by Will Panzo
He gathered Aulus’s gauntlets from the floor, then returned to the front room and collected the other banknotes and stuffed them all into the oilskin parcel. He took Nicola’s long-handled knife and removed the octan from Nicola’s neck. He wiped his hand in the congealed blood pooling on the floor and walked outside. He stabbed the knife into the door and hung the octan from the knife. With his bloodied fingers, he wrote “War” on the outside wall.
STRIKE FIRST AND STRIKE WITH OVERWHELMING FORCE
In Scylacium, they called him Two Cups. A boy of eleven, he prowled the Viper’s Belly slums with a gang of boys known as the Pinchpennies. His brothers were orphans, pillow slaves, runaways escaped from labor camps and legion servitude. They spent their days scamming dice games and fencing stolen goods nicked from the storehouses of the largest trading companies in the Republic. They lightened the purses of travelers and missionaries foolish enough to venture into the Belly, always alert for Vigil patrols. At night, they snuck away to the city proper and burgled the estates of wealthy patricians, eating for weeks on stolen jewels and silk gowns.
These were wild days. He lived like a feral dog more than a true boy, perpetually unwashed, nearly naked, always half-starved. But in all his short life, he had never felt so alive.
He made his home in the burned husk of an old tenement on Hangman’s Road. A revolving band of boys squatted with him. Calub, Limper, Sheepsfeet, Bonesaw, Manius Dento, Manius Naso. The house had room enough to sleep eight, but they were never less than ten, sometimes as many as twenty. They shared everything. Food and drink and bedrolls. In the winter, they shivered together, and in the summer, they sweated together. And they fought every day, sometimes against Vigils or marks, sometimes against other slum boys.
Two Cups was not much of a fighter. Short and skinny, he lacked the raw strength needed for street fighting. Moreover, he had no taste for violence. The boys teased that he was softhearted and tender. They called him Mother Hen. It shamed him greatly, but he knew it to be true. He did not appreciate cruelty as the other boys did, never enjoyed tying rats together by their tails or splashing mud on the white gowns of young nuns on their way to temple.
He liked stories of heroes and great battles, though, could sit for hours listening at the knees of the graybeards in Philosopher’s Square as they recited the legends of old. Tales of Ulpius the Bear, the finest soldier ever to don a centurion’s helm, rugged Barbatus, who forfeited his senatorship and his life of leisure to become a pirate hunter, Diokles of the Black Cloud, slayer of gorgons and harpies, who carried lightning in his ash spear.
These tales filled him with wonder and he dreamed that someday he would win glory on the field of battle. Not in fistfights with other slum boys but in a proper battle, where men fought for honor, men whose acts of valor echoed through the ages.
The graybeards taught him the hero’s code. A hero was strong. A hero fought for what he believed. A hero was loyal. He did not strike first. He did not kill the defenseless. He needed no reward but honor. He was not afraid of death.
He was kin to these men. He could feel it in his blood. They shared the code.
Every man needed a code, Two Cups knew that. Calub told him as much. Calub who had fifteen years to Two Cups’s eleven and so was wiser than most. Calub who was tall and strong, with heavy shoulders and hard fists, who had never lost a fight.
“Stick with your brothers,” Calub said. It was a chill autumn night, and the boys huddled indoors around a small fire, roasting potatoes on sticks. Two Cups sat massaging a bruise on the side of his head.
That morning, two rival slum boys had caught him and Sheepsfeet walking home after stealing tomatoes from a grocer. The slum boys were older than Two Cups, probably thirteen or so. He recognized one of the boys as Fullo, a tall, fat bully with big arms and crooked teeth. Fullo was famous in the Belly for his teeth. He liked to bite during fistfights, had once bitten Avino’s cousin’s ear off in a fight outside the Staghorn Pub.
