Miranda nodded. “I don’t know what I’d do without you here.”
“You had another nightmare?”
“Yes,” Miranda said.
“Was it the same as before?”
“Yes,” Miranda said again. “Portia… oh God, Portia. She called me a murderer, she said that retribution was coming…and then she burned. And there was nothing I could do stop it.”
“She’s dead,” Octavia said. Her voice was soft and gentle as she ran her fingers through Miranda’s silver white hair. “She’s gone, Miranda. It’s terrible, I know, but…these dreams…you can’t save Portia.”
“I know,” Miranda said. “I know that but…if I ever stop wanting to then I’ll be truly lost.”
Octavia frowned, creasing her brow and knotting her slender eyebrows nearly together. “Miranda…I’m worried about you.”
Miranda laughed. “I’m worried about myself.”
“I’m serious,” Octavia said, taking her fingers out of Miranda’s hair. “Do you think…do you think that maybe you keep having these nightmares because you want to?”
“Are you saying I should forgive myself?” Miranda replied. “Are you suggesting that I should not feel guilty? After everything I did?”
“You weren’t yourself.”
“But it was me,” Miranda said firmly. “And I should regret that, as I do. If I don’t…what kind of monster would I be if didn’t feel guilty for the blood on my hands?”
Whatever Octavia might have said to that, if she would have said anything, was pre-empted by a firm and insistent knock upon the door to their room.
“Filia Miranda, Filia Octavia,” the callow voice of Lieutenant Marcus Cornovius came through from the other side of the door. “Are you fit for company?”
Miranda sat up, gently removing Octavia’s arms from around her. “I’m afraid not Lieutenant, we’ve just woken up.”
“Then I’ll have to ask you to dress quickly, Filiae,” Lieutenant Cornovius said. “Major Severus presents his compliments and asks you to join him in the north garden as quick as possible. I’ll wait outside until you’re ready.”
“Is there no time for breakfast first?” Miranda asked.
“I’m afraid not, ma’am.”
“What’s going on?”
“Best if you see for yourself, ma’am,” Lieutenant Cornovius replied.
Miranda looked at Octavia.
“What do you think is going on?” Octavia asked.
“Nothing good, judging by the urgency,” Miranda replied. “But we can’t avoid it by staying in here, much as we might want to.” She threw off the covers as she shuffled out of Octavia’s lap and embrace, and swung her legs out over the side of the bed. It was only then that she remembered that she had left her walking stick a little too far away last night, leaning against the wall at the very limits of her ability to reach it.
“I’ll get it,” Octavia said.
“No, I can reach,” Miranda said, a little more sharply than was needed. She leaned out, gritting her teeth as she stretched her arm out as far as it would go…and knocked the ebony walking cane onto the floor, where it rattled upon the wooden boards.
Miranda huffed, and her expression was abashed as she glanced at Octavia. “Would you mind getting that for me please?”
“Of course,” Octavia said, managing a slight smile as she clambered out of bed and retrieved Miranda’s stick. There had been a time, not too long ago, when Miranda’s self-reliance would have forced her to climb out of bed herself, in spite of the pain to her withered leg. But love had smoothed the edges of her pride, she felt less helpless in accepting help, at least when it came from such as Octavia, who didn’t care that she couldn’t walk without help, or even that she possessed magic such as hadn’t been seen in five hundred years. Octavia saw the whole of her, and accepted her in all her greatness and her flaws, and that she accepted those flaws…it made it easier for Miranda to accept them too.
Miranda threw on a light blue dress that hung loosely upon her shoulders, something of a return to the sort of things that she had worn in Corona province before her ill-starred adventure in Eternal Pantheia. Certainly it was a far cry from the riches she had displayed during her brief time as the Empress’ favourite. She was definitely not in favour now. She still had one piece of jewellery with her, Portia’s necklace, which Romana had given her after the defeat of Quirian, but she did not wear it. Miranda never wore it. It had been given to her to remember a friend, not to adorn her own throat for the pleasure of Octavia.
