Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1) (33 page)

"My name is Jason Nemon Filius, son unacknowledged of the Emperor Demetrius the Fifth, and this is the story of my life. More is the pity."

He paused, as if uncertain of how to begin. “It is best to start with my great grandfather, the Emperor Aegeus the Sixth. He dominated the Empire for sixty years and his family for just as long. He outlived all his sons, and spent his grandsons in games of war and politics until on his death only one: Demetrius. Demetrius had been married off by his grandfather for political reasons but he had not liked it, and his marriage bed was cold and childless as a result.

“Demetrius succeeded to the throne, as Demetrius the Fifth, and ruled for a number of years still childless. There were grave fears - never spoken openly, but present for all that - of what would befall the state should the line of Aegea die out: the Empire has never been ruled by anyone not of the blood. Foolishness. Any man of wit and sound mind could rule as well my sorry kin.” Tullia pursed her lips a little at that, but said nothing.

“If you will beg a lowly freedman's pardon, your highness, you do not have the look I would expect of a republican,” Michael said. “Low, coarse fellows they are; with the gall to blame upon their betters the misfortunes they have brought upon their own heads through idleness and license. You seem, forgive me, too handsome to be a part of such a disreputable mob of malcontents.” In Corona, where deference, tradition and loyalty where bone deep, the authorities tended to take a dim view of vulgar madmen spreading seditious doctrine, and the lucky ones got away with a good whipping. The unfortunate ones got sent to arena, where in Michael’s experience they rarely made a good showing of themselves. He remembered one man had tried to convince Michael to rebel, to 'throw off the shackles of your oppression, brother, and stand up tall and proud as a free man'. Michael had not appreciated the jibe at his height any more than he had appreciated being called 'brother' by some bearded imbecile of a layabout with
liberty and justice
written across his forehead. He had had a splendid brother, slain by treachery, and for this lout to compare himself to Felix... Michael had made sport of his death, perhaps too much sport, and perhaps he had enjoyed the killing a little too much.

A smile flitted across Jason's lips. “Thank you, for the compliment to my looks. But, whatever may be the case in the provinces I can assure you that in Eternal Pantheia there is more to the political discourse than the beautiful people versus the ill-favoured.”

“Only among the fools who count themselves wise,” Gideon said. “The truly intelligent know that there is only duty, Empire and the Divine Empress and all the other nonsense that some dignify with the name philosophy signifies precisely nothing.”

“The rhetoric of tyranny,” Jason said. “In what world does having a great ancestor qualify one to lead a nation of many multitudes?”

"In every world where honour yet holds sway," Michael said. It was the natural state of man to acknowledge one ruler, and some men as superior to others by right of birth, mirroring the hierarchy of the world in which the gods stood high over their creations. Anything else was anarchy, and blasphemy to boot. That a prince such as Jason could betray his class in such a way... Michael’s mind could barely conceive of it. Something had gone very wrong in this young man’s upbringing.

"In any case, my father's marriage was very unhappy," Jason said. "Or so I have been told after the fact, for I was in no great position to observe it firsthand."

"You have heard it straight," Gideon said. "The Princess Consort was of noble birth, and not unpleasing from an aesthetic stand-point; but the match was made of politics not love, and the Prince Imperial's eye wandered constantly. As, it transpired,  did his hands and sundry other things besides."

"Self-evidently," Jason said. "And so, while my father's marriage remained cold and barren, I was placed by my mother at the palace gates with a note declaring me the Emperor's natural son and entrusting me to his care and protection."

The prince closed his eyes for a moment, and freed from the distraction of those arresting orbs, Michael was free to observe the princely features in greater detail. They were soft, feminine almost in some respects, and there was a sense of lithe fragility about His Highness as though he might at any moment shatter like a beautiful vase dropped by a careless child. And yet it seemed that he had passed through so much already and yet lived, so the impression was surely a misleading one, emotionally speaking at least. Physically Michael was confident he could have snapped the thin young man in half with his bare hands if he could only get past Filia Tullia first.

