the deal in your own head, on your own terms. If he throws this race and we don’t give her back, do you honestly believe he’ll ever stop hunting us down? Do you honestly believe we’ll ever be able to stop looking over our shoulders?”
Belbus remained silent.
“What about the boy?” Ursa said. “We couldn’t do something about him?”
“The boy is dead. Nothing we do now will bring him back. All we can do is learn from that.”
“You admit it was a mistake then?”
Belbus considered it. “No. I made the best choice I could with the information I had at the time. Now, I have new information.”
“What information?”
“The information that we have, in our custody, a girl who glows with the light of a thousand suns. A girl who was born into wealth, yes, but who was never shown even an ounce of love in her entire life. A girl I’ve known for less than a fortnight, and without even trying, I’ve done enough to endear myself to her that she runs up and hugs me at the door. It’s not...” His voice caught in his throat. “It shouldn’t be that easy.”
“I know that,” she said. “But we knew that this morning. Before the boy.”
Finally, Belbus stopped. Turned to face her. There was something broken down about him now. Something resigned. Something raw, laid bare.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen to her. I figured maybe she’d go back to the same neglectful parents as before and I could live with that. But if Pistrus gets her back.... He’s going to sell her to that monster and that man is going to rape her. He’s going to rape her over and over and over again, every day and every night until she gets old enough to actually have children, and then he’ll get rid of her.”
Ursa looked down. She knew it as well as he did, but to hear it put so bluntly forced a moment of contemplation.
“For the first time in my life, Ursa, I have the ability to do something completely on my own terms. Something unequivocal. Something good. Something I don’t have to compromise on. Something restorative, maybe. Something that adds to my soul instead of chipping away at it. I’m never going to have statues carved in my likeness. I know that. I’m not stupid. I also know he was right when he said I’ll be forgotten in fifty years.” Belbus paused, searching her face and finding pity and confusion. “But I can do this. I know I can. I can get Chimera and the money and save Agnina and live happily ever after. Everything that I want is right there, and it’s the right thing to do. That’s never happened to me before. It’s either one thing or the other, and I’ve always chosen the other. Maybe I have a chance to square something away with the gods here. Ursa, it’s so close I can taste it. I just have to find the courage to reach out, and I think I have found it. All these years of wandering, and now it’s here. I’m here. There is no other choice.”
Ursa watched him, feeling his want and his rage and his hope, even if it was a fool’s hope. She felt it in her stomach. In her bones. As he spoke, her own rage gave way to bafflement gave way to pity gave way to hope.
His face was animated. Alive. The years fell away from him and she saw the man he used to be; a wily scrapper who didn’t yet know what path he was going down but who now shone with the light of foreknowledge. He vibrated with energy. Anger and hate and the eager anticipation of being able to feel content. He was... excited. She could almost see the smile he was holding back.
“If this is about that...” She sighed. “Fine. I’m in. But if this is about the juice, I’m out.”
“The juice?”
“Don’t play coy with me. If you’re doing this to get a thrill on top of everything else, that is a line I won’t cross. I can see my way clear to the rest of it, but if this is like a drug to you...” She hesitated before continuing. “I can’t help but think that’s why you got into this in the first place.”
“I got into this because I was poor, and I hated it, and some asshole put an abrupt end to the first idea I had about getting out, and I didn’t have a daddy who was a lawyer.”
“You don’t like the juice?”
“I like the juice fine.”
“You won’t miss it?”
“Sure, I’ll miss it. I’ll miss a lot of things.”
“You think you’ll be able to give it up?”
“Would I be doing this if I didn’t think I could give it up?”
She folded her arms and studied him. “I think you think you’ll be able to give it up. I think you’ll be bored.”
Belbus was shaking his head like she was way off the mark. “So what if I’m bored? I’ll be rich and happy and bored. Better than poor and desperate and constantly looking over my shoulder. Bored? I can’t fucking wait to be bored. I’ll work my farm and raise my kids and be bored and happy and rich. Maybe I’ll paint. Maybe I’ll build furniture. Maybe I’ll sculpt.”
