by Kate Quinn
I told him. Hadrian, making me his bodyguard and his desk-man. Hadrian, making me butcher his enemies. Hadrian, for whom I’d cast off most of my friends and lived separate from my wife. “I hate him,” I concluded. “But sometimes . . . sometimes I forget that I hate him. When I’m riding along behind him on the Rhine as he’s surveying the legions, or when he tells me to do what I like with training the Praetorians because he knows I’ll make a fine job of it—that’s when I forget.” It was worse since we’d begun traveling—in Rome I could keep the hatred stoked, during those long idle watches where I did nothing but watch the bastard’s back as he worked at his desk. Nothing like idleness for hatred. But on the road, so many new things to see, so much to do, his energy subsumed by movement instead of idle viciousness—that’s when I forgot.
It wasn’t just for the sake of seeing Mirah more often that I pressed to travel ahead of Hadrian’s court, out of his company, to make his preparations as he journeyed while Boil held the bodyguard watches. I was more comfortable out of range of the man, where I could keep what he was clearly in mind. Because I was a dim, rock-headed bastard who apparently couldn’t keep his grudges straight, and it made my eyes prick with shame. “He once threatened to have Mirah and the children killed if I didn’t do his bidding,” I said, “and yet sometimes I forget that I hate him.”
My father said nothing.
“Did he break me,” I managed to say, “and I’m only now noticing?”
“No one could break my son,” my father said calmly. “Not the Young Barbarian.”
My old gladiator name. How foolish it sounded—so foolish I almost laughed. “Not so young anymore.”
“And grown more stubborn, not less.” My father looked at me. “Nobody’s broken you, boy. Not the Emperor, not anyone.”
I wasn’t altogether sure he was right, but I still felt a violent relief pierce me like a spear. Fathers do that to you—here I was, thirty-eight years old, the Emperor’s protector, commander of hundreds, and I still felt relief because my father had told me things weren’t so bad.
Or maybe it was just relief at admitting my secret guilts and shames at all; my fears of what I had become. How long had it been since I’d been able to speak like this? At one point my confidante had been Titus, but I’d buggered that up to Hades and gone. My eyes pricked, and I dashed a fist across them angrily. “Dust,” I growled, but my father wasn’t fooled.
“Don’t you talk to that wife of yours about any of this, boy?”
I was taller than he, but I’d always be “boy.” I didn’t mind that. “Of course I don’t talk to her, not like this. Who talks to wives about this sort of thing?”
“I do.”
“You’re still a barbarian, you know that? You have no idea how things are done.”
My father just waited, arms folded across his chest, scarred as an old oak, though not as yielding.
I shrugged. “Mirah thinks I’m a bloody hero. I don’t want her knowing the things I’ve done.”
“I’ve done worse,” my father said calmly. “You know how many I killed in the arena? Men, unarmed prisoners, boys young enough to still count as children. Women—there was one dressed like an Amazon. I still think about her. I’ve killed more than you, I’ll wager; they called me The Barbarian, and I earned it.” Arius the Barbarian—the city had resounded to that name once. “Your mother knows all my stories. Even the bad ones.”
“That’s different. You were a slave; you didn’t have any choice. I did.” I rested my fists on the wall, looking down at the wooded hills. “I let the Emperor make me his dog. And Hell’s gates, he’s even tamed me.”
“You could kill him,” my father said. “But I don’t advise it. It’s a lot of trouble, killing emperors, and you don’t need more trouble.”
My father did kill an emperor, long ago. Never mind why. “Mirah wants us to leave Rome. I reckon I could, get far enough away from Hadrian to make it not worth the chase, but . . . ”
“But you’ve never liked running.”
“Still don’t.”
“So what’s your plan? Keep taking everything he dishes out; smile and say ‘Thank you, Caesar’? I know you, boy. You’re no tame dog. You’ll slip your leash someday, and then you’ll crack him open like an egg, and that’ll be the end of you.”
I had no answer, not for him and not for me.
“My Roman son,” he said, shaking his head, and we trailed down the flowered hill in silence, the dogs loping between our feet.
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