Act Five:
Dutybound and Down
Episode One: The Road to Hell
Frantic is probably not the best word to describe our escape. For that matter, nor is escape exactly the most accurate descriptor.
Ted, sooner than later, got his horses back under control and slowed their pace. I—
I'm standing in the door of the carriage, numbly managing to stay in place – watching Metus silently watch me until I can no longer see them. And then until we are away from Pavia – and still, after the city is long lost over the horizon.
Maybe madcap is better. I certainly feel insane.
Regardless of the vocabulary, we got away.
Eventually I feel a hand on my shoulder. I blink, for what feels like the first time in a very long time, indeed. In a sort of daze – like when, in movies, they cut the soundtrack and muffle the ambient noise, and all you can hear is the actor's breathing and the camera is sort of loosely panning around in slow motion— I turn to look inside the carriage.
At Peitho.
M – What is your debt to her that you feel duty-bound to protect her?
The statuette burns warm against my chest – as Peitho's gaze bores its way like a demented surgeon's laser-drill into my brain and out the back of my skull.
She is sitting on the bench facing our laid tracks. Just as casual as you like, hands even demurely in her lap. Her face is placid, but there are no thanks in those too-big eyes.
S – She doesn't think I'm protecting her.
“Do you believe me that magick is real, now?” Peitho's lips twist wryly and her head tilts so that she is looking up at me through her archly told-you-so brows.
I don't move – that is, the carriage bumps and I have to struggle to maintain my footing.
I – How long has she known?
R – That Metus—
S – That Metus what? And don't say—
I – Has access to powerful, ancient magicks. You know this. You've seen it.
Maybe the carriage didn't bump. Maybe my own thoughts rocked the floor toward my chin. As it is I all but have to pick it off the ground.
Had I known all this time? The rumors, sure – but did I believe them? Did I believe Peitho that magick is real?
“Why don't you sit down?” Peitho suggests. “You don't want to fall.”
“Why don't I—“
“You're making me anxious, Robert. You could do something foolish – hurt yourself. Why don't you just sit down, huh?”
All of a sudden, I feel sick – dizzy – confused. My legs want to buckle.
S – Am I going to faint?
With no small amount of either care or effort, I ease my way to the bench across from Peitho. My vision isn't swimming, but I feel like I want to close my eyes and keep them that way for a long time. Maybe forever, if I'm lucky.
I can feel more than see Peitho get up and pull the carriage door closed behind me. “Jesus, Robert – show Tedoro some respect,” she huffs her way back to her seat.
I open an eye to look at her and realize two things: I am slumped across the bench, lying on my bruised and now very sore cheek, not sitting upright as I'd thought; and Peitho is furious with me.
“Sorry,” I mutter, letting my eye droop closed.
“We need to talk.”
“All we do is talk. I just want to sleep. Let me sleep and we can talk—“
The next thing I know, her hand is on my face. She must have heard the slur in my words, too. I flinch away from her. When I open my eye to glare at her, I have another dual realization: I don't think I can open the other eye, and Peitho's face is filled with concern like the innocence which radiates from a cherub.
I smile and take her hand.
“No, Rob— Let me see.”
Her voice is surprisingly frustrated, so I let go of her. Trying to be still as she lifts my head on my – very sore and stiff all of a sudden – neck. Her eyes are worried. I can see that they start to widen, then her whole face just sort of— It isn't paralyzed, exactly. It kind of deadens, like all expression is sloughed off her features.
Her hands, though. They're cool on the flesh of my injured cheek. That is, the very tender flesh of my introduction with the street.
“You got yourself good,” she says, her tone somewhere between a laugh and grudging praise. “Lucky you hit where you did. It's already bruised – but the eye shouldn't stay closed.” She's prodding the lower socket. “No. Just some swelling. Any higher, and....” she sits back down, meets my one-eyed gaze. “You're lucky you didn't kill yourself. But—! No sleep. Not for you. Not after a head injury.”
I frown at her. “A head injury?”
“Shut up.” She cuts off whatever protest I am obviously too slow to articulate. “You are a man – you wouldn't know you were injured until you saw for yourself that you couldn't reattach a lost limb.”
Under her gaze, I do shut up – for a time – if only because I think there's going to be a command or a further insult thrown my way. A few seconds later, sheepishly, at least, I ask: “Then what do you want to talk about?”