Once Octavia was dressed, in a white strapless and backless blouse that left her wings free and unobstructed, they headed out of the room, and found Lieutenant Cornovius waiting in the hallway outside, just as he had promised.
The younger and junior of the two officers of Miranda’s guard detail looked visibly harassed as he waited for Miranda and Octavia, his brown eyes wide with anxiety and his skin stained with sweat. He was wearing his uniform, as an officer of the Imperial Household Foot, but it seemed to fit more ill on him than usual, and from the way he froze in place in the middle of the hallway Miranda guessed that he had been pacing up and down.
“Good morning, Lieutenant, I hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long,” Miranda said. In truth she wasn’t half as ready as she would like to be, her hair felt terrible and she hadn’t had time to wash more than her face, but Lieutenant Cornovius had claimed that it was urgent and so needs must. She would get ready properly later once whatever this had been sorted out.
Cornovius nodded. “Thank you, Filia, please come with me, as quick as you can.”
“Do you want me to carry you?” Octavia asked.
“No,” Miranda said. “I can get there myself. There’s no need for that much speed is there, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Cornovius hesitated for a moment. “No, I don’t think so, Filia. Not unless you, with your power, can raise the dead. Come with me.”
Miranda and Octavia followed Lieutenant Cornovius through the villa. After the deaths of Portia, Demodocus, Antiochus and Quirian, after the night of madness that Quirian had arranged in order to take his long overdue vengeance upon the Empire that had slaughtered his entire people, Princess Romana had despatched Miranda to a villa not far from Ilpua, one of the many estates held by the Imperial family, there to remain indefinitely until Princess Romana decreed otherwise. Miranda had to admit that, as much as she disliked being kept under house arrest in all but name – and as much as she had to admit that she deserved it, and that Princess Romana would have been within her rights to have decreed a far harsher punishment for the things Miranda had done – the villa was a fairly comfortable place to reside. Some kind of summer retreat for the Imperial family, as she understood it, at the intersection of every corridor stood a statue of some beautiful boy or pretty girl sprung from old tales of Ausonia and Pantheia, often in athletic poses and almost always with nothing on. The corridors were painted red on top, down to about waist level, and then white below that, and already torches flickered in the sconces to cast light where the sunlight from the windows could not reach. They passed the interior courtyard, where the roof disappeared to open up a fountain to the skies, and permit the shrubs placed round about to breathe. They passed the shrine where candles burnt before the icons of the Novar gods, past the portico where more candles burned underneath an image of the Empress Aegea, and smaller portraits of Romana, Demodocus and Portia underneath. It bothered Miranda a little that Romana’s image was larger than that of her dead brother and his wife, but then she supposed that that was only to be expected in many ways.
And then they passed out of the house altogether, and came to the north garden, where statuary was the order of the day rather than the flowerbeds found in the east, or the ornamental forest found to the south, or the water features found in the west garden. As they approached across the lawn Miranda could see their destination clear enough: the clump of about ten or a dozen men standing not far from a statue of a naked man w
ith a bow, gathered together around something – or someone, given Cornovius words – on the grass. Miranda’s leg ached a little as she quickened her pace, eager now to find out just what was going on, and to find out as quickly as possible.
Miranda’s guard, they were not so called but that was what they clearly were, consisted of two officers and thirty men under the command of Major Alexander Severus. Of the two officers, Miranda preferred Lieutenant Cornovius’ conversation, if only because he didn’t give the impression of actively disliking her, but again, fairness demanded that she acknowledge that Major Severus could have interpreted his authority from Princess Romana to make things much worse for her than he did. She was allowed to walk through the grounds each evening with Octavia, she was kept well-supplied with books to read – Miranda reckoned that she had read as much in these past couple of months as she had in the entirety of her nineteen years beforehand – and she was not made to feel a prisoner.
Except when she looked into the eyes of some of the soldiers tasked with her ‘protection’. Then she felt a prisoner, if only because she could see how much they hated her.
