Onward, Drake! - eARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  The man looked at Cabbage with no expression in his eyes. He swung the baton like a hammer and hit Cabbage on the forehead.

  Cabbage fell down. He saw Tydeus raise his sandal to stamp with the heel, but Zoe twisted and snapped at him. The sandal was crimson suede, very pretty to look at, but from the way Zoe’s teeth had gone through the apples, Cabbage figured Tydeus was lucky to have jumped back instead of stomping on Cabbage like he’d planned.

  “He controls the lizard, sir,” Tydeus said, edging a little farther away. “It’s probably just as well to keep him around for now.”

  “His name’s Laurentius,” said Zoe. “He’s one of the Praetorian Prefects. His brother’s the governor of Numidia, and he’s the one who hired Atlas.”

  Cabbage got up. He dabbed at his forehead; he already had a lump, but there wasn’t any blood on his fingertips when he looked at them.

  “Come along,” the Prefect said to uncle. “The emperor is dining outside tonight. I’ve had a marquee set up in sight of the dining alcove with the items you said you’d need. The staff here is so large that nobody asks why anything is being done.”

  “The emperor!” Cabbage said.

  Tydeus reached under his cape and started to draw the long dagger whose sheath was sewn into the lining. His eyes were as sharp as a pair of needles trying to stick Cabbage to the ground.

  The prefect touched Tydeus’ wrist—just touched, but it was like he’d hit him with a club. Tydeus jerked his hand away from the dagger and closed the front of the cape again. Neither of them said anything, but they were both looking at Cabbage. There wasn’t much to choose between the way they were looking at him, either.

  “Boy, keep your mouth shut,” the prefect said softly.

  Cabbage nodded. His throat was too dry to have said anything even if he’d wanted to.

  Cabbage and Zoe followed Hesperus as he walked between the two civilians. Two Praetorians led and two more were at the back.

  Cabbage raised a hand to squeeze the lizard on his shoulder. Being with her made him feel better, though he couldn’t say why. Well, he usually didn’t know why he felt things or why things happened.

  “If matters don’t go our way . . . ,” Zoe said, “neither of us is going to survive the night. We’ll just have to see that they do go our way.”

  Cabbage still didn’t say anything, but he squeezed Zoe’s bony hip again. Her skin was dry and sort of pebbled instead of being scaly. Her breath fluttered, like the way a dog pants.

  There was sure lots of people at Tivoli. They must mostly be slaves, but they were all better dressed than most folks Cabbage had seen. Their clothes were clean and didn’t have rips or patches. You could spend all day watching the crowds on Patrician Street and not see anybody as well tricked out as any of these.

  Most of them looked at Cabbage, but he figured they were really looking at Zoe. Nobody ever noticed him.

  They did notice Hesperus though. Walking—stumbling—along between Tydeus and the prefect, he looked like a turd with a couple gold bracelets. Uncle was trying to hold the left sleeve onto his robe, but he wasn’t having much luck.

  The prefect must’ve thought the same thing, because he scowled and said, “Tydeus, give him your—no, you can’t, you’ve got that cursed dagger . . .”

  He snarled at a Praetorian, who unclasped his red cape and threw it over uncle’s shoulders. “There,” the prefect said. “I don’t want people asking me why I’m walking through the palace with a rag-picker.”

  Tydeus snickered and said, “An unsuccessful rag-picker.”

  “I don’t like them,” Cabbage muttered to Zoe.

  She snorted. “Nor should you,” she said. “Nor Atlas either. But Atlas isn’t a problem where he is now, and the day’s still young.”

  They walked down a flight of steps to a valley between two terraces. There was a reflecting pool in the middle, and at the other end was a half-dome sheltering an outdoor dining alcove. Cabbage couldn’t see much of the people reclining on the benches there, but there were a couple handsful of guards in armor on either side. They were big blond men with full beards, and they held their long swords in their hands.

  Servants were carrying dishes to and from the alcove. There was just enough breeze from that direction that Cabbage caught a whiff of roast meat.

  He still had two stalks of celery in his left hand. Part of him wanted to stuff them both in his mouth, but the rest of him knew that he might as well gobble a handful of grass for all the good celery would do for the rush of hunger that the smell of roast had given him.

