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Chapter 3:
The Muse in Bronze


I


When Hanuvar arrived at the famed Laminian arch that morning in late autumn, it was not at the head of a triumphant column of troops, but alone on a horse, one among countless fellow travelers. Pilgrims walked along his left, their sandals, calves, and cloak edges stained with road dust. Behind him three horse-drawn wagons laden with grain sacks had stopped before a bored band of inspectors. Ahead of him eight slaves paused with the curtained litter they bore on massive shoulders while the aristocrat inside leaned out to speak with a centurion monitoring the traffic with his troops.

The legionaries waved Hanuvar under the arch and into Derva itself with barely a second glance. Middle-aged jewelry merchants on the horses behind him were eyed more warily, probably because the soldiers remained alert for a gray-haired bearded man of late middle years burning with the desire to conquer Derva, or perhaps just trample it a bit with some elephants.

Hanuvar no longer resembled that person, although he hadn’t looked much older than he did now when he’d assumed command of the Volani army, long ago. He’d been bearded during those years, and now he was clean shaven. His dark hair, cut in conservative Dervan style, ran straight and partless across his forehead, rimmed his ears, and did not extend further than the nape of his neck.

His kit looked fully Dervan as well, from his simple ankle boots to his belted off-white tunic and brown winter cloak. He seemed the son of some middle-class merchant comfortable enough to afford a decent mount. A bundle of spear, helmet, and old corselet was tied across the horse’s rump, between his weather-beaten saddlebags, but that was to be expected. Only a fool traveled the countryside without some protection, and many sturdy young men took occasional jobs as caravan guards or rich man’s sentinels, for not everyone could afford to hire former gladiators and legionaries.

Blinking against a shaft of sunlight, he crossed at last beneath the arch and into a wide square with a central fountain surrounded by two- and three-story buildings casting long shadows. Taverns and bakeries and butchers occupied their first floors. He rode past them, taking in the sights like the tourist he appeared to be. Decades before he had looked upon the city from afar and studied its maps. To travel it in person, though, was another thing.

Cross streets intersected the avenue further down its crowded length. Three of the city’s famed five hills rose in the distance, the largest of which was crowned by a massive red-shingled building with columns, shining in sunlight. Hanuvar knew it for the temple of Jovren the lightning bearer.

After Hanuvar had retreated from the Tyvolian peninsula, the poet Orvenal had written that the general’s greatest lust had been to tear down the arch of Laminius, cart the great Jovren statue away to decorate the harbor of Volanus, and raze the city. The Dervans had not produced a great poet since the previous generation, though few of them had noticed, blind as they were to propaganda masked as literature and barren as they were of compassion for those born beyond their borders. The same people who wept when presented with ornate rhymes describing the miseries of bereft Dervan war widows and orphans could exult without any sense of hypocrisy in the death, devastation, and destitution of those the empire conquered.

He moved through the streets with Dervans and could feign their manner, but he would never fully understand them, especially when it came to how such a fundamentally decent people could be capable of the cruelties of gladiatorial entertainment, much less slavery and genocide. While he lacked the time or inclination to luxuriate in bitterness, sometimes he could not help but brush it in passing, especially that autumn morning. Derva was vibrant, alive with sound and scent and people in motion. He wondered if any of those he passed gave thought to the blackened, empty streets of Volanus, or Orinth, or Ekamaya. He did not expect so.

Volanus, too, had been old, but its founders had laid the city out in long straight lines from the start, so it was not this warren of narrow twisting lanes. Derva had grown organically and with little guidance, although it did not lack all planning, for it possessed a famously efficient system of aqueducts, which rivaled those of lost Volanus. Its sewer system was said to be comparable as well, at least in principle, although upper-level apartments lacked access to it. The dumping of chamber pots from high windows was both a well-known hazard and the most prominent source of the city’s underlying reek. That odor blended with the smell of horse and the stench of humanity, despite the folk of Derva making regular use of public baths. More pleasant scents of baking breads, sizzling sausages, and fragrant perfumes and sharp spices threaded themselves into the overlying fetor so that the worst factors rarely overwhelmed.

The great city presented an unceasing variety for the ears as well, Hanuvar found, and not just the clop of hooves on brick roadways or the chattering of men and women, gossiping at restaurant counters or bickering at merchant stalls. Derva was apparently a city in constant need of repair. In the span of six blocks Hanuvar passed three separate buildings under construction, the last occupied by a small army of carpenters hammering upon all three levels of its skeletal wooden frame.

Most buildings were fronted with shops and rose two or three floors. Further in, the city tenements climbed as high as five or six stories, and their windows stared at him from the flanks of two of Derva’s hills. Villas with gardens sprawled higher upon those hills, crowned by pillared temples and stately buildings of the imperial bureaucracy.

As he traveled the winding avenue deeper into the city, he left behind tourists to blend with local men and women on their daily chores. He passed a line of off-duty soldiers, in the red tunics of the legionaries but wearing no obvious weapons in the city, by ancient law, and then came to a row of seated beggars.[3] One of the weather-beaten old men looked grimly up at him as he neared, shaking his stub of a left arm. He bore a placard identifying him as a soldier from the Sixth Legion. If that were true, he’d probably lost the limb fighting Hanuvar’s troops over a dozen years ago.

The coins Hanuvar carried were quite literally intended for the preservation of lives, but he tossed one to the old soldier, wondering why a nation so given to conquest could not better care for the maimed who had marched to enact its decrees. In Volanus, a man like this without a family to care for him could have lived out the rest of his life in one of the complexes set aside for veterans, along the city’s south shore.

He left the central road and meandered through side streets. He purchased pork skewers from a vendor on one avenue and eyed gaudy bracelets on another, as though he thought about gifts for a lady friend, and generally behaved as though he were in no hurry and had no particular place to be. He even pretended to flirt with a trio of pretty singing girls at a small market while they performed for coins.

Finally, as if by chance, he wandered down a side street only a few blocks beyond the forum. There he looked over several taverns before advancing a block further and stopping at a complex that offered both a tavern and a stable. Each building in the row bore a placard with a blue spoked wheel beside an additional implement, indicative of each shop’s particular function—a bed, a wine jug, a table with steaming ribs, a horse.

Until he had seen those blue wheels he hadn’t been certain he would find them there, and even then he did not feel fully relieved. It might be that some new owner had taken possession of the run of buildings and thought it unwise to part with the well-established symbols.

He didn’t recognize the young man to whom he turned over his horse, but then he wouldn’t expect that. Carthalo would never have survived so long at the hub of his intelligence network if he had employed obvious Volani, and this boy had probably been very young when Hanuvar last walked the Tyvolian peninsula.

He chose not to ask if Terrence, Carthalo’s cover name, still owned the business, and, saddlebag on his right shoulder, war gear under his left arm, he walked past the street-side counter of the inn and into the shadowy restaurant interior. Most of the tables and low-backed chairs sat empty. A trio of old men were leisurely consuming a morning meal of eggs and bread, and they briefly eyed him before returning to a discussion about the merits of various drivers for the whites and who was best suited to win against the reds next week.

Two voices were engaged in a friendly exchange only a little further in. One was gruff and unfamiliar. The other was fluid and mild and Hanuvar permitted himself the faintest of smiles, for he recognized it on the instant as belonging to Carthalo.

An inner counter was illuminated by a low window and showed a stout Dervan vigile, or bucket man, of late middle years, leaning on a hairy arm with his nose pressed close to the open mouth of a wine amphora. He wore the blue tunic of his uniform and a wide belt from which hung a flattened wooden club. His helmet rested on the smooth, dark counter in front of him.

Carthalo watched the vigile. His dark, curly hair had receded from his forehead and his nose seemed somehow to have grown more pointed, but he otherwise looked just as Hanuvar remembered him from years of service; a medium-sized man with a rawboned strength invisible at first glance. His merry eyes were a warm brown.

“What do you think?” Carthalo asked. “Doesn’t it smell as sweet as Fadurian wine? Tastes just a little less sweet but more complex; I always thought Fadurian was oversold.”

“You’re right about the smell,” his companion answered.

“Do you want to try a cup?” Carthalo was already reaching for one, but the vigile raised a hand to forestall him and sighed with regret.

“I should get in and check on the lads. If I have one drink with you, pretty soon we’ll be through the bottle and I’ll show up half smashed.”

Carthalo laughed and his eyes shifted to Hanuvar, who had stopped a few paces out. There was no missing the sudden shock of recognition and the greater shock of its impossibility. But Carthalo was a master dissembler and his easy smile shielded his surprise before the vigile had finished drawing in another sniff.

“That’s fine stuff,” the vigile concluded warmly. “Save me an amphora?”

