Broken Chariots Read online

  “What are we doing here, then?” Belbus said to her.

  Suddenly, they were talking just the two of them.

  “I don’t know. I think this might have been a fool’s errand.”

  “We clearly don’t have anything he needs, or even wants.”

  Pistrus’ eyes were darting back and forth between them like they would tracing blows at an even match in the Colosseum.

  When at last he grew tired of the absurdity, he said, “Enough!”

  Belbus and Ursa turned to him, faces blank.

  Then Belbus snapped his fingers. “There was that one thing...”

  Ursa pretended to catch on. “Oh, right. That one thing.”

  “What one thing?” Pistrus said, through gritted teeth. They were wasting his time and he wasn’t having any of it.

  Belbus didn’t blink. “Your daughter.”

  All the air went out of the room.

  Pistrus stared at him with the blood draining from his face. “What do you know about my daughter?”

  Ursa took the reins. “We know she’s a little cutie. Agnina, right? We know she’s staying with her mother in the countryside. We know her mother has lax security and an even more negligent approach to her parenting.”

  “You know what she’s like, Pistrus,” the bookie said, showing his cup to the host. “She doesn’t have a problem with breakfast wine. Doesn’t even mix it with water.”

  “I hear she mixes it with other stuff,” Ursa said, like she’d overheard a juicy bit of gossip at the market.

  The charioteer’s gaze drifted lazily to her as if he’d been sedated. Everything was swimming around him now, moving slow. His feet stuck in quicksand and him trying to move but unable to. Stuck fast. The situation out of his hands before he even realised there was one.

  “I hear she breaks open a few of these,” Belbus said, producing an opium tablet from his pouch. “Sprinkles it right on in there. Gets herself nice and glassy-eyed. Lies out by the pool all day, grabbing at her gardeners if they come too close. I mean, some of them like it...”

  Pistrus listened with building fury, lips pursing tighter until his mouth became a line.

  Ursa sipped her wine, forgetting she was hungover. She turned her nose up at the foul liquid. “I hear they all like it.”

  “All at the same time is what I hear,” said Belbus.

  “What I hear,” said Ursa, “is that the kid’s actually better off without her. I mean, I guess she could live with her father, but he’s too busy winning championships and screwing his way through half of Rome.”

  Belbus nodded. “What I hear... is that the father’s house isn’t much better. Supposedly, he has all kinds of women around the house, and not the nurturing kind.”

  Ursa finished the thought: “And even when he’s not gallivanting about town, it sounds like he ought to be. It’s one thing to hit your kids, another to pretend they don’t exist.”

  “Sounds like she’d be better off without both of them,” said Belbus.

  “Sounds like someone should liberate her from that tyranny,” said Ursa.

  “Sounds like someone could,” said Belbus. “Just mosey on in and say they were friends of her parents here to mind her for a bit in the lead-up to the big race. You know how busy it is in the lead-up to a big race. Whatever suspicion she has would evaporate the second they offer her a ride on a donkey, starved for attention as she is, and bored to boot. I reckon she’d leave without even saying goodbye.”

  Ursa said, “Well, who’s there to say goodbye to?”

  Belbus said, “Well, exactly. That’s a good point. No one who’d notice, that’s for sure. Not for a week or two. Maybe not even then. And even then, the mother is said to be so terrified of her husband, estranged though they are, that he’s the last person she’d go to with the information.”

  Ursa rubbed her chin, seeming to think deeply about it. “Mmm. I reckon someone could. If they had the balls.”

  “If they had the balls...” Belbus mused.

  Then they both stared at Pistrus. His hands were curled around his cup so tight his knuckles had gone pale. He was looking at the cup like it was Belbus’ neck.

  “If they had the balls...” Pistrus repeated. Then he chuckled. A dark, hollow chuckle. “You guys have the balls? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  The cup shattered between his fingers. Wine burst from his clenched fists. The thin red liquid splashed on the marble, and with it, a thicker, darker liquid.

  Pistrus let the shards fall and looked at his bleeding palm. He’d cut one of his hands open. Cut it deep. His racing hand. It was trembling. He was staring at the hand and it was bleeding and it was trembling. He was trembling.

