by Will Panzo
“Cinna, who had me kidnapped?”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe, stranger.” Servilius leaned back so that his chair rested on two legs. The light from the candles flashed over his face and, for an instant, cast the shadow of a grinning demon on the far wall. “It does all seem to fit. A misunderstanding. A fight. Someone gets killed. Could have happened to anyone. Now the girl though, Sulla, she seemed to think you were up to no good. She didn’t know what exactly, but she thought you were the one who instigated the trouble at the Market today.”
Sulla started to speak, her words muffled by the gag.
“She came to me saying she couldn’t bear to see the killing anymore,” Servilius continued, ignoring the cries of protest. “Told me she knew where you were hiding, would tell me for free if I came to get you, put an end to all this chaos. Free. Can you imagine? Of course, nothing is free in Scipio, so I wonder if maybe she isn’t working an angle of her own.”
Servilius stood and approached Sulla from behind. He gripped her hair, pulled back her head to expose her neck. He lowered the blade till it rested over her pulsing jugular.
Sulla glared up at him, her eyes raging and defiant.
“Should I slit her throat for making up these vicious stories?” Servilius caught sight of Sulla’s withering look and smiled. He lifted the blade so that its point rested in the corner of her right eye. “Or maybe just take out one of those pretty eyes. That way she’ll always have something to remember me by. What do you say, stranger? Tell me she’s lying, and I’ll teach her a lesson.”
“I kidnapped you,” Cassius said.
Servilius looked up. “What?”
“I paid the bath attendants to drug you. Had you carted to Hightown. I used a draught of Stone Sleep brought up from the Southern Kingdoms to keep you in a stupor until I made my move to Lowtown.”
Servilius took a fresh grip on his dagger. “Why?”
“I needed to imitate one of Piso’s men to cause some trouble in Hightown. And I needed someone who was recognizable and easy to impersonate. We’re about the same height. We’re both spellcasters. In the dark, when I’m wearing an eyepatch, we’re practically twins. It was nothing personal.”
“I’m going to kill you slow, boy.”
Servilius flung Sulla aside. He lunged for Cassius and at that moment Lucian sprang up from the floor, shouldered into him, and sent both men toppling to the ground. Servilius hit first, his head striking loudly on the wooden floorboards.
Cassius raced for the bar. He vaulted over it and landed on his feet and crouched and searched in the dark with his hands. He overturned amphorae, knocked cups and plates to the floor. Then he felt the smooth stock of the crossbow. He hefted it and stood. By the light of the candles, he saw it was already loaded. It was also heavy. He had to balance it on his hip to aim.
Lucian and Servilius were still on the ground, Lucian atop the dazed spellcaster. He lay sideways, pressing his girth across Servilius’s arms, pinning him. The ill-dressed knight was rushing to help, while nearby the man in mail unsheathed his sword and approached Sulla. He straddled her prone form, raised high his sword, and the crossbow bolt struck his neck. A spray of arterial blood arced in the light of the candles, and Sulla kicked up, striking the man in the groin. He dropped his blade and staggered off into shadow, and Cassius heard the sound of blood hitting the floor, wet and dull, then the sound of the man collapsing. His chain mail rang, then fell silent.
Not knowing if Lucian had another bolt at hand, or if he’d be able to find it in the dark, or load the bow, Cassius hoisted the heavy bow overhead and hurled it at the ill-dressed knight. It struck the man on his side and he turned, eyes wide with murderous intent, and charged at Cassius behind the bar. The sword from the shadows struck him at the base of his skull, an executioner’s swing. The force behind the blow was enough to kill but not enough to separate head from body, and so the head lolled forward at a gruesome angle as the body finished its halting step and collapsed.
The sword hung in midair, as though wielded by some hidden wraith or a shadow come to life. And then it clattered to the floor and Sulla emerged from the dark. Her hands and feet were still bound. She screamed into her gag and muffled as it was, Cassius still recognized Lucian’s name.
He vaulted the bar again and, with his good hand, snatched up the discarded sword mid run. As he approached the struggling forms of Servilius and Lucian, he switched to a backhanded grip and aimed and drove the point down into the flesh between Servilius’s shoulder and his chest.
Servilius screamed. His hand clenched, and a tremor carried up through his arm. Cassius tried to lift the sword for another strike, but its tip was stuck in a floorboard.
Servilius’s gauntlets lay under Lucian’s large thigh and Servilius reached for these awkwardly with his good hand and Cassius stomped on the hand and felt a crunch underfoot.
Cassius kicked the gauntlets out from under Lucian, and they skidded across the room. He helped Lucian roll onto his back. He retrieved Servilius’s knife from the dark and cut Lucian’s binds and ungagged him, then did the same for Sulla.
Still holding the knife, he stood astride the prone Servilius and, with his free hand, shook the sword still buried in flesh and bone and floorboard. Servilius writhed and screamed, his arm spasming.
“Tadua,” Cassius said. He stopped shaking the sword long enough to hear a response.
“What?” Servilius gasped.
