“Naw, not like that,” Sestius said in a clumsy attempt to be ingratiating. Perennius was moving slowly to the grating by the centurion’s side. “Look, you can’t have much fun with these crazies, right?” Sestius continued. “I don’t mean just wine. I mean sex. I’ll bet you’ve never been laid, not the way a man as strong as you has a right to be.”
The guard began to laugh unexpectedly. He walked toward the door, slapping his club against his palm. There was real humor in Erzites’ laugh. The twitching cudgel was a motion and not a threat. “Say,” he said, “I’ll bet you’re going to offer to get my ashes hauled, ain’t you? Going to have one of the women do it, or do you figure I’d rather have the kid? Sure, I’m going to open the door for that. Or maybe you were going to say I could just stick my cock through the bars and let somebody get his teeth in it?” Erzites slammed the knotted head of his club against the iron in another burst of anger. “You think I haven’t heard it?” he shouted. “You think I haven’t heard it all?”
In Perennius’ right hand was a shard from the waste jar. The two pottery vessels were the only source of solid weight in the cell. Calvus had broken the waste receptacle by the pressure of her fingers on the rim. There had been a popping sound like that of the tendons of a knee going out, but there was no sharp crash to bring the guard’s attention. Erzites would not have taken any action – if the prisoners wanted to slide in their own slops, that was their business. But it would have made the guard curious and even more cautious than before.
“Look, I’m going to tell you,” Erzites was saying. He was dangerously cheerful, in charge and aware of it. The Cilician had dropped the chunk of bread in his flash of anger. Now he picked it up, wiped it on his trousers, and took a bite. Erzites’ teeth were as strong and yellow as a camel’s. “The old man made do with what came in trade, sure, and that was damn all,” the guard said through the wad of bread. “None of the others – ” “others” tripped out so naturally as a term for the sectaries that it was obviously the one the brothers used between themselves – “would give him the time, of course, and the bastards wouldn’t let him keep a pretty one around until the next lot came through. Not even after Ma died.”
The villager walked back to the hamper and drew out a skin of water. He was obviously pleased to have an audience. Perennius suspected that Father Ramphion and his fellows circumscribed to the extent possible all intercourse, not just sexual, with the two Ophitics. Out of the guard’s sight, behind the rock of the wall, the agent was carefully coiling again the sash tied around the potsherd. Perennius would have liked to double the length, but he was afraid that a knot in the middle of the line would throw off his cast.
“Well, the old man knew some field expedients from his army days,” Erzites continued. He smirked. The guard was obviously relaxed, but the habit of caution was so well ingrained that even now he remained at a safe distance from the bars. “Brought me and my brother up on it, too. Donkeys.” He pumped his cudgel up and down. “And I tell you, women don’t compare to a stump-broke jenny. Nor boys, neither, though the others wouldn’t let us use them since my brother wasted one.” Erzites frowned at the memory. “Weren’t his fault the brat bled out.”
Perennius had not realized quite how much of reality he had saved Gaius from until then. The younger Illyrian began to gag in the background of the cell. Apparently he understood enough Cilician to get at least the drift of the description. Erzites laughed. Then he noticed that the agent was almost touching the bars. “Move back, damn you!” the guard ordered with a gesture of his club. Not quite close enough.
“Calvus, can you make him come closer?” whispered the agent as he obeyed by a step.