Loreticus: A Spy Thriller and Historical Intrigue Based On Events From Ancient Rome (Lost Emperor Trilogy Book 1)

by J. B. Lucas

  “I don’t understand,” Loreticus said, this time turning to her to better understand her implication. “Are there things that I don’t already know about?”

  “Loreticus,” she laughed, “how manly of you to presume you knew even the half of what I talk about at court with my friends.”

  He smiled, admonished. Of all his sins pride was the greatest.

  “It seems that they have won though. The generals are in command,” he said. “Your protectors hold the reins.”

  “No. Until Marcan is dead, I have my stay of execution. Once his body is delivered, my story will be closed in only one possible manner.”

  Years of hard conversations had not prepared Loreticus for this interaction. He was far too involved in her case, with her fate. He had nominally dismissed his focus due to the importance of this intrigue–a fight for the throne itself–but with very little reflection, he knew that it was because of his attraction to this woman. Again, he glanced at her. She was looking away from him, her golden hair reddening in the sun, the corner of her jaw running in a perfect line to her unseen chin. The neck that wore naked muscle and a pulse through the metallic bronze skin. He could feel the heat coming off her shoulders, and for some reason he felt this warmth in his lips from afar. Eyes closed, he turned his head to his lap and made to stand.

  She heard him, moving elegantly to meet him. As she rose, her dress fell forward to offer the briefest glimpse of a perfect tanned breast. It happened so quickly that he did not look away, nor realise the event until after she was standing. She had not noticed, but a look on her face signalled that something had happened to his own expression.

  “What?” she asked softly, startled.

  “Nothing,” he said with guilt in his chest.

  “You know, Loreticus, next time you visit you’re actually going to have to tell me why you come. You don’t believe that I know where he is. You don’t think he’ll come to rescue me. And you don’t think that I’ll reveal any great secret about Iskandar and his wooden-headed chums.”

  Loreticus folded his arms and stared at the floor for a few breaths.

  “Maybe I shall be able to explain next time,” he said slowly.

  As he walked down, out of the house, away from her and the setting sun, away from the dry fountain and the dusty plants, he looked for the funeral urn. It stood where the salt had on his last visit, in a prime place in the middle of the foyer, proudly displaying its pearled swallow insignia. He stared as he passed it, connecting it silently with what he had just seen.

  Much as he held the memory of that stolen intimacy, it was confused by the black necklace of bereavement which draped hidden underneath the dress. Who had she lost? Loreticus felt ice run in his veins as he considered the possibility that Dess knew that the true emperor was dead.

  Chapter 24

  Ten of them left before dusk, out of the gate on the road to the new borders at the base of the mountains. The structure was massive, imposing and built to inspire the thousands of soldiers who marched towards the boiling horizon. The gate stood as a tangible threat to those fanatics squirming in their pits and their prayers the other side of the mountains. Its great, bleak majesty held firm against the evening sun, its unusual grey brick squared and sharp with perfect shadows.

  After the gate came a long, artificially smoothed slope which evolved the corda as it stretched like an arrow shaft in the direction of the borders. The horses slowed their gait on the gradient, and they were forced to weave continuously by the crowds returning to the city for nightfall. The party eventually broke free from the numbers as the ground flattened, and the horses snorted in relief. Turning back, Marcan saw that the gate was dwarfed by the overall structure, a massive grey line challenging the mountains themselves. Millions upon millions of bricks blocked the view of the city, crowned by regular torches and silhouettes.

  “You built that façade,” commented Selban, bouncing and jerking slightly in his saddle. Marcan continued to stare at it, twisting in his saddle until he felt his mount complain. The darkness had snuck in without him noticing, and when he turned back from the glow of the city he was momentarily blinded in the plum darkness.

  “Interested in where we’re going?” asked Selban, prompting a conversation. Marcan had tired of the man quickly over the last day, and decided that it would be a long journey if he was polite.

  “No,” he said.

  He watched the ripe, coloured clouds as they strained against the mountains’ summits. The peaks had torn some cottony underbellies, and now the clouds shed immense diagonal slants of rain.

