He stepped over the body of an unconscious reveler, snoring against one of the white paving stones. Best to avoid too much drink. The silenoi considered passive prey to be a bit dull, but if they were hungry enough, they’d drag away the sleeping bodies. He needed to stay alert. He was alone. The night gens would offer him no protection, and even the city guards would simply avert their eyes if something attacked him. Letting nature take its course. He was the very reason that the silenoi hunted at night. Fools who wanted a taste of the dark city. He wouldn’t know that he was being followed until his back was against a reeking wall. He couldn’t even hire a link-boy to light his way, since they only served the wealthy. He had to make do with a cracked lantern and the flickering lights of the Subura. The district of pleasures and rude endings. This neighborhood had made him what he was. Tuneful, wary, and just mad enough to think that this plan would work.
There were other options. He could prostrate himself before Basilissa Latona, hoping that he wouldn’t be fed to her lampreys. He could pay a visit to Felix. The house father of the black basia was seldom under guard. He could creep into the tabularium and lay the edge of the sword against Felix’s unprotected throat. That would provide him with answers. But these were suicidal moves on a board that cared nothing for him. The long game was the only solution. If he wanted to stay alive, he needed to increase his value as a player.
The wilds were the thing. He’d been pondering it ever since he’d first discovered the ingress that led between worlds. There was a soft space between city and wilderness, a line of old power that kept them a hand’s breadth apart. That moment between waking and sleep, full of dawn-cares, when your body floated in a strange pool of knowledge. The cracks themselves were like alleys, where the city’s drama faded to a distant murmur, both dead and alive. Latona wanted to control them. She wants to watch all the worlds burn. Babieca wasn’t certain of that. When they’d heard her speaking with Mardian on the Patio of Lions, fire seemed far from her mind. It was power that she’d wanted. The power to resurrect an empire. Unlike her mother, who’d seen reform glimmering along the edge of a blade, Latona fought with contracts. She’d sell her own city to the hunters, if it meant gaining an advantage.
But she couldn’t buy the lares, the spirits that had gathered to watch in fascination as settlers built the first shrines. They’d remained beyond her grasp, until now. His hope was that she would reach too far. He had other hopes, but they seemed less likely, rattling around like the few spare coins in his pouch. Trust. Desire. Escape. In the dark, they seemed less real, but somehow more possible. Lunacy at its finest.
He followed the ancient wall that circled the city. It gleamed with bits of quartz and porphyry, no doubt broken from some older monument. It was in everyone’s nature, he supposed, to build walls around things. This is mine. And desire nudged us to climb over, to break through, no matter the cost. The city was alive with betrayals, misplaced bricks, moonlit repairs. The web of skyways above was silent, though he knew that people gathered there, out of sight. The great insulae rose everywhere, teeming with bloody stories and gabled windows lined with flowers. He could hear the cucurrucucu of the rooftop doves, a gentle staccato to the sounds of love and fighting within. He couldn’t tell if the hunters wanted to destroy this, or if they were drawn to it, like crowds to a harp.
He paused at the crossroads of Via Rumor and Aditus Papallona. The Avenue of Butterflies. If he climbed uphill, he’d reach the wealthier vici, giving way to arcades fragrant with lemon trees. Eventually, he’d come to the Arx of Violets, where death waited for him on swift sandals. If he turned in the opposite direction, allowing himself to descend past the low firewalls that separated rich from poor, he’d come to the necropolis. There, among the tall osiers and marsh fires, the silenoi would embrace him. It might be comforting to fall soundlessly in the mud, to join the slow spread of decay. The hunters would hold him still as they unlocked his bones, like a sacred cabinet, prying open the delicate hasps. They would lay him red and simple, solved at last. There was something to that. He imagined some brightness spinning away, tumbling grief over game, to join the smoke.
Instead, he chose the middle way. The path led him to the southernmost corner of Anfractus, where two great walls brushed among a scattering of houses. It was an unfinished place, neither rich nor poor. Garments soaked in tubs of acrid dye. People leaned out of windows, breathing in the warm air. If he listened closely, he could almost hear the wild sounds beyond the high walls. The greening unknown beyond the city, where imperial roads had surrendered to the dominion of moss and small forest lives. The twin rivers thundered, Clamores and Iacto, locked in their perpetual game of Hazard. And somewhere to the south, Pulcheria stood at the heart of her city, Egressus, weaving threads. The rival queens were inevitabilities, like the lares themselves. They had always been fighting, above and below, fingers on the ivory. Latona in her anger, Pulcheria in her cold grace, and the inscrutable queen of the catacombs. Warriors one and all, whose shield-dance would sweep everyone away. Fortuna watched them with indrawn breath. Her instruments of wrack and wonder.
The trick was to move beyond their sight. To mean something while seeming nothing. That he could do.
