Interregnum

by S. J. A. Turney

  He sighed and rearranged his sword belt to be less constrictive while Darius shuffled into a better position. Reaching into his tunic the young man produced a flask of earthenware, topped with a wax seal. He smiled at the commander. “I managed to lay my hands on some of the minister’s plum brandy. With him being bedridden, no one’s looking after his store.

  His smile broadening, he broke the seal and took a swig from the flask, swilling it round his mouth appreciatively. The taste was both sharp and sweet. The island did make an excellent brandy. He proffered the flask to the commander who smiled and took it for a grateful swig. The morning was already gearing up to be a scorcher and the shade of the palace wall behind and the trees above was welcome. Down the hill between the dappled shadows of the branches a short stretch of grass sloped down to the sea. In the distance the city of Velutio was vaguely visible in a wavering heat-haze and between the waves crashed on the rocks surrounding the island and fish leapt, sparkling in the sun. In other circumstances it would be idyllic.

  He resealed the flask and handed it back to Darius, who secreted it away again. With a grin the young man stood.

  “Enough of feeling sorry for yourself commander. I haven’t had a chance for sword practice today and I’d be grateful if you’d spar for a short while.”

  With a nod the commander stood and drew his blade as Darius drew his. Looking around, they stepped out from the area of cluttered trees and wandered across to the area of lawn before the sea. As Sabian removed his cloak and placed it on the ground to one side, the young man took up a duelling stance, his sword held at forty five degrees before him. The commander smiled and took up a similar stance opposite. Neither moved for a moment and then Darius stepped forward with some speed, swinging the blade at chest height in both hands. Sabian had been prepared and stepped to one side, his sword vertical and blocking the blow. He pivoted with the momentum of his step, his own sword coming back in a swing at head height, but Darius had already recovered. The young man ducked and lunged towards the commander’s thigh. Sabian barely sidestepped in time, the blade catching his breeches and tearing along the seam. The two stepped apart again, breathing heavily.

  “You know, Darius, you’re better than I thought? You almost caught me good and proper there.”

  The young man nodded. “I get a lot of practice, remember?”

  As Darius grinned, Sabian lunged forward and Darius came to meet the blow, only to discover it was a feint; the commander fell forward into a roll beneath the sweep of Darius’ sword and the flat of the blade connected painfully against the young man’s shin.

  Darius collapsed to the floor, his sword falling from his hand as he sat clutching his shin. “Shit, that hurt!” he exclaimed.

  Sabian dropped his own sword point to the grass. “You do have a tendency to over-extend. I think you’ve done remarkably well taking everything from the great writers and more from a couple of reasonable tutors here, but nothing beats field experience and live targets. Shame Ursus went; he’s one of the best training officers we had.”

  Darius opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a voice from the gate. One of the island’s scribes was calling them and, collecting his cloak, Sabian and Darius strode up the hill. The scribe, clad in a white tunic and cloak and with a scroll in his hand frowned at Darius before turning to Sabian.

  “Commander” he said, slightly breathlessly, “Minister Sarios would like to see you in his chambers if you have the time.”

  Sabian nodded and thanked the man as he and Darius strode across the Ibis courtyard toward the doors of the Raven palace. He wondered momentarily whether to tell Darius to wait below for him as they approached the narrow spiral staircase that led up to the top floor apartments, but decided against it. As they strode down the corridor, he realised that the minister’s door was open and spotted the old man moving about within. He paused at the door and knocked out of courtesy. The minister’s voice, stronger than the commander had heard it in some time, called for them to enter and they did so. The sparsely furnished study was full of paperwork at the moment and Sarios stood at a desk, shuffling a large wad of notes and filing them away in a leather case. He turned and smiled. His colour was considerably better and, although he staggered a little as he turned he seemed generally in better health. His head was no longer bandaged, though the bruising and scrapes on his face were still clearly evidenced and he wore a hastily fashioned eye patch to cover his still blind eye.

  “Commander, thank you for coming so promptly. I didn’t want to interrupt anything important, but I think I may have something that could help you and I wanted to catch you before the funeral.” He gestured to a couple of wooden chairs arrayed beneath a window. “Please sit down.”

  The two settled into the chairs and Sabian raised his hands, palms up, and shrugged questioningly. The minister wandered over to the corner of the room and picked up a lamp, bringing it across and placing it on the desk before them.

  “Is this the lamp you found in the room?”

  Darius and Sabian glanced at each other before they both nodded. The commander pointed at the lamp. “Where did you get it? I confiscated the one from the room and hid it in my own kit.”

  The minister smiled. “I know we’re supposed to be cut off from the mainland here, commander and I have to admit that we’ve never used these; after all, who would we signal? But there were three on the island that had never been confiscated in the early days. All three have been locked away in a storage room for many years. As soon as Darius here told me what had happened, I went to check on them and I assume you can guess how many I found?”

  Sabian cleared his throat, standing once again. “So this lamp we found was stolen from your secret store room?”

  The minister nodded and a sour look crossed his face. “And that means that your doctor was being aided be someone from the island.”

