Out of the corner of his eye, Lorenzo surveyed Moon Xeator standing astride beside him. "Do you need anything? Wine? Liquor?"
"Thank you, my lord. Liquor would be nice."
A servant brought up a flagon. Xeator gargled and quaffed.
Next to them, Ulpius shook his head with force in disapproval. "Foolish!" he bristled at the blond man. "It's foolish to do what the Turisian asked! Now we look soft! And how dare you promise gold to the Turisians!"
Xeator thudded the flagon on a pedestal round table next to Ulpius. "For one," he observed, "we didn't do what they asked. Lord Lorenzo didn't drink with him. I did. And two," swiveling to Lorenzo, he continued. "So what if we appear soft? What's soft is also flexible, and with flexibility comes room for negotiation. Lastly, there is no easier way than to eat and drink what others do to earn their trust. Only a fool would see such a chance slip away."
"What do we need the Turisians to trust us for?" Ulpius retorted. "What do we owe them?"
Xeator only sneered. The crackling fire cast his taut and pale face in a chiaroscuro. His deep-set eyes sought Lorenzo, glimpsing like emeralds. "You can't wish destruction on your rivals without establishing an alliance, my lord. As the Turisian has pointed out, the Gaius will deploy the best mercenaries as their candidates for the Favorite. And if you're to win, you must make sure that the men they hire are actually yours. Whatever the Gaius promise the mercenaries, you'll have to make a more generous offer. The Legidus' exchequer is your advantage."
"Gold may sway the men, but it never guarantees loyalty," Lorenzo observed. "How do I be sure the mercenaries won't take my gold and still fight for the Gaius?"
"Pay them only one-third of the agreed amount and the rest when the final is over," the blond man replied without a moment of thought. "But there is another concern."
Lorenzo nodded.
"Unlike the Gaius, who have their turn to name and bet on the Favorite this year, you'll be offending the Pyhrric rules if you hire candidates for the Favorite while betting on the Underdog. Hence, you need the Turisian as the middleman to keep the hire a secret. Given all the untoward happenstances of late, you don't want to give the Praetor more reasons to suspect you or your house but keep his suspicion riveted on the Gaius."
Lorenzo mused on the young man not much older than half his age. The official news of Domitian Uranus' death reached them earlier that week, saying that the banished baseborn came to Julius with four Exonian cohorts and was meant to revolt. To punish him for his sinister intent, a bolt went astray by the Gods' will and ended him. Upon Domitian's death, Julius placated and cautioned the Exonians with a reminder of how the Nothern Legion controlled the Dam of Uruk that controlled the three rivers on which the Exonian livelihood depended. The four cohorts fell back behind their borders.
Lorenzo didn't buy a word of it, of course.
Why would Domitian revolt now when he was just pardoned? But it'd make even less sense for Julius to commit the murder. The Gaius couldn't be unaware of their popularity among the people that had centered them to the Praetor's suspicion of mutiny. Killing Domitian now would only substantiate it. He flicked his eyes to Moon Xeator. "You've only spoken of speculation," he commented at length. "Nobody knows what the Praetor actually thinks."
Xeator shrugged and smiled. "To every betrayal, there is a curse. The traitor shall spend the rest of his life in fear of the same being done to him," he took a meaningful pause, then went forth, his voice uninflected. "With General Julius in command of the best Renanian legion and his raging popularity, even if he has never meant for mutiny, he could. Such awareness, given time, suffices to fume the smoke of suspicion to incinerate. The Gaius must know this, as does everyone else, and that's exactly how they dared to carry out … what did they call it? Ah, the Gods' will. By committing a strategic blunder too obvious even for rookies, they'd appear framed, and the appearance would goad the Praetor into deliberating the wrong question of who framed them. Pardon me for asking, my lord, how much do the Gaius still owe you?"
Lorenzo squinted, a bout of jitters coursing beneath his composure. The grudge between the Gaius and his house had been more than just a rumor that had spread further than he thought. "But how can my bet on you vindicate myself?" he asked. "So long as no one initiates the bet, your nomination as the Underdog will be forfeited, and everyone can still walk away. And even if no one profits from the game this year as the Turisian said, what do I care? It isn't the Legidus' year to rake in the most anyway."
"True," the blond one seconded, keeping his head low, his eyes up, riveted on Lorenzo. "The less likely you'd profit from it, the more pure becomes your motive, that is, to keep the Praetor's best interest. If everyone walked away, everything would look like a farce. But the farce that nominated me as the Underdog drove the Praetor into pardoning Lord Domitian, and the pardon, which the Praetor himself decreed, led to the death of his son. Who'd be most offended by such an irony, I wonder."
