Onward, Drake! - eARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  “She’s not property, she’s Zoe!” Cabbage said, but he was crying so hard that nobody could’ve understood even if uncle’s hand hadn’t been muffling him.

  Cabbage stopped struggling. It was just one of those things that was going to happen, like Ma dying. It wasn’t right, it just was.

  “Ah!” said Atlas. “I’ll take that skull I see behind you until I can replace mine with something more suitable. I had the skull of an ancient Pharaoh, which the animal broke when it escaped.”

  “Not Ma?” Cabbage said through a gulp. It sure sounded like he meant Ma, though.

  Hesperus pushed Cabbage to the side and stood as straight as the boy had ever seen him. “I’m sorry, Lord Atlas,” he squeaked. Culture had gone off somewhere far away, but uncle was trying his best. “The skull in question is that of my dear sister Portia, the mother of my apprentice. I cannot sell her to you.”

  “You little worm,” Atlas said. “I wasn’t asking you to sell her, I was telling you that I’m taking her because I need her.”

  Uncle Hesperus closed his eyes, but he didn’t move from where he stood in front of Ma. He said, “I’m sorry, your l-l-lord—”

  “Or would you rather . . . ,” Atlas said, pointing his twisty ivory wand. “that I—”

  “Not Ma!” Cabbage said and grabbed Atlas by the left wrist, the one holding Zoe. The magician shook his arm hard, but Cabbage didn’t come loose. He didn’t have much; Ma and Uncle Hesperus were everything he could think of, and it seemed he was about to lose both of them.

  Atlas raised the wand high over his head and turned to bring it down on Cabbage. His right heel stepped into the spill of oil from the broken lamp. Both of his feet flew up in the air.

  Atlas sat down hard with a clack! and a funny grunt. He mumbled something, but Cabbage couldn’t make out the words.

  Cabbage let go of the wizard’s sleeve and got up slowly. Atlas was just sitting there. He looked awful mad. Zoe was moving around again, scratching herself with those big hind claws.

  Uncle Hesperus opened his eyes a little bit at a time. “Ah . . . ?” he said. “Can I help you up, Lord Atlas?”

  Atlas toppled over on his right side. He’d sat on his ivory wand when he came down, and there wasn’t but the handgrip at the blunt end showing outside his robe.

  “Oh-oh,” said Cabbage.

  “Merciful Isis!” said Hesperus, backing against the wall.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say,” Zoe said. She raised her hind leg and sprayed liquid green feces on the magician’s corpse.

  “Oh, what will we do with the body?” Hesperus said, knotting his hands together.

  “What do you have in the way of food here?” Zoe said, lifting her head on her long neck. Her tongue stuck out like she was tasting the air.

  “Well, there’s a little lettuce left,” Cabbage said, lifting down the basket that served them for a pantry. “And a turnip, I guess, but it wasn’t much good even when we found it in the street.”

  “Do you suppose we can hide him till the middle of the night and then sneak him out of town?” Hesperus said. “If he’s found in a ditch in the morning, nobody will think about us. Mistress Berenice has a cart we could . . . but no, not after the way she left here.”

  He must be much talking to himself. He didn’t seem to hear Zoe talking, and he didn’t care what Cabbage thought. No reason he should, of course.

  “Why don’t we just go to the Watch station at the gate and tell them?” Cabbage said. “We didn’t do anything wrong, did we?”

  “No, Cabbage, we did not,” uncle said. “But Atlas was obviously a wealthy man—this robe is silk—so our chance of convincing the Praetor that his death was accidental is not very good. About the same as the chance of the Emperor appointing me Chief Priest, in fact.”

  “Gosh!” Cabbage said.

  “What is that animal doing?” Hesperus said, speaking louder than he had since Atlas came to their doorway.

  Cabbage looked down. “I think she’s eating,” he said.

  Zoe raised her head from the basket. “Rather, she has eaten,” she said. “I hope you’ll be able to do better in the future, but that will tide me over for the moment.”

  “The turnip was bad, uncle,” Cabbage said. “And the lettuce wasn’t much better.”

  “That’s quite true, Cabbage,” Hesperus said, “but they were also all we had. Well, perhaps they’ll give us a meal in prison before we’re thrown to the beasts. That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think I want to be thrown to the beasts,” Cabbage said doubtfully. Then an earlier thought returned and he added, “Uncle? What will you want me to do when you’re Chief Priest?”