“The girl you killed. The bath attendant. Her name was Tadua.”
“What does that mean?”
“Say it.”
“Go to hell.”
Cassius rattled the sword again. Servilius groaned.
“Say it.”
“Tadua,” Servilius shouted. “Tadua. Her name was Tadua.”
“The last word you ever speak.” And, leaning down, he slit Servilius’s throat.
• • •
Cassius sat on the floor of the bar, his heart pounding so forcefully he could hear its beat in his ears. Time slowed. He measured its passage by the spread of blood pooling beneath him, the blood of Piso’s men. He was aware of voices speaking behind him but not of the words spoken.
He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and looked up and saw Lucian looming over him. He gripped the barkeep’s tunic and pulled himself to his feet. He hugged Lucian.
“I didn’t know,” he said. He was trembling. “If I had known . . .”
“It’s okay, boy.”
“I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.”
“I know.”
“I would have died before I let that happen.”
“I’m okay. We’re all okay.”
Cassius stepped back. He wiped his face, his hands coming away wet with sweat or with tears or maybe with both. Sulla stood nearby, leaning her weight against a table.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“I’ll live.” Sulla was panting, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She eyed him warily. “Unless you have other ideas about that.”
“I think there’s been enough bloodshed in this bar tonight.”
She nodded. And by that short exchange, a few words, a simple gesture, they agreed not to kill one another. The most informal of peace treaties.
“My gauntlets?”
“In the back near Vorenicus.”
“Are there any others that we should be worried about?”
“Servilius only brought two men,” she said.
Cassius scanned the room. Every shadow seemed full of menace.
“You could have gotten us killed.” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Why?”
“I wanted you to stop. You wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“You betrayed me to Piso. What did you think he would do?�
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“I knew he would kill you if I told him everything I knew,” Sulla said. “That’s why I never told Piso.”
“Only Servilius then?”
“I thought you two had an understanding.” Sulla rubbed her sore wrists. “More so than any of the other men. I told him you had something to do with the fight in the Market and that you were working your own agenda. That’s it. Nothing more. I thought he would take you back to Lowtown and maybe discipline you. Bring you in line. I never thought this would happen.”
“You didn’t think at all,” Cassius said.
“You forced my hand.”
“Don’t blame this—”
Sulla flipped a nearby table. It landed with a crash.
“Someone had to stop this madness.”
“Did you really believe they wouldn’t kill me?” Cassius asked.
“Do you think I wanted you dead? I could have slipped poison in that glass of wine I gave you. You would have drank it and never woken up. But I didn’t. Think about that. And believe what you will.”
Sulla moved for the door. Shadows swallowed her as she stepped beyond the candlelight.
“Where are you going?” Cassius asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s dangerous out there.”
“No more dangerous than being near you.”
The door opened with a sustained creak. A strong breeze swept the room, snuffing the flames of the last few candles. Her footsteps halted.
“Lucian.” Her voice was soft, sorrowful.
“Yes, girl?”
“I’m sorry.”
The door swung shut, and the room was dark and quiet.
• • •
The Yoruban arrived while they were eating. They ate by candlelight in the main room of the bar, a meal of fish and boiled potatoes, day-old bread. They drank a sweet port.
They had cleared the bodies from the front room, moving them out into the lane, then dumping them in an alleyway, where three discarded dead would not raise much suspicion on a normal day and certainly not tomorrow, when the dead of the Market would number in the hundreds. They scrubbed the blood from the floorboards as best they could. Probably the wood had stained anyway but in the dark, the Yoruban did not notice.
The Yoruban accepted a glass of wine and thanked Lucian for his hospitality, his tone formal and polite even as the city burned outside the front door.
“You are in need of healing,” the Yoruban said.
“For myself and for someone else,” Cassius said.
“You are in bad shape.”
“The other is worse.”
“You then?” The Yoruban looked to Lucian. Lucian shook his head.
“Come.”
Cassius stood and walked to the pantry. The Yoruban followed.
At the sight of Vorenicus, the Yoruban made a low grunt and muttered a prayer in his native tongue.
“That is who I think it is,” he said.
“Yes,” Cassius said.
The Yoruban kneeled over the prone figure. He felt for the pulses in Vorenicus’s neck, listened to his chest as he breathed. He peeled open Vorenicus’s eyelids, one and then the other, and felt his forehead for fever.
“This is beyond my abilities,” the Yoruban said.
“Is there nothing you can do?”
“The wound is in his mind. I have no spells to help that, have never even heard of such a spell.” The Yoruban spread his hands like some pious supplicant, as though appealing to Cassius and to his own gods and to the shades of all healers who had come before. “If I could help, I would. But I don’t believe I can. And worse, I may injure him in trying.”
“I understand,” Cassius said.
“How did he come to be here?”
“Do you want to know?”
“No, my friend, I do not. Nor do I want to know what you will do with him. I suppose I asked by reflex.”
“Can you help with these?” Cassius held up his ravaged arms. “I believe the hand may be broken as well.”