Lorenzo squirmed a little in his rattan chair. "And yet the question remains. Who nominated you as the Underdog? So long as the question looms over our heads, everyone is a suspect to the Praetor."
"Who nominated me as the Underdog," the blond man repeated, his brows a quizzical arch. "Could be any clansman of the Gaius, the Scipios, or even the Uranus. Could be your brother, or perchance … you?" He allowed himself a broader smile that sent a chill down Lorenzo's spine.
Ulpius paled as he dropped to his knees next to Lorenzo. "Oh, the blasphemy!" he cried. "Have the guards seize the presumptuous man, my lord!"
The Underdog sneered, darting a disdainful glance slantwise at the wizened man on the floor. "While the question looms, the answer doesn't matter. So long as you can pass on the ball of suspicion the Gaius have just passed at you. And you mustn't let it drop."
Lorenzo pushed himself to his feet. Padding past Ulpius, he halted before the young man over a head taller than him. "I cannot risk bankrupting the Legidus," he regurgitated the line like a thespian with his catchphrase.
"Of course not." The blond man nodded, his half smile a perennial shadow over a well-mannered mien. "Except that's what you've been doing."
Raising his chin, Lorenzo wrung his hands on his back, his jaw moving side to side.
"You've kept a blind eye on the Gaius' debt to drain the Legidus' exchequer so you can pass it on empty to your nephew when he comes of age," the blond man resumed. "But what's good in having your heirdom when you can't save the Legidus from the rivaling houses?"
Lorenzo found it difficult not to take offense at the young man's accusation even though the rhetorical question rammed home a point he couldn't refute. Scrambling for whatever remained of his dignity, he taunted, "Since when does a lowly pugilist get to comment on the future of my house?"
Xeator didn't rush to answer but smiled more. "Since it chanced upon this lowly pugilist through whom you may claim not only what's yours but more."
"More?" Lorenzo spurted a dry laugh. "And what is that?"
"Why settle for being the master of your house when you can sit at the helm of all houses?"
Sizing up the man, Lorenzo wondered where he had heard of it before. The night darkened, and the wind rose. A draft tumbled through the dogwood hedge; fire hissed atop the brazier, stressing the sieging silence. Lorenzo turned to the pedestal table where he had left his stein. Behind him, the blond man continued.
"Our Praetor must feel quite a nuisance as people across the country celebrate General Julius, who now controls the north. And the Gaius took advantage of it to come off as if they were framed. Their sinister allusion against the Legidus leaves you no choice but to initiate the bet on me to show the Praetor your steadfast loyalty to the Triumvirate under his reign no matter what. That said," he paused for a small chuckle. "If you want more, my lord, you can't let the Gaius relish their popularity indefinitely."
Lorenzo drew the stein to his mouth. Sourness burned down his throat, not unlike the young man's words. He gestured for him to expound.
"Eventually, you'll need the public opinion to favor you." The blond man did as bid. "Between now and the finals, please consider commissioning artists below the salt. Encourage them to pay deference to General Julius, let them sculpt him, paint him, and write verses about him. Give them a voice and let the world hear it." He glanced up, seeking Lorenzo with the emerald glints of his eyes, his hand tight around the pommel of a long sword slanting from his flank.
"That's outrageous!" Ulpius squealed. "Haven't the Legidus squandered enough gold on the Gaius? And yet you propose that we waste more to commensurate that prancing Gaius boy?" Boiling, or affecting so, he shot up from the floor and thrust his spindly arm at the Underdog as if wielding a javelin. But on a stone white wall behind the dogwood, the lateral view of their shadows looked as if the Underdog was landing astride Ulpius' chest, perforating his larynx.
"If you trip and fall into a well, Lord Attianus, how do you propose for us to save you?" asked the blond man, cocking an eye. "Aw, we can throw you a rope. But what if you're too weak, or the walls inside too slippery?"
"You—" Cuts of humiliation scrunched up Ulpius' wizened face like a wadded papyrus; his jabbing arm trembled. He turned to Lorenzo.
"I suppose we can fill the well with more water and let it carry him to the top," said Lorenzo with a chuckle.
The blond man bowed, his gaze an enigma. "By the same token," he resumed. "You must spend the gold to save the Legidus' name, and the name shall carry you."
"How will celebrating Julius save the name of my house?"
"People talk," another instant reply that came easily to the blond man's mouth. "Eventually, words will take the street that it isn't the Praetor, the Gaius, or your brother, but you, Lord Lorenzo, who has bestowed on them the means of expression, even when the expression doesn't favor you. When you let the people celebrate their hero, you're celebrating their freedom of expression, and they will love you for it."
Above the dogwood rustling in the wind, the stars wheeled in the moonless sky. Lorenzo tucked at his toga, uncertain what he should do with the young man, who certainly posed a threat if kept close, but even more so when left to an enemy. He could wreak inconceivable havoc if not reckoned with.
