by Will Panzo
“Explain what happened,” Cassius said. “Tell the truth. You only set up the fight to help a friend. Things got out of hand. If you’re as resourceful as you say, Piso will know you’re more valuable than a second-rate killer.”
“What the hell was that about anyway?” she snapped. “Did you think you’d impress Piso by killing one of his men?”
“No, I did it to impress Boss Cinna.”
“You’re working with Cinna?”
“Not yet.” Cassius smiled. “That’s why I need your help.”
Sulla’s face slackened. She stared at Cassius as though trying to spot a scratch on a pane of glass.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I’m talking about making a lot of money.” Cassius lowered his voice, fixed Sulla with a pointed stare. “I’m unknown on this island. No one will hire me because no one knows what I’m capable of. Now that’s changed.”
“No, you’re still an unknown. Cinna wasn’t there. He didn’t see your fight.”
“But you were there. And you’ve got Cinna’s ear.”
“Do I?” Sulla laughed. “You think every goddamn fence on this island has access to the bosses? I’ve dealt with Cinna’s people before, and even with the man himself a time or two. But I’m not his advisor.”
“You don’t need to be especially close for this. I just need you to spread word about what happened at Piso’s yesterday and make sure Cinna hears of it. Don’t make it seem as though we’re working together. Make it seem like gossip.”
“To what end?”
“A deal with Cinna.” Cassius paused, let his words sink in. He watched for Sulla’s reaction.
She lowered her eyes, but otherwise, her face remained calm. She was considering the offer and how it might play out, but she did not seem to oppose it on principle.
“I’ll present myself to him later,” Cassius continued. “Ask for terms of employment. If he takes you at your word, I’ll sign on with him immediately. And if he needs a demonstration, I won’t have a problem with that either.”
“You think he’ll go for it?”
“Why not?” Cassius asked. “I know how to fight.”
“Good enough to beat one of Piso’s lieutenants and brazen enough to do it in one of Piso’s houses.”
“You’re selling already.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” She nodded good-bye and headed for the mouth of the alley.
“Sulla,” he called after her.
She stopped and turned.
“I meant what I said about leaving friends behind.”
“Why should I believe you?” she asked.
“I’m one of the good guys.”
She laughed. “You’re in Scipio, boy. There are no good guys.”
• • •
Sunlight poured through the window in Cassius’s room, spilled across the scroll in his hands. It was an old parchment scroll, cheaply made and purchased on the mainland for a few coppers. He had heard that Fathalans produced the best papermakers in the known world, had heard of whole markets in the Empire dedicated to books and scrolls and codices, but their work was hard to find in the Republic.
This particular scroll concerned the Attus epic. He had no need of a richly crafted volume on that subject. These words he knew by rote, carried them with him daily. The page was simply a reminder.
He read for hours. Read till the sun sank below the window in his room, then sank below the earth itself. Read while smoke rose from the city’s chimneys to cloud the night sky with oily fog. Read while the sounds of the jungle carried to him from the dark.
When his eyes failed, he lit a few tallow candles and continued the story.
Attus as a hillman on the fringes of the Fathalan Empire. His communing with the first of the four great bird spirits who would guide him on his journey. His revocation of the Fathalan yoke. An uprising. Blood and bronze.
The text did not recount Attus’s first kill, but it must have taken place here, Cassius decided. Before this, the great hero was a humble farm boy who had never seen war; after this, the champion of a hundred battles. Nor did the story concern itself with Attus’s feelings about the killing. Whether he despaired for his loss of innocence; whether he recognized the bloodshed as transformative. Whether he welcomed it.
The words were plain to see, but their meaning, their truth, still had to be teased out, like a loose thread on the fringe of a garment. He read till he fell asleep, and even sleeping, his mind searched for answers.
A knock at the door woke him. He found Lucian standing in the hallway, a bowl of stew and a pitcher of water in his hands.
“You didn’t come down for dinner.” Lucian’s face was flushed, his ears red, and his eyes bloodshot. Cassius could smell sour wine on his breath.
“I was busy with a few things.”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“Not at all.”
Cassius motioned Lucian into the room, and the barkeep entered, staggering, spilling wine and stew as he moved. He set down the bowl, then the pitcher on Cassius’s nightstand. He paced the room, circled around to the desk by the window, fingered the scroll where it lay between the candles.
“Doing some reading?” he asked.
“A bit,” Cassius said.
“More stories about heroes and their destinies? Battles and magic and the like?”
“It’s what I enjoy.”
“Not much of a reader myself,” Lucian said. “I can read, mind you. I’m just not one to spend my days surrounded by scrolls. I’d get bored.”
“Not me,” Cassius said.
“No, not you. Seems excitement has a way of finding you.”
“You heard about the fight yesterday.” Cassius took a seat at the desk. He gathered the scroll, rolled it, and set it aside.
“Word is all over the streets of Lowtown.”
“I thought you weren’t welcome in Lowtown.”
“I still hear things,” Lucian said. “What were you thinking, boy? I didn’t help you find work so you could go off killing people. Prizefighting isn’t glamorous work, but it’s honest.”