  The commander glanced at the grim and bleak expression on Darius’ face and moved forward to the dusty signalling lamp, tapping it with his fingers. “Who knew where that room was and what was kept in it?”

  Sarios shook his head. “Several people knew of the room’s existence and its contents, but only I ever kept the key.” The minister watched a look cross the commander’s face and continued hurriedly “there are a number of things in there that we keep very private and I’m breaking a rule of the council’s just by telling you about it, but I would like to think that you would allow us the trust to keep the room hidden in return for what I’m about to give you.”

  Sabian frowned and raised an eyebrow as the minister continued once more.

  “Since I have been incapacitated my affairs have been handled by Minister Turus and it is in his hands those keys have rested these past five days. I suggest that it’s he you need to visit to pursue your enquiries.”

  Sabian smiled, though there was precious little humour in it. “Minister, I am grateful, and my men and I will find the good minister and deal with him accordingly.”

  As he stepped back, however, he held out his hand. “I would like to think you trust me and I would hope I can trust you, but if you have a room containing such things as signal lamps, I do need to see the room and its contents. What I do after I’ve seen them is something I’ll have to think on, but please pass me the keys.”

  The minister’s face fell but he held out the key without another word and dropped it in the commander’s palm.

  “You’ll find the store room on the ground floor along a corridor past the rear entrance” he said. “At the very end of the corridor is a locked door. I hope I can rely on your discretion and although I realise that Turus has betrayed both you and us, but I would still ask you to inflict no harm without him being brought to the council first.”

  The commander nodded. “I imagine that Turus is just a tool in this and I’ll abide by your wishes for now. What happens after the council sees him remains to be seen.” He turned, leaving an unhappy looking old man watching after him.

  As Sab
ian left, Darius cast a quick glance at the minister and nodded once before following the commander back along the corridor and down the stairs. He hurried to catch up as they crossed the main floor and entered a corridor that the commander had never used before. The young man strode at Sabian’s shoulder and cleared his throat.

  “Commander, is this important right now?”

  Sabian continued to walk, talking without turning. “Darius, if Turus and the doctor had access to lamps in there, I can only wonder what else they could have found. I need to check the room out for myself before I confront the minister on it; besides, I want to know what’s in there for my own satisfaction. I can afford to be lenient in my command here, but not blindly so.”

  As he finished speaking they arrived at a heavy wooden door. The commander reached out and turned the key in the lock, pushing the handle hard. The door barely moved, scraping along the floor with a spine-tingling noise. He put his shoulder to it and the heavy portal suddenly gave way, swinging inwards. He recovered himself quickly and glanced around the room; it had obviously been visited rarely and dust lay thick on everything. The window to this room was high and of opaque glass casting strangely wavering, almost submarine light around the interior. He made his way to the desk directly opposite on which sat a signalling lamp of the same style as the two he’d already encountered. Two bare circles in the dusty surface betrayed the existence of the other two. Biting his lip in concentration he began to survey the contents of the room.

  Picking up a small soft leather bag from the desk, he tipped it gently upside down over a tin plate. A number of small gems of remarkable quality tumbled out onto the plate with a rattling noise. He blinked and whistled through his teeth. He was no expert on gems, but he’d be willing to bet that this small pouch would be worth enough to keep him in luxury for over a year. These must have been found in the wreckage of the palace just after they’d been made prisoners here. A glance around told similar stories and his eyes wandered across the desk as he poured the gems back into the bag and pulled the draw-string tight.

  Items abounded here that he knew would be confiscated if Velutio had known of their existence. A large chest of dried foods carefully packed and sealed would be very useful on a long journey; signalling lamps that could keep the islanders in contact with someone on the mainland; a bag of gems that could keep a traveller for some time. Oh, but they were by no means all forbidden items though. Some had obviously been stored here due to their precious nature. A number of delicate and very rare books lined a shelf each covered in linen to protect them, a jewelled knife bearing the imperial crest on the hilt, a portrait of the last emperor, a little faded but otherwise well preserved. Sabian whistled again. Now that he gazed at a good portrait of Quintus the Golden, the resemblance to the missing Quintillian was unmistakable.

  He quickly reached across the desk and pulled over a set of scrolls, six in all, unfastening the silk tie and unrolling them. The moment he saw their contents, he let the scroll go and it rolled back into a coil. He glanced over his shoulder to check on Darius, but the young man was poking around another desk in the corner. Unrolling the scroll again his eyes strolled across the genealogy of the Imperial bloodline and there, clearly labelled at the bottom was Quintillian. He was about to roll it back up carefully when another name caught his eye that made him blink in surprise. Tracing the lines on the chart from Quintus the Golden, he double-checked, but there it was: Livilla Dolabella, a cousin of the Emperor and her husband clearly marked next to her: Kiva Caerdin. He frowned, for there was no mention of a child. With another furtive glance at Darius to make sure he was occupied, he rolled the scroll once more and tied it, fumbling with another. Another genealogy, this time showing the ancestors of a man named Pelius; a name vaguely familiar to the commander from his roll calls on the island. A third scroll revealed another familiar name, and he glanced briefly at it before unrolling the fourth and smiling broadly. The Caerdin line. This short scroll showed Darius clearly enough along with his mother and father and some of the members of the non-direct Imperial family. Caerdin’s father had been added but presumably the northern tribes he came from didn’t keep records of ancestry beyond their father. The maternal line went back a long way, though and very high-born. His suspicions finally confirmed, along with a connection of which he’d been previously unaware, Sabian allowed the scroll to roll up once more and then placed the six back in their container. He turned to Darius.

