Under the windowsill outside a tablinum of Lord Lorenzo of House Legidus, shrubs of moon vines shivered in the twilight.
Their heart-shaped leaves whispered in a breezy petrichor, passing on dews like frivolous gossip. Chili pepper-like buds yawned and spun into many a blossom the shape of the full moon, and the petals spiraled from each stigma like a pentagram turning inside a milk-white disk.
A moth hovered above the shrubs and landed on a stalk, bending the bulb to the ground. It closed its wings; its feathered antennae rotated, whisking an indecipherable scrawl in the air. The bulb bounced as the moth flew off to the window.
Inside the tablinum, a bronze candelabrum cast a swaying shadow on a plain back wall, like a willow tree ruffled by the breeze.
"Damn moth!" Facing out at the window, Lorenzo Lucretius Legidus waggled his hand.
The moth flew off again. Landing on the wall this time, it blended in with the tree-ish shadow.
Lorenzo abhorred the sultry air of summer. The clamminess, the anxiousness, and the ill whispers, all but reminded him of the stifling days thirteen years ago, when he was thirty of age and at the end of his reckless days.
He was marching to Pethens under the command of his half-brother, Luke Germanicus Legidus. When the Claudian Walls, in every bit as grand as legend has it, just peered into view, Luke, however, ordered the men to halt and bivouac. Over the distance – as Lorenzo still often heard in the groggy state of his light sleep – came the muffled screaming of men and the clashing of metals.
Lorenzo shoved the sentry aside as he rushed into Luke's tent, the only tent they had in the camp
"Gods blight!" he barked. "Why are we stopping? The Scipios should have breached the gate from the east by now! If we don't go in now, we'll leave them to the slaughter!"
Luke didn't even deign to look him in the eye but ordered the guard standing sentry by his tent to be flogged twenty times for having let Lorenzo in. When soldiers carried away the sentry in a stretcher, Lorenzo watched his limbs flail from either pole. The first injured man since the start of their march, and it wasn't done by the enemy. Lorenzo traced for Luke with his eyes and found him standing in the shade outside his tent. Dressed to the hilt in leather and mail, he sported gold pauldrons, each of which a leaping panther, the Legidus' sigil. Spliced to the pauldrons, a vermilion surcoat billowed. His right hand gripped around the panther-headed pommel of his long sword cinched to the belt. Under his tall crest helmet revealed his eyes, dark and deep-set. He was a big man, a heavy man, wider, stronger, taller, and more of a warrior in any way than Lorenzo would ever become, and he was baseborn.
Lorenzo doubled his hands.
His brother cocked a brow, jerking his face to a sneer, as he caught Lorenzo looking his way, then turned on his heel as he dipped back into his tent. His vermilion surcoat snapped behind him.
Two days later, after the Gaius sent a man, informing Luke that which Lorenzo could only guess, the legion resumed the march.
Blood and gore had taken the city when they arrived. Consul Claudius' staunch supporters had fought tooth and nail to their last breaths, taking out renegades led by Augustus Gaius, and enemies led by the Scipio brothers, who had awaited their backup in vain. Lord Romulus Scipio flew off the handle when he saw Luke. "Blight you Legidus, you rat of a man! You hung us out to dry!" he snarled, bounding up to them.
His brother, however, only gave a facetious shrug. "We were taking out resistance outside the city," he deadpanned, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. "Look at my men, tired and bedraggled. You think we've been lying around?"
So, that's why he ordered us to bivouac. Lorenzo scoffed wryly. Just to look shit.
Before he could recover from the absurdity, in the open ground before the Ziggurat of Ra, he watched aghast with the rest of many thousands of men while Augustus Gaius bludgeoned out Consul Claudius' brain with a mace. As the pinioned corpse dropped to the ground, Augustus grabbed the neck and stabbed the spiky tip of the mace through the dead man's skull, impaling him to the Totem of Gods.
And there announced the end of Consul Gnaeus Janurarius Claudius, transfixed on the Totem, which some called the column of justice. In the heart of Renanian power, the cadaver had hung suspended for days. Until it could no longer withhold the scorching sun, the pelting rain, and the preying of vultures and rats, it collapsed, crushing into the sandy flagstone. Slaves picked out any metals that might sell from the pile of bones, then dumped the rest in the Pyre of the Forgotten.