“Surely. Tonight?”

“If things are quiet, I’ll slip away.” He slapped the counter. “Be well, Terrence.” The vigile scooped up his helmet as Carthalo returned the farewell, then headed for the doorway. He sized up Hanuvar as he passed. He was heavy-set and powerful, with a square jaw and small eyes. He looked almost like a street thug himself. But then it took a strong man to wrestle with both criminals and fires, which the city’s vigiles were sworn to do, by day or night.

Carthalo had joined the Volani forces when Hanuvar himself was older than he currently looked, and during most of that time Hanuvar had worn facial hair. But before embedding himself at the center of his intelligence network, Carthalo had seen Hanuvar in a variety of guises, and the man’s perception was keen. He restored a cork to the mouth of the amphora, watching as Hanuvar advanced to the counter.

Hanuvar voiced the opening phrase of an old password exchange. Likely it had long since been abandoned, but he had no other phrase to offer. “My Uncle Cyrus says your red Divurian is best.”

“Your uncle’s a wise man,” Carthalo replied quietly. He then added; “I’d heard he and his family were dead.”

“They are. I’m glad you’re still in business. And it looks as though your business is prospering.”

“We do well enough. Are you an old friend’s son I never heard about? The resemblance is striking.”

“I’m older than I look. Is there some place we can talk? About a job?” he added, for the benefit of the old men. Although judging by their low chatter they remained so involved in their hippodrome race talk that they would hear nothing else.

Carthalo examined Hanuvar for a moment longer, then turned his head to call for “Horace.” A handsome youth with Carthalo’s curly dark hair emerged from a doorway in the rear.

“Take the counter,” Carthalo said. “I’m talking to this young man about a job.”

Horace looked at Hanuvar in mild interest, then said: “Of course, Father.”

Carthalo beckoned Hanuvar to follow, stepped out from the counter, and headed through that same back entry way from which his son had emerged. He lifted a lantern from a crowded table, lit it from a low candle, and proceeded through a brick doorway and down an old stone staircase.

They emerged in a wide basement space supported by square pillars and stacked with barrels and jugs standing upon heavy wooden shelves with large numbered labels. One lower shelf displayed a jumble of urns and plinths and what looked so much like a human body that Hanuvar started until he realized he looked upon an exquisitely well-painted statue of an athlete—set aside for repair owing to a broken arm and chipped ear. There were yet more doorways; Carthalo ignored the first two and turned suddenly into a third, climbing two steps into a small, carpeted room with a central table, like a private booth at an expensive restaurant. He hung his lantern on an overhead hook and closed the heavy door.

He turned his attention to Hanuvar, and his eyes were piercing.

Hanuvar set the armor and saddlebag on the bench and spoke in Volani. “It is me, old friend. A spell went wrong and changed me thus.”

Carthalo’s gaze did not soften. “Prove it.”

“When we were beside Adruvar’s body you told me even headless he was a better warrior than any Dervan.”

Carthalo’s expression didn’t change, so Hanuvar continued. “When you toasted Maharaval’s wedding, you leaned over to tell me you just realized that you’d slept with his new wife’s sister.”

His eyebrows twitched at that, but he still looked unconvinced. “Tell me about the poem you wrote your wife.”

Hanuvar slowly shook his head. “I wrote no poetry. I told you I only wondered if I should have.”

Finally, there was a sign of Carthalo’s discomfort, for he chewed his bottom lip. “It is difficult to believe. I heard rumors you had lived but I did not credit them. What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking up an old friend. I was afraid he wouldn’t be here.”

“They never found me out,” Carthalo said quietly. “When Volanus fell I wondered for a time if papers from some of our correspondence would point my way, but I stayed. Strange as it may seem, I have a life here.”

“Almost no one knew of your placement, and I assume you have been as careful as always, just as I assume our people would have taken time to destroy the most important documents as the Dervans marched in.” Hanuvar’s voice didn’t break, but it had grown brittle.

“I worried they might have had other things to worry about.”

A somber silence settled between them before Hanuvar spoke quietly. “When you know your time is nigh, I think duty may be the most important thing left you.”

Carthalo nodded sagely, then stared at him, allowing a little wonder to show in his gaze.

Hanuvar wanted none of that. “Five years ago, you sat in the midst of a great web, gathering information. Do you still?”

“Most of my distant sources have gone silent. And why not? For whom am I gathering?”

“Can you rebuild your network?”

Carthalo set his left arm upon the table and leaned forward. “For what purpose? What can you even hope to do?”

Before he could tell him, he had to be certain. “Are you still with me, Carthalo? For Volanus?”

Carthalo sucked in a breath, and his head rose. His voice was cool, quiet. “You ask me that? Have I not given my life to Volanus?”

“Volanus is in ruins,” Hanuvar said brutally. “Here you have a home. A family. A business that prospers. What I ask would have you risk it all.”

“To slay the emperor?” Carthalo asked. The easy way he leapt to that conclusion revealed prior contemplation of the same path.

“No. I hope he lives long enough to suffer greatly. I plan to free our people.”

Only someone who had known Carthalo for long years would have recognized his surprise. His expression was unchanged but his eyes took on an inward look of concentration. Finally, he reached a conclusion and it inspired a question. “You mean to transport them to your colony. It prospers?”

“Last I saw it, yes. I mean to buy the freedom of all survivors and send them to New Volanus. When they’re released, I’d like to carefully contact all free Volani living in outlying lands, too. So that they know we still have a homeland.”

Carthalo did not require any time to adjust to this new reality. He merely began performing new calculations about the requirements necessary for success in this new venture. Hanuvar could almost see him thinking. “You’ve ships?

“I’m building a shipyard. And I have gemstones to finance our first efforts.”

“Of course you do. You were always prepared well in advance.”

“Not so much this time. I have had to improvise. We shall need more money. And we will have to find purchasers for the remaining gems. Using them exclusively as payment will present an obvious pattern.”

Carthalo warmed to the topic. “And we can’t just use one buyer for repurchasing our people. We’ll need a sequence of them. Fake businesses, so the Dervans don’t see what you’re doing. That’s in part why you need my network,” he added.

“Exactly.”

Carthalo stared at him then laughed and thrust out his arm. Hanuvar clasped it and found the grip tight as ever. “It’s not just what you know, it’s how you sound. It’s you.” He laughed incredulously. “How in all that’s damned is it you? Like this?”

Hanuvar shook his head. “That’s a long story and I’m only like this for a while. I’m quickly aging back.” He forestalled further worry about where the end to the sorceries would leave him.

“You must tell me. How did you survive? Were you really there when Volanus fell?”

“I was. And I’d rather not go over that now.” He suddenly felt leagues wearier. “Tell me about yourself and how you’ve managed here.”

“I’ve had it simple,” Carthalo said, as though building a successful business in an enemy metropolis while running an intelligence network could ever be an easy task. “I’ve been under no true hardship, nor has my family. I’m surrounded by people who’ve no idea who I am or what I’ve done. I’m a fixture in the community, and friend to vigiles, lawyers, and even a senator or three.” His lip curled. “I considered and discarded a variety of plans that might briefly have made me happier, but would have jeopardized everything I’d built, and the people I love.”

“Movement against the emperor yourself?” Hanuvar sought confirmation of his previous guess.

“And the circle that championed the destruction of Volanus. I worked out a way to reach most of them and I might have done it, but it would have exposed me. I didn’t care about my own destruction, but if they found me out, they’d have come after my family. My employees. My friends.”

“They will be at risk in this new venture,” Hanuvar reminded him.

“This is different. This isn’t an empty act of revenge that would only clear the way for some new tyrant. That was about death. What you propose is about life. The freedom of our people. However few remain.”

“Yes.”

“I’m with you.”

“I knew that you would be.” He had never doubted Carthalo’s loyalty, much less his courage. The man had distinguished himself from a very early age, leading scouting missions deep into Dervan territory and returning with incredibly detailed information about not just the enemy’s movements, but the personalities of their leaders and their internal disputes. Carthalo had a chameleonlike ability to blend unnoticed into different groups of people, and a talent for weaving disparate threads of information into surprisingly prescient deductions about enemy intent. Hanuvar had reorganized his intelligence service based upon Carthalo’s suggestions. Carthalo himself had been too fine a field agent to completely remove from service, and at the end of the second war he had chosen to remain in deep cover inside Derva itself to better monitor the empire’s plans for Volanus.

Carthalo anticipated the course of his thoughts. “I warned them, you know. I was still in contact with Tanilia and some personnel in the Ministry of Defense.”