"My mother, whoever she was, can have known my father only briefly or she would not have expected so much of him," continued Jason. "He never acknowledged me as his son, by any word or deed. Whenever I met him he treated me worse than his slaves. I was taken into the palace to be raised worse than the child of the lowest drudge, denied even a name that is the birthright of the poorest farmhand's son."

"I cannot speak for the Prince Imperial's intent, but political considerations would have prevented him taking an active role in your upbringing even had he wished it," Gideon said. "The first and foremost duty of any prince is to beget an heir, and the fact that he had been neglecting that duty in favour of base amusements caused a terrific scandal at the time. His Majesty was able to wrangle a divorce out of it, but when he married a younger wife he had no choice but to get her with child at the earliest opportunity. To have acknowledged you, even to have associated with you, would have been difficult verging upon impossible."

"A very plausible excuse, perhaps," Jason said. "But I think a far simpler explanation is that he never cared a wit for me or for my mother, which is why he was happy to leave his child in the care of his slaves and his freedmen. Not once in my life was I allowed to forget what I was: a shame, an embarrassment, an unwelcome complication. Courtiers and servants alike ignored me, guards would cuff me and drive me away whenever I tried to go where I was not wanted. The other children who inhabit the lower echelons of the palace were given free rein to mock and beat me. And when the princes, the Emperor's
legitimate
sons were born, they liked nothing better than making my life miserable. It was only my half sister who did not behave completely wretchedly towards me.

"And when I escaped, when I thought that I had found my place amongst people who cared for me and accepted me for who I was and not for what I was, I was no sooner settled there then I was snatched away by my father's men and dragged back to the places of my misery and torment, and again and again and every time I tried to leave that wretched place behind."

"Your Highness, that is not so," Tullia said. "His Majesty knew that only in the palace could you be kept safe. Out in the city you would have been vulnerable to the predations of enemies."

"Whose enemies, mine or his?" Jason demanded. "He never feared for my safety, only that his opponents might seek to use his bastard son against him. All of a piece with the utter selfishness of that worm."

"If your father had not cared for you, Highness, he would not have entrusted you into my care," Tullia said.

"Indeed," Gideon said. "After all, to commend someone into the protection of a mage of the Black is no small thing."

Tullia nodded in acknowledgement, as Michael said, "The Black, my lord?"

"One of the orders that make up the Imperial Corps of Mages, and of the orders the most highly skilled," Gideon said. "Children who show a talent for magic are taken in by the palace and tested. Those who show an aptitude for combat are then entered into one of the four battle orders: the Red, Blue, Green or Black. The Black are bodyguards, the protect the Prince Imperial, his family and other notable dignitaries. Mages of that order are amongst the most highly skilled warriors in the empire. The Prince Imperial would not assign one to protect you, unless he cared for you."

"I can think of many other reasons, not least the fact that he was dying," Jason said. "Perhaps he lost his mind in his final hours, or perhaps he simply wished to try and appease the gods with a final act of virtue. A fool's hope, the gods are too wise to be fooled by such trickery."

"The gods are merciful," Michael said. "They are fair, and they will judge the wicked, but they are forgiving. That is why we mortals must also strive to forgive the insults offered to us."

Jason snorted. "You may wish to believe that, but I am not inclined. Indeed the prospect horrifies me, if there was more justice and less forgiveness the world might be a better place."

Says he who is not in danger of being judged,
Michael thought, but did not say so aloud; for Jason was a prince and to contradict him so was not Michael's place.

"When my father died, his eldest legitimate son inherited the throne as Demodocus the Second," Jason went on. "But he is a fool who does not notice Antiochus and Romana plotting against him though they have all the subtlety of angry hippopotami, and so while Demodocus adorns his wife with more diamonds every day Antiochus and Romana gather their power; I think it may come to civil war between the two of them once either makes their play for the throne."

Gideon leaned forward. "Of the two, which would you say was the more dangerous?"

