Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (87 page)

Aulan found himself attempting to disengage himself from an effusive and somewhat wine-soaked Crescentian who appeared to have mistaken him for Sextus Valerius or one of the other betrothed young men, as the senator kept praising his nonexistent bride-to-be.

His father turned to say something to him, then suddenly cried out and clutched at his lower back. He stumbled forward into him and nearly knocked him over.

Aulan caught Patronus and prevented him from falling, though not without difficulty, as Pomponia was still holding onto his left arm. As he momentarily lost his balance, she instinctively tightened her grip on it.

“Father, what is it? Are you unwell?” For a moment, Aulan feared his father was having a stroke or perhaps some sort of fit.

But Patronus hissed from between gritted teeth and cursed under his breath.

“My back.” He groaned. “In my back. I think I’ve been stabbed!”

A few of those in the immediate vicinity were just beginning to realize something was wrong and turn toward them. Ferratus was the first to react, and he pushed two senators as well as the consul out of the way as he leaped toward Patronus and caught him about the shoulders. Severus Serenus was also quick to respond, grabbing one of Patronus’s arms and helping Aulan keep him upright.

“Who was it, Father? Did you see?” Aulan was frantically scanning the crowd, but more and more people were turning toward them, and he didn’t see anyone running away. “Did you see who attacked you?”

“I didn’t see anything,” his father gasped, wincing as if in pain. “Ferratus, see if there is anything there, will you? In my back! Ah, it burns like fire! I was talking with Flamininus, and then Metius, and then I felt this terrible pain….”

His suddenly legs gave out.

Aulan was able to hold up his dead weight only with the help of Serenus, who wrapped both his arms around his uncle’s chest and held him upright, supported by his armpits.

Regulus suddenly appeared in front of Aulan with a look of mixed irritation and concern on his face.

“Father, what’s this I hear about you fainting? Dammit, Aulan, what happened? What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t see who it was,” his father kept repeating. “I didn’t see anyone. Put me down, damn you all. Put me down, and someone get that bloody dagger out of my back!”

Between them, Aulan, Serenus, and Ferratus managed to lay Patronus down carefully upon the hard stone of the Comitium. Pomponia, Titus Severus, Valerius Magnus, and Falconius Metius forcibly cleared out some space for him. Any instinctive objections to the actions of the latter two were swiftly rendered mute by the victim’s realization that the the large older man shoving him without warning or apology was a head of a House Martial.

“Daddy!” he heard Severa screaming. She wasn’t the only one, but it was the only voice he recognized.

“Get her out of here, Valerius!” Aulan snapped without looking up. “Regulus, find some guards, or at least some clients, and keep Severa safe. And someone find a medicus, right now!”

“I found the knife, shall I withdraw it?” Ferratus asked him.

There didn’t seem to be much blood, Aulan was thinking as he flipped the thick wool cloak his father was wearing out of the way. That was good, anyhow. He could see the dagger now, buried almost to the hilt at an upward angle. It looked as if it might have punctured his father’s right kidney. But when he caught a glimpse of the hand that had moved the cloak in the firelight, he saw it was covered with a dark substance that it took him a moment to recognize was blood. Because the Severan cloaks were scarlet, he hadn’t seen how much the wound was bleeding, and to his horror he realized the cloak was already soaked through with his father’s blood.

He and Ferratus looked at each other.

“Better leave it in there,” Aulan said finally as he shrugged off his own cloak and pressed it into place it around the jutting knife handle. “There’s a tavern near the other end of the plaza. Let’s carry him there.”

“You’re going to be all right, Papa,” Regulus assured their father as he bent down to grasp his right leg. Aulan couldn’t see Severa, however, so at least Sextus had listened to him.

“Of course I’m going to be all right!” Patronus spat, sounding more annoyed than injured. “He only got me once, dammit. I’ve seen men stabbed twenty times and survive. But my God, it bloody burns!”

