by Will Panzo
Cassius had not expected such a sentiment from Vorenicus. He had assumed the son would share his father’s hatred of the Natives by reflex. Lucian and others had spoken of the commander’s fairness, but an even hand did not preclude a desire to subjugate. Benevolent masters were masters nonetheless.
“You think I’m mad,” Vorenicus said.
“No,” Cassius said. “I just don’t agree with you. From what I’ve seen of the Natives, they need an iron fist to rule them. They’ll respect nothing less.”
“You don’t know them as I do. They’re a proud people, noble in their own way. Inquisitive. Hardworking. With a great love for family and friendship.”
“They click and squawk like beasts in the field.”
“Come now, Cassius. You don’t know the first thing of their history. Before the legion arrived, they were divided into small tribes, each ruled by a chieftain selected from amongst the best warriors. No divine right of kings, no crown passed from father to son. They chose their leaders. Just like in Antioch.”
“You’d have us let them vote?”
“Every citizen has the right to vote. The Natives should elect their local council, same as any other province.”
Cassius thought again of Attus, of a single spark igniting a great fire. He was closer to his dream than ever before, the island like dry brush beneath his feet, waiting only for a flash of lightning to set it off. Yet now it seemed the legion commander himself had been stacking kindling.
“You’re laughing at me,” Vorenicus said.
“I’m not.”
“I’ve been laughed at before, it doesn’t offend me. Many people on this island think me a fool.”
“I don’t think you’re a fool. Just idealistic.”
“Men of vision shape the world. Tellium said that after the truce at Parnay.”
“What he actually said was, ‘It is the burden of men of vision to shape the world.’ And it wasn’t at Parnay. It was before the war, in his plea to the senate to raise an army.”
“A student of history, I see.”
“I’ve studied all the classical heroes,” Cassius said. “Tellium, Equitius, Plinius.”
“Attus?”
“I know every word of the Attus epics by heart.”
“Where did you study?”
“Nowhere.”
“Just something you picked up on the streets of Ivalia then?”
Cassius shook his head.
“I’m not mocking you,” Vorenicus said. “That’s quite an accomplishment. My father paid for a team of mainland tutors to instruct me since I was a boy. And still I don’t think I ever made it through all of the Attus epics.”
“Surprising what you can do with a little conviction.”
• • •
He was three blocks out of the Market and heading south into Lowtown when Sulla caught up with him. He did not see her approach. One minute he was walking by himself and the next Sulla was walking beside him. She did not call him by name, nor did she acknowledge him by gesture.
She moved ahead of him and crossed directly in front of him. He kept pace behind her, and when suddenly she darted over a refuse heap and into a stinking alley, he followed after her.
They moved to the end of the alley, the ground wet with excrement from emptied chamber pots. A rat brushed Cassius’s leg and he shouted from surprise and kicked at it and Sulla wheeled on him and told him to keep his voice down. She crouched, motioned for him to do the same.
“What the hell was that in the Market?” She was whispering. Her right eye was bruised.
“I had to prove to Piso and his men that I wasn’t a spy. The only way to do that was to attack Cinna’s men.”
“You interested in doing that again?”
“What does that mean?” Cassius asked.
“Don’t act so indignant. It’s what you do, isn’t it? Killing people? I’m asking if you’re looking for work?”
“Does this have something to do with the eye?”
“It does.” Sulla’s lips peeled back into a sneer.
“Who did it?”
“A man named Iustus. One of Cinna’s.”
“And this is the man you’d have me kill?”
Sulla bowed her head, looked as though she were calculating odds.
“If you’re interested,” she said finally.
“Why did he hit you?”
“I owe him money.”
“Gambling debts?”
“What business is that of yours? I owe him, that’s all you need to know. And I’m good for it, but he’s been beat by some other debtors recently, and he’s looking to make an example of me.”
“Will he kill you if you don’t pay?” Cassius asked.
“I believe he might try.”
“Can you pay him with the money you owe me?”
“That money”—Sulla shook her head—“that money is gone, Cassius. And even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t put a goddamn dent in what I owe.”
“I don’t just kill people, Sulla. I’m not a monster.”
“What about today? You were prepared to kill that man, weren’t you?”
Footsteps sounded from the mouth of the alley. Cassius and Sulla fell silent. They waited. Two men appeared on the street but continued moving, lost in their own whispered conversation.
“That man had it coming,” Cassius said.
“Why? Did you pick a fight with him like you did with Junius? Or is it just because he was one of Cinna’s, and it served your purpose?”
“To hell with you. I’m not on trial here. You came to me.”
“For help.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It would benefit you,” she said. “I know a way you could do it and take down others if you wanted. Cause some trouble and score a nice bit of money as well.”
“What does that mean?”
“What?”
“Cause some trouble?”
“The conflict with Piso and Cinna. The one you’re trying to orchestrate. Or did you think I hadn’t noticed.”
“If I do this for you, I’m going to need you to do something for me. Something big.”