Hence, justice had prevailed, or so proclaimed Marcus Cornelius Uranus before the Ziggurat of Ra, ushering in the new era of his Praetorship, with Laelia Euphrates on his right as the Prophetess of Pethens, both in full regalia.
Every summer since then, Lorenzo could always feel the heat like blood spurting over him in an arc as if an opening fan. He threw up his head at the full moon in the starless sky and hissed with a long sigh.
Someone knocked on the door – a light tapping.
"Come in," he said.
The door creaked ajar.
"Yes?" He kept facing the window, his eyes lingering still upon the moon.
"It's confirmed," said Ulpius Attianus in his pipping voice. "Someone has just named a candidate for the Underdog from the Scipios' pugilists. My eyes have made a copy of Tobius' nomination stub." Feet swished forward and stopped before Lorenzo's trestle desk. "Here, my lord."
Lorenzo turned around, head first over the shoulder, and looked at the wizened man from across the desk. In the shaking candlelight, Ulpius Jovianus Attianus seemed even scrawnier. Lorenzo remembered the first time they met almost half a lifetime ago when Ulpius was still debonair in fine silk trimmed with silver threads, a mockingbird with a glib tongue that mastered rich timbres and sated many ears.
Lorenzo let his eyes fall on the desk, at a thin piece of tracing papyrus. He strained his eyes, holding up the papyrus against the candlelight. "How much has the Gaius owed us?"
"Plus the ones before, about fifteen thousand denarii."
Lorenzo sat in his chair. "It's the Gaius' turn to pick the Favorite this year," he mumbled, pressing his fingertips on each other as he rotated his wrists.
"With a possibility of the Underdog being a pugilist this year, Augustus would have to choose his bet among the outliers. And if he loses, it'll mean bankruptcy for both the Gaius and the Scipios."
"That can't be good for us," Ulpius cut in, narrowing his glaucous eyes stricken with cataracts.
"Why not?"
"Even less likely the Gaius would pay us, no?"
"Would if they could?" Lorenzo scoffed. "I think not."
"Do you, my lord," Ulpius hesitated, a sly grin on his lips, "propose to place the initial bet on the Underdog?"
Instead of answering, Lorenzo asked, "How's my brother?"
"Lord Luke hasn't been able to step out much of late, prostrate with gout. Only the smoke of opian may alleviate the ordeal he undergoes. I've heard his feet were so swollen he—" Ulpius stopped as he saw Lorenzo raise a hand.
"What about the heir? Any word on when he'll announce the heir?"
"He had called lawyers and notaries to his bedchamber."
"And Luke Junior with them?"
"I believe so."
Lorenzo gave a mirthless chuckle. "Remind me to send my dear nephew a gift on his fifteenth nativity day this year. He's almost a man now. Any suggestion?"
"You mean the gift?"
Lorenzo nodded briskly.
"The boy is quite strong for his age. Yet a man, he is already about his lord father's height." Ulpius flicked a wary glance at Lorenzo. "How about a longbow? Or perhaps a stallion?"
His lord father's height, Lorenzo wrung his fingers under the chin. And look at his father now. A gouty weakling. How tall is a man bedridden? We'll see who shall have the last laugh. A sneer made him squint.
He rose from the chair and sauntered over to a chestnut rack standing against the wall to his left. It held a longbow carved from a chunk of black locust. Well over a decade since it last saw blood, Lorenzo thought as he took it off the rack. The bow, majestic and beautiful as it ever was, felt much heavier than he had remembered. He sighed in awe of time, and of his own age, which, too, had caught up with him.
It felt as though yesterday when he was still a boy. Everyone mocked him in their whispers. They called him Lorenzino, little Lorenzo, who could still yet wield a wooden sword at eleven. Time had never quite washed away the feeling of shame that still bit him at night, nor his mother's consoling words.
"Come here, child," she called him up to the center seat of a triclinium; the ruddy glow from the fireplace softened her aquiline features. Holding his face, she wiped the tear off his cheek with her thumb. "They fear you," she said, her large green eyes boring into his. "That's why they want to shame you! You're Lorenzo Lucretius, Lord Heir of the Legidus! You hear me? And don't you forget it!"
He never did.
