Chapter Text
NOW
“You’re bonkers.”
“Irrational,” Fabien corrected him. “Use proper language, Cassius.”
“I apologise,” Cassius replied unimpressed. “I suppose one should keep matters proper when set on ruining one’s future.”
Fabien chuckled darkly. His cousin sat at the table, throwing shrewd glances his way, his long, light hair curling down his shoulders, in full contrast with his stark uniform. His built couldn’t be more different than what was normally expected of a soldier. He looked more like a dancer, graceful and lithe. The damage he could inflict with a sword notwithstanding, Fabien wondered often if Cassius had ever questioned his carrier in the army. Though probably not. He was an Alba through and through.
“You will be required to keep most matters formal if you’re to take the seat in the Senate.”
Cassius frowned at him. “I don’t know what I want. I’m not trained for it, Fabien. That was always your role. Can’t you reconsider?”
“I’ve already said yes.”
“So, you’ll be a legal advisor to the imperial council. One of many with similar standing and far more experience than you. It’s a dead end, you realize.”
“I happen to be good with dead ends. I prefer them.”
“Oh, so your brilliant plan is giving Grandfather another stroke,” Cassius retorted. “On and on he goes about how disloyal you’re being to the family. Forgive me for asking, but don’t you care at all about what he has to say?”
The question was fair. Grandfather had no sons, only daughters, and as the elder Alba heir, Fabien had been groomed since childhood for politics. But Fabien had never been so inclined, for all that he had the required skills – or, at least, he did when he could bring himself to care.
“To answer your question, no, I don’t care all that much. But I don’t seek to displease him on purpose.”
Cassius narrowed his eyes. “Then you’re becoming a counsellor by accident. And turning my life upside down in the process.”
“Cassius, you’re my favourite cousin. But I need to sort out my own life. The empire is ruled by laws. The family will be very well served if I have a hand in drafting them. And if you don’t want to go into politics, then decline and stay in the army.”
Cassius shook his head. “You know I can’t do that. Not if they ask. I’m not strong like you.”
“Am I?” He didn’t bother explaining to Cassius the painful road he’d travelled to stop seeking affection where there had never been any to give to begin with, to arrive at the point where the only decisions that mattered were his, or how very lonely this particular destination was. Cassius was still so young, unaware of certain bitter realities.
“You will learn to protect yourself in time.”
“Am I to marry lady Florence in your place, as well?”
“Is the prospect so upsetting? You chase all the other ladies, and she is just as pretty.”
“I’d rather stick to the chasing, but no, it’s not as upsetting as that. I simply fail to understand why you’re throwing everything away.”
“I’m doing nothing of the sort. None of it was mine to throw away to start with. And I refuse to live my parents’ life, trapped into something that resembled a battlefield more than a marriage.”
“You don’t know it would be like that,” Cassius protested.
“Oh, but I do.”
“Pardon me, I’ve forgotten. You never sleep with the same person twice.”
“I never sleep with the same person twice,” Fabien confirmed. “And never with my back to them. I never give unsolicited advice, either, but if I were, it would be this one.”
“Point taken. Though at the rate you’re going, you risk depleting the entire population of the province.”
“Would you believe if I told you I can easily do without? It’s just a pastime. It’s all the same to me.”
Cassius tilted his head, studying him, his green eyes full of question. “Will you ever tell me what happened, Fabien? You didn’t use to act this way before my aunt passed away. And never as bad as over these last few months.”
Fabien huffed a brief, bitter laugh, and let his head fall against the high backrest of his chair, squeezing his eyes shut. “I suppose I’ve grown up.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Cassius asserted. “And if I am to be married soon, I want to go out in style. Join me tonight. My company is throwing a party, and I know you drinking is not a thing, but there’s bound to be plenty pretty women and men for you to choose from.”
“I don’t have anything better to do,” Fabien admitted. “I could.”
His home in the capital was a small, pretty villa he shared with a cook, a maid and a stable hand. It stood on a hill at the periphery of the city, as most elegant residences, and when he’d bought it, it was surrounded by an unfriendly garden with uncut lawns and weeds threatening to take over. Fabien had had all the greenery burnt out and the garden paved with stone, deciding he was done with plants in this lifetime.
