Lucius Bucero gawked.
Never had he expected that under the baby skin and cocksure mien, the boy was a hustler.
"Brave sailors from across the Huron sea!" spoke Dracus to a small crowd of Senecan sailors who had only just disembarked. Crouching atop a fence, he held out three dry figs wrapped in a piece of fig leaf. "Long have you prayed to Asphaleius and Amphitrite for safe sails and their bounties. But your prayers would not ease the pain of the Gods parting, with Asphaleius confined to the firmament and Amphitrite locked to the bed of the sea. And their pain finds expression in fury. The rage of Asphaleius rumbles the earth and shakes figs off trees. To ease his rage, Rennian women eat the figs and bed their men, then send fig leaves to the sea to console Amphitrite.
"My brave sailors," the boy deadpanned with a straight face. "These are the only figs left from the last earthquake, and you can have them for only five denarii! Feed them to your lady friends tonight, and they shall see you as their Gods. When you sail for home tomorrow, remember to return the leaf to the Huron Sea, so Amphitrite knows that she is loved, and with love, she shall make your journey safe!"
The figs were bagged from the cartful Bucero had tried but failed to sell for days, and the leaves were plucked earlier that morning.
While Bucero found it morally impossible to consent to what he saw, he clamped a hand over his mouth so as not to giggle.
After Dracus sold out, he jumped off the fence and tossed a pouch of denarii to Bucero. "There," he whistled the words. "That's how it's done." He turned his back to the sea and strutted down the stairs. The wind rose like breaths of heat, ruffling his hair. He splayed his fingers, sweeping those thick ringlets away from his face.
"But aren't you afraid they'll come back for trouble? And they'll be back tomorrow, you know that, eh?"
"Is there any way they can verify what I've just told?" Dracus shot a haughty glance at him over the shoulder. "No matter what, the whores will treat them as Gods, listen to their crap, and eat their damn figs tonight or any other night. So long as the price is right, they will even drink their piss. As for their sails home, if they have a safe return, they'll spread the word, and more will come for your figs with an even higher price. If not, well, Amphitrite takes care of the problem, doesn't she?"
"But it just seems wrong," Bucero demurred, blinking under the scorching sun. "It feels … wrong …" His voice trailed off.
Dracus swiveled back to Bucero the instant he halted his feet, his hands on hips, a quick sigh moving his jaw from side to side. "You know what's really wrong? You!" The boy threw a forefinger at him. "You ran off to take the exam, leaving behind your old mother to your younger sister. What kind of man does that? Then, after you flunked, you ran home, and for weeks you couldn't put a single denarius on the table! You haven't just failed the bloody exam. You've failed as a man! While I appreciate your help and all, I can't leave you to it, or else we'd all starve to death!"
Despite the roaring heat, Bucero felt a chill sapping him of words. He had only wanted to make it as a lawyer so he could provide for his family and have one to call his own. He had studied hard as he had worked, but nothing he had studied ever seemed to work in his favor. For the thirty years of his life, he had always tried to do the right things, which all led him to make the wrong decisions. And was it yet another wrong decision, he wondered, to let the boy billet at his home?
Waves buffeted the shore, whose outline bobbled in a nimbus of vapor under the blazing sun. Bucero looked afield where the gray sails of galleys billowed along the pier. Day in and day out, Renanian porters carried grain off Senecan ships while the Senecan sailors refilled their cabinets with Renanian gold. But the bustle on the dock looked somehow different today. Bucero rubbed a tear duct with the heel of his thumb. The porters, the sailors, and the peddlers, such as himself, were no longer men at work. They morphed into many a wood plank like those that built the pier. But instead of joining in checkers, the planks scattered, swashing along the shore that stretched away as far as the eye could see. They became a means to an end at possibilities, a resource to anyone who was resourceful.
Bucero felt he had descried a whole new dimension in the same breath the world unfolded before him. Uncertain whether it was an epiphany or sunstroke, he turned his eyes back on the pier and wheeled the cart around to the trail home.
