“How did he make the Eagle light?” demanded the Ch’in.
Quintus could have laughed at the baffled arrogance in Lucilius’s voice. “I don’t know. I never saw that happen before. I tell you, there is a strangeness … I will be glad when we go to a place where family is respected and a man can be civilized.”
“Mud huts and upstarts!” spat the Ch’in noble. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, he was speaking of his own capital! Or of the capital of the young man whose body had been usurped. Then he recovered self-control.
“The man who could teach me the secret of the Eagle’s fire—the secret of the Phoenix itself—might find himself honored as if he were a prince, almost as the Son of Heaven himself.”
Lucilius almost purred. “You begin to interest me.”
“You, not—”
“That peasant? He would not listen to you. But it was. he for whom the Eagle lit. I must think….”
“I must see it,” said Wang Tou-fan.
“And if you touch it? It may consume you as it consumed … how shall we call your former … yes, yes, I know. I am all discretion, not that I believe you. Will you risk the chance that the thing has bonded so to him that it will turn on all others?”
“It allowed Ssu-ma Chao to touch it.”
“The risk, as I said, is yours.”
“He has the place,” said Wang Tou-fan, “that should be yours. That can be yours, with far more added to it. That choice, as I said, is yours. Remove him, and perhaps the Eagle will turn to you. And then you and I can talk again.”
Quintus stiffened. They had never agreed, he and Lucilius, not from the moment that the patrician had eyed him and marked him as a bumpkin and his family’s client; and Quintus had, in return, seen the other as responsible for his family’s degradation. All this long round of service and exile, they had been like enemies manacled on a short chain and tossed into deep water, to drown together or, together, struggle onto dry land.
“Here is a blade,” said Wang Tou-fan. “And here is a phial. They have fine poisons in the farthest East. But a scratch…”
Lucilius made a sound of revulsion.
“Do you want to be a fighting man all your life, one step up from a slave, when Ch’ang-an holds so much promise for a talented man who understands where his advantage lies. Take the knife!”
“He is not worthy of my attention,” the Roman muttered. “To die at the hands of one of my gens is more honor than that rustic deserves.”
“Can you be so sure? Or is it that you fear him—or that hulking oaf who marches behind him and serves him? As he should have obeyed you. Tell me, Lucilius, are you afraid?”
Afraid of Rufus? If Lucilius was not, he ought to be— if only for listening to this talk of betrayal. Quintus’s belly chilled. He would not have thought…
“What’s there?” Lucilius whispered and whirled about.
The Ch’in laughed softly. “Afraid? As I thought. Review your enemies; and what is there to fear? The oaf, the young fool, the old man from Hind, perhaps, and she who travels with him.”
“She is of interest to me….” Lucilius purred.
“Take her if you wish,” said Wang Tou-fan, as if throwing a coin to a whining beggar. “They are not … unskilled, adepts like herself. As you may have observed. As your enemy the rustic doubtless has discovered.”
The other laughed softly. “She is of interest to many.”
“I’ll kill him myself!” Quintus got the words out between gritted teeth.
“Quiet!” Draupadi hissed. She flung her arms about him as he started toward Lucilius and Wang Tou-fan and out of the range of the protective illusion she had cast. Her breath against his neck was warm and comforting.
“No, Quintus,” Draupadi crooned it almost as if she cast another spell. Lady, you do bespell me with every move. “No. Caius. Dear one. Be still, please!” She seemed to rock him back and forth, as if seeking to relax his too-taut body. “I am here. Stay with me.”
So it was treachery by Lucilius, was it? Knives in the back. And not just in his back, but Rufus’s. Quintus had known Lucilius to be venal, known him to be ambitious, spoiled, too ready to assume that all good things were his for the asking. But not evil. Now—with a strangled moan, he let his head fall onto Draupadi’s shoulder. Her body felt better in his arms than he could have dreamed. And this, he knew, was no illusion.
Nevertheless, he let her go. He needed to get closer, to see the two men, born half a world from each other yet united in treachery. Romans had shamed Rome before, but this … this was somehow different. And there were so very few of them left this far from home.
“Who’s that?” Lucilius’s voice rang out sharply.
“How long have you been in the desert?” asked Wang Tou-fan. “Are you truly fool enough to believe the stories of demons and goblins?”
A hissing began to rise in the outermost range of Quintus’s hearing, a hissing of great snakes, their jaws wide, draining the life through shining, hollow fangs until their prey were ancient-seeming, bled-out husks such as he had seen at Stone Tower.
“Yes,” Draupadi whispered. “Yes. Surely, he has been touched by their power, promised…”
Surely, Lucilius had been promised—what? Draupadi herself? The gold he had always wanted? He would be lucky if he did not find himself, like his master the dead proconsul, with more gold than he could safely swallow—the mock of his enemies.
Still, Lucilius stood. “Why not do it yourself?” he demanded. “You could say he tried to escape. You could say he ran mad and tried to kill someone.”
“Perhaps I require proofs of those in my hands. For example, you know, as does every man here, that as long as one of you Romans remains alive, he will not abandon him. He would not even, I imagine, abandon you.”
Quintus could guess Lucilius’s answering, high-nosed glare. But would he take the knife and the poison?
The Ch’in noble’s hands dropped. He stood motionless. Quintus heard other footsteps, passing so close beside him that surely the conspirators must have heard their breath in the stillness of the night.
Ssu-ma Chao! Why had he ventured outside the safety of the camp, unless—and the thought made Quintus’s belly chill—he too…
“Who goes there?” the frontier officer snapped. Quintus might well have laughed at the way the two conspirators attempted to look casual, guilt-free.
Wang Tou-fan recovered himself first, staring at Ssu-ma Chao—a contest of wills as each sought to make the other cast down his eyes. The younger man was from Ch’ang-an, was in favor with the Court; but Ssu-ma Chao had a will of iron. He might have been called a provincial, accused of filial impiety, and all but accused of treachery to the Son of Heaven, but he knew his own mind. The man from Ch’ang-an had, by his own code, toyed with treachery, conspired with a prisoner; he could not meet the older man’s eyes.
“These lands are not safe,” Ssu-ma Chao said. “Not just the demons, but our own soldiers have died. When you have ranged the deserts as long as I—which the spirits of your ancestors forbid!—you will know that this land holds traps, even for the wary.” Then he bowed ironically and deeply. “This one humbly suggests that one trip across the Takla Makan does not make the esteemed officer from the capital an expert guide. And you—” he turned to Lucilius, “—are under guard, or should be. So, back to your camp. I will not report this to your officer, and you will not be punished.”
Lucilius stiffened. Hoc habet! Quintus thought, as he might have applauded a deadly blow. Even in the darkness, Quintus could see how the patrician’s light eyes flamed. A slave and a subordinate—that was what Ssu-ma Chao had treated him as. Now, he gestured at Wang-Tou-fan as if requesting him to take charge of a somewhat recalcitrant prisoner so that the ranking Roman officer—Quintus himself—might not need to be told. And that, no doubt, would rankle Lucilius worse.
“This is my command now,” snapped Wang Tou-fan.
Ssu-ma Chao bowed even more deeply. Then, deliberately, he turned and began to walk back toward the camp, toward the fire. The hissing Quintus had heard subsided. There would be no attempt tonight, he thought.
Wang Tou-fan glanced down at a small, poisoned blade slipped from his sleeve. It would be easy, so easy for him to run up behind the other officer and stab, not even stab, but scratch him. At this moment, he hated Ssu-ma Chao more than he wanted Quintus himself dead. If he stabbed him, it might even be blamed on the Romans.