Chapter 8:
An Accident of Blood
I
Even from a hundred feet away, Rennius’ arm hairs pricked. He couldn’t perceive many details through the wispy blue fog. But he knew what lay in the pillared gazebo at its center, and fought against the impulse to turn and run back through the broken field to the villa.
Gone were the gardens, the slaves who’d worked them, and the masters who had idled here. His father had no need for flowers. In their place was only the field of dirt and weeds and struggling grass—and the open stone outbuilding where a nobleman might once have reclined with his guests in the evening surrounded by blooms and their scents. Its couches had vanished with the flowers.
The icy chill, which had settled on the place when the mist came, hit him forty paces out. Somehow he forced himself on. The round stone gazebo was home to five lanterns warring feebly against the gloom, the smell of incense, Rennius’ father, the mist, and the chanting sorcerer. The dark brown Hadiran sat on a little mat, his bald, wrinkled pate painted with knotted circles. Bedecked with a bright red robe and beaded yellow necklace, he rocked back and forth as the incense billowed beneath the blurry man-shape hanging in the air before him. Possibly he was mumbling in his native tongue, and possibly he simply repeated nonsense syllables. Rennius didn’t know how to tell, and he didn’t know how his father could stand to watch the Hadiran, hour after hour.
But no one would ever claim that Senator Catius Marcius lacked patience. Age had shrunken him, but he stood spear straight no matter his sixty-five years. From Rennius’ vantage approaching on the left, the old man looked almost normal, a patrician in a white tunic with wide purple edging befitting his rank. His gray hair had receded to a curve well back of his forehead, almost meeting his bald spot.
Looks deceived. When Catius turned at the sound of Rennius’ footsteps, as well as those who came after, the semblance of normalcy vanished. The right side of his face was pulled back by the purple slash of a scar dealt to him in battle forty years before, and his withered right arm was supported in a metal frame. Some other man might have concealed the shrunken, almost skeletal limb, or applied makeup to lessen the impact of the scar. Not his father.
Rennius heard his brother in his wake. Even if he hadn’t known Flaminian followed, he would have recognized him by his tread. Two others moved with him. Most of his older brother’s troops walked with the same martial precision, but Flaminian’s steps sounded a degree more arrogant, as if each heel-toe movement was meant to leave a mark upon the world. Their father had driven into them that they were to shape the world or he would see them as failures. Flaminian had no intention of being seen as a disappointment to his father. That was Rennius’ role.
Rennius stepped into the cold place, and saw his breath hang in the air. He pretended he felt no discomfort, that he didn’t have to gulp at proximity to the blurry thing suspended in the mist in front of the Hadiran. He bowed his head in greeting. “Father.”
“Something to report?”
“I’m simply curious to see if there’s been a change.”
“The Hadiran mumbles more,” Catius said crossly.
Rennius did not turn to mark his brother’s arrival. Yesterday he’d learned the trick of looking at the fog sidelong, briefly glimpsing then a wide-shouldered soldier in an armored tunic and helmet. Today as he looked sideways, he thought he saw the man with lifted sword, and a cloak at his shoulder. After a moment the image smeared, as though Rennius was trying to focus after a night’s drinking, and he couldn’t be certain he’d seen anything at all. He might be imagining it, just as his sister had assured them.
Flaminian crossed under the roof, a smaller man in legionary armor, complete with scarlet cape. His hair, bottle black, had not yet receded as far as their father’s. It would, though, and Rennius looked forward to seeing his older brother’s reaction as one more thing slipped from his control.
Flaminian came to a parade rest and saluted his father. He then stepped aside and two soldiers marched forward, expressions grave. Each bore a large white bowl with a steaming black organ aswim in dark blood, the hearts from white stallions. At their proximity Rennius looked to both the ghostly fog and the little brown man for sign of change. He saw none.
“Where shall we deposit them, Father?” Flaminian asked dutifully. His voice was deep, befitting a much larger man.
“At the foot of the sorcerer,” Catius replied, his querulous voice a bitter snap.
Flaminian bowed his head respectfully and pointed to the witch-man. The soldiers walked together, their steps carefully matched. They even timed their kneeling as they sank, setting the bowls gingerly down. They withdrew, and the only sign that either was human was the wary glance the one on the left briefly gave the spirit in the mist.
Flaminian ordered his men to depart, and they tramped off in unison like the marionettes he’d trained them to be, out across the ruin of the garden.
The sway of the Hadiran accelerated; his voice grew louder. He stretched both hands and waved them over the steaming hearts.
With some trepidation, Rennius looked up to the spirit, thinking he might finally glimpse something more finely drawn. Yet even after the witch-man spoke for long minutes, he saw only the fog and the vague suggestion of someone within, as though the ghost stood upon a distant hillside obscured by mist.
Flaminian shifted uncomfortably; Catius frowned at him. His brother enforced iron discipline in others but never truly managed it himself.
The Hadiran chanted. The spirit hung in the stinking air. The blood cooled.
Finally the Hadiran sat back on his haunches, head bowed, and wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Unless my sight has suddenly failed,” Catius said waspishly, “the hearts of two expensive stallions have helped not a whit.”
“He does not want to talk,” the witch-man said, his words blended together by his rolling accent. “He resists me.”
Flaminian sniffed. “You were not hired to fail. My father has paid you well. We have endured your stink and your heathen chanting, and—”
Catius lifted his good hand and his son stopped his speech in midsentence. In the ensuing silence Catius reached over to adjust the height on his arm brace, ratcheting the elbow dial so that the withered limb bent downward. He then passed the rod of his office across to it, and Rennius knew a different kind of chill, for he recognized what this meant. The hand at the end of that crippled arm still worked after that injury long years before, and it grasped the flail of command. His father always held it when he was readying a pronouncement. Seldom had Rennius heard a pleasant one. “I asked for a spirit of the Cabera family,” Catius said sharply. “That could be any spirit.”
The Hadiran pretended stoicism, but Rennius could have sworn he smelled fear upon him. “It is Adruvar Cabera,” the mage said. “I, Lotartys, have caught him. Name some other mage who can do that. He is suspended by my sorceries and cannot return to the dark lands.”
“So you have said,” Catius snapped. “Yet he will not speak. And if he will not speak, he’s useless to me. You said you required more power. I spent the money you said you needed for it. But nothing has changed. For all the good you have done me, you might as well have summoned a fart.”
The mage’s dark forehead beaded with sweat. “Senator, I told you that more power might not work. That a better option would be to acquire more things Adruvar had once wielded or owned. That would bring him into better focus.” He waved a shaking hand toward the tarnished helmet half hidden in the darkness beyond the spirit.
Catius spoke with icy disdain. “And I have explained that is not a possibility.”
“What about someone who knew him?” the mage suggested. There was no missing the desperation in his voice.
“Everyone who knew him is dead,” Flaminian said primly.
With a start, Rennius saw a possible solution. One that might not just spare the witch-man, but score a point against his brother. “What about an elephant?”
His father turned to regard him through narrowed eyes.
Rennius explained. “A circus arrived in town two days ago. They claim they have an elephant owned by Adruvar himself, and Hanuvar before him.”
Flaminian laughed. “They say that about any elephant, to draw in the country folk. There are so many elephants Hanuvar supposedly left behind you could march on Derva with them.”
The witch-man seized upon the possibility. “An elephant would suit. Their memories are long. They are like dogs. They forge relations with men.”
Catius’ lip curled. Rennius braced himself for the tongue lashing, or the passing of the rod, probably to himself, to beat the witch-man. Rods, after all, had to be wielded from the dominant hand, thus had Catius placed it in what had once been his own.
But his father turned to his elder son. “Find the elephant. Buy it. Bring it here. And then, Hadiran, you’d best make your spell work, or this garden shall host a second tongueless dead man.”
II
Hanuvar, riding at Antires’ side, looked little different from any middle-aged man traveling the roads of a Dervan province. He sat a good horse and his equipment was in fine order, but his clothes were travel worn. His saddlebags did not bulge. He led a pack horse weighted down with shovels and other gear, but a beast of burden shared between two travelers was not so strange a sight, and no one could guess that a warrior’s armor was stowed within the canvas bags. Even that could be explained, though, for Hanuvar carried forged papers declaring him an honorably discharged veteran of the Mighty Sixth legion.
Over the weeks of their acquaintance, Antires had seen Hanuvar don several guises, and he had glimpsed small changes in the way each was approached, which he hoped owed something to his tutelage.
Yet none of those identities had affected as great a change on the general as that after his single night in Erapna. Antires had wheedled much of the tale from Hanuvar and inferred the rest. A more jaundiced man would have thought Hanuvar’s improved mood had to do with the company of a lovely Dervan patrician. But while an amorous dalliance could brighten the affect of most men, Antires knew the change to be the result of Hanuvar learning his daughter truly lived . . . and lived free. His manner had grown noticeably lighter.
They’d wakened before dawn, as was always Hanuvar’s habit. Now, with a half hour’s travel behind them, the sun was up, Antires was fully awake, and he found himself wondering if he dared broach one of the many subjects Hanuvar had declared off limits. After Hanuvar had told him they would not be travelling by sea, he had begun to suspect Hanuvar sought to cross the Ardenine mountain range, many weeks ahead of them, and longed to ask whether this were true.
“Something’s on your mind,” Hanuvar said. “Out with it.”
The man seemed to notice everything. Antires decided to try an oblique approach. “I can’t help wondering. I know you mean to save all your people, but . . . is this how you’re going to do it? Wandering from town to town in the empire?”
“That would take a lifetime. No.” Hanuvar paused as his gelding snorted. “And you know why I can’t share more.”
“Because if I’m caught, I might not be able to resist Dervan torture.”
