by Will Panzo
He rose and walked to the window. In the streets below, a pair of old women argued. They began to yell, then one old woman spat on the other and they grabbed and slapped and fell in the mud.
A long-haired man entered and stood staring at Cassius, as though he had not expected him to be there.
“We’re going to meet someone,” the long-haired guard said.
“Who?” Cassius asked.
“Don’t worry about that.”
Cassius adjusted his cloak. He made his way to the door, walking with a hitch in his step.
“Leave your gauntlets here,” the guard said. “You’re in Master Cinna’s house. There’s no need to be armed.”
“I won’t leave my gauntlets.”
“I could take them if I wanted to.” The guard eyed Cassius. He had a knife tucked into his belt, and a truncheon hung at his hip.
“You don’t want to.”
The guard stood silent.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he said finally.
With a flourish, Cassius slid his arms out of his cloak, like a stage magician preparing for a trick.
The main room of the Purse was cleared of all tables save for one. The table could seat ten but now seated only Cinna and Vorenicus.
Vorenicus was dressed in a red tunic trimmed with yellow. His skin was tanned, and he had close-cropped hair, as befitted a soldier. His eyes were dark and deep-set. He looked to be about Cassius’s age, and behind him stood another soldier, much older.
“Cassius, this is Master Vorenicus.” Cinna motioned toward his guest.
“Nice to meet you, Cassius.” Vorenicus offered his hand, and Cassius shook it, the hand small but the grip wiry and strong.
“This is about the incident in Lowtown yesterday. Vorenicus is here to gather information.”
“What does he care?” Cassius asked.
“I’m the head of the city guard.” Vorenicus’s wide-brimmed helmet, with its two long eagle feathers strapped one to each side, lay on the tabletop.
“I thought the legion didn’t interfere in Scipio business,” Cassius said.
“I don’t know who told you that. But I assure you, I’m very interested in what you have to say.”
“Tell him everything he needs to know,” Cinna said. “Start from the beginning.”
“I was in Lowtown around noon yesterday.”
“What were you doing there?” Vorenicus filled a cup with wine.
Cassius looked to Cinna. Cinna nodded.
“I was going to collect money,” Cassius said. “Money that was stolen from a gaming hall.”
Vorenicus lifted his cup. He stared into it and sniffed, then set it down.
“Who was with you?” he asked.
“Me and Nicola and Aulus.”
“Just the three of you?”
“Yes. We tracked the man to his house and entered and found him and a child inside.” Cassius paused. An image of the back room flashed through his mind. He breathed deep, tried to calm his racing heart. There was strength in stillness. He knew that well. “We questioned them, and they confessed to stealing the money and told us where it was hidden.”
“Questioned?” Vorenicus looked deep into Cassius’s eyes. “Their bodies were mutilated.”
“It’s my understanding,” Cinna interjected, “that the thieves weren’t cooperating at first. My men were in enemy territory. They needed to find our property and leave as quickly as possible.”
“Who ordered that?”
“The questioning?” Cassius’s hands, lying on the table, began to shake. He buried them in his lap.
“The mutilating.”
“Nicola did it. I’m a spellcaster. I don’t know how to work a knife that way.”
“What happened after that?” Vorenicus’s eyes seemed always to be searching. His gaze moved from Cassius to Cinna and back again, looking to see every change in expression, whether prompted by questions or even certain words.
“We found the money buried under the back room. Nicola counted it and said it was good. We left and stepped outside into an ambush. Piso’s men were everywhere.”
“How do you know it was Piso’s men?” Vorenicus reached for his helmet, ran his fingers along its brim.
“Who else would be down there?”
“So you don’t know for sure.”
“I didn’t ask to see their papers,” Cassius said.
“It’s important.” Vorenicus leaned forward. “Piso claims that he didn’t send anyone to that house. Claims the men inside weren’t even his.”
“Of course he does.” Cinna had forgotten his makeup, and his naked face was mottled and red. “What good would it serve him to take responsibility for this?”
“Please finish your story, Cassius.”
“We were outnumbered, and it was over fast. Nicola fell first. Someone stabbed me. I managed a fighting retreat. Aulus was still standing last I saw him. But he was hurt pretty bad. All burned up.”
“And what happened to the money?”
“The money was—”
“Taken.” Cinna slammed a fat fist onto the table. “From the corpses of my men. Whatever restitution Piso is forced to pay should also include the stolen money.”
“And how much was it?”
“Five thousand gold,” Cinna said.
“We’ll have to look into that.”
“Well, you had better make it quick,” Cinna shouted. “I’ve got a thousand men under my command. And every last motherless one of them is calling for blood.”
“Keep your men in line.” Vorenicus stood. He gathered his helmet and placed it on his head and, for a second, it caught the candlelight, and he seemed wreathed in golden flame.
“I’m doing the best I can.” Cinna leapt to his feet. “But they don’t like when their associates are murdered in broad daylight. They want some goddamned justice, and if you don’t give it to them, they’re liable to take it for themselves.”
