Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (78 page)

“I don’t see why he doesn’t simply set a few slaves to the chores and have done with it,” Posticus said with a disdainful air. “Corvinus, you wretched man, only agree to run, and I’ll send a score of slaves to your estate, each with more muscles than a gladiator, to milk your pigs and slaughter your grapes.”

“Very well, in that case, I’ll consider it,” Corvinus promised, only half-insincerely, being genuinely touched by their faith in him.

His friends broke into a rousing cheer.

But he stopped them by raising a hand in warning. “I’m not promising anything, you understand. I’ll need to talk to my wife, and I imagine it would be wise to take the opinion of the Consul Suffectus into account, as well.”

“Of course, of course,” assured Opimius, but he was grinning as if he’d backed the winning gladiator in an all-comers bout. “Just let us know by the end of the week.”

“To Servius Valerius, the next Curule Aedile!” called Ponticus.

“Corvinus, Curule Aedile!” the others cried.

Corvinus rolled his eyes, but he had to grin at his friends’ enthusiasm. They were truly the best of men, and it would be a pity to disappoint them. Had he not once shared their dreams of making the world a better place? And, he thought, it was even possible that a change wouldn’t be the worst thing for him now. Julia would certainly enjoy moving back to the city for a while, and his mother would love to have the two grandchildren living where it wouldn’t take her several weeks to visit them.

“No, to you, my friends,” he raised his goblet to them. “I declare that no man has ever been more fortunate in his companions than me.”

Two bells and several goblets of wine later, Corvinus was wrapped in his cloak and making his unsteady way through the winding bricked streets in the general direction of his father’s domus. He was not alone. Ponticus had invited him to stay the night, as a severely intoxicated Opimius was already snoring on one of the couches, but when Corvinus had refused, Ponticus had insisted that he accept an escort of two armed slaves bearing torches. The cold winter air had somewhat shocked him back to his senses, and by the time he’d crossed the second street away from Ponticus’s residence he had firmly decided to refuse the aedileship and return to Vallyria.

Caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t initially hear the men standing on the corner he was passing call out to him. Only when the slaves preceeding him suddenly stopped and he nearly walked into them did he realize anything might be amiss.

“Keep your hands off them hilts, boys,” a thickset bearded man holding a thick wooden staff warned the two slaves.

Corvinus felt a jolt of fear run through his body as he counted six, no seven, men stepping out of the shadows to confront them. He’d heard that the city had become increasingly chaotic of late. Even during daylight in some of the poorer quarters. But the thought that the crime and unrest might have reached this close to his family’s neighborhood had never occurred to him.

“Pardon me, gentlemen, but I would ask you to step aside. I’m but a simple farmer. I have no purse or anything of value to give you.”

“Don’t sell yourself so short, Valerius Corvinus,” he heard an educated voice behind him say. For a moment, he felt relief, thinking it might be one of his friends. But when he turned around, he saw a tall young man with deepset eyes and a bony face that, in the dancing torchlight, made him look rather like a dark angel. A Severan, unless he missed his guess. And he too was holding a staff, although his was more of a walking stick, painted black with iron bands on either end. “Value is entirely subjective.”

“Who are you, sir?” Corvinus asked him, a little nervously. “And why do you know my name?”

“I know a Valerian when I see one.” The young man grinned humorlessly. “I’m afraid you had the misfortune to be born into the wrong House. But for what it’s worth, I do apologize.”

“For what?”

The Severan, if he indeed was a Severan, grimaced. “For this.”

Pain exploded under Corvinus’s chin as the lower end of the black stick flicked up and snapped his head back. He could taste blood in his mouth and felt the rough brick surface of the nearby building smash against his back.

Corvinus tried to spin away from his attacker, but a second blow from the stick in his stomach doubled him over. He could hear the sounds of the two slaves struggling nearby, but it seemed they were as helpless to defend themselves as he was.

“No, please!” he cried out, barely managing to hold up one of his hands in desperate supplication. It was a futile gesture, as a third strike, this one to the left side of his head, dropped him to his knees. A moment later, the fourth one sent him into the merciful darkness.

SEVERA

He was handsome, Severa had to admit as she watched her prospective husband walk down the stone steps and into the garden. Sextus Valerius carried himself with confidence as he approached her, and he didn’t so much as glance at the armed guards who stood on either side of the staircase. His tunic was the maroon and light grey of his House, over which he wore a light blue cloak with a gold clasp in the shape of the crossed swords that indicated his was one of the Houses Martial. The cloak was perhaps a little much, especially given the easily recognizable colors, but the light blue went beautifully well with them, and the overall effect was both striking and effortlessly aristocratic. The only question was whether the deft touch was his own or someone else’s?

She wished she had thought to wear Severan colors instead of the dark red gown her mother had selected for her the night before. It suited her well, but not half so well as his sartorial statement suited him. She felt at an unexpected disadvantage.

“My lady,” he bowed gracefully once he had come within a few steps of her. His eyes were a very light brown, she saw as they met her own.

“Valerian,” she replied, a little coldly.

“Ah,” he said, raising his head, and a faint smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. It was, she noted with some annoyance, a rather charming smile. “Am I correct in understanding that I need not recite the various homages to your charms I had prepared?”

