Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones

by Vox Day

  The Valerian nodded to the bald slave and preceded him from the room.

  Aulan stared at his father in silent disbelief as Patronus went to the door and closed it, then turned around.

  “You look rather like a fish, with that expression,” his father commented. “Albeit fish are seldom so covered in dirt, seeing as they tend to dwell in the water. You look as if you’ve ridden hard. What does ‘a few men’ mean?”

  “Two squadrons.” It was easier to focus on the small things. “I’m sorry, Father, but as I wrote you in my letter, the Valerian legion escaped. The assassins missed two of the junior tribunes, who then contrived to get past Buteo and the Cynothii.”

  “By digging a tunnel under the walls? How on Earth did Buteo miss that? Is the man a cretin?”

  “No, but he was too confident in his position. Corvus’s son is the tribune commanding, I think, and the lad managed to cut me off from the legion when he captured Vestremer and his men. Vestremer was the captain of the Cynothii mounted infantry, which I really have to say were actually a rather good idea for all that it didn’t turn out well in this situation….”

  “Aulan,” his father broke in.

  “Right, I’m sorry. Anyhow, I was trying to work my way back to Buteo when, fortunately, one of my scouts spotted their outriders. I sent a pair of riders to see what was going on and saw that the whole bloody legion was on the move, marching west. As soon as I reported to Buteo to let him know which way they were headed, I rode hell for leather here to warn you. I didn’t dare try to shadow them, since Corvus established two wings of cavalry when he raised the legion, and I had only half a wing.”

  “West. I would have thought they’d make directly for Vallyria to winter there.”

  “My thought was that he’s hoping to join forces with the two Valerian legions that remained in Gorignia. Do you know who is commanding them?”

  “Yes, of course. Titus Didius succeeded Corvus. He’s officially the general responsible for the goblin campaign. But Didius didn’t remain in Gorignia—he marched them south to Vallyria. Your young tribune will find their castras abandoned and empty. It’s a pity Buteo is so incompetent. I’d hoped we could take control of XVII now. That would have given us nearly three full legions in the north bolstering the provincials. But now, with Corvus holding the City legion plus his three House legions, we might be looking at our one and one-half legions against their four, come spring.”

  “But that’s a disaster!” Aulan cried, suddenly realizing how precarious their situation had unexpectedly become. “Even if we could get the other provinces to join with the Cynothii, we still wouldn’t have enough men to make up a difference of three legions!”

  “Two and one-half,” his father corrected. “It would certainly be a military disaster, my dear tribune. But fortunately, this is not a matter to be settled on the battlefield. Don’t worry too much about the tactical aspects while the strategic battle is still playing out.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Aulan said. “How can you be so unconcerned about that failure to take the Valerian legion? That leaves the balance of power in their favor! And where does Magnus come into all of this?”

  “I wasn’t unconcerned, not initially. I was very worried, especially if our part in the untimely deaths of Marcus Saturnius and the others became public knowledge. But the loose ends have been dealt with, and some new developments have potentially rendered even Buteo’s incompetence a matter of little concern.”

  “Valerius Magnus, I assume.” Aulan folded his arms and eyed his father skeptically. “What sort of deal could you possibly strike with him? He’s been a thorn in your side for decades. It’s not as if he’s going to come over to your side.”

  “Our side.” His father smiled enigmatically, looking rather like an eagle about to strike. “And yet that’s precisely what he’s done.”

  Aulan was astonished. House Valerius was putting its not inconsiderable weight behind the auctares? That would leave the Falconians as the only House Martial of any significance supporting the clausores, a shift so significant it might even justify calling off the civil war they’d labored so tirelessly to prepare.

  “The Valerians are with us?”

  His father shook his bald head. “Sadly, no. Only Magnus himself. He may be the Head of the House, but that is a step he can’t force them to take with him. The feelings run too deep. The bitterness is too severe.”

  “Even so…” Aulan’s voice trailed off as he marveled at his father’s ability to persuade even his worst enemy. “How did you do it? What do you have to do to seal the deal you were discussing?”

