But the execution always came with surprises. A putrid whiff sent a tremor through him. His hands slipped, hair on his arms spiking up against the drafts.
The lid creaked as they pushed it aside, releasing a roar of rot. Dracus twirled on his feet and retched.
"Damn it!" the tall soldier cursed. "You're stinking up the whole place!"
Dracus stared at the soldier with disbelief. But he knew better than to offend him. "Apologies, m'lord," he slurred, choking with a smile. "I'll clean it up."
Bucero swallowed his own puke.
Inside the box were stuffed the cadavers of two teenage girls with parts of their lower abdomens removed. Their waxy skin was bruised with livor mortis, their hair scabbed with gore in disarray. As he and Dracus tried to move the second corpse out to the furnace, it collapsed from the torso, dropping the maggot-infested intestines on the gravel. Dracus gagged again.
Both soldiers groaned. The tall one shoved Dracus to the wall, then tossed a shovel at Bucero, ordering him to remove everything on the floor to the fire.
The furnace rumbled, engulfing the rotten flesh in blue flames that burned as cold as the sweat on Bucero's back. His hands trembled on the wooden shaft of the shovel, the tip of its sooty blade clunking against the littered floor. He narrowed his gaze. Other than gravel, there were charcoal chips that cracked like desiccated barks of trees. He plucked his eyes from his feet and swallowed again his own vomit.
"Pardon us, m'lords," he bowed and grinned at the soldiers. "My nephew hasn't been feeling too well. Any chance he can catch some fresh air outside and let the other officers watch him?"
Tending the furnace, the short soldier glimpsed over his shoulder. "They're upstairs, splashing in their bath, using the water we're heating now. And if you plan to escape, you can forget about it now. That Hectius can shoot down a boar from a hundred yards. The pretty boy stays."
"A bath?"
"What'd you think this is?" the tall one butted in. "Yes, a bath. Escorting bodies here is called going for a bath. And it really is, not for rank and files like us though."
The short one hushed him, his onyx eyes shooting daggers.
"So that's what it means, going for a bath," Dracus chuckled, tucking his head to the crook of an elbow propped against the rammed earth. "Very clever."
"What?" Bucero edged closer to him, pretending to shovel.
"At first, I found it incomprehensible how there's only one guard," the boy hummed. "Then, it became obvious: why else would you need more men to guard a hypocaust? Any added number would only make it more suspicious. And if people travel past and see the smoke coming out, hey, it really is a hypocaust!"
Bucero nodded.
"So, what's up with your big plan about selling me to brothels?" Dracus wiped off a rivulet of vomit with the back of a wrist. His sapphire eyes flared wet from throwing up as though the furnace flames.
"You're kind of important back in the capital, eh?"
Dracus snorted, his voice on the fence between a derisive laugh and a grunt. "Why does it even matter now? None of these lowly sons of bitches recognize me! Nor I can prove anything without my amulet! I say we take these two, chop the rope with the shovel, and make a run for it. Didn't you hear? The others are all up there stewing themselves! We can make it!"
A swish of steps pelted from above, interspersed with a few obtuse clangors.
Bucero gripped the shovel. Scooping up what was on the floor, he hurled it into the furnace. "Those guards on the road," he muttered, "they wouldn't happen to be looking for you, would they?"
The boy shot a wary glance at him; his silence spoke volumes.
"We only need to run into any of those guards with your drawing! And if we're to be sold as slaves, they'll escort us to the port, where there must be more drawings of you!" Choking on another gut of rotten air, Bucero clamped a hand to his mouth.
"What if I'm a wanted criminal?" the boy japed.
"Are you?"
The tall guard wheeled around to them and pushed Dracus to the shaft. "Grab us more dry wood and make yourself useful!" he grumbled, swinging his head to Bucero. "And you! Get over here!"
Bucero complied and moved with the charred bones cracking under his feet. He tried not to faint. A sudden clamor from the upstairs rose to a crescendo, of growling and groaning pierced by rounds of clatter. A series of thumps, followed by dragging across the floor moments later. Weights tumbled off the stairs.
The fire puffed; the furnace huffed.
