Seed of Rage Page 21

  His jaw worked exaggeratedly to splutter, “It’s so everyone knows Rascius made it.”

  “I see…” His name, then.

  He nodded to himself, wiping his hands on his leather apron. “Now ye ’till owe me one sigli.”

  Seriously? I was about to give him a piece of my mind, only to be interrupted by the familiar velvet of a masculine voice. “Only one? You’ve never made me pay less than six for a blade, old friend.”

  27

  Reflected in the mirror-like blade, Clearchos’s dark silhouette stood in the shop’s doorway. I jerked around and hastily sheathed the sword in my scabbard. He wasn’t alone—leaning against the side of a brick house across the street, Irius stood guard, still as a marble statue. Realization came on the heels of my initial surprise. Six sigli? In other words, Rascius had been giving me a price from the start, but I had been too stupid to see that. Because where I came from, five assari were enough to feed a family for a month, and no one had ever owned a sword. Shamed, I fished for three silver coins in my purse and dropped them on the counter. “That makes it six,” I said.

  Rascius’s chin folded over his upper lip as took the money, a grimace I recognized as a smile. “Pleasure doin’ business wit’ you.”

  I shrugged off my embarrassment. “Sure.”

  Clearchos exited the shop ahead of me, in a whiff of that strange perfume of his. Once we were in the street, he extended a gloved hand to my scabbard. “Can I take a look?”

  The street was deserted, silent save for Rascius’s indiscernible muttering inside the shop. The light was yet too dim for me to make out Clearchos’s features well, but I guessed at the lopsided smile, the false kindness void of anger—because it was all cruelty instead; now I understood that. I wondered if he already knew I no longer trusted him, if he could read it in the way my fingers quivered on the hilt, before I pulled out the Lorian sword and flipped it around for him to take.

  He held the blade vertically in front of him, admiring its slick length and sharp edges as I had. When he turned it a little, it reflected the rising sun, as if the steel were still white-hot. “Perfect. Light as a feather.” He handed me the sword. “Care to give me a demonstration?”

  I considered him warily behind the holes in my mask. Did he want me to flourish it, or… Clearchos bared his incisors to me in a predatory sneer. He wanted to spar. My eyes darted to Irius’s stony face, searching for answers in vain. Cold seeped through my chain mail and set in my gut. Clearchos hadn’t survived so long as a mercenary without solid fighting skills, and there was an intent behind his offer—and behind every word that made it past his lips. He could have sparred with me anytime during my months of training at the mine. Yet he hadn’t, and I was almost certain that his odd impulse had everything to do with Victrix’s confession. Maybe I was becoming too much trouble… and he had decided to get rid of me.

  I grazed the smooth pommel of my sword, like a good-luck charm, something to give me strength. “What’s in it for me?” I asked, my voice thankfully flat and controlled in contrast to the furious pulse in my neck.

  Clearchos’s brow creased, not unkindly. “Are you trying to bargain with me again?”

  “Depends. What do I get if I win?”

  Quiet laughter shook his frame and made the sleek fur of his cloak ripple like water. “I suppose you’ll find yourself in charge of an army, but I doubt you’ll make a good leader of men.”

  “So, you want a fight to the death?” I snapped, deliberately trying to make him lose the composure no one and nothing could make a dent in.

  He sobered, motioning to a narrow alley snaking down toward the lakeshore. I followed him, all too aware of Irius trailing behind us. If they struck right now, I’d be trapped. “Why would two brothers at arms kill each other?” Clearchos asked suavely.

  “You’re the one who wants to fight, so you tell me,” I countered.

  “What I really want is a sincere word with you, and we both know you’re never truer than with a sword in hand.”

  At least we were getting somewhere, I thought as grit and pebbles took over the last feet of uneven pavement under my feet. “Victrix came to you,” I stated coolly, drawing out my sword.

  Clearchos got in position along the shore, half-shrouded in morning mist—a fitting cloak, I realized. His own blade came out of a finely engraved black scabbard with a whisper of steel. “He’s nothing if not forthright, but you already know that,” he replied, flourishing once a long Spathian blade that reminded me of Ulpinus’s.