Even after Mother passed in the autumn he turned fourteen, and even after Father named Luke the Legidus' heir upon nosing out Lorenzo's untoward preference, Lorenzo never forgot. Nor had he allowed himself to forget the scathing mortification when Luke had him doped and tied naked to a tree, with his mouth about a stable boy's shaggy loin on Father's fiftieth nativity day. It was on that day Lorenzo learned that which no master would teach, nor book transcribe. Men dared to belittle, offend, and attack him not because they feared him but whom he had yet to become. They said and did what they had said and done to him so as to reduce him to the point that he, too, would come to believe that he, Lorenzo Lucretius, the true heir of House Legidus, was only Lorenzino. They didn't fear him enough!
"My lord?" Ulpius drew in his chin, his eyes lifting.
"A longbow, or a stallion, both are excellent choices for a gift to my dear nephew. And surely, he'll love either of those. Neither, however, should be expected from his gay uncle." Putting his longbow back on the rack, he shook his sore arm.
Ulpius displayed a studied smile, his glaucous eyes moving up and down as if gauging what Lorenzo could imply.
"Send him the Pearl of Huron."
"The Pearl?"
"The boy could use it to adorn his sword or bow or the bridle for his stallion."
"But my lord, it's an heirloom from your lord father!" Ulpius demurred. Color rose on his patchy cheeks, rendering his concern genuine.
"And as an heirloom, it should go to the heir." Lorenzo raised his head.
Three years ago, when Luke's health began to decline, as Lorenzo still clearly recalled, in Luke's much more luxurious tablinum draped with hangings of embroideries, they agreed that Lorenzo should run the Legidus' fund until Luke Junior came of age. Over the stretch of time as Lorenzo presided over the Legidus' business, he had labored at two ends. One, he tended to his public appearance. A good lord and a kind man, he pontificated austerity in his words as in his actions to set himself apart from the rest of the flamboyant patricians. Two, he kept a blind eye on the Gaius as they drained the Legidus' exchequer. In doing so, he manifested loyalty to the Praetor and his High Consort – as it was with their permissions the Gaius drew loans for their projects sprouting across the country. And he intended bankruptcy when Luke Junior took over.
Now that a candidate for the Underdog had been named from the Scipios' pugilists, Lorenzo contemplated the prospect of taking out the two birds – the Gaius and his brother – with one stone – his bet. Tucking his chin to the shoulder, he shot a glance of the prophet sideways.
Wrinkled like a walnut, the hunching geezer he was now had seen better days. And in those days, Lorenzo had loved him. Until he found out that Ulpius had flaunted their affair. Details about what went on in his bedchamber had spread like a plague. When Lorenzo confronted him, Ulpius kneeled by his feet, groping for his sleeves as he pled for a second chance.
Lorenzo had only sneered.
For the many years to come, he had kept Ulpius around but not for the reason everyone else believed. Like how he had feigned his incompetence, if not cravenness, with the handling of the Legidus' business, he paraded a forgiving nature. In truth, he never touched Ulpius again. What could he tell Ulpius now, Lorenzo wondered, that he also needed Luke to know? By sending Junior the Pearl, he meant to make a case for his lack of ambition and interest in being the heir. But would it suffice?
No, he shook his head as he proceeded to the window, one hand stroking his chin. His declaration of no interest wouldn't be as reassuring to Luke as his corpse.
"Ulpius," he spoke at length. "Did you suggest earlier that I should bet on the Underdog this year?"
"No, my lord!" Ulpius denied, shaking his head with force. "It was only a guess, stupid one!"
Lorenzo snorted. "You're the prophet of my house, and my advisor, after all. I see nothing inappropriate in taking your advice. However, if I am to place the initial bet, I need to check out how the candidate fared, wouldn't you agree?"
While Ulpius stood at a loss, Lorenzo went forth, "Tell Jovianus to prepare the wagon. We're leaving for Volos next week. What's the name of the candidate?"
"Moon, my lord," Ulpius replied, on the floor, his shadow bowing. "Moon Xeator."
"Are you sure?" Lorenzo had to laugh. What a sissy name for a pugilist!
Ulpius laughed along, then retreated from the tablinum as Lorenzo waved him off.
The door squeaked shut.
When the room quieted, leaving only the chirpings of cicadas over rustling leaves, Lorenzo gazed up again at the starless sky. Moon Xeator, he mused. Could the name also masquerade his true purpose and strength?
A waft of air rippled through the tree-ish shadow on the wall. The moth fluttered its wings while it edged to the ceiling where the candles cast their light in the shape of a half moon. Having leaped from behind a cove, a tarantula stabbed the moth with its fang. Jigging its legs, it spun a web around the prey, then retreated to the burrow.