  These were divine threats to a man of the empire, and Marcan felt a knot of anxiety growing inside him. His birthplace, the kingdom, rarely saw heavy rainfall and sat in a dry plateau, harvest-fed by the damper farm lands days away from the capital. No civilian ventured out here to the new borders, and any legions sent here came back complaining of the constant cold, winds, rains and rocky grounds. Maybe this wasn’t the edge of the known world, but it was certainly the edge of the desired world.

  Ten years ago, Talio and his religious extremists had brokered peace with the exhausted old emperor, who had spent years beating the barbarians in to submission. When he returned to claim that dream of rest that borne him through the final, brutal seasons, the emperor found blood on the streets of his home town. He sold his dignity after a weak resistance, giving Talio a land of his own. And so when the zealots had claimed the other side of the mountains as their own, the emperor laughed and offered them carts. “Take the land!” he had cried. “I might not have brought you to heel, but those wild gods in the mountains will. May you get thinned out on the way through and we’ll not see you again!”

  This last compromise in a life of conflict and betrayals had broken the old emperor. He had kissed his daughter Alba’s hand as he gave her away to the unblemished young hero Marcan. Then he settled into his palace and his gardens and his self-enforced ignorance.

  The horses beneath Selban and Marcan plodded along, flicking their ears to the shifting underside of the clouds. If these vast, disembodied creatures guarded the mountains so that neither animal nor man should pass through, surely Loreticus could find a more logical hiding place?

  Eventually, Loreticus led the party to a cleft in the drumlin under the slopes. To the eye, there was nothing but a dark patch of lake and the striped shadows of the rising ground, but as they approached something warm penetrated the thick, cold air. Two buildings stood solid and white, glowing in the dusk against the deep purples and blacks. One was a family cottage, chimney rising proudly from its end whilst its companion structure was a much bigger, bolder manor house of a poor architecture. Behind the building rose a sharp, wooded slope and behind the cottage the valley disappeared into gloom.

  The party arrived five minutes too late to miss the first few frosty spatters of rain. The unexpected drops gave energy to the horses’ gait and they instinctively found the stable doors at the base of the bigger building. Everyone moved in quickly, the icy water rooting through their clothes, finding paths under their collars.

  The men dismounted in silence and Loreticus gestured to Demetrian that he and his guard would spend the night with the animals. Selban and Marcan followed the spymaster’s dark shape, flexed into a comical bird pose with his hands on the back of his hips and his elbows squared out like wings. The ride had been tiring, with tough ground and heavy-footed horses. Loreticus folded his wings back to fit through a door and the steep wooden steps beyond.

  The stairs turned in on themselves, only wide enough for Marcan if he walked leading with his right shoulder. The poor light came from the stables below. It was reflected weakly by polished brasses on the walls, and was soon strengthened from a room above where a large door swung open, its dark wood and resplendent in the glow of dozens of tall candles.

  Loreticus entered without a pause, stalking directly over to a robust older man, who was hoisting himself from a giant, heavily cushioned chair by the fireplace. />
  “Felix,” declared Loreticus warmly, as they first clasped each other’s forearms and then hugged.

  “My old friend.” Felix’s voice was tenor and rough, as if he had been breathing this cold damp for all his life. He smiled as he watched Loreticus, examining him as a returning son. Marcan couldn’t tell how much older he was than Loreticus, but he had always been useless with those native details. Instead, he captured the friendship between the men, the parity of thought, and he saw how his spymaster’s face had melted into happiness. It was an expression that Marcan hadn’t seen before.

  Selban approached more discreetly, almost creeping across the floor with his sycophantic wobble. He smiled as a welcome to the old man, long before Felix even noticed him on the periphery of his conversation.

  “And Selban,” he greeted, again clasping forearms but foregoing the hug. There were few people in the country that dared to bring that pockmarked cheek close to their own. Peasant wisdom said that ugliness was catching, so beware who you marry and who you play with. No matter how elevated the palace walls, there was still such country chatter in the back of every courtier’s mind. Felix studied Selban’s face, before saying, “It seems you’re on the mend. Are you still behaving yourself?”