“The fate of my people is at stake. I can’t chance their lives. I’d prefer that you simply not get caught. For your own sake.”
Antires’ patience, so long held in check, vanished in a finger snap. “Will you share nothing?” The sharpness in his voice surprised even him, but he plunged on. “If I’m to write this account, or a set of plays—”
“A set of plays?” Hanuvar asked in wonder.
“Yes. To chronicle what you do. I can’t manage anything if I never get to know you.”
“You know me.”
“Only what you show me. If you can’t talk about your future, can you at least talk about your past?”
Sensing Hanuvar’s thoughtful frown signaled an opening, Antires continued. He wanted most to hear about the general’s daughter, clearly in the forefront of his thoughts yet rarely discussed. But he worried so tender a subject might terminate the discussion before it began. Hanuvar seemed to grow exceptionally distant on the few instances when Antires had broached the subject of his wife. He still knew nothing more about Imilce than that the marriage had survived despite a long separation forced by the war, and that both she and their son had died during a difficult labor. But there was another topic that might be a little less painful. “What about your brothers? The lion’s brood. You never talk about them.”
The older man looked down the road, curving through the farm fields ahead. “It’s not because I never think about them,” he said. He had the air of a man who meant to say more, but he fell silent.
After a time, Antires prodded him, gently. “They say Harnil was a shrewd planner.” What the Dervans truly said was that he had been a treacherous cheat, but Antires guessed the truth was different.
For once, Hanuvar spoke easily. “The Dervans malign what they cannot best. Harnil was wily. People were drawn to him. He could win nearly anyone to his side. He might have made a fine general, but he was such an excellent go-between and scout . . .” His voice trailed off. Antires wondered if Hanuvar was thinking of the Dervan poisoner who had brought Harnil down in the final days of the second war, but when he continued, it was with a wistful smile. “No one could make me laugh more. He once made Melgar laugh so hard while he was drinking that wine came out his nose.” Hanuvar chuckled.
“What kind of jokes?”
“Anything. He was quick with a quip, or a dry aside, or even a long story with a sting. You would have liked him best, Antires. He was a storyteller. Maybe he could have been a playwright.”
Antires would never have guessed that. “I thought Melgar was the dramatic one.”
“Well, he was the youngest, and he had a lot of big brothers to live up to. He was all for making the biggest splash. But he was probably the kindest, up until the last few years.”
“What happened in the last few years?”
Hanuvar’s gaze suggested he thought Antires had spoken without thinking, and Antires felt his cheeks flush. “The war.”
“Yes.”
“What about Adruvar?”
Hanuvar’s expression tightened. “He was bold. And born with a bull’s strength. His word was his bond. All of us were raised that way, but Adruvar—if he pledged something, he meant it from deep within. You’d have never won a firmer friend.”
“You tensed when I brought him up.”
“War is a foul business. Adruvar was surely too dead to care what was done with him.”7
Antires thought then that the grim past had once more silenced the present, but Hanuvar proved more talkative than usual.
“Before the battle, one of Catius’ sons intercepted Adruvar’s courier. Double marching his legion to sneak up on my brother was the one clever thing Flaminian Marcius ever did. But as with his father, honor is only something you are accorded, not a character trait you practice.”
“Subtle as a sledge,” Antires said, repeating a well-known aphorism about Flaminian’s father, Catius Marcius, the man who’d ended every speech before the senate with identical words, regardless of subject, from the end of the Second Volani War until the start of the third that delivered the shining city’s destruction. Always he had concluded with a single, dire phrase, exhorting the extermination of a people . . . “and further, I say that Volanus must be destroyed.”
Antires did not say the phrase to his friend, though it seemed to hang in the air between them.
Hanuvar had retreated once more into somber silence, and once again, Antires wondered how one man could live with so much loss. His land. His troops. His city and all its people. Father. Wife. Son. Brothers. Daughter—not dead but missing. Everything. He had to be the loneliest man in the world.
Antires would dearly have loved to ask more—the details of Melgar’s daring raid behind enemy lines to recover the rest of Adruvar’s body, or the truth about the peculiar friendship Hanuvar was rumored to have struck with Ciprion, the Dervan general who’d finally defeated him.
But before he could decide whether to chance more questions, they rounded a bend in the road, and saw the circus. Though he had seen many a circus, Antires had never fully lost his sense of delight in them.
A fair-sized entourage of more than two dozen gaily painted wagons sat in the meadow beyond the village outskirts, and if not the very largest he had seen, it held a prosperous air evident not so much from the equipment but the spirited manner of the people and the behavior of the animals. As the band readied for departure, the horses stood alert in their traces, their coats shining. The twin leopards in one of the cages were well fed and bright eyed. A few children from the nearby village, likely skipping their morning chores, stood watching the animals from a respectful distance. There was a cage of monkeys, too, grooming each other with brushes in an unsettlingly human fashion, not to mention some pretty young women, one of whom returned Antires’ smile with one of her own as she bore an armful of fabric—probably a collapsed tent side—to one of the rear wagons.
An elephant stood off the side of the road, lifting hay into its mouth with its trunk. Only a slim rope secured its massive leg to a nearby wooden peg. Antires had seen the great beasts smash wooden barriers in bloody arena spectacles and had no doubt the animal could break that line any time it wished. He watched the rope with some concern as the beast turned to regard them, chewing.
It froze, trunk half stretched toward the hay. It flapped its ears. Its trunk rose and it trumpeted in excitement.
Neither Hanuvar’s horse nor Antires’ cared for the smell or sight of the strange moving hulk, much less the sound. Both shied. The pack horse pulled on the lead line tied to the rear of Antires’ saddle, further troubling the playwright’s mount. By the time he had gotten both animals under control, he had to take the general’s as well, for Hanuvar had dismounted and now stood beside the elephant, patting the side of the beast’s head while the creature’s flexible limb felt about his shoulders and arms.
Hanuvar’s face was creased with a wide smile, a unique moment in Antires’ experience. It wasn’t that he had never seen Hanuvar happy. He’d just never seen him truly delighted, as if for a brief moment he’d forgotten his cares. He was talking to the beast in a low voice, chuckling as he did so.
Hanuvar’s proximity to the elephant had not gone unnoticed. A woman had turned away from one of the carts and now strode purposefully toward him. Small and slim, she had a long broad nose and olive-skinned complexion typical of the folk of the Inner Sea.
Antires called to an older boy among those watching the leopard cage, promising him a coin to hold their mounts and pack horse, suggesting further that they move the animals to the far side of the road. He then hurried to join his friend.
By the time he arrived, the attitude of the woman, now standing at Hanuvar’s side, had grown bemused.
“She must know you from somewhere,” the circus woman was saying. “They have fantastic memories.” Her gaze flicked to Antires, who briefly studied her, finding a plain woman in her midtwenties. Her dark eyes were accentuated by kohl, and a necklace hung with spiritual sigils draped her neck. From this last he guessed she must be the circus’s resident fortune teller and magic worker.
Hanuvar continued stroking the creature’s jaw and murmuring to it. Antires was frankly surprised. Even supposing that this elephant were some former possession of Hanuvar’s army, he’d have never guessed that the general would have personal knowledge of it. Surely the beast would have been handled by men far beneath him.
“Please step away from my elephant, you ignorant man,” said another woman’s voice, and Antires turned as a tall, athletic lady, skin dark as night, drew up beside the other. Her coiled hair was pulled tightly backward so it swayed to her shoulders. A Ruminian, the famed horse riders of the Kenasa coast. Her full lips pulled back to show clenched white teeth.
The Ruminian planted hands on her hips, not too far from where both a whip and a knife with a worn handle stuck up from her belt.
Hanuvar turned to her, his hand still upon the beast.
The Ruminian’s eyes widened, her expression flowing from anger to wonder, and then to dread. She stepped quickly back, speaking to him rapidly in rhythmic, flowing Ruminian, her left hand shaping a sign in the air, as if to ward off evil spirits.
Hanuvar responded in that same language, and there followed a long interchange.
The fortune teller appeared just as puzzled as Antires, and finally looked over at him. “Do you know what they’re saying?”
Antires recognized the sound of the language but knew only a few words of Ruminian. He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t.” He kept his guess to himself. This woman recognized Hanuvar, and her first instinct had been that he was a spirit. He was explaining that he was not, and maybe even telling her something of how he came to be here, depending upon her identity.
“Andros,” Hanuvar said, addressing Antires by the name he’d adopted for this leg of their trip, “this is Shenassa, a daughter of an old friend of mine. And I am Helsa,” Hanuvar said to the other woman.
“Are you an animal trainer?” the first woman asked dubiously.
“No, I’m a soldier. I helped in the mop-up operations with the Volani supply line.” At the woman’s blank look, Hanuvar continued: “There were units left behind when Adruvar Cabera and his army followed his brother over the Ardenines, including some elephants. I stopped some legionaries from abusing Kordeka. She must be going on thirty-five at this point.”
“Helsa,” the Ruminian woman said, unintentionally putting emphasis on the name, as if to confirm that she said it properly, “this is my friend Nyria. She is the circus mage and is second-in-command to the owner. Ah, speak of the cat and up she jumps.”
A stout, bright-eyed woman with a wealth of black hair drew near, walking vigorously, planting the metal end of her staff with every stride of her left leg. A bundle of colorful feathers swayed from the snarling cat-head of the staff as she moved, revealing then concealing the multitude of additional faces carved along its length.
She stopped and boldly surveyed them, as though she readied herself for a grand speech. “Good day to you, sirs,” she said. “I thought that there might be a problem, but I see now I have interrupted a reunion.”
“An old friend recognized me.” Hanuvar patted the elephant. “It was only proper to pay my respects.”
