In Her Shadow(42)

He slammed his fist against the door and called Britta's name. No one came.

***

Dux Lucius, Captain Marcus and the cohort's clerk spent the evening hunched over a table making plans best they could. Lucius sent messages to his father about the situation only to receive replies insisting this was a military problem, not a civilian one. Between this and his refusal to send men to the docks during the riot, Dux Lucius began to feel the Governor was sabotaging him.

"He's pouting," said Captain Marcus. And though Lucius agreed, didn't say so.

When they concluded for the night, Lucius went to the cramped officer's quarters. Lucius didn't want to take it from Marcus, but Marcus insisted. He'd even had a cot put in for Ava. "Safer here than at the manse," he'd said.

True, thought Lucius, for a number of reasons.

She was still awake when he entered the room, resting on her stomach whispering secrets to her favorite doll. She watched as he entered, her mother's eyes following him as he sat down on the room's single chair. Ava scrambled up from her cot and into his lap. "You look sad," she said as she traced a finger across his cheek.

"You can always tell," he said. And it was true. No matter how well he he hid it from the world only she could read his emotions. Britta too, but–

"Why?"

"Because life is complicated."

"When I was telling Captain Marcus where to put my stuff, he kept saying 'girls are complicated.'"

"That's true."

"Is it a girl, daddy? Is that why you're sad?"

Lucius shifted Ava in his lap so he could look her in the eye. A number of lies rose in his mind, any of which would have been convenient, but he wasn't interested in teaching Ava about easy answers. "Yes," he said. "I'm sad because of a girl."

"What did you do to her?"

A laugh escaped him before he even realized it. He let it go and the chuckles that followed. He was too tired to fight it anymore. "What makes you think I did something to her? Maybe she did something to me."

Put a hand on her hip and rolled her eyes just like Shavana used to.

"You're right," he said. "It's my fault."

"You should say you're sorry."

"I would if she'd let me, but she won't talk to me."

"Then get her a gift. Girls love gifts."

"Mmm," he said, hugging her against him, feeling her warmth against her chest. Some vague part of him wished she could stay this age forever. "Wise advice, my little sage. What should I get her?"

"Get her something she wants more than anything else in the world."

"I don't know what that is. What do you want more than anything else in the world?"

She pulled back enough to look him in the eye. "My mommy back."

Dux Lucius gripped her by the hair and pulled her close to his chest again. To feel his baby close. So she wouldn't see him cry.

And then the urge to cry left him. When was the last time he'd held her like this? Before the plague that took her mother, and almost her.

"Daddy," she said against his chest, "I can't breathe."

Lucius let her go. She pulled away from him, mock coughing and choking. "That's my little ham," he said. "Get in bed."

She crawled down off him and into her cot as he rose to leave.

"Where are you going?" she asked. "You should go to bed too."

"If you don't want me to work all night, you should stop giving me ideas." He closed the door behind him, and from the other side listened to Ava giggle herself to sleep.





Chapter 20


No one was home. Or, rather, everyone was home and they were ignoring him like every other time he'd attempted to deliver his message. This time, however, the Dux had told Valex not to take "no" for an answer. That's exactly what he intended to do. Not do? Valex shook his head. The front door was a no go; barred from the inside. The tower had windows, but too high to climb safely. And anyway, they were all shuttered.

He paced around the building, looking it up and down for any opening that might give him access. The only possible ingress was a chimney jutting from the abbey's ground floor. The kitchen, Valex suspected. To feed the cloister, the kitchen had to be fairly large. Therefor the stove had to be large. Therefor the chimney had to be large. Climbing the main building would be no problem, so long as the abbey's crumbling architecture held.

"Tricky," he said to himself as he found a handhold on the wall where a piece of siding had rotted through. He put a foot into another, similar hole. The wood gave a squishy crunch. "I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die," he said, scrambling up the wall in the hopes he could out run the rot. When he made it to the top, huffing and sweating, he thought about resting on his back for a moment, but the roof didn't look any safer than the siding. Instead, Valex girded himself for further danger, then skittered across the roof until he was at the chimney. The shingles slipped beneath his feet, and he felt the roof below him give with every step. When he made it to the chimney, he slung his arms around it as far as they'd go. He clung to it like his mother's leg while he caught his breath and waited for his heart to stop pounding. At least this one thing seemed stable, he thought, until he felt a brick shift.