It was a narrow pathway atop a great swath of ivory cliff along the southern coast, with walls of rocks as sheer as if slashed by the sword of Asphaleius when fury took hold of him. Bucero panted while cresting a steep slope, and the rickety wheels screeched, somersaulting on the gravel. The slanting sun scorched his nape and pate. He paused for breath when he reached the top. Below him, waves crashed into belts of spindrifts near the cliff, where many shades of turquoise spread far into the deep blue. He heaved, taking in a lungful of air the smell of seaweed, and forgot for a second about life's constant striving. He withdrew his eyes. Far ahead of him, Dracus' slender figure had shrunk into a bouncing dot. Bucero shook his head, and the three wheels resumed screeching.
Padding along the trail while his mind melted to the heat, he shifted his legs without feeling his feet. As they approached the Elephant's Tear, a thin ridge extending out to the sea like an elephant's nose, he blinked and rubbed his eyes to be sure that he wasn't hallucinating. The dot that was Dracus enlarged as he slowed down and turned, heading to the ridge.
"Gods blight, what's he up to now?" Bucero muttered to himself, then raised his voice, "Dracus! Don't go there! You're going to fall!"
But as always, the boy ignored him. He crouched down, advancing to the tip of the ridge like a mantis hopping on a blade.
"Oi, come back!" Bucero yelled as he watched the boy thrust out an arm and fall off. Abondoning the cart, he scuttled to the ridge. Chips of stones tumbled and disappeared into the vertiginous height under his scrambling feet. Willing his eyes away from what was beyond redemption below, he focused on the bare rocks ahead. His cheeks sunk, ragged breaths pumping his lungs with trepidation.
"Dracus!" he shouted again. "You still there?"
"Yep, still alive!"
Bucero broke into a shivering smile as he edged forward, hands stretching horizontally on either side. "Hang in there!"
"Where else can I hang?"
As Bucero slowly came to the end of the ridge, he saw the boy's dark ringlets flutter in the wind about two feet down. Lying prostrate, he reached for the boy. "Grab my hand!"
The sudden weight attached to his arm made his body skid. His feet groped for holds; his hands purpled, crawled with bulging veins.
"Swing me to your left if you still can, and let go, Bucero." The boy looked down, then reared his head.
"What?" Bucero grimaced, clicking his teeth, "No, I won't!"
"Let go, or we're both going to fall. There's a footing on my right. I can see it from here. Swing to your left as much as you can and let go!"
Gasping for air, Bucero stared into the boy's eyes. "You sure you're not just saying that?"
"Why would I do that?" Dracus glared. "Do as I said before you kill us both!" Despite a few worry lines that folded out as he looked up, the boy didn't flinch even a little, his sapphire eyes looked calm as the sea below.
While Bucero didn't know what he saw in those eyes, he knew it wasn't fear or resignation. "Alright," he nodded. "On three!" Tilting to his other arm, he swung to his left and lost grip.
The sea, the breeze, and his throbbing heart – all ceased in motion for a shard of the moment when the boy's hand slipped off his. Bucero ventured another inch off the edge in a desperate search for the sight of him.
Affixing himself to the steer wall, Dracus had found the footing. He splayed his slender limbs like a gecko as he climbed back up and hauled Bucero away from the edge, tugging at his ankle.
Bucero flipped, lying flat on his back, one hand dangling off the edge, the other clamping to his chest. "Gods blight, boy. What were you thinking?"
Dracus sat down on crossed legs next to him. Holding out a sample of dirt and a few stalks of weed wrapped in gauze, he shrugged, "I found these growing on the tip of the ridge."
"For some grass, you risk both our lives?" Bucero blustered, his head shaking with force, his lips hanging widely apart.