A warm smile touched the owner’s lips. “Old friends are a treasure beyond measure.”
Shenassa hurried to make introductions. “Mellika, this is Helsa, an old friend of my family.” This time, the name came easily to her.
“A pleasure,” Mellika said. “So you were a prior owner? I bought her from the legion some years ago.”
“I saw to her briefly when the legion took possession of her.”
“Ah. And you were kind to her. Animals know, and remember, even the ones you think wouldn’t care. We practice kindness in our circus; it’s why our animals and trainers are the best known in the province.”
“I can see Kordeka’s been well managed.”
“Shenassa has cared for her most of her life.”
A clop of hooves and jangle of reins from the south drew Antires’ attention. A band of mounted soldiers rode from the little river town. These weren’t ordinary cavalrymen, dusty and casual after a long patrol route. They wore parade helmets, each with a horsehair crest, and their armor shone brilliantly as the sun burnished its image on the muscles shaped in bronze. The second rider even carried a banner, that of a clenched hand holding a flail.
The entire entourage struck Antires as somehow absurd, down to the small man leading it, as though all of them were bad actors in a drama they took entirely too seriously. His first thought was that they meant to pass, but the attention of the small man in front was clearly turned toward them.
Hanuvar’s perceptivity never failed to impress Antires; just as the playwright turned to check his friend’s reaction he discovered him vanished. A moment’s search showed that his sandaled feet were visible on the elephant’s far side. Rather than following and drawing attention to Hanuvar, Antires shifted with his back to the nearby cart, watching. Mellika turned to face the riders, offering a broad smile as the officer reined in and looked haughtily down. He removed his helm. The Dervan’s receding hair was ridiculously black for his middle years. He apparently had the money for hair dyes but no expertise in their application.
“Welcome, officer,” Mellika said. “Today certainly is a fine day for visitors.”
Neither the officer nor any of his men seemed to have taken notice of Hanuvar and appeared incurious about the meaning of the greeting. The officer had eyes only for the elephant. He stared at her as she flapped her ears and returned his scrutiny.
“I am the general Flaminian Marcius,” he said with ringing, stentorian tones. His voice was deep.
The slayer of Hanuvar’s brother. Antires looked for Hanuvar and still did not see him, hoping he was well hidden. He then fell to staring at the son of the bitter senator who’d spent most of his career pressing for Volani genocide. He couldn’t help wondering if his talk of the man had somehow summoned him.
Flaminian’s attention shifted to the owner. “Are you Mellika, the circus woman?”
“I am,” Mellika said with a bow, one hand wrapped to the staff. “How may I—”
Flaminian didn’t let her finish. “Did this elephant truly once march in the army of Adruvar Cabera? Tell truth. I’ve no time for games.”
Mellika bowed once more. “My mother bought this elephant from the legion, along with an old Ruminian, whom she later freed. This is his daughter.” Mellika gestured to Shenassa. “Her father was once an elephant tender both for Hanuvar and his brother.”
“And now you will tell me this elephant somehow served with both brothers,” Flaminian said sharply. “Did it then cross back and forth over the Ardenines?”
“No. She was a young elephant traveling with her mother when Hanuvar neared the mountains, and the trainers didn’t think she would survive the trip, so she was sent back with some small divisions left behind. When Adruvar passed through with his own army, he took Kordeka and other elephants with him, but . . . Kordeka was not a war beast. She was too skittish. And so she was left behind, and when the legions reconquered the provinces, they took possession of Kordeka. I’ve a fellow here who could—”
Shenassa stepped forward. “It is all true, General. I am the daughter of the drover. He was old, and was left behind to care for Kordeka and other animals, in one of the supply camps.”
Antires had seen the quickening of interest in Flaminian’s eyes, something akin to a bloodhound catching scent of its prey.
“But she is no war elephant,” Shenassa said. “She is too gentle. I hope you do not think she could be used in—”
Flaminian chopped his hand through the air. “Your thoughts are not of interest to me. It is enough that you speak true.” He clapped his hands and on the instant, the soldier riding behind the banner man rode forward, stopping half a horse length behind Flaminian, who turned his head to speak to him. “Take the elephant. Leave them a thousand denarii.”
“That is less than the elephant is worth,” Mellika objected. “And she is not—”
“Buy another beast for your men to fight,” Flaminian said coldly.
Mellika stiffened. “My men do not fight my beasts. They train them to do tricks, and that requires years of effort.”
Flaminian’s eyes narrowed. “I will give you fifteen hundred, because you spoke truth, and I think you speak it now.”
“That is a fair price for a new elephant,” Mellika said, “but she is not for sale. It would take years to train another, and her temperament cannot be—”
The general urged his horse closer and leaned forward, glaring imperiously. “I have the power to take this elephant without compensation. If I thought you were trying to bargain, that is precisely what I would do. Is that clear?”
“Your words are clear,” Mellika said, stifling her anger, “but not your legal right.”
“Do you know who my father is?”
Mellika did not answer, but she finally looked away, her knuckles white on her staff.
“You cannot do this, Mellika,” Shenassa said. “Tell them—this is not a legal thing. They cannot do this!”
“This is the son of Senator Catius Marcius,” Mellika said stonily, her mouth a grim line. “If I were to take this to the local magistrate, what do you think he would say to me?”
“But you can’t—”
“Woman, your mistress has the right of it.” Flaminian turned his head without taking his eyes from them, addressing the man to his right. “Pay the woman her fifteen hundred. You others, collect the elephant.”
“But what are you going to do with her?” Shenassa protested.
The two bags the soldier lobbed landed with a weighty jingle at Mellika’s feet. Flaminian turned his horse smartly and cantered back the direction he had come, his banner man riding behind. The others dismounted.
Antires found himself troubled over the elephant’s fate to an extent that surprised him, given that he’d only met her. But that paled in comparison to his concern for Hanuvar. Where was he, and what might he be doing? When Shenassa crowded forward Antires used her as a screen to retreat. Hanuvar he found scratching his forehead and effectively blocking the side of his face as he moved behind the next wagon.
There were more shouts from Shenassa, a trumpeting from the elephant, and then the unmistakable crack of a whip used on flesh.
Still Hanuvar kept walking away. Stepping between two carts, Hanuvar retreated across the road and back to where the children held their horses. The soldiers were leading the elephant off, one guiding her by the lead rope around her neck. The animal obediently went with them, although Antires would have sworn she looked confused. Mellika still stood beside the unopened coin bags, scowling. Nyria knelt beside Shenassa, who wept on her knees in the dust of the road. A livid red welt stood out along the dark skin of the trainer’s left arm.
Antires paid off the children, who were far more interested in the commotion than the money. Hanuvar was looking down the road toward the town and the vanished elephant and soldiers. Usually the older man’s emotions were tightly lidded. Today, though, his anger was close to the surface. His mouth was tight, his nostrils dilated, and his eyes burned with an almost incandescent inner light. Antires realized what should have been obvious to him—only a man with a death wish would go out of his way to make an enemy of Hanuvar Cabera.
Shenassa pushed to her feet and slapped one of Nyria’s reaching hands away. She strode determinedly toward Hanuvar, wiping her eyes as she went.
The pain was writ plainly across the Ruminian’s features as she halted before Hanuvar, ignoring Antires. She spoke again in Ruminian, rattling the words off so quickly Antires had a hard time believing Hanuvar could follow them, much less respond.
Nyria had come up behind her. Mellika, now cradling one of the unopened coin sacks, talked with a knot of other circus folk, but she kept looking across at them.
The mage’s kohl-lined eyes were wide in sympathy. She put a hand to Shenassa’s arm. “He’s just an old soldier,” she said. “That was a general. Helsa can’t help.”
“You do not know him,” Shenassa said angrily in Dervan, and once more shook off the other woman’s hand. “You have no idea the kinds of things that he can do.”
“Why didn’t Mellika lie?” Antires asked. “The Dervans wouldn’t have taken your elephant then.”
“Mellika is a good woman, Herrene,” Shenassa said, naming Antires’ homeland bitterly, for there was little love between his people and hers. “She answered true to that warmonger. She told them truth of my Kordeka.” She wiped at her eyes and once more faced Hanuvar. “Tell me, great one. There must be something to be done.”
“Our options are limited,” Hanuvar said. “It is difficult to hide an elephant, even if we can liberate her. And I lack troops to take her by force.”
Shenassa’s voice trembled, a mix of pain and despair and rage. “You mean to say that there is nothing to be done?”
Hanuvar replied, “Sometimes the way through is not clear until the terrain is scouted. I can promise nothing except that I will look into matters.”
Nyria had been looking more and more curiously between the woman and the man. “Who is he, really?” she asked.
“I’m just a family friend,” Hanuvar said.
“They will kill her,” Shenassa said. “The townspeople gossip that the senator has summoned a ghost, and that it needs blood. They must want my Kordeka’s blood. Please. You must help her.”
“I need a moment.” Motioning to Antires, Hanuvar stepped away.
Antires followed, wondering what the general could possibly be planning. Usually he handed out orders on the instant, so Hanuvar’s hesitation was all the more remarkable.
Antires looked down the road where the dust of the Dervan cavalrymen hung in the air, and over to the crowd milling about the circus, broken now into small groups and talking among themselves. Hanuvar’s brow was furrowed.
“Please tell me we’re not going to start rescuing elephants now,” Antires said.
“Kordeka was a mascot, really,” Hanuvar said. “She shouldn’t even have come along on the journey, but the men liked her, and morale is important. I didn’t want them to see her die on the passage over. It was going to be bad enough on the big elephants.”
“I didn’t realize you’d left any men behind. Let alone elephants.”