“I’ll do what needs to be done,” Vorenicus said. “But I won’t abide open violence in the streets. If you can’t control your men, you’ll be forcing me to take action.”
“I assure you,” Cassius said, “that’s something no one wants.”
• • •
That night Cinna came to Cassius’s room and Cassius pretended to wake from a deep sleep. He ordered Cassius out of bed and together they walked to the third floor, Cinna’s private apartments. At the top of the steps was a small anteroom, the far wall draped in a rich purple tapestry embroidered with an ancient battle scene, Aemillius Attus and his troops fending off Fathalan horsemen.
Cinna’s bed had a large brass frame and was draped in a mosquito net. A young girl lay amidst the blankets, curled and naked. She looked fourteen at the oldest.
There was a bottle on Cinna’s nightstand and two mugs and Cinna collected these. He crossed the room to a set of double doors and opened the doors and stepped out onto the balcony. He poured the mugs full of wine and leaned against the balustrade, gazing over the city. In the middle distance, to the east of the Grand Market, a fire raged. It was three blocks long, and smoke from the flames hung thick.
“What’s this about?” Cassius asked.
“Can’t a man have a drink with a friend?”
“Is that what we are now?”
Cinna smiled. “Of course not. You work for me. We can’t be friends.”
“So I still work for you?”
“Unless you’ve resigned your post.”
“I’ve been locked in that room,” Cassius said. “I thought I was your prisoner.”
“Boy, I don’t make a habit of leaving prisoners armed. I kept you locked up at first because I needed to learn the particulars of the situation. There was a lot of money at stake. Not to mention the loss of lives. I don’t
know you well, and it was too much of a coincidence that men loyal to me were dead while you yet lived.”
“But all the money was there?” Cassius walked to the balustrade. In the street below, a drunk Native man wandered singing.
“Every note.”
“I told you as much. I don’t steal.”
“I know that now.” Cinna raised his mug to Cassius and sipped it. “And I want you to know that’s a quality I appreciate in my men.”
“So why keep me locked up after the money was accounted for?”
“It’s my job to control the flow of information to my men. They don’t like to hear of their own dying. That’s news I have to break to them.”
Cassius leaned back against the balustrade. “So what happens to me now?”
“You can resume work if you’d like.”
“Two days ago, I thought you had a mind to kill me.”
Cinna smiled. He stared off. “Why would I kill you?”
“Because I was more trouble than I was worth.”
“And now?”
“I have a feeling you may need my services in the coming days.”
“So then rest easy.”
Cassius sniffed at his mug. He sipped the wine and found it sweet and heady, unwatered.
“An acquired taste,” Cinna said.
“They say unwatered wine makes you dim and crazed.”
“I find that it can be invigorating. In moderation.”
“Moderation.” Cassius smiled. “I didn’t think you were familiar with the word.”
“And why should I be when I can have as much of everything as I want?” Cinna spread his arms, gesturing to the city and beyond the city, to the horizon.
“But not of unwatered wine?”
Cinna stared in silence. “The first wine I ever drank was unwatered,” he said after some time. “I was a boy then, maybe ten. I grew up in a small border town, near the Crean Desert.”
“That’s Fathalan land.”
“This was fifty years ago. Now it’s Fathalan land, but back then, it was part of the Republic, and there wasn’t a summer went by the legion didn’t fight those animals for it. One night, a raiding party came across the desert and raced through the town, slaughtering, raping.”
“Fathalans?”
“Of course.” Cinna spat. “The pigs. They burned everything. The legion arrived, and there was a huge spellfight, one of the greatest I’ve seen to this day. The ground was shaking, and I was certain I was going to die that night. The next morning, I wandered out onto the plains. Me and Nicola.”
“You knew him then?”
“Even before then. Our families have been friends for generations. We were raised together.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you?”
Cassius shook his head.
“Nicola and I wandered out of the town to the countryside. There was a winery there. Nicola wanted to see his first dead body, and I wanted to find something of value. Of course there was nothing at the winery worth taking. We searched the whole ruins. Stole grapes and ate them in the fields of ash. Later, we came upon a sinkhole.”
“From the battle?” Cassius set his mug of wine down when Cinna wasn’t looking.
“Some spell had punched a hole in the ground. There were tunnels below for storing the wine. We found the barrels destroyed, goddamn tunnels flooded. Some of the wine had gelled inside the barrels from the early-morning cold. Nicola and I ate it.”
“Did you get drunk?”
“Of course. Nicola’s father was furious. He beat Nicola when he saw him drunk. Right in front of me. Nicola was crying, and I was crying. His father asked where we had gotten the wine, but Nicola never told him. Certainly never told him I was the first one down the hole. That it was my idea to eat the stuff. My idea from the start.”
Cinna turned to face Lowtown. Streetlamps sputtered under an overcast sky and the city was mostly quiet and the sounds of the jungle loud. Crickets, birdcalls, the howls of monkeys.
“He didn’t want a funeral. He wanted only to be burned. He wanted his dog killed and burned with him, but beyond that he asked for nothing.”