She hesitated before speaking, then reached out her hand. Cassius stared at it without moving. It hung soft and insistent.
“Go on,” she said. “I don’t have plague.”
He gripped her hand. She pulled him close.
“When I make a deal with a demon,” she said, “I shake his hand.”
• • •
Piso’s quarters smelled heavily of musk and beneath this of rancid meat. Scented candles burned weakly. The door to the side room was closed, and a black cloth was draped over the entranceway.
“Have a seat,” Piso said.
A scream rent the air, high and sustained, followed by hushed voices. The noise had come from the next room, but Piso seemed not to hear it.
“I’d rather stand,” Cassius said.
“Suit yourself.” Piso produced a wad of shredded tobacco from a pouch at his hip and tucked the plug into his lower lip. He worked his tongue over his teeth, smoothing the wet mass until it lay evenly against his gums. “Tell me, Cassius, have you been to war before?”
“Is this a war now?”
“It’s a war, boy. I didn’t exactly want one, but one’s what I got. Only thing for me to do now is try to win it.”
“Is it too late to sue for peace?”
“Much too late.” Piso eased back onto the edge of his desk. “You saw what Cinna did last night. Sent spellcasters down here to cause trouble. He’s getting more brazen with each attack. Now answer my question.”
“No, I’ve never been to war.”
“And yet you’d come fight for me.”
“How many spellcasters do you have?” Cass
ius asked. “Eighty? Maybe ninety? Cinna has a hundred and twenty.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?”
“I’d know better than you.”
Piso stared up into Cassius’s face, sitting motionless, waiting for the lie to reveal itself.
Cassius stood tensed, his cloak pulled tight, his arms tucked inside to hide their trembling. His heart pounded in his chest, and beads of sweat rolled down his neck. On the Isle of Twelve, he had learned to stand calm in fire. Panic meant death. But if you could move past panic, then no fire in the world could harm you.
He had no spell to protect him from Piso’s gaze or his sudden rages. But the lesson still held. He was safe if he was calm.
And if he chose his attacks wisely, waiting for his opening and striking with overwhelming force. It was a lesson that took years to learn, a lifetime to master. Cassius was no expert, but he knew an opening when he saw one.
“I’m an adept spellcaster,” he said. “And I’ve shown I’m willing to fight Cinna’s men. You don’t have the luxury of turning me away. Not now.”
Piso sniffed. “The men are still upset about Junius. I can’t offer you my brand.”
“If your word is any good, I don’t need the brand.”
“It’s two silvers for every man of Cinna’s you kill,” he said. “Four if the man’s a spellcaster. I don’t pay for women or children. But I don’t frown on it either.”
“All right.”
“But no more of what happened this morning. You can’t be that careless. Not in the Market at least. That’s legion territory.”
“What do you care?” Cassius asked.
“I care because the legion has twice the men I do. Trained cutthroats every one. I don’t need Quintus sticking his nose in this. So you stay clear of the Market.”
Another scream rent the air.
“Goddamn it.” Piso spat. He sprang from his chair and moved to the door opposite the entrance. Cassius followed him inside.
A man lay on a table, naked to the waist, and two men stood over him. The man on the table had deep burns to his arms and chest, his flesh the caramelized brown of cooked pork skin. He was trembling, and one of the men was trying to hold him. The other man, a spellcaster, cradled the burned man’s left arm, clutching it at the wrist and at the elbow. The flesh of the forearm was unlike the other flesh, smooth and pink as though freshly sunburned but with no severe trauma.
“Are you healing him or twisting his dick off in here?” Piso shouted.
The spellcaster stood at the sound of Piso’s voice. He was old, with a wide brow and a wrinkled, thin-lipped mouth.
“Can’t you give him something to ease the pain?” Piso asked. “There are monkeys in the jungle who can hear him carrying on.”
“I gave him all I can,” the healer said. “Any more, and we risk his going unconscious. Can’t have that. Need to be able to hear him to know how much of this he can take. When to keep going and when to back off some, give his heart a chance to rest.”
“How much more is left?”
The healer shrugged. “He’s hurt bad. It’s going to be a slow healing.”
“Are you certain he’ll recover?” Piso asked.
“Recovery isn’t the problem. Spells I got can heal any wound a man can sustain. I can regrow you two lungs if needed. But they won’t be any use to you if your heart seizes up while I’m doing it. So we go slow, and we hope he doesn’t die before I get all the way through him.”
“How slow?”
“I wouldn’t want to put a time to it if I didn’t have to.”
“You have to,” Piso said.
“Thirty or forty hours.”
“At a half-gold per hour, he had better make it out of this alive.”
“I’ll do the best I can.”
The healer returned to the table. He took a fresh grip on the arm and closed his eyes. Cassius felt a stirring in his chest and the flesh of the burned man’s bicep began to bubble. A smell like rotted ham rose from the arm, and the burned man kicked his legs and screamed. The flesh dried as it bubbled, then sloughed off in great calcified flakes, and the skin left beneath was bright pink and smooth.