“I expected you were.” Hanuvar could also guess that for some reason Carthalo’s communications hadn’t been heeded. He knew Carthalo well enough that he would never have considered blaming him for Volanus’ fall.

But his old friend clearly faulted himself, at least a little. As he continued, his words took on a confessional note. “The Dervan senate debates about the war, and the build-up for it, were impossible to miss. And yet our councilors still thought the Dervans would be reasonable. They kept trying for peace.” The pain in Carthalo’s eyes was real. “Maybe there wasn’t any other option left.”

Not after the second war, when by the treaty Volanus had surrendered all but a handful of its warships and armaments, and had been forced to disband all but a fraction of its standing army.

“Maybe not,” Hanuvar said.

“When the Dervans finally moved, it happened faster than I would have thought. I’ve been wondering ever since if I should have risked taking down one of their ring leaders. I would have loved to have killed Catius. I managed to bribe a few senators, to change votes, but the senate was mostly just a stamp for the emperor then, as now—”

Hanuvar cut him off. “You don’t need to explain yourself. I’ve questioned whether things would have been different if I’d returned sooner. But there was so much to do finding and establishing a new colony, and I thought the city might draw less ire if I wasn’t there. We can’t dwell on what we didn’t do. We have to move forward.”

“I know,” Carthalo said bitterly. “I know,” he repeated slowly, but as if to unseen judges, or his own internal ones.

Hanuvar saw he needed to pull his friend back to the present. He tapped the table top. “Here, and now, there is no man I’d rather have at my side. No one is better suited to building and maintaining a network like this. You will be the one who sets our people free.”

Carthalo’s look was somber as he nodded acceptance—not to the compliment, for he was impervious to flattery, but to the idea of readying for the cause.

Someone approached the door to their booth, and a young woman spoke tentatively. “Father?”

“I’m in an important meeting,” Carthalo answered without getting up.

“We’ve a problem upstairs,” the voice said.

“What kind of problem?”

“You might want this private.”

“Come in,” Carthalo said.

The door was opened by a young woman in a yellow dress holding a candle. Her hair was wavy rather than curling, although it was the same dark color as Horace’s. Her eyes were bright and inquisitive.

“This is Lucena, my daughter,” Carthalo said.

Hanuvar nodded in acknowledgment. “I’m Postumus.”

Carthalo broke into a grin at the assumed name[4], then addressed his daughter. “You may speak freely.”

Lucena appraised Hanuvar for a few heartbeats, then addressed her father. “That man Cassandra’s afraid of has turned up, and he’s threatening legal action. He’s waving a paper around and demanding she be turned over to him.”

Carthalo’s expression was sober as he turned to Hanuvar. “This must be dealt with.” He climbed to his feet. “Lucena, can you get Postumus here some food?”

“I’ll come with you,” Hanuvar said. “This room’s secure?”

“Indeed it is.”

Hanuvar left his belongings on the bench and followed his old friend out of the basement and back through the halls to the central room of the tavern. Lucena trailed them.

The three old patrons had finally dropped their talk of chariot racing. They were turned in their chairs, staring at Carthalo’s son, behind the counter next to a younger boy who was practically identical, and the patrician who faced him, flanked by two large guardians.

The character of some men was mysterious until you had spent long hours or days in their company, gradually learning their humors, their attitudes and preferences, and their special strengths and failings. The patrician was not one of these. The crux of his personality could be gained in a single glance. In his late twenties, his expensive orange tunic with its fine gold embroidery failed to conceal his spindly frame, and his thin lips appeared permanently fixed in a superior sneer. The arrogance obvious in his stance was almost comically magnified by the backward tilt to his head so he might better look down his nose. His eyes glittered with something meaner; his was the malice of someone who believed wholeheartedly that he was an exceptional form of human and that all should acknowledge it. A large ruby glittered upon his citizen’s ring and it flashed in the lantern light as he brandished a scroll at Carthalo.

Hanuvar’s scrutiny shifted to the bodyguards. Their well-tailored tunics and sandals could no more have obscured their profession than they could have disguised the nature of upright bears. They had the thickset build and scarred, heavy limbs of gladiators, and their stares were practically unblinking.

Carthalo ignored the scroll and addressed the rich man. “What seems to be the problem here?”

As if determined to present himself as a stereotype, the stranger sniffed and spoke through his nose. “The problem is yours, for harboring an escaped slave, one Cassandra, whom my informants tell me is upon your premises. You’ll turn her over immediately, if you know what’s good for you.” He again waved the scroll at Carthalo, who again refused to touch it.

Carthalo responded with flat disinterest. “You are mistaken.”

The patrician blinked in astonishment. “You deny that she is here?”

“On the contrary; she is here. But she is a freed woman.”

“You, citizen, are a fool or a liar.” The rich man raised his other hand and wiggled his fingers. Both of the gladiators leaned closer, like hounds tensing on the leash. “Search this place and bring her to me.”

Carthalo’s sons and his daughter bravely moved into positions to oppose any forward progress, the youngest barely rising to the chest level of the brutes. Their father’s voice rang with the sound of steel. “If you take another step into my establishment, you won’t like what happens.”

Behind Hanuvar was a heavy footfall. A quick glance showed him a hirsute man a head taller than Hanuvar, glaring at the two gladiators. He smelled of garlic and cooking oil, but his powerful frame and the look in his eye suggested he might have skills beyond the culinary.

“I am within my legal rights,” the patrician sneered.

Carthalo answered without hesitation. “As am I.”

“I have friends in high places.” The patrician’s voice was threatening, quavering with indignant rage.

“So do I,” Carthalo countered.

At that the rich man laughed. “You, a tavern keeper? I count numerous senators among my close companions.”

“That doesn’t help you right now, though. Whatever’s on that paper you’re trying to hand me is horse manure.”

The patrician eyed Hanuvar and the large man behind him and then sucked in a breath. His voice took on a wheedling, honeyed tone. “Let me make myself clear. It’s possible that the girl deceived you. She is a notorious liar. She might even have procured false documents. If you turn her over to me, there will be no further complications, much less trouble and expense.”

“I’m not turning her over.”

The patrician’s brief flirtation with cordiality ended on the instant. He shook the scroll. “The law will differ, citizen!”

“We shall see. For now, you and your men had best clear out. If any of you come at me or mine you’re liable to get hurt. And I’d hate to see that.”

Carthalo didn’t sound as though he meant the last. The rich man’s expression tightened; he crunched the paper in his fist. He turned on his heel and retreated so quickly his gladiators scrambled to part before him. He called over his shoulder. “You will rue your choice, tavern keep! You can depend upon it!”

The guards fell in behind him. The patrician continued ranting as he reached the door: “I’ll sue you for everything you own! I’ll buy out this whole measly property just so I can tear it down!”

The moment he stepped out of sight, a woman’s voice, weary and hopeless, spoke from behind the big cook. “I’ll never be rid of him. He’s using sorcery. He must be.”

At the same time, Carthalo was speaking softly to Lucena. “Follow them. See where they go. Don’t be seen.”

“Yes, Father.” Her dark eyes flashed intently as she hurried quickly after. The younger son followed her.

Hanuvar turned to face the woman speaker, for whom the big cook had stepped aside. He loomed behind her like a sad giant, lifting a hand as if to pat her back, then lowering it as if he’d thought better of the idea.

She proved slender and solemn. The young woman’s striking red-gold hair was styled simply, swept back from her forehead, exposing her fine brows. She looked toward Carthalo, though she did not quite meet his eyes. Her voice was sunk in despair. “How did he find me?”

Carthalo answered gently. “I don’t know. Cassandra, this is the son of my best friend.”

“I’m Postumus. What’s your history with that man?”

She answered, matter-of-factly at first, but with growing speed and nervous passion, though she never met Hanuvar’s eyes. “His uncle once owned my family. He grew old, and ill, and knew Titus was obsessed with me. On his deathbed, he freed me, because Titus and his mother were his heirs and he didn’t want Titus to have me. But Titus followed me.”

“What makes you believe he used sorcery?”

“He found me out, somehow, wherever I went. He left letters, telling how he watched me, though I never understood. He saw what I did in places where I was alone, where no one could see in. When I got here, I never went out, thinking he couldn’t find me if he never saw a landmark. Although . . . last week those boys were tormenting the cat, and I went outside to stop them. But I was only on the street for a moment . . . ” She put a hand to her head.

Hanuvar would have liked to have known more, but if Titus had led Lucena swiftly, he’d already be hard pressed to catch up. He faced Carthalo. “I’m going with your daughter.”

Carthalo’s eyebrows arched. “It’s not your fight.”

“It is if your business is in jeopardy. Take care of my saddlebag.”