Eager hands reached down to help, so many that Patronus seemed almost weightless when Aulan counted to three and they raised him. But they hadn’t gone more than three or four steps when he suddenly began convulsing, and, with a dreadful, subhuman sound, vomited blood all over the legs and feet of Aulan, Ferratus, and the others in the lead. Startled, one or two of those carrying him released him and jumped back, forcing the others to stop as they fought to avoid dropping the stricken man.

“Put him down!” Aulan shouted. “Put him down gently.” He reached out and turned his father’s face toward him and was aghast at what he saw. His face was drawn in a rictus of pain. Blood covered his chin, and the eyes that had been so keen and conscious only moments ago were vacant and unseeing. Aulan sat back on his heels in despair.

“What is it? What’s wrong? What’s happening to him?” his brother shouted, sounding terrified.

“Poison,” Ferratus said, standing over them with his arms folded as a violent spasm caused Patronus to curl into a fetal ball and vomit more blood onto the cold stone. “The bastards put poison on the blade.”

“But what are you doing?” Regulus protested. “Pick him up again. We can’t let him die!”

Aulan started to put his hand on his brother’s shoulder, then he stopped himself. There was no need to ruin a third cloak tonight. “We don’t have any choice, Regul. There’s nothing anyone can do. I doubt even God could save him now.”

A third spasm brought up another spray of blood, but it was smaller and less violent this time.

“Dammit, Patronus.” Aulan looked up and saw Falconius Metius standing over him, in between Valerius Magnus and Laelius Flamininus. All three men were staring at his dying father. “I swear to you on the honor of my House and yours,” Falconius said, “whoever did this will pay with their lives and the lives of their children!”

Aulan wished he could summon up a similar sense of rage, but instead he felt nothing except exhaustion. He wanted only to stand up, walk home, go to sleep, and wake up tomorrow to learn that this was nothing but a bad dream. But he couldn’t find the energy to even rise to his feet. So he simply sat there, holding his father’s left hand, feeling it alternately tighten and release as the poison wreaked its deadly havoc on his insides.

He might have sat there for hours, except a sudden commotion all around him drew him from his impromptu deathwatch. Even Regulus and Ferratus stood up and turned to look at something in the direction of the rostra. He ignored it until he heard a vaguely familiar voice calling his father’s name.

“Let the histories proclaim, thus passed Aulus Severus Patronus, the Princeps who thought to make himself king!”

Releasing his father’s hand, Aulan rose to his feet and saw Cassianus Longinus standing astride the platform, flanked by no fewer than thirty of his household guard, each aiming a loaded crossbow at the crowd below them.

“What have you done, Gaius Cassianus?” Flamininus shouted in anguish. “You have killed Aulus Severus!”

“Murderer!” he heard a woman shriek.

“Indeed I have!” Longinus thundered back, holding his right hand aloft for all to see. His palm was stained with Patronus’s blood. “I do not deny it! But I deny the crime. This was no murder—it was an execution for the highest of high treasons!”

“And these,” Falconius Metius said calmly, gesturing toward the crossbow-bearing slaves. “What is their purpose? Are they executioners too? Who else do you deem guilty here?”

“Merely a precaution, friend Metius. Have no fear, they are here only to ensure that I live long enough to be tried by the Senate.”

“Do you really think we’ll believe you’re not going to run to Arretium, to hide behind your legion wintering there?” Magnus shouted, shaking his fist at the killer.

Longinus smiled and shook his head as if in pity at his former ally. “Are you so blind, Marcus Valerius, that you think I would hide from justice? I welcome it, and when the trumpeter comes to my home to summon me to the Senate and the trial that awaits me, you may be certain I shall be there! Your new ally betrayed you, Magnus. He betrayed all of you, as he betrayed Amorr herself. And I will prove this to the full satisfaction of the Senate and People!”

The crowd was mostly stunned into silence, less subdued by the thirty deadly bolts aimed at their faces than by the accusations and the unshaken confidence of the assassin. Longinus turned away and headed for the stairs at the rear of the rostra, still shielded by his armed slaves.

As he did so, Metius stepped forward and pointed his finger at the killer.