  Besides, they were really Zoe’s celeries.

  There was a line of canopies set back from the other side of the canal; that was where the food was getting its final sauces and garnishes. “Umm . . . ,” said Zoe. “I could murder a stalk of that giant fennel. Well, perhaps another time.”

  The prefect and the rest of them were going to the single marquee of red silk on the opposite end of the canal from the dining alcove. Under it was a rectangular table holding a basin and something covered by a napkin. The guards stood at the corners of the marquee, facing out.

  The prefect and Tydeus motioned Hesperus inside with them. Cabbage came too, but he didn’t like this at all.

  “All right,” the prefect said. “It’s time for you to earn your pay. Here is the basin, and here—”

  He whipped the napkin off the other thing on the table. It was a marble bust.

  “—is who you’ll raise the dragon to devour.”

  Tydeus giggled. He said, “And maybe the dragon’ll swallow a couple of those snooty German guards while it’s at it, too. They could each have had a fortune if they’d just been willing to look the other way for a bit.”

  The bust was of the Emperor Marcus.

  Uncle Hesperus seemed stunned. Tydeus and the prefect stared at him.

  Cabbage looked at uncle too, for that matter. The choice was to look at the bearded marble head, and that made him sort of queasy. The emperor, the real man himself, must be eating down at the other end of the pool.

  “I’ll bet you never thought you’d be seeing the emperor in the flesh, did you, boy?” Zoe said. She was still on his shoulders, sticking her head out to the left side. Her body didn’t bend the way a snake’s did, but she was pretty flexible.

  Cabbage shook his head. “I can’t see him now,” he said. “I guess he’s there, though.”

  He kept his voice down, but the civilians could’ve heard him easy enough if they’d been interested. They weren’t.

  “If your uncle doesn’t start calling out a spell and tapping the basin of water,” Zoe said, “Laurentius is going burst a blood vessel. Or he’ll tell Tydeus to open your uncle’s throat, which seems to me to be more likely.”

  “Uncle, Zoe says you’re supposed to touch the water while you’re spelling,” Cabbage said. “Like you do at home, right?”

  Uncle, Tydeus and the prefect all looked at Cabbage. The other two were angry—angry at Cabbage now, not just at uncle—but uncle said, “Right!”

  He tried to tap the water, the way he’d have done a sand picture when he was making a charm for a customer. The narwhal tooth was a lot longer than the olive wand he was used to—or maybe of sacred oak—so instead the point jabbed into the table on the other side of the basin. The prefect didn’t look best pleased, and Tydeus reached under his cape again.

  Hesperus was awake now, though. He used his left hand to slide the tusk back so he could short-grip it with his right. This time he rapped the basin. “Abracadabra!” he said.

  Other than the water sloshing, nothing happened. “Zim zam whammie!” uncle said. He’d told Cabbage that he changed the words of the spell each time he did a charm, so if somebody came back when the first charm didn’t work, uncle could do him a fresh one.

  The charms did work sometimes, or anyway the girls who’d come—it was almost always girls—were happy about the result.

  “When are you going to let the lizard’s blood out?�
� the prefect said.

  “How are you going to do it?” said Tydeus. “You don’t have a knife!”

  “Don’t!” said Cabbage.

  “I’m not going to use that t-technique,” uncle said. His voice went up as he spoke, and he looked like a bunny between a pair of snakes. That was true enough.

  For a moment, nobody moved. Then uncle tried to tap the water again and dropped the narwhal tooth on the table instead. “Eenie meenie keenie!” he squeaked like he was trying to talk to bats.

  “Cabbage,” Zoe said, “when I tell you, I want you to say ‘Lampsoure othikalak steseon,’ and strike the water.”

  “This is ridiculous!” the prefect said. Moving faster than you’d guess for somebody so pudgy, he grabbed Zoe around the throat and swung her over the bust. “Tydeus!”

  Cabbage jumped, catching Tydeus by the wrist as he brought the dagger out. With his left hand, Tydeus punched the boy in the head. Cabbage didn’t fall, but everything went fuzzy. He didn’t lose his grip on the knife wrist.