"These are not just any grass! These are triticeae, of the same botanical tribe as wheat!" Dracus snapped. "I didn't run off to tout your damn figs, old man! I came to study the plants so I can grow salt-tolerant wheat on a large scale in Renania one day! And let's be clear, I've never asked you to risk your life! I could climb back up with or without your gratuitous assistance!"
Bucero harrumphed, laughing. He sat up with an elbow under him, his eyes squinting at the shimmering sea. "You're right. I must have had a sunstroke. Should have just watched."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why didn't you just watch? Why try to save me after what I'd just said?"
"I never thought you needed a reason to save someone, and as I've said, I must have had a sunstroke."
Dracus snorted. Then, nudging Bucero on the arm with his elbow, he looked down and said, "Thank you for saving me, Lucius Bucero. You're a veritable man, and I'm saying this not because you've just saved me. You're a veritable man because you always do the right things no matter what or how they'll cost you. I said what I had said earlier only to get you off my back, and I'm sorry. You're quite vexing. I hope you know that."
"Believe me, lad, the feeling is quite mutual," Bucero laughed, his voice rasping in this throat. "So, salt-tolerant wheat, eh? Is it really that important? Can't we just keep buying from the Senecans?"
"What if they go back on their word and stop selling?"
Bucero grunted, fumbling for a sentence. Nothing came out.
"People are not much better than dogs, Bucero. They wag their tails at whoever feeds them. They see Marcus Uranus as their demigod because he can still provide food. But what if the Senecans go back on their words? Let's not forget, it's good old Marcus who agreed to the independence of Exonia, the only corner of Renania arable for wheat, so the Senecans would sign the pact with us. If there's another famine, it won't even need to take a mastermind to hold good old Marcus liable. And if the delicate balance between the praetorship and the triumvirate is to last, we need to grow our own wheat."
"Sounds like you care a lot about the Praetor Magnum."
Dracus didn't comment but went on with his reading of the situation. "The Senecans are raising the price now because of the drought, and what if the drought lasts longer than usual, or there will be more droughts in the coming year? If they couldn't afford their own supply, they would discontinue the trade because no amount of gold could buy you that which doesn't exist." Then, taking a pause, he regarded Lucius, his brow corrugating in a frown of concern at odds with his age. "Our swindle must go on," he concluded. "You and your family need the denarii now to buy and store wheat while there still is to buy."
The same chill that had sapped Bucero of his words earlier at the dock made a return. Turning his back to the sun, he narrowed his gaze at the boy, whose swarthy skin gleamed like undulating rows of wheat ears in fields on the foreign land he had imagined but never seen. He wondered how much he should believe the boy.
"Anyway," Dracus continued, having cinched the sample of dirt and stalks back to his belt. "I've been meaning to ask, why is this cliff called the Elephant's Tear? I know it looks like an elephant's nose, but why tear?"
"Aha!" Relieved by the lighter subject, Bucero looked into the west at the slanting sun and beamed. "I think you might just be lucky enough to find out today. Come, I'll show you." He rose to his feet as his voice fell. Edging his way back to the trail, he led the way down to the beach.
About half a mile from the cliff where he had nearly lost his life, he stopped and turned around. "That'll do," he mused.
"Do what?"
"Just wait."
Dracus drew in his chin, incredulity lifting his brow. "And what're we waiting for?"
"That."
Dracus spun around and looked to where Bucero pointed. The sun had sunk just behind the arch of the cliff, the light shining through as if a teardrop.
"Wow."
"Astonishing, eh?"
The boy nodded and shook his head. "It's not a tear," he said, eventually. "More like light coming through a keyhole. It's a new beginning."
"Yeah? Well, whatever you call it, it's magical. And it's kind of a waste watching this with you."
Dracus narrowed his eyes to a haughty, half smile, "Oh dear, the barmaid."
Bucero felt a flush across his cheeks, his eyes on his feet. "Well, what can I do? She's going to Pethens to sing. She's got talent. And she deserves a better life there, one I can't provide."