Though they were all men of the Household Foot, many of them had been in the regular army at some point previously, including Major Severus himself, and they were armoured for the most part as regular legionaries, in lorica segmenta, with the large tower shields of the legions, spatha in their scabbards and pila in their hands. Those who, like Lieutenant Cornovius, wore the lighter mail cuirasses and spears of the Household were in the distinct minority. They also tended to be the younger men, those who had seen no service in the line of battle before their appointment to the dignity of the Imperial Household.
There was a roughly even mix of the older veterans and the younger fellows on the lawn as Miranda approached, although the veterans were in a slight majority. Both old and young men looked disturbed by whatever it was that they could see and Miranda could not.
“Filia Miranda Callistus, Major, and Filia Octavia Volucris,” Lieutenant Cornovius announced in an officious tone.
“Of course they are Lieutenant, who else would it bloody be?” Major Severus snapped. He stroked his grey moustaches impatiently, though his tone remained civil on the surface. “Filia Miranda, thank you for coming.”
“Of course, major,” Miranda replied, not seeing the point in mentioning that he hadn’t given her much choice. “What can I do for you?”
“Probably nothing, but I had to try,” Major Severus said. “Move aside, men. Filia, what do you make of this?”
The soldiers shuffled aside, and Octavia let out a gasp as she beheld what it was that the two of them had been bundled out of bed to see. Miranda, who had seen a great many things during her time tending to the sick and injured of Lover’s Rock, was able to maintain her outward composure better, but even she had to confess to herself that she had never seen anything quite like this.
There were two dead men lying on the ground before her. That, unfortunately, was nothing new to her. She had witnessed death on a far greater scale during Lysimachus’ assaults on the houses of Quirian and Lord Manzikes, and she had caused death on a far greater scale during her night of madness and furious grief for poor Portia. Octavia had seen as much herself, but what had made her gasp, Miranda thought, was not that there were two dead men in front of them but what had been done to both of those dead men.
Both of them had had their tongues ripped out. Their mouths were covered in blood, and Miranda could see the severed tongues lying not far away, also covered in blood which had stained the grass beneath them. Their hands had been cut off; Miranda could not see the hands themselves, just the blood pooling around their severed wrists. The strangest, and most disturbing thing, however, was that both men had been slit from throat to navel, through their armour, which had parted like an orange peel at the touch of the knife, opening their whole bodies to the elements like a pair of dissected frogs.
And then, by the looks of it, something had been done to their insides. They were black as soot, with…was that ash? Yes, ash inside of them. In fact there was more ash than there was anything else, as if their insides had been forcibly burned away. Burned away like Portia in her nightmares…
Miranda forcibly cleared that image from her head. She had to focus, when there were so many eyes upon her. Ash. Burnt. It was very nasty, and she had no idea how it was done.
She looked up at Major Severus. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for them, Major, if that’s why you called me out here.”
Severus snorted. “Trust me, Filia, if I’d thought that there was any chance of that I wouldn’t have let you take your time getting out here.”
“She’s better at making corpses than at saving them,” spat Sergeant Major Mezentius. He was, perhaps, the oldest soldier present aside from Major Severus, though his hair and beard were still black with only the odd hint of grey here and there. He had only one eye, and the patch he used to conceal the other could not obscure the nasty scar above and below it, but he made up for it by glowering enough for both eyes out of the single dark orb that he had left. Just as he was glowering now, his tone vicious rather than mocking, casting blame rather than making light of a grim situation.
Miranda was tempted to glare right back at him, but in the circumstances she decided it was better to respond calmly. “Even I don’t have the power to bring back the dead, only the gods can do that. And these two have been dead for some time, I think.”
“They’ve got names,” Mezentius said, his voice rising. “Gaius Castra and Publius Nemon Filius.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Major, that’ll do,” Lieutenant Cornovius said quietly.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but it’ll do once we find the bastards who did this,” Mezentius said.
