Emperor

IV

Audax had been washed, that pale hair cut and brushed, and he was dressed in a fresh tunic. He was probably as clean and presentable as he had ever been in his life, Thalius reflected. But he was nothing but skin and bones, and there were marks, like the bruising around his mouth, that no amount of water would wash away. But Audax clung to Tarcho's hand, and Thalius saw that Tarcho was finding a way to win his trust.

It struck Thalius that he had not yet heard the boy speak, not one word.

'Apart from that scarring on his back his health is reasonable,' Tarcho said now. 'Nothing a bit of sunshine and some decent food wouldn't cure.' He said more cautiously, 'He has some bruising around the thighs, however. His mouth and throat are damaged, and-'

'Enough,' Thalius snapped.

Tarcho said to the overseer, 'I know what goes on in these places. A pretty boy like this will be traded for a morsel of food.'

Volisios said, 'What did you expect? But things are more complicated than you probably understand, soldier. The men, trapped in the dark and the damp, turn to each other for comfort, for there is nothing else. Why, some of our longer-lasting workers have "marriages" that have fared better than my own! This boy may have been hurt, but he's just as likely to have been treated with kindness.' But he didn't look at the boy as he said this, or ask him to confirm or deny it.

Thalius asked carefully, 'And the marks on his back?'

Tarcho nodded to the boy. Audax turned around and lifted up his tunic, exposing skinny legs, flat buttocks, and a back covered with livid scars. But now the dirt was off Thalius could clearly see the shapes of the letters, sixteen of them, in their square grid: PEEO NERR OSRI ACTA

Tarcho scratched his head. 'And is this what you came looking for?'

'It must be.'

'The boy has no memory of having received this tattoo.'

'I'm not surprised,' Thalius said. 'See how the letters are stretched, distorted? He must have received these markings when he was very small, an infant perhaps. As he has grown the marks have grown with him. Perhaps the marks were copied from his own father at his birth, and his father before him…' Thalius imagined it: a slave painfully pricking out letters into the raw skin of his child, perhaps with a bit of quartz from the gold seams, and rubbing in dirt or vegetable dye.

It had been the curse of Severa's sentence to slavery that her grandchildren would not even be literate. So with the Prophecy burned, its words would be lost after a generation, two, three. But evidently, Thalius thought, excited, somebody had come up with a way of preserving at least some of the text, inscribed into the very bodies of children. Thalius had read something of Severa, his remote grandmother of so many generations ago; perhaps it was that hard woman herself who had come up with this way of saving the Prophecy in blood and pain.

Volisios had become a lot less respectful since Thalius had admitted he was no government inspector. 'So you have what you wanted. What will you do with the boy? Throw him back down into the pit? Or would you like him to warm your own bed first?'

'You disgust me,' Thalius snapped.

But Tarcho said, 'Actually he has a point, Thalius. Slaves are expensive, you know.'

'He is blood,' Thalius said. 'Distant blood, but blood. I won't leave him here to be raped to death. Name your price, overseer.'

Volisios nodded and, business-like, reached for a wooden note block and a pen.

The boy watched all this, wide-eyed; surely he hadn't understood a word.

Tarcho studied the tattoo again. 'But what does it mean?'

'I don't know. Not yet. It's clearly some kind of acrostic.'

'A what? Never mind. And where will this quest of yours lead us next?'

'To Rutupiae.'

'The east coast? What for? Who will be there?'

Thalius said simply, 'Constantine.'