Anthony Riches - The Emperor's Knives

‘Forgive my ostentation. A decade ago good honest marble would have sufficed for my backside, but these days I find the stiffness in my joints eased a little by a touch of luxury. I thought we might best speak out here in the garden, given that walls frequently hear more than would appear possible, even, I suspect, in my house.’ Sigilis played his bleak stare over each of them, his eyes assessing every man in turn before moving on. ‘You bring a large party with you, Tribune, larger than I expected, and yet you provide me with some small distraction by doing so. If I might speculate as to the origins of your people …?’

Scaurus smiled back at him.

‘By all means, Senator. We must present something of a mixed bag.’

‘Indeed you do, although some of you are easier to read than others.’ He looked at the tribune. ‘You, of course, are already known to me, Rutilius Scaurus. I remember your father well, and the disappointment we all felt when he was obliged to take his own life after being landed with the blame for that shabby little affair on the other side of the Rhenus. I am, of course, on excellent terms with your sponsor …’ He smiled thinly. ‘I find it ironic that his fortunes should be recovering so strongly with the praetorian prefect’s death, while my own seem to be in a terminal decline, but I can’t hold it against the man. He tells me that you’ve grown no less headstrong for your years of service. He also tells me that you’ve been dabbling in politics of late?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘Not me, Senator, I’ll leave that to men with more ability and stronger stomachs than mine.’

Sigilis raised an eyebrow.

‘So it wasn’t you that marched ten boxes of gold into the palace and got the praetorian prefect murdered by the emperor a few nights ago?’

The younger man shrugged, his face commendably impassive.

‘I was no more than a small part of that night’s events, Senator. Most of the hard work was done by your colleague Clodius Albinus, in league with the emperor’s freedman Cleander.’

Sigilis chuckled mirthlessly.

‘How very self-effacing of you. You carried a cargo of gold, proving the praetorian prefect’s ambitions to take the throne all the way from the northern frontier … Where was it again?’

‘Britannia, Senator.’

‘Yes, all the way from Britannia, along, I’m reliably informed, with the lost eagle of the Sixth Legion, which you then used to tip Commodus over the edge to murder his own praetorian guard commander. Somewhat to the amazement of the hapless Clodius Albinus, I would imagine, and much to the delight of that conniving snake Cleander.’

Scaurus returned his level gaze in silence, until the senator nodded slowly.

‘Just as your sponsor intimated to me. You’re shot through with granite, aren’t you Tribune, and a dangerous man to cross for all of your modesty and self-effacement?’

He turned his stare to the younger man sitting next to Scaurus.

‘And what have we here? Early twenties, Roman in appearance, and muscled like a man used to carrying the weight of weapons and armour on a routine basis. I did my time in the service, and, believe it or not, I once had much the same build. You’re fresh from battle too, if appearances are any indication, unless of course you did that shaving …’ He raised a hand to point at the scar across the bridge of Marcus’s nose. ‘It looks too light to have been a sword. A spear, perhaps?’

Marcus tipped his head in recognition.

‘Yes, Senator. I didn’t get my head out the way fast enough.’

Sigilis pursed his lips.

‘You were still lucky, that’s a scratch compared with some of the facial wounds I saw serving as a tribune with the Thirtieth Legion in Caesarea. Well, scar or no scar, you remind me in your manner of a man I used to know, a highly respected fellow senator who was clearly too well thought of to survive under this regime. He died a good three years ago, and his entire family with him, dragged from their beds at night and carried away to a fate the thought of which makes me shudder. Only the older son remained unaccounted for, or so the informed gossip from the palace had it. He had been serving with the praetorian guard as a centurion, but vanished only days before his father was arrested and was last seen heading for Ostia with orders to take ship on a courier mission — or at least that was the story that got him out of the praetorian fortress.’

He locked gazes with the centurion.

‘Your name, young man?’

The Roman rose from his seat and bowed.

‘I am known as Marcus Tribulus Corvus, Senator, Centurion, First Tungrian Cohort, but I am indeed the fugitive son of your friend Appius Valerius Aquila. You now hold my life, and that of my family, in your hands.’

Sigilis smiled back at him with apparent genuine pleasure.

‘Rest assured that your secret is safe with me. It is indeed an honour to make your acquaintance, Marcus Valerius Aquila. The letters my son wrote before he died in Dacia made generous mention of you, although he was clever enough to do so in veiled terms that he knew only I would understand. And now you have returned to Rome with the fire of revenge bright in your eyes, even though you have no idea where to find the men upon whom you would visit your violence?’

The young Roman’s tone hardened, no longer deferring to the status of the man to whom his words were directed.

‘I will find them, Senator, with or without the help your son told me you would be able to offer. And when I find them, I fully intend to subject them to the same indignities my father, my mother, my brother and my sisters suffered before they died.’

Sigilis sat back and stared at him with grim amusement.

‘That’s more like the way I’d expect a man of your class to express himself, under the circumstances. So, a tribune with a propensity for righting old wrongs, and a centurion set on vengeance for his dead family. That would be a combination to strike fear into the men responsible for the destruction of your family, I’d say, if they were to find out that they were being hunted. And what sort of supporting cast do we have for this pair of furies?’

He looked across the remaining members of the party with an expression turned bleak again, locking gazes with each man briefly before speaking.

‘Two more soldiers, officers to judge from their apparent confidence, both scarred and both with the look of killers.’ He smiled grimly at Julius and Dubnus. ‘Some men find themselves unable to kill, even when their lives are at risk in battle, and others kill but are for the most part unchanged by the experience, apart from the inevitable nightmares and regrets that will trouble them until they come to terms with the fact. And there is a third type of man, gentlemen, men whose eyes lose just a hint of what they were before once they have stood toe to toe with other men and taken their lives, while also gaining something else that’s impossible to define. I saw battle more than once with the Thirtieth, and I saw sleepy farm boys become executioners in the space of one swift engagement, once they’d undergone their blood initiation. Their eyes were just as yours are now, windows on souls with some small part torn away and replaced with something else, no more evil than they were before, just with a fraction of their humanity excised. They scared me more than the enemy we were fighting, if I’m honest with you …’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Which was the point at which I realised I probably wasn’t fitted to military service.’

The senator laughed grimly, shaking his head and turning his attention to the remainder of the party.

‘And a trio of barbarians, each of you bigger and uglier than the last. Now that isn’t something a man sees every day, not without chains and collars at any rate. You, with your hair worn in a topknot, you are a German I presume?’