Fullo lived well by slum-boy standards. He never had to steal or beg. Instead, he trawled the alleys for the prettiest boys he could find and sold them in the city. No two slum boys agreed on where Fulla made his sales. Some said slavers or whorehouses, others believed he had ties to a dark temple where initiates fed boys to a giant rat god. Two Cups never believed the story about the temple, but he believed Fullo was trouble.
At the first sight of Fullo in the alley, Two Cups had dropped his bag and run. He shouted over his shoulder for Sheepsfeet to follow, but Sheepsfeet was only eight and slower than the older boys. As Two Cups fled into the market crowd, he heard a scream, then felt a burst of pain on the side of his head. He found himself on his hands and knees, a bloodied rock lying next to him. His mind had only a few seconds to piece events together, then he was up on his feet again, staggering away.
“You have to look after one another.” The fire cast shadows on Calub’s high cheekbones, his strong jaw. “You have to protect one another. You want to be men, don’t you? Not little, crying slum boys but real men, right?”
Low mumbles answered from the dark.
“Speak up,” Calub shouted. He hopped to his feet and leaned out over the fire. The smoke and the flames drew up higher, as though answering his challenge. “You want to be men, don’t you?”
The boys hollered their assent. Two Cups shouted with them. Whenever Calub spoke, he felt something stir in his chest.
“Well, then you need to stand for something. You have to be strong and proud. You have to look after boys littler than you. Weaker than you. You can’t take shit off of anybody.”
Two Cups sat outside the light of the fire, listening, learning. That morning, he had fled at the first sign of trouble, and he was sorry for that. But he knew now that running had not been a choice. He acted without thought, on instinct alone. He would be better next time, would choose to be better. He was certain of that. Calub’s words convinced him.
Sometimes Two Cups pictured Calub as one of the old heroes in the graybeards’ stories. He imagined Calub in the early days of the Republic, fighting the Widsith barbarians in some black forest, or as a gladiator facing down wyverns and manticores in an ancient coliseum. He wanted to picture himself there alongside Calub, armored and brave, but each time he tried, it ruined the illusion. He had not earned his place next to Calub. Not yet.
That night, he slept bundled up with Sheepsfeet for warmth. Sheepsfeet winced when he wrapped his arms around him. The boy had bruises along his back and chest and arms, a bite to his shoulder. Calub had given him a pinch of whiskey to help with the pain, and Sheepsfeet had not cried since. He was a tough boy, Sheepsfeet, and one quick to forgive. He had said nothing of Two Cups abandoning him in the alley, although everyone knew the truth of it, Two Cups especially.
Sheepsfeet was an ugly boy as well, with a lazy eye and a face pitted with scars from the same pox that had killed his family. A lucky thing those scars, or else he might never have made it back home from that alley. He shook as he dreamed.
“I’m sorry,” Two Cups whispered to the sleeping boy. “I’ll make this right. I promise I’ll make this right.”
Two Cups woke early the next morning. He went outside and circled around to the back of the hovel, where the boys kept a small stash of weapons hidden under a large plank of wood. Sharpened sticks, a few rusted shivs, a fire-hardened club, a heavy chain. He picked through these until he came upon the cestus, or battle glove, made of leather straps threaded over strips of iron. Calub had pinched it from a gymnasium months ago, but Two Cups had never before worn it.
He slid the glove over his right hand. It was large for him, but he liked the weight of it on his arm. When he made a fist, his hand felt heavy and strong.
“Do you think you’ll hit him with that?”
Two Cups turned to find Calub standing behind him. Suddenly he felt small and silly.
“Answer me, boy,” Calub said.
“Do you think you’ll be able to hit him with that?”
“Who do you think I want to hit?” Two Cups asked.
“I know exactly who you want to hit. And I know his arms are longer than yours. And that thing on your hand is heavy as a brick. You won’t be halfway through your punch, and he’ll have you knocked out.”
Two Cups lowered his hand. The cestus seemed heavier after Calub’s words.
“Go back inside,” Calub said. “Get some sleep. It’s too cold to be out this early.”
“I won’t,” Two Cups said. “I have to look after the little ones. You said it yourself.”