He called for the man to take out his horse, and that of Cassius, but his cousin stopped him with a hand on his arm and a roll of his eyes.
“I’ll be too drunk to climb on anything that doesn’t have breasts, and you would’ve done plenty riding by the time the night is over, so let’s not bother with horses. We will walk, old man.”
“The army did wonders for your sense of grace and sophistication, didn’t it?”
Cassius laughed, and winked. Fabien prevented himself from stressing again how Cassius would have to break the habit of speaking whatever happened to cross his mind so freely. Or how he was still too young for the Senate, how Fabien was too young himself, and he was only a couple of years older, and if he took the seat now, they would eat him alive. There was still time, and his cousin’s presence was refreshing. Fabien watched him sometimes, wondering what being so full of joy and spirit felt like. He couldn’t remember for himself.
He knew Cassius thought him cynical, and he was ready to admit that he was. But he recalled the hurt, which had been his first reaction, and the anger, which had been his second. The hurt had been devastating; the anger had been terrifying, and Fabien didn’t handle anger well.
Whenever he couldn’t push it back, he lashed out, and such lack of control was appalling for someone holding his amount of power. He refused contemplating the dark thoughts he’d entertained or the dark places he’d visited for months, or how that fury had eventually translated into utter futility, how there had been a time when he had simply lost the will to live. Or how he’d slowly and painfully crawled back from that hole, only to be pushed back inside once more by betrayal. Scepticism was highly preferable.
“I love your new home by the way,” Cassius told him, as they went down the alley. “The garden, in particular, is unique. It’s still spring, and it already gives out so much heat. In summer, it’ll be hot as a volcano, and in winter you’ll basically have a pool in your backyard. Enchanting.”
“Cassius,” Fabien warned. “You’re really not that charming.”
“I know a girl who’d disapprove, well, several. Which reminds me: May I reside at your furnace for a few days? Not reside, reside,” he hurried to add. “I’d hate to be a bother. But just in case someone asks. Grandfather, for instance.”
Fabien sighed. He didn’t particularly want to lie, but he couldn’t hold Cassius resenting Grandfather’s hospitality against him either. “Can’t you tell him you’re staying at headquarters?”
Cassius rolled his eyes again. “Like he’d ever believe it, Fabien. Maybe the Senate seat is for me after all. I hate nothing like the headquarters.”
“Fine. But I’m not asking where you’re actually going, and you’re not going to tell me, either. You’ll simply be my disappearing guest.”
“And you’ll be my distant host, and did I mention how you’re my favourite cousin, too?”
“Oh, we’ll make a politician out of you yet,” Fabien said, clapping his shoulder. “Your favourite cousin is Lucio.”
“Well, yes, I do tell him that, but I only mean it with you.”
They went into the street, still bantering. As they turned around the corner, Fabien’s smile froze on his lips. His body went stiff, hair standing out on the back of his neck.
The man waited respectfully to the side of the gate, with his shoulders straight, his hands folded behind his back and his head bowed. His short-cropped hair borrowed a sense of gravity to his otherwise stunning features, making him appear more mature and less frail than Fabien remembered. His eyes shifted to him, and he nodded his head briefly in acknowledgment before lowering them again, impassible as though he couldn’t be more content than standing there, staring at the ground.
Fabien’s initial shock translated into pure, raw anger.
“What’s happened?” Cassius asked. “Why did you stop?”
“Cassius, walk to that man and send him on his way for me.”
“I’m in your debt, lord, I realize, and this bloody uniform is confusing, but a personal guard I am not.”
“Please,” Fabien said. “Please, if I go, I’ll do something I might regret.”
Cassius looked like he wanted to argue some more; but then he studied Fabien’s face better and started walking away.
“I plead for a moment of Lord Alba’s time, nothing more.”
“The lord orders you away.”
His chest rose and fell a few times, carefully, controlled. Then he bowed to Cassius.
“Lord.”
From the distance, Fabien watched him leave, his movements fluid and his shoulders straight. His mouth tasted like rust and his heart was pounding inside his chest.
“Who was he, Fabien?” There was curiosity in his cousin’s eyes, and something more – concern.
Fabien bit his lips. “A mistake.”
