Interregnum

He gestured around the hollow. Kiva actually stopped for a moment and followed his gesture. The company stood in silence, their faces grave as they watched. They wouldn’t interrupt; not on this subject. Other than them, there was just the grassy dell.

“What are you talking about?” the captain demanded.

Quintillian rushed over to the rock the captain had been leaning against. “Look!” he replied, anger and hope vying in his voice. “Actually look at it.”

Kiva turned and looked down at the rock. He hadn’t actually noticed the carving before. The rock was the fractured torso of a large statue, the robes and breastplate all but worn away. The captain stepped back.

“What is this place?” he asked, his voice now low and unsure.

Quintillian grasped the captain by the elbow and turned him, pointing into the deep grass nearby. The head of the statue stared back up, weathered, but better preserved. Despite the weather damage, the resemblance to the boy was uncanny.

“How many temples have you been in during all that time you commanded the army, General Caerdin?” the boy asked. “How many sanctuaries to the Imperial Cult? Don’t you recognise my uncle when you see him?”

The lad immediately regretted his words. Though it was barely perceptible, he could swear that the captain was shaking a little, with his shoulders hunched over. For a moment, Quintillian actually believed that the man was shedding a tear, but then he turned again. The look on his face was one of cold, calculated anger.

“That’s it, boy” he barked. “You’ve lectured me enough. I’m entirely the wrong man to appeal to a sense of nostalgia. You’d have been better targeting Athas; he’s still a romantic at heart. You may be the last of the Imperial Line and by all the Gods there’s a lot of your uncle in you, but that’s just the problem, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Quintillian asked, with a rising tone of apprehension.

Kiva had fallen quiet, his hands shaking slightly. “What do I mean?” he continued. “Have you never read your histories? I thought you prided yourself on your reading? Your family are prone to the most brutal insanity, Quintillian. Never read about the madness? The death and mayhem this dynasty caused? Your grandfather had to be put down by priests of his own cult so he could be buried and ascend to the Heavens. He tried to bite them as they held him down frothing at the mouth, while they cut his throat in the fountain of his own temple. But that wasn’t until after he’d had a thousand heads removed just for his amusement. Soldiers, senators, peasants, anybody. Hell, even one of the Marshals fell foul of Basianus the fair when the Emperor started to get paranoid thinking people were plotting against him. Problem is: by the time his madness was becoming obvious, they were! And your uncle? I couldn’t believe your uncle would succumb; I knew him so well. Yes, he was my best friend, and I tried to save him when the Senate condemned him for his insanity. I didn’t believe the rumours, but it was with my own ears that I heard him command me to crucify a city. A whole city, Quintillian. Men, women, children. Even the cats and dogs!”

The boy realised that Kiva was shaking now, whether with anger or some other emotion, he couldn’t tell. The captain drew his sword and Quintillian’s eyes fixed in fear on the deadly point. Kiva gave the sword a couple of idle, angry slashes.

“And do you know why?” he challenged. “Why they were all to die?”

In a panic, Quintillian stuttered. “N.. no.”

“Because they couldn’t afford to pay his new fucking taxes!” Kiva shouted.

The captain thrust the sword, narrowly missing the lad’s shoulder and digging the point deep into bark before turning and speaking as he walked away.

“ That’s the problem with Emperors” he said without looking back. “Power curses you, or drives you mad or something like that. Look around you. The other Lords are all going the same way. They all want to rule and look at what it does to them. Better we stay as we are: mercenaries, and wait for the day the Lords have all killed each other. Then we can have some peace.”

Quintillian stood stock still, his eyes on the hilt of the sword by his side, still shuddering with the force with which it had struck the tree.

“But you were his friend ” he cried. “You still helped him. You saved him.”

Kiva stopped abruptly. He turned and walked very slowly back toward the boy. Once he reached him, he put his hand on the lad’s shoulder, almost comforting. To Quintillian’s astonishment, there really were tears in the captain’s eyes. Kiva pushed hard and, as the lad dropped to his backside on the grass, he drew the sword from the tree.

“I was more than his friend, Quintillian. He was like my brother.”

Sheathing his sword, he stood, looking down at the boy.

“But it was me who locked him in his palace” he said, his voice cracking slightly with raw emotion. “ Me who dismissed his guard.” His voice sounded choked; clotted, his face bleak and more open than Quintillian had seen since they’d met. The captain cleared his throat.

“ Me who set the fire and killed him.”

Kiva turned his back on the boy, who had blanched and was gasping for breath. As the captain reached the edge of the hollow, he turned back one last time.

“It had to be done Quintillian. For the good of the Empire.”

And with that the captain vanished from sight over the lip of the hollow.

The boy sat stunned in the grass, shaking uncontrollably until suddenly a large hand appeared beneath his chin, holding a Wolves flask that contained something that smelled revolting. Athas crouched next to him.

“Drink lad” he said comfortingly. “You’ve never needed it more than now.”

Quintillian took a grateful pull on the spirit and coughed repeatedly. His throat spasmed and he leaned to one side, towards the bushes and vomited until he was dry retching. The face of his uncle stared up at him from the grass. Still shivering, he looked up at Athas, his face streaked with the tracks of his sorrow.

“It can’t be true” he begged of the big sergeant.

The hulking, coloured man placed a blanket around the boy’s shoulders and sat beside him. He took a swig from the flask and then passed it back to the lad.

“Quintillian,” he said, “there are some things you have to understand.”

“About him?” the lad said, his voice beginning to harden again. “A regicide? The man who murdered my uncle? I feel like such an idiot. Why should I need to understand?”

Athas shook the boy by the shoulders.

“It’s not that simple” the sergeant said quietly. “Your uncle had lost his wits. We were the last to see it and the last to believe it. There were other officers, even Generals who had wanted to execute your uncle in public. The nobles were calling for it in the city, but no one could decide what to do. You can’t kill a God without repercussions and who the hell would do the deed? It was Kiva who stopped them all. He tried to reason with Quintus, but there was no reason left in the Emperor; none at all. It had to be done, otherwise Quintus would have ruined the Empire or a mob would have got to him and torn him to pieces.”

Athas sighed.

“In the end, history remembers that he died in a fire in his palace. He went to the Gods deified and pure and died a hero, albeit a lunatic. People don’t talk about it. Most people are frightened to speak ill of a divine figure, so his name goes unsullied and that’s the way it should be. He’d been a great man for a lot of years before he started to slip. And when the time came and there was no other choice left to us, Kiva did it all, from dismissing the guard to locking the door, starting the fire and watching until it was over. He had to, don’t you see? He wouldn’t let anyone else do it. Couldn’t let them. To kill the Emperor was to kill a God. He would be cursed for the rest of his miserable life.”

“Cursed?” the boy queried.

“Can’t you see that in him?” Athas sighed. “A curse? Whether he actually is cursed or just believes it to be so, it’s affected his life ever since. Personally I don’t believe in curses; those of us from the desert lands never really held with the Emperor being a God anyway.”

The burly sergeant grasped the boy’s shoulder.

“Kiva did what he had to” he said. “He brought down the Empire with his own hands, but he had to do it; there really was no other way. Hate him now if you must, but try to remember this: you never even knew your uncle. Kiva treated him like a brother. He’s had to live for twenty years with the knowledge that he personally brought down the Empire, destroying the dynasty and executing a friend. You might begin to understand why he sleeps so badly.”