  Zoe twisted her body up and sprayed green feces in the prefect’s face. The prefect shouted and slammed her hard onto the ground.

  Tydeus hit Cabbage again. Now the boy couldn’t feel anything. He was seeing things in shades of gray, and they were all very far away. Tydeus had his dagger out and bent over Zoe.

  The prefect snatched up the narwhal tooth. He can’t have been seeing clearly, though, because he stabbed Tydeus in the middle of the back.

  Zoe squirmed under the table. “Now, Cabbage!” she said.

  Cabbage said, “Lampsoure othikalak steseon!” He always tried to do what he was told, though he wasn’t good at understanding what people told him. He still had the remaining celeries in his left hand, so he slapped the basin with them.

  The guards around the marquee were looking inside now—well, all but one of them—but they didn’t seem to know what to do any better than Cabbage did. Uncle was sitting on the ground where somebody’d knocked him. Cabbage hadn’t seen that happen, but thinking back he kinda remembered elbowing somebody when he jumped to grab Tydeus.

  Tydeus kicked and flailed twice; then he went limp. The prefect was trying to pull the tusk out, but he wasn’t having any luck. He seemed to have stuck it all the way through Tydeus and on into the ground.

  Cabbage didn’t like the prefect much, but he always tried to be helpful. He started to say, “It has a left-hand twist, sir.”

  Before he could speak, he saw the water humping up in the pool, though. He still opened his mouth, but he just let his lower jaw hang. At first Cabbage thought something was coming out of the pool and it kinda was, but it was the water coming out—only shaped like a dragon. It had a big head and teeth, and it carried its heavy body on four flippers.

  The dragon waddled toward the marquee. The pool behind it was empty, though a little water trickled through a pipe that entered midway for topping it off.

  “Zoe?” Cabbage said. He hoped she knew what to do, because he sure didn’t.

  The prefect looked up. There were people screaming all around, but the prefect made more noise than most of them. He let go of the narwhal tooth and started running away. The other guards ran too; the one who’d kept looking outward had taken off as soon as the dragon climbed out.

  Zoe turned her head, watching the prefect as he stumbled toward the buildings farther up the valley. The dragon was gaining.

  “I think we’ll just amble back the way we came,” Zoe said. “You don’t need to carry me now, but I think you’d better lead your uncle till he’s a little more himself.”

  The dragon’s head dipped. The prefect screamed again. The long jaws closed on him and flipped him up in the air. Before he hit the ground, the dragon lost its shape and sloshed back to water. The flood drained down the slope toward the pool again.

  “He wanted to use my bodily fluids for a spell?” Zoe said. “Well, he got his wish.”

  “Come along, uncle,” Cabbage said, helping Hesperus to his feet. “We’re leaving now.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to walk back to Rome,” Zoe said. She’d picked up the celeries that Cabbage had dropped and was crunching them. “It’s over twenty miles.”

  “We’re used to walking,” said Cabbage as they started up the steps.

  They had to go around a fellow who seemed to have fainted. He’d been carrying a wedge of bread. Cabbage plucked it away when a glance told him that despite all the people, nobody was interested in him and his companions.

  “Those roasts sure smelled good,” Cabbage said sadly. He tore the bread in half to share with his uncle.

  “I was feeling glad to be home,” Hesperus said as they turned in the mouth of their alley, “but then I remembered that, ah, I can’t go to bed yet.”

  “Do you think that Sestius might have us use his wagon if we brought it right back?” Cabbage said.

  Hesperus grunted.

  “No, your uncle does not think that because a man lets you ride into town on his wagonload of crockery,” said Zoe, “that it means he will help you dispose of a dead body. And your uncle is quite right to be doubtful.”

  It was pitch dark in the shop. “Nobody seems to have broken in while we were gone,” Hesperus said.

  “How can you tell, uncle?” said Cabbage. The wagon ride had saved them a long walk, but Cabbage had helped the potter unload at his stall. The pots were awfully heavy.

  “Your uncle is being ironic,” Zoe said. “He means there was nothing here to steal; which isn’t true, of course, but he doesn’t know that yet.”

