The Burning Isle

by Will Panzo

  “Galerius, ever prepared,” Quintus said. “You’d bring a coffin to your funeral. I kid you, of course.”

  “It’s no bother, sir.”

  The general turned his attention to Cassius. “Have you joined my inner circle now? You whom I’ve known two days.”

  “He has news from the city,” Vorenicus said. “He worked with both Piso and Cinna and can offer insight into their motives. We’ll need all the information we can gather before deciding our course of action.”

  “The only motive either of those bastards ever had was the desire to see the other fail. Offer them a loaf of bread, and they’d fight over it until both were dead. Motives.” Quintus spat on the floor. “There are your motives.”

  Vorenicus produced a handkerchief and handed it to Quintus. He whispered to the general, and Quintus nodded bitterly and wiped his mouth and leaned back in his chair.

  “Out with it,” the general snapped. “One of you talk.”

  “How do you want to proceed against the bosses?” Vorenicus asked.

  “I don’t. Let them fight. What do I care?”

  “Should we reclaim the council hall?” Galerius asked.

  “In time. I care more about their men slaughtering each other than I do for that eyesore of a building.”

  “And what about the safety of the city?” Vorenicus rubbed his temples. “If we let the bosses’ fighting go unchecked, casualties will be high.”

  “I should hope so. That’s the point of our not sticking our noses in this till it’s goddamn ripe. Let them weaken each other, so that later, when our forces reappear, it’s clear we’re superior. They’ll have no will to fight us, and we’ll take back what’s ours. Plus force them to pay restitution. The tight bastards won’t like that.”

  “And what of the cost of innocent life?”

  The general smiled at Vorenicus. “My son. My beautiful sweet boy. There is no innocent life in Scipio. There will be deaths, of course. But the city will endure. It always does.”

  “May I speak?” Cassius asked.

  “Please do. I’ve been waiting anxiously.” Quintus picked up a glass and made to sip it but saw that it was empty. He stood and crossed the room to his desk.

  “I don’t know what the skirmishes of the past were like,” Cassius said. “But this one feels serious to me. Cinna lost his second a few weeks ago.”

  “Nicola is dead?” Quintus produced his box of powder, sprinkled two spoonfuls into a glass. “That rat-faced bastard. I hope there’s a demon having his way with him as we speak.”

  “And Piso lost his nephew. They’re angry at each other. They want blood. If we go in now, they won’t join forces against us.”

  “Us?” Quintus filled his glass from a kettle. “Have you been conscripted, Cassius?”

  “The legion. They won’t join forces against the legion. If you ever wanted to take the city back from them, now is the time.”

  “Wait a minute.” Vorenicus held up a hand. “We shouldn’t—”

  “Take the city back from them? What in the hell would I want with that pisshole?” The general was shouting. “Let them keep it for all I care. And more to the point, it doesn’t belong to them anyway. It belongs to me. They tithe to me. I am ruler here. Let them play at being bosses in the filth, day and night. When it comes time to collect, they know who holds their markers.”

  “I respect your candor, Cassius,” Vorenicus said. “But I don’t think more violence is the answer. If we arrive with a sizeable, but not an intimidating force, the bosses won’t risk a second attack. They’ll know they’re stretched too thin as it is, and to attack again would risk counterattack. We can then set about containing the violence and opening up peace negotiations.”

  “Peace negotiations.” Quintus stirred his cup. He licked the spoon and set it on the desk. “There can be no peace in a city divided like that.”

  “Something has to be done,” Vorenicus said.

  “Yes, yes. So you’ve said. What are your thoughts, Galerius? Show us a chart that we might understand you better.”

  “I think action is necessary. I’d prefer a plan of direct confrontation. But if we don’t go that road, then we must at least return a force of men to the city to exert our authority.”

  “And wouldn’t our authority be better exerted in a month’s time?” Quintus asked. “When the best men of both bosses are dead? Then, when we arrive, we can round up any number of offenders and punish them as you see fit. Flog them, hang them. Anything you like. And the bosses and the people will beg us for mercy and we will grant it and they will know us the deciders of their fate.”

  “Won’t the delay in delivering the message mute its meaning?” Galerius asked.

  “Not if the message is made clear through action.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you, Galerius?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “When the Uprising ended, there were people in that city scared to speak my name aloud for fear it would summon me like some vengeful spirit. That is authority.”

  “Those days are done, Father. No one wants to go back to that time.”

  Quintus drained his cup and set it on the desk. He paused as though in thought. His hand began to shake, just a slight tremor, noticeable only because the rest of him was so still, then he swept his arm over the desk, sending everything clattering to the floor.

  “Get out. Get the hell out, all of you.” Quintus had sustained a cut to the side of his hand and he wiped at the blood now and licked his fingers. “And send that whore back in here to clean this up.”

  • • •

  “I didn’t mean to undermine you in there.”

