here. For once Vos might actually help us, however unintentionally.'
'I hope you are right. Arthur said — '
Tabius held his wife at arms length and smiled reassuringly. 'While I appreciate Arthur looking after my family while I am away, he is an old man, and I really must have a word to him about scaring you unnecessarily.'
'He said people were being killed in the streets. And the fires, I saw them from the landing. Half the city is aflame…'
'It is not as bad as all that. Where are the children?'
'Maggy is asleep. Lucius is pretending to be. He wanted to go down into the city to find his father.'
Tabius grinned at that. 'Thank God you convinced him otherwise. Now, I have a great deal of work tomorrow. Let's have supper and get some rest. Everything will seem better in the morning, I promise.'
She wiped away a tear and nodded. 'I'll rouse the kitchen.'
Leaving Tabius' side, she walked proudly away, causing him to admire her fortitude, not for the first time. She paused at the door, then turned round. 'Tabius… do you hear that?'
Straining his ears, he listened hard, not sure what his wife was getting at. Then it suddenly hit him — the mob was ascending the hill. He could hear their cries, muffled and distant now but slowly growing stronger.
'Impossible,' he muttered. 'The guard would not dare let them loose. Not up here.'
His wife rested against the door for support. 'Tabius,' she said, worry and strain evident in her voice. 'Are you sure about that? Really sure?'
One glance at his wife, standing by the door, strong in her faith but unsure of what to do, convinced him.
'Get the children. Do it now!'
As his wife fled upstairs, Tabius crossed the hall to his study, striding to the unlit fireplace to unbuckle the sword that hung there. Though it had belonged to his father and the blade had not been drawn in anger in decades, the lessons hammered into him during adolescence began to flood back as he grasped the hilt and drew the weapon. He fervently hoped he would not have to use it, especially in front of his children, but he would not permit anyone to hurt his family.
Striding back into the hall, he saw his wife leading little Magallia down the stairs, still in her night clothes and rubbing sleep from her eyes. Behind them was Lucius, his pride, about to enter adulthood and take on the responsibilities of the family business. Spying the sword, Lucius had just one question.
'Are we fighting them, Father?'
'I sincerely hope not,' Tabius said, though he could not fully suppress a smile at his son's spirit.
A rap at the main door of the house caused them to freeze before it was followed by several more. Three raps, then a pause, followed by two more.
Tabius looked at his wife as he went for the door. 'Arthur.'
Unbolting the door, he opened it a crack at first, then threw it open when his suspicion was confirmed. Arthur, a stooped man in his seventies but with all the energy of someone far younger, shuffled in.
'You are preparing to leave?' he asked.
'Right now,' Tabius said. 'I'm not taking any chances. Have you seen anything?'
Turning to gather his family, Tabius stopped when he realised Arthur had not answered. He looked at the old man, and saw tears in the familiar face.
'The guard are already outside,' Arthur said. 'They are funnelling the mob straight here, avoiding everyone else. When they let me through their line, they said they were happy to let me burn with the rest of you.'
Tabius sagged against the door, furiously trying to think what to do. His first thought was for the children. He walked slowly to his wife and took her hand.
'Get the children into the cellar. They will be after the three of us, not the children. They may be… missed in the confusion.'
She put a hand to his cheek, and his heart broke at the look of anguish on her face.
'Tabius…' she said, searching for the words. He had nothing of comfort to tell her.
'It is too late.'
CHAPTER 1
Once again, he found himself waiting for his opponent's decision. Leaning back on two legs of his chair, Lucius propped his feet up on the table and closed his eyes, knowing this could take a while. He held three cards to his chest, feeling the hard, rounded edges of mail beneath the hardened leather of his tunic. Two long, thin daggers were concealed in his boots and any member of the city guard shaking him down might quickly find the short sword strapped to his back, beneath his grey woollen cloak. The taverns on the Street of Dogs had not been noted as rough places when he was last in Turnitia, but too many changes had happened in the city during his long absence to take any chances.
The tavern was heaving and, judging by the other establishments he had visited earlier in the evening, business was good in the Street of Dogs. Whether it was the boost in the city's economy by the occupying power or the result of a subjugated populace seeking to forget the realities of the day, he had yet to tell. Certainly some had profited from the occupation, but as he knew too well, others always had to suffer for it. Here, at least, there seemed little evidence of the long war, as the soft tones of flute and harp from somewhere near the back of the common room floated over the raucous cries, laughter and shouts of the patrons.
His eyes snapped open as his opponent, a luckless man in rough clothing and sporting a thick dark beard, grabbed the dice and took a breath. Lucius had taken him for one of the labourers that toiled in the city's warehouse district, perhaps hoping to turn a week's wages into a year's salary in just one fortuitous night. This was not to be his night, Lucius knew, as he focussed his attention on the dice in the man's hand.
'I'll stay,' the man said confidently, ignoring Lucius' provocative raised eyebrow. With another glance at his hand, the man shook the dice, blew on them, and then scattered them on the table.
Lucius narrowed his whole world to the tumbling dice and, under the table, the fingers of his free hand twitched as he sought the invisible threads that had become so familiar to him, and he felt the other-worldly power flow under his control. Tiny wisps of air streaked across the table to envelope the tumbling dice. As the dice bounced, Lucius lifted each one by the smallest fraction, buoying them up on a current, while spinning each slightly. When they landed and came to a rest, both cubes of carved bone presented the number four on their top face.
'At last!' the man cried, and his relief was palpable. Lucius had already seen that his belt pouch was getting light, but he had no desire to prolong his opponent's pain. The man took a card from his hand and proudly laid it on the table.
'Eight Princes!' he declared. 'Your luck has turned, my friend!'
'Alas, I think not,' said Lucius as he produced one of his own cards, also showing the number eight but with a smiling nubile woman seated on a golden throne. 'The Queen trumps all but the Fool. I win again.'
So saying, Lucius swept the coins lying on the table into his own pouch before snatching another card from the face down deck between them. 'Another round? I believe I'm getting the feel for this.'
The man, however, was not swayed by Lucius' demeanour. 'The ills of Kerberos be on you, no one is that lucky,' he spat. 'How many times is that now? Eleven, twelve hands in a row? You've played me.'
Seeing the man begin to rise from his seat, Lucius swept his legs off the table and stood, reaching into one of his boots for a blade. It was done in one well-practised, fluid motion that caught the man completely off-guard. He had no idea of the danger until Lucius was leaning over him, the dagger planted firmly in the wood of the table with a dull thud.
'I'm sorry,
Looking into the man's eyes, Lucius could see what he was thinking. The man was no coward, and he likely had friends here that, in the very least, he would not want to see him backing down. On the other hand, Lucius' weather-beaten face, out-of-town air, and readiness to display a weapon marked him as someone not to casually entangle with. An ear-beating from the wife for losing a week's earnings was infinitely preferable to a knife in the