  The boy stooped to begin mopping up the wine, but Pistrus grabbed him by the hair instead. A good handful of it with the cup-cut palm. This time, the boy did make a sound. He exclaimed in surprise and then whimpered as the charioteer squeezed tight, pulling the roots of those youthful black locks against the scalp. Pistrus wasn’t looking at the boy. Didn’t even seem to be aware he was doing it. He held the lad with all the strength of a man used to controlling four horses at once. Blood ran into the child’s hair and down his forehead.

  Belbus and Ursa went rigid. Watched with bated breath.

  The bookie’s mouth twitched. He couldn’t break. He’d come this far.

  Pistrus rose, dragging the boy by his hair across the room.

  “Ahhhh!” the boy screamed.

  Ursa went to stand, but Belbus put a hand on her knee, eyes fixed on the boy. She sat. Watched.

  The boy’s feet kicked out under him, scrambling for purchase on the smooth tile to take some of the weight off his hair. He was wailing, crying, pawing uselessly at Pistrus’ thick-muscled hand and forearm; not so that he might free himself, but that he might haul himself up.

  It took them a moment to realise Pistrus was dragging his slave toward the pool.

  “God, no...” Ursa whispered.

  When Pistrus neared the edge, he tossed the boy down and pointed to the pool and said, “Get in.”

  The boy looked up, fear etched into his face and in his eyes. Confusion too. What was this?

  When the boy didn’t immediately comply, Pistrus raised his hand to slap him again. The boy winced and clambered in, inching his way down the ornately-tiled steps until he was up to his neck.

  “Go under,” said Pistrus.

  The boy looked to Belbus and Ursa for help.

  “Don’t look at them. They don’t own you. I do. And I said... go under.”

  The boy didn’t dare disobey him a second time. He took a deep breath and went under. Five seconds passed. Ten. Bubbles started breaking the surface, followed shortly by the boy’s dripping head.

  He gulped in a large breath.

  Pistrus towered over him, face red, veins bulging in his neck like ropes. When he spoke, his voice was as soft and as gentle as a mother tucking her child into bed:

  “I didn’t tell you to come up.”

  Belbus pictured the wine cup in the charioteer’s hands on the verge of shattering, but the grip as yet insufficient in pressure and duration to break it.

  The boy took a few more breaths and went under.

  Ursa couldn’t stand it. “Belbus, we have to do something.”

  “Do what?” Belbus whispered back, his voice just as urgent as hers, but more measured. “You interfere with a man punishing his slave and you’ll end up in there with him. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “There has to be.”

  “There isn’t. He’s property.”

  The way Belbus said it, she could tell he had a problem with what was happening. Maybe he was even torn up about it. It didn’t matter. The world didn’t change to suit him any more than it did her.

  The boy came up again.

  “I can’t,” he said, crying. Coughing and spluttering and crying. Tears invisible. “I can’t.”

  Belbus realised it was the first time he’d heard the boy
speak.

  “You can’t?” said Pistrus. The charioteer turned to Belbus and Ursa, giving an exaggerated shrug. “He can’t.”

  They just watched him. Watched the fake smile on his face dissolve until there was nothing left.

  “Then let me help you.”

  Pistrus pulled the towel from around his waist and dropped it and stepped, fully nude, into the water with the child.

  He took the child by the hair once more and pushed him slowly under. The boy began to scream, then changed his mind and went instead to draw the deepest breath he could. He had filled his lungs about halfway before the water forced his mouth shut and he vanished from sight.

  “Pistrus, stop!” Ursa shouted, rising to her feet.

  “Sit down!” Belbus hissed, grabbing her wrist and yanking her back to the couch.

  Pistrus ignored her. Ignored both of them. He stood holding the boy under, the muscles in his arm flexing as he applied pressure this way, then that; the boy like a slippery fish trying to get free.

  Tiny hands churning the surface, clawing wildly. Blood clouding outward from the charioteer’s wound in wisps of diluted red. The bubbles from boy-sized lungs lost in the roiling.

