Foreign Devils Read Online Free PDF Page B

from where he stood awkwardly holding a pair of heavy wooden boxes identical to the one that held the Quotidian. ‘You’ll need to blood them together and have Rubus show you the way to send a message. It’s much less pleasant than receiving one, I can assure you, and even if you have a dwarf –’ He winked at me ‘– or slave present, it will do you absolutely no good because it must be the sender’s blood to activate the damned thing. So there’s that,’ Cornelius said, his voice thick with alcohol and slightly unsteady on his one good leg. ‘At least this way you’ll be able to correspond with each other. “Fill’d her ears with sweeten’d words, dripping from the infernal tongue,” or something like that.’
    ‘Bless?’ Secundus asked.
    ‘No, a new poet I picked up in the printer’s shop in New Damnation. Vintus Mauthew, his name is. I have his folio around here somewhere. The Teats of Fortuna . I shall gift you with it.’
    Livia rose and approached her father. He had the honesty to look surprised when she kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Father. This will make it bearable.’
    ‘A brave face, my sweet. A brave face.’
    Fisk thanked him solemnly as well and, after Rubus explained to them the workings of the Quotidians, they retired to spend what time they had left together.

    The next day, camp was struck quickly – even the legionnaires and lictors were eager to end the long march through the hardscrabble – and we came within an echo’s distance of the Smokeys before turning north. A great plume of dust was cast against the liquid blue of sky and only when we drew nearer did we see that it was a great horde of workers laying the railway line. As we drew near enough to the terminus – the point at which a flurry of labourers wielding shovels levelled the earth and set massive iron bars with spikes, filling the air with the ringing report of sledgehammers on iron – we heard the call and response chants of the men; be my woman, girl, I’ll – be your man – put that silver money – in your hand – chanted over and over again with one dusky-skinned man leading the chorus, to be answered by the rest of the men, establishing a kind of inexorable, inescapable rhythm that I couldn’t shake until long after we had passed them.
    Secundus and Fisk, both mounted and in Imperial blues, rode over to the nearest optio, stationed at the spur-head, to inquire about the Valdrossos. From where I sat atop Bess, I could see the ranker pull aside the bandana covering his mouth – the dust kicked up from the earth-levelling spiced the air something fierce – and pointed north.
    By late afternoon, we’d come within sight of the steaming iron behemoth that was the Valdrossos. It stood black as midnight and thirty feet tall and was easily the width of eight horses riding abreast, a massive column of black smoke pluming skyward. Looking at that panting black machine, fuelled by malice, I was reminded that war was coming unless we could prevent it.

    I bid my farewells, and even Cornelius was kind enough to shake my hand – though it remained bandaged from when he took my blood. ‘You’re quite an acceptable little fellow. Your society has given me hope for the rest of your kind,’ he said, slipping a silver denarius into my palm.
    My first inclination was to say that I wish I could say the same and throw the coin as far as I could into the hardscrabble, but it was a silver denarius. And that impotent gesture might’ve seen me crucified. So I nodded and thanked the senator, silently praising the old gods that it would be a very long time before I’d have to endure his company again.
    Secundus was more cordial. He gripped Fisk’s and my forearms in turn and, smiling, said, ‘And I was so looking forward to a life out on the shoal plains.’
    ‘Never can tell, young master,’ I said, answering his grin. ‘You could find yourself on the plains again. And if you do, you’ll always be welcome to