  Cassius and Vorenicus were walking toward the officers’ quarters. The rain had calmed to a misting drizzle. Galerius had abandoned them to drink in the mess.

  “I understand,” Vorenicus said.

  “I thought we were there to present the general with all sides of the problem. And that was my side. But if your plan is to win back the peace, I’ll help in any way I can.”

  “Will you?”

  “If you let me.”

  “I appreciate that.” Vorenicus shut his eyes and grimaced. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Another headache.”

  “Maybe you should lie down,” Cassius said.

  “I think I should.”

  “And in the meantime, do we wait to hear from the general?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if he chooses to let the bosses’ war continue?”

  Vorenicus stood silent, measuring his next words. “Then we wait until it’s over.”

  “Even if that means people will die?”

  “You didn’t seem too concerned for loss of life a minute ago.”

  “If we took the city by force,” Cassius said, “I believe it would have saved lives ultimately.”

  “We may never know.”

  “There’s got to be something we can do.”

  “You heard the man.” Vorenicus lowered his head. In the moonlight, his face looked gaunt and pained. “This island operates under his authority. Act accordingly or face the consequences.”

  “You can do something.”

  “I won’t cross my father.” Vorenicus pointed a finger at Cassius. Moonlight pooled in the dark of his pupils.

  “Even if it’s the right thing to do?”

  • • •

  “To brotherhood.”

  Galerius held his glass high, the whiskey inside the color of olive oil. He smiled at Cassius and waited smiling until Cassius raised his own glass, then both men tapped glasses and drank.

  “To brotherhood,” Cassius said.

  The whiskey was greasy and as close to sweet as any whiskey Cassius had ever drank. He washed the taste from h
is mouth with a dry wine.

  “I’m sorry you had to see the old man like that tonight. But I guess it’s best you get used to it now.” Galerius refilled Cassius’s glass with another measure of whiskey.

  The mess hall was filled with a hundred men. There were massive dice games occupying all four corners of the room. Two men were wrestling in the center of the hall, and a crowd had formed. At the tables, men drank and ate and rolled cigarettes. There was no bar, but each man brought his own provisions, and the haggling over the cost of a cup of wine or a pinch of tobacco was fierce enough to rival the merchants in the Grand Market.

  “Is he always like that?” Cassius asked.

  “Always. As fierce and opinionated a man as I’ve ever met. When he thinks a course of action is right, there’s no swaying him. Not by reason anyway. Although the crack about the map was uncalled for.”

  “You were just trying to be helpful.”

  “If it had come to talk of an invasion, he would have wanted the map. If it had come to that, and no one in the room had brought a map, he would have been furious.”

  “Did you think he would support an invasion?”

  “I didn’t know.” Galerius sweated in the heat of the room. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his tunic. “I never do. Every time I think I have his mind figured, he does something I’d never expect.”

  “Must be hard to work for a man like that.”

  “He’s brilliant. I know that to be true. And he’s a great leader. But he can be hard to please.” Galerius drained his mug and refilled it.

  “And do you think he’s right about this?”

  “It’s the right move for what he intends.”

  “Meaning to keep the bosses divided,” Cassius said.

  A cheer went up from the crowd near the wrestling pit. Galerius stood on his chair to see over the heads of the men to the action.

  “Portius has never been beaten.”

  “Sit down before you fall.” Cassius set his hand on Galerius’s side to steady him.

  Galerius whistled and clapped. He climbed down from his chair and took a swig from the bottle of whiskey.

  “What were you saying?” Cassius asked. “Quintus picked the right move for what he intends. Meaning this plan only works because his goal is to keep the bosses divided?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But if he wanted something else, he should act differently.”

  “What else would he want?” Galerius asked.

  “I don’t know. It just seems strange to me that he’s kept up this arrangement as long as he has. The bosses controlling the city and tithing up to him. He could take that city if he wanted.”

  “He hasn’t yet. Isn’t that proof enough of his feelings on the matter?”

  “And why hasn’t he?” Cassius asked. “Not from fear of the bosses. Is he scared of the senate’s reaction?”

  “I told you already, I don’t know his mind. And he certainly won’t tell me what he’s thinking. Not unless it’s important that I know it.”

  “Does he not trust you? You’re a capable commander.”

  “Twenty years in his service.” Galerius lifted his head and squared his shoulders as though being called to attention. “His service. Not anyone else’s.”

  “The men respect you. You know the island.”

  “I see it in my dreams.”

  “I bet you could run that city better than either Piso or Cinna.” Cassius’s voice was a whisper, his words spoken swift and quiet, like a snake coursing through underbrush.

  Galerius snorted. He snatched up the whiskey bottle and brought it to his lips and paused, his eyes locked in a faraway stare.

  “That would never happen,” he said.

  “Never?”

  Galerius drank. He shook his head.

  “Not so long as the bosses are in power,” Cassius said. “But they won’t be alive forever.”