The Yoruban removed the bloodstained bandages, surveyed the wounds as a general surveys the terrain of a battlefield, considering whether success was even an option.
“It will take time,” he said
“Hours?” Cassius asked.
“Days.”
“No.”
“This cannot be rushed,” the Yoruban said.
“I don’t have time,” Cassius said. “Can you clean the wounds and bandage them? And then treat the hand?”
“The hand can be done in a few hours. I am confident of that.”
Cassius fished inside his tunic. He produced the leather pouch that contained the wound-rot spell, holding it by its straps so that his bare hand was far from the jewel inside.
“This is yours.” He offered the pouch to the Yoruban by its strap.
“Because I’ve earned it?” the Yoruban asked. “Or because I will not see you again?”
“Either,” Cassius said. “Both.”
• • •
After dinner, Lucian stepped outside to smoke his pipe, and when he returned to the bar, he asked Cassius to help him scour the plates.
“I think you’ll be dead soon,” he said, when they were alone in the kitchen.
“Not such a controversial opinion, I’d imagine,” Cassius said.
“I’m not joking.”
“You’ve been warning me about my death since the first drink I ordered.”
“This isn’t a warning,” Lucian said. “I know there’s no use talking with you. You’ve set your mind to whatever it is you intend to do, and you’ll be goddamned if you’re going to listen to sense.”
“I can handle myself.”
“Spoken like a man who has never faced Quintus.”
“Have faith in me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucian said flatly.
“What?”
“This thing you’re doing. You think it matters, but it doesn’t.”
Cassius was silent.
“Not to me anyway,” Lucian said. “And I was there. Not to the people of this city either. Most of them think you a murderer. Would kill you if given the chance.”
“I don’t care what they think. Much less what they would or wouldn’t do, in light of opportunity.”
“The dead are dead. It’s childish to think you can alter their condition.”
“Talk of Quintus brings out something strange in you.”
“Fear, boy,” Lucian said. “But it brings out a rage in you. Might be wise to hide that when you meet the man himself.”
15
The streets of Hightown were empty. For the second night in a row, no streetlamps were lit and all houses were shuttered. The two men waited in a dark interrupted only by starlight. Cassius kneeled over the prone Vorenicus, who had begun to mumble.
The coach that stopped in front of them was an old sprung wagon drawn by a pair of sickly-gray horses. Two men sat on the perch, one holding the reins, the other a lantern made of tinted glass so that the light it gave off was pale green. The carriage had a cloth roof and room enough to seat six although it was empty now.
The lantern bearer leaned down off the perch. He was wearing a hooded cloak, and the hood was raised so that Cassius could not see his face.
“Looking for a ride?” the hooded man asked.
“Were you sent by a friend?” Cassius squinted up into the shrouded face.
“I don’t have any friends in this world. But an associate said I could find a man here who was in need of a ride. And willing to pay for it.”
“I’m your man.”
It began to rain as the wagon turned onto the main thoroughfare, and by the time they had ridden past the city gates, a storm broke. At each report of thunder the horses shied, an
d after a time, the driver steered them to the side of the road. He and the hooded man unharnessed the horses and hobbled them and pressed close to them and talked to them in low voices.
In the carriage, Vorenicus stirred. His head rolled to one side, and he groaned, a long, low wail like a mourner at a funeral. He arched his back, as though trying to pull himself up from his shoulders. After a few minutes, he settled down again, and Cassius sat staring out into the rain.
He was aware of the jungle around him. He could not see it for the rain, nor hear it for the thunder, but he knew it lay just beyond the road, and he felt as though it were waiting for him in all that dark and had been waiting for some time.
He told himself this was his imagination. He told himself it was the same as the feeling of being watched that sometimes followed him in the city. But he could not deny that this felt different.
The other had been a kind of restless anxiety. It had seemed conquerable. If he could stay ahead of the searching eyes long enough, they were nothing to fear. But this new dread carried with it a sense of the inevitable, like following a river to the sea.
The rain cleared after an hour, and they set off again. The sky was the blue of near dawn, and staring out from the carriage, Cassius spotted small camps of huts, cruder even than the tenements of the city. Chalk-white cattle antlers and the tusks of wild boars hung above doorways, and the Khimir moved about nearly naked, some with bones threaded through their hair and weaves of feathers tied to their arms and some with stranger charms on display. He glimpsed figures smeared with red and black paint or with odd camouflages of leaves and vines that hid the forms of the wearers so well, their faces appeared to float disembodied in the overgrowth.
The sun rose red as they passed into the clearing where the fort stood.
A deep embankment surrounded the compound, filled with sharpened stakes and pricker bushes. Above this rose a wooden palisade and a rampart. Upon the rampart stood a wall of stone and mudbrick and wood, layered from repeated rebuildings. Along the wall spired crenellated guard towers manned by legionnaires.
They were twenty yards from the main gate when the wagon stopped.
“What’s the problem?” Cassius asked.
“No problem,” the driver said. “This is as far as we go.”