by J B Lucas
“But my head will do instead?” asked Loreticus.
“I can’t send him this fool,” stated Ferran, and Loreticus saw that it hurt him to deny his friend. “Satrus is, after all, royal blood. We have to deal with our own. I’ll let Claisan know that you’re under my personal protection.”
“He’s not going to be happy that I brought you first,” stated Loreticus.
“You had a choice to make between the two of us,” said Ferran. “He will be upset that he lost the chance to punish someone he’d never even met, and I would have been upset that you had betrayed me.”
“I will be in deep trouble,” said Loreticus. “I promised. It was my chance to smooth over our differences.”
“I’ll make sure that you live,” said Ferran. “It’s not as if you weren’t already on his hit list anyway.” There was a finality to the comment, and a tone which was a rebuke to Loreticus’s efforts. They looked at each other, neither wanting to ruin the nostalgia of a childhood friendship.
Loreticus stood and nodded. “Another time then, Ferran.” He left with Selban, leaving the general and his minion to show themselves out.
*
“I think I have failed, Selban,” he said to his friend as they watched the servants pack their stuff for their return to the capital. “What kind of person am I to have let down someone like Amle?”
“You didn’t let her down,” Selban said quietly. “Ferran could never have handed over a royal to be judged and executed by zealots. Could you imagine the political mayhem? Claisan wanted that more than anything else. He would have had his rebellion.”
“Then what are we to do?” asked Loreticus. Selban knew when his master was like this, Loreticus was comfortable simply to give up on logic.
“Ferran will need to send Satrus away. He’s a liability and a fool. I’ll find out where he was sent and you can give Claisan his location,” replied Selban. “It’s a sign of goodwill.”
“It’s an undignified compromise,” said Loreticus.
“You’re the spymaster,” replied Selban. “You only dislike compromise when you’re on the losing side.”
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading The Convenient Murder, the first book in the Loreticus Intrigues series. I hope that it offered some escape and some inspiration in its pages.
In the Loreticus books, I cheat and use an alternative historical setting, a fictional world based on Rome. Were I to have used Rome in its true form, the details of how the characters interacted with their environment would have been of greater importance than the plot in my mind. I was keen to divorce from this historical legacy, but keep its splendour. Better I focus on the exchanges of imperfect information between the characters in the book, than the imperfect knowledge of real history by the author and/or the reader.
An older and more battered Loreticus is currently waging a war in the Lost Emperor Trilogy, which is available in eBook and print on Amazon.
You can sign up for free pre-release orders via the mailing list at [email protected], as well as receiving free exclusive content such as maps and character backgrounds.
J.B. Lucas