In a few heartbeats of silence, Bucero gaped at the dome overhead, then at Dracus, as did the soldiers at each other. Before any of them latched onto what happened, an ursine shadow enlarged from the tunnel's entrance.
Hectius emerged, steaming with sweat. Blood dribbled from the blade in his hand.
"You two," stomping toward them, he bellowed at the soldiers. "More work outside. And once you're done, wait till I come back! If you dare to abandon your posts, I'll report you for murdering your officers! As for you filthy peasants," he turned to Dracus and Bucero. "Let's roll! Now!" He manacled their hands on the front and wrung the ropes leashed to their necks around the crook of his thumb.
Bucero shambled and choked, groping for the cord around his neck that tightened like a noose. The first beam of light pierced his eyes like many grains of sand. He blinked hard; his vision struggled to adjust. Next to the creek, he saw the bodies of the winy and the hooked nose piled on one another. Water burbled and splashed them, sluicing blood from their gashed mails and leathers. Red stretched long and thinned into disappearance as though it were never there. Snapping away his eyes, Bucero heaved. The fresh air he had coveted only a few breaths ago felt frigid and buckled his knees.
Bedraggled as they scrambled through the woods for miles, with Hectius presiding from behind, Bucero kept looking overhead until he spied the wobbly masts peering over the treetops.
They had arrived at the waterfront lined by many quays.
Ferrymen poled fore and aft between the trading galleys, ready to empty their bellies. Upstream on the north bank, half a dozen war vessels were moored to their cribs. Gaunt and sullen with tarred hulls and furled sails, they looked as though the skeleton of raptors, biding their resurrections in the lapping waves.
"Praetor's Port," Bucero murmured, tilting to Dracus. "Where our shared journey began."
"How romantic!" Dracus scoffed. "Had I not been so dehydrated I might shed a tear!"
"Hang in there, lad," Bucero mumbled, glancing at Dracus out of the corner of his eyes. Dampened by cold sweat, his floppy ringlets stayed flat and draggled about his anemic face streaked with dirt and gore and thin scabs of his vomit. The boy looked as horrific as horrified. What if he doesn't look like the drawing, and no one recognizes him? Bucero gagged on the thought. "It'll all be fine," he added, uncertain whom he was trying to reassure.
"You won't find any more drawings of me hanging about," the boy coughed up the words. "Those men-at-arms you saw earlier before I jumped off the wagon? They are Mother's secret house guards. And they'd only look for me covertly."
Bucero smacked his shivering lips. "W-w-why?"
"It wouldn't be safe for me, or anyone, if everyone knows I've gone missing."
A few words overladen with so many implications Bucero wouldn't know where to start to process. "Why didn't you say so earlier?" He wanted to sob.
"You didn't ask." The boy side-eyed him. A crooked grin bared his upper canine so white under the sun it almost glinted. "But don't worry. I've got a new plan," he murmured, his head inclining to Bucero. "Romulus Scipio is usually at the port meeting slave traders around this time of the year for their talent recruitment. The Scipios always have their first pick on the younger, healthier, and prettier—"
A hard yank felt around Bucero's neck also cut the boy short. Hectius hauled them apart. "Stop talking!" he spat.
Dracus, however, wheeled around to Hectius. "There is a way for you to make more gold, my lord!" the boy croaked, his voice as hoarse as sand grinding on flagstones. "Why go to the traders when you can have a word with the highest bidder? Cut the middleman and take us directly to Lord Romulus of House Scipio!"
"Do you take me for a fool, boy?" Hectius blustered, drawing in his chin, eyes gawking. "Why do you think they have traders if anyone can just pop by Romulus Scipio?"
"No, my lord, but neither a fool is the Scipio," Dracus pressed on. "If you can let him see me, he will want me, and he'll come to you."
Hectius cachinnated, exposing a mouthful of yellow teeth. "Not shy at all, are you?"
A half smile tilted the boy's lips. "I'm pretty, and I know it."
"What if Romulus doesn't see you as pretty as you think?" Hectius wrung a gore-streaked hand around Dracus' neck.
The boy still wouldn't budge. "Then sell us to traders at a bargain," he rasped. "But if Romulus buys me directly from you, think of the profit!"
"Oh yeah?" Hectius sneered. "What's good for you?"