  Ursa looked away. Couldn’t bear it. Belbus forced himself to watch. This was his gambit. He had to own it. All of it.

  Splashes echoed in the vast, hollow room. Belbus saw the slave girl by the wine jug looking at her feet. She was trembling, trying not to cry. The boy had probably been her friend.

  Slowly, the splashing died away, until the room became mausolean in its silence. The boy quit struggling. Went still. Pistrus gradually eased up the pressure as if expecting his slave to be faking. He let the boy go, even pushed him away, so that his limp body drifted out, floating, toward the centre of the pool.

  Then he just watched it.

  “It’s warm,” the naked charioteer said, after a moment. “I think he pissed himself.”

  His back was still to them. Shoulders heaving with the effort of taking a life. Chest expanding, contracting. His lungs drawing vast amounts of air and expelling it again in what seemed like salt to the boy’s mortal wounds.

  Ursa got to her feet, furious tears in her eyes.

  “You will throw this race for us,” she said, keeping her voice about level.

  Pistrus did not respond. Nor did he turn.

  “Throw the race or your daughter joins him in the afterlife.”

  She turned, and walked out. Belbus lingered a moment, unable to tear himself from the floating boy. He closed his eyes to rinse away the image, but when he opened them again, the boy was still there. Floating.

  He was in this now. All the way in it. It was all over him, sticking to him, foul-smelling and sticky and heavy. Weighing him down like tar, or like so much rancid blood, soaking his clothes and dripping from his face and hair.

  He stood.

  “Take the dive,” Belbus said, thinking that with steady words might come a steady stomach. “Take the dive and Agnina will be returned to you safely. Win the race and I’ll drown her.”

  He heard no response from the charioteer as he left, just quietly lapping water as the surface once again became glass.

  Even without the limp, Belbus doubted he would have been able to catch up with his partner. She was walking fast. He didn’t call out to her. He could tell by her shaking shoulders that she was crying.

  This was confirmed when she passed Auribus.

  The centurion grinned that yellow-toothed grin, then adopted an expression of mock sympathy. “Aw, why so sad, darling?”

  Ursa didn’t break stride. She clocked the centurion square in the nose and kept walking. He went to the side, doubling over, clutching his face.

  “You bitch!” he called after her, taking his hand away to see blood where the skin had split across the bridge of his nose.

  “That’s a break,” he said to himself. He felt warm blood streaming out of either nostril. Over his lips. Down his chin. He licked his upper lip. Nodded in confirmation. “Yep. Definitely a break.”

  Belbus predicted what was going to happen before it did, but his prediction changed nothing. Maybe he predicted it too late. Either way, he felt like he saw the punch coming at him in slow motion.

  As he passed Auribus, the teary-eyed, bloody-faced, crooked-nosed centurion was still glaring after Ursa. The second he noticed the bookie appear at his side, it was like a bear seeing blood.

  Auribus lashed out at him, delivering the punch that was meant for Ursa into Belbus’ eye. It sent him staggering off the path into the dirt, his world going dark at the peripherals.

  “Fuck!” shouted Belbus.

  “Feel free to pass it on,” said Auribus, and he spat blood.

  Belbus straightened, blinking rapidly. It didn’t hurt as much as it might have - thank you, opium - but it sure wasn’t any kind of picnic.

  “I can’t see,” the bookie said, groaning more in frustration than pain. “You blinded me! You fucking...”

  “Oh, quit your belly-aching. You were asking for it.”

  “I’m fucking not the one who hit you!”

  Auribus gestured after Ursa. “Well, she’s all the way over there, and you’re here, and she’s prettier than you are.”

  “Now she is!” Belbus said, doing his best to hold his bad eye open, but it wasn’t any use. He covered his good eye with one hand and held up his other, moving it in closer, then further away.

  “I can’t see bloody anything!” Keeping the hand over his good eye, he turned roughly in the direction of Auribus, in something approaching total darkness. “Hold up some fingers.”

  “Oh, come off it...”

