Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (47 page)

“I don’t believe you,” she said, but he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. “He would never have done anything so cruel.”

“I was there, Romilia! I was a junior tribune on my first campaign, just like Marcus is now. I saw them run, I saw your father pronounce his judgment, and I saw them beaten into bloody, lifeless pulp by the fists of their fellows. It may have been cruel, but your grandfather was absolutely right to order it, because I can tell you that there were three or four other cohorts damn near to running themselves, and if they had, the Great Orc’s war boars would have trampled us all into the mud and eaten our bodies afterward. And the only reason they didn’t run is because our centurions were screaming at them, shouting at them, whipping them, and above all, promising that running might save them from the orcs, but it wouldn’t save them from the wrath of your grandfather!”

Romilia didn’t answer. Nor did she look at him. She just stared at her hands, until the tears running down her face began to drip from her chin and onto her folded hands. “I suppose you’re right. It’s just so awful,” she finally said. “It’s so cruel. I don’t know how you can stand it. And I wish you hadn’t permitted Marcus to follow in your footsteps.”

As it always had before, he found his anger washed away by her tears. He stepped forward to cradle her head in his left arm, and he dried her cheeks with the back of his right hand. “The world is cruel, my dear. You have a soft and merciful heart, and I am glad of that, but we live in a fallen world, and there is no room for mercy in the legions. That is why I give thanks, almost every night, that the Almighty is merciful as well as just. If man’s justice is colder and harder than steel, I fear to even imagine what divine justice would be like.”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “This must just be killing Julia.”

“She looked like an old woman when I saw her two days ago. Magnus hadn’t told her the whole story then, but she must know by now. He’s more than half-mad with grief himself.”

“You saw them already?”

“The first thing I did upon arriving here was to deliver Fortex’s bones to them. Saturnius came with me to pay his respects.”

“Did Magnus know the truth? About Fortex’s death?”

“I told him, fortunately before Julia arrived. It was ugly. I didn’t expect him to thank me, but my idiot brother actually struck me. Can you believe that? In front of my fascitors, no less.”

“Oh, no,” she gasped, alarmed. “You didn’t have him arrested, did you?”

“Of course not! Do you think me mad? That wouldn’t have been justice—it would have been pure sadism. He was out of his mind with grief. I ordered them to forget it ever happened.”

She put her arms around his waist and pressed her head against his chest.

He could feel her shaking as she cried. He would have liked to have said something to comfort her but, considering how his previous attempts had gone, decided to simply hold his tongue. A few moments later, she dried her eyes on his tunic and pushed back from him.

“Never mind what I say when I’m angry with you, Corvus. You’re a good man, you are. I know you would have saved Gaius Valerius if it was possible. I don’t understand these things. I don’t even want to think about them. But someone has to, and I’m glad it’s someone like you rather than the likes of Patronus or Centho.”

“Damned by faint praise indeed.” He stroked her hair. “I’m sorry. It’s going to be hard on you, I know. Don’t blame Julia if she doesn’t want to see you or speak to you for some time. The wound is still raw, and it isn’t going to heal anytime soon, if ever.”

“Poor Sextus. He looked up to Fortex so. I hope this won’t cause too much of a rift between him and Marcus when Marcus returns home.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that anytime soon,” Corvus told her. “I don’t like the reports I’m hearing from the provinces. If we don’t put down the Cynothii quickly next spring, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rebellion spreads to two or three more provinces by mid-summer. I’ve even heard that there are some unpleasant rumblings among some of the allies, and that would be a real nightmare.”

Corvus heard a polite cough behind him and turned around. Nicenus stood in the doorway with Torquatus at his side. The majordomus looked a little embarrassed, but he could hardly be expected to have denied entry to the ruler of the city.

“My lord consul, my lady, I apologize for disturbing you, but the Consul Civitas assured me it was urgent.”

“Of course, Nicenus,” Corvus assured him as he stepped adroitly away from his wife. “Good morning, Titus Manlius. This is an unexpected honor. What is it?”

Torquatus entered. He was neither tall nor short, and his close-cropped hair had mostly receded, but he carried such an air of unconscious power that he seemed to fill the room. His features were thick and rounded, and this morning, they were weighed down with obvious worry.

“I’m sorry for the intrusion, Lady Valeria, but there has been murder, concerning which I very much need to consult with your husband.”

“Think nothing of it, my lord Manlius,” she assured him. “But since when is murder a matter for the consuls? Isn’t there a quastor available?”

Torquatus glanced at Corvus, then grimly shook his head. “This is no matter for quastors, Lady Valeria. Six princes of the Church were murdered while in conclave at the Sanctal palace last night. Including, I am deeply distressed to report, both of the leading candidates to replace the Sanctified Father.”

“There is something exceedingly troubling about this,” Torquatus commented as the two men took in the full extent of the gory devastation that surrounded them in the chapel. “I’ve seen murders, and I’ve seen the aftermath of some reasonably hard-fought battles, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like this before. And certainly never anywhere near here!”

The two consuls were surrounded by a small army of fascitors as well as guards from both the Manlian and Valerian households and a squad of armored Michaeline priests. Six Sanctal guards stood watch at the door. They could hardly have been safer were they ensconced in the heart of a stone-walled castra, surrounded by two legions.

And yet Corvus felt a cold frisson of terror run up his spine as he looked at the dead bodies of the once-powerful churchmen sprawled in a variety of impossible poses around the high-ceilinged chamber. Two had their throats torn out, and three had been disemboweled as if by the claws of an enormous feline. Their flesh looked as if it had been torn by teeth that were pointed, though not necessarily sharp. It was a tableau out of a mad butcher’s Hell.