A flicker of disdain flitted across the boy's eyes. "Either way, my fate is sealed," he choked. "If I end up with a trader, Gods know how many pigs will ravish me. But if you sell me right off to Romulus, I get to serve the high lords." He allowed himself a broader smile.
Hectius bored into the boy; his teeth ground. Turning his head shoulder to shoulder, he scanned the traders smirking from the shade of their huts, then returned his gaze to the pier.
An ornate barge with a single mast rose high like a Corinthian column. From its flying jib billowed the ensign printed with a diagonal scorpion, the Scipios' sigil. He loosed his grip and gave the rope another yank, hauling both Dracus and Bucero toward a dirt slope slanting into the river next to a goose-headed galley.
He swung the sword at the slope. "Get down there and wash your shit face!"
"M-, mine too?" Bucero stuttered.
Hectius booted him in the buttock, sending him to a forward lurch. Crouching next to Dracus, he wetted his hands in the river. As he splashed his face, Bucero tumbled to what was happening. The boy must know Romulus Scipio quite well in person. So long as the younger brother of Lord Triumvir Remus recognized the boy, their predicament should dissolve.
Stifling a shudder, he stole a furtive glance at the swarthy youth as he contemplated the weight of his true identity.
"We're fucked," the boy casually remarked, his voice lower than a whisper. "Romulus isn't here. See the banner on the jib?" He flicked his eyes at the ornate barge. "The scorpion on the ensign, if the head is downward, it means the lord is away."
Bucero froze for a moment, then slapped his own cheeks. A nervous cackle fled his throat. He willed himself to calm. "We only need a man with a name who recognizes you, and he doesn't have to be Romulus, eh?"
"Look at you, learning fast!" the boy teased, an impish grin scrunched up his face. "Follow my lead, alright? We need to make a scene." His eyes narrowed at the east.
Bucero looked to where the boy had his gaze. Further down the pier had docked a new sloop with the flapping print of the Legiuds' leaping panther.
A gaunt man approaching his forties had alighted from the deck. Sullen and unprepossessing, he had a protruded chin and a prominent nose. His large green eyes were wide apart like a toad. Behind him followed a striking youth over six feet tall. He had the diamond-cut contours of an alabaster statue. His dark-rooted hair lightened to a silverish blond as if bleached by the sun. Clutching his sword, he folded his arms upon the chest in a hunching pose. He bore no expression. His emerald eyes glinted and cut where he looked as if the finest steel.
"You sure about this?" Bucero coughed up the words. Of all three top clans, the Legidus was the worst, or so he heard. "They feel fouler."
"Just act along." The boy gave him a wink.
Once they were back on the main road, Dracus stumbled ahead and dropped to his knees unannounced. Grasping at his chest as if he had choked, he wailed.
A few men halted their feet.
Hectius gave the rope hard yank, but as the boy refused to stand up, he knocked him flat on the ground with the pommel of his sword. "Get up now, you little shit!"
Dracus flopped in the dirt. "Help!" he groaned, hurling a death glare at Bucero. "Can't breathe!"
Balling his hands to stifle his spasming, Bucero felt his teeth chattering. Oh, bloody hell! He spun to the onlookers and beseeched, "My nephew is sick! Gods help us! Is there a healer around here?"
Hectius jolted at him, whacking him on the back with his scabbard. "Shut up, you parasite! The boy's healthy as fuck!"
Bucero stumbled, his back welting from the blow.
You've got a glib tongue. You should loosen up and use it more often. Hearing Dracus' voice render into his own, he staggered toward the Legius' sloop as fast as he could.
"Why would nobody help us?" He tore his throat with long howls. "My brother, the boy's father, died in the civil war so the country could start anew! He fought and died for the promise that all lives deserve a chance! Even slaves have a chance at citizenship! Isn't it what we've been promised? But no! All that a slave has is a chance to die! But if we're all dead, who will die for your lordship? Who'll fight those Pyrrhic battles for your moments of triumph and joy? If all our children are to die, over whom shall yours rule and preside? Who will—"
A sidelong swing slammed into his head. Bucero saw daylight swirl and dim into a pitch-black void. The world quieted.