by Adam Golden
“Not directly, no,” Nicholas allowed. “We are far too careful for that, but without a guilty party, justly tried and punished for all to see, fear and suspicion will fester in the city. The people would suffer, I can hardly allow that.” Left unsaid was the fact that such an environment would make his own needs much harder to meet safely.
“We need this trial concluded and that damnable priest’s diggings halted, but I can hardly be seen to object or even show undue interest. I need to think on this. That will be all for now, Tulio.”
“Of course, lord,” the manservant said with a deep bow. “I’ll send one of the girls with some wine,” he added. Nicholas nodded absently, already back to his ponderings as his old friend turned on his heel and marched from the room.
—
“Tulio, Tulio! Up man!” Nicholas called as he burst into his servant’s sleeping chamber. “Come along, wake up!” The other man’s eyes had snapped open at the first utterance of his name, and he was on his feet before Nicholas had finished trying to rouse him.
“Dress and prepare two horses, if you will. We have to go into town, as immediately as is possible. I believe I have a solution to my problem.” Nicholas wore an easy, comfortable smile that Tulio had first seen when they were children. His master had solved a puzzle or made sense of some previously incomprehensible bit of arcanum. As a boy, Nicholas had never been happier than when he’d managed to straighten some twisted bit of logic. Much had changed as the boy became a man. Tulio mused looking at his friend. Much indeed, but not everything.
“Would my lord care to watch me dress, or would you like to repair to the atrium and await me?” Tulio asked, moving to the pegs on the wall which held several of his tunics, leggings, and such.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Nicholas said as though it hadn’t occurred to him to consider privacy. It likely hadn’t. The man tended to miss mundane details when his mind was working. Catching those details was one of Tulio’s most important duties in his master’s service.
“I’ve one or two things still to collect. I will await you in the atrium,” Nicholas said with a touch less than his usual grace before turning to leave.
Tulio chuckled to himself. His master was without question the most intelligent person he’d ever met. He was capable, accomplished, driven, and on his way to becoming one of the most prominent men in the Empire, yet, in many ways, he was still the shy awkward boy so desperate to win approval, the one whom Tulio had met at nine years of age.
Nicholas did not live in the world of other people, didn’t really understand it. He could navigate it brilliantly, and he’d been manipulating it like a master as long as Tulio had known him, yet it was always as an outsider looking in. As he slipped his jerkin over his head, Tulio considered. He supposed it was that sense of ‘otherness’ that allowed his master to do the things he felt called to do, to dabble in things that others, that Tulio himself, could not fathom or stomach.
Most would have condemned Nicholas if they knew, revile him, they would certainly imprison him, probably even kill him. Most of those would likely feel the same about Tulio himself, after all, he supposed he was an accomplice in what they would call ‘Nicholas’ crimes’. Those people would not understand Tulio’s duty any more than they would understand Nicholas’ calling. Some bonds transcend every other consideration, stronger than mere loyalty, or friendship, or even family. That bond let Tulio keep going, keep wading through the darkness a step behind his master.
The stoic servant shook his head at his own philosophizing, belted on his heavy dagger, and went to see about his task. There was work to be done and daylight was fast approaching.
—
A loud hammering echoed through the Villa. Tulio startled, nearly dropping the silver pitcher he’d been polishing. He must have dozed off. Embarrassed, he looked around quickly to make sure none of the villa’s small staff were close. It had been a long night, very long. There had been a time when he could be awake all night and work all the next day without trouble, but clearly those days were behind him. The banging sounded again just before the blurry-eyed servant reached the atrium.
Standing before the heavy door was a matched pair of Praetorian Guards. Dust covered and sweating under the afternoon sun, they were still rich with the splendor of their famous black and purple armor.
“We come for His Excellency, Bishop Nicholas,” one of the pair said, his accent heavy with a western twang that made it difficult to decipher.
Tulio nodded, ushered the two men in, and hurried away to announce them. On his way to his master’s study, Tulio sent the first servant he saw running for water and wine for their guests.