Carthalo would already have been sure to do that; by calling it out Hanuvar had ensured his old friend would personally inspect it and begin calculating how much money was left them, as well as how far it would go in freeing the slaves listed upon the scrolls hidden in another pocket.

With that subtle instruction delivered, Hanuvar dashed into the Dervan streets. Carthalo’s younger son was stationed at the door and told him the direction Lucena had gone. Hanuvar managed to catch up just before she took an avenue to the right.



II


Carthalo’s daughter accepted Hanuvar’s presence with little question. As the young woman skillfully shadowed the patrician and his guards through the streets it was easy to imagine once again scouting terrain with a youthful Carthalo in the hinterlands before they’d crossed the Ardenines.

Titus’ guards kept a wary eye on anyone crowding toward their master, but neither seemed alert for followers. Titus certainly wasn’t. Every so often he would halt and lift a small rectangular object by its handle to peer into it. At first Hanuvar wasn’t certain what it might be, but a growing suspicion was confirmed when the rectangle flared in the light.

“I think it’s a mirror,” he said to Lucena. They had stopped behind a vendor selling scrolls from a pushcart.

She snorted. “He must really be in love with himself.”

Possibly he was. But there might be something more to the habit.

Titus slid the mirror back into a belt pouch and headed forth.

Hanuvar stepped away from the cart, Lucena at his side. “It looks to me as if they’re headed for the Tarkelian hill,” he said. The destination seemed a likely one, given that the avenue led straight on toward the slope where many patricians made their home. But Hanuvar knew Derva mostly as lines on a map and wanted to consult someone more familiar with the streets. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a fair guess,” Lucena replied. “But we shouldn’t assume.”

“I’m going to go a block over, make a run for it, and see if I can get ahead of them.”

She eyed him skeptically. “Why?”

“I’d like a closer look at the mirror. It may be important.”

She frowned. “Father said to be discreet.”

“He’ll want us to gain enough information to act.”

Lucena’s frown suggested she didn’t like a stranger telling her what her father would want, but she said nothing as Hanuvar diverted at the next intersection. Once on the parallel street he ran flat out for the next three blocks. He was slowed by a line queuing up in front of a delicious smelling bakery he promised himself to revisit and nearly collided with a man stopping to shout a greeting at another leaning out a second floor window, but before long he was cutting back on a side street. Halfway along he stopped an old man and paid him two times the worth of his floppy brimmed hat, then slapped it over his head and turned the corner.

It wasn’t hard to spot Titus and his gladiators almost two blocks away and strolling toward him. Now the only trick would be timing. Hanuvar proceeded slowly at first, hat brim pulled low, eyes fixed upon Titus. The aristocrat’s mouth was turned down in a scowl, and he spoke energetically to the gladiator on his right from time to time, who replied with only short phrases. It didn’t seem so much a conversation as an airing of grievances, to which the slave responded with studied sympathy.

When Hanuvar was only a hundred paces out Titus spoke to his bodyguards and veered toward a storefront. The aristocrat himself remained on the walk with the preferred bodyguard while the other stepped to the shop counter. Hanuvar couldn’t yet see what was being sold, but he did spot Titus untying his belt strap, and hurried forward.

Titus lifted the mirror, then spoke a phrase to it, and stared.

Hanuvar abandoned all pretense and jogged ahead. He bypassed a trio of boys kicking a ball and raced past a woman who’d dropped her grocery basket.

At ten strides out he smelled roasting nuts and spotted a little sign dangling from the store’s arch blandly labeled “Good Things.” And he saw Lucena, who was closer than he was, walking up slowly, her eyes narrowed in warning to Hanuvar.

One of the gladiators was lined up to buy a bag of roasted, honeyed nuts. The other, though, was scanning passersby, and his eyes found Hanuvar, who slowed, clapped at his hat as if to adjust it, and came on, the arm he’d lifted obscuring his face, his head turned as though he were curious about the food. But his real gaze was focused to his side. He pretended distraction with the store so that he barely avoided the gladiator, then stumbled, shifting his attention to Titus.

The gladiator growled at him to watch himself; Hanuvar stared at the image in the mirror’s rectangular bronze frame.

It should have showed him a reflection of the nut shop and Titus and maybe his wary guard. Instead, he saw a sad-eyed red-haired woman speaking to the big cook in some back room of Carthalo’s inn, her mouth moving silently. Cassandra.

The mirror itself looked of standard make, the sort you could purchase at any upper-class boutique. Threads of hair were wound about the handle, and Hanuvar noted Cassandra’s distinctive red-gold sheen among them.

The gladiator cursed and shoved Hanuvar, who apologized meekly and kept on.

He passed Lucena, who frowned. “Keep following,” Hanuvar said. “I’ll catch up.”

“Discreet,” Lucena whispered in disapproval.

There wasn’t time to explain. He continued in the same direction until Lucena was a block ahead, then left his hat on the frowning bust of an ancient Dervan built into a wall recess and turned to watch from a greater distance.

Munching candied nuts, Titus resumed his disgruntled course until he entered a villa in the shadow of the Tarkelian hill, rather than upon it, suggesting he had less financial wherewithal than he pretended. It was abutted on its left by a weaver’s shop with second story living quarters.

Lucena was waiting in a side street beside a restaurant, looking very much like an officer ready to scold a subordinate.

Hanuvar spoke first. “He was watching Cassandra in the mirror.”

Lucena’s brows drew in confusion; Hanuvar stepped to her side, his voice low. “He’s using sorcery. Just like Cassandra thought.”

The young woman’s look was piercing, but she seemed to decide Hanuvar was both serious, and sane. He told her what he’d seen in detail.

“So can he watch anyone?” Lucena’s voice rose in apprehension.

“I don’t know the capabilities or limits, except that he can’t seem to hear through it. And I’m guessing he can only watch those whose hairs are wrapped about the mirror’s handle. These sorts of things usually have some kind of connection materials to link the subject with the sorcery, and I saw he had some of Cassandra’s hair.”

Her expression grew more quizzical, and he understood she didn’t have the experience to accept the conclusion he’d drawn wasn’t a wild guess. “What we should do now is scout the neighborhood to pick up gossip about Titus.”

Her look said she still wasn’t sure she trusted his judgment, but she nodded after a moment. “Getting more information isn’t a bad idea. Why don’t you wait here, and watch the villa, and I’ll see what I can learn.”

Hanuvar agreed, well aware that she was trying to keep him out of further trouble. She didn’t know him, and she hadn’t liked him breaking her father’s instructions, even if it had yielded good information.

He took a seat at the restaurant counter. He ordered a large repast, eating very slowly while eying the villa’s entrance.

This problem with the aristocrat needed to be brought to a close, and swiftly. Anything that imperiled Carthalo and his holdings imperiled the people of Volanus. That the threat originated from a self-entitled narcissistic boor was an especial irritant. Such a man held little value for Hanuvar, particularly when measured against the lives of his people. He found himself wishing the situation required a quick kill, but aside from the moral implications, the violent death of a man with connections would involve an investigation, then suspicion would almost certainly devolve upon anyone with whom the rich man was angry—the opposite of a swift and satisfactory resolution.

And thus he watched, and waited.

In less than an hour Lucena returned. Hanuvar gestured to the stool across from him and signaled for the server, then pushed the rest of the platter of sausages, barley cakes, and cheese toward his companion.

She waited to speak until the server deposited a new cup and left. Lucena chewed and swallowed one of the salty little sausages and waited further to ensure that the old owner was gossiping with some of the regulars at the back of the restaurant.

“What did you find?” Hanuvar asked.

The young woman’s caution continued. “What’s your stake in all this?”

She reminded him of his own daughter at that age and he couldn’t help but respond warmly. “I’m the son of an old family friend. Any of your father’s problems are now mine. But I haven’t learned anything new sitting here, so what did you find?”

She didn’t look entirely pleased about being pressed, but answered. “His full name’s Titus Pira Vartius, and he’s only recently taken possession of the villa, about a month back. He spends a lot of his time wandering around with those two brutes, staring at a little hand mirror.”

“Go on.”

“His slaves hate him, but are sullen and quiet. The local merchants say the slaves are terrified the master will find out if any bad word is said about him, then punish them severely.”

Hanuvar hadn’t expected kindness of him. “How often do the slaves circulate in the neighborhood?”

“The cook comes out every day in the morning, about this time. She’s the only one with a regular schedule. Oh, one of the bodyguards is a slave, but the other one is a gladiator who won his freedom a couple of years back after he killed a lion in a single blow. His name’s Nessus; supposedly the crowd went wild and demanded his freedom even though he wasn’t well known.”

“Anything more?”

“Not really.”

“Well, that’s a lot. Now, tell me about Cassandra.”

