Juba stared at the last of his cup for a few seconds before coming to a decision at last. He swallowed the remainder and let it wash down his nerves. It was now or never, he decided. “You haven’t asked me what I’ve brought,” he said.
His elder stepbrother’s eyebrow raised, but he seemed otherwise unmoved. “Thought you were waiting for the right moment to tell me. Is this it?”
Juba shrugged. Better to keep things light, he thought. “Could be.”
Octavian allowed himself a smile. “Well? Tell me. What have you brought back from your trip, little brother?”
Juba set aside his empty cup, then walked over to retrieve the canvas bundle. Returning, he set it across his lap and couldn’t help but notice that the Trident seemed so much heavier than it should be. And warmer. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath.
“One of the first books you gave me was a collection of Homeric hymns,” Juba said, his voice a whisper. “Do you remember it?”
Octavian leaned forward, the look of amusement on his face pushed away by Juba’s sudden seriousness. “I do. You were nine or ten.”
“That’s right. The twenty-second hymn: ‘And so I sing of Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth—’”
“‘—and of the fruitless sea,’” Octavian said. “I know it.”
Juba nodded toward the silver tray on the table between them. “Could you move the wine?”
Octavian did so, barely taking his eyes from the bundle that his stepbrother set down in its place. “Poseidon. Neptune. Mover of earth and sea,” Juba continued. His fingers began to unwrap it. “Do you remember how?”
The last of the folds came away, and Juba brought his hands back to rest on his empty lap. The two men stared at the object between them. Its metal surface was rusted in spots, and only a foot of the wooden shaft inserted into its base remained, but the long spearhead of the central head was still intact, like a thick metal arrow, and the spurs of the two points to either side of it were still present even if their tips had long since broken off.
“A trident,” Octavian finally said.
Juba had to build the courage to say it. “The Trident of Poseidon. Of Neptune.” Octavian did not reply. Juba’s focus was still fixed to the trident head on the table, but he didn’t need to see his stepbrother’s face to know the look upon it. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, either,” he admitted. “Or I did want to, but I didn’t, you know?” He paused to calm his nerves, but still Octavian said nothing. And now that he was speaking about it—the first time he’d spoken to anyone other than Quintus about it—the words were pushing against his throat, yearning to come out. “I’d read the myths. I’d heard the stories. We all have. Neptune cutting islands in two. Neptune raising waves to wreck ships. All with his Trident. All with this.”
When Juba finally raised his eyes, he could see the mixture of incredulity and hope on his stepbrother’s face. “Juba, I—”
“I know. You don’t believe me. I’m young, I got taken in by a trader … I know.” Juba reached for his wine cup, which he’d set down next to him on the bench, and saw that it was empty. He could use the jug, he knew, but that would make too big of a mess. Octavian’s half-filled cup, though, would do nicely. “May I?” he asked, reaching for it.
Octavian handed over the cup, his gesture bordering on something like exasperation, and Juba stood, carrying it over to set it down on the floor near the door. He returned, ignoring the confused look on his stepbrother’s face, trying to focus his mind as he wrapped his hands around the fragment of wooden shaft and picked it up.
Though it was clearly a trident, it was unlike any other trident that Juba had ever seen, heard, or even read about. Most tridents were simply three metal prongs, or daggers, fixed atop a wooden shaft: sometimes made parallel to one another, but perhaps more often rooted in the same base so that the lateral prongs shot outward at angles from the center one. Their only other differentiations were in whether or not their points were steadily thinning blades, like those atop spears, or flared at the tips, like the heads of arrows.
The design of this arrow-tipped trident in his hands, though battered and broken, was clear enough, and it was strangely different. What was left of the wooden shaft fit into a typical base socket, but everything else about it was odd. The two lateral prongs weren’t directed forward at all. Instead, they shot directly out to the side, perpendicular to the main line of the shaft so as to give the whole the look of a cross. Stranger still, there were two serpents, one wrought of bronze and one of copper, that wound their way around the head and down the length of the shaft before they were broken off. Unlike the intertwined snakes on the wand of Mercury, the heads of these twin serpents did not bend inward to the shaft at the top, but instead shot rigidly forward, parallel to the central head, flat-faced and sharp to the point of being prongs themselves. And in the center of it all—atop the socket and acting as a root for the main prongs, framed by the winding bodies of the two snakes—was a blacker-than-black rock that seemed, to Juba’s eye, to swallow the very light out of the air. It was this that always seemed—though he was certain it could not be so—to be warm.
Juba forced down his nerves as he shifted his grip so that each hand held the body of one of the two serpents.
He’d only dared to practice with the artifact a few times, but he knew enough to know that his focus was essential. He had to be calm. He had to be confident. He had to reach down within himself, grab hold of something he could not yet define, and then push it outward through the metal in his hands, seeing it all unfold in his mind.
Juba turned to face the goblet on the floor, some five or six paces away. He closed his eyes, focusing on the feel of the metal in his hands. It was cool beneath his skin at first, just finely etched metal scarred by time, but it seemed to grow warm as he held it, as if the serpents were alive. When it did so, Juba let his awareness fall back away from the sensations of scale and form, pushing away the world. Down and into himself, Juba felt at last a kind of quiet solidity with his mind, a certainty of stillness. He grabbed hold of the smallest part of that darkness then drew it up and out through his arms, through his fingers and palms, into the metal beneath his skin. As he did so he pictured the wine in the cup. He willed it to move.
The snakes seemed to twitch in his grip as something within him let go. The slightest puff of wind pushed back his hair, like the Trident head itself had exhaled, and as he opened his eyes he saw the goblet of wine fling up off the floor and crash against the door as surely as if he’d strode across the stone and kicked it.
The goblet clattered to a stop, the sound of it echoing in the room. Juba let out his breath, not remembering having held it. The metal beneath his skin still felt warm, but it no longer felt alive.
He shivered.
“By the gods,” Octavian whispered.
Juba could only nod. He carefully moved his grip back to the wooden shaft, then set the object once more on its cloth wrappings. Octavian’s gaze followed it. “How—?”
“It was in Numidia. Some there called it Nehushtan.”
Octavian finally looked up at his far younger stepsibling. “Nehushtan?”
For the second time since they’d sat down to talk, there was a quiet knock on the door. Octavian stared at Juba for several heartbeats. His eyes were intense, but Juba didn’t look away. Finally, Octavian rose and walked over toward the door and opened it.
In the light of the hall stood Livia, Octavian’s wife, with her hands on the shoulders of a young boy of nine or ten years. It took Juba a moment to recognize the growing lad as Tiberius, her favorite son from a previous marriage. Behind them stood a servant with trays, the legionnaire on guard, and an uncomfortable-looking Quintus, who’d obviously been rebuked for trying to keep the consul’s wife and stepson from interrupting the meeting.