by Vox Day
“What can’t be done?” the others asked him.
“We can’t afford a civil war now. The legions are scattered in their winter camps, and with the exception of Fulgetra, most of the legions belonging to our Houses are the ones that are wintering the farthest away. Two of the three Valerian legions are in Gorignia, and the other is in Thaparus near the Cynothii border. Some of your legions are closer, but no closer than the Falconian legions…and I find myself suddenly wondering if Legio I was truly put out to pasture or not.”
“Even if their retirement was genuine, all of those men are twenty-year veterans. It was only five years ago they were retired. They could probably beat two newly raised legions if Quintus Falconius were to call them to the eagle again.” Aquila looked around the room. “My lords, it is time we decided. The law demands we take this matter to the Senate. The honor of our Houses requires that we raise our legions against our fellow Amorrans. And Reason declares that we agree to murder one of our fellow senators, one of the leading magistrates of our city. How say you all?”
Tillius was the first to answer. “Patronus is the cause. Patronus is the poison and the power in the Senate.” His eyes flashed. “Patronus dies.”
Lucretius concurred. “Killing is killing. Patronus brought this on himself. Better him dead and rotting in the ground than ten thousand of the city’s sons in his place. Once he is dead, we will have little trouble winning them over, especially after his secret agreements with the provincials are exposed.”
Aquila looked at Longinus, but the old man held his tongue and looked away. Aquila nodded regretfully. “Though I wish it could be otherwise,” he said, “I see no other option. Death for Patronus. My lords consul?”
“Death,” Torquatus answered. “The consul aquilae knows whereof he speaks when it comes to military affairs. And better the risk of civil war than the certainty of it.”
It was Corvus’s turn. Immaculate, forgive me for what I am about to say. “The consul civitas is correct, but we should consider more than the avoidance of war. Marcus Saturnius is dead at the instigation of Patronus, if not his direct order. For that alone, he merits death. Patronus gave Saturnius no trial, so it is right and just that he himself should die without warning at the hands of an assassin.”
“Well said, Corvus Valerius,” Tillius interjected. Both Aquila and Torquatus grunted with approval. “Saturnius’s death wasn’t merely a murder,” Tillius said. “It was an outrage that a legate who had so loyally served Amorr should die upon a legionary sword.”
All eyes turned to Longinus. He was still silent, breathing loudly, staring pensively in the direction of the wall. Corvus wondered what the man was seeing in his mind’s eye. Bloodshed? War? Burning cities ransacked by men in legionary armor? Finally, Longinus spoke.
“I agree. If there is any chance to bring this war to an end before it begins, we must pursue it. Aulus Severus must die. So how, my lords, do you propose to make this happen?”
“I will do it!” Tillius exclaimed.
“One of us can simply send a squad of fascitors to the Quinctiline,” Torquatus suggested. “Once he’s been arrested and is safely in our hands, he can be summarily executed. He is guilty of high treason against the Senate and People, after all.”
Aquila shook his head. “No, Tillius, your attempt to kidnap his daughter through that gladiator has already failed. You are too fond of complicated machinations. And, besides the additional risk, there is no time for such antics. My lord consul, it will serve no purpose to attempt arresting Patronus. He is on his guard, he keeps more than fifty armed men at his residence, and whenever he is in public he is surrounded by dozens of his loyal clients who would never permit him to be taken easily. Moreover, any attempt to arrest him openly would be tantamount to declaring the very civil war we are hoping to avoid.”
“You knew about the gladiator?” Tillius was astounded.
“Of course,” Aquila answered. “I make it my business to know such things. But no worries, Lucius Gaerus: Patronus still does not know you were responsible.”
“Corvus?” Caecilius turned toward him.
He shook his head.
“I would strangle him with my own hands without regret, but neither the Consul Civitas nor the Consul Aquilae can be seen to act in such a way. It is beneath the dignity of the office and would be seen as tyranny, not justice.”