  “Of course, absolutely. All the time.”

  Felix smiled, turning back to Loreticus and gesturing to bring one of the other chairs nearer to the fire. Marcan looked around the room, a huge old hall which could have sat a small army. The rafters in the ceiling were ageless, and the wooden walls were stained and dirtied with soot, smoke, and the life of its inhabitants.

  The old men had started talking and gave no indication to Marcan about what he should do. But before he committed himself to an introduction, he folded his arms and stared out of the window and listened to the rain as it grew heavier. Inside, against this warped glass, the drumming was friendly. The smell of dry old wood aflame in the hearth, the mixed warm and cool breezes of a cavernous room, the half-heard babble of older and wiser people. Marcan was visited by an intoxicating feeling of lost memories from a much younger self, sad and intimate. Something about how he felt now was too close to that same seclusion. It was comforting, hidden. He wasn’t ready for whatever was next. Marcan took a deep breath, soaking in the vision of early night-time rain reuniting with a dry mountain pass, empty of people and talk. Then he turned, releasing the air methodically and quietly as he walked to the ingle.

  Selban looked up and smiled, a genuine expression of delight at seeing Marcan, and gestured to his chair. Marcan shook his head, stepping nearer to Felix. His host looked up at him, and Marcan saw now the heavy bags under his eyes, the paleness of the blue in the gaze. Up close, he was more fragile, more decrepit. When he smiled however, even, white teeth gleamed.

  “So, Marcan,” he said, standing and grabbing his elbow, forcing him to clasp forearms. “You’re my guest and my entertainment for the next few weeks, I understand. Fine, fine. We’ll talk a lot and I’m sure you’ll be able to enjoy some sleep.” He looked again at Marcan’s face, glancing at his chin, his cheeks, around his eyes. “You have something of the old boy himself,” he said. He flung out an arm to the chairs in a manner which countered his earlier elegance before dropping into his own large, bum-beaten piece.

  “Thanks, I’ll stand by the fire,” replied Marcan to the unspoken offer. “I’ve sat all day.”

  “Very wise,” said Felix. “You don’t want to end up like crooked Loreticus here.” His eyes caught someone outside of the circle and he nodded. Shortly afterwards, breaking the silence that had tumbled, a middle-aged woman came with a generous wooden plate with roast meats and bread. Close up, the food looked delicious, perfect for the travellers after the ride and the rain. Somehow the echoing, empty hall stole the smells from the food. They ate in quiet, before Felix spoke. “You’re going to see our zealous friends, are you?” He directed the question at Loreticus, as he chewed on a fat piece of white meat, his fingers holding it daintily between visits to his mouth.

  Marcan paused, a pinch of bread halfway to his mouth. He didn’t look up, but instead focussed on every word of this conversation. Loreticus was in league with the zealots? Loreticus nodded. “We had to leave earlier than expected, so they need a little time to get things in shape.” Selban peered sneakily at Marcan, excitedly hoping for some reaction to the news. Marcan ignored him. “But they are honest people.”

  “Ever the spymaster,” muttered Selban in a jolly tone, milking the moment for its revelation. He was laughing directly at Marcan now.

  “Kingmaker!” proclaimed Felix, lifting a finger demonstrably. “Better yet, kingdom builder!” He sniggered the way a fox coughed.

  “Do be quiet,” grumbled Loreticus with a pout. “I’m nothing of the sort. We’ve got problems and this man here is the only one with the true worth to fix things.”

  “But he needs more than that to be an emperor!” said Felix. “To be an emperor, he needs insight, foresight and wit. If he’s anything like the old boy, he’ll lack the lot.”

  “Who’s the old boy?” asked Marcan, slightly unsettled by the conversation.

  “The old emperor,” replied Selban, pouncing on the closest thing to gossip he might find in the mountains.

  “Felix was in his court for several years.”

  “He was a great man,” stated Marcan by rote, for want of something to offer the watching faces.