  “Ask, rather, what you will do,” Patronus said. Unexpectedly, his face tightened with distaste. “It’s an ugly business, son, make no mistake. But when Domina Fortuna offers you her hand, take it you must, for she will seldom make the same offer twice. The opportunity is simply too great to be declined out of delicacy.”

  “What does Magnus ask of you?” Aulan had no idea what the answer would be. He was, however, fairly certain he wouldn’t like it.

  “Magnus has a nephew by the name of Corvinus. He left Amorr about six years ago and manages some family estates in Vallyria. He’s a good man, from what I’m told, for all his lack of ambition. Married, two children. And it seems Magnus would be very grateful to House Severus, very grateful indeed, if you would kill him.”

  Aulan stared at his father in silence for a long moment, until it became clear that he wasn’t joking. “You’re not seriously intending on doing the man’s dirty work for him, are you? I’m a soldier, Father, I’m not a damned assassin. I’m not a murderer! Why the hell would Magnus want his nephew dead anyhow? Did auntie visit the farm and get herself raped or something?”

  “He has his reasons.” Patronus shrugged. “You’re not merely a soldier, son: You’re an officer, a tribune. You’ve killed men with your own hand, and you’ve killed men by ordering them to their deaths. Dead is dead, Aulan, whether it comes to a man on the battlefield, in his bed, or on the street. We kill this one man for Magnus, and we may prevent a war that will see legion pitted against legion, House Martial against House Martial, and Amorran against Amorran. I’ve been speaking for peace in the Senate for twelve years, Aulan—twelve years, and the wretched old fools are no more inclined to listen today than they listened to me then. Maybe one life sacrificed for peace won’t be enough to please the fates. God knows they are cruel, cruel bitches. But we have to try. We really have to try.”

  Aulan sighed. He saw his father’s point. They’d shed enough Amorran blood, sacrificed enough Amorran lives, in trying to save the Senate and People from themselves. Why shirk at one more? Still, the notion of simply murdering an innocent man, even if he was a Valerian, stuck in his craw.

  “Isn’t there someone else you could use? I just got here—I really don’t want to ride all the way to Vallyria now.” Aulan knew he was whining, but he couldn’t help it. For God’s sake, he hadn’t even managed to wash his hands yet and here his father was asking him to bloody them!

  “Of course there are others I could use. But there is no one else I could trust so well. And you needn’t complain. There is no need to ride to Vallyria. Magnus’s nephew is right here, in the city, visiting his father.”

  Aulan gave up. It seemed both the fates and his father were conspiring against him. “Very well,” he nodded with reluctant obedience. “I’ll see to it. I suppose I should be happy that if someone needs to die, at least it’s a damned Valerian.”

  CORVINUS

  Servius Valerius smiled as a mocking toast was made to him by his old friend Opimius. Opimius was only a knight, but he had always been the smartest of his friends, and now that he had cobbled together a group of investors to purchase the tax-farming rights to Falera, Fescennium, and Solacte, the three largest cities in Larinum, he was considered to be one of the leading up-and-comers of their generation. He would never serve in the Senate, but it wouldn’t surprise Corvinus in the least if in
ten years Opimius were more influential than half the patricians in the Senate.

  Opimius was a short, ruddy-faced, passionate man, with bright eyes and the voice of a much taller, deeper-chested man. He commanded the attention of the seven other men in the triclinium with ease, even though he was the only plebian present. He gestured grandly with his goblet, causing the wine within it to slosh audibly around, somehow without spilling a drop. He was well into his cups, and yet his voice wasn’t the least bit slurred as he returned to abusing his friends for their lack of ambition, a theme with which Corvinus was more familiar than most.

  “What use are your noble bloodlines, my friends? What use is it, Ponticus, to be treasured for that which runs so sluggishly within your veins? What satisfaction do you find in displaying the painted statues of your ancestors, an armless Arvina, a crumbling Caecus, a Calatanus who has lost his forearm, or a Galus with neither ears nor nose? What does it prosper you to boast a Maximus or a Magnus—” and here he nodded at Corvinus—“in your family line and number consuls and censors and Masters of the Horse among your rotted forefathers, if you carouse the night away and are woken by your slaves at noon?