Hanuvar looked at him as though he were foolish. “I had to have a supply line,” he said. “Tenuous as it was.”
“Of course.” He’d forgotten that the Volani, for almost a decade, had controlled much of the hinterland and part of the coasts. “And you’ll have to forgive me—how long after did your brother follow you over the Ardenines?”
“Six years.” Hanuvar had grown stern, closed, as he usually did when he mentioned his brothers. “In the last few dispatches he wrote, Adruvar sent word about Kordeka. She helped them haul and even erect barricades. Once she picked up a spear and chased some thieves away, waving it in her trunk, like she had seen the soldiers doing.” Hanuvar looked away from the past and met Antires’ eyes. “I thought myself beyond sentiment.”
“No good man is. And it can be a redemptive quality in the worst of them.”
Hanuvar let out a tense sigh. “I cannot help directly. Catius would recognize me.”
He had known the request was coming. “Do you want me to scout things out?”
“I do and I don’t, my friend. I would like to help Kordeka, but the danger for you is great. And I doubt that there’s anything we can do even if we learn what they plan.”
“I can concoct a reason for a visit to the senator’s villa,” Antires suggested. “I could pose as a buyer for the Coliseum.”
Hanuvar’s gaze was piercing. “I do not ask this of you. Your life is more valuable than the elephant’s.”
“I’m volunteering,” Antires said. He didn’t add that knowing the enemies of Hanuvar’s people would improve his storytelling, for he knew that might change the general’s mind. “I’m an actor,” he reminded him. “A good one. I can do this.”
Finally Hanuvar nodded a single time. “Kordeka is a forest elephant of the Ulivian bloodline. You can tell by the angle of the tusks. The Ulivians are famed as quick learners, and fighters. She is too old to fight in the arena, but could birth future champions who could be marketed as children of an elephant who served the Volani.”
Antires had thought of a wrinkle. “Flaminian saw me.”
“Probably he paid you no notice. But if he did, you explain yourself as readying to bargain for the elephant yourself. You can show up dressed in finery. You were in your traveling clothes.”
Seemingly on the moment Hanuvar had concocted an entire plan of approach. Antires grinned in admiration. “The Marcius family is rich. I know you can easily counter with the supply of gems you have, but will they need the money?”
“Catius is a miser. He’ll take every sesterce you offer. If he doesn’t have some greater profit in mind.”
“What do you think he wants?”
Hanuvar shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand. You’ll have to play your role carefully.”
“I always play my roles carefully.”
“This is no joke. He may present like a narrow-minded fool. But he sees more than you may think.”
“Is your father really the man who crippled him?”
“That’s what Catius always said. If father fought him in the first war he was just one more soldier.”
“He never mentioned it?”
“My father fought many men, and he was dead before Catius became famous. Now we will talk with the circus owner, and Shenassa. I’m sure the performers gave one or two shows here before packing up, and they would have relaxed in the taverns and soaked up some local gossip. Maybe they can tell us more about Catius’ activities.” While he sounded as though he were ready to move, he did not yet do so, and his eyes fastened once again upon Antires. “This may be the riskiest thing you’ve ever done. We’ll get what information we can before you make your approach. You’re just a scout, not a warrior. Make sure you understand and remember the difference.”
III
The villa lay on the far side of the town, nestled in a narrow valley between high, tree-lined hills. As idyllic as the setting was, the grounds resembled an armed camp, for a small cavalry troop had set their tents and picketed their horses on the wide front lawn, and chopped down all but the ornamental pines lining the roadway. Antires didn’t think the destruction was carelessness so much as a statement of disdain over appearances, as though Catius thumbed his nose at things he considered decadent, like beauty and comfort.
A stern legionary on the property’s edge eyed Antires’ fine green tunic and sandals, listened to his story, then escorted him to the front door.
A meek slave allowed him entry into the clean but austere interior and was almost immediately pushed aside by a pale-skinned noblewoman, who had popped out of a bedroom on the left of the atrium.
“Oh, praise the gods,” she said. “It’s someone interesting. You are someone interesting, aren’t you?”
Antires knew he had a good smile, and he favored her with it. She was likely in her midforties, and her maid had obviously taken pains with her appearance, for her dark hair was piled high yet cascaded down to gentle the harsh planes of her face. A proper stola did not quite hide her robust figure, nor did her perfume quite mask the scent of wine. She had been drinking, and if not clear from the fragrant fumes, it would have been obvious from her eyes, not bleary, but glassy.
“Almost certainly, milady,” Antires said.
“This is Stirses, a field agent from the Coliseum, Lady Lydia,” the slave said with a bow of his head to her.
“How exciting,” Lydia said to him. “Are you here to bring more elephants?”
“I have a few right here in my tunic,” he said. It was a feeble enough joke, but she laughed, and brushed his arm with cool fingertips, holding contact there a little longer than strictly necessary.
“What are all those troops doing here?” he asked.
“Those are my brother Flaminian’s. They’re some sort of important cavalry. I feel sorry for those poor bastards, let me tell you. Oh, forgive me my language. One grows so tired of living in the provinces. Come, join me. We so rarely have visitors.”
“I would be delighted.”
“Would you like some wine?”
She appeared to have already had enough for both of them, but he said that he did, and this got her loudly demanding refreshments from the house slave, who hurried off.
She then took his arm and guided him through the entryway and out into a courtyard. Here there was a pool framed by stone benches. The greenery was well tended and included some shade trees.
“I would have thought most Coliseum agents were grubby little men who looked like they’d been kicked by a mule,” she said.
“Some of us have to talk to important people, so it’s good to employ those able to clean up nicely.”
“And you certainly have.” She seated herself on a sun-worn cushion atop a bench and patted the space beside her. “I do so miss our family estates north of Derva, but we make do.”
“Your courtyard is lovely,” he said as he took the seat.
“It is passable, and you are too kind. Father has treated these grounds terribly. They were so beautiful when we arrived.”
“What brought you here?”
“You really don’t know?” Her blink was a moment delayed by the wine in her system, though neither her words nor her diction were labored. “You must be one of those rare people who don’t follow politics.”
In Antires’ experience, most ordinary people didn’t pay much attention to politics, but Catius’ daughter likely didn’t interact with many of them. He smiled by way of answer.
“Well, once Father got the emperor to finally act against those nasty Volani, his block in the senate splintered. One of the emperor’s little favorites betrayed him, started a campaign to promote proper Dervan Family Virtues—he even stole father’s slogans—and the next thing you knew, that weasel was the new darling of the party. Father was sick of the senate anyway. Because they had turned their back on him, he turned his back on them and bought some old property in the provinces.”
“Politics,” Antires said with a sympathetic head shake. He wanted to steer the conversation’s course onto more useful ground, but recognized his host was one of those who had to repeat certain stories before she could talk about anything else.
“Father really does have the best interests of Derva at heart. He may come across as harsh, but someone has to remind the people about what made us great. All those Volani and Herrenic ideas about mob rule are a plague.” She touched his arm again, her cold fingers lingering. “I don’t mean to equate your people with those money-grubbing Volani, but you must know that many of your customs are a little soft.”
At the sound of approaching footsteps on the courtyard pave, Antires looked up, expecting the slave, but found a slim, tall man in a well-made green tunic. He resembled Flaminian, though he was taller and his hair had not receded as far, and its shade of black appeared to be natural. His face was creased with bitter lines, as of long suffering or self-pity.
Lydia addressed him sharply. “Leave us be, Rennius. I’m entertaining a guest.”
Rennius did not withdraw, coming instead to a stop before them. “So I see. What does he want?”
“Do you know, I’m not entirely sure.” She glanced blandly at Antires, patting his arm. “Stirses and I have just been chatting.”
“I’m from the Coliseum,” Antires said, rising with a bow. “Your brother purchased an elephant I was hoping to buy. I hadn’t finished my examination when he rode away with her.”
Rennius’ expression cleared. “Oh. I’m afraid that elephant’s spoken for.”
“Is she?” Antires said, aware of Lydia’s impatience. “What are you intending her for? Perhaps I could buy her after you’re done.”
“She may not be alive after they’re done with her.”
He didn’t even have to pretend horror. “May not? Gods, man, that’s a valuable elephant. Is your family going to kill her?”
Catius’ son didn’t answer.
Antires spoke quickly. “I would like to finish my examination. I’d be willing to pay a substantial amount of money if she really is a healthy Ulivian.”
Rennius’ eyes fastened on him. “How much money?”
“Three thousand denarii.”
At that sum, Rennius struggled to look unimpressed and failed. “You have that on you?”
“I don’t wander around with that many coins, no, but I have gemstones easily worth that amount.”
Rennius nodded as though some test had been passed. “Well then. Maybe that can talk some sense into my father and brother. Come along with me, circus man. Apologies, Lydia.”
“A pleasure, my lady,” Antires told her, noting she held her tongue but did little else to disguise her disappointment, and then followed on Rennius’ heel. They passed into a back hall, and after Rennius asked for and received Antires’ full assumed name, the patrician addressed him with a knowing look.
“So my sister was venting about her exile, the purity of our family, and batting her eyes at you, I suppose?”
“I’m not sure about the latter.”
“Then you’re either dumber than you look or mistake me for someone who cares.” Rennius opened a back door onto the grounds behind the villa.
“She’s your sister,” Antires said.
Rennius held the door for him, and they stepped through into a farm plot being worked over by slaves in sun hats. “An accident of blood. She probably told you that Father isn’t really all that bad, and that all of his actions are for the good of the people.”
Rennius started around the garden bed for a red brick path.
“She did,” Antires answered, following.
“She’s constantly trying to convince herself of that. Everything Father does, he does for himself. He talks about virtues, but it’s all about vengeance. He’s hated the Caberas ever since he was crippled in the First Volani War, and he transferred that hatred to an entire people.”