“No man did this.” Torquatus turned to a pair of gold-cloaked Michaelines, who were examining a large pool of blood that appeared to have been forcibly liberated from the body of Carvilius Noctua, the less likely of the two main contestants for the Ivory Throne. “A demon—or demons—wouldn’t you say?”

The warrior priest, whose scarred face made Corvus think the man had probably seen as many battles as he had himself, shook his head. “I would not. There is no indication of any demonic activity here, my lord consul. Not in the material sense, at any rate. The wounds may not be consistent with conventional bladed weaponry, but neither is there any of the spiritual pollution that a demon capable of manifesting physically and wreaking such havoc would leave behind.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?” Torquatus demanded.

“As sure as my lord consul is confident that these men were neither struck down by arrows nor run through with swords. However, there is something more. Look here. These smears of blood look convincingly ritualistic. They’re complicated, and there is an amount of detail to the patterns. To the uneducated eye, they would appear to be indicative of something esoteric at work. But they’re almost entirely without meaning.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Corvus’s colleague demanded. “You Michaelines aren’t magicians. By the blood of Unctios, how would you know it’s not some sort of occult inscription used for a demonic summoning or something?”

The priest blinked slowly and did not respond right away, clearly unimpressed by Torquatus’s consular status. “Our training is comprehensive, my lord consul. In order to counteract the various magicks of our enemies in the field, it is necessary for us to be familiar with them. The fact that we refuse to soil our souls with the practice of their dark arts should not be taken as ignorance of them.”

“Then what are you suggesting, sir?” Corvus broke in before Torquatus could further annoy the Michaeline.

“It is not a suggestion, my lord consul. At this point, it is at most only a suspicion. My thought is that it is no secret to anyone that this republic brooks no traffic in the esoteric arts. Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that whoever did this would have believed that the quastors investigating the murders would think these false symbols are real. They can’t have anticipated that the consuls would be involved or turn to our order for assistance. Nor would they necessarily have known the full extent of our knowledge of the occult.”

“A false trail, then,” Corvus nodded. It made an amount of sense. Whoever did this couldn’t have thought it would go uninvestigated, so an amount of misdirection would be wise. “Orcs, do you think? Or kobolds.”

The Michaeline smiled approvingly. “You are on the right track, Lord Consul Valerius, but I should guess neither. You’ve fought orcs before, I believe, so I draw your attention to the observation that none of these men has been vivisected.”

“Not orcs, then.” The priest was right, Corvus realized. Orcs, especially those eschewing the use of conventional arms, had often been known to rip a man’s limbs off his body. But each of the dead men were more or less whole. Also, when he looked more closely at the body of the nearest celestine, he could see that the width of the teeth marks on his face and chest were much too close together to have been left behind by the jaws of an orc. And now that he was on that train of thought, he could also see that the wounds were also much too small to have been inflicted by an orc’s massive tusks. “Not kobolds either?”

“No, my lord consul. Kobold teeth are small and somewhat needle-like. These marks were left by teeth that were thicker and more jagged. See how the edges of the wounds are torn and crushed rather than slashed?”

“Goblins,” Torquatus interjected. “Nasty creatures indeed. But how would a pack of goblins get into the palace? Or into Amorr, for that matter? It’s not as if they’re permitted residence here.

“You have it, my lord consul. I am confident it was goblins. But I see you are not one for the games. The Greens always keep quite a few of them in their stables, mostly as minor attractions between the major bouts. I saw some in the arena just a few months ago myself—they were pitted against dwarves. The poor creatures didn’t last long, but I should think two or three would have been more than a match for a few unarmed old men.”

“That’s as may be, but even if the priest here is correct, who is to say that there wasn’t some sorcery involved in disguising them?” Torquatus asked. “It’s not as if one could simply march a pack of goblins through the streets and into the palace without attracting attention.” He looked around the room in disgust. “And in any event, I’m not convinced there wasn’t something seriously amiss here. I can’t imagine evil has penetrated so deeply into the Church hierarchy that this many celestines were involved in some filthy practice. Could it be that there was a secret coven active within the Conclave and what we’re seeing here is the consequence of some black magick gone awry? Evil ever delights in feeding upon evil.”

“We can search the city for goblins, beginning with the stables,” Corvus suggested. “But how do you propose determining if there was sorcery at work here if the Michaelines don’t see it?”

Torquatus snorted bitterly. “I suppose it would be easier if over the years we hadn’t executed everyone likely to know anything about it. There must be a few secret practitioners hidden away somewhere in the city, though. There always are. We can have the quastors make inquiries, and I’m sure the Michaelines must have a few inquisitors who would be helpful.”

“No, that’s not necessary,” Corvus told his colleague as a thought occurred to him. “We don’t need to dig for any hidden mages, not when there are two highly skilled sorcerers who practice their arts openly. They don’t practice them here, of course, but they will almost certainly have the knowledge we need. And if they don’t, I can’t think who would.”

“Sorcerers, here in Amorr?” Torquatus looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “What are you talking about?”

“Take some men with you to the elven ambassador’s residence,” Corvus had already turned to Caius Vecellius. “Give the ambassador our regards, and inform him his presence is requested at the Sanctal Palace by the Consul Civitas and the Consul Aquilae. Escort him here and answer his questions, but don’t tell him about the murders. Just tell him we have urgent need of his esoteric expertise and ask that he come without delay.”

The captain of his fascitors saluted, divided his squad with two simple gestures, and departed hastily with five men at his heels.

Corvus looked at Torquatus and shrugged. “The ambassador is surely of noble elven blood, and from what my son tells me, most of Elebrion’s aristocracy are far more learned in their various witcheries than any human could hope to be.”