“Sculpt?” she said, snorting a laugh.
“The point is: I can’t wait to sleep with both eyes closed.”
“But will you be able to sleep with both eyes closed?”
“Because of this, you mean?” He gestured to his eyepatch.
Ursa squinted. “What? No, I mean if you do this to Pistrus. Will you be able to sleep with both eyes closed if you stab him in the back like this?”
Belbus breathed in deeply through his nostrils, filling his lungs. “If I go far enough away... Sure.”
Ursa’s face fell. The same sadness from the tunnel at the Circus Maximus came back to her now.
He wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. What he could say. If there was anything to say. All of his cards were on the table now.
Finally, Ursa let out a long sigh.
“Do you have a plan?” she said. “Or are you just making this up as you go along?”
*
In that exact spot, hours later, Belbus limped in the opposite direction, wiping the blood from his blade. Beside him were Ursa, Bobarius and Taurinus, all with daggers drawn.
“Told you I had a plan,” Belbus whispered.
Ursa rolled her eyes.
They were in. That was the hard part over.
Joining their party tonight was one additional member, though he was not there by his own choosing. He was there, quite visibly, against his will.
The guard who they’d caught dozing where Auribus had previously stood shuffled along in front of Taurinus. He was a young, gangly sort of man; in many ways, a child. The giant pressed his knife into the man’s windpipe and urged him on, the implied promise being bloodshed should the man decide to shout. The guard had already seen Belbus make good on that promise with a fellow sentry.
They made their way quickly and quietly up the hallway towards the pool room. Into the pool room. Across the pool room. Past the pool.
“That’s the one?” Taurinus said, meaning the pool.
Ursa nodded. “That’s the one.”
Torches flickered to guide their way; casting light, casting shadows. No one moved in the house, save them. Not a sound could be heard, save the gentle scuff and scrape of leather sandals on cold marble.
They passed beyond the pool room into a kitchen and beyond that into a garden courtyard surrounded by a covered walkway. Tall columns held up the roof. Doorways in each side led off to different parts of the villa.
“Which way?” Taurinus hissed at the guard under his knife.
At the risk of cutting his throat as Belbus had done that morning with Auribus, the guard jerked his head to the left.
“That way,” he groaned.
The cloak-and-dagger crew scurried around the courtyard, as quickly as silence would allow. They slowed, approaching the doorway. Hung back. Flattened themselves against the wall. Belb
us poked his head around the corner. Moved out. Gestured for them to follow. The coast was clear.
They went after him.
Down another corridor, this one shorter.
They stopped again where the hallway ended. Across the colonnade, a short flight of marble steps descended to an expansive garden.
“There,” the guard whispered, indicating a long, dormitory-like building on the far side of the garden. “That’s the slave quarters. She’ll be in there.”
Belbus fixed the dormitory in his sights with grim determination. He inched closer to the corner of the final walkway. Already, he could hear footsteps coming along the colonnade.
Footsteps to his left. The side he was on. Footsteps approaching, not retreating.
He froze. Gestured for the others to be silent without looking back.
The bookie leaned forward ever so slightly. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. He poked his head just far enough around the corner that his outer eye could get a line down the colonnade.
Two guards, walking side by side. Each holding torches. Coming his way.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
Belbus turned back to his crew. He jerked his head at Bobarius to come up with him. The big guy did so. He leaned in for the instructions he knew were coming.
“Two guards,” the bookie whispered. “One about five foot six, the other about five nine. Sixty feet away and counting. Chest high. Lungs, if you can get ‘em. Not all the way through. We want them on their back. No blood.”
Bobarius hesitated as he ran the calculations in his head. The uncertainty that registered on his face didn’t fill Belbus with confidence.
“Have you got this?” he said.
Bobarius nodded vigorously. “No, of course. I got this.”
“Was that ‘no’ or ‘I got this?’”
“I got this.”
The big guy stepped forward, trading places with Belbus. In the process, he removed an immense composite bow that was slung across his back, lifting it over his head. With the other hand, he drew two arrows from the quiver slung in the opposite direction. Together, they had formed an X.