"Well..."
"Shut up, Marcus!" said Tavius. He gave me his full attention, turning his glare up another notch. "We have been given the task of maintaining order in this unnatural shit-hole, and we only accept tributes from legitimate Citizens. Now, I see a dead body, and I see blood all over the pair of you. I'm sure you're about to tell me there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this ..."
"Actually, no," I said. "I've got an unnatural explanation, but frankly, life's too short. Why don't you take our word for it that this lady and I are very powerful, very dangerous, and extremely pissed off by recent events; so unless you want this lady and me to turn the whole lot of you into dog food ..."
"Oh hell," said Tavius. "You're magical?"
"Told you we should have paid the extra insurance, for full godly cover."
"I won't tell you again, Marcus! Now bring me the bloody list."
The smallest of the Legionnaires hurried forward, handed his leader a rolled scroll, gave me a quick shifty smile, and dropped a wink to Suzie. Then he retreated swiftly back into the ranks. Tavius opened the scroll and studied it carefully.
"So, are you gods, walking in disguise?"
"Definitely not," I said. "And don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise. They're just guessing."
Tavius considered that for a moment, and then moved on to the next question on his checklist. "Are you a Power, a Force, or a Being?"
"Not as such," I said.
"Are you a magician, sorcerer, raiser of spirits, or soothsayer?"
"There's a lot of debate about that," I said, "but I prefer not to comment. However, it would be fair to say that this lady and I are dangerous in a whole bunch of unnatural and unpleasant ways."
"I can set light to my farts," Suzie volunteered.
"Don't go there," I said quickly to Tavius.
He blinked a few times, then looked back at his checklist. "We've already established you're not Citizens, so ... which gods protect you?"
"Absolutely none, as far as I can tell," said Suzie.
"And I think we can safely assume I'm not going to find your barbarian names on the approved list," said Tavius, rolling up his scroll with a certain satisfaction. "Which means you're fair game. All right, boys, arrest them. We'll sort out some charges later."
"They said they were dangerous. Powerful and dangerous."
"Gods, you're a wimp, Marcus. How you ever got into the Legion is a mystery to me."
"They're tall enough to be dangerous."
"Look, if they had any magic worth the mentioning, they would have used it by now, wouldn't they? Now arrest them, or there'll be no honey with your dinner tonight."
"What the hell," I said. "I've been having a really rotten time, and I could use someone to take out my feelings on."
And I punched Tavius right between his beady little eyes. His head snapped back, and he staggered backwards two or three paces, but he didn't go down. Either they built them really tough in the Legion, or I was losing my touch. Tavius raised his short-sword and started towards me. I caught his gaze with mine, and he stopped short as though he'd run into a brick wall. I kept the stare going, and his face went blank, the short-sword slipping from his hand as the fingers slowly opened. I hit him again, and this time he went down and stayed down. Which was just as well. It felt like I'd broken every bone in my hand.
The rest of the Legionnaires were already advancing on us, hoping to overwhelm us with numbers. Suzie shot four of them in swift succession, working the pump on her shotgun with practised speed. The loud noise, the flying blood, and the terrible wounds scattered the Legionnaires like startled birds, and I thought they might run, but their training quickly reasserted itself. You don't choose the faint-hearted to act as the Watch in the Nightside. They spread out to make harder targets, then advanced on Suzie and me, sandalled feet stamping in perfect unison. I fell back on my standard response, which was to use the taking-bullets-out-of-guns trick. I wasn't actually sure what effect it would have, and so was pleasantly surprised when all the Legionnaires' weapons, armour, and clothing disappeared, leaving them utterly unarmed, and stark bollock naked. They looked down at themselves, then at us, and they turned as one and ran. There were limits to what even trained soldiers were prepared to face. Suzie started to raise her shotgun, but I shook my head, and she lowered it again. She looked at the departing bare arses and shook her head.
"Getting mean, Taylor."
"Everything I know, I learned from you," I said generously.
She considered me thoughtfully for a moment. "I'm never sure what you can or can't do."
I grinned. "That's the point."
We watched the departing Legionnaires leave the square at speed, probably on the way to tell on us to their superiors. Some of the people had wandered back into the square. They looked at Suzie, then at me, very disapprovingly. I glared right back at them, and they all remembered they had urgent appointments somewhere else.
"Feeling better?" said Suzie.
"You have no idea," I said.
I took a good look at our surroundings. The stone buildings were basic and blocky, prettied up with columns, porticoes, and bas-reliefs. Most of the latter featured gods, monsters, and people doing naughty things with each other. The centre of the square was taken up with a whole bunch of oversized statues, featuring either the local gods and goddesses or idealised men and women, most of them naked, all of them very brightly painted. I expressed some surprise at this, and Suzie immediately went into lecture mode again. I could remember when she hardly said a dozen words at a time. A little education is a terrible thing.
"All classical statues were painted, and repainted regularly. The Romans adopted the practice from the ancient Greeks, along with everything else that wasn't nailed down. Even their gods, though they at least had the grace to rename them. We're used to seeing the statues in museums, old and cracked and bare stone and marble, because that's all that survived." She stopped abruptly. "Taylor, you're looking at me strangely again."
"I'm impressed," I said. "Honest."
"Look, I got the History Channel for free, okay? I subscribed to the Guns & Ammo Channel, and History was part of the package."
"Cable television has a lot to answer for."
I went back to looking at the buildings, and I slowly realised they were all temples of one kind or another. Most were dedicated to the local Roman gods, of which there were quite a few, including Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, complete with idealised busts showing off their noble features.
"After Julius, all the Roman Emperors were declared gods when they died," said Suzie. "And sometimes even during their lifetimes. Good way to keep the colonized nations in line, by telling them their Emperor was a god."
"Actually, I knew that," I said. "I watched I, Claudius. And the Penthouse Caligula. But only because Helen Mirren was in it."
Other temples were dedicated to Dagon, the Serpent, the Serpent's Son, Cthulhu, several of the old Greek gods, half a dozen names I vaguely remembered from the Street of the Gods, and a whole bunch I'd never even heard of. And, one temple dedicated to Lilith. I considered that for a while, but it seemed no more or less important than any of the others.
"There aren't any Christian temples," I said suddenly.
"Too early yet," said Suzie. "Though there are probably some underground, unofficial places."
I turned my attention to the people, and others, passing through the square. Less than half were in any way human. There were elves, moving silently together with mathematical precision, holding strange groupings and patterns as intricate as a snowflake, and as alien. Lizardly humanoids slid quickly through the darker parts of the square, unnaturally graceful, their scaled skin gleaming bottle-green under the occasional lamplight. Large squat creatures, composed entirely of heaving, multi-coloured gasses, progressed slowly and jerkily, their shapes changing and convulsing from moment to moment. Liquid forms as tall as houses splashed across the square, leaving sticky trails behind them. Earthy shapes crumbled as they stamped along, and living flames flashed and flickered, come and gone too quickly for the human eye to follow. In these early days of the Nightside, humanity was the minority, and forms and forces long since lost and banished to the Street of the Gods walked openly.