  “What valor do all the effigies of warriors past convey upon you, if the only bones you see are not on the battlefield but rolling upon the floors of whorehouses? You drink yourselves to oblivion and go to bed with the rise of the Light-bringer, at a bell when the generals of yore would be raising their standards as the legions began their march!”

  He stopped to drink from his goblet.

  Ponticus pointed to it, laughing.

  “You would deny your betters the fruit of the vine, Opimius, when you yourself have drunk more than any man here?”

  Opimius shook his finger and tilted his head as he fixed Ponticus with a somber stare. “Do not bind the mouths of the kine who thresh the grain, my friend. It is solely in your interest that I lecture you. Look at Servius Valerius here. He is the nephew of a consul, and now, the son of a consul!”

  “Hail Valerius!” Rubellius Drusus cried, raising his goblet.

  “Hail Corvus,” Opimius agreed, joining the others in a toast to Corvinus’s father.

  Corvinus chuckled and sipped at his wine. He was pretty sure he knew where Opimius was going with all this. In fact, he rather suspected it was the purpose for the dinner Lucretius Ponticus had hosted tonight. He had no intention whatsoever of being yoked to serve his old friend’s ambition, but he was determined to enjoy himself and see what madness Opimius had concocted now.

  “My friends and countrymen,” Opimius said, “though you bear the names of generals and heroes, you must know that virtue is the only true nobility. An aristocracy of aspiration, a society of public service—these are the eternal elites to which we must aspire! Model yourselves on a Paullus, a Causus, or a Demian. Do not spend your days languishing in the halls populated only by the lifeless statues of your ancestors. Let their noble spirits serve as your fascitors when you walk among the City as its consul!

  “You owe me, my friends. You owe me the effort that my blood denies me. You owe me that walk that my humble ancestry forbids me! Leave your brothels and your baths, leave your stinking swine shit and whatever else it is you do in those savage and uncivilized lands, Corvinus, and I will name you a new Lucius Quinctius and acknowledge you as a lord among lords!”

  “Lucius Quinctius went back to his farm, you know, Opimius,” Corvinus drawled, amused by the fervor of his friend’s appeal.

  “After he saved his country!” Opimius wagged his finger again. “Only after he saved his country! Serve the Senate and People, Corvinus! Set your feet upon the path of honor once more, and you can return to your damnable pigs and chickens in their own time!”

  “I’m not running for aedile, Opimius. I have no interest in it. Besides, there isn’t time to raise the funds.”

  Opimius grinned and Drusus cleared his throat.

  Corvinus swore under his breath. Dammit, he’d walked right into that one.

  “Actually, Servius Valerius, you needn’t worry about that.” Ponticus gestured around the triclinium at the four other patricians. “We’ve arranged for the loans you’ll need to secure the election. Gnaeus Palfurius is willing to wait a year in return for four hundred thousand sesterces and a promise of House Valerius’s support, and Drusus has confirmed that House Falconius and House Horatius will throw their support to you over the Gaeran they were originally backing.”

  “How?” Corvinus demanded, wondering what that support would cost.

  “Let’s just say Falconius Metius and Horatius Pulvillus readily grasped the logic of putting their weight behind the new consul’s son.” Rubellius Drusus was thin and red-haired. His family called him Rufus. He was a moderately talented poet, and he waved his long-fingered hand theatrically as he reclined on his couch. “They know perfectly well that your father will win the next election without needing to buy so much as a single vote, and they don’t see any point in wasting any more of their investment in Gaerus Balbus when the tribes that vote for Corvus will vote for Corvinus as well.”

  His six friends looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something. Corvinus merely stared at them in silence, wondering how on Earth he was going to convince them that he wanted nothing more than to return to his farm in Vallyria as soon as the winter festival was over.