“That’s what our esteemed guest is here to help us with, Sergeant Major,” Major Severus declared. “So try and keep a lid on it for the time being.”
“Sir, yes sir, sorry sir.”
“Filia,” Major Severus said. “What can you tell me?”
Miranda crouched down beside the bodies, feeling her leg start to ache as she did so, doing her best to ignore the throbbing pain. “I doubt there’s much I can say that you haven’t worked out for yourselves. Gaius and Publius,” she glanced at the Sergeant Major as she said their names. “Were held down – though I can’t see any sign that they were restrained, which is interesting.”
“Why?” Cornovius asked.
“Because it means that they weren’t tied down, nailed down or anything of that sort,” Miranda replied. “Someone bodily held them down.”
“Are you sure it was someone,” Cornovius said. “It couldn’t have been some kind of animal? Wolves, maybe?”
“The only wolves I know can split armour like that carry swords, sir,” Optio Gabinius said, with the contempt for his lieutenant clear in his voice. Another of the veteran soldiers, Gabinius had done something to win some honour or other that entitled him to wear a wolf pelt, covering his helmet and falling down his back so that it half looked as though a wolf were trying to bite his head off. Unlike any of the other soldiers, his cuirass was neither lorica nor mail, but black leather decorated with a silver wolf’s head on the chest. He wore a spatha at his hip, but he also carried a large two handed sword slung across his back, and he did not usually bother to carry a shield. He had none today.
“Strong men, in their prime,” Major Severus murmured. “It would take at least two men to hold each one down.”
“Unless they didn’t struggle,” Miranda said. “But I doubt that was the case. I think their tongues were cut out before they died, to stop them screaming. And they were…well, as you can see. Cut and then burned. I’m not sure what could do that.”
“You could, couldn’t you?” Mezentius demanded.
Miranda glanced up at him. “I could,” she said softly. “But I didn’t.”
“Anything else?” Severus demanded.
Miranda pressed one thumb against Gaius’ eyeb
all. Opening it confirmed her suspicions. “Their eyes were burnt out, along with the other organs.”
“Gods above us,” Guardsman Lucius murmured. Miranda thought he was the youngest man in the guard, though she could have been mistaken slightly, there was no mistaking his overall youth. He still had pimples marring his face, and carried himself with the awkwardness of someone who hadn’t grown into their own body yet. His face was paler than those of the other men, and he looked as though he was about to be sick.
“If you want to piss yourself, lad, do it where the rest of us can’t see you,” Gabinius said. Some of the other men chuckled at his remark, and Lucius’ cheeks reddened with embarrassment.
“Did you find their hands?” Miranda asked.
“On the statue of Prince Aeneas,” Cornovius muttered.
Miranda tried to remember which one of the many statues decorating the garden that was. “Is that…that’s the one with the scales, isn’t it?” She frowned. “What do you mean they were on the statue?”
“They’d been piled up in the bloody scales,” Sergeant Mezentius snapped.
“Weighed in the balance and adjudged,” said Guardsman Remus. He was an older soldier, his hair turned grey and his skin turned to leather beneath the sun, with a deep mark on his chin from where years of wearing a chin-strap had bitten into his flesh. But he did not swagger about, like so many of the other old soldiers did, he did not seem proud of his service. He carried himself with shoulders hunched, back bent a little, curled up as though he was trying not to be seen, with a diminutive demeanour that even the younger fellow eschewed. His voice was a deep, hoarse croak that could convey the impression of deep wisdom even when complaining about the food.
“What did you say, Remus?” Gabinius demanded, his voice acquiring an edge of anger as he turned to square off against the old guardsman. “Say that again, so that we can all hear it.”
“Optio-“ Lieutenant Cornovius began.
“Say that again!” Gabinius yelled, pushing Remus back. “Say that again and tell us what you really mean, that Gaius and Publius deserved to die!”
Spirit of the Sword: Faith and Virtue (The First Sword Chronicles Book 2) Page 58