“It would set an evil precedent,” Aquila said. “Very well. Leave it in my hands. You may be sure he will not survive the week.”
“No,” Longinus objected. “I will do it.”
The others regarded him with varying degrees of skepticim.
“I will do it,” he insisted. “Don’t look at me like that, Tillius. Surely you have commanded enough men to understand that it is seldom the most reckless or the most eager who are the most effective. Patronus knows me well. He even, I daresay, trusts me, for all that we often find ourselves opposed in the assembly. I can get much closer to him than any of you without arousing suspicion.”
Tillius looked doubtful, but held his tongue.
“Are you sure you can do it?” Aquila asked.
“I may be fat, Marcus Andronicus, but I have lost little of my strength.”
“I have no doubt you can still wield a blade, old friend. The question is whether you can kill a man you have known for decades.”
“How well do you know him?” Torquatus asked. “I did not know you were friends.”
“I wouldn’t call him a friend as such. He’s ten years my junior, but we both served under Crescentius Metellus in his campaign against the hill dwarves. I saved his life once, when the century he was with got themselves cut off from the main body by a troop of axemen. I led our horse on three charges until the dwarves finally fell back and he was able to bring what was left of his century through to the rest of the legion.” Longinus shrugged philosophically. “He was fighting for the city then. He’s fighting against her now. I won’t rescue him this time.”
“I believe you,” Aquila said, sounding sincere. “It needs to be soon, though.”
Longinus nodded. He met Gaerus Tillius’s skeptical eyes, and this time, Corvus noted, he did not look away. “I’ll see it done before the end of the festival. Torquatus, Corvus, you should be prepared to call the Senate into session when you hear the news. If Patronus survives Hivernalia, Tillius, then you may consider the responsibility yours and act as you see fit.”
The younger man stroked his chin and stared at the ex-consul before finally nodding in acquiescence. Corvus looked around the triclinium and saw emotion ranging from regret and sadness to anger and determination in the faces of the other men, but no lack of resolve. Nothing more needed to be said. They were committed.
It was strange, Corvus thought to himself as the talk in the room turned, with visible relief on the part of most of them, to the winter elections and who their Houses were considering throwing their support behind for the various magistracies. It seemed that planning a murder wasn’t all that different than planning anything else. It bothered him a little that he didn’t feel worse about it. And then the thought of his murdered son returned, and with it came the darkness.
THEUDERIC
There was something strange about the merchants and small groups of families traveling north along the Malkanway, Theuderic thought as he and Lady Everbright led the column that was the Savondese church embassy toward the great city of Amorr. The guards had protested his taking the lead, but on foot there was little they could do to avoid being outpaced by Theuderic on his horse, and they weren’t about to leave either the archbishops or the silver behind.
Lithriel Everbright made for an incongruous sight: a tall, almost skeletal nun mounted astride a noble’s warhorse. But none of the travelers appeared to take any notice of her. So little notice, in fact, that she had stopped bothering to throw her veil over her face when another group was seen on the horizon.
For one thing, there were an awful lot of such groups. They hadn’t see
n half as many people on the road the last time they’d ridden this way even though it had been at a time of year generally accounted more suitable for travel than now, the beginning of winter. They saw little snow this far south of the Souspleuvoir range, but the post-festival end of the year was not a favored time for travel throughout the empire.
And there was something else that struck Theuderic as odd, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.
He pulled up his horse and waited for the guards at the fore of the column to reach him. “Guermont, is there anything that strikes you about these travelers we’ve been seeing?”
“They’s a lot of them.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But is there anything besides that?”
The guard scratched his head and looked puzzled. “Naught specially, ‘cept of course that most of them ain’t Amoorish. They’s all from the outskirts of the empire, by the look of them.”
Theuderic snapped his fingers. That was it! Few of the travelers had the distinctive, arrogant appearance of the true Amorran. Some had lighter hair or lighter skin, others were too hairy, or with features too soft and indistinct. He pointed to an approaching man driving a donkey cart, in which was sitting a fair-haired woman holding an infant.