  “Come on, Corvinus,” Drusus finally said. “How can you possibly think to keep yourself occupied on your estates?”

  Corvinus stared in disbelief at his younger friend, who was expected to run for aedile the year after next. Were they really all so effete and hopelessly urbanized as to be ignorant of the back-breaking labor that was the agricultural life? He glanced from the gold necklace around Opimius’s neck to the rich purple hues of Ponticus’s tunic and realized they very probably were. He laughed and pointed to the remains of the fat turbot they had so appreciatively devoured over the course of the evening, lying in disarray on the large silver platter.

  “Gentlemen, you do realize that, unlike that noble fish there, the countless pigs, cows, and chickens which contribute to your table do not wander to the city of their own accord. Opimius excoriated you for crawling back to your beds at sunrise, an hour when I am already feeding the swine and milking the cows. It takes six months of that to raise a hog to a size worth slaughtering. And let me tell you, butchering a beast twice the weight of a man is no easy task. This is to say nothing of sowing the fields, threshing the grain, mashing the grapes…. My friends, you should only marvel that I could find a few days to come here now that the harvest is done!”

  Ponticus and the others stared at Corvinus in bewilderment.

  But Opimius laughed. “See how his industry shames us! Is this not a man well worthy of one day sitting in his father’s chair!”

  “I don’t see why he doesn’t simply set a few slaves to the chores and have done with it,” Posticus said with a disdainful air. “Corvinus, you wretched man, only agree to run, and I’ll send a score of slaves to your estate, each with more muscles than a gladiator, to milk your pigs and slaughter your grapes.”

  “Very well, in that case, I’ll consider it,” Corvinus promised, only half-insincerely, being genuinely touched by their faith in him.

  His friends broke into a rousing cheer.

  But he stopped them by raising a hand in warning. “I’m not promising anything, you understand. I’ll need to talk to my wife, and I imagine it would be wise to take the opinion of the Consul Suffectus into account, as well.”

  “Of course, of course,” assured Opimius, but he was grinning as if he’d backed the winning gladiator in an all-comers bout. “Just let us know by the end of the week.”

  “To Servius Valerius, the next Curule Aedile!” called Ponticus.

  “Corvinus, Curule Aedile!” the others cried.

  Corvinus rolled his eyes, but he had to grin at his friends’ enthusiasm. They were truly the best of men, and it would be a pity to disappoint them. Had he not once shar
ed their dreams of making the world a better place? And, he thought, it was even possible that a change wouldn’t be the worst thing for him now. Julia would certainly enjoy moving back to the city for a while, and his mother would love to have the two grandchildren living where it wouldn’t take her several weeks to visit them.

  “No, to you, my friends,” he raised his goblet to them. “I declare that no man has ever been more fortunate in his companions than me.”

  Two bells and several goblets of wine later, Corvinus was wrapped in his cloak and making his unsteady way through the winding bricked streets in the general direction of his father’s domus. He was not alone. Ponticus had invited him to stay the night, as a severely intoxicated Opimius was already snoring on one of the couches, but when Corvinus had refused, Ponticus had insisted that he accept an escort of two armed slaves bearing torches. The cold winter air had somewhat shocked him back to his senses, and by the time he’d crossed the second street away from Ponticus’s residence he had firmly decided to refuse the aedileship and return to Vallyria.

  Caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t initially hear the men standing on the corner he was passing call out to him. Only when the slaves preceeding him suddenly stopped and he nearly walked into them did he realize anything might be amiss.

  “Keep your hands off them hilts, boys,” a thickset bearded man holding a thick wooden staff warned the two slaves.

  Corvinus felt a jolt of fear run through his body as he counted six, no seven, men stepping out of the shadows to confront them. He’d heard that the city had become increasingly chaotic of late. Even during daylight in some of the poorer quarters. But the thought that the crime and unrest might have reached this close to his family’s neighborhood had never occurred to him.

  “Pardon me, gentlemen, but I would ask you to step aside. I’m but a simple farmer. I have no purse or anything of value to give you.”