                
Hungerblade
Part Five: Giovanna
The fleeing girl held Hungerblade in her
fist as she dodged deftly around the midday throng. Jacques ran after her. The
sword was still in its scabbard, at least, but that fortunate condition wouldn’t
continue for long if he lost sight of her.
The girl was, Jacques guessed, a little
over four feet tall. She was skinny, dirty, dressed in rags, and very fast. She
slipped around a portly knife sharpener, dodged between a pair of private
guardsmen, and dashed up a set of villa steps, narrowly avoiding collision with
a fruit vendor. Jacques did his best to follow her, but had to execute a
graceless leap to avoid being tripped by the knife sharpener. He circumnavigated
around the guards and fruit vendor only to see her rush down the steps and slide
beneath a moving ox-cart. Jacques expected to see the girl cry out in pain as
her bare legs skidded across the grit-covered stone of the Romulian road, but
she barely winced. Fearing that he might lose her, Jacques became bolder, openly
pushing his way through the crowd. “Make way!” he cried, in vulgar Romari.
“Danger!”
His peripheral vision registered the
bobbing movement of a plumed helmet behind him. Whether the soldier meant to
stop the thief or the marauding foreigner remained an open question. He kept
running, but made his explanation clearer, just in case: “Stop that girl!” he
shouted. “Thief! Thief!” It abashed him to cry out like a common fool who
couldn’t take care of his own property. His pride meant nothing, though,
compared to the risk Hungerblade posed if allowed into anyone else’s hands. He
tried not to picture what would happen if the girl popped it from its sheath
with no one else around.
The girl disappeared into a shadowed alley
on the other side of the street. A house slave stepped from one of its doorways,
rug and rug-beater in hand. Some helpful plebeian had taken up Jacques’ cry:
“Thief! Thief!” The slave threw the rug onto the girl as she passed him; she
fell, a cloud of dust billowing behind her.
A mob coalesced at the alley’s mouth;
Jacques grabbed at shoulders and arms to pull his way through them. Finding a
pickpocketing hand worming its way past his cloak and into his doublet, seeking
his purse, he grabbed the offending index finger and twisted. There was a soft
pop and the pickpocket jumped aside, moaning faintly.
Jacques looked down the alley’s length to
see the girl regaining her feet. She reached down for the sword. An evident
friend of the pickpocket seized Jacques by the shoulders to pull him back. A
quick elbow to the face, unleashed with only an instant’s backward glance, broke
the man’s nose and deterred his grip.
A matronly slave stepped from a doorway
behind the girl, blocking her flight. The girl’s tiny hands curled around the
weapon. Jacques pelted down the alley: “You do not want to do that!”
The girl turned on Jacques, flashing shocking green eyes at him.
The child was filthy, her hair a tangle, but beneath the grime was the feral
beauty of a wild beast. “Don’t come any closer,” she hissed.
Jacques made his approach imperceptible. “I
won’t punish you. I just want my property back.”
She thrust the scabbarded sword at him,
truly looking at it for the first time. “Why don’t I want to draw this?” It had
begun to register on her that she had stolen something much more valuable than
an equestrian’s sword.
“It’s magic—like whatever you used to cut
my belt. But this is the kind of magic you can’t control.”
“Magic, you say?” she cocked her head, as
if performing a calculation. Jacques could see her ribs through a hole in her
shift.
“What is your name?”
“Why would I tell you that?”
“Because I’m being friendly, and when
friendly people speak, they use each other’s names. My name’s Jacques.”
“You’re not from here.”
“I come from Dotur and I know what you’re
thinking. That any promise I make to you now, when you have what I want, means
nothing after I get it. That you’ll be captured and punished. But we foreigners
have funny ideas sometimes, and one of mine is that I don’t take back promises.
Or have children hurt, for that matter.”
The girl moved back a step. Behind her
stony expression Jacques could see her survivor’s mind working out a hundred
permutations.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve been
able to trust anyone, hasn’t it?” he said.
She did not so much nod as shudder her
agreement.