“I’m no prizefighter.”
“Damn it, I don’t want to aid a murderer.”
Cassius started at the word. Lucian sighed, raised a hand as though to offer an apology, but Cassius cut him off.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said. “That man attacked me.”
“After you provoked him.”
“I wanted a fair fight. A demonstration of my abilities. But Junius wanted something else. He killed the man he fought before me, would have killed me, too, if given the chance. I had no choice.”
“Do you know why this bar is always empty?” Lucian crossed the room, his steps shuffling and unsteady. He eased himself onto the bed. “Because I don’t accept blood money.”
One of the tallow candles sputtered and died. Shadows crept forward from the far corners of the room, covered Cassius in near-total darkness.
“Are you telling me to leave?” he asked.
“I’m telling you your next payment is due at the end of this week. That gives you five days to scrounge up enough coin to extend your stay.” Lucian stared into the darkness that had swallowed Cassius. “And I don’t accept blood money.”
Cassius sat silent.
“Scipio wasn’t always like this, you know?” Lucian resettled himself on the bed. “Restless? Yes. Violent? Of course. But it didn’t use to be so . . . so completely . . .”
“Rotten,” Cassius said.
Lucian nodded.
“If I was short with you when first we met, if you thought I was trying to scare you off, it was only because I see too many of your kind here. Naive boys who think themselves strong.” Lucian motioned toward the scroll on the desk. “Boys in search of adventu
re. They don’t survive this place.”
“I think I’ve proven myself strong.”
“And a survivor?”
“Only time will tell,” Cassius said softly.
Lucian heaved himself up from the bed. He stood wobbling, then steadied himself. He patted his belly and loosed a soft belch.
“I think I may have overstayed my welcome,” he said. “Enjoy your dinner. I’m not much of a cook, but you can be certain I didn’t spit in the stew, which is more than you can say for most places around here. Sorry for disturbing you.”
“Why do you let me stay here?” Cassius asked.
Lucian shrugged. “I rent rooms for money.”
“You warn off every mainlander you talk to. And you refuse to accept blood money. If you expect me to believe your only motivation is the pursuit of gold, you don’t think me naive, you think me stupid.”
“You’ve a sharp mind, boy.”
“But?”
“But a bit of a blind spot for the human heart.”
Lucian crossed the room to the door. Cassius stood to see him out. They shook hands. Cassius offered Lucian the scroll.
“I don’t always read for adventure,” Cassius said. “Sometimes a good story introduces you to a new friend.”
Lucian set a hand on Cassius’s shoulder, ignoring the scroll. “I suppose we can all use one of those.”
• • •
The Madam’s Purse was a three-story building on a dead-end road. No sign hung above its entrance, but two men stood guard at the door. One was bald with a deep underbite, the other squat and bearded. They were dressed in black tunics, and each man wore as a necklace an octan, an ancient Antiochi coin made of copper shavings and iron and having eight sides and a hole through its center.
“I just want a drink,” Cassius said.
“This is a private club,” the bearded guard said.
“And I’m a man looking for privacy.”
Cassius did not realize he was falling because he did not see the punch thrown. When it landed, it broke his nose, numbness spreading over his face. As the earth rose to meet him, he thought he was sinking. He had time enough for only this one thought. And then he hit the ground.
A boot struck his side, and his ribs flared with pain. He gasped for air, and the pain doubled.
Scrambling to his feet, he staggered up the lane, bent and coughing. At the end of the street, he collapsed and forced himself to breathe, his breath coming in shallow gasps, as though he were sipping air.
He stood and fumbled under his cloak for his gauntlets. Tears clouded his eyes. After two deep breaths, he turned and walked back to the bar, blood from his nose dripping down his chin.
The guards advanced on him. He pointed a finger, and the mud in front of him swirled, as though stirred with a stick.
The two men halted.
The air hummed with a loud buzzing, then mud exploded upward, and the sky filled with a swarm of flies.
Cassius felt a droning in his head. He caught glimpses of the world as seen through multifaceted eyes. He wanted to dart away and burrow into a wet, dark place now, the world alive with a thousand new scents.
He cleared his mind. He waved his hand, as though shooing the flies, and they rushed forward as one.
The bald man choked as the black cloud enveloped him. His partner ran for the bar, and as he reached for the handle, the door opened inward, and a half dozen people shouldered outside.
The flies floated back to hover over the sinkhole between Cassius and the bar. They drifted like smoke, black against a black sky.
The crowd at the door parted, and a crossbow appeared in the entranceway, its wielder hidden in shadow. The tip of a bolt glinted in torchlight.
“Move, and you’re dead where you stand.”
• • •
In the back room of the Madam’s Purse, Cassius sat with his hands on a large table inlaid with silver and ringed by high-backed chairs. There were two earthenware mugs before him, one filled with a recent vintage Berundian wine and one filled with his own blood. His gauntlets lay in his lap.
Two men entered and took seats at the table.
“Welcome.” The man sitting to Cassius’s right extended his hand. “My name is Cinna.”