“He should be happy then, because his vengeance was secured.”
Rennius laughed shortly. “Happy? Father thought Caiax weak for letting any survivors live, even as slaves, because they can still whisper their corrupting philosophies to today’s weak-willed youth.”
Antires wondered if he might have found an ally. “It doesn’t sound as if you like him very much.”
“Liking one’s father,” Rennius repeated, as if testing the sound of the idea. “I’ve known people who claimed to do so. He might be more palatable if he didn’t hold a death grip on our futures. Property, money, slaves, it’s all in his name until he dies. And he just won’t die.”
“You don’t need gold or property to be happy,” Antires said, regretting his words the moment he spoke them. He’d broken character, something he had coached Hanuvar never to do.
“Says the pampered agent of the great circus!” Rennius countered. “You sound more like a poet.”
Antires shrugged as if he were not alarmed by how close to the mark the older man had hit. “When you wander the road long enough, you end up with so much time to think I suppose one ends up sounding like a philosopher.”
Rennius snorted. “So are you trying to lead me to inner contemplation?” Rennius’ question sounded more self-mocking than accusatorial. They left the fields at last and started up another path toward a hedge wall the height of a man, and an arched trellis that gave passage through it. “I know what I am. Maybe alone among my family. Lydia’s bitter and deluded and desperate for approval. She’d love to have been part of a family respected for its status rather than feared for its power. You should have seen how fast Father’s faction turned on him once Volanus fell. Even they couldn’t stomach Father’s call to butcher prisoners.”
“And Flaminian?”
They had drawn close to the trellis. “Flaminian lives in the shadow of a dead man, our eldest brother, slain in the Second Volani War. One of thousands Hanuvar’s army blindsided at the battle of Acanar. That’s where Lydia’s husband died too. Every moment Flaminian fights to prove he’s worthy of the mantle he can never—” Rennius fell silent the moment he passed through the trellis. Walking after, Antires saw the reason, for they had come upon Flaminian, burning incense before a vine-wrapped outdoor shrine supporting a faded white bust to the Dervan goddess of nature, Diara.
Flaminian had disposed of breastplate and helmet but wore his red uniform tunic still. He had turned and now considered his taller brother with wrathful eyes. “Who is this, Rennius?”
Antires had already forgotten how incongruously deep Flaminian’s voice was.
“An agent of the Coliseum, Flaminian.”
“A stranger. To whom you speak of the family.”
Rennius’ tone grew slyly scornful. “I was just getting around to telling him how brave and bold you are, and how Father never notices.”
“And were you going to tell him you’re a snide coward who imagines he’s worldly?”
Rennius gestured to his brother. “You see, he’s actually quick witted, but he has to pretend to be the marble statue of a soldier. It doesn’t matter, Flaminian. Father has the heart of a stone.”
Flaminian’s frown deepened, but he looked away from his brother to Antires. “What do you want?”
Rennius answered. “He’s here to see the elephant. He wants to buy it for the Coliseum. Have you already killed it?”
“The Hadiran is going to look at it after he rests.”
“Father’s letting him rest?”
“The witch-man was up chanting for almost twenty-four hours. This is his last chance. He might as well be ready for it.”
“And Father’s probably taking his midmorning nap,” Rennius guessed. “So he doesn’t know about you being sparing. Dreadful of you, showing mercy like that.”
Antires didn’t conceal his puzzlement, for he could imagine a true agent of the Coliseum would look curious. Gossip had it that Catius had brought a sorcerer to summon a ghost. What that had to do with an elephant remained unclear, and felt like a natural question to ask in character. “Your pardon, General, but what is the elephant to be used for?”
“That’s not your business.” Flaminian stared at him. “You were there this morning.”
“Indeed. I was bargaining with the circus owner when you rode up.”
“Unfortunate for you, then.”
“He’ll give us three thousand denarii for the elephant,” Rennius said. “Do you think Father might like the sound of that? I seem to recall he didn’t look happy you’d paid so much for the beast in the first place.”
Flaminian’s gaze burned hate at his brother, then shifted once more to Antires. “The beast doesn’t look remarkable to me.”
“It’s not that she’s remarkable—I’m told she’s too domesticated for the arena. But she’s a forest elephant of the Ulivian bloodline. As you no doubt noticed, their tusks have more of a downward trajectory than your standard elephant. They’re hard to lay hold of these days because their numbers have been depleted. It’s not just that they’re smart and easy to train, they tend to be more fierce when they’re young. They’re excellent for a number of purposes.”
Flaminian grunted, as if to suggest he knew all this. Antires continued, surprising even himself with the conviction of his seeming expertise. “I have access to a male Ulivian. With him, and her, the Coliseum could birth a line of future champions.”
“It sounds as though she might be of some value to you,” Flaminian observed.
Antires took that as a good sign. “You’re absolutely correct. I can well justify more than what you paid for her, but I’d need to verify her age and general health before making any offer.”
“You were not able to do so before?”
“I had not even begun my examination,” Antires answered. “I’m afraid that you arrived only moments after I had my initial conversation with the quaint travelling circus owner.”
Flaminian’s expression remained unchanged. After a moment, though, he nodded once. “Come along, agent.”
Beyond the little shrine lay what must once been a rose garden, vast and walled by the high hedges. Antires could not help but mourn a little for its lost beauty when he beheld a field of empty dirt with sad clumps of weed and the occasional forlorn thorny tendril—a few inches of rose stalk that had survived Catius’ will.
“Cultivating the previous owner’s flowers was a waste of manpower,” Rennius remarked acerbically.
Midway between the outer hedge and a rectangular stone gazebo stood a line of thick oaks, and the elephant was chained to the largest of them, near a trio of soldiers who seemed as ill at ease as the beast. The elephant’s trunk was raised and she had stretched the chain as far from the gazebo as she could manage. A tub of water and a pile of hay sat nearby, but the elephant appeared disinterested in either. Antires could not help staring at the gazebo, which for some reason filled him with foreboding. He sensed rather than felt that the place was cold, and saw tendrils of bluish mist drifting about its edges. This, then, was the summoning point. He only briefly wondered if he felt disquiet because he expected to.
“There’s nothing to see there,” Flaminian said gruffly, stepping to block Antires’ view. The general’s brow furrowed suspiciously.
“You think he can’t tell there’s something wrong there?” Rennius mocked. “Even the elephant senses it.”
“I would thank you to still your tongue,” Flaminian responded shortly.
“Then you must think this man is a spy?” Rennius laughed. “What dire secrets do you think I’ll reveal to him? That Father is pouring money away to talk to a Volani ghost?”
“Shut up,” Flaminian snapped.
Volani? None of the gossip had mentioned Volani spirits. Concerned now that the younger brother had just taken a step too far with the older and endangered Antires’ life, he was surprised to hear Rennius laugh again.
“You don’t think your soldiers are gossiping about this shit show with the town harlots?” Rennius asked.
“I haven’t spent much time in the town,” Antires said, then lied: “And I don’t care what you’re doing. I’m just here for the elephant.” He made a great pretense of inspecting the beast, walking around her, having her pick up her feet, tickling her chin to get her to open her mouth, as he’d been taught, and even peering under her tail. The elephant was preoccupied with watching the misty area but cooperative enough. Antires stepped back to the men. “Good news, gentleman. She looks young enough to sire several calves, and her health is very good. By Jovren, look at those tusks! And those eyes! She is a beautiful specimen.”
Antires couldn’t read Flaminian’s expression, and so added, “I can certainly offer you twice what you paid for her; three thousand denarii. As I mentioned.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Rennius said to Antires. “Father will have to be consulted. Of course, he may just want to have the elephant gutted anyway.”
Antires didn’t have to strive very hard to put desperation into his voice. “Surely there are some other animals you can sacrifice to appease the gods. If you need bulls or something—”
“It has to be an elephant,” Flaminian said. “But the witch-man said if it’s the right one, its blood might not even have to be spilled.”
“How will you know if it’s the right one?” Antires asked, wondering how close he was to learning what these insane Dervans really planned.
“Only the Hadiran witch-man can tell us that,” Flaminian answered.
Antires bowed his head, sighing. He gathered his thoughts, then spoke formally. “General, let me speak bluntly. Many sorcerers and priests are showmen as much as the entertainers I deal with. They’re after spectacle, so that the people paying them feel like they got their money’s worth.”
He sensed that Flaminian understood the veracity of his argument. Rennius, too, listened with obvious interest. Antires continued: “I’m sure it would be quite a show to slay this poor animal, but I assure you that there is nothing magical about her. It would be a pity for us all to lose this animal’s value to a charlatan’s game.”
“Your words have the ring of truth,” Flaminian said, as though he thought it something serious people said when they agreed with you. He seemed oblivious to Rennius’ resulting eye roll. Antires bowed his head at the compliment.
“Father will waken soon, and I will speak with him. Rennius, see that this man is given refreshments while he waits. Not here,” Flaminian added.
“Of course.”
Rennius motioned Antires to retreat with him. Once they were walking for the villa, Antires dared a question. “What is this business with a ghost? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“You really haven’t heard?” Rennius sounded surprised.
“No. I have only just arrived this day and went straight to my business.”
“Huh. Well. I assume you’ve heard the rumors of Hanuvar’s return?”
“Gossip. People will believe anything.”
“That’s certainly true. But there may be something to it. There was some sort of riot in Hidrestus and the governor himself was killed. Over a hundred people claim to have actually seen Hanuvar alive. And there’s a report that he visited some islands off the coast of Volanus.”
“So you believe these rumors?” Antires asked. He had, of course, witnessed the former, and dragged a few details about the latter from Hanuvar himself.