She wiped her hand on a threadbare napkin, then rubbed the skin near her temple, still evaluating him. Hanuvar waited patiently.

She again decided to answer with apparent openness. “She’s a freedwoman who’s been working for Father. She’s a potter, and a skilled one. She’s been afraid of Titus for a long time. So afraid that she almost never leaves the building. I mean never. She never even visits the baths. The sad thing is that she’s obsessed with cleanliness, and so she washes every day, sometimes twice or more, but she does it via a pitcher and a wash basin, like an old farmer.”

“What does Titus want with her?”

“She really is a gifted potter,” Lucena explained. “She invents finely detailed patterns.” She sighed and looked straight at him. “But I gather he wants her for her body. Which doesn’t make sense.”

“Oh?”

She gave thought to her response, watching him the while. Her fine eyes were as perceptive as Carthalo’s and he realized he had unintentionally presented himself as a mystery for her. His youthful appearance was out of step with his competence, or at least his apparent confidence, which probably seemed a bit different from that of an arrogant youth. She couldn’t decide what to make of him. “Cassandra’s different,” she said finally. “She doesn’t really like talking with people much. Father says that she communicates best with her clay. She doesn’t seem to want to look at anyone, not directly, much less smile. And she hates to be touched. If this man wants to sleep with her, he doesn’t understand her.”

“There are legions of men who don’t care about the understanding part,” Hanuvar remarked wearily. He was tired of looking younger than he was. He was certain Antires would have been disappointed by his portrayal of a youth for the last few hours.

Lucena nodded sagely, liking his answer. “Exactly. If a woman looks a certain way, then they just want her.”

“The way rich women want a bracelet,” Hanuvar added, completing her thought. He swallowed a final swig of wine. “We should get back and tell your father what we learned.”



III


When they returned, Carthalo was drinking at a back-room table with the vigile he’d been entertaining earlier that morning. He welcomed Hanuvar and his daughter with a glad hello. “I was starting to think something bad had happened to you.”

“We’re fine.”

Carthalo addressed the vigile. “Julius, this is Postumus. His father was one of my best friends.” He then turned to Hanuvar and his daughter. “Pull up a seat. Do you need some food?”

“No, thank you.” Hanuvar took a stool on the vigile’s right, away from the lone shaft of sunlight streaming onto the left side of the table. Lucena sat beside him, gilded in an outline of the beam.

“I told Julius about what’s happened, and he’s been making some inquiries for us. I’ve known him for ages. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he used to be on the other side of the law.”

“Before I got fat.” Julius patted his belly. “I was a second story man and a first-rate street thief, if you can believe it.” He chuckled.

Carthalo explained the vigile’s change in professions: “He pulled some people out of a burning building and got offered steady work by the bucket brigade. Anyway, I told him you and Lucena were trailing the rich man. Did you learn anything?” He was implying Julius could be trusted to a limited extent, at least concerning their problems with Titus.

Hanuvar looked to Carthalo’s daughter. “Lucena was in the lead.”

She nodded at him before beginning a report on their findings and he found himself appreciating her physical features. A moment of self-reflection cleared up his confusion at being drawn to a woman more than half his age, who was the daughter of one of his closest friends. It was this young body. He snorted lightly at his own failings. While he hadn’t stopped appreciating the charms of women as he aged, his body also hadn’t been driving him to consider them at every turn.

Lucena finished her summation by offering Hanuvar’s claim to have glimpsed Cassandra in the mirror as a partial explanation for why Titus had been seen wandering the neighborhood with it. She downplayed that he had broken her father’s orders to remain out of sight.

At mention of the mirror being magic, Julius laughed. “That’s impossible.”

Hanuvar took no offense. “It ought to be. But I saw Cassandra in it. She was talking to that big cook in a back room about three hours ago.”

“What were they saying?” Julius asked.

“I don’t know. There was no sound from the mirror, and I only caught a glimpse. Cassandra told us that Titus seemed to always be able to track her down. In letters he’s described where she was and what she had seen. So, she decided to remain totally indoors.”

Carthalo nodded vigorously. “She’s worried that Titus must have somehow learned where she was by a landmark on the street outside. I thought that a strange fancy.”

Under different circumstances Hanuvar would have agreed. “It might not be. It’s my guess that Titus has been wandering around the city trying to find something he saw her near when she was outside. Maybe it was your sign, or maybe it was a shop across the street, or the fountain. It’s hard to know what all he sees. But that would explain why he’s been in Derva for a month and only now approached you.”

Lucena eyed him with respect. Carthalo nodded sagely. Julius’ gaze was skeptical.

“Where is Cassandra?” Lucena asked her father.

“In back.”

She slipped away, saying she was going to go check on her.

“What have you found?” Hanuvar asked. Carthalo wouldn’t have been idle. Probably this vigile was a source, or he wouldn’t be sitting in this private room.

“Julius, why don’t you tell him?” Carthalo asked.

The vigile shifted in his chair. “Terrence here had me make some inquiries. It didn’t take long. It looks like this Titus is in good with an aedile, who has examined paperwork proving Cassandra’s a former slave, although there’s no paperwork on Cassandra being an escaped slave. But there’s no record on her being freed, either. The aedile’s mostly honest but the word is he has a lot of debts.”

Hanuvar accepted this information without comment. Dervan political offices could be prohibitively expensive for their holders, because many remunerated a pittance but required large outlays to fulfill their expected duties. As a result, graft and bribery were commonplace.

“Titus runs with a few senators. No one important,” Julius added. He then named three men with whom Hanuvar was unfamiliar. It had been hard for him to keep track of all the Dervan senators even when he’d occupied the peninsula. The senate was composed of upward of three hundred landed members, the numbers fluctuating every few years from deaths, retirement, and the occasional removal of members demonstrating flagrantly abusive or morally repugnant behavior[5].

Julius continued, “My sources tell me the aedile’s going to be presenting Terrence with an order tomorrow after he meets with his morning clients. He’ll be coming with lictors, and he’ll probably haul the woman away when he does.” Julius looked soberly at Carthalo. “You need to hire a lawyer. A good one. Or simply give him the girl.”

Carthalo emphatically shook his head. “I’ll let no free woman become a slave. Much less to the likes of that man.”

“Titus sounds like a first-rate ass, alright,” Julius said. “But you can’t just make one like him disappear. Not unless you’ve got friends higher up than I know.”

“None that high up.” Carthalo turned his attention to Hanuvar. “Do you have any thoughts?”

Julius’ brows rose in surprise. But before he could ask why such a young man’s opinion was being sought, a woman cleared her voice, and all three men turned to find Cassandra in the doorway, Lucena behind her.

Hanuvar eyed her as he imagined Titus might, trying to decide what about her inspired such obsession. Objectively he found her beautiful, but she did not possess any particular allure. He’d met women with far less refined features who were nonetheless more fascinating because they radiated an innate charisma this woman lacked. Or, he thought, more charitably, their manner invited engagement whereas nearly the whole of Cassandra’s attention was focused inward.

“Hello,” Cassandra said. “Lucena has told me that Titus has a magic mirror.”

“It seems so,” Carthalo said.

Cassandra worked her fingers together in a knot, struggled violently for a brief moment, then pushed them behind her back. “He was carrying a hand mirror when he came for a visit four months after the death of his father.”

“I hope you don’t mind,” Hanuvar interjected, “but I think it best if you retreat into that corridor behind you. Is there something there you can pretend to do?”

“I don’t understand,” Cassandra said.

Quick-witted as he was, Carthalo gleaned Hanuvar’s intention. “Pretend to straighten the shelf of oils,” he suggested.

Julius eyed Carthalo and Hanuvar as though they were both demented. While confused, Cassandra complied, and was soon rearranging a shelf full of supplies in the dimly lit hall beyond. Lucena looked undecided about whether or not she should be helping.

Hanuvar explained to Cassandra. “Titus doesn’t seem to be able to hear through the mirror. You told me earlier that he had been able to send you notes. Think carefully. Did he ever suggest he’d heard you saying anything? Or was it only ever about what you could be seen doing?”

Cassandra paused in her work. “I . . . it was only ever about what I was doing. What I had seen.

What was around me. He was always angrier if he saw me with a man. Any man.”

“But was it ever about anything you said?” Lucena pressed.

“No. But what does it matter? You’re saying he can always watch me? What am I to do?” Her voice cracked. “I’ll never be rid of him. I will just have to kill myself. He will probably like watching that.”

Lucena reached out with her hand, then withdrew it, just as the cook had done.

Julius looked as though he’d been gut punched. “Now you don’t need to be thinking like that,” he said awkwardly.