  “Cabbage,” Hesperus said, looking at him like he was angry. “I know you’re young; twelve, aren’t you?”

  “If you say so, uncle,” Cabbage said. “I’m not very good with numbers.”

  “I think it’s very possible that you’ll grow up to be the stupidest man ever born,” Hesperus said. “Somebody has to be, and I think you’re in line for that status.”

  “Ma used to say that too,” Cabbage said, nodding. “That’s why she got to calling me Cabbage. I had another name once, but I don’t remember it.”

  Hesperus jerked back like somebody had slapped him in the face. Cabbage looked around to see if somebody was standing behind him, but there wasn’t. They’d have needed long arms, anyway.

  “Yes, you do have another name,” uncle said faintly. “Your father named you Bion. You’re a lot like your father, from what I remember from my visits. He was very willing and goodhearted, but not . . . well, not a philosopher.”

  “Ma always said he was real dumb,” Cabbage agreed. “I don’t remember him myself.”

  Uncle cleared his throat. He turned his head a little to the side and said, “Would you like me to call you Bion, ah, Bion?”

  Cabbage frowned. There seemed to be more to the question than he understood, but there usually was when people said things to him.

  “Cabbage is fine,” he said at last. “I wouldn’t remember Bion, I guess. I’m used to Cabbage.”

  “It doesn’t bother you to be called Cabbage?” Uncle said, looking at him again.

  Cabbage smiled broadly. “I’m really dumb, Uncle Hesperus. Calling me Bion wouldn’t make me smarter.”

  “You know,” said Zoe, “there are philosophers with a poorer grasp of basic truth than you just showed, boy. For now, though, don’t you think that you ought to get Atlas’s body out of sight? Just in case somebody does come in here. I suggest the loft.”

  “Oh, right,” said Cabbage. “But he won’t fit in the loft unless we stretch him out.”

  “What do you mean, Cabbage?” said Hesperus. “Oh, yes, Lord Atlas. I suppose between us we can lift him into the loft until the midwatch. Though how we’ll get him out of the city then I can’t imagine.”

  The wand had pinned the middle of the wizard’s right thigh up through his chest. Cabbage knelt and pulled on the visible end. It didn’t move.

  “Turn it boy, turn it,” Zoe said. “No, no—the other way. This narwhal had a left-hand thread.”

  After a moment Hesperus bent to look closely at what Cabbage was doing. He had more than half the wand clear. There was some blood on the ivory. Cabbage tried to wipe it off on the robe.

  “Oh, that’s very clever,” uncle said. “Turning it out, I mean.”

  “Zoe told me,” Cabbage said. “You don’t hear her, I guess. Uncle, what’s a narwhal?”

  “What?” said Hesperus. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a small whale that lives around the ice in the far north,” said Zoe. “Atlas claimed this was a unicorn horn, and I’m not sure he knew better. It’s not a horn, it’s a tooth, and there’s no such thing as a unicorn.”

  “Thank you, Zoe,” Cabbage said, because it was polite. The tooth came free. He leaned it against the wall and pulled Atlas’ legs out to straighten them.

  “Why
are you talking to the lizard, Cabbage?” Hesperus said as he took Atlas’ legs. They half-slid, half-lifted the body to the back where the loft was.

  The ladder would’ve been helpful if it hadn’t broken, but it would’ve been even better if Atlas hadn’t killed himself. Though this way he’d stopped saying he was going to take Ma’s skull.

  “Well, she talks to me,” Cabbage said, puzzled again at why uncle didn’t see the obvious.

  “I talk to him too,” said Zoe, “but all he hears is grunts. You’ve got the same brain as Aristotle had. You just use yours for different purposes than he did.”

  Together Cabbage and his uncle shoved the wizard’s body onto the shelf. There wasn’t a bed curtain, but his black robe wouldn’t show up unless somebody was really looking for him. Or the light got better, Cabbage supposed, but that would mean the four floors above them disappeared or the similar building across the alley did.

  “What did Aristotle do?” Cabbage asked.

  “What?” said uncle.