Cassius accepted the hand and shook, and his ribs burned with the effort.
Cinna was fat, with a smooth, bland face. His neck was short, and when he lowered his chin, he looked as though he had no neck at all, as though his head were set directly into his torso, like a frog’s head. He wore a wig, short and gray-blond, and heavy makeup. His face was powdered, and each eye ringed by black. His fat lips were painted red, as were his cheeks.
“It seems you’ve injured yourself,” Cinna said. He arched his thick gray brows, appraised Cassius with bulging eyes the color of apple rot.
“That’s one way to put it.” Cassius snorted, spat blood into one of his mugs.
“I know we’ve just met,” Cinna said, “but there are things you should know about me. For one, I don’t like when people pick fights at my bar.”
Cassius shrugged. “I didn’t pick that fight.”
The man next to Cinna laughed. He was dark and rat-faced and sat with his hands tucked into his armpits.
“This is my associate,” Cinna said. “Master Nicola.”
“Tell him he doesn’t want to be laughing at me,” Cassius said.
Nicola rose from his seat, his hand drifting toward the knife at his hip. Cassius reached under the table.
“Enough!” Cinna slapped the tabletop. One of the cups fell, and Cassius’s blood spilled into the silver inlay. The room echoed with the sound of the slap, then fell silent.
“Boy, I let you keep that iron as a courtesy,” Cinna shouted. “Because I thought you came here to talk business. If I’m wrong, if you’re a blood-mad killer, then I’ll thank you to leave.”
Cassius placed his hands on the tabletop. Nicola sat.
“Good,” Cinna said. “Now I’ll be as direct as possible. I know your short history on this island. I know yesterday you killed one of Piso’s men in a prizefight. And now you’ve come here seeking sanctuary. You angered Piso, and I’m the only man who can protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection,” Cassius said.
“You’re no fool.” Cinna wagged his plump finger. “Maybe in over your head, but not a fool. Remain calm, and we can talk business like civilized men. We’re sons of Antioch, after all. We have to be examples for these yellow savages.”
“I killed Piso’s man yesterday,” Cassius said. “I’ll kill more for you.”
“This isn’t a war, boy,” Cinna said. “My interests conflict with Piso’s, but that doesn’t mean I can have you killing people in the street. Order must be maintained. Understand?”
Cassius nodded.
“So tell me, are you any good at what you do?” Cinna filled a mug from a pitcher of wine set in the middle of the table. He sipped the wine, tilted back his head to savor the taste.
“Better than Piso’s man. And I’m told he was good.”
“Where did you train?”
“I’m from Florea.” Cassius watched the flow of his blood along the inlay. “The grasslands between the Delium plains and the mountains. I trained myself. Street fights mostly.”
“You’re a farm boy?” Cinna didn’t bother to hide the contempt in his voice. “How’d you get here?”
“I killed a man in a duel some time ago. He was an officer in the legion.”
“And now you’ve come to Scipio to start over.” Cinna shrugged, unimpressed. “I’ve heard that story a hundred times. I was hoping for something a bit more interesting.”
There was a knock at the door, and Nicola answered it. A short man with blond hair entered the room. He approached Cinna with his head bowed.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Master Cinna. My name is Brieus. I work for you.”
“I know who you are,” Cinna said. “You stopped a knife fight at the door last year.”
“That’s right, sir.” Brieus flashed a quick smile.
“I never forget the faces of my men. Do you have news for me?”
“We found Cornelia, Master,” Brieus said. “The girl from the brothel on the street of jewelers. Blond girl. Young thing. The one who run away last week.”
“Yes, I seem to remember.”
“We caught her by the city wall a few hours ago,” Brieus said. “That’s where I patrol. Near the gates. Out by the old west tower.”
“Well done, boy. Nicola, make sure our friend here receives compensation.”
“Thank you, sir.” Brieus nodded, bowed awkwardly. “Back to work now.”
“Brieus,” Cinna said, “I’d like you to take care of the girl first.”
“Take care of her, sir?”
“Discipline her.” Cinna ran the tip of his finger along his bottom lip.
“I don’t—” Brieus’s face paled. He looked to his feet.
“You know how it works, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We do it to dissuade the girls from leaving. Afterward, she’ll tell the others and they’ll know the punishment if they run away and they’ll know it gets worse each time one of them does it.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Brieus said.
“Nonsense.” Cinna dismissed Brieus’s protests with a wave of his mug. “Take her upstairs. How many men did we use the last time a girl ran away? I think it was four. So take five men this time—”
“It was five last time,” Nicola said.
“Five? Well, then take her upstairs with six men.”
“Ye-yes, sir,” Brieus said.
“Brieus.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You as well,” Cinna said. “It’s five men and you. Do you understand? I want you there to make sure it’s done properly.”
“I ain’t never done a thing like that.”
“You will have after today.”
Brieus nodded to Cinna and exited the room, his shoulders stooped.
“Good man,” Cinna said. “But a bit timid. This will put some steel in his spine. Now would you care to discuss salary, Master Cassius?”