Paul Kearney - Corvus

“You are to be congratulated,” he said at last to Sertorius. “It’s not a time to be on the road.” He raised his voice slightly. “Polio.”

“Master?” The old steward was also staring at the women in the cart, his white beard quivering.

“We must find a space for these three fine fellows to lay their heads. Water for washing, food and wine – whatever they want. Have the cook run something up.”

“How about a plump little slave girl?” Bosca leered.

Karnos looked at him. “Centurion?”

“Yes, Speaker.”

His eyes were still fixed on Bosca. “I want four men to stand guard over our guests here. Make sure they do not wander round my house and lose themselves.”

“Yes, Speaker.”

“Now listen here, Karnos -” Sertorius exclaimed.

“Ah, I have it. Grania, show these gentlemen to the grain store. You will forgive me, my friends, but I am a little short on space.” Karnos jerked his head to one side and the spearmen clustered around Sertorius, Adurnos and Bosca. The slim slave girl led the way.

“Phaestus – you tell him!” Sertorius shouted over his shoulder. “You’d be dead were it not for me!” The spearmen shoved him along in Grania’s wake with the relish of angry men.

Karnos was still staring at Rictus’s brutalised family. “Phobos,” he seethed under his breath. He and Polio looked at one another.

“We couldn’t stop them,” Philemos said miserably. Karnos looked at him with contempt, then shook his head and touched Rian gently on the arm.

“Lady, you are in my house now, and here I swear no man shall touch you.”

Rian bent her head and began to sob silently.

The slaves went about their business in unaccustomed silence. They had rarely seen their master in such a mood. He was not shouting, ranting or throwing winecups at the walls, as they had seen him do many a time on returning from the Amphion. He was not drunk, nor was he impatiently shouting orders as was his wont.

He sat in his chair before the fire of the main hall and stared into the flames with unblinking eyes as though he were waiting for something to appear there. The long room was almost in darkness, a few single-wicked lamps glowing in the corners. His chlamys lay on the floor at his feet, and no slave had yet dared approach to pick it up.

It was Polio who broke his dark reverie.

“Master, the lady Kassia is here.”

“What? Fuck!”

“Shall I show her in?”

Karnos stared into the fire again. He had lost weight, and as the flesh had melted from his face so the bones beneath had become more prominent. He was no longer the florid fat man he had been before Afteni..

Polio cleared his throat. “I believe Kassander sent her. She has two servants with her, and baskets of linens.”

Karnos nodded. “That’s Kassander’s way. I was going to send for a carnifex to look at them, but the last thing they need is another fucking man pawing -” He clenched his teeth shut on the words. “Let them in, Polio.”

Before Polio could move away, Karnos set a hand upon the older man’s fingers and gripped them.

“Thank you,” he said.

Polio raised his eyebrows slightly. “You do not need to thank me for a thing, master.”

“Perhaps I will before this is done. What about Phaestus and the boy?”

“They are sleeping.”

“Let them sleep then. And send in that bloody woman.”

He bent and tossed another log on the fire. Pine wood, hewn from the forests north of the Mithos River. The resin in the timber oozed and spat and flared up in little knots of white fury.

“Sitting in the dark?” Kassia’s voice said behind him.

“The dark seems best, for now.”

She bent and retrieved his cloak from the floor. “Kassander told me, said I might be needed here. I brought two good women. One’s a midwife. They will look after them.”

Karnos nodded.

“What are you going to do with them?”

He looked up, and laughed. “What would you have me do? They were brought here because they are the family of a dead man. Their suffering has no significance, no sense to it.”

“Most suffering doesn’t.”

Karnos clenched one fist in another. “What a filthy world we live in, Kassia.”

She sat in the chair across from him, picking at the threads of his chlamys, teasing out the wool. “There are a thousand women like them in the city.”

“I am responsible for this, Kassia. Me.” He stood up, began pacing the room, in and out of the dark and the firelight and the lamplight, up and down like something caged.

“I encouraged Phaestus to do this thing. It was his idea, but I wrote, urging him on. Get them, I said. Bring them here. We will hold this over the great Rictus’s head and cleave him from Corvus. I was so fucking clever about it. My seal on a scroll of paper is what brought them to this.”

Kassia stared at her busy fingers picking the wool in her lap. “I see.”

“It is one thing to face a man on a battlefield, or on the floor of the Empirion for that matter. But this is pure poison, even had it worked.”

“You love your city, Karnos,” Kassia said simply. “You would do anything that would help preserve it.”

“You have not seen them, or the leering bastards that brought them here. I would have killed those animals on the spot, except I am no better. It would not be justice, unless I had the same done to me – I am complicit.” “You did not know this would happen, Karnos.”

“A man’s family, Kassia.”

“Do they know he is dead?”

“What? No – not yet. I must tell them, I suppose.”

“Not tonight, for Antimone’s sake. They have been through enough.”

“You are right not to marry me. I am not fit for a decent woman.”

She stood up and blocked his path, took him by the arms as he tried to sidestep her. “If that were so I would not be here, and this would not be tearing you up the way it is. You made a mistake, Karnos. But you are leader of a great city in desperate times, making a hundred decisions a day. You will be wrong some of the time, and because you have power in your hands, your mistakes will bring misfortune and misery to people. That is the nature of your position.”

Karnos stared at her and managed a strangled laugh. “By God, Kassia, you can be a cold-blooded bitch when you want to be.”

She slapped him across the face, eyes blazing. “You are Speaker of Machran. You do not have the time to indulge your guilt. The thing is done. That’s all there is to it.”

He glared at her, and for a moment they measured up to one another in a crackling silence. She lifted her hand again and touched the reddening welt on his face.

“Kassander is right – we should marry and get it over with. Then we could make up like married people do.”

The fire in his eyes smouldered. He took her by the upper arms and kissed her, hard enough to blush her lips into a bruised rose.

“I am a big-bellied slave-dealer with a streak of drama running through me. At heart I am still only that. I mind these things. I cannot play the great man and put them to one side.”

“Machran is lucky to have you.”

“I wish I could believe that.” He kissed her again, gently this time, then turned and faced the fire, watching the smoke rise up to be sucked out of the slats in the roof. The moonlight was red outside, the smoke taking colour from it as it left the house.

“Will you go to Rictus’s wife in the morning Kassia? Tell her about her husband. I cannot do that. Maybe I am Speaker of Machran, but I cannot stand in front of that wretched woman with such news.”

She nodded. “I will.”

“And Kassia, tell her that she is safe here. She can come or go as she pleases.”