  “Nonsense. You barely knew him. He was a powerful man,” said Felix. “Don’t mistake the two.” He turned to Loreticus, a tightness pulling his features together. “Your surprise arrival has its own risks,” he said, more quietly this time. “I haven’t had time to send my old maid away to make space for all of your people.”

  The spymaster stared at his host for a moment, the point of the comment obviously lost on him.

  Then Loreticus made the connection and his face whitened. “Oh dear,” he said and glanced instinctively, furtively at Marcan. His Adam’s apple worked its way up and down his throat.

  Marcan chewed his food slowly, waiting for something else to be said. He was lost. Loreticus was in bed with the zealots? He could cross the mountains? The subtle fiction that Marcan had built up since that first morning in Bistrantium felt a lot more fragile, a hubristic fantasy of a desperate man.

  A paranoia tightened deep in his chest. He watched the logic of the situation unwrapping in its simple force as he stood before these three. Everything that he knew came from them. What had Alba told him, truly told him? Nothing but their own story.

  These men had hidden him, keeping him from royal protection, and were now taking him to the zealots on the far side of the mountains. Demetrian guarded his exit but there must be another way out.

  Loreticus dreamed of a unified kingdom, an empire which encompassed the soldiers and the priests. For the spymaster and his gang to offer up a crucified emperor certainly flew the battle flag that he needed to lead the armies through the mountains.

  As the realisation hit him, he felt a deep and shabby feeling of humility. Humility at his own incompetence, at the ease with which these veterans had pushed him off the throne. That destiny he had been bred and wed for, that role dozens of kings had filled comfortably before. He choked on the realisation that the entire court must have been behind this betrayal, laughing and plotting and lying, liaising even with the enemy to see it through. A pain in his chest grew as he realised that he was no more than a sacrificial lamb, fattened on ignorance and arrogance. His heart pulsated, and his lungs gulped air and his eyes sprung tears. Fear forced him to snap his head to look at the three men as he heard the scrape of their chairs on the floor.

  “Grab him,” shouted Felix and without warning Marcan’s sight went black.

  Words came to him and brought him back into the room. The smell of the log smoke, and two or three different conversations confused him; he kept his eyes closed as he tried to paint a picture of his surroundings.

  “Fainted?” asked Selban’s edgy voice. “Co
llapsed,” replied Loreticus.

  The sound of people moving, the friction of their clothes creating a background. Felix said something to someone – by his voice Marcan presumed the lady that had served previously.

  “Perhaps it is some long-term effect of the drug they gave him?” asked Felix curiously. No verbal answer came, but Marcan sensed that he had received a reply.

  “Perhaps it is a simple weakness of mind,” responded Selban in a tone that carried a deep disappointment.

  Water splashed near his head, and he waited for a cloth or a press to placed on his brow but instead he heard someone pause.

  “He’s waking up,” said the lady. It must have been his eyes rolling under their lids. He took a deep breath and came back to the room.

  Five people stood in his line of sight–the three men, then Demetrian and the lady. She completed her chore, draping a cold, wet rag over his forehead and dabbing at his cheekbones with another. His skin felt dead, absent of sensation or movement. Somehow his hands were not his own, unresponsive and still. He accepted his incompetence and lay, rotating his gaze up to the massive rafters. He took the soft touch of his nurse, passive in her rhythmic patting.

  “Do you need something, Marcan?” asked Felix. He could feel all their judgemental eyes on him, looking for a direction of his thoughts. The smallest gesture came from him, and he felt bizarrely that he might burst into a tight-faced crying fit. He pulled the rag down over his eyes and rolled his jaw, trying to regain control, certain that they could see through his charade.

  “I’m going to bed,” declared Loreticus. “I think we all should.” Marcan listened to people turning, the wet towel still dabbing against his cheeks. “We’ll see you before we go in the morning,” he said to Marcan, and their footsteps moved away to the far end of the hall. The lady remained.

  “Who are you?” he whispered after a few minutes. “Trudix,” she replied, her voice strong and clean. “I live here with Felix.” There was an educated, urbane accent, which was at odds with her current home. “You’ve had enough of their playing gods I should imagine. They’ve all disappeared off now.”