  “I think I’ve seen enough here” he said and the young man turned, pulling himself away from some dusty book. The commander went on. “I’ll speak to the minister later, but I can’t imagine any of this presenting a problem for me at least. Shall we go and have a word with Turus?”

  Darius nodded and left the room, waiting in the corridor as Sabian heaved the door shut and locked it.

  They strolled down the corridor in the direction of the great courtyard, the commander walking ahead lost in his own musings. Behind him, Darius carefully shuffled into his breeches the one item he’d removed from sight in the room while Sabian had been otherwise occupied. He placed a great deal of trust in the commander, but showing him the only map they had of the island’s reefs and safe channels would be taking that trust too far.

  Sabian stood in the octagonal room of the ruined Golden House tapping his fingers on his bronze-plated belt, his eyes darting around the various shattered entrances to the room. Behind him Cialo leaned yawning against a crumbling wall and Iasus stood stiff and upright in what was once an alcove, his sergeant’s vine-staff jammed under his arm. No one had said a word for more than five minutes but impatient sounds abounded. How long would it take the young man?

  Footsteps in the ruins announced the arrival of their guest. The commander heaved a sigh of relief and Cialo pulled himself upright off the wall. Minister Turus rounded the corner, picking his way gingerly among the fallen masonry with Darius at his shoulder. The minister spotted the soldiers and gave a crooked smile as he gratefully crossed into the clear area within the octagon.

  “Commander,” the man said slightly breathlessly, “young Darius said that you need to see me? A strange place to meet.”

  Sabian nodded. “Somewhere quiet… out of the way.” He grinned an unpleasant grin at the minister. “Easy to clean…”

  The minister opened his mouth to say something, his eyes surprisingly wide, but the commander rode over the top of whatever comment he intended to make.

  “I would assume, minister, that due to your complicity in the affair, you are aware of what happened to the good doctor yesterday?”

  The colour drained from Turus’ face. He made strange burbling noises and spun around, finally taking in the solitary location in which he now found himself and the four armed men around him. Eyes so wide they looked like they might burst, he collapsed in a heap on the ground.

  “This can’t be happening…”

  Darius, only a couple of steps behind him dropped his sword point to the ground a foot away from the minister’s knee. “Oh but it can” he said.

  Sabian reached down and grasped the slightly portly man by the tunic and hauled him to his feet. He was surprisingly heavy.

  “Save your breath with denials” the commander said plainly. “We know about the doctor and we know about you. The doctor’s gone because he wouldn’t talk to me. I’d assume you’re more intelligent than that.”

  The minister said nothing, still pale and frightened, but he nodded vigorously. Sabian smiled inwardly. This was easier that Velutio’s damned doctor. He released his grip on Turus and the man sank back to the floor.

  “I’ll give you a very simple choice, Turus” the commander said. “Either you stand brave and irresolute and protect your fellow conspirators, in which case we cut you into several pieces to fatten the fishes… or you tell me everything you know right here and now and I turn you over to Sarios to deal with.”

  As he finished speaking, he became aware that the minister was whimpering. The man reached up and there
were tears in his eyes.

  “I didn’t want to, but … my family! You must understand.”

  Darius looked over the broken minister at the commander and cleared his throat. “The man’s daughter lives in Velutio.”

  Sabian remained stony faced. “I’m waiting, minister.”

  Pulling himself together as best he could, Turus hauled himself to his feet.

  “Someone in the city. I don’t know who, but he must be powerful. The doctor came to me with an offer; said he could get me off the island and to my family. How could I not? I didn’t know he was going to kill anyone; that was never part of the deal.”

  Sabian nodded. “I know who the someone in the city is and I know about the doctor and you. You’re not telling me anything. I know there were soldiers involved; my men. Tell me who they were and what was sent.” To emphasise his words, he drew his sword and tapped the flat of the blade against his shin. The minister’s eyes bulged again.

  “I don’t know what the messages were; I was just to get the lamp. There are three men though… three that I know of anyway. Don’t know their names, but they’re all on the guard duty under him.” He pointed at Iasus. Sabian turned and nodded at the sergeant. The young martinet stepped forward and reached out with his vine staff, placing it beneath the minister’s chin.

  “Descriptions” he said. “If you can’t give us names, give us descriptions.”

  The minister tried to nod, but the vine staff inhibited him; the position looked very uncomfortable. Sabian glanced briefly at Iasus. Sometimes a strict military disciplinarian had his uses. Turus gulped.