  Standing guard nearby, his hands folded over his studded leather apron, Irius looked as stolid as ever, a silent witness to our exchange. Did he know too? He was, after all, Clearchos’s closest confident with Victrix—and Gemina.

  “Why did you keep me in the dark?” I asked, digging my heels into the sand to find the perfect balance. Clearchos’s guard was low—not to say he was sloppy, probably the opposite, in fact. Everything in his posture spoke of contained strength, of a lazy assurance honed by decades of slaughter. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

  Rather than answering, he dashed to me, much faster than I expected for a man his age, and a powerful upward blow nearly struck my sword from my hands, immediately followed by a swipe that grazed my chain mail as I dodged. I danced around him, sidestepping his attacks without finding any opening in his guard. He wasn’t as agile as I’d first feared, but my newly-forged blade kept clashing against his in vain—as if he already knew my next move before even I did.

  “See?” Clearchos hissed, raining blows on me, some I narrowly met thanks to the reverse grip moves Irius had taught me. “This is why I let you lie to me. You wouldn’t have trained half as hard if it weren’t for that.” His blade swooped down, crashing against mine so hard I thought both would shatter. “I freed you!”

  The vibration of steel against steel reverberated up my wrists and arms, making muscles and tendons sing in pain. I staggered back, panting fast under the furnace of iron encasing my face, and tightened my hold on the hilt of my sword.

  It was true. Even in my rage, even as I yearned to tear him apart, I could see he was right. He had made me Silverlegs, not that damn mask or Victrix’s cursed greaves. I could never have tasted that kind of freedom as a girl; I would have been spurned, hated, or desired, but in any case, never an equal to Victrix, Hastius, or Vatluna.

  I spoke to myself more than him, my voice hoarse and brittle. “But I can never be like the others.”

  He advanced again, easily blocking my halfhearted slash. “Then be a step above.”

  The best can have anything their hearts desire. Regardless of who or what they were underneath the lorica. As I whirled to his side and at last, managed to slice off one of the strips of black studded leather protecting his thighs, I glimpsed more clearly, for the first time, the essence of the power Clearchos held over us all. This tight balance of the gifts he gave us and the flesh he clawed from our bones, of kindness and ferocity. Like Gemina, whom he covered with extravagant jewelry before ripping her apart in the privacy of his chambers; Victrix, who would one day fall in battle in exchange for gold and glory; I wasn’t just Clearchos’s victim.

  We were bound by a pact, and the price for the freedom he had given me was the blood on my sword, the red haze shrouding my mind at night, the howls of the men I had killed and the Nyseites whose lives I had torn apart. I saw it all now, the pact, the price, Clearchos’s blade ripping against mine, drawing sparks in the mist. I grew reckless and danced closer, pleasure and anger prickling together down my spine, as if sweat were sizzling across my back.

  His face was a hairbreadth from mine, streaked with wayward strands of black hair sticking to his ravaged skin. His eyes were the same silvery pools Victrix had inherited. And when his pupils shrank, at last I glimpsed the anger he hid so well, there, lurking at the bottom of these dark wells. I thought I could win, kill him even, but I never saw his elbow crashing into my ribs like a mace. I careened back,
struggling to breathe through the flare of pain, and it was over.

  I blinked, and his blade was against my neck, a cool thread of steel pressed to the pulse there. Too shocked to even be scared, I took an exhausted breath that made it even easier for the edge to nick my skin. It stung a little, but I didn’t mind the pain. I didn’t let go of my sword, but my arm dropped limply at my side, allowing the tip of the blade to rest on a colorless bed of gravel. I waited for his decision, a spectator to my own defeat.

  The good half of Clearchos’s face twisted into a crooked smile as he drew the blade away. “Never lie to me again. There’s no need to.”

  The tension in my limbs ebbed, leaving tremors and shivers in its wake. “What if someone else learns about it? Will you kill me then?”

  He waved my concern off as if the very notion was ludicrous. “People talk, rumors slither around. But there’s no need to be ashamed. Cases like yours aren’t that uncommon. Hundreds of your kind roam the imperial palace in Cispirina. They’re Manicus’s favorite aides.”

