Gaius spared a moment to glare. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Explain this to me.” He seemed genuinely confused, his brow furrowed, a hand plucking at the hem of his garment. “You’re working a spell . . . a spell made of fire?”
“No! I owe you nothing!” He stomped forward, raised his hand to the old man—and could not strike. Fist trembling, he snarled.
A knock came at the door. Both Gaius and Kumarbis froze, looking at each other as if to ask, Were you expecting someone? This night was cursed with interruptions. Gaius went to the door and cracked it open.
“What?”
“May I enter? Am I interrupting anything important?” He seemed like a young man, but Gaius had learned not to trust appearances of age. Bright eyes set in finely wrought features, the confident stance of a patrician, this man would be at home in the Forum at Rome. The kind of man who always had a curl at the corner of his lip, as if all he gazed on amused him. His tunic and wrap were expensive, trimmed with gold thread.
“Who are you?” Gaius demanded, and seemingly of its own will the door opened and the stranger stepped inside.
At the same time, Kumarbis dropped to his knees, which cracked on the flagstones.
“Hello, there,” the stranger said amiably to him.
“You! It was always you!” the old man cried. “Your voice in the dark, drawing me forward. I tried! Don’t you know I tried to build your army? I tried!”
The stranger’s mouth cracked into a grin, and he turned to Gaius. “Is this man bothering you?”
Some sort of balance tipped in that moment. Gaius felt it in the prickling of skin on the back of his neck. In the way this stranger drew the eye, held the attention, though there seemed to be nothing noteworthy about him.
“Please! Why have you forsaken me?” Kumarbis had prostrated himself and was weeping. It was . . . almost sad.
The stranger said, “I found a stronger man. Or, you did. Thank you for that.” He looked Gaius up and down, as if surveying livestock.
“For thousands of years I’ve—”
“And? Do you expect pity from me?”
“Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . mercy?”
The stranger laughed. “Oh, no, old man. No. Not from me.”
“But—”
“Get out. Go.” The stranger took Kumarbis by the arm, hauled him to his feet. He had no care for brittle bones or bent back. Why should he, when the old man didn’t seem inclined to break? Only to weep.
He pushed the old man out and gently closed the door. Almost, Gaius worried. Where would Kumarbis go? Would he find shelter by daybreak? Would he find sustenance? But no, Kumbarbis had survived this long, he didn’t need help. He didn’t need pity.
The stranger turned back to Gaius. “There. Where were we?”
Gaius stood, amazed. “Who are you?”
“Call me Lucien,” the man said, smiling like he had something to sell.
“What do you want?”
The man paced around the courtyard, studying stone walls, looking over the charcoal and candles Gaius had laid out. “That’s not the question. The question is this: What do you want?”
His words held a largeness, a vastness to them that expanded far beyond mere sound. They spoke to the depth of Gaius’s anger, his urge to grab Kumarbis’s skull and smash it against the wall. To break everything that would break, to shatter it all. But a dozen skulls would not satisfy. And rage was unbecoming to a soldier of Rome.
He said, “I want to see how much of the world I can change with my actions.”
“Change?” Lucien said. “Or destroy? I see what you’re doing here—this isn’t change.”
“Destruction is a kind of a change.”