“It is you who are the betrayer, Cassianus Longinus! It is you who have shattered City and the Empire alike and hurled us all into great danger! Do you not understand that Aulus Severus was the one man standing between us and the rebellion of the allies?”

Longinus seemed to hesitate a moment, then he disappeared into the night with his guards following him two-by-two.

“Avenge my father!” shouted Regulus as soon as the last armed slave had exited the platform. “Let them pay for his blood with their own! After them!”

“Stand where you are!” roared Magnus, who had swiftly moved toward the nearer of the two steps and mounted it halfway to block the easiest way to the platform.

The surging crowd stopped, instinctively obeying the authority in the deep voice of the four-time ex-consul.

“In the name of the Senate, the People, and the princeps senatus,” Magnus said, “I order you to let them go in peace! There will be no more bloodshed this night. Go to your homes. Go to a tavern and drink to the memory of the most noble Severus Patronus. But do not seek vengeance now. In the morning, the consul provincae will call for the assembly of the Senate. And in the afternoon I swear to you that Metius, the consul, and I will go to the house of Cassianus Longinus. The consul’s fascitors will arrest him if he does not respond to the summons as he has promised.”

“Is Patronus truly dead?” someone from the middle of the crowd shouted.

Metius glanced at Aulan, who kneeled down again and placed his hand on his father’s back. He could not feel a heartbeat, and he saw that his father’s face was still, though still contorted with pain. He stood and nodded grimly.

The Falconian pushed his way forward and mounted the rostra’s other steps with the anxious crowd’s eyes upon him.

“Severus Patronus is dead,” he told them.

The news was greeted with cries of anger and groans of dismay.

“What if Longinus isn’t there when you come for him?” demanded Regulus angrily.

“Severus Regulus,” Metius said, “if Longinus is not true to his word and does not submit himself to the verdict of the Senate, no power on this earth will save him. House Cassianus has but two legions, one retired. House Falconius has four, Valerius three. Your own House has two. If Longinus wants war, then by the Sanctiff and the Immaculate Heart of the City, I swear to you that we will give him war!”

SEVERA

The day after the funeral, Patronus’s oldest children gathered in the Quinctiline gardens behind the house. Thousands had come to honor the murdered prince of the Senate, but thousands more stayed home, or worse, walked about the Forum arm-in-arm and took turns reviling him and his supposed treachery. All three consuls and many foreign dignitaries were gracious enough to appear despite the controversy, but most of the patrician clausores and even a few dedicated auctares did not, so deep were feelings running throughout the Senate and the City alike concerning the shocking revelation of Severus Patronus’s intended expansion of his clientele.

Some said Patronus intended to make himself king. Others asserted he was doing no more than breaking the half-barbarian princes of the provinces to civilized rule, a venator careful to maintain his whip hand over the wolves in his charge.

But to Severa, all that mattered was that it appeared increasingly clear that Cassianus Longinus would be facing a sympathetic audience in his trial before the Senate. If so, not even the fact that the prosecution was being brought by Pompilius Ferratus could guarantee that the Cassian would pay for her father’s murder, given the widespread belief that his actions were justified by the threat to the city supposedly posed by her father.

Had he survived the assassination attempt, Severa thought bitterly, Father would have known how to turn the rumors around so that they would work in his favor. He would answer them in such a way that they would strengthen his position rather than weaken it. But there was nothing he could do to counteract the whispers, as venomous as the evil substance on the blade that killed him, now that Patronus was lying dead in his sarcophagus.

It was hard for her to know what emotion most powerfully filled her, her rage or her grief. Her mother grieved as befit a patrician widow, in noble silence, though her haunted eyes and increasingly drawn face betrayed her reluctance to eat more than the occasional morsel of food since her husband’s death. Severilla didn’t seem to truly understand that their father was gone forever. She still babbled nonsensically and never-endingly about her cats, but she did so in a subdued and intense way that told Severa her sister’s innocence too had been slain by the poisoned blade wielded by the old clausore.