Crooking two fingers next to his half-opened mouth, Dracus pretended to retch. "So many things went wrong in just a few sentences I didn't even think it was possible." He rolled his eyes.
"What? What did I say this time?" Bucero retorted.
"For starters, it's probably for the best that you don't have her, not because you're some loser who can't provide, but because love is only love from afar. If you have love for her as you've claimed, you should keep a distance. Without the distance, whatever this mawkish lovey-dovey you have becomes life, and once it does, it palls. It becomes, You reek of whores! Or, Oh suck it! Or a wine cup smashed to the wall next to your head. Do this, do that, or else. Life reduces love to a private room where you abuse your quota of power on each other." A glow flared up in the sapphire blue of the boy's eyes.
Baffled and taken aback, Bucero puffed his cheeks at a loss. "Knock it off!" he chuckled at length. "What do you know about love anyway? I mean how many women have you been with? Have you ever even had a lover?"
"I don't have a lover. I have a mother."
Bucero sputtered, stooping with his hands on laps as he chuckled. "Sorry," he paused to collect himself. "Didn't mean to laugh." He burst into a fit.
"Yeah, yeah, so sad I thought it was funny too." Dracus sighed, darting a side-eye. "But let me finish before you laugh yourself to a stroke, old man. Pethens is dangerous. The triumviri and their clans are a sinful lot. Every plebeian who thinks he has a talent thinks he must make use of it by becoming famous. The Scipios exploit that thinking. If you wish someone ill, make him believe that he's got talent. I don't know what your friend believes, but she needs to be careful. She needs someone to look out for her. I'm serious, Bucero." The boy whirled to face Bucero, staring him right in the eye. "I think you should come to Pethens with me."
Bucero straightened his back and glanced at Dracus. "But I don't understand. You've just made quite a poetic statement about why I should keep my distance." He sounded as flustered as he felt.
"Oh, fuck poetry. If I want to spin verses and groan about nothing, I join the soy boys and stay in Pethens. Now, don't get me wrong, I still don't think you should be with her. But if it really is love, you should try to look out for her."
"But how? You need a job, a position, an invitation, something, to be allowed in the capital. I have nothing! Even if I wanna go, I can't!"
"Yes, you can."
"How?"
"You still want to be a lawyer?" An impish grin cocked the boy's brow while lifting a corner of his lips. "The legislation exam held in Volos is done for this year, but there is another one held in Pethens in three months. If you pass that one, you can practice the law anywhere in Renania, including the capital."
"Bu-but isn't the one in Pethens even more difficult?" Bucero stuttered after a few pulses of silence. "I mean, I, erm, I can't even pass the one in Volos. How in the name of Gods I … erm …"
"The questions may seem more convoluted with unnecessary details, but the logic behind them is the same. Every test has its logic. You failed because you haven't got it. Once you do, it's kind of hard not to pass. You've kept the scrolls for study, right?" the boy asked, glancing at Bucero for affirmation. "I can tutor you if you like. We can start tomorrow after we milk more Senecans."
Bucero widened his eyes and scratched his head. Five years he had tried and flunked, he had given up the tormenting hope, or so he had thought. But it dawned on him that the problem with hope was that courting insanity, it kindled at even the slightest chance, and with that unwarranted hope, he grinned ear to ear. "Yeah," he said, balling his fists. "Yeah, I still got the scrolls."
"Good." Dracus chuckled, narrowing his eyes before he turned the way back. His shadow stretched long, tailing behind him.
"But what about tonight? Should I do a preliminary study?"
"No, you'll only be wasting candles."
"What should I do then?"
"Sleep! And bring a clear head with you tomorrow!"
The sun dipped further into the horizon, gilding the clouds while it glazed the cliff and the sandbank in pale gold. Bucero watched the swishing waves ebb from his feet and giggled like a girl. Never had he been so grateful that he had always tried to do the right things.