“That’s right. You have to look after the little ones. And when there’s a fight, you have to be there. But what do you think you’re going to do now? Walk down to the Staghorn and call for Fullo to come out and fight you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
For a second, he expected Calub to laugh. It was the worst thing he could imagine. If Calub had yelled at him or called him a fool or even knocked him down and ripped the cestus off his arm, Two Cups could have endured it. But laughter would have broken his spirit.
Instead Calub smiled and, bending down, lifted up a fire-hardened club and swung it over his shoulder.
“Well, if one of us is fighting, then all of us are fighting.”
There were nine Pinchpennies sleeping in the house, and within minutes, Calub had roused every one of them. They made their way to the far edge of the Belly, where the twisting corridors that gave the slum its name began to crest the first of the twin Lupine Hills, and where the Staghorn Pub sat on the edge of Dustmaker’s Lane. Sometimes the boys marched, mimicking legionnaires at drill, and sometimes they ran flat out, like a pack of dogs after a hare. Each boy wielded a weapon, and as they moved, the boys stabbed and swung and cleaved at their imaginary enemies.
Two Cups walked with Calub at his side, the older boy whispering strategy in his ear.
“As soon as he steps outside, you rush him,” Calub said. “You’re quick. If you can knock him down, you might get a few punches in before he can make a move.”
“I can’t hit him first,” Two Cups said. “What about the code?”
“What code?” Calub asked.
“The hero’s code. Like the graybeards teach. A hero doesn’t hit first.”
“Listen to me.” Calub grabbed Two Cups by his shoulders, stopped the boy in the lane. “Graybeards never been in a fight. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Now you hit him first, and you hit him with everything you have, understand?”
Two Cups nodded.
It was midmorning by the time the boys arrived outside the Staghorn. The slums had woken and the lane bustled with foot traffic. On the walk over, Two Cups had rehearsed in his head the words he would say to call Fullo out of the pub. But Fullo stood outside when they arrived, laughing and chewing Kaota leaves with a few other boys his age. The laughter stopped when Two Cups approached, Calub at his side.
“What’s this about?” Fullo asked. He turned and spat a chewed brown mess onto the ground.
Fullo had addressed Calub. The two boys knew each other by reputation but had never had much interaction. Fullo seemed not to notice Two Cups at all and certainly did not recognize him from the events of yesterday.
“Seems you had a little trouble with my friend here,” Calub said.
“Is that right?” Fullo looked to Two Cups.
Two Cups started to speak, but his voice caught. He took a breath. He pictured himself and Calub as horse-haired Akhaian warriors on a blood-soaked plain, ash spears and heavy shields in hand, back-to-back, as a horde of howling, painted barbarians bore down on them.
He clenched his fist and tested the weight of the cestus. His hand felt strong.
“My name is Two Cups, and I’m a Pinchpenny.” He stepped forward, within arm’s reach of Fullo now. “Same as Calub, same as all these boys. Yesterday you hurt one of my brothers. Little Sheepsfeet there. You caught us in an alley and put the boots to him. Instead of helping, I ran away. But I’m here now to make that right. And so me and you are going to step out into this square and—”
Fullo’s fist caught Two Cups on the chin, and Two Cups collapsed, tumbling off the porch of the Staghorn and into the dirt of the lane. He was unconscious when he hit the floor, but if his eyes had been open, he would have witnessed Calub and the Pinchpennies charge, a glorious charge worthy of a true epic.
6
Cassius held his belly as he walked. Ahead of him in the road, a couple stood kissing beneath a sputtering streetlamp. The glow of the fire cast the lane in a pale haze, and the couple glanced at Cassius and retreated into shadow.
At the Purse, he walked to the back room and asked to speak with Cinna. The guard at the door said Cinna would not be taking visitors until morning.
Cassius lifted his hand from his belly, and the wound there was black and ran with black blood that dripped to the floor, with a heavy, wet sound, like the rain of a storm.