Peitho is frowning again, now. “Why did you do that?”
“Why did I—? It's just a question.”
“Don't play stupid with me, Robert. Did you plan for that all to happen? Metus – for Ted—?”
“What?” I blink, as dumbfounded as had she slapped me instead. “No. Why—? Why would I—?“
“To entrap me. To make me believe that you are some kind of hero – some kind of savior. To put me in your debt for “saving” me when I had the situation fully... under... control.”
Peitho begins angry, but ends almost sputtering. I try to find a comfortable upright position on the bench, settling with a palms up, There you go. She breaks her stare, looks at the floor. Blinks, several times, but slowly, over a long period of minutes. I'm watching, and I'm not sure why. Because she's beautiful? Certainly. Because I want to know what she's thinking? Probably. Because I want her to be thinking well of me?
Definitely.
“Ted knew where I was because I asked him how to find you,” I start slowly, tearing my eyes from her to gaze out the window – to watch the Po River Valley pass, heedless, careless, of whether Peitho is listening to or watching me. I met Adalbert— I guess I should say Adalbert met me – at the first tavern I stopped at. It's hard to imagine, isn't it? That of all the places in Pavia a man could go to get drunk and forget about his problems, Adalbert walked into the same one I did. Coincidence?”
I wasn't asking the question because I wanted an answer, so Peitho's surprises me.
“There are no coincidences.”
I turn only as much as I need to regard her from my good eye. “Is that what you think?”
“That is the Truth.”
“Hm.” I break contact with her all-too sincere eyes. “I'm sure you believe that.”
“I know that you were taught it.”
“By the Master,” I acknowledge with a nod. “Nearly every day of my life for, what ten years?”
“Until you were eighteen, right?”
I hear it in Peitho's voice – she's not just feeding me questions to keep me talking. She wants to know.
I – Is she still going to want to know when she finds out you've got her Statuette?
I look at her. “Do you think the Master did all of this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean do you think the Master organized all of this – the theft of the Rod, the involvement of the Venatores... all of it.”
Peitho blinks, slowly, one time, and for all the world, it's like watching a reptile let me know it's watching me too.
“Why do you think that? Why would he do that?”
I look away, out the window. “You'll think I'm crazy.”
“Think you're crazy?” Peitho scoffs. “Did you see what Metus just did?”
My eye is starting to get tired of all the back-and-forth. “I'm not sure what I saw.”
“Oh, come on, Robert, don't—“
“Don't tell me what to do. Just... I guess it's all you can do now, isn't it? Just trust me?”
I can see Peitho biting the inside of her lip. Indecisively? I'm not sure.
“I think this is about a lot more than just the Kingdoms of Christendom.” Peitho doesn't react, so I continue. “I think the Scholeio—“ I cut myself off.
For so long I haven't let myself so much as think about them. Seven years, I have kept their name off my lips. It's death to talk about them.
R - But it's more than that and you know it.
I - It's your duty.
R - You gave an oath.
al'S - You will hear men tell you that a man's word is his bond - that their word is their bond. This is only partly true. A man's word is all he's got in this world. A man is only as good as his honor. He is only as honorable as he is dutiful to his oaths.
al'Shamshir's voice lingers in my mind like a fog.
“The Scholeio?” Peitho asks, clearing the smoke of memory. This time not because she's curious, but because she wants me to continue.
I meet her eye, hard, with the significance of what I'm about to say. “I think something is going on inside the Scholeio. A... I'm not sure. We don't have a phrase yet for coup d'etat.” Peitho's face scrunches up with incomprehension. “Something is coming, all right? Something... something like the end of the world. Some radical shift in the way things are done. I'm not sure. An end? The End? I don't think so. But I think someone wants it to seem that way. I think that there might be a splinter group within the Scholeio looking to overthrow the Archi.”
Peitho kind of chuckles. “Rob....”
R – She doesn't think you're mad.
I – She thinks you're an idiot.
She puts her hand on my knee. Her eyes are way too gentle. What is she about to say to me?
“The Archi hasn't been in control of the Scholeio for – well...” Her face takes on a don't make me say it – you know this – cast. Then her mouth sets, her jaw working in the minutest flinches of some unknowable agitation. “Fine. The Master hasn't been the Archi in anything but title since you abandoned him.”