“But for some reason you can’t explain
right now, you know you can trust me, can’t you? The only way for this to end
well is for you to hand me the sword, right now.”
“My name’s Giovanna,” she said, holding it
out for him to take.
***
Now that she was cleaned up a bit, Jacques
tried to better estimate the girl’s age. She sat in the small reception room—or
tablinarium, as they called it here—of Isabelle Darras’ villa. The child in the
center of the room was a stark contrast to the surroundings. A black and white
mosaic floor was only partially covered with thick rugs and carpets from
Zanatium. The walls were brightly painted and, when combined with the bright
Medrano sunshine, the room was initially quite dazzling. Marble busts on wooden
pedestals lined the walls. Jacques would not have put it past Isabelle to have
had the busts created especially for the room and he’d earlier looked for any
likeness he recognized, but they were strangers. Perhaps he would meet them
later.
Giovanna had consented to a
topical washing of her face, arms and legs, but had so far refused a more
thorough scrubbing. She ate from a bowl, wolfishly consuming bread, olives and
pieces of cold fowl. More food was set out on the center table. The girl’s
skinny, knob-jointed physique showed the signs of chronic malnourishment. She
could be anywhere from nine to thirteen, Jacques concluded.
Wigandus and his party had departed to
settle in other accommodations, leaving Giovanna alone with Jacques and
Isabelle. Before departing, Hemwold made sure to volunteer his services for the
necessary thrashing.
“You’ve been stealing long enough to get
clever at it,” Jacques told the girl. “You waited until I was distracted, and
moved in quick. Someday I’ll ask to see that enchanted implement of yours.”
She dangled it before him: a knife-shaped
sliver of polished black stone, tied to her wrist by a cord of supple leather.
She slid it under a simple leather strap beneath her wrist.
“Where did you get it?”
“I stole it,” she said, flatly, with
neither shame nor pride.
“That would be worth a good sum, if you
sold it.”
“Then how would I steal? And besides, I’d
be cheated.” She looked with suspicious fascination at a new linen garment a
servant had presented to Isabelle. Although simple, it was dyed yellow with bit
of red trim.
“How long have you been fending for
yourself?” Jacques asked her.
She shrugged and tore her eyes from the
clothing. “A long time.”
“I have an offer for you, Giovanna. If you
come here every morning, to report for possible duty, you will get one denari.
Each day.” He paused to let the generosity of this sum register. “Some days we
will have a small job for you to do. Nothing dangerous, nothing you don’t want
to do. Some days we’ll send you on your way. But even then, you’ll get the
denari.”
Giovanna sat mulling the offer, a piece of
sausage poised before her mouth. “If you do as you say, foreigner,” she finally
said, “I will be loyal to you, always.” Jacques nodded and left the girl to
finish her meal.
After instructing her servants not to let
the girl leave without a head-to-toe washing, Isabelle retreated into the
villa’s atrium with Jacques. The black and white mosaic of the floor was
continued here, but instead of paint brightly colored mosaics covered the high
walls. Natural light poured from the upper windows and, diffused by water of the
impluvium, bathed the room in a warm glow. The southern clime seemed to be
treating her well, having warmed her once-pallid complexion. She wore her wavy
brown locks in the loose fashion of a Romari grand dame with simple golden
accessories. The flowing fabric of her simple dress, bound by golden cords,
showed her figure more clearly than the Doturi finery Jacques had last seen her
in.
“Word travels swiftly in Romulus,” she
said. “The Emperor already knows you’re here.”
“Is that so?” Jacques moved toward the
impluvium in the center of the room, staring into the shallow pool as they
spoke.
“I believe he knew you were coming before I did.”
“Who else would know, then?”
She smiled and moved beside him at the
pool. “All three major Senate factions, I’d imagine. But them you can meet
later. An imperial summons has arrived. Your presence—and that of Wigandus—is
immediately requested.”
“Meaning demanded. Well then. Let us gather
up Wigandus, and bow down before great Nero.”