  My eyes flitted back and forth between him and Irius in mild panic. It was one thing to hear out loud that Irius knew my secret, but the whole camp? And had Clearchos just said that women dressed as men in Cispirina and no one cared? Maybe I needed to head there.

  As if the crust of marble encasing him had cracked, Irius moved for the first time since we had reached the lakeshore. He strode to me and clasped a hand on my shoulder. “You are no less of a man,” he said, with an earnest squeeze.

  Am I? It all sounded much too good to be true—and despite his kind words, the bizarre smile clinging to Clearchos’s burns boded nothing good. I sheathed my sword hesitantly. “I’m… um, I’m not sure I understand—”

  Irius raised two fingers, silencing my question. A single crease appeared between his eyebrows as he looked around at the deserted shores and the dying glow of the patches of crusamantes in the woods. I went still. A gust of wind wrinkled the lake’s oily surface and carried the sound of galloping horses. They were headed our way, on a forest trail that ran along the shore. Irius drew his sword in the same instant the shadows of five horsemen dashed by, headed straight to Nyos.

  “Let’s go greet our visitors,” Clearchos ordered, all trace of humor gone from his voice.

  I bolted past him and Irius. “I’ll go ahead.”

  In truth, I wasn’t about to pass on this perfect opportunity to outrun my doubts alone in the woods. All thoughts and questions washed away to the back of my mind as I abandoned myself to the pleasant ache in my legs and the exhilaration of the hunt. I gained speed on the trail toward the village and glimpsed the horsemen rushing among reddening sigillarias. Two of them cut to our camp, while the rest of them seemed headed for the Magnatura. Indigo saddle pads draped the flanks of their mounts—Western equites, then. Messengers?

  I slowed once I was back in the camp, striding among clusters of closed tents. Ragged groans here and there announced that the men would rise soon—most of them with a pounding headache. All that was left of the night’s bonfire was a pile of dew-dampened coals and blackened logs, but the tang of smoke lingered in the icy morning air, overpowering those of cheap wine and vomit.

  I slipped past the whore cart and glimpsed the jet coat of a pair of warhorses standing at Clearchos’s tent. “Hey!” I called the pair of equites as they dismounted. “What’s going on?”

  The older of the two equites, a ruddy man with graying temples, glowered back and forth between me and the two sleepy mercenaries guarding the tent, in an obvious effort to figure out the line of command among our scruffy bunch. “We come carrying a message for Clearchos the Eurian.”

  I made a mental note that it was the first time I heard him called that—and the moniker suggested Clearchos, like Spurius hailed from the southeast. “He’s”—I motioned to the entrance of the camp, where Clearchos and Irius had appeared, who were now striding toward us— “right on my heels.”

  The bells started tolling then, in powerful and ominous waves coming from Nyos, louder and louder, enough for the tents to flap open and the men to peek out with sleep-swollen eyes. Victrix was among them, his own tent facing Clearchos’s. I barely gave him time to stand up. “What’s happening?” I urged him. “Are we under attack?”

  By then, Clearchos and Irius had joined us, and the three of them shot me looks that ranged from utter condescension to mild annoyance. Victrix rubbed his whiskers and groaned. “Listen to the damn bells. It’s the Lament. He’s dead.”

  I turned to Clearchos as the dismal notes rolled down the hill to drift to our ears. “Who?”

  The older eques who had come looking for Clearchos invited himself into our conversation, narrowing outraged eyes at me. “Our revered lord Manicus.”

  Manicus? The emperor… Our emperor was dead. Probably long before ever learning that Nyos had fallen, since Cispirina stood days, if not weeks away from the Lacustra. Clearchos came out of his tent, his fur cloak rustling behind him. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” he drawled, the soft amusement in his tone a sharp contrast with the equites’ solemn expressions.

  Victrix crossed his arms over his tunic, gazing somberly at the bruised fortifications of Nyos crowning the hill. “Well, I guess Bassianus the Overseer is our new beginning. Should I get Aus’s hand tattooed on my ass?” He sighed, ignoring the scandalized glare of the two equites standing at his side.