The fire had faded, but its marks were still there. Much of the house had crumbled to blackened timbers. The roof had partially collapsed, offering up the bones of the place. But some of the rooms had also survived. He wasn’t sure why Latona hadn’t razed it to the ground. Most likely, she wanted to remember it. Another sort of trick. If you knew how to use it, you could move between, at a price. Babieca could remember the dizzying feeling of transit, the confusion that followed. This was a dangerous ingress. Lean too heavily on it, and you could end up lost to yourself, unable to recall either place. After a time, only the fault line would become real. At least, that had been Felix’s warning. But he’d never really trusted the mask and wasn’t about to start now.
He couldn’t quite trace the roots of his mistrust. Perhaps it was dull jealousy. Felix had wealth and status. He may have been a lupo, but he was Latona’s favorite wolf. And Roldan—or Aleo, as he was known now—seemed eager to follow him. Maybe it was bitterness. Felix had danced with him for a while, but only as a diversion. That was all they really were to the mask. Distractions of different orders, meant to entertain for a while. Still, he dimly remembered that Felix, in another guise, had come to their aid. In some distant tabularium, filled with bright boxes and blinding lamps, the wolf-shadow had led them to a barrow full of weapons and strange armor. Had he also taken the middle path? Or was he the enemy that had circled them from the very beginning?
Babieca picked his way carefully among the debris. The front of the house had crumbled, and the floor was heavily scarred. The walls were covered in soot, though he could still make out some of the frescoes. They’d all been naked in this room, politely ignoring each other. The house had seemed impregnable. Some relic of old magic that would survive long after they’d gone. But now it was bone and ash. He walked to the corner of the atrium, whose walls remained mostly intact. A breeze slipped in through the shattered window. Fire had fused the cheap glass to the floor in long rivulets that reminded him of candle wax. He nudged the flagstones with his sandal until he found the loose one. Then he knelt down, prying it free with the hilt of his sword.
Everything was as they’d left it, including the red tunica. He reached underneath and carefully withdrew the blade. It had slept untroubled. The whorl-patterned guard seemed traced with fire. It was light, but not insubstantial. He cut the air with it experimentally. In the right hands, it would be truly dangerous. But not in his.
Babieca slipped the dagger into its sheath and fastened it to his belt. He no longer felt lopsided. All I need is a helmet, he thought, and I could be a musical miles.
He slipped the lute case from his shoulder and opened it. Gently, he laid the instrument against the floor. The horn was underneath. It was carved with the likeness
of Fortuna, and as he stared at it, as the goddess looked back. The carvings around her uncoiled. He heard the scrape of metal and the hum of something terrible. He wasn’t sure if it was coming from the ivory, or if the house itself was rumbling in sympathy.
Latona had described it as a forgotten heirloom. Something discarded beneath cobwebs in the royal undercroft. This old thing? We’re practically giving it away. But if such a weapon had always belonged to her, why hadn’t she used it before? And why hadn’t she come looking for it? She’d been content to leave it on the other side of the veil, where anyone might find it by accident. Maybe the horn itself was no longer important. It had done its work, after all. The lares of smoke were awake. But he had the feeling that its task wasn’t over. They would have need of it in the coming days. If he buried all of the sleeping relics in a hoard, it might just be enough to save them.
He wrapped the horn in Roldan’s tunica and replaced the stone. He covered the spot with debris. By the time he was finished, his hands were dark with soot, and his tunica smelled like a pyre. The broken house seemed to regard him with curiosity. Was its power still intact? It seemed reduced to cinders and blackened paint. He tried to think about some place far away, whose possibilities remained undiminished. But there was no sting of vertigo, no force dissolving the world beneath his feet. Just the weight of Felix’s dagger, and half-moons of ash beneath his fingernails.
Babieca sat down among the cinders. He picked up the lute. His hands were dirty, but he couldn’t help himself. The strings yielded as he began to play a song of his own invention. His voice was thin as it assailed the blackened timbers, but it gained power with each word. The horn growled beneath the stone. His sole audience.
Memory’s a minor coin
Discarded in the street
A thing of smoke and sentiment
Exhausted from the heat
Keening like a house on fire
Resplendent in its grief
A song of ash and ivory
Undressing at your feet.
There was no more. He put away the lute and was just about to rise when he heard something stir. He scrambled to his feet. Before he could draw the dagger, a shadow unlaced itself from the wreck of the atrium. Babieca felt himself relax, but only slightly. He picked up the lute case and slung it over his shoulder.
“Did you follow me?”
“It wasn’t hard.” Aleo stepped over a bit of rubble. “You stick out like a sore thumb after sunset around here.”
“And I suppose you’ve adjusted completely to the night gens—a true oculus now?”
“It’s a different perspective. That’s all.”
Babieca moved to the side. It wasn’t quite a retreat. More of a shift. He wanted to put some distance between them and the buried horn. “When did you arrive?”
He surveyed the skeleton of the house. “Maybe I never left.”
“That’s cryptic even for you.”
Aleo smiled slightly. “I just got here.”
Did you hear the song? He couldn’t ask. He didn’t want to know. The horn was whispering things too, but he tried not to listen. Could the oculus hear? Their power resided in sight, or so he’d been told. Perhaps he could see through the stone. Babieca didn’t want to chance finding out whether this was possible.