“I think we can help,” Hanuvar said. “I’ve something in mind that may settle all of this. If Titus is obsessed with you, he must know your schedule. When do you usually bathe?”

Cassandra froze. Her shoulders stiffened. Her voice was anguished and remote. “Every evening. He has watched me bathe, hasn’t he?”

“I am counting on him to watch you this evening,” Hanuvar admitted. “And we can use that against him.”

“How?” Julius asked.

“I need about ten people we can trust to play a joke, this evening.”

Carthalo thought for a moment, then nodded. He didn’t ask about details. “Alright. I can find them. Then what?”

Hanuvar explained his plan.



IV


The first time Titus saw Cassandra, she’d been shaping a pot at his uncle’s farm, her hands filthy, her clear-skinned face marred by speckled red dots of clay and her stola strap slipped down one shoulder. He was so fired with desire he would have mounted her then and there if his uncle hadn’t been standing close.

The old man had never liked him much and had deliberately ordered Titus to keep his hands off the slave. At first Titus thought it was because the old goat was keeping Cassandra to himself, until one day he’d sat him down on a bench beneath a shade tree. He’d explained the girl was fragile, and only suited for a handful of tasks.

“A slave should center her life on her master’s needs,” Titus had rightly pointed out.

“A good master knows his tools,” his uncle had corrected with growing impatience. “Cassandra’s a gifted artisan, and you’ll ruin her if you have your way.”

“If she cannot perform as required then she can be replaced,” Titus said.

His uncle took a breath with visible effort. “I shall try one last time. Some tools have specific uses. Say you have an exquisite sword. You might be able to chop down a few small trees with it, but you’ll dull it and might even break it. It would be a waste of a good weapon.”

His uncle was an imbecile. “Women are for pleasure. They’re nothing like swords.”

Glaring, his uncle put his hands to his thighs, and rose stiffly. He departed without a backward glance and addressed Titus’ mother, waiting near the garden pool. Titus had heard what his uncle said, and his blood still boiled in memory: “Your son is a complete idiot and a sorry sprig on this decrepit old blood line.”

Titus contrived to obtain some of the old man’s hairs. He’d thought it would be a pleasure to watch him breathe his final moments, but it had actually proved boring. He’d long since acquired Cassandra’s hair and wrapped some around the handle—watching her had proved far more entertaining.

At first it hadn’t seemed an impediment that he couldn’t hear Cassandra, because she didn’t spend much of her time talking. She certainly was amazing to watch when she disrobed and bathed, and once Titus understood that she performed this act at nearly the same time every single evening, he only missed a show when something irritating got in the way, like when his mother died, or when he got caught on the road in a rainstorm.

He felt sure if he watched her long enough he’d catch her kissing someone, hopefully another woman, or even pleasuring herself, but she seemed completely naive. Titus resolved that he would tutor her when he finally possessed her. The lack of sound from the mirror made tracking her down quite tedious, especially when she confined her activities to private spaces.

But now there was only one final obstacle. He’d thought that the aggravating innkeeper would cave once he had shown him the correct paperwork, but he hadn’t. It didn’t matter. Brencis the aedile had agreed to accompany him tomorrow, and then there’d be nothing the stupid tavern owner could do. There’d be an end to all of his difficulties very soon. If that contemptible plebeian didn’t turn Cassandra over, he’d sue him into nonexistence and take everything he owned, including those miserable children of his.

For now, though, he went to his bath, had his body slave oil him down, and then reclined in the water with his mirror to await Cassandra’s evening cleaning. At any moment, he would bask with his muse again in the bronze.

He rubbed the hairs tied about the mirror’s handle, idly recalling the day he’d caught his father whispering strange words to it. Even when he’d sneaked into his father’s office that first time and tried it, he hadn’t understood how it really worked. He’d pried the information out of the old man’s decrepit attendant.

He’d been told a Hadiran mage, indebted to Titus’ grandfather, had ensorcelled a simple mirror so he could watch his home from afar when he’d ridden off to battle. Whether or not that were true, Father had inherited the thing and put it to more personal use. Titus eagerly sought it the moment his father died. His mother had been after it, too, and never believed Titus when he told her only someone of Father’s bloodline could employ it.

You had to be special to use the magic.

His thumb caressed Cassandra’s red-gold lock of hair, then he whispered the strange words. He closed his eyes to avoid the dizzying distortion when the device activated, and then turned over the mirror and saw Cassandra framed before him, almost as though he looked through an actual window at her. She was swaying down a hallway, her stola deliciously draping her backside.

Cassandra didn’t turn into her private quarters, and he frowned at the thought he’d caught her early. She stopped to converse with the odious tavern keeper, who moved away to address a group of men seated in the tavern. The room was dark, for the door was closed and the windows were shuttered. Light strayed in through the slats, but most of it rose from lanterns.

Titus found that all peculiar, but not so peculiar as Cassandra’s change from her reliable habits. It was downright frustrating, and he’d already had a frustrating day, so he cursed foully.

The tavern keeper in the mirror spoke silently to the men at length while Cassandra watched. Among those listening were a few he recognized, like the young man who’d stood at the tavern keeper’s side, and the big fellow who’d looked so intimidating. Another wore a vigile’s uniform, and from his command sash he could tell this was an officer. The tavern keeper’s brats were nowhere to be seen.

When the tavern man finished talking, Cassandra carried a small bowl to each of the three tables, and one by one the men seated there reached into it. When their fingers emerged, they were black with ashes.

Each man then drew a symbol across his forehead—a circle with an opening along one side, and a slash through the middle.

Titus’ frustration ebbed and his curiosity flowed. Over the year and a half he’d been watching Cassandra he had never witnessed any moment remotely like this.

The men appeared to be chanting something now, in unison, but Cassandra was walking past them. Rather than watch her, Titus found himself wishing she would turn, so he could better see what it was the men were doing. He supposed it was some ceremony of brotherhood, or even a religious ritual.

At the thought they might even be holding some kind of criminal covenant, Titus’ jaw dropped open. It had never occurred to him to use the mirror to spy on malcontents, and then threaten to turn over their doings if they didn’t pay him. While he had money, his family was not as rich as it once had been, owing to those upstart equites, so Titus was always alert to the potential for new revenue streams.

As he wondered how easily one might obtain hairs from the heads of criminals, Cassandra moved to a counter out of sight of the drinkers and mixed a variety of white powders from different vials. What could she be doing now?

Finally, she dumped all the powders into an amphora which she then corked and shook, vigorously.

So she was adding something to the wine? What, though?

Expressionless, Cassandra lugged the amphora through the doorway into the tavern, where she poured the dark wine into cups. She set the cups on trays, which she deposited on the tables.

Each man took up the cup but did not raise it. They were watching the tavern keep, still speaking at them. Finally, the proprietor took a cup himself, and lifted it, saying a few final words before downing it.

Every man drank but the big fellow.

The young man set down his cup then reached with one hand for his throat. Cassandra watched carefully as he appeared to be having trouble taking a breath. The man on his left then gagged and reached for his own neck.

As Cassandra looked about the room, every one of the seated men put fingers near their wind pipes, and one by one they toppled, some sliding to the floor, others across their tables. A few twitched when they landed, but momentarily all were still. Only the big man remained upright, and he did not look alarmed. He grinned. Cassandra reached behind a chair, produced a hand axe, and presented it to him. The owner must have consumed a separate draught, for he too looked unaffected, apart from a mad look in his eye. He raised his own axe and pointed the big man to the bodies on the left side of the room as he started toward those on the right.

Titus gaped. Cassandra and the tavern keeper had either murdered the men with poison, or rendered them unconscious so he and the big man could chop them to pieces. Titus leaned closer to the mirror, but Cassandra frustrated him once more, for she left the chamber before he saw what the tavern master meant to do. She returned to the counter. From behind it she removed a piece of papyrus and contemplated it.

Upon it was a long list of unfamiliar names. One by one she crossed ten off with an ash blackened finger. Titus realized just then that there had probably been ten men in the other room. Only one name was left, and that was his own. Despite the warm water, a chill spread through him.

Cassandra circled his name with her finger twice. Just then the big man came by and she paused to exchange a few words with him. They spoke casually, as though the big man’s axe wasn’t streaked in red. He opened a small wicker basket to show her bloody human hands and livers. One of them lay across the top half of a blood-smeared face.

Titus gasped in terror.

The big man wandered off with the basket, and the girl drew strange symbols around Titus’ name on the papyrus. Finished, she headed for a tall cabinet near the tavern entry way and opened its door.

A pair of a pig’s heads stared out at him from a high shelf, their eyes glazed in death, and he involuntarily pushed himself backward, so that he struck the back of his head against the stone rim of the bath. He swore in pain.