S – I didn't.... That—
R – Can't be true?
I react as though she had punched me in the stomach, but manage not to curl up in a ball on the bench.
“So that explains why Ted came, I suppose. Did you tell him you thought you were in danger?”
“No,” I mutter. “I didn't think I was in danger.”
“Then why did you want to leave? If you did not know that Metus were in the city?”
I roll my eye to look at her. I'm getting tired of this. She looks suspicious, and it flashes on me why that might be:
R – She thinks you dreamed something.
I – She can't trust you because she knows you know things you aren't telling her.
“I just had a bad feeling about staying,” I try to explain, but I know it's a lie almost as soon as the first word hits my lips – and Peitho isn't much more convinced by the last to leave them. “You're right. That's not true. Not the whole truth. I— Something Adalbert said – I don't know what it was. He said something that made me – that made me think that maybe I am the only person that can do this.”
Peitho's eyebrows raise, but I can see the insult behind them. I can predict the question.
“It has nothing to do with you or with being convinced. Maybe it does have something to do with you. It has nothing to do with Adalbert convincing me. I—“ I take a deep breath, rolling my eye in my head to look anywhere but at her – then sigh, dropping my gaze to the floor. “I guess I just wanted to be where you were – after Adalbert. And that made me realize – made me realize that maybe I didn't want you chasing after me after all. Maybe I wanted to come with you.”
“Come with me?” Peitho laughs. “Come with me?”
I look up at her, frowning, confused.
“Am I supposed to be flattered?”
“What?”
Peitho looks at me – it only takes the space between thump-thumps of the heart – and her face changes. “You mean that. You aren't being funny.” She smiles, and now she's rolling her eyes and her head on her neck and looking anywhere but at me. “You're like a lost puppy dog – just looking for someone to keep you company and share your time. All right, puppy dog, why did you stop me from killing Metus? That's why I'm really angry with you. You could have planned all of this – but why did you stop me? Why did you save me?”
“I wasn't saving you,” I say to the window.
“Why did you interfere?”
I can hear Peitho's frustration. She thinks I'm being evasive – that I'm being pedantic. I'm not.
“I couldn't just watch – I couldn't just... let you kill them.”
“Why? Why not?”
I breathe a little helpless laugh. “Because— It's wrong to do nothing to stop a friend from doing evil – to themselves, or another. Even when that other may be better for both of us if they are gone.”
I meet Peitho's eye when I finish this, and she is not having it.
“A friend?”
“Anyone. Cicero says—“
“I know what Cicero said. Are you Cicero?”
“Well, no, but—“
“Are you Marcus Tullius Cicero?”
“No. But—“
“No, but does not mean no. No, but means yes. Are you Cicero or his son? Did you write or was On Duties written to you?”
“No.” I want so badly to hate Peitho right now.
“Then why did you stop me?”
“Because killing Metus would be wrong.”
“Why? Metus would kill me if given the chance. Metus would die trying at the merest chance! Why did you stop me?” Peitho is shouting by the end of this. I can almost feel the horses and Ted shifting to listen to us.
I close my eye and let the onslaught wash over me. When she is only breathing loudly and I am sure I can keep the quaver from my voice, I answer.
“Because I think – I don't think Metus knows what Metus really is.”
“And what is that?”
I open my eye, latching my gaze onto hers. “You don't want to know.”
“Don't tell me what I want to know,” Peitho practically hisses, a deadly warning.
“Then I don't want to tell you. How's that? I think – no, I believe that if Metus really knew what Metus is, who their Grand Magus is and what they really want.... I think Metus would join us.”
“Join us,” Peitho echoes. I hear the irony.
“Us. Yes. You and me.”
“In what, exactly, would he be joining us? And you think I would work with him? Metus stole my Figurine. And what is this us?
If I had expected to take her hand and be lifted to safer, stabler ground, I am finding it already to be crumbling. This ground is not the rock I thought it to be. What do you do when the land you find for yourself is an earthy cliff overlooking and crumbling into a hungry sea? Do you build? Do you abandon?
Or do you just wait it out?
“I don't know. I don't know what this us is. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know why you would work with Metus. I don't know why anyone cooperates with anyone. I don't know why—“ I take a deep breath. “But I do know one thing. Metus didn't take your Figurine.”
I meet her eye.
“I did.”
Comments
Post a Comment