Free Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw Page A

administrators in the South have called for a purge. I’d intended to shift Eukairios to Dubris anyway. But I’d rather give him to you. I do believe you’d find him useful.”
    I was silent for another moment. I, too, believed I’d find the scribe useful. It was against all the customs of my own people to keep any slave, and I didn’t like the sound of this cult at all—but I needed the man to write letters for me. I wouldn’t know how to buy or hire another scribe. I had no idea how much a good scribe would cost, and I suspected that I’d need all the money I’d brought with me to secure a good position for my men. “Thank you, Lord Valerius Natalis,” I said at last. “I accept him.” I got to my feet. “But let me give you a gift as well, in gratitude for your efforts on our behalf.” I unfastened the gold pin from my coat. It was dragon-shaped, set with rubies, and about as long as my middle finger. “This I have worn as prince-commander of a dragon of Sarmatian cavalry,” I said. “Very few Romans have ever held one of these, my lord Natalis. Perhaps the emperor alone. I trust you will keep it and remember my people kindly.” I set it in his hands.
    Natalis went pink with pleasure. “You have quite outdone me in your generosity, Lord Ariantes! Thank you, thank you very much indeed!” He took his own brooch off and pinned his cloak with mine instead. He fondled it a minute, running his fingers along the curves of the gold. “I will certainly remember you with friendship.”
    I’d thought that morning of giving him one of my horses; I saw that I’d been correct to offer instead this, which a Sarmatian would have valued less. I was relieved. I had another pin—in fact, I had a wagonful of valuables I had brought along especially for bribing Romans—and it would have been hard to part with any of the horses. “As I shall remember you,” I told Natalis. “But you must excuse me now, my lord. I ought to stay with my horses to make sure they come to no harm. I could not easily replace them.”
    Eukairios was sitting beside the horses with his cloak over his head. When I came up he pulled it off his head again and rubbed his face. The hold was only dimly lit by the light that came in down the gangways, but I could still see well enough that he’d been crying. “Wh-what happened?” he asked me. It was a sign of how distressed he was that he omitted my title.
    “I accepted you,” I told him. After a moment I added, to defend myself against his misery, “He would have sent you away from Bononia anyway.”
    “To Dubris?” When I nodded, he rubbed his face again. “I didn’t realize he knew,” he said wretchedly. “I always thought no one in the office knew.”The one great daring secret of his drab little life, as Natalis had called it, had proved to be no secret at all, and he was trembling with the shock of it. “He told you I was a Christian?”
    “Yes.”
    “Ah. And had you ever heard anything about us?”
    “No. But I understand that it is illegal.”
    “It’s all lies, what they say,” Eukairios declared bitterly. “Wicked lies. People have died for them, tortured until there wasn’t any sound flesh to use the irons on, but it’s all, all lies. We don’t”—he looked up and met my eyes directly—“we don’t hold incestuous orgies and feast on human flesh. We are forbidden to shed blood; we are told to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If I had any choice in the matter, my faith wouldn’t allow me to work for the regular army, let alone for a man who decorates his horses’ bridles with men’s scalps and drinks from a Roman skull. God help me.”
    “I do not have that cup anymore,” I said. I was touched by his defiance, the more so as he’d never referred to the scalps or the skull story before. In Bononia he had been attentive and deferential, and warmed to friendliness with his own efficiency. “I will not require you to shed blood, Eukairios,