"Antiochus, without a doubt," Jason said. "Romana is a dreamer, and her ambitions are too tempered by kindness and lofty principles for her to be as ruthless as she would need to be to take the throne. Antiochus, on the other hand, is as hard and cruel a man as any I have ever met. His freedmen have put it into his head that I am a threat to the throne. So he had me accused of the forbidden practice of sorcery; I was forced to flee the city one step ahead of an arrest warrant."

"A view not entirely without merit," Gideon said. "Aeneas, Aegea's son and the first Prince Imperial, was himself of bastard birth; yet as the son of their beloved Aegea the legions bore him on their shoulders to the throne and those who tried to prevent his accession were cast into rootless exile. Doubtless some scholar has reminded Prince Antiochus of the venerable precedent."

Jason snorted in disbelief, spreading his arms out to encompass the surround. "Do you see an army ranged to sweep me into power? Shall I stamp my foot to raise the provinces in arms to enforce my claim? I was raised by slaves and servants, prostitutes, crossdressers and priests of small faiths. What power have I, to defy an Emperor lawfully enthroned and acclaimed upon that seat by soldiers, patricians and equestrians alike? To stand against the council and the comitia, the patricians and the proconsuls, against Lord Manzikes and all his host? Will you four make me Emperor?"

"We might attempt it, Your Highness, but I fear you have given little evidence you would govern the Empire well," Michael said.

Jason rolled his eyes. "I was not actually asking a real...oh never mind. Heavens preserve us. At any rate, putting such delusions to one side, that is how I came to be on the road with only Tullia for company. One night Silwa came to me in a dream and asked me to come here. She told me of the urgency of the situation, and I agreed."

"Why," Amy said. "Doesn't seem like you've much reason to love this country."

"This country?" Jason smiled wanly. "Indeed, I would not raise a hand to save this rotting travesty of a nation from it's well deserved end."

"Then why are you here?" Gideon asked.

Jason's smile acquired a little more life. "For prostitutes, crossdressers, and priests of small religions. For all those who will suffer undeservedly if Quirian's plans come to fruition. That is the only reason I would come here, for there is no other good reason to take up arms."

"Is that so?" Gideon said. "I will not deny that protecting others is a motive not ignoble, but the only motive?"

"All the others are but the vainglories which bloodthirsty killers use to justify their actions, the shields by which savages can glory in their savagery," Jason flashed a grim smile in Gideon's direction. "Do you not find it so, Butcher of Oretar?"

"Your Highness," Michael murmured. "That is the second time you have insulted Lord Gideon so, as his servant I must insist that there is no third occasion."

Tullia's eyes hardened. "Some might see a veiled threat there, and take offence."

"Would it offend you less if the threat were more explicit, Filia?"

"It is all right, Michael," Gideon said.

"But my lord-"

"I have been called that name many times, by better men than Jason Nemon Filius," Gideon said. "I had it flung in my face often by my brother's friends; I endured it then and I shall endure it now."

"Yes, because you are the one labouring beneath misfortune with that name, not all of those you slaughtered to acquire the name," Jason said. "Surely you do not deny you thoroughly earned it?"

"I did my duty, to Throne and Empire," Gideon said. "I served the Empire as faithfully as I could, which has been and will always been my only aim. The war was won, the Empire was preserved, that is all that matters."

"So the morality of the actions taken in it, they are irrelevant?" Jason asked.

"What do you wish me to say?" Gideon said. "That they are relevant, that you may condemn me for contravening them, or that they are not that you may castigate my opinions? I will not deny it was the wrong war: the publicani, those fat innkeepers who thought that a heavy purse entitled them to an equal share in the governance of the realm alongside names reaching back eight centuries, had no right to pervert Aegea's dream into a means of lining their pockets. They had no right to treat the army, the embodiment of the Empire's might and valour, like some hireling pack of mercenary dogs. That is why, when the war was over, I went back to Eternal Pantheia and I dragged those snivelling publicans out into Eternal Square and I cut off their heads for treason. That is why no one raised voice or hand against me when I did so; that is why for the only time in my life the soldiers cheered me on as I avenged the insult to their tarnished honour. But in between times the war had been started and it had to be won, for the sake of our prestige and our standing in the world. And so I did what had to be done to ensure that victory.