“I’ve seen legion dispatches,” Rennius said. “Some of the testimony is quite compelling. Father means to learn if the accounts are true, and if so, where Hanuvar is.”
“By talking to a ghost?” Antires asked.
Rennius lowered his voice. “By talking to the ghost of one of Hanuvar’s brothers.”
“By the Gods,” Antires made no effort to hide his horror.
“The sorcerer claims to have caught Adruvar Cabera. I’ve seen a spirit that looks like a man in armor. The old Hadiran says he can’t compel the ghost to speak unless he has something that the man actually owned, or that he valued.”
“So you got an elephant?” Antires said, though he already knew the creature’s connection to Hanuvar’s brother.
“My brother kept Adruvar’s helmet. And the sorcerer reported that item worked for trapping the ghost. But the witch-man says something living is better. And if the circus people are telling the truth, and the elephant knew Adruvar, well . . .”
“Even if the elephant can help, what can a dead man say about the living?” Antires asked.
“Firstly, whether or not Hanuvar is on the other side. But also, who better to guess what Hanuvar might be planning but his own brother, and second best Volani general?”
Antires fought down a growing sense of dread. Could this scheme actually work? If so, Hanuvar was in real danger. He nodded, and used his own worries to fuel what he thought an appropriate look at mention of spirits. “I suppose that would make sense, if such a thing were possible,” he said.
He now had all that he required. Hanuvar had warned him not to overstay his welcome, and to avoid any unnecessary interaction with Catius himself. Yet moment by moment he was gaining more information, and the family had accepted his identity without question. The fact that he actually carried valuable gemstones upon him felt a shield of sorts, a final proof of his intent. Besides which, Rennius and Flaminian were both turning out to be reasonable men, and Rennius himself was helpful. Perhaps he really could persuade them to let him leave with the elephant.
Antires made his choice. “I wonder if you would mind me drafting a note to my traveling group, to let them know I may be running late.”
“If you wish,” Rennius said. “I’ll have one of the slaves run the message to whomever you like.”
Hanuvar had devised a simple code, should Antires have to send a message. The rest of the way back to the villa Antires agonized about how to convey his information covertly, worried the slave would read the note and relay it to his masters.
In the end, Antires kept things simple. First he wrote: “I have confirmed that the elephant is in good condition, and she has the kind of tusks we were hoping for.” By arrangement, mention of the tusks was confirmation of the supernatural gossip. The trick was conveying the information about Hanuvar’s brother, and Antires thought he’d come up with something clever, writing: “Please apologize to your brother—I won’t be there to greet him when he turns up. But I know he will be as happy with the handsome head on this animal as I was. I hope to finish the arrangements soon.”
“I hope you’re not conveying any family secrets,” Rennius said with a half smile. Antires sat back from the letter he was writing in the courtyard, at a portable desk a slave had brought for him.
“Not at all—you can see it if you want.”
Rennius waved a hand negligently, called for a slave, and bade him deliver it to Antires’ friend Helsa at the inn. Antires didn’t think he’d ever seen a house slave move quite so fast as the one sent from the home of Marcius.
For the next quarter hour Antires carefully fished for more details, learning little more than Rennius’ seething resentment about his father and his ill luck for being born into this family. The man’s tone began to grate, and Antires was happy at first when Rennius fell silent and climbed to his feet.
The playwright rose and turned.
He had been told Catius was hideous, but as the old man strode into the sunlit courtyard he saw the word hadn’t really done the man’s appearance justice.
A web of white scars crept out from a purple slash pulling down the corner of Catius’ right eye and lifting up one side of his slit of a mouth. An open metal frame supported his withered right arm. The liver-spotted fist at its end retained near normal proportions, as though an adult hand had been grafted onto to a child’s wrist.
Rennius hurried to his father’s side, speaking quickly to his ear, any suggestion of his pronounced dislike for the elder completely absent in his fawning manner.
The old man paid close heed to what he was being told, asking one or two syllable questions and eying Antires coolly. Then, his expression changing not in the slightest, he called for another house slave. A dark-haired man sprinted up, bowing his head respectfully, and Catius spoke quietly to him. The slave bowed once more and ran off. Antires couldn’t hear what the old man had said but didn’t like the concerned look that had flitted over Rennius’ features.
Catius started forward. His stride was vigorous, determined.
The son followed the father, stopping on his left side. Catius fixed his watering red eyes upon Antires and addressed him without preamble. “A Herrene,” he said with distaste. “So you offer money for my elephant.”
“A generous offer. The Coliseum can use her for breeding a new generation of performers.”
Catius grunted. He was silent for a time. “How long have you been in the field, looking for elephants?”
“About five weeks. I’m not just looking for elephants.”
“I see.” Catius seemed to take a long time to mull that information over. “What else are you looking for?”
“Lions are always popular, Senator.”
“Your superiors must be idiots,” Catius said. “Or you are a liar.”
“I don’t think he’s a liar, Father,” Rennius said. “Flaminian said he was there at the circus when he came to buy the elephant.”
Catius turned his terrible face toward his son, eying him as though he were the idiot.
Someone was running down the back hallway—several someones, clattering in their hobnailed sandals. Antires turned to find three legionaries hurrying toward them, and felt his stomach lurch. What mistake had he made?
“This man is no Coliseum agent,” Catius said to his son. “He wants the elephant for his own reason. Soldiers, arrest this man.”
“What?” Antires stood straight. “I am a citizen of the Dervan Empire, on legitimate business. I have committed no crime!”
“Truly? Have you given your real name? Can you put me in contact with your superiors? What are their names, and where are they based? Where are your assistants, to transport the animals?”
“I resent all of these accusations. And I do not recognize your authority to arrest me.”
“I recognize it. You may take it up with a quaestor when we’re done talking with you.”
“You will regret this,” Antires said, speaking over his fear, as though he were the son of princes and a very kingdom might rise in anger at news of his mistreatment.
“I have only ever regretted failing to act,” Catius said. “Flaminian?”
The elder brother had appeared behind the soldiers. He came to attention. “Yes, Father. What do you want me to do with this man?”
“Give him a little while to contemplate his situation. He should know that further lies will only make his situation worse. I honor truth.”
“Who do you think he’s working for?” Rennius asked wearily.
“Ciprion. Aminius. One of my enemies prying into my affairs.” Catius scowled. “His appearance at this moment is entirely too coincidental. I will find the truth.”
IV
In the cool of the evening Lydia returned to the courtyard, where Rennius had been pacing along the well-trimmed shrubs. Her handmaid must have gossiped about the Coliseum man’s fate, for Lydia lamented to him, sipping wine while a pale, muscular Ceori fanned her. “He seemed like a nice man,” she said. “I would have never thought him for a spy.”
Rennius held off commenting that she rarely thought about much of anything but wine and handsome men. “If he’s really a spy, he had peculiar goals.”
“I hear that he didn’t have papers on him,” Lydia said.
“A lot of people don’t have papers on them,” Rennius countered. “And he was clearly thinking about the elephant like a Coliseum man would—not just about its profit, but its care.”
“So he’s a fine liar. Spies have to be, you know.”
Rennius shook his head. “There’s something odd about him, but he didn’t seem to really know much about us. I think he really is interested in the elephant.”
Lydia sipped. “How typical. You’ll whine about seeing something no one else noticed but won’t do anything about it. That’s your story, isn’t it? Clever Rennius, sneering at the rest of us, the smartest of us all.”
“I don’t see you doing anything but drinking.”
“It’s the one vice Father doesn’t notice.”
“He notices,” Rennius said. “He just doesn’t care what you do so long as you don’t make a spectacle of it. Like sleeping with a Herrene.”
Lydia smiled slyly. “Oh, that would really have riled him up, wouldn’t it? I wonder what he would have done?”
“He would have arrested him on a pretext, executed him, and returned to ignoring you.”
“He doesn’t care about you, either, you know,” Lydia said spitefully. “Nor does he care about Flaminian.”
“Yet here we still are, one big, happy family.”
“Going off somewhere to sulk?”
“I’m going to see what Flaminian’s doing.” He walked away.
“Going to go watch the torture, are you?” she called after him. “But you won’t do anything. You never do anything.”
She was right. He never did. But he still made his way beyond the villa toward the slave quarters. Dusk had come, and the cicadas whirred in the trees while a scops owl repeatedly shrilled its single, piercing note.
Nearer at hand, two of Flaminian’s soldiers were marching the bare-chested Herrene to a tilted wooden plank from which manacles dangled. Stirses made an effort to hold his head high and maintain his dignity, no matter that he wore only sandals and a loin cloth. As yet, there was no mark upon him, but he walked with some obvious discomfort. Sweat drenched him.
Flaminian stood at their father’s side, watching his soldiers force the purported Coliseum buyer to lie on his back, head lower than his feet. They fastened manacles to the Herrene’s wrists, so that they were beside his shoulders, then secured his neck and locked wooden blocks to either side of his head so that he could not shift it from side to side. They wrapped his waist and ankles with additional binding.
“Has he said anything?” Rennius asked.
“He still lies,” Catius answered.
The soldiers stepped back and looked to Catius for the order to commence. A slave stood at the nearby pump, filling the second of three wooden buckets. One of the soldiers brought the first bucket forward and dipped a cloth into it.
Rennius spoke, hating the deference in his voice. “Did he have the money he said he’d have on him?”
“He had gems,” Catius said.
“Enough to purchase the elephant?”
“A little more, I think. The beast may somehow be important to his masters.”
“It wouldn’t be important to a spy,” Rennius pointed out, and swallowed as his father’s eyes narrowed. He dared to continue. “What have you done to him so far? An innocent man, or his family, could take us to court. But if you haven’t drawn blood . . .”