  Clearchos indulged in a rare chuckle. “Perhaps.”

  Why would the Overseer succeed Manicus? He wasn’t even from the imperial bloodline. “But Manicus has a son, right?” I asked.

  “Our revered lord Nisephorus,” the old eques snapped back. “He is our new emperor,” he reminded Clearchos with a pointed look.

  “Absolutely,” Clearchos concurred in a silky voice. “Our eight-year-old emperor.”

  •♦•

  I can’t remember where I first heard that men are only ever equal in death. Farmer, warrior, emperor… All destined to rot—and most to be forgotten. Manicus, with his gold, his legions, and Aus to guide his steps, was ultimately no exception: he died at forty-seven, of an abscess of the brain not even Meditrinal water could have cured—had it been allowed in the imperial palace—and without seeing the fall of the city he had relentlessly tried to conquer for almost a decade.

  28

  After the Western messengers had disappeared inside Clearchos’s tent—presumably to deliver less official news—I all but jumped on Victrix. “I need to speak to you.”

  “My tent?” he offered, walking away without waiting for my answer.

  I watched him crouch to slip past the hive flaps, but my own feet remained stuck in the mud. I felt his mouth again, brushing my cheek when I’d avoided his kiss. Maybe he didn’t really mean it? It’d be like him to try to unsettle me, only to better strike right afterward—and struck he had, sent my entire new life swinging upside down with just a few words… I shook the thought off and took a calming breath before I slipped in after him.

  Sitting on my haunches with my satchel beside me, I took a leery look around Victrix’s palace. His was unquestionably the dirtiest mat I had ever seen in my life. The only thing that was clean in here was his armor, minutely polished after the battle—a stark contrast to the ball of rags I identified as a pair of dirty trousers and socks. Oh, that smell was definitely socks. I pointed at the tiny and grimy half-moons gathered into an oddly neat pile on the tent floor. “You collect your nail trimmings?”

  He swept them out of the tent with his palm. “None of your business.” Done with cleaning, it seemed, Victrix worked on fastening the leather laces of his braided cuirass. “What do you want anyway?”

  I fidgeted a bit, careful to stay at a safe distance from him. “Clearchos came to me, to discuss… what you told me last night.”

  His fingers slowed down in the work as he gauged me with the same kind of quiet intensity I had discovered in his eyes the night before. “Are y
ou gonna wear that mask all the time?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, if I can. I like it,” I admitted, shifting to sit cross-legged. “I like that no one can see my face, but Clearchos said no one will care I’m a girl, that there’re many girls like me serving in the imperial palace. They dress like men, and they were Manicus’s favorite aides.”

  As he gave a final tug at the laces, Victrix’s hands froze. I puzzled in silence over his expression, the way he wouldn’t stop blinking at me. His lips twitched, quivered, before he burst out in brief laughter, like an explosion inside him that he contained by running a hand over his face. “Are you sure you got that right?”

  I sat a little straighter, pricked—and worried, too, remembering Clearchos’s unexpected grin. “Irius was there, too, and he said I was as good as any man,” I retorted tartly. Well, he had said I was no less of a man, but that amounted to the same.

  Victrix plopped himself on his ratty wool covers. “Just as I thought. You didn’t get it at all, birdshit.” The hair at the back of my neck bristled at the insult, but I breathed out my irritation and let him go on. “They’re not girls at the palace. They’re spadones. That’s what Clearchos told Irius… that you’re actually a spado,” he concluded, with an eloquent pat on the leather apron covering his crotch.

  I remained briefly speechless as the magnitude of the offense set in. “Clearchos told him I’m a… eunuch?”

  Victrix chuckled. “He’s such a clever asshole.”

  I had to make a conscious effort to unfurl my fingers and place them flat on my knees or else I’d have to punch someone soon—possibly Victrix. “No one will respect me if they hear that!” I hissed. “What the hell—”

  “Irius still respects you,” Victrix countered, tender mockery warming his gaze. “He was pretty impressed. He told me he never knew a spado could fight like a real man.”