***
The Emperor prowled the lip of the polished
granite platform that held his marble throne. He paced compulsively, moving
along the dais’ edge, stopping, turning, reversing his course, and then
repeating the route in reverse. Jacques recalled the bears and the lion
imprisoned in his own Emperor’s menagerie.
Nero was a diminutive man, swimming in the
purple cloak that marked his imperial majesty. He swaddled it around himself
like a blanket, compulsively swatting it against his stick-like legs. By walking
with a pronounced stoop, he gave himself the appearance of a hunchback, although
Jacques was reasonably sure that this was a matter solely of bad posture, and
not a malformation. Nero’s round face and protruding top teeth, however, could
only be attributed to a sadly thinning bloodline. His family had given Roma
three Emperors over the last generation, each less respected than the last.
The audience was half an hour long, and so
far had consisted of a rambling monologue, mostly concerned with the
imperfections of his senators. Occasionally the Emperor seemed to be on the
verge of saying something, but stopped before the words would leave his lips.
“You there,” he said, pointing to Jacques.
“Your name again?”
Jacques supplied it, for the fourth time.
“Jacques Gardien, an Emperor is an Emperor
is an Emperor. So I must know if your Emperor, Guntram, supports this Emperor,
Nero.” He pointed to his own breastbone.
“In what endeavor, Your Imperial Majesty?”
“Should I be challenged by my lessers,” he
said. “Should I be challenged by my lessers,” he repeated. “They bite and chew
me, like maggots they do, as if I am already in my grave. Do you understand,
Jacques Gardien, how I must feel?” A set of a dozen shallow steps led from his
imperial dais to the floor below, where Jacques and Wigandus stood at respectful
ease. He stared down at the first step as if it represented a precipice. He
rubbed his hands together, dug at a blemish on his chin, and hopped down onto
it. A smile of childish accomplishment broke across his face. He sat down on one
of the lower steps, his head only slightly above Jacques. “You think me mad, but
this is not madness. This is—“ His face twitched. “—different.” He beckoned
Jacques closer. “If Guntram’s senate conspired against him, played him for a
fool, deserved to have their tiny necks wrung . . . You would not hesitate to
aid him.”
“We do not have a senate, but yes, of
course I serve empire and emperor alike.”
Nero stood and walked slowly back up the
steps. “But if there was a cleavage between empire and emperor, if an iron wall
was placed by worms, by snakes, between the two . . . Emperors rule with the
favor of the gods, do they not? My predecessors, the first Julius, the first
Octavian—they were considered gods themselves. So it is a blasphemy, is it not,
to undermine the Emperor, to drag him low?”
“In Dotur we believe in Reason, against
which it is not possible to blaspheme.”
“Reason?” The Emperor laughed bitterly as
he collapsed on his throne. “The world has never been run by reason. It is
change and chaos and caprice, those are its guiding principles. Reflected here
on Earth, and on Mount Olympus.” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his
knees, his tone essaying a quicksilver shift from complaint to bargaining. “But
the point I make is this: Emperors must stick together. Our authority is the
only bulwark men have against unreason. And Reason is what you stand for, yes?
So Guntram will aid me, should aid be needed, which is—“ Again he twitched.
“—something we must consider.”
Jacques had been stealing glances at
Wigandus, to see what he was making of this distressing show of weakness. The
merchant prince shifted his weight uneasily, no doubt happy that Gardien was the
exclusive focus of the Emperor’s frenetic attention. If he noticed anything
strange about the emperor, he gave no indication.
“It is our belief in Dotur,” said Jacques,
“that both our empires should be strongly led, and that both should naturally
benefit from the prosperity of the other.”
“Good then.” Nero moved to a panel behind
his throne, which was decorated with the imperious profile of his father,
Emperor Placidus. “I have tired myself. Go.”
Attendants conducted Jacques and Wigandus
out of the throne room and into an antechamber, where Isabelle met them. A
lavish spread of food and wine was laid out for them. Jacques waited until
Wigandus was in the deep throes of gourmandizing ecstasy, and then pulled
Isabelle aside.
“Where in this city,” he asked, “might one
hire a magician?”
To be continued...
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