  “Never mind, boy,” Zoe said. “He couldn’t have talked with me either.”

  Outside, probably on Patrician Street but loud enough to be heard in the shop, somebody said, “A tall man with a lizard and an ivory wand! Have you seen him?”

  Cabbage didn’t recognize the voice, but it was Moschus the Beggar who said, “What’s it worth to you, good—urk! He went in there! Just now!”

  The first two men through the shop doorway looked each so big that Cabbage thought they ought to stick in the opening. They didn’t, though, they moved as slick as gymnasts.

  They wore swords, which was illegal in the city except for the Praetorian Guards; and they wore them openly, so they were Praetorians.

  One of them said, “Master Tydeus, here’s the lizard!” He drew his sword and added, “Mithras, look how big the sucker is!”

  “Don’t hurt Zoe!” Cabbage said. He picked up the lizard and fell on his butt. He’d slipped in the oil, just like Atlas had. He looked to see where the wand—the tooth—was, but it was leaning safely against the wall.

  The man who came in behind the soldiers was thin and pretty; his hair was curled and he brought an odor of rose perfume with him into the shop. “Put that sword up, you idiot,” he said. “The beast is necessary for the sacrifice.”

  Cabbage would have objected, but Zoe put a forepaw over his own mouth. “Don’t!” she said. “Tydeus needs me, but he doesn’t need you.”

  “You,” said Tydeus, looking at Hesperus. His voice sounded like a snake was speaking. “You’re the magician?”

  “Ah, yes,” uncle said. “Ah, yes, your lordship. Did your lordship want a love charm, possibly?”

  “If you joke with me, you fool . . . ,” Tydeus said, never raising his voice, “then you will be carried to my master with two broken legs. Do you understand?”

  “Ah,” said uncle. “Yes.”

  “You were to meet us at the Viminal Gate, but instead the guards told me you had gone running down the street,” Tydeus said. “You will not run again. Do you understand that?”

  “Oh!” said uncle. “You were looking for—”

  He stopped, covering his mouth with both hands. He lowered them and said, “Yes, Lord Tydeus. I understand perfectly, Lord Tydeus. What would you like me to do, Lord Tydeus?”

  “The coach is waiting at the gate,” Tydeus said. “Bring the tools you need, and get a move on. We’re late already.”

  “That’s his wand,” said a soldier, picking up the narwhal tusk. “Say, it’s bloody!”

  “Bring the wand,” Tydeus said. “I don’t want or need to know the details of how this person prepares his equipment.”

  He looked down at Cabbage, still sitting on the floor. “This boy is your apprentice?” he said.

  “My name’s Cabbage!” said Cabbage, because uncle’s mouth was opening and closing like a carp gulping air. “Zoe’s mine!”

  “Well, you bring the lizard, then,” said Tydeus. “If she makes any trouble, we’ll break her legs—and cut your throat for being useless.”

  “I’ll be quiet,” said Zoe. She clung to Cabbage’s shoulder as he got up. “But tell him that you need to feed me apples from the fruit-seller at the gate. And there was some rather good-looking celery in the next barrow.”

  Cabbage followed Hesperus and the soldiers out of the shop. Tydeus was last, and behind them all in the sleeping loft was Gaius Julius Atlas. At least they didn’t have to worry about him any more.

  Tydeus’ vehicle was a mail coach with the leather curtains pulled down on the sides and back so that Cabbage and Hesperus couldn’t look out. Neither could Zoe, but that didn’t seem to bother her. She had pinned the last of the apples against the floor of the coach with a forepaw and was biting juicy chunks out of it.

  Tydeus rode beside the driver on the front seat. The Praetorians who’d come to the shop with him were riding ahead on horses, and there were two more following behind the coach. It wouldn’t have done Cabbage much good to wriggle out the back, even if there’d been someplace to go if he had.

  The iron tires ringing on the stone roadway made a lot of noise. Uncle looked numb. He hadn’t said a word since they got into the coach.

  Zoe hadn’t spoken either, but that was because she was so busy eating. Now she swallowed the apple core, seeds and all, and scratched herself behind the earhole. Cocking her head toward Cabbage she said, “I was thinking of another stick of celery, but I guess I’ll wait for a while for that.”