By the time he was paying attention to the mirror once more, Cassandra had rubbed the paper on the pig faces, looked carefully about the room, as if wary of being found out, then climbed into the cabinet beneath the heads. Once more she looked around, then shut the doors.

Everything then was black, for the mirror’s view was restricted to her and her nearby surroundings. He had long since learned that he couldn’t watch anyone very well while they remained in darkness.

He had seen enough this evening, however. He rose from the water, shouted for his slaves, and had started to towel himself off before they were there to aid him. He discovered his hands shaking, and realizing it was due to fright angered him. This was all that low class tavern keep’s fault. Cassandra had been perfect until she’d gotten involved with him. The aedile’s schedule be hanged. He would lead Brencis there tonight and carry her away. If she retained any strange beliefs, he could have them beaten out of her.



V


By the light of the lanterns they carried, one of Carthalo’s lookouts noted Titus enroute with a man in a toga carrying the small gold baton of an aedile. They were followed by his gladiators and a pair of lictors with their staves. The news was passed to Lucena, who hurried to report to her father, sitting with Hanuvar and Julius in the central tavern room.

Hanuvar and Carthalo scanned the room and its two dozen occupants, relaxing at the tables with food and wine. All looked in readiness, meaning that the majority, who weren’t in on the joke, were simply enjoying themselves. Julius toasted Carthalo with a cup of wine. “It won’t be long now.”

He was right. When the outer door was roughly thrown open, its bang was thunderous. The lictor in the lead stepped inside, his staff at the ready. As tall as himself, the pole was both an ornament of his office and a sturdy weapon for protecting the government official in his charge.

Like the few lictors Hanuvar had glimpsed over the years, this one was muscular. He wore a well-made white tunic with green scrollwork at its hemline. He took in the room full of citizens, among them three tables filled with uniformed vigiles, who looked back in curiosity.

The lictor addressed the room in a booming baritone. “Everyone stay where you are. The aedile Brencis Virgil Sertorius is here for official inquiry.”

Another lictor entered behind him, followed by a small frowning man with a beard’s shadow showing on his face. After him Titus pushed forward, leading his gladiators. The aedile turned to him expectantly.

Titus’ eyes swept the room and widened as they settled on the cabinet a few steps beyond the front door. He pointed to it. “That’s where my slave is hiding! Right there! Below the pig heads!”

The lead lictor advanced, his footfalls ringing in the stunned silence. He brandished his staff and threw open the door.

His body obscured what lay before him, but those nearest looked puzzled. The lictor stepped aside, looking back to the aedile for orders. Nothing sat on the cabinet’s floor but a long row of stoppered amphorae. Various service dishes populated the shelves above.

Carthalo rose and started forward.

Frowning, Titus turned and jabbed his finger toward Carthalo. “There’s the man! You, tavern keep! Where are the bodies? Arrest him! He killed them all! Including an officer of the vig—”

His voice fell, because at that moment Julius stood up. He wore his full regalia, including the sash with his officer’s helmet-shaped sigil. A moment later Hanuvar came after.

“And that young man,” Titus said, though his voice trailed off.

The aedile’s brow creased.

Titus raised a shaking hand and pointed at both Julius and Hanuvar. “But you . . . you were poisoned, and then hacked with an axe!”

Julius stopped at Carthalo’s side.

Carthalo addressed the frowning aedile low voiced, turned slightly away from Titus as though embarrassed by him. “This madman has been bothering us for the last few days. He complained initially that the donkey I left on his roof was making too much noise.”

“I never!” Titus cried, and surged toward Carthalo, pointing his finger. “You’re lying!”

Julius interposed himself and bumped against Titus, who stumbled. Julius, with a patient look, assisted him in righting himself.

Carthalo addressed the aedile. “Your honor, yesterday this man was back in my establishment and said he’d get the vigiles to arrest me because he knew Hanuvar was keeping elephants in my basement.”

“It’s true,” Hanuvar said.

The crowd watched, and a few of them were laughing.

Titus had huffily separated himself from Julius and objected stridently. “I didn’t! They’re lying!”

“He threatened to beat me up so I couldn’t marry his grandfather,” Hanuvar volunteered, and more patrons chuckled.

The lictors looked back and forth at the crowd and Titus, and Brencis the aedile himself, whose frown deepened by the moment. The gladiators were slack-jawed in confusion.

Julius respectfully addressed the aedile. “Sir, how did he say he knew this business owner had killed someone?”

Brencis Virgil Sertorius answered slowly, with a hint of skepticism. “He said an informant directly witnessed a mass poisoning and preparations for chopping up the bodies. There were even some body parts carried away in a basket, apparently.” He turned his head toward Titus. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

Titus gnashed his teeth. He glared at Carthalo, then apparently came to a conclusion. “It wasn’t really an informant. I was using a magic mirror!”

The vigiles chuckled at that, and then Carthalo quipped: “And I’m the ambassador from the moon!”

The tavern patrons roared with delight.

“This is all some trick!” Titus cried. “They staged it to make me look foolish!” He reached into the wide pouch tied at his belt and brandished the mirror. “I’ll prove it!” He then pronounced Hadiran words Hanuvar recognized as “open to me” before crying: “Show me the girl!”

Titus waited expectantly, then stared at the mirror. “Show me!” he shouted.

“Is something supposed to be happening?” Julius asked.

The aedile traded glances with the lead lictor, whose stolid face betrayed weariness. The gladiators appeared equally confused.

“Show me!” Titus screamed. And then he stared at the object in his hand. “Wait! This isn’t my mirror! One of you took my mirror!”

“Just like we took your slave?” Hanuvar suggested.

“She’s mine!” Titus spat. “Where is she? She put you up to this trick somehow, didn’t she?”

Everything had worked as Hanuvar had planned, better even, for he hadn’t been completely sure how well Julius could play his role, much less whether the vigile’s vaunted thieving abilities were as promised. But the man had switched out the magic mirror slyly enough.

It was then he spotted Lucena looking out from the doorway to the interior rooms. She motioned to someone out of sight, and Cassandra emerged.

Titus’ eyes widened at sight of her. He screamed. “You! You foul little bitch! This is all your fault! You did this to me!”

“Calm yourself,” the aedile snapped.

Cassandra’s eyes were huge and white. She halted. Immediately after, though, came the cook, Brutus, his hands hidden behind him.

Titus backed away, gulping.

In his low, mild voice, Brutus said, “Cassandra asked me to show you something.”

“He’s got an axe!” Titus screamed. “Save me!” He ducked behind the gladiators.

The lictors tensed and interposed themselves.

Brutus halted. From behind his back, he produced a small lidded wicker basket. At sight of it, Titus let out a gasp of horror. “There’s a face in there! A human face!”

Cassandra stepped to his side and lifted the lid. A pair of small gray kittens peeped out. They mewed softly.

The tavern guests roared with laughter.

Both lictors relaxed their guard stances and one of them audibly sighed in disgust. Cassandra retreated behind Brutus, her eyes still wide in alarm. While replacing the pig livers and statue parts with the kittens had been her idea, she hadn’t felt up to the challenge of speaking to the odious Titus herself.

Titus’ fists clenched and unclenched. Hanuvar could not hear what he said to the aedile, who glared at him. Finally, Titus could stand no more, and turned on his heel, shouting above the tavern noise that this was far from over. He tripped on the threshold as he exited, evoking another round of laughter. The gladiators left with him, one of them grinning.

Just as the laughter died, Hanuvar said coolly “I guess he doesn’t like cats,” which raised another loud guffaw from the crowd.

After the mirth trailed off, the aedile remained with his lictors, a solemn island. One of the lictors had striven hard not to chuckle, but the other had been unable to restrain himself and struggled still to stop smiling. He turned his face so Brencis would not see his expression.

The aedile addressed Carthalo in a low, calm voice. “In light of these . . . revelations concerning the behavior of the accuser, I am no longer interested in investigating his charges.”

“That’s good to hear,” Carthalo said. “He’s been a pest.”

“Can you see that this interaction is recorded?” Julius asked. “So that fool can’t take his crazy claims to someone else?”

“I will make a note of it,” the aedile replied. “But gossip spreads faster than fire in Derva.” He looked pointedly at Julius, as if to intimate he knew how well the vigile was acquainted with fires. “By tomorrow morning I expect every official in the city will have heard of this disgrace. I’d be surprised if he stays in the city. He’ll be a laughingstock.” The aedile sighed heavily, probably anticipating that he’d be part of that punchline any time someone recounted the evening’s events.