Piso exited the room and Cassius followed and closed the door behind him.
“Goddamned washed-up old killer.” Piso kicked his desk. “He’s robbing me.”
“That’s generous of you to pay for that man’s healing,” Cassius said. “I’m sure your soldiers respect you for it.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I don’t pay to have every man in Lowtown treated by healers. That’s my sister’s son in there. She’d have my balls if I sent him back to the mainland in that condition.”
“Is that why Cinna attacked last night? To hurt your nephew?”
“I don’t know. He thinks I killed his friend. And that fat old pervert wants revenge. Probably he just wanted to kill someone, anyone, and got lucky with the boy.”
There was another shout. A long wail that tapered off into a breathless gasp.
“Aren’t you worried that screaming will spook the other men?” Cassius asked.
“All healing is painful. If the men don’t know that now, it’s time they learned.” Piso crossed the room to his desk. He searched through his drawers until he found a bottle of spiced rum. He poured a measure of this into a mug and drank it in a single gulp.
“About the fight last night,” Cassius said. “Do you know how many people were killed?”
“Five of Cinna’s. Three of mine. Three if him in there lives. Four if not.”
“And civilians?”
“What?”
“How many civilians died?” Cassius asked. “I saw the ruined houses while walking this morning. The destruction was terrible.”
“What do you care? They don’t pay taxes to you, do they?”
“I was just wondering.”
“I don’t know. Go ask around if you’re that interested.”
“All right.”
“I don’t have enough trouble as it is?” Piso shouted. “Worrying about this fat bastard trying to kill me? Worrying about that maniac in the jungle and exactly how much damage I can cause before he decides enough is enough and marches his army over the whole damn town? Now I’ve got to worry about how many of these yellow animals died under a collapsed tenement, too? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I was just wondering.”
“Are you a physician, Cassius?”
“No.”
“A priest maybe?”
“I’m not.”
“No, you’re a killer. And we do ourselves a disservice to deny our nature.” Piso jabbed a finger at Cassius. “So put the suffering of the masses from your mind and do the job you came here to do.”
• • •
“Why do you practice Rune magic?”
Cassius sat on a high stool in the healer’s shop. The Yoruban stood next to him, probing the painful lump on the side of his head with his large, gentle hands.
“The same reason you do,” the Yoruban said. “Because it is my gift and a means for me to make my way in this world.”
The Yoruban pressed the base of Cassius’s skull, felt along his occipital bone, felt along his temples. He looked into Cassius’s ear and dipped the tip of his index finger into the ear canal and withdrew it, inspecting for blood but finding none.
“Yorubans must have their own magic.”
“A kind of nature magic,” the Yoruban said. “Handed down from elders to initiates that my people may use these secrets to tame the wilderness and protect our kingdom.”
“But you weren’t interested in Yoruban magic?”
“I was not able to study it. Initiates are chosen from only a handful of families, their secrets well guarded. Rune magic is different, though. You have the ability to work the runes or you don’
t. If you do, you need only acquire spells and learn the runes. You need permission from no one.”
The Yoruban moved in front of Cassius. He pulled down Cassius’s lower eyelids to inspect the red flesh there. He examined Cassius’s pupils. He held his finger in front of Cassius’s face and asked him to follow it with his eyes while tracing an H in the air.
“Did you ever train as a killer?” Cassius asked.
“For a time. When I first began to practice.”
“But no more.”
“No more.”
“Why?”
The Yoruban tilted back Cassius’s head and looked up his nose. He tapped a fingertip on each of Cassius’s cheeks, and Cassius winced with both touches.
“Rune magic is an open system,” the Yoruban said. “More so than the magic of my people. But it is also a predatory one.”
“How do you mean?”
“The only way to grow powerful is to gain spells. You can’t study your way to being a better Rune mage. The spell is not in your mind, you have to own it physically.”
“That’s not true,” Cassius said. “You grow better through training and practice, the same as any other discipline.”
The Yoruban moved to the table by the far wall. He shuffled through a pile of gruesome instruments, an amputation saw, vein hooks, suture needles, a bone mallet and chisel.
“But still there is the matter of acquiring spells,” he said. “If you’re rich, you can buy them. But if not, you have to take spells from others, from those who can’t resist. The strong devour the weak. And the weak, hoping to become the strong, devour the helpless. I was neither rich nor strong. I didn’t like my position, so I had to change it.”
The Yoruban came to a vial of green liquid. He held it up in the light of the room and sighted through it, measuring its color and its cloudiness. He uncorked the vial and sniffed it and then moved back to Cassius’s side.
“Owning many spells doesn’t make you strong,” Cassius said.
“Of course it does.”
“Is the man with the most swords the best fighter?”
“Not necessarily. Although he may have the advantage of always having the best blade.”
“You still have to learn the runes.”
“They teach runes to children.”