“Guermont, you speak some Utruccan, do you not?”
“Aye, my lord comte.”
“Then go and ask him what this is about. Find out why they are all leaving the city of Amorr. If there is something amiss there, I’d like to know before we stick our heads in the middle of it.”
With what appeared to be some difficulty, Guermont managed to keep himself from saluting. He approached the donkey cart driver and conversed. Theuderic waited impatiently until he returned.
“Well?” he demanded.
“I ain’t rightly sure, comte. He said something about one o’ their big nobles, like, got hisself killed a week or so back by another noble. I don’t know how or why, but somehow this made some o’ the kings and princes out in the sticks real mad, so the Amoors been kicking all o’ them out who ain’t from the city, which I don’t see is lahkly to help. But not all o’ them, just some as are fixing to fight a war because they want to get conquered, and the Amoors won’t do it. I don’t know. It all sounds crazy to me, and he said it didn’t make no sense to him neither.”
“Does any of that to you make sense?” Lithriel asked him.
“It sounds to me as if they’re having difficulties with their rustics again,” Theuderic told her. “They lost a battle in Cynothicum this summer, so perhaps a few more principalities decided to throw off the imperial yoke. It doesn’t sound like anything of much concern to us.”
“Who will come to the waters? Who will receive new life?”
The Savondese column was traveling along the Malkanway, still three days north of Amorr. They’d unexpectedly encountered a crowd gathered near a ford across a river that paralleled the road about one hundred paces away. At first, Theuderic had thought they might be in for trouble, and while he wasn’t worried about the men’s ability to defend the silver, a general slaughter this close to Amorr would likely be frowned upon. But as he rode closer, with Lithriel on her mule beside him, he saw they had no need for concern.
Standing knee-deep in the river was a young monk with a stubbled head and a plain brown woolen tunic pushed up over his spindly thighs. He was slight and short, with a hunched back and a complexion that was worse than some Theuderic had seen before on poisoned men. Nevertheless, he held the crowd in thrall. Perhaps seventy folk—travelers, by the looks of them, and judging by the horses and wagons waiting all around—stood watching and listening.
The young man spread his arms to the people. “Come! Receive the forgiveness of the Immaculate. The water is cold—colder than sin! But sweet it is when your sins wash off you like dirt from the road. Who will come? Who will meet the Almighty?”
Lithriel’s brow wrinkled with puzzlement as an old woman laid aside her outer garments and waded into the water to meet the man. “Are they so desperate for the baths?”
Theuderic had returned his attention to the head of their column, looking to make sure they hadn’t stopped to gawk as well. “Hmm?”
“Those people in the river,” she said, pointing with her chin. “Isn’t it too cold for bathing?”
“Ah.” He grinned. “No, my lady, it is not for a bath that these enter the water. It’s not a literal cleansing of skin, anyway. Unless I miss my guess, that man is an itinerant monk of the Immaculate. He’s preaching his religion’s absolution by ablution, I believe. Baptismus, they call it. They think their god stands ready to forgive anyone his past crimes if they will avail themselves of the water.”
“That water?” Lithriel looked incredulous as she looked over the brown, muddy water of the ford.
“It’s not the specific water that matters. The water itself is symbolic. They feel that the real forgiveness is a matter between the believer and the Immaculate.” He shrugged.
“Oh.” Lithriel cocked her head to one side, fascinated by the way the man pushed the old woman under the slowly moving water. “But even if gods existed, how can crimes be forgiven by them when they are not the one wronged?”
“Ah, but our good monk here would counter that all wrongs are ultimately crimes against God, even if they victimize another man.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t look as confused. “That makes some sense, I suppose. The man who raped me and broke my magic would be executed in Merithaim for the crime of costing King Everbright a sorceress.”