Aleo looked at him. “I make you nervous.” Roldan would have turned the statement into a question, but this was not Roldan. He saw it now. It wasn’t just the black. His voice was different. His hands were still, his gaze steady. No flutter of uncertainty. No squinting as he searched for the right word. He could see the shadow of those familiar things, but they were little more than an afterimage. The man he’d known had wintered into the one before him, and Babieca felt strangely lost. They were strangers after all.
“What does it mean?”
“What?”
“Your new name.”
Aleo cocked his head. “Wild throw.”
“That’s appropriate. I suppose you have a die, now.”
He reached beneath his tunica, revealing an obsidian die with gold pips. Babieca touched it lightly and drew his hand away. “It’s like ice.”
“You’re surprised?”
“I guess not.”
“What were you expecting? A miracle? Your friend preserved in amber? That was never going to happen. You must have known.”
“You bear no resemblance to him.”
“Untrue.” Aleo took a step forward. “Would you be here, otherwise?”
He placed his hand on the dagger’s hilt. “I won’t help you. And I won’t serve her.”
Aleo looked at his hand. “Go ahead. A weapon like that deserves to be used.”
“This is your brilliant plan? Convincing me to kill you?”
“There’s a salamander behind you, and another watching from the rafters. Try it, and you’ll surely burn.”
Babieca drew the knife. “Show me.”
Aleo made a low, whistling sound. Babieca felt the heat on his bare legs. Twin tendrils of smoke were rising from a spot next to his feet. He thought he saw two coals, winking at him from the dark of the debris. Another cloud of smoke formed lazily in the topmost corner of the atrium, beneath the shattered roof.
“Are they dogs to you now? Pets to be controlled?”
Aleo shook his head. “They do as they please. But they like to be noticed. They’re a bit vain, in that sense. And they enjoy showing off. I wouldn’t test that, if I were you. A salamander’s purpose is to burn. If I dare them to, they’ll melt the very stones.”
Babieca started to say something. Then he put away the dagger. The smoke gradually diminished, though he could feel something invisible twining at his feet.
Aleo watched him sheathe the blade. “That’s wise.”
“I don’t need it.”
He struck Aleo. It was a glancing blow, but it had a definite effect. The oculus stumbled backward. He touched his face in astonishment. Blood flecked the corner of his mouth. Babieca felt the heat return. The salamanders were curious at this unexpected turn of the wheel. Aleo stared at him.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because you’re acting like a cock.”
He wiped his mouth. “You still think this is all about you. That I’ve done this solely to hurt you, as if you were at the center of it all. You’re a drunken bard with no prospects and no power. This could never be about you.”
Babieca stepped forward. He could feel himself redden and hoped that it wasn’t obvious in the dim light. “At least I’m not a traitor. You sold us out to kiss that woman’s ring. You think she’ll give you power, but she’s played you like a cheap cistrum. Maybe you see spirits now, but you’re blind to what’s in front of you.”
“And what’s that?”
“You can’t control them. He knew that. You’ll kill yourself trying, and that’s exactly what Latona wants. To watch the worlds burn.”
Aleo narrowed his eyes. “I can’t imagine where you get your information from. Purple scrolls and ridiculous stories.”
“Actually, your mother told me.”
He let that sink in for a moment. Aleo seemed on the verge of replying. Then he paled slightly. He seemed to look straight ahead for a moment, without seeing anything. Babieca felt the surprise go through him like a bolt.
“You—” He turned slightly. His voice, when it emerged, was barely a murmur. “You’ve seen her?”
“We had an illuminating conversation. Your name came up. Both names, in fact.”
“What did she say about me?”
“She said—” He watched Aleo’s face fall. He’d finally discovered what linked the oculus to the auditor. Their common longing. The triumph was bitter in his mouth. All of his anger melted away. “—that she misses you. That she’s always loved you. That it wasn’t your fault, and soon she’ll see you ag
ain.”
Aleo’s voice broke. “Is she safe?”
“I’d say so. She has an army of furs at her command.”
“She—” He frowned. Then it clicked into place. Slowly, as if he were half-asleep, Aleo sat upon a blackened timber. He said nothing for a long while. Then he laughed.
Babieca sat next to him. “I’m not sure what your plan is,” he said, “but we have plans of our own. We could use your help. It’s not too late for a change of perspective.”
Aleo shook his head. “I’ve already gone too far. I need to see it through. You may not believe it, but we’re on the same side.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“It’s the truth.” He looked at the floor. “You’re not a minor coin.”
The flush returned to his cheeks. “Heard that, did you?”
“Perhaps.”
Babieca shifted in place. “That’s what it feels like, most of the time. I can’t see spirits or build fabulous machines. I’m shite with a sword. But I know who I am. I’ve felt power at my fingertips. The glory of the old songs. All I have are my blisters and my pride, but I’m not afraid anymore. I’ll fight to keep this all from going up in flames.”
Prize of Night Page 13