He found Nicholas hard at work, scribbling one of his endless streams of letters, likely to a member of his large network of contacts flung across the breadth of the Empire and beyond. The man positively hummed with energy, he looked fresh as if he’d slept the whole night through. Tulio bit back a spike of jealousy. With each day he felt older, slower, less, yet Nicholas went on unchanged as a mountain . . . no, not unchanged. His master actually seemed to be growing stronger, more vital as time passed.
“Excuse me, Dominus,” he said, making his voice impassive and entering without a knock, as was his habit. His master’s eyes swung up, attentive and inviting, as they always were when Tulio spoke. “There are two members of the Praetorian Guard in the atrium.”
Nicholas looked back down at whatever it was he’d been writing for a moment, signed with a flourish, set down his quill carefully, and rose.
“Come then, Tulio, let us see what the Empire requires of us,” he said with a slight upturn of his lips and a glint in his eye that could have been called mischievous if Nicholas ever did anything paltry enough to be described as such.
—
Governor Quintus Mammarius Asianicus looked as though he was surrounded by a bad smell that only he could detect. The man’s sour, pinched expression was, as far as Tulio had seen, a permanent fixture on his face. Tulio thought the man’s large, beak-like hook of a nose, and hanging fleshy jowls, which combined to give him an unfortunate vulture-like appearance, might have been the cause of his ever present sour expression.
“I was informed this morning, well before I was wont to rise, I might add,” the sour aristocrat said, “that our prisoner, this Fouettard creature, has had a change of heart. He now acknowledges his guilt and wishes to confess his crimes. He has asked that his confession be attended by a clergyman so that he might be absolved of his sins before sentencing is carried out. Given your role in discovering the man’s guilt, I thought you might like to serve in that capacity.”
“I am, of course, always at the disposal of the Empire,” Nicholas said with the slightest bow of his head. “I will be happy to serve as confessor,” he finished.
The Governor nodded at Nicholas’ words and summoned one of the Mayor’s house servants with an irritable wave. “You, send my escort to gather the prisoner from his cell, and have your master pulled from his wine jug, rung out, and dressed. He is to attend me presently.”
The startled looking mouse of a Chaldean house girl squeaked something unintelligible and raced away to see to her tasks.
—
Pair Fouettard looked three days dead, and that was after someone had, thankfully, dunked the man in a barrel to clean off the worst of the pungent combination of his own waste and the sludge of the town’s sewer cell. Even from the back of the chamber, Tulio could see the bright red abrasions on the man’s skin. It looked as though he’d been scrubbed with a curry brush. Obviously, the Praetorians hadn’t felt the need to be too gentle in making their charge presentable. He was dragged in between the two men and dumped unceremoniously on the floor before the three-man panel made up of the Governor, a still sodden looking Mayor Gratius, and Nicholas himself.
“I have been told you wish to confess your culpability in the deaths of the two children whose remains were discovered in your shop,” the governor said, ostensibly speaking to Fouettard,
but never deigning to actually look at the man.
Fouettard dragged himself onto his knees, nodding enthusiastically. He opened his mouth to speak but the governor’s fleshy hand shot up to silence him.
“I stand as witness for the Empire, Mayor Gratius for the local municipality, and standing witness for the Holy Church is Bishop Nicholas, who will hear your confession and proscribe your penance. These proceedings are being transcribed for the official record.”
Even from behind the man, Tulio could see that Fouettard attention shifted anxiously between Nicholas and the Governor. He could imagine the kneeling man’s feelings. He stifled a shiver, recalling the feeling of standing in the dark pit outside the cell the night before, watching as his beloved employer plunged that black knife of his into the cringing prisoner’s heart. Fouettard’s screams were wild, animalistic, and heart wrenching. The already tight space of the ancient sewer felt suddenly and chokingly claustrophobic as Nicholas’ unintelligible chants and gestures called unseen things his servant didn’t want to consider too deeply.
Nicholas fell silent, the screams cut off with an unnatural abruptness, and Fouettard’s sad cringing form stood transformed, eerily straight and silent, eyes wide and empty. Nicholas’ horn-handled dagger stood out from the center of the man’s chest, but he paid it no mind. He stood as though etched from granite as Nicholas issued commands. When the work was done, Tulio’s master retrieved his weapon, muttered a few words that concealed both blood and wound, and then they departed, walking past guards who didn’t see them any more than when they had arrived.