Carthalo invited Brencis and his lictors to stay, offering free rounds, but the aedile declined and departed with his men. After ordering another drink for the taverners, Carthalo motioned Hanuvar, Julius, Brutus, and Cassandra to the backroom, where they gathered at a table with Lucena.

Julius lifted the cup he’d carried with him in salute to Hanuvar. “That worked even better than I expected, boy. You got lucky.”

“You and Terrence were fine actors.”

The vigile shrugged. Hanuvar had the sense Julius had pretended to be many things over the years and that his job might require it—intimidator, confidant, criminal, and other roles besides.

“You played that just right, Brutus,” Carthalo said with a laugh, then looked to Lucena. “Your timing was excellent. And that kitten idea was the perfect little sting on the end.” He offered this last to its originator, Cassandra, standing just as tensely as she had before Titus. Brutus eased the basket toward her. She lifted one of the kittens and began to stroke its back.

Julius raised the mirror he’d procured. “Shall we see it working?” Without waiting for an answer, he mangled the Hadiran words Titus had used, then said, “Show me my son.”

Nothing happened.

“I don’t think it works unless you wrap the hair of someone you’re trying to observe around the handle,” Hanuvar said. “That’s Cassandra’s hair there.”

“Don’t use it to look at me,” she said flatly.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Julius politely extended the mirror toward Cassandra.

Her expression suggested she’d just been offered spoiled eggs. She continued to stroke the mewing animal shifting in her arms. “I want nothing to do with that.”

“We can work out the magic later,” Carthalo said. “For now, some of the best magic is a good jar of wine shared between friends. Do you want to join us, Cassandra?”

“It is kind of you to ask,” the young woman replied. “But no. Thank you all. You are sure he won’t return?”

“I’m certain,” Carthalo said.

Hanuvar gave him a searching look. It was unlike Carthalo to speak in absolutes he couldn’t control.

His friend smiled at Cassandra reassuringly. “He won’t trouble you again. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

She deposited the kitten she held in the basket, collected the other from the table, where Lucena had been engaging its attention with a shawl, and left with them both. Brutus said that he’d be back in a moment, then followed her.

Carthalo handed the mirror to Hanuvar. “I’d best get back out front. Put this some place safe.”

“I’ll be along in a moment,” he said.

Carthalo and Julius left.

Lucena eyed him speculatively. “Well, go on. You want to try out the mirror, don’t you?”

“It won’t work without the hair of your quarry.”

“Probably,” Lucena agreed. “But we both know Julius didn’t say the words properly.”

He smiled lightly. After a moment, Hanuvar lifted the mirror and contemplated his own youthful reflection. He ran his fingers over the strands of hair tied about the mirror, almost certain that without one of Narisia’s the spell wouldn’t work. But, softly, he pronounced the Hadiran words that Titus had uttered, and asked the mirror to show him his daughter.

All that looked back at him was a young man with haunted eyes. He wasn’t at all surprised. He had long since learned that the only miracles he could depend upon were those engineered by hard work, and the aid of friends. “Nothing.” He set the mirror face down.

Lucena had lifted up a plain silver locket hidden by the collar of her stola and opened its face. From inside, she pulled a lock of silvery hair. “What were those words again?”

He repeated them and watched curiously as she lifted the mirror, carefully looped the hair strands around its handle, then spoke in halting Hadiran and asked to see her grandmother.

After a long moment Lucena let out a sad sigh. She lowered the mirror. “It didn’t work. I don’t understand. This is my grandmother’s hair.”

“There must be something more to using it that we don’t know,” Hanuvar suggested.

“Father knows some mages. Maybe they can help.” Lucena took the hair from the handle and restored it to her locket. “How old is your daughter?”

“Impossibly old.”

Lucena gave him a strange look, then replaced the locket below her collar. “I can’t quite figure you out.” A smile touched her lips. “Although I’m curious to try. Are you married?”

“My wife is dead.”

Her brows drew down in sympathy. “I’m sorry. Was it recent?”

“It seems a very long time ago,” he admitted. Or perhaps the sting of her loss was less noticeable amongst so many others.

She offered a tentative smile. “I’m going to put this mirror in storage, and then what say you join me for a meal? You can tell me where you’re from and how my father knows you so well.”

Were he the young man he’d seemed, he would have been flattered that a clever, pretty woman wanted to know him better. To some extent he still was, but he would not mislead her any further as to his nature or intentions. Whether or not his true identity should be revealed to her or any other member of Carthalo’s staff was a decision best made in concert with Carthalo. For now, though, he had to simply, and a little regretfully, discourage her interest.

“I hope we can be friends,” he said. “But it’s been a long day. I think I’ll have a quick chat with your father, and then turn in.”

“Turn in?” She laughed at him. “The night is young! You sound like an old man!”

At that he could only smile.

***

Titus left Derva that night and was not seen again, a matter that might have looked more suspicious had he not so publicly embarrassed himself. I am inclined to suspect Carthalo’s involvement in his disappearance, for he would not have wanted an ongoing threat to his security, but on this matter he refused comment.

Carthalo contrived to speak with some of Titus’ household slaves before they were eventually passed along to the terrible man’s remote cousin, and from one ancient learned the history behind the mirror, including the confirmation of the viewing subject’s hair being required for use. Even with that information, however, the mirror’s magic proved elusive and it was decided that the old slave’s story about it only working for someone of Titus’ bloodline must be true. Carthalo later melted it down.

It took long months for her to feel confident doing so, but Cassandra eventually began to venture from Carthalo’s complex, journeying to the public baths and consulting with other artisans, and sometimes attending the hippodrome, although I gather she preferred watching the horses training rather than seeing them during actual races, which often involved injury and death.

More immediately, after that night, Hanuvar and Carthalo launched into action. With money and a list, the two began to plan the recovery of Volani slaves and reached out to former members of Carthalo’s extensive network of allies and informants.

The majority of the slave liberation was handled with little drama, although, as will become clear, challenging situations presented themselves from time to time, some so difficult that Carthalo or Hanuvar had to personally address them. The first of these instances involved a renowned Volani theoretician who’d been forced by the Dervans to develop weapons of war.

Carthalo’s informants learned where he and a Nuvaran sorcerer were being held inside Derva and arranged for an escape. Like all of Hanuvar’s plans, it was well-laid and well considered. This one, though, through the intervention of an unexpected party, failed completely.

—Sosilos, Book Eight


Footnotes


3) Once the Dervans had thrown out their kings, the Republic’s founders had decreed that armed hosts were not to be housed within the city limits, and that weapons were not to be carried upon city streets. While the decrees of the first emperor eroded elements of these laws, even in the time of Hanuvar, those walking the streets were not allowed to carry bladed weapons larger than utility knives. It was permitted to move privately owned weapons through the city, but only so long as they were not ready for use — bows were to be unstrung, spear blades wrapped, sheaths tied closed, and so forth.

Thugs and bodyguards took to carrying staves or canes, and some even equipped themselves with flattened cudgels like those employed by the city vigiles. The boldest criminals secreted large knives upon themselves, and faced stiff penalties whenever they were discovered. Some nationalities found the laws particularly irksome. The Ceori in particular believed it demeaning to wear no sword. Ceori visitors and citizens had caused so much turmoil each time they were challenged over knives only a little smaller than a Dervan gladius that vigiles and guardsmen relaxed the law’s enforcement upon them so long as their weapon stayed in its sheath, a tradition mockingly referred to as the Ceori peace accords.

Andronikos Sosilos


4) By calling himself Postumus, Hanuvar was identifying himself as a child born after the death of his father. While he was young again, or reborn, both to a man long thought dead and to a vanquished city, it strikes me as a dry and rather convoluted joke, and a dark one as well, but Antires preserved Carthalo’s reaction, so it must have taken place. I can only assume Carthalo possessed a somewhat morbid sense of humor and that Hanuvar, knowing him well, had anticipated how the name choice would strike him. Or it might be that Hanuvar himself was in a wry mood.

Silenus, Commentaries


5) Even under the emperors, the official censors remained somewhat independent and could act with a measure of impunity, especially in regards to policing the senatorial class. Charged from ancient days with the maintenance of public good, they were well-known for closing theatres and drinking establishments frequented by rowdy youths, but they also kept their eyes upon the conduct of the empire’s office holders. They tended to overlook bribery because the practice was so widespread, only decrying it when other charges, such as dereliction of duty, neglect of city infrastructure, or repeated instances of lewd public behavior could be leveled upon the accused. While to some the censors might have appeared in accord with the tightening restrictions over speech or atypical practices enforced by the revenants and the emperor’s secret police, the censors at least seemed to labor in general for the health of the society rather than for the empowerment of the elite.

Andronikos Sosilos


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