"Winning the bet will only be your first step," Xeator continued. "The amount of gold you win would send the Gaius to bankruptcy, which they would not stand by. We don't know how they'll react, but they will, and once they do, you'll frame it as a mutiny. Who, then, will our Praetor turn to if it isn't someone rich and loyal enough to take them out?"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, lad," said Lorenzo softly as he ambled around the young man, his eyes on him like a radius. "You suggest I redirect the Praetor's suspicion to the Gaius by underlying their popularity. Meanwhile, you want me to commission artworks that eulogize Julius, and the opportunity of an expression I'm to offer is to help me gain popular support. Does it not come off as a contradiction to you? Isn't it popularity that cost the Gaius the Praetor's trust?
"Can you, my lord, step in the same river twice?" Asking in reply, Xeator swiveled to meet him in the eye.
"Stop speaking in riddles!" Ulpius shrieked. "When Lord Lorenzo asks, you answer!"
Xeator didn't bother with even a side glance this time. "When you step foot in a river for the first time," he continued, his eyes focusing on Lorenzo. "You may be aghast by the temperature of the water, the speed of its flow, the slippery moss, the sharpness of the rock … You're studying the river, so when you step in the second time, you're more learned, prepared, seasoned, and naturally, you will zero in on different matters, such as how you should swim this time to be more efficient, or where is the narrowest crossing. You are the same man, and yet you're different. So is the river. The moss, the rocks, the water, all, too, will have changed, however inconceivably. Do you think the Praetor's priority would not have changed when a mutiny rises against him? Would he still care who's gaining more popularity at that time?"
Halting his feet, Lorenzo locked eyes with the blond man. "And yet, why should I go to such lengths? I could just have the newsman read to the public the truth about the Gaius, no?"
"Then why haven't you done it?"
Lorenzo felt his brow knit in a frown so tight his eyes hurt.
The blond man chuckled. "People will accept your truth only when you're accepted as a good man. You know how mass mentality works. That's why you have tried to establish a personality different from other courtiers. But it still isn't enough. You need the people to learn on their own terms how much more you've toiled for their sake. So when they finally learn how the beloved Gaius have been guzzling up their taxes and are just another piece of shit galvanized in gold, they will feel betrayed. With a right nudge here and there, could this feeling of betrayal ferment into a full-on riot?"
Backlit in the flame, Moon Xeator gazed from the wispy shadows of his ash blond strands. But it wasn't just the hair that cast his shadows, Lorenzo thought as he contemplated the young man towering before him. He was dark, not in complexion but in air. Above the high cheekbones, the glow of those almond-shaped eyes divulged nothing; the diamond-cut jawline framed half of his face in chiaroscuro, and all lights, as it seemed, dimmed in his presence. A chill eddied across the patio as the blond man went forth.
"While you will have framed the Gaius' reaction to a mutiny, there is no guarantee how the Praetor will react, or if the Gaius will make a case for themselves. On the off chance the Praetor chooses to believe the Gaius, all our scheming today will be for nothing. But if we can have the people rise against the Gaius, the Praetor will have no choice but to address the demand. And you, my lord, will be there to deliver. So, to answer your question, you go to the lengths for insurance."
Lorenzo drew a long breath. "Even so," he opined, "let's not forget that Julius is married to Marcus' daughter. No father would wish harm to his own blood."
"Indeed," clucking his tongue, the blond man seconded. "Every daughter holds a special place in her old man's heart, and no man shall ever deserve her as far as the father is concerned." He paused, his lips essayed a broader smile. "I've heard a local goldsmith killed his apprentice at a cockfight earlier today. Young, talented, and popular among the patrons, the apprentice was thought to be the protégé. What a shame. Instead of cornering his master to marry him his daughter, he should have handled the situation with more patience."
Wine gushed up and singed Lorenzo's gullet. He gulped the chill air to keep it down, remembering the story at the cockpit and the resemblance it struck with the tension at large.
"My last suggestion," Xeator pressed on. "Once you win the gold, I'm afraid you'll keep little to yourself. You'll spend it on reform as a promise to the people so they have a reason to live. Only when they have a reason to live, will they die for it. They will die for the man who gives them that reason." Taking a step forward, he dropped to one knee before Lorenzo, an elbow resting on his lap. "And I beseech you, my lord, to be that man."
Lorenzo signaled for him to rise. Gazing into those emerald eyes, he asked, "So, what're you dying for, my lad?"
The blond man didn't flinch from his gaze for a moment when everything seemed to hold still. Then, raising his head, he glanced up at the night sky, where stars gazed down from beyond the scudding clouds. "To die for is a reason to live. I am to die because I have nothing to die for."