“He’s been in the coffin box.”
“All afternoon?” The coffin box was used only for the rudest and laziest of slaves. Closed inside with your legs doubled up, it grew incredibly uncomfortable, very fast, especially since the box stood in the sun, and its front face was metal.
No wonder the Herrene was wobbling on his feet, stinking and wet with sweat. Rennius swallowed.
“You are weak, boy,” Catius said. “You refuse to see what your eyes have told you.” He nodded at Stirses. “There is a liar. I will break him.”
“Because he wants to buy an elephant?” Rennius objected.
His father’s mouth twitched. His voice lowered. “You challenge me in front of those not of the family?”
He knew what he should have said. That his father was cruel, and hateful, and that the Herrene should be released at once. But he heard his answer even as he despised himself for saying it. “I am sorry, Father.”
“You will learn your place.” Catius raised his voice. “Herrene! I ask you now. For whom do you truly work?”
The answer came as a weary gasp. “I am contracted to Titor Mennius out of Syrenia, who sells animals to the games.”
“If you expect me to show you mercy, you look to the wrong man.” Catius stepped forward, adjusting the winch on his terrible arm so that his rod of command rose once more. Rennius listened to the rasping click of it and looked desperately to Flaminian, who contemptuously ignored him.
“You think I will hesitate to kill an elephant, much less a lying Herrene? When I was fourteen, I beat a slave to death because he had stolen a single cake from my mother’s ovens. I do not tolerate deception!”
“You’re a murderer,” the Herrene whispered. “Thousands of times over. Your city hates you. Your soldiers hate you. Even your children hate you. They’re just too frightened to say it to your face.”
“Will the Herrene prate to me about love?” Catius remarked. “There is only one thing true men respect. Fear is the secret to our empire. We will triumph, we will endure, because we are strong, and because our enemies know to fear us. As you should know to fear me. We shall see how defiant your eyes look after you have lain on the drowning table.”
Catius stepped back. “Begin.”
V
The soldier lay the wet cloth across his nose and mouth with care that seemed almost tender, and a confused Antires thought at first that it was a kindness, for his lips were parched, his throat dry.
Then they poured the water over his face.
The liquid crashed down and filled his nose and mouth, and he sputtered and gagged and wondered why he hadn’t thought to hold his breath.
There was a brief reprieve, and then a second torrent washed over him. He fought to turn his head, to lift away, but the bindings were too certain. He knew that he would drown.
Hanuvar had given him many warnings about Dervan torture, and Antires had always thought himself too clever to be caught. He also believed himself too honorable to betray a friend. The former had proven false, but he vowed he would say nothing about Hanuvar, no matter what was done to him, even as stark, panicked fear swept through him. He honestly did not know if he could endure this. Every portion of his being screamed out for him to beg them to make this stop.
But an important quality of bravery, Hanuvar had once told him, didn’t mean that you had no fears, simply that you were more afraid for others than you were for yourself. Antires didn’t know if that was true for him, but he wanted it to be.
After the third bucket the cloth was removed. Antires lay gasping, heart beating a sprinter’s pace, his head pounding, for he had struggled mightily against his bonds and bruised his skin.
He grew conscious that the senator was speaking with a soldier who’d run up to him. Antires couldn’t make out all of what was being said, partly because the soldier spoke in such a low voice and partly because it was hard to hear over his own gasping. By straining, he could just see the brothers. Flaminian listened attentively to the soldier. Rennius caught his eyes and looked away, shamefaced.
Antires had mistakenly thought Lydia was just a lonely, spoiled noble woman. That Flaminian was, at his heart, reasonable. That Rennius might even be a kindred spirit. But each was in thrall to their monstrous father.
The horrific patriarch turned on his heel and pointed to Antires with the rod clasped in his crippled arm’s hand. “Unchain him.”
As the soldiers stepped up to Antires, Catius sneered. “This is but a temporary reprieve, Herrene. Do you know what has happened?”
Antires didn’t answer; he had no idea.
“Adruvar Cabera has suddenly grown more distinct. It happened almost on the instant your drowning began. Are you going to tell me why?”
Antires weakly shook his head, just freed of the blocks. “I never met Adruvar Cabera.”
“I think you lie. I think you’re a Volani agent. I think your blood might make the ghost talk even faster. Unless you can tell me where Hanuvar is and what he’s planning.”
“I don’t know anything of that,” Antires said tiredly. He coughed as the soldiers sat him up, and water dribbled from his mouth.
Catius laughed without humor. “I brought the ruin of the Volani towers. Breaking you will be as nothing. Bring him.”
The soldiers grabbed his arms.
Volanus, Antires thought dully. He had never seen those silver towers, though he had heard the poets sing of them. It was said there had been hundreds of thousands living behind the city’s walls when the Dervans besieged it during the third and final war. And barely a thousand had been led away in chains. Much of that dreadful toll could be laid at the feet of Catius Marcius. Oh, other generals had led the army, but it was he who had stoked the fire, not just through his exhortations at the end of every speech, but through long diatribes given over to nothing but warnings about the treacherous, subhuman Volani, who should not be suffered to live.
The soldiers force-marched Antires after Catius, striding vigorously through the twilight in front of his sons and on through a gap in the hedge toward the row of trees with the elephant. Kordeka trumpeted in alarm, still straining to pull from the tree. Antires understood her fear better now. A cruel fate, to be helpless in the hands of madmen.
His eyes shifted to the blue light glowing within the gazebo’s mist. It burned brighter; it chilled the soul.
He couldn’t reason it. Antires was no magician, but he understood that even sorcery obeyed rules. Rennius had told him that they were trying to call up a Cabera, and that to do so they needed something he had known. Something, or someone, that had been important to him. Adruvar Cabera had been dead for at least thirteen years. Even if Antires had known him, he would only have been seven or eight at the time of Adruvar’s death. Antires supposed he might look older than he truly was, which had conceivably deceived the senator, but that didn’t explain how his own presence could have any effect upon the spirit. There must be some other explanation. Maybe the elephant’s proximity was making a difference.
Antires would gladly have been almost anywhere else other than that dreadful place. He thought Catius’ sons hesitated before following their father under the gazebo’s tiled roof. One of the soldiers holding Antires cursed as they brought him over the threshold, either because of the ghastly atmosphere or because of the sudden drop in temperature. It felt like entering an ice cave. Sodden as he was, Antires wondered if he’d freeze to death.
The candles stuck in four nearby lanterns flickered redly, their flames twitching widdershins at the same instant. Smokey incense rose from a diminutive fire and up through the eerie azure fog. At its dead center the ghostly image of an armored man floated above the floor.
The family resemblance to Hanuvar was striking. He was far younger than the general, broader, with a thicker chin and a nose that had been broken. He was all in grayish blue, so it was impossible to know the color of his hair. His face was twisted in discomfort, as if he fought against spectral pain. His eyes were closed.
An old bald man with a painted head mumbled at his feet.
“Well?” Catius snapped.
Voice low, the bald man continued his chant.
Antires looked at the spirit, awed and frightened. Could it really be made to tell something useful about Hanuvar?
“Answer me, mage,” Catius demanded. “Why does he not speak?”
The Hadiran halted and slowly turned his head. He spoke, tired but triumphant. “You have asked him no question.”
Catius grunted. “Very well. You there, spirit. Who are you?”
The voice answered in Volani and was the whisper of moth wings, and the patter of soft rain. Antires could just understand it. Only a generation before, Volani had been one of the most important tongues along the Inner Sea, for the city’s merchants had traded far and wide. He had learned it to better soak up the sophisticated work of the great Volani playwrights. He’d never thought to hear it pulled through insubstantial teeth.
“Speak up!” Catius commanded, addressing the spirit forcefully if haltingly in its own tongue. “Who are you?”
This time the sound was more clear. “Brother, be careful.”
“He’s not answering me,” Catius said.
“Do not relent,” the Hadiran advised.
Catius growled, then resumed his questioning. “Who are you? Are you Adruvar?”
“. . . Adruvar . . .” The figure shifted in the gloom and his head turned. It had no eyes, only empty holes, and as that gaze fell upon Antires it was as though icicles pierced his skin. Already shivering he trembled more violently, whether from cold or fear he could not tell. The soldier on Antires’ left whispered a prayer to Arepon the sun god.
“Well done, ghost,” Catius said. “Answer my questions, and I will release you to your eternal rest.”
The cry of another voice rose, a wail as of someone in terrible anguish. It did not seem to originate from Adruvar, though the noise emanated from the blue mist. The moan was joined by another, rising and falling. Every instinct in Antires’ body urged him to flee. Though sore, exhausted, frozen, and parched, he might even have managed it, but the two soldiers held him tight. The fog thickened.
Once more Adruvar spoke. His voice this time was more clear, more focused, louder. “Do not come near. Do not attempt this.”
“Mage,” Catius said, “what is this nonsense? What is he talking about?”
“He is frightened,” the sorcerer answered. “Don’t you feel it?”
“He fears you, Father,” Flaminian said, exultant.
More disembodied voices joined the wailing.
“Sir!” another voice called from behind them. A soldier stood just outside the gazebo, at rough attention, his features indistinct in the darkness. He saluted as Flaminian turned, then reported: “Someone’s set fire to the outbuildings!”
“Well, put it out and kill them!” Flaminian said.
“Yes, sir. We are. But there’s a lot of them! We need help!”
“Rennius,” Flaminian said, “guard the prisoner. You two, go lend a hand. Go!”
Antires felt himself released, even as his stunned senses put everything together. The panicked-sounding soldier in the darkness was Hanuvar. And he must have been somewhere close all this time, which is why Adruvar had addressed his brother.
