He turned on his heel and started back through the doors to the stairs as the room behind him erupted with muttered conversation. He stopped at the head of the stairs and sighed. Without turning, he cut through the murmur with a loud clear voice.
“Now!” he shouted.
As he started down the beautifully crafted marble staircase, he heard the inhabitants shuffling toward the door in confusion. Pausing a second at the bottom with his hand resting on a slightly damaged ivory carving of an elephant, Sabian waited for the elders to catch up a little. He stepped to one side of the door, noting with satisfaction the companies forming in the Ibis Courtyard. Gesturing to the small crowd to continue on into the open, he made a mental count as they shuffled past. All the elders he could think of seemed to be present, as well as a few people he only vaguely recognised. Toward the rear of the group came Darius. For a moment Sabian considered hauling the lad out of the line and telling him to go back, but the realisation of the importance of the boy both in intrinsic terms and to this particular situation got the better of him. If he didn’t take Darius, he was fairly sure his Lordship would ask why he hadn’t. The group assembled in a small knot in front of the two companies of soldiers and Sabian took one last glance up the stairs before he ventured out into the sunlight.
The companies of men were at attention and the islanders stood silently, their intent eyes locked on the commander. Sabian gestured toward the arch with one arm and the courtyard began to empty. The commander fell in alongside the rear company of soldiers, side by side with the sergeant. He walked with his back straight and his arms by his sides, every inch the military commander on a mission. Within, however, he was still hoping that the graves would contain the bodies of those they declared and that the island could be left to its own devices while he went back to his house in Velutio. Hope, but not belief. He shaded his eyes and saw the small group standing around the graves. His Lordship turned and looked in their direction, his attention presumably drawn by the racket the companies of men and the group of muttering elders made.
He picked up a little speed and bypassed the group, coming to the front just as they arrived at the burial site. Sabian noted with some distaste the twisted forms of three bodies that lay on the grass, surrounded by fragments of burial gear and small piles of earth. They were not pleasant to look at, damaged as they had been by falling masonry and then eaten by worms for many months. He realised that while he had his hands clasped behind his back, his fingers were crossed. Shaking his head a little, he uncrossed them and addressed the men with him.
“Fall into formation, four deep!” he barked, turning back to Velutio. The Lord glanced around at Sabian while his physician continued to examine the bodies he knelt beside. He shook his head barely perceptibly and the commander’s heart fell.
The physician stood, brushing dust, earth and much worse from his hands, and addressed Velutio.
“You say these men died some time in the last six months?”
With a brief look at Sabian, who had been here half a year earlier, the lord nodded.
“They were alive at the last head count here, yes” he said.
The physician shook his head. “These three have been dead much longer than that,” he pronounced confidently. “I would estimate two or three years ago. They do have reasonably fresh damage, however. There have been a number of wounds inflicted on them with blunt objects, possibly masonry, within the time-frame of which you speak, my Lord.”
Sabian stood still as a statue. He daren’t move. Velutio was almost always a calm man, but like all tightly controlled individuals, when something got past that implacable exterior, an explosion was bound to follow and the commander was determined to avoid being the target of the blast. Instead, his Lordship merely shrugged.
“Then these were the three who drowned two and a half years ago whilst fishing among the reefs” Velutio said. “I remember it clearly; as I’m sure do you, Sabian.”
The commander nodded; said nothing. Waiting for the explosion still.
Velutio turned and sought out Minister Sarios in the crowd. Locating him, he strode forward. “Sarios, I would ask you to explain yourself, but I think I see your mind clearly enough. Useful for you that you’d had three deaths of people roughly the same ages as Quintillian, Castus and Stavo eh? I’d never realised that you were capable of such calculated callousness.”
With no warning, Velutio swept his hand up and across Sarios’ face with a resounding slap. The minister staggered and almost fell, his nose fractured and blood running in rivulets down around his mouth. Sabian lurched forward for a moment, intending to intervene, but remembered the likely consequences of such an action and forced himself to stand, impassive. Crosus craned his neck and grinned at the commander.
Sarios grimaced at the steely grey lord. “I am a prisoner for no crime” he announced loudly and defiantly. “Do what you will.”
Velutio sneered. “Where are they now?”
The minister continued to glare at him. “I have no idea” he declared with deep determination.
Reaching down to his belt, Velutio drew out his gauntlets; leather gloves protected by interlocking bronze plates after the fashion of the East. Not taking his eyes off the minister, he drew the glove onto his right hand and flexed his fingers.
“I say again only once: Where is Quintillian?”
The minister held his head high and spat a large gobbet of clotted blood onto the lord’s boot. Velutio clicked his tongue and then brought his right hand round in another back-handed slap. This time the sound of breaking bones was audible even where Sabian stood. The commander closed his eyes, but not quick enough to miss the minister falling to the floor and the spray of blood that dampened the grass.
Velutio reached down and wrenched a length of cloth from Sarios’ mantle, wiping the blood from his gauntlet. He looked up at the assembled group, as Crosus leaned across and whispered something into his ear that Sabian would have killed to have been able to hear.
“Doctor?” the lord addressed his physician without looking around.
“My Lord?” the man replied.
“Take this old fool away and make sure he doesn’t die” Velutio said coldly. “I will have need of him yet.”
He then finally looked around at Sabian. The commander couldn’t read his master’s expression and that was a bad sign. Sabian drew a sigh inwardly but kept his back rigidly straight and his features deadpan.
“Commander.”
“Sir?” he responded. He knew he wasn’t going to like whatever came next.
“Take the rest of this rabble back to the dining hall and lock them in” Velutio commanded. Sabian sighed in relief as he turned to his men, but too soon.
“And Sabian?”
The commander froze.
“Pick three of the young ones at random and have them crucified on the lawns” the older man said calmly as he turned on his heel and strode off in the direction of the palace. Crosus stood still a long moment savouring the look of distaste on Sabian’s face before giving a brief heartless laugh and striding off after his master.
Sabian winced. Again he’d contemplated intervening but there will little chance of Velutio’s mind changing and somehow, though the reason escaped him, he seemed to be slipping from Velutio’s favour at a rate of knots. Instead, he walked over to the minister who lay on the grass, barely conscious, with the physician fussing around him. The commander craned his neck to see what it was the doctor was actually doing and regretted it as he saw the man pop an eyeball back into its socket. The old cleric strained to look up at him, but the pain of his damaged eye was too much and the lids closed. Sabian sighed.