“It’s the pretending it just . . . ‘happens,’ ” the agent went on. He was looking at the empty courtyard now. “They didn’t do it. Sure, we all screw up … and this is a business that you screw up, maybe somebody gets dead. But if you pretend you didn’t do it, the arrow was Fate or Fortune or any damn thing but a kid talking … I thought he was going to say it wasn’t his fault. And then I might’ve killed him.”
“Don’t confuse what men say with what they mean, Aulus Perennius,” Calvus said.
“I don’t – ” the agent rasped back.
“No, you don’t,” the tall woman responded more sharply than Perennius had ever heard her speak before. “You take those lies as a personal slur on your intelligence. And you know they aren’t! They’re the prayer of somebody human that the world not tell him something he already knows. You’ve watched Gaius. Do you think he really doubts he was responsible for what happened?”
“He shouldn’t lie to me,” Perennius muttered.
“He didn’t,” Calvus said, “and he didn’t lie to himself.”
The agent looked at her. “Yeah,” he said. He took Calvus’ hand loosely in his own. “Ah. Thanks.”
Calvus smiled at him. Her expression was still untrained but now real. “Aulus Perennius,” she said, “I didn’t touch your mind. I promised you. Even if I thought you were wrong, I wouldn’t have gone back on that promise. To you. I don’t trust my instincts that far, you see.”
“Blazes, you don’t have to lie,” Perennius said with a return of his earlier anger. “Look, I saw you, you did what you had to, and I want to forget it.”
“He felt guilty,” the woman said. “He wanted to admit it, but he was young. Pride and embarrassment, you can understand. But he wanted so desperately to ask forgiveness that it didn’t take much of a, well, nudge.” Calvus was still smiling.
“The hell you say,” Perennius said mildly. “Well. Not that it mattered.” He cleared his throat. “Besides the Guardians, we’ve got that dragon to take care of now, don’t we? And one man.”
“An allosaurus,” Calvus agreed. They were both looking across the courtyard. The fresh scarring near the gate was evident even in twilight. “The dragon is an allosaurus, that is.”
“Umm,” the agent grunted, accepting the datum. Hydra, chimaira, allosaurus … it didn’t much matter. After a moment he said, “Blazes, I wonder if there’s some truth in the old stories after all. Hercules and women turning into trees and everything? Well, we’ll handle it, however things shape up.”
The door swung open again. Both faced around quickly. The agent took a half step to see past Calvus. Sabellia stepped out. Her eyes were reddened but dry. “Our gear’s in with the animals,” she said, nodding to the block of stables. Four more doors were barred shut than had been when the party looked in from the hillside. “I’ll get a meal together. Those – others were just boiling porridge.”
“Right, I’ll give you a hand,” said the agent. He looked away from Sabellia as he spoke. “Need to see to the horses, too, it seems.” They began walking toward the stables in parallel, though they were not precisely in concert.
“I was raised to believe in an ordered, understandable universe, Aulus Perennius,” Calvus called after the agent. “I think that I am coming to believe in heroes as well.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Blazes, this is going to be awkward,” said Gaius as he held up the mesh gauntlet. Even with the fireplace niche stoked high, the lighting of the common room was more an occasional absence of shadow than good working illumination. The room’s volume and blackened stone saw to that.
“I’m coming too,” said Sabellia. She did not raise her head or her voice.
“Awkward, but the only thing I see working with that many of them, Guardians, and the way the land lies,” Perennius said with a shrug. He lifted the facemask from one of the sets of parade armor.
“Listen, there’s three horses!” the red-haired woman said loudly. “You’re not going to leave me here!”
“You stay here, like you’ve been told,” Perennius said. Sabellia’s mouth opened for a retort. The agent overrode it, shouting, “There aren’t three bloody sets of armor, are there? Just what the hell good do you figure to do getting wasted the first time they shoot? You didn’t see what that does to a man. Believe me, it’s quick and it’s final, just as final as it comes.”