“I respect that,” Cassius said.
“So do I.” Cinna looked to Cassius. “But if he hadn’t sworn me to his last wishes, I’d build a funeral mound. A mausoleum. A goddamned pyramid to rival the ones those apes in the Southern Kingdoms build. High enough to blot out the sun.”
Cassius thought about Nicola standing over the butchered man, his bloody knife gripped in his fist, his rat-face locked in a twisted grin.
“That’s a good sentiment,” he said, speaking of the funeral wishes of a man he himself had killed. He looked Cinna in the eye while he said these words, and never once did his voice waver.
He had come very far to be here, he thought in that moment. And he knew now there was no place else that he belonged.
“What worth is good sentiment?” Cinna asked. “Hell, they’re not even going to return his body.” Cinna sipped from his cup. He spat, then hurled the cup over the balcony. “That bastard down at the docks is laughing his sick ass off. Bad enough he outmaneuvered me with that ambush. But he killed my friend as well.”
“And what will you do?”
“I don’t know yet. The men want blood. That fire is their handiwork.”
“One of ours started it?” Cassius asked.
“Who can tell? Piso will claim that we started it. And the men will swear they were attacked and only defending themselves. The outcome is the same either way.”
“And what’s the outcome?”
“Fifteen dead for us. Twenty for Piso. Twice as many injured. Plus the property damage. And it’ll mean another visit from Vorenicus tomorrow.”
“Why is that?”
“He doesn’t like when we burn the city,” Cinna said. “He’s a bit strange that way.”
“I thought Quintus benefited when you and Piso fought. Nicola said it meant you weakened your own forces, and Quintus grew stronger in the process.”
“That’s true. But Vorenicus is different from his father. Fancies himself a lawgiver. Thinks it’s his job to keep us bosses honest. He doesn’t have the foresight of the general. And he’s idealistic besides. I suspect if there’s more bloodshed, he’ll want it contained to our personal armies. Any more business like this”—Cinna motioned toward the fire—“and he’ll want to get involved.”
“Will his father let him?”
“Who knows?” Cinna was sweating. He wiped his brow. “That crazy bastard is liable to do anything.”
“And will there be more fighting?”
“I don’t know. The men are right to want revenge. Hell, I want it. But it’s not that simple. What would you do?”
Cassius’s wound began to ache. He rubbed it while he thought, his mind working intuitively to decide a true answer to the question, then counterintuitively to find the answer Cinna would expect of him. He recalled what the blind man in the Market had said the other day about warring with himself, about his every thought being a contradiction.
“I’d sue for peace,” he said.
“Only days ago, you said you wanted to join me to kill Piso’s men.”
“There’s more money in peace, though.”
“Money isn’t my only concern,” Cinna said. “What about the way people look at me? Is it okay for them to think they can kill my men with impunity?”
“No.”
“And what of the guards they killed the other night?”
“You’re sure that was Piso’s man Servilius who did that?”
Cinna threw up his hands. “Oh, who can ever be sure? The only witnesses were whores. But they said the man told them the streets were no longer safe. It was war now. War. The same message left at the house in Lowtown, spelled in th
e blood of my men.”
Cassius stood silent.
“My men cry out for revenge,” Cinna yelled. “Should I deny them? If I do, they’ll think me weak. And what about honor? About loyalty and justice? My friend is dead. Don’t I owe him vengeance?”
“What worth is vengeance? It’s not something you can hold.”
In the distance, one of the burning buildings collapsed, and a cloud of embers rose into the sky.
“In the early days of the Republic, before the courts were created,” Cinna said, “vengeance was the only justice. Families and clans used blood feuds to settle their grievances.”
“These are not the old days.”
“A shame, if you ask me.”
“It must have been chaos then,” Cassius said. “People killing each other over the smallest insult.”
“That’s not how the feuds worked. There was a price that needed to be paid for minor infractions. Assault. Theft. Rape. These things were negotiable, could be mended with the exchange of gold. But other crimes—murder, slavery—these had to be paid in blood.”
“A dark time, to be sure.”
“Dark time? That was the age of heroes, boy. Don’t you know your history?”
“I haven’t studied it much.”
“You know what they say of the young and history.” Cinna sighed. “It was a different time then. Men cared still for personal honor. For a moral code. Back then, a man’s honor could not be satisfied with gold. It could only be repaid in blood. So murder demanded murder for retribution. And sometimes more than one.”
“How do you mean?” Cassius asked.
“The death of a servant or a friend demanded one death. The death of a brother or a son, two. The death of a father, five.”
“And what of a mother?”
“The law only applied to men. Although there is the legend of Aemillius Attus and his mother.”
“I’m not familiar with it.”
Cinna clutched his heart dramatically. “You should be ashamed, boy. He’s the father of the Republic.”
Cassius did not respond.
“After Attus escaped from slavery and began to war against the desert rats, they killed his mother to break his spirit. In response, he destroyed the city of Al-Bujah.”