Tulio snapped back to the present to hear the former butcher declaring his guilt. “I killed ‘em, I did,” Fouettard said. There were tears in his voice, and Tulio saw him raise his manacled hands to wipe at his face several times. “Them two weren’t my first, neither. I killed lots o’ them over the years. Dozens. Laughin’ little bastards! Not laughin’ no more! Not laughin’.”
The man broke down into blubbering about forgiveness and, despite the Governor’s best efforts to silence the prisoner, it went on for several minutes. It was, predictably, at least to Tulio, Nicholas who reached the man. The Bishop knelt before the prisoner, whispering encouragements, and slowly the poor wretch seemed to return to himself.
“My people is a hard bunch, M’lord,” he said. “Warriors and killers all, even the womenfolk. We don’t suffer no weakness. I never been big, never been real strong, and when I was young I guess I was what you’d call fair. Pretty little weaklings like I was is rough treated among the Franks, even as youngins.”
The murderer mopped his wet face with his hands and a muffled sob broke free.
Nicholas gently put a hand on the wretched creature’s shoulder and whispered to him, urging him to continue. The killer sniffled like a child, rubbing at his running nose for a moment as he sought to master himself. Finally, he pulled himself upright and continued. “I got a fair bit o’ attention from the other lads, beatings and such, some worse than others. All them beatin’s taught me to run, though. Run damn fast. The summer of my tenth year I ran in the spring games. Trounced all them big lads.” The rat-faced killer’s back straightened a bit at that point, and Tulio heard pride in his voice. “Ran ‘em into the ground an’ it felt real good, too good. Got a bit of a big head about it I guess, started showing off. By the end of the three days of racin’, people cheered me. Called me Pair Pranzen, they did. Prancin’ Pair. Can you imagine? People cheerin’ for scraggly little Pair! It was a great time, ‘cept those lads I beat didn’t think so.”
The despair in the man’s voice was fresh, unweathered by the decades between this day and that. Much to his surprise, Tulio felt sympathy for the man. Not guilt, the man was a monster and monsters always got what they deserved. That thought brought him up short and his eyes swung to his master. Did they? What of Nicholas? What was he? What did he deserve? He pushed the treasonous thoughts away roughly. He didn’t care, he reminded himself. He had his duty.
“. . . caught me coming out of the alehouse, a boy drunk as a drown’d rat on winnin’ and weak ale.” Fouettard went on, “Three of the ones I’d beaten especially bad, all bigger than me, all good strong lads. They were gonna break my legs. Told me all about how they was gonna. I screamed and screamed, tried thrashin’, tried fightin’ but t’was pointless. They drubbed me good an’ dragged me out the village and into the dark. One of ‘em picked up a big bit o’ log, grinnin’ about bashin’ my knees. I thought that was the worst, but the biggest lad stopped ‘im, an I knew it was gonna get worse. The leader was a big mean cuss named Illan. The kind that hurts animals fer fun, y’unnerstand? Anyways, he says leg breakin’s too good for me. Says that ain’t how you train a prancin’ filly, need to learn my place he says. They kicked me over on my stomach . . .” The man sobbed again, his voice breaking. “They pushed that bit o’ log under my hips an . . . Illan he . . . used me. Like I was a woman! With the others callin’ ‘Prancin’ Pair, Prancin’ Pair!’ an’ laughin’ the whole time.”
There was silence in the room, even the haughty governor looked vaguely sorry for the poor specimen before him.
“They left me there when they were done, sobbin’, bleedin’, wishin’ I was dead,” Fouettard said, his voice soft, ghostly. “I don’t even remember getting to m’feet, or walkin’ back into the village. Don’t remember when I got the pitch fork, but I remember the look on Illan’s face before I drove that fork into his stomach. I remember the screams an’ the feelin’ of his hot blood sprayin’ all over when I stabbed him again and again . . .”