As Rennius laid hold of his arm Antires knew a greater fear than he had yet experienced, not for himself, but his friend.
Catius had barely glanced at the pretend messenger. He resumed his harangue of the ghost as Hanuvar and the two soldiers raced away. “Does Hanuvar live?” Catius asked “Where is he?”
Adruvar writhed, his teeth gritted.
“Make him answer me, mage!”
The sorcerer threw more incense into the fire at his feet, which flared up with a poof. “I am compelling him, but his strength . . . it grows.”
So too did the mist, thickening in the gazebo. “Adruvar! Tell me where Hanuvar is, or you will be destroyed! Do you hear me?”
“There . . . there . . . there. . . .” the spirit said, as though the words were being forcefully pulled from him.
“What do you mean?” Catius asked. “Answer me! Where is he?”
“Here . . . here . . . here.”
“You mean he’s dead, with you?” Catius’ voice rose in frustration.
Behind the spirit the mournful voices rose in a chorus. And in the eerie light Antires saw other figures beyond Adruvar’s shoulder. Rennius swallowed and backed away minutely, still holding Antires’ arm.
“Answer me!” Catius demanded. “I can destroy you, eternally, as I destroyed your people. Do you know who I am?”
“Murderer.” Though Adruvar’s voice was a whisper, it carried through the gazebo.
The voices repeated the word. “Murderer,” another said, and another, and then it was picked up and carried from dozens of voices beyond the spirit in the blue gloom, passing on to more and more until Antires realized that hundreds lay just beyond the opening between this world and the next.
“Father,” Rennius said, “I don’t like this.”
“Shut up,” Flaminian told him.
But it did not stop, and the voices began to overlap each other so that men, women, and children spoke the same word at the same time. Hundreds upon hundreds of them.
Catius leaned down and slapped the sorcerer.
“Command him to obey me!” Catius cried.
Something fell out of the darkness—a round shape that smashed beside them with a fragile tinkling of fine glass. Immediately the scent of vinegar and sage and another, subtle floral scent rose in the air.
The Hadiran cried out in abject fear, throwing up his hands and shouting incantations. Flaminian searched the darkness, commanding that whomever had thrown the glass reveal himself.
Then the candles died, along with the fire. All was dark but the flare of the spirit light, and the rolling mist.
“What’s happening, mage?” Catius demanded.
“They broke the magics,” the Hadiran said. “Asphodel and sage and vinegar—I can’t restrain him here. He’ll be pulled back—“
But it seemed that the spirit was no longer restrained in any way, for Adruvar stepped free, a transparent man-shape outlined in cool blue, like a fine artist’s preliminary sketch, only the most important angles of face and limb and armor well defined. A moment after, two more grew further detailed, one shorter, a cloak belled behind him, the other taller, leaner. They resembled one another, and Adruvar, and Hanuvar. Melgar and Harnil Cabera.
Rennius let out a quavering cry and his hand released Antires’ arm.
Still the voices of a dead people multiplied, a call of thousands separated by a vast and impossible gap. The Hadiran writhed upon the floor and then stilled.
The trio of spirits drew curving gray-blue swords. Behind them, in a growing fog, moved other figures. The night flooded with shapes half hidden by the mist that rolled with them toward the villa. The spirits flowed out in a rolling cascade.
Catius shook his good arm in defiance. “You can’t hurt me! You are but spirits! Cowardly spirits!”
Someone grabbed Antires and pulled him back. He stumbled, weak and stiff in fear. He found himself clutched by Hanuvar, disguised in Dervan military garb.
Catius saw the general too. And this, more than the presence of an army of ghosts, set him gaping. “You!” he cried, his voice choking.
“You,” Hanuvar repeated.
“Kill him!” With a shaking hand Catius pointed to Hanuvar. “Flaminian, Rennius, kill him! It’s him, Hanuvar!”
The elder son, backed to the gazebo’s edge by the oncoming ghosts, turned with lifted sword. But he drew no closer to Hanuvar, for Adruvar himself hacked his chest with his transparent blade. The sword rent no flesh, but Flaminian fell dead.
“No!” Rennius cried. “I’m not like them!” But Melgar, teeth showing in a wicked sneer, slashed him in the throat and the younger brother dropped like the first.
Antires thought for certain that Harnil would then turn to Catius. The old man had drawn a knife and held it in his good hand. Somehow he had found the time to ratchet his withered arm up, the rod of command lifted high. His eyes showed white with fear.
But the brothers withdrew to stand with Hanuvar. Antires was but a hand span from Melgar’s transparent cape.
A host of spirits half hidden by mist crowded upon Catius, latching hold of him even as his knife flailed uselessly through their semblance of bodies.
Vanished at last was Catius’ composure. The spirits dragged him shuddering toward the glowing blue center of the mist. He gabbled in fear. Antires glimpsed the thousands awaiting him there, in the beyond. Obscured by mist, Catius continued his protests, his voice finally rising into a quivering scream of terror.
One by one, the ghostly brothers stepped to Hanuvar, and one by one he met their cold embrace, flinching not at all. Each stood with him for a long moment, saying nothing. They then stepped apart, their hands raised in farewell.
Hanuvar, solemnly, lifted his own, and then the spirits turned and stepped into the mist and the brilliant azure light. The fog dissipated swiftly as the illumination dulled. The sounds from beyond lingered for a moment: the chants of murderer, and the distant screams of a mortal driven mad with fear, and then that too was gone, leaving only the wind, a dead sorcerer, two dead brothers, and an old helmet.
VI
The next morning Antires woke in a wagon, where he lay in a huddle of blankets. Momentarily confused as to his whereabouts, he sat up, and then groaned. Nearly every muscle in his body throbbed.
Hanuvar walked at the wagon’s side. The morning sun was bright, and Antires raised his hand to shade his eyes. “What happened?”
“You passed out. You’d endured a lot.”
“I should say so. But how did you get free of all those soldiers?”
“The soldiers are dead. Only the slaves escaped alive.”
“What killed the soldiers?”
“The ghosts, I expect,” Hanuvar answered. “There wasn’t a mark upon their bodies.”
“And the elephant?”
“Marching in the column with us.”
He was glad of that. Antires had been worried for her, but most of all for his friend. “You risked your life to free me,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“And I shouldn’t have allowed you to risk your own life to gather information. But it’s done.”
Antires shaded his eyes and looked at his friend. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
Hanuvar’s frown suggested that was the least of his worries. “I’m sorry they hurt you. None of the damage seems permanent, though, and the circus healers say you’ll be all right in a few days. For best results, you’re going to need to rest.”
Despite his pain, Antires grew conscious of a more troubling worry. “Do we have time for that? Won’t someone come after us?”
“There’s no one left to come after us. Catius kept his doings secret. Someone will investigate how thirty cavalrymen died, but there won’t be any good answers.”
Antires stated his fear more clearly. “You’re not leaving me here with the circus, are you?”
Hanuvar smiled faintly. “I would be a poor friend if I did that. The circus will provide us with a good cover while we travel, at least until we draw closer to the Ardenines.” He paused, his voice lowering. “Once we cross them, I will tell you what I plan. And I will want your help after, if you still wish to give it. I can’t succeed by myself.”
“I will help you,” Antires vowed.
“You should wait until you hear what I mean to do.”
“I know you well enough to promise it now.”
Hanuvar patted the wagon’s side. “What is it that alerted Catius?”
“Maybe my story wasn’t as clever as I thought. But I think the senator was just paranoid. It was you who threw that glass in the fire, wasn’t it? What was that?”
“Thanks to your clever note, Nyria, the circus’ magician, cooked up ingredients she said would sever a spirit’s hold on the real world. I thought it would simply send Adruvar back. But it also sheered the sorcerer’s control over the spirits.”
“So you didn’t mean for any of that to happen?”
“No. I was just trying to free my brother. I should have known he’d do his best to free me as well.”
Antires quietly absorbed that thought. “What was it like, to hold them, one last time?”
Hanuvar didn’t answer.
“It’s all right if you don’t want to say.”
“No, I think I owe you my honesty. I just don’t want to insult you.”
“How would you insult me?”
“I value your friendship, Antires. But it is not the same as the company of one’s family.”
“I don’t suppose it would be. Although it would depend upon the family.”
“True enough.”
A long silence followed, over which Antires heard only the roll of the wagon wheels and the jangle of reins. “So,” he prompted, “what was it like?”
It was a long while before Hanuvar answered, his voice remote and fragile. “For a brief moment, I was no longer alone.”
From that day forward Hanuvar grew more open with me, against his natural inclination, for he was a private man. Sometimes his struggle to speak against his better judgment was visible upon his face.
During the next few days he provided a more detailed accounting of the events he’d undergone between the fall of Volanus and our first meeting, and he supplied numerous smaller details I had not yet heard about incidents we had experienced on the road, alone or apart. He told me once that I had long since earned his loyalty, but that he realized after my encounter with the Marcius family that he could better return it.
Over the course of the following weeks our travel grew easier, relaxed even. The circus welcomed us and, even unwittingly, provided camouflage, as well as better travel fare, security, and, before too long, companionship. I know Hanuvar chafed at the delay, but I saw also that he enjoyed the company. In some ways, those days were among the most pleasant we ever spent together.
—Sosilos, Book Three
7 After having been slain in a battle with the army of Flaminian Marcius, Adruvar’s head was cut from his body and borne overnight by a hard-riding Dervan cavalryman so that it could be tossed into Hanuvar’s camp. In this manner the general learned his next oldest brother had died, and his army of reinforcements had been destroyed. While war is never the glamorous business poets pretend, this particular act stood in stark contrast to the way honored dead had been treated by both sides during the Second Volani War.
—Silenus