“As it suits you. You need not state the obvious. I am young, beautiful, and the daughter of the first man in the City. Otherwise you would not be here.”

“Are you so certain, my lady?” he asked with a rueful snort. “Given the last, I suspect my father would have sought you for my bride even if you were old, ugly, and repellent. How fortunate for me that is not the case. We need not be at daggers simply because our Houses have long been enemies.”

“Rivals, not enemies,” she corrected him, just as her father had corrected her. “I concur, but there is a great distance between sheathed daggers and a marital alliance.”

“A marital alliance? Say rather, a marriage, my lady. Houses and nations ally. Men and women marry.”

She examined his face closely. His features were good and his bones were strong, but she could see the weakness of character beneath them. He was more horse than lion, wolf, or bear, with a slight skittishness that belied his apparent self-possession. He had the broad shoulders and slender waist of an athlete, but he had neither the rounded muscles of the gladiators nor the lean, wiry power of Aulan and other men of the legions she knew. His was the athleticism of the baths, not the battlefield. It gave him the soft appearance of a boyish innocence she had not expected from a son of the most warlike of the Houses Martial.

“You are not what I expected,” she told him, a little more honestly than she’d intended.

“Are you sure you don’t want to hear my homages?” Sextus smiled more openly now. “My father has some excellent poets who wrote some truly compelling verse. I swear, I very nearly fell in love with old Lucipor when he was reciting me my lines.” He punctuated the self-deprecating remark by raising his eyebrows.

And suddenly she felt he had given her the key she required to understand him. He was the youngest son of a great man whose approval he could never hope to gain. That was why he had not embarked upon the cursus honorum and why he was so willing to portray himself as a clown. For all his seeming confidence and relaxed demeanor, he was an empty vessel of self-doubt. Most likely, he had figured out early in his youth that the only way he could avoid losing was to refuse to play the game. He was quick to diminish himself—so that his father, or perhaps his older brothers, could not do it for him. It was a habit she had long observed in Tertius, who, despite his keen intelligence, was never able to live up to the example set by their father or even the lesser examples of their dashing brothers.

And, it was something to which she could relate. No daughter, however ambitious, could hope to sit in her father’s chair.

She nodded slowly, taking in his good looks and the tall, powerful frame he would impart to their children. His mind was not a dull one either, not with his easy wit and the vaguely mischievous sparkle in his eyes. He was something with which she could work, someone with whom she could work, that much was clear. His potential was unlimited, raw and ignored though it might be.

But would the clay be amenable to the potter’s shaping? Did he harbor any ambitions of his own, or had they been crushed out of him under the considerable weight of his House and family?

“You are a gambler,” she stated. It was not a question.

“Aren’t we all? If I have heard correctly, even my lady has been occasionally known to place a wager or two at the games.”

She caught her breath, taken aback by his unexpectedly cutting retort. How much did he know? Was his reference to her wagers the innocent and obvious response of one who had seen her at the games, or was it or an oblique reference to her near-affair with Clusius? Could it even be that he was somehow connected to those behind the machinations against House Severus?

No, she realized as she looked closely at him. He was here to win her, not to prosecute her, and there was no expression of satisfaction on his face, instead, he looked almost comically wounded, as if a trusted hound had nipped him in the backside without warning. He was not counter-attacking—he was only lashing out in self-defense.

“I fear you mistake me, Valerian. I have no objection to a sporting wager. I find it adds somewhat to the spice of the event, don’t you? What interests me is the extent of your gambling habits. Does it only extend so far as the plebian games of bones and stones, or do you wish to play for nobler stakes? I am the daughter of the princeps senatus, the grand-daughter of consuls, and the great-grandaughter of consuls. I have no regard for men, however noble their birth, however grand their House, who content themselves with children’s games and end up as bankrupt clients dependent upon the largesse of their kin.”

The Valerian folded his arms and frowned at her. But for the first time since he’d entered the garden, he was truly paying attention to her now, not to her face or her body, but to the woman inside.

“I may play what you call children’s games, my lady. But I would not say I am content with them. Still, what would you have me say? Shall I tread the path of my fathers on the cursus honorum? Shall I join the legions, only to butcher men who have done nothing to me and want only to live their lives without Amorr’s heel on their necks? One of my brothers died a tribune this summer, and for what? To teach a few wretched goblins not to harass a few miserable farmers? You have two brothers in the legions, my lady. Would you sacrifice them for such a gallant cause? Would you sacrifice your husband for it?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I would not. But, my lord, I think you mistake the path for the destination.”

“Do I?” Sextus asked. She could hear barely concealed pain in his voice. “Let us say I declared this fall and won election as tribunus militum, though I am well past my year. No doubt my father can arrange it. And then, I take my oath, and I join one of the House legions. My brother lived for the glory of battle and the honor of the legions, and my duty-mad uncle had his head for it. How long would someone like me survive? A week? A month? I’m no coward, Lady Severus, but neither am I a fool. I would risk the swords of the provincials, the clubs of the orcs, and the axes of the dwarves without flinching, but I have no desire to find myself under the executioner’s axe of my own officers, of my own relations!”