“Shame,” Janus said, unflinching. “Shame is motivator in this matter. What is yours?”
I didn’t dare draw a breath. “Fear.” I caught more than a few stray looks at that and ignored them all. “Janus … Sovereign is still at the head of this rodeo they call Century. He’s still a threat to humanity. If there’s anything you know about him that you can tell me … please.” I actually pleaded, raising my voice to a tone as close to begging as I ever tread. “Please, Janus.”
I was expecting another denial. Or quiet resignation. Or anger. Anything, really, but what I got.
Because what I got … was a hard blink of the eyes, and then two tears ran down his cheeks. The lines of his face were so pronounced that I wondered how I forgot on a near-constant basis that he was thousands of years old and had all the attendant pain that life had delivered over that time.
The old man—I couldn’t think of him any other way after that—let out a choked noise and spoke once more. “I will tell you … what I know. And afterward … I hope you will all find it in yourselves to forgive me.”
Chapter 24
Rome
280 A.D.
“They killed my daughter, you see,” Janus said, his voice cracking as Marius listened. “I was a hundred yards away or so when it began, just around a few corners and out of sight. The fire crackled in the hearth and filled the room with a low, smoky aroma and a warmth that Marius found intoxicating, a hint of home that he’d never felt before. Janus’s low, soothing voice rolled through him and he listened with interest as the man spun another tale. He’d been telling tales of gods and powers all day long, but this was the first that had caused him to show anything approaching the pain he was showing now.
“I could hear it, the disturbance,” Janus went on, low and slowly, his eyes dropping. “I thought nothing of it at first, just some thief stealing. The requisite shouts to that effect were obvious enough, the stall-keeper in a rage that someone had taken from him. These sorts of things were settled quickly, and even had I known it was my daughter who had perpetrated the crime, I would not have been overly alarmed. But I did not know.”
Janus reached a hand up and ran his fingers through his dark beard idly. “But she was like you, you see, and that was her undoing. The stall-keeper grabbed hold of her by one arm, another, a friend of his, took her by the other so that she could not escape. They were anchored tightly to her by grip, and even though she struggled she could not get free. She was … six. She had never used her power before, and when it came upon her, draining these two souls—doing what you do—she was unprepared, and it overwhelmed her. She fell to the ground with them and maintained hold of them.
“She was disoriented, I imagine,” Janus went on, the strands of his dark beard between his fingers. “Feeling that sick sense of both pleasure and pain that comes after absorbing a soul. She did not even resist them when the mob came upon her. One of them told me later that she looked nearly unconscious, save for the smile on her face.”
Janus’s face darkened. “And it was that man who ran the knife over her throat, opening it and spilling her precious, precious blood all over the dirt.” He paused, and his eyes appeared to sink in his head, becoming pools of shadow that hid a darkness that Marius did not wish to gaze into. “That alone might not have killed her. But it was a mob by that point, and they began to beat her—” He cut himself off and turned his face away.
Marius sat there in silence, listening. Waiting. He had been transfixed all the day, listening to the tales of his heritage. They had all been fascinating, but this one struck him in a different way. It was cautionary, a warning of what happened to their kind when they made a misstep. She was like him, she made a mistake, and now she was dead. Dead, and her father mourned her.
In a way my mother would never mourn me should I die. He felt agreement deep within, under the rock where he had placed her with his will.
“I killed them, of course,” Janus said, and his face was still turned away. “Slowly, in many cases. Wringing the confession from each of their lips in turn. Right there in the market where it happened. You see, by the time the mob had swung into full action and I heard—truly heard—the disturbance and came to find out what it was … they were …” he paused, “… they were really just beating a lifeless body by that point …” His voice trailed off.
Marius stared at him, this time unable to turn away. Janus did not seem to want him to, in any case. He said nothing for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was more composed.