  Cabbage looked at the remainder of the bunch Tydeus had angrily bought before they boarded the coach. There wasn’t much left. He counted on his fingers: one, two, three stalks.

  “Can I have one of your celeries, Zoe?” he asked. He wondered if uncle would want one, but Hesperus just sat with his head in his hands.

  “Yes, boy,” Zoe said with a wave of a forepaw. “We will replenish our store shortly.”

  Cabbage wasn’t so sure of that. Tydeus had been right peeved when Cabbage insisted that they get food for Zoe before they went off. Zoe had said to say that her blood would dry up if she didn’t have apples for the trip and Cabbage just passed that on.

  Cabbage crunched the white end off the celery and chewed it thoroughly. He said, “How is it an apple keeps your blood from drying up, Zoe?”

  “It doesn’t, but Tydeus couldn’t be sure of that,” the lizard said. “Atlas kept me in a cage since we left Africa. I heard him tell the messenger that he was bringing the sacrifice whose bodily fluids would be spilled to raise the dragon, but there’d be an extra charge. Well! I had my own opinion about that.”

  Cabbage finished the celery. He really liked the leafy end, so he had left it for last.

  Zoe spread the fingers of her right forepaw. The claws looked just as sharp as Cabbage remembered them being when the lizard kicked off from him.

  “When the porter dropped the cage on the docks here in Rome,” she said, “he sprung one of the hinges. It took me a little while to get the other one loose, but when I did, I took off running.”

  “Oh,” said Cabbage, wondering if he could ask for another stalk of celery. “I guess it was lucky that Tydeus found you. Uncle Hesperus wouldn’t be able to be able to feed you apples until somebody buys a love charm.”

  “Umm,” said Zoe. “I think he’ll do better than that with you and me helping him. But we’ll deal with that later.”

  The coach slowed. Cabbage heard one of the Praetorians ahead of them shouting something. He looked out the front past Tydeus and the driver. The coach went through a gateway and started down a boulevard.

  There were trees and clipped bushes, and well back from the road Cabbage could see buildings. They were fancy ones, too, not sheds and farmhouses.

  They turned a little semicircle and pulled up. Someone outside unlaced the back curtain.

  Tydeus looked over his shoulder and said, “All right, get out of the coach. And make sure that lizard doesn’t get away. Don’t you even have a leash for it?”

/>   “I won’t run away,” Zoe said.

  “She won’t run,” said Cabbage. Now that he had Zoe for a friend, he felt happier than he remembered being. Zoe didn’t get mad at him the way Ma had, though he knew it was hard on her to have so stupid a son as Cabbage was.

  He knew that, because Ma had said so at least once a day.

  Cabbage let uncle get out first, then thought that maybe he should’ve gone ahead instead so that he could lend a hand. The guards watched with sneering expressions instead of helping.

  “You get down and I’ll climb into your arms,” Zoe said. “It’ll look better if you carry me.”

  Cabbage didn’t see why that was, but he climbed out of the coach and held his arms up. Zoe stepped onto his shoulder instead, then walked behind his head to the other shoulder too and curled her tail in front of him. She didn’t weigh very much, but she sure was long.

  “Why, this is a palace!” Hesperus said as he looked around.

  “Of course it’s a palace,” said Tydeus, who had come from the front of the coach. “We’re at Tivoli. Did you think we were going to slip you into his camp when he’s campaigning on the frontier?”

  A group of men were waiting for them. One of them wore a toga, which Cabbage had only seen on statues before, and carried an ivory baton with gold knobs on the ends. He wasn’t the biggest or tallest, but he was the one the rest kept their eyes on just like dogs do the leader of their pack. Leaving the rest behind, that one walked over. He was maybe the same age as uncle, but he was better dressed and a lot better fed.

  “This is the magician?” he said to Tydeus. He didn’t look happy. “My brother said he was a rich man already, which is why the price was so high.”

  “Here’s his wand, sir,” said a Praetorian, holding out the narwhal tooth.

  “Don’t give it to me!” the man said. He glared at uncle and added, “Take your wand, you fool.”

  “Yes, your lordship,” uncle said. “At once, your lordship.”

  “Who are you?” Cabbage said. It made him mad to see the fellow being so nasty to Uncle Hesperus. Uncle always tried, and any food they got he split with Cabbage.