M. Scott - Rome - The Emperor's spy

Even that was burning. Flames lanced without warning through the smoke, spearing at their eyes. Sparks flew and lodged in their hair.

‘Math!’ Caradoc caught Math and drew him into the hollow of his body, hunching his shoulders round to keep him safe. They began a strange, shuffling run, dodging the falling debris, feeling forward with four hands, like a creature from the winter tales. The building goaded them, groaning and grinding, threatening to break apart under them, or over them, to carry them to death in fire and rubble.

Math had felt the floor lurch under his feet. Jumping sideways, he had felt his father follow, then brace and, with a lightness that defied his injuries, spin in mid-air, grabbing him by the waist and throwing him forward, and sideways, back the way he had come.

The beam had fallen to the place Math had been; the place his father now was. With sickening slowness, he heard unfragile wood smash into fragile bone and flesh.

‘Father!’ He groped outward, grabbing at wood and skin equally.

‘ Go! ’ The power in his father’s voice would have moved a tree from its rooting.

Math was not a tree. He was a son with an injured father. He crept forward. ‘Father, come with me.’

‘Math. Go to the ladder. I’ll follow.’

‘You can’t.’ Math was weeping. ‘I won’t leave you. We can go to Mother and the others together.’

There had been others, nameless brothers and sisters, he was sure. He had never spoken of them, nor heard them mentioned in his presence, but they had been the missing parts of his family, gaps that should have been filled, for as long as he could remember.

More than anything in the world, more than racing in Rome or being cherished by Nero, more than stealing gold or being with the horses, more than winning Pantera’s approval, in that moment Math wanted his family to be whole again.

‘Math, please, will you…’ His father’s voice had fallen away. Math turned his head, listening, and then he, too, had heard the miracle.

‘Pantera!’ He squirmed back towards the ladder. ‘He’ll help you. I’ll make him come up.’

‘Math, no-’

But he was already gone, and Pantera had done as he was bid, and gone up the ladder back into the fire to get his father, and all there was to do now, out on the cold meadow, with the blaze of the tavern lighting the whole sky, was to sit and wait and watch and listen to Ajax speaking to Hannah and pray with every part of his soul to the gods of sea and land and wind and forest that Pantera could bring out his father alive.

Hannah sat on the scorched grass and watched Math come back into himself from the place he had been. He was white and cold, so that the skin around the burns’ edges was blue.

She reached for him and found him stiff as wood. ‘You did well,’ she said. ‘He’ll be proud of you.’ She did not have to say who.

‘You’re peaceful,’ he said, as if that followed from what she had said. ‘But you’re alive.’ His face crumpled in a frown. ‘Father told Ajax that my mother found peace when she died. I heard him.’

‘Math…’ Hannah laid his hand down. Hesitantly, she leaned over and kissed his forehead. It tasted of soot and smoke and boyish sweat. She said, ‘When you live with peace, death seems not such a great thing, and not so far away. Like a leaf seen through thin ice, you could reach for it and take it easily.’

‘It’s not a bad thing?’

‘I don’t think so, no. Sometimes…’ She searched for words that she would not regret later. ‘Sometimes, it can seem like a gift. But it doesn’t do to seek it too early.’

He toyed with a tugged blade of grass, his eyes seeing something else. ‘But a warrior gives his life for his friend’s, so that his friend might not die.’

‘A warrior does that for honour,’ Ajax said, thinly, from Hannah’s other side. ‘Not because death is bad. Pantera’s been a warrior. He’ll bring Caradoc out alive if he can, even at the cost of his own life.’

‘Ajax!’ Hannah spun from the boy to the injured man. With consciousness had come pain. His face was grey, tinged to a bilious yellow around his eyes and mouth. She pulled back her hair and laid her ear to his sternum. His skin was warm, but not hot. She could hear the drum of his heart, stronger and more regular than it had been.

When she sat back, his eyes rested lightly on hers, questioning. He managed the ghost of a smile. ‘Will I live to see dawn?’

‘You should do. Whether you’ll drive or not remains to be seen.’ She lifted his left hand. ‘See if you can hold my finger with this hand… and this one… and then tell me if you can feel it when I pinch the finger ends…’

She tested the fingers of each hand to make sure he was able to feel and flex all of them. Across her head, to Math, Ajax said, ‘Drivers are indestructible.’

Math’s whole being was fixed on the fire. Hannah shook her head slowly. With a feigned lightness, she said, ‘That I doubt, but you’ll at least be able to hold the reins.’ She laid Ajax’s hands down on his lap. ‘I need to test the health of your mind. Can you tell me your name?’

She asked it without thinking: the question she always asked of men who had crossed the Lethe and returned again.

She saw him take a breath and let it out. ‘For tonight,’ he said, ‘I am Ajax, son of Demetrios of Athens.’

She felt her face freeze. ‘Will you name for me your parents? The ones for tonight?’

‘Hannah-’

He caught at her hand. She pulled it free. ‘Any names will do, as long as they’re consistent with who you claim to be.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Demetrios, my father, was a potter. My mother was the daughter of a horse trainer. Her name was Eurydike. She died two years ago.’

He forced open his eyes. He was angry, which was a new thing to see. ‘Must I speak of my cousins and uncles, or is that enough for you to believe my mind isn’t curdled?’

‘It’s enough.’

She had never been curt to him before. He grasped for her hand again, catching her one finger in the clumsiness of his burned palm. ‘Hannah…’

‘Don’t.’ She shook herself free. ‘I have never pried where my patients did not wish me to go.’

‘Am I only a patient? Still? You saw the bear last night.’ He was beyond tired and in a kind of pain she couldn’t begin to imagine, or he would never have said such a thing.

She laid a hand on his shoulder, where she thought it would hurt least. ‘You’ve cracked two ribs. You won’t drive a chariot for at least two months, but that should get you on board the ship for Alexandria. Once you get there, ask whoever you retain as the team’s physician to let you know when you’re fit.’

His eyes, which had drifted shut, flashed open. ‘I thought you’d come with us?’

‘Then you were wrong.’

‘But-’ He made himself sit upright. ‘If I lie, it’s for your safety.’

‘I know. I meant what I said. Your life is your own. I don’t want to know a name that will harm us both. It isn’t that.’

‘But you don’t want to return to Alexandria? Is the pain of old loss too great?’

‘It’s not that, either. I could return tomorrow if that were all that was keeping me away. The grief is old and long since ceased to hurt.’ That was a lie, but she spoke with a conviction that made it possible to believe otherwise.

‘Then why…?’ He started to reach for her a third time but let his hand fall. ‘Hannah, you’re a part of our team. We’re going to race for the emperor. We need you if we’re going to win.’

Hannah stared down at her hands, at the smears of old blood and new, at the burns and the cuts, at the miracle of their being whole, and not burned to raw stumps.