Tulio could see the excitement in the man now, his body near quivering with energy, like a man deep in the throes of passion.
“I ran off after that. They was all too shocked to stop me. Spent weeks in the woods, freezin’ and starvin’, but I came back. Got them other two in their beds. Took the head off the first. Skinned and dressed the other like a dear. Not easy for a boy not yet eleven. There weren’t no more laughin’ for a time, but it came back. It always comes back. No one laughs at Pair Fouettard for long, though. Nosir, ol’ Pair always laughs last.”
Tulio was glad he couldn’t see the smile that he knew was on the man’s lips as he said that last. It was only then that he saw the troubled look on Nicholas’ face, the slight sway as he rose and the subtle sign to prepare to leave. Tulio nodded and moved for the door.
—
“. . . something dark and powerful, very powerful,” Nicholas said as he rifled through the letters on his desk. Tulio’s master looked more uncomfortable than he’d seen him in years. Whatever was going on had rattled the man badly.
“Are you threatened, Dominus?” Tulio asked, but Nicholas seemed not to hear. “Niki!” the faithful servant barked, using the nickname he hadn’t uttered more than a dozen times since childhood. “Are you in danger?”
“I don’t know!” Nicholas admitted. “I searched for the priest, he was in the same general area as the disturbance. If he’s found allies, or perhaps dabbled with something strong . . .”
Mother? the Bishop wondered.
“We should leave master,” Tulio ventured. “A tactical retreat until we understand the danger more fully.”
Nicholas grimaced, he wouldn’t want to run. He’d want to face whatever it was. Tulio’s mind raced to marshal an argument.
“I cannot risk conflict now. Not with the Emperor’s council so close,” Nicholas said, surprising his manservant. “Very well. Make preparations, we’ll make for Nicaea as soon as all is ready. In the meantime, I’ll see to increasing our defenses.”
—
“You! Identify yourself!” Tulio called to the robed, hooded figure standing stock still before the Villa’s main gate. The chief servant’s chest was still heaving from the dash to the gate. One of the kitchen girls had spotted the strange figure and come shrieking for him.
“Give your business or move along!” Tulio called, drawing the eighteen inches of steel from his belt.
“Easy, my friend,�
� came the calm baritone of Nicholas as he strode through the atrium toward the gate. “You’ll scare our friend away.”
“You know this man, Dominus?” Tulio asked
“Indeed, think of him as a kind of bodyguard,” Nicholas said as he opened the gate. He turned back and must have seen the wounded look Tulio tried hard to mask. “Fear not, my friend, I trust in your protection as I always have. Yet our new friend’s abilities are . . . singular.”
Tulio eyed the still stationary figure warily. Magic.
“Immune to death,” Nicholas said, confirming his unspoken suspicion, “possessing strength many times that of any man, and most importantly, completely null to any magic save my own. Valuable, don’t you agree?”
What could Tulio do but agree without seeming petty? He inclined his head but said nothing. Nicholas’ creature passed through the gate and slowly removed its hood. Tulio gasped, looking back at him were the dead, lifeless eyes of the corpse of Pair Fouettard! Tulio could just make out a bit of noose still about his freshly broken neck!
“If we must run,” said Nicholas, that mirthful twinkle in his eye again, “who better to accompany us than our friend the Prancer?”
Shadows of Doubt
Nicholas ran as fast as he could, desperately trying to outpace his pursuers. Was he gaining distance? Were they closing in? He couldn’t tell. Clouds of grey black miasma swirled and rolled around him like an impossibly dense fog, obscuring everything. He just had to keep going.
A gravelly sort of growl sounded. Was it behind? In front? It seemed to come from all around. Was he being surrounded? Nicholas felt something he hadn’t in long years. Panic. He was out of control. He was never out of control. The Bishop kept his legs pumping at the fastest rhythm he thought he could maintain, and forced a series of deep slow breaths.
His hand slid to his hip, reaching for his weapon, his totem, seeking its ever-present power and the accompanying confidence it brought. The heavy black knife with its familiar goat-horn looking hilt was gone! The shock hit Nicholas like a physical blow, he stumbled, tried to correct and pitched forward.