  “Those two bastards will live to be a hundred. And die throttling each other.”

  “Maybe one of them won’t survive this war.”

  “They’ve survived dozens of these things. Part of me thinks they like fighting each other. If one was killed, the other would die from loneliness.”

  Cassius brought out his box of Garza-root powder. “But if we had gone with your plan. With legion intervention.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then maybe the odds of the bosses making it out of this alive would be much slimmer.” He pinched a bit of powder and snorted it, then offered the box to Galerius, who accepted, snuffing from the back of his hand.

  “Maybe. But Quintus would never go for it. Nor Vorenicus, for that matter.”

  “You’re right,” Cassius said. “Vorenicus is too interested in peace.”

  “Always has been.”

  “Strange for a soldier to be that way.”

  “I suppose.”

  Cassius drained his mug. Galerius poured two more swigs of whiskey, and they drank, toasting this time to peace.

  Cassius knew he was not supposed to accept succor from an enemy. He had a code. This was different, though. This was not a drink imbibed for pleasure. This was a drink to water the mind and the tongue of an opponent. He could endure the slight to his personal honor if it meant furthering his goals. He had endured worse.

  “But what if Vorenicus were more practical?” Cassius asked. “If he knew that peace between the bosses was foolish and backed your plan.”

  “That’s unlikely to happen.”

  “But if it did happen, do you think the two of you combined could sway the general?”

  “Maybe,” Galerius said. “He does trust that boy more that anyone. But Vorenicus is for peace.”

  “Only because he doesn’t know that peace is impossible.”

  “Do you plan to lecture him on the error of his ways?”

  “What if he saw for himself?”

  “Maybe if the bosses killed him. If the kid said something stupid enough that one of those bastards slit his throat for him, then Quintus would act.”

  Cassius did not like even the hint of violence against Vorenicus. The man was honest and true, with an idealistic streak that left him vulnerable in so corrupt a place. He had lived with rats like Galerius all his life yet still managed to avoid fleas.

  “Don’t say that.” Cassius sat forward, his voice even and final.

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “It’s wrong to say that.”

  “Don’t get sensitive now. We were just talking here.”

  Galerius poured another round of whiskey. They drank without toasting.

  • • •

  Lying on the floor, Cassius watched the ceiling spin. When he breathed, he tasted whiskey. He could not sleep for the whispering in his head. The whispers came and went, so low that he could not discern the words being spoken nor if the voice was the same he had heard these past days.

  His heart was racing. His jaw ached and his throat was numb from Garza root. He rose and stumbled to the door and did not make it around the side of the barracks before relieving himself on the wall. He finished and wiped his hands on his tunic.

  The moon overhead was silver, so low he could see the craters on its surface. He raised his hands, held them up against the glare, and by that light marked the bruises and cuts and discolorations. He recalled the old woman’s words.

  There is blood on your hands, boy. No bath can wash that off.

  He heard the clink of metal on metal and turned to see the general reeling in the dark. He called to him, and Quintus did not respond but continued walking. Cassius could see that he wore his gauntlets on his belt and held a bottle in his hand.

  He called again and followed after him, but the general did not stop until he had reached the clearing near his quarters. Once there, he kneeled before
the statue of his father and kissed his own hand and touched it to the stone. He sprinkled some of what was in the bottle on the ground.

  Cassius approached.

  “I wanted to say a prayer,” Quintus said. “But I don’t know any. And by the time I realized, I was already on my knees.”

  “If he’s watching, he’ll know you meant well.”

  “He isn’t watching a damn thing. You need eyes to watch. And he has none.”

  Quintus stood and dusted his knees. He sipped from the bottle and offered it to Cassius. It was a rich wine, fruity and bold.

  “Did he believe in the afterlife?” Cassius asked.

  “No. I learned my disbelief from him. The same with prayers. He knew none and he taught me none and so I have none to offer at his monument.”

  “What else did he teach you?”

  “He taught me most every spell I ever learned. He taught me not to trust anyone. He taught me to be a soldier and how to roll dice.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “No,” he said. “Is that strange?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You lost your mother.”

  “Yes,” Cassius said softly.

  “Do you miss her?”

  “In a way.”

  “In what way?”

  “I missed her very much for a long time. And then, when I learned I was touched, I decided to make myself a spellcaster. I dreamed of using my abilities to find her because I thought then she was still alive. As I grew older, I realized I would never find her. Would never know even if she had died. This almost killed me although at the time, I didn’t know that this was what was killing me. And by the time I did, I had decided to come here.”

  “And now?” Quintus asked.

  “Now I think of her every day. Except it isn’t really her I think about. I can barely remember her face, her voice. So who is this person I see in my head?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “And your father?”

  “What about him?” Cassius asked.

  “How did he take the loss?”

  “He didn’t notice.”

  “How did he not notice?”