  “Hey, you’re the one who did this. It’s not like I came out here asking to get socked in the face.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Belbus ignored it; the guy had a point. “Look, the least you can do is help diagnose me.”

  “Diagnose? What are you, a physician now?”

  “No, but I might need one to cut this useless fucking eye out of my head before it rots and gives me some horrible infection. I could die because of this.”

  “If you can’t see your own hand two inches in front of your face, what the bloody hell good is it going to do trying to guess how many fingers I’m...?”

  “Just do it!”

  Auribus sighed audibly. He didn’t like the guy, but he did feel a little bad. He hadn’t meant to blind the bastard.

  “Alright. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  One hand stayed on his spear. The other hung down by his side and didn’t move.

  “Three.”

  “Bingo.”

  “Really?” the bookie said, voice brightening with hope as he let the hand fall from his good eye.

  “Really,” Auribus said, smirking.

  Belbus saw the smirk and where the centurion’s hands were. “Did you even fucking do it?!”

  “Of course I did.”

  Belbus gave him a dismissive wave, fed up. He started limping off down the track.

  “Watch your back, fella,” he said, pointing at the centurion. “Eye for an eye. Isn’t that what the Jews say?”

  The centurion was baffled. “Are you Jewish?”

  Belbus turned his back. Ignored him. Limped.

  “You do realise you just threatened an Imperial officer?” Auribus shouted after him.

  “I threatened a guy with two good eyes and way too many fucking ears!”

  He limped on, touching his hand to his bad eye and taking it away again to see if there was any blood. No blood, but no sight either. He would have preferred blood.

  Ursa was still shaking her punching hand by the time he caught up with her. She was crying too, so when he touched her arm to spin her around, he got a ferocious look like he was about to get the other eye taken out.

  Belbus flinched and jumped backwards, giving a cowardly little squeal.

  As soon as she saw him, Ursa’s rage-contorted face relaxed, moulding concern from
anger.

  “Gods,” she said, rushing to him. “What happened to your eye?”

  “I caught the punch meant for you is what.”

  She laughed, putting her hands on his face to hold his eye still so she could examine it.

  “Sorry about that. Here, let me see...”

  She squinted, and he didn’t know if it was from the morning light or from how repulsive the injury was.

  “Is it bad?”

  The part of his eye that was normally white was red. All of it. Every bit.

  Ursa winced. “It doesn’t look good. Can you see?”

  “Not really.”

  “How well?” She cupped a hand over his good eye, plunging him into blackness. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  He took a stab in the dark: “Three?”

  “No.” Ursa took her hand away.

  “Damn it!” Belbus ground his teeth. “That earlace-wearing freak did blind me.”

  “Well, not technically...”

  He furrowed his brow at her.

  “I mean, you’ve got a spare. You’re only half-blind.”

  She gave him an encouraging smile. Then she laughed. Then he laughed. Then she started crying again.

  In that moment, Belbus forgot all about his eye. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in close, beneath his wing. She fit there like a ball in a socket.

  “It’s alright,” he said. “I know. I know.”

  “He was just a little boy... And he just... he just...”

  “I know.”

  Ursa could lay Belbus out cold if she wanted to. He knew that. Had no problem with it. More often than not, she’d served as the muscle of their operation, when muscle was called for.

  But there was something inside of her that he didn’t have inside him. It was a lack he considered a strength - especially in the world they inhabited - even if it came at the cost of his soul. It made him more formidable, less vulnerable to things like blackmail. What levered Pistrus would never lever him, because he had no daughter. No son. No wife. No friend, save Ursa, and even her he’d sell to save his own skin, if he was being honest with himself.

  Ursa took a few wet, ragged breaths, and he snuffed out the warm feeling he got when he held her. It wasn’t romantic. He wasn’t attracted to her. He could see that, yes, objectively, she was a beautiful woman. She made him laugh, and didn’t take herself too seriously. She carried herself well, stood tall, thought deeply about things and formed opinions and didn’t mind sharing them. All were traits he found desirable, but she was like a sister to him. Always had been. Sometimes a younger sister. Sometimes older. It depended on the situation and their respective levels of maturity on any given day.