Theuderic cleared his throat and urged his horse on. They rode in silence as the woman came up again, spitting and off-balance, to the cheering of the onlookers. The joy on the woman’s face stood in deep contrast the blue of her lips brought on by the icy chill of the water.
“If it’s symbolic,” Lady Everbright asked a few moments later, “then why do it in the river at all?”
Theuderic grinned. “It would be more comfortable to do it in the baths, wouldn’t it?”
Three days later, he was forced to reconsider his assumption that the expulsion of the Amorran rustics would not concern them.
They were stopped by the city guard at the bridge that crossed the river marking the outer boundary of the great city. It was still an hour’s ride to the actual walls, but for all legal intents and purposes, they had reached Amorr. The guards were heavily armored but visibly nervous at the size of their contingent. Theuderic’s troop outnumbered them nearly four to one. As they’d approached, he’d noticed a rider galloping off in haste across the bridge, and he surmised that reinforcements would soon be arriving.
“You cannot enter,” said the guard with blue horsehair decorating his helmet, presumably the squad commander. He pointed to a written notice tacked onto the gate that blocked their way. “The city is closed to all foreigners by order of the Senate until further notice.”
Theuderic spread his hands in disbelief. “This is a royal embassy from His Majesty the King of Savondir to the Most Holy and Sanctified Father! You cannot possibly expect me to believe that an order applying to foreign residents has any relevance to a royal embassy!”
“Believe it, Savonder. You ain’t Amorran. You ain’t an ally. You’re a foreigner. You’re all foreigners, and so the Senate order applies, you understand? I got nothing against you or your party, you see, but our orders is clear. You ain’t coming in the city.”
Theuderic nodded and decided to try a different tack. Sometimes even the most unlikely intellect would respond to sweet reason. “I understand, sir, and I am not unsympathetic with your position. But allow me to bring two things to your attention here. First, do you see the two elderly gentlemen on the mules toward the rear?”
The bridge commander allowed that he did, in fact, see the two men in question.
“While they are admittedly somewhat the worse for wear given the journey, they are not only men of God, they are archbishops of the Church. They have come here at the express invitation of the Mos
t Holy and Purified Father. I suspect you would not want to defy His Holiness? Furthermore, this sister here, as you can see, is not actually a nun.”
Lithriel, at his gesture, pushed back her veil.
The commander stepped backward in surprise.
“You’re an elf!”
“You are observant, man.” She stared down her long, slender nose at him, her eerie green eyes unblinking.
The Amorran looked thoughtful and just a little less pugnacious. “All right, I hear you, Savonder. What’s the second thing?”
“I assume you are aware of the Sanctal Scot which is collected throughout the demesne of the Church by the various potentates on behalf of the Most Holy and Purified Father?”
“We call it the calx tax, but sure, I know what you mean.”
“Now, do you see that wagon there?” Theuderic pointed. “And perhaps you recall that Savondir is a large and very wealthy kingdom?”
The commander looked from Theuderic to the wagon and back again. “You ain’t…you ain’t serious. That ain’t all…? Not the whole wagon?”
“Please don’t take my word for it. I suggest you have a look for yourself, Commander. Three hundred pounds of silver is a sight worth seeing, in my humble opinion.”
Lithriel snorted beneath her veil but fortunately, held her tongue. The Amorran jerked his head toward the wagon, and one of his men followed him over to the wagon. Theuderic didn’t dismount but urged his horse around so he could keep an eye on the two men. The six royal guards waited for him to nod his approval before they moved aside to permit the Amorrans access to the treasure.
With the practiced air of a man who’d searched many a cart for contraband before, the commander drew his knife and slashed through the rough canvas. Theuderic knew better than to protest. He simply watched in amused silence as the man realized that the chests under the canvas were locked. The Amorran’s discomfiture was increased when the two archbishops, curious about what was delaying their entrance into the city, rode up on their mules and immediately began vigorously protesting this unseemly violation of Church property.