“I can’t wait that long.”
• • •
Cassius lay in a dark room on the second floor of the Purse. His bed was small, and the gray sheets smelled of come and sour wine.
A guard stood at the door, a tall man with jowls and short, stiff hair. A sword hung sheathed at his hip.
When the door opened, the light from the hallway was blinding.
“Don’t move,” Cinna said. He slammed the door shut, and the room was dark again. “I’ll kill you where you lie if I lose sight of your hands for a second.”
Cassius held his hands in the air.
“Now you just keep them there,” Cinna said.
“I need to see a healer.”
“And I need answers,” Cinna roared. He kicked a nearby chair. “You give me what I need, and I’ll think about giving you what you need. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, where’s Nicola?”
“Dead.”
Cinna clenched his hand into a plump fist. “And Aulus?”
“Dead.”
“And yet you’re just fine.”
“I wouldn’t say fine,” Cassius said. “I’m hurt, and I need to see someone about my injuries.”
“Where’d the gut wound come from?”
“One of Piso’s men.”
“Piso’s men?” Cinna shook his head. “What were they doing there?”
“Coming to pick up the money.”
“That’s a lie. The man who took my money wasn’t with Piso.”
“It was Piso’s men at the house,” Cassius said. “A man and a woman. Nicola got to work on the kid, and the man started to talk. He was with Piso. Nicola didn’t believe him at first, so he got to work on the man, but the story was the same. He was Piso’s man, and he was just holding the money until the pickup.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The robbery was too sloppy. He took the money and left a trail for us back to him.”
“That’s what Nicola tried to figure out. But we couldn’t get a straight answer. And then the rest of them showed. Six of them. And then it all made sense. The whole thing was a setup. The thief was a lure, and he didn’t even know it. Led us right to an ambush.”
“But you managed to get out?” Cinna’s voice was low and searching.
“Wounded.”
“So let me go over this again. Just to be sure I’ve got it right. I sent three men to retrieve my money. You three arrived at the house and found the thief and found the money. My money. And then suddenly Piso’s men arrived.
“They killed Aulus, one of the best spellcasters on this godforsaken rock. They killed Nicola. A man who was like a brother to me. Yet you, who I’ve known a week, somehow you escape. Go missing for hours. Show up on my doorstep with a scratch on your belly. And now my money is gone. Is that about right?�
�
“Not exactly,” Cassius said.
“Well then, explain. And you had better do a good goddamn job of it.”
Cassius reached into his cloak. Cinna shouted, and the man at the door reached for his sword.
“Easy.” Cassius drew an oilskin pouch from a fold in his cloak. He tossed it to the floor and raised his hands again.
“You didn’t search him?” Cinna asked the guard.
The guard lowered his head. “He said if I touched him, he’d burn this place to the ground.”
“I could kill you right now. Go get that for me.”
The guard retrieved the pouch and handed it to Cinna. Cinna untied the pouch and looked inside, then withdrew a stack of bound banknotes. He thumbed the notes and looked to Cassius.
“Is this all of it?”
“I don’t know,” Cassius said. “It’s banknotes, and I can’t read. But it’s all that was in the house.”
Cinna tossed the bundle to the guard. “Count this. And be diligent. A man’s life depends on it.”
• • •
The new stitches itched. They were thicker than the old ones and tied with an overlong knot. The area around the wound was caked with dried blood, and the wound itself was raw. Cassius knew enough about wounds to know that it would leave a scar when it healed.
The physician had arrived in the night. He had been curt when addressing Cassius and unconcerned when Cassius flinched from the pain of the needle. He did not ask Cassius his name and did not supply his own. He thought the wound looked strange, as though it had been stitched recently.
Afterward, Cassius lay in bed, his tunic wet. There was no longer a guard at the door, or if there was a guard, he stood outside the door now. The light through the window was gray, early-morning sunlight filtered through a cloud cover.
He was tired now, so weary his joints ached. Beneath his exhaustion, he felt warm with anger.