  “I wish somebody would have taken Atlas away,” uncle said. “This morning I thought that things were as bad as they could get, but that was obviously tempting fate. Where are we going to get a handcart tonight?”

  “I’ll ask Mistress Berenice,” said Cabbage.

  “She’ll never agree!” said Hesperus. “Don’t you remember how angry she was this morning? Just this morning!”

  They were both—all three, probably—really tired, and it seemed to have worn uncle’s temper short. When he got snappish, he reminded Cabbage of Ma.

  “Nobody but Mistress Berenice has a handcart in the neighborhood, uncle,” Cabbage said reasonably. “We have to borrow hers unless we rent one, and we’d have to have money to do that.”

  “I know, I know!” Hesperus said. “And we don’t have money!”

  “Well, there’s the gold coins Atlas weighted the hem of his robe with,” Zoe said. “That leaves you with the problem of changing them into silver or bronze that you could actually spend around here, but it’s certainly a start.”

  Cabbage walked to the sleeping loft and felt for the bottom of the magician’s black robe. It hadn’t been easy to see the body even by daylight—which was a good thing, what with Tydeus and the soldiers coming in like they did—but Cabbage remembered which direction the legs had been when they’d stuck him onto the shelf. Sure enough, there were round weights sewed into the hem.

  “Uncle, do you have a knife or something?” Cabbage asked.

  “What?” said Hesperus. Then in a breaking voice he said, “You don’t plan to butcher him? Oh, boy, have we fallen that low?”

  “Never mind,” said Cabbage. His thumbnails were thick and as sharp as a dog’s claws. He got them into the seam and ripped it open with no trouble. He worked out two of the lumps and brought them to Hesperus.

  “Zoe says these are gold,” Cabbage said, handing over the coins. “I can’t see when it’s so dark.”

  “Cabbage, have you gone . . . ,” Hesperus said. He was probably going to say “crazy,” but the light flickering toward their doorway made him and Cabbage both look up.

  The clerk from the bronze-goods shop came in with a lantern. Right behind him was the widow Berenice herself.

  The lumps Cabbage had just put into uncle’s hand glinted. They were gold coins, all right. There were lots more coins—or anyway, round lumps—still in the hem, too.

  Uncle jumped to his feet, looking aro
und like he wanted a place to run to. There wasn’t one.

  Cabbage was pretty calm. No matter how mad Berenice was, Cabbage had just seen a magical dragon sploshing toward them. The dragon was worse.

  “Mistress?” uncle said.

  “Oh, Master Hesperus, I don’t know how I could have doubted you!” Berenice said. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “I—forgive you?” uncle said.

  “I hadn’t left you for an hour when I heard that Tychos had strangled Murmilla this morning,” Berenice said. “And he was still so drunk that the Watch found him sleeping beside the body. I shudder to think of the things I called you!”

  “Ah,” said uncle.

  Cabbage nodded. The things Berenice had been saying made him shudder too. She’d sounded like she meant them.

  “I brought this—” she held out a brand-new lamp, brass but polished to shine like gold “—as a thank-you gift and an apology. I’ve been telling everyone how well you understand the will of the gods. I’m so glad you’ve come back. I was afraid that the neighborhood’s ingratitude had caused you to forsake us.”

  “Ah,” said uncle again. He looked as woozy as he had when Cabbage accidentally clouted him while he was wrestling with Tydeus.

  “Ask her to change the gold coins,” Zoe said. “Or at least one of them, so you can buy me something to eat.”

  “Mistress Berenice?” Cabbage said. “Can you change some gold for us? Zoe and me are pretty hungry, and I’ll bet uncle is too.”

  “Gold?” said Berenice. She looked at the coins in uncle’s hand and said, “Mother Isis! That is gold!”

  “Ah, yes,” Hesperus said. “It, ah . . . a recent commission. I shouldn’t say more, you realize.”

  “Oh, I . . . ,” said the widow, and now it was her tongue that stumbled over her thoughts. “I didn’t know—that is, I’m so glad that you’re doing well, Master Hesperus. So very well.”

  She pursed her lips and got an expression that Cabbage had seen her wear when she was counting up the day’s takings. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I believe I can change one of those.”