The party was everything he had expected: laughter, sin, strong music and stronger wine Fabien wouldn’t touch. He touched a soldier instead, older and built like a mountain, who couldn’t seem to take his eyes from him half the night. Fabien took him into one of the side rooms, closed the door behind, and told him, through the noise in his brain that he could not silence,
“Don’t be gentle.”
But Kreso kept coming back, and soon Fabien realized there was a pattern to it: He always arrived on Fridays, when it was customary for the lords of Salona to receive their clients and collect their fees. Absent extraordinary circumstances, overseers normally dealt with such matters, except Fabien didn’t have one. He kept the minimum number of slaves, all on time-barred contracts, for all that he was well aware it was both hypocritical of him, since he still benefited from the proceeds of the estate, and a complication in the long run, what with new potential clients. For lack of options, he’d sent Mario, his stable man to dismiss Kreso every single time. He was rough around the edges, but what he lacked in position and authority he made out in size and bulk. Not that Kreso ever put up a fight. He simply went away when ordered – and always returned the next week.
Fabien was at the very end of his wits. It didn’t help that Cassius had disappeared altogether and going out on his own for a casual good time wasn’t all that it was cut out to be. Not when he felt like he couldn’t breathe, like the city was suddenly too small to hold him and Kreso as well.
Up until one Friday afternoon, when his man was nowhere in sight, having picked that particular day to go about business into the city. It annoyed him to no end, seeing how Fabien had been crossing his fingers hoping against hope Kreso might tire of whatever game he was playing now. But then he realized he’d never actually instructed Mario to stick around. He considered sending the girl. It seemed cowardly because it was. So, he opened the gate and walked out feeling like he was throwing himself head first from the top of a cliff.
Kreso saw him approach, and flinched. His eyes moved slowly to Fabien, but, unlike other times, he didn’t look away again. They were still striking, the black irises trimmed with gold, but clearer than he remembered, and it just then occurred to Fabien that he’d been wrong before, when he’d judged Kreso impassible. The quiet air about him was something else – acceptance. His clothes were clean, if simple, his shirt still a bit too large to fit properly. He noticed how he was pale, as well, his cheekbones jutting out almost sickly on his face, his frame still too fraught, the man clearly was unable to feed himself properly. He walked to him with determination, his face set, and stopped a few steps away, his hands crossed over his chest, waiting for Kreso to speak first, which, he realized, was cowardly as well.
“I plead for a moment of your time,” he said, same as he’d told Cassius that first day.
“Leave,” Fabien said, keeping his tone tightly in leash. “Or, heavens help me, I’ll have you dragged away by the city guard.”
“You still look like you want to hit me,” Kreso said quietly. “I probably deserve it.”
“Probably?”
His eys dropped to his feet. “Certainly. But once you do, there’s no coming back from it.”
Fabien sneered at him. “Do you imagine there’s one now? After four years?”
“Three years and nine months,” Kreso said. Still quiet, still placating, and wasn’t Fabien all too familiar with his tactics by now? He will play you for favours and do what’s in his best interest, Father had told him one time, when Fabien had been stupid, and in love, but he was no longer any of those things. “And no, I don’t think that. I only ask for the opportunity to explain.”
“I’ve been warned you were impertinent. I refused to see it. I suppose I failed to see a great number of things, but I’ll spell it out for you, gorgeous: Whatever was there, some of it lingered after you first ran away. It didn’t survive the time you spiked my drink me and left me alone in a hut to freeze. After you swore you’d never give something like the poppy to me. It scrambled my brains, took my will away and made me say things that were private and to which you had no right. How do you suppose you’ll explain it away?”
Kreso stared silently at the ground. His shoulders were vibrating with tension.
“What do you want?” Fabien asked, his managed tone only making his anger more palpable. “Say it already and be gone, and if you ever cross my path again, I promise you’ll regret it.”
“My papers are old. They’re from back then.” He swallowed hard. “From that day. I hadn’t known I’d been your client all this time.”
“You’ve been informed last November.” He didn’t know himself why he allowed Kreso to drag him into this conversation, except that it felt like uncovering a body that had been left to rot, so he could take a close, clinical look at all the horrors it summoned, and there, he'd found his explanation: morbid curiosity. “It is the end of May.”
Kreso folded his lips in. His eyes sought his, openly, unguarded, and he flinched again when Fabien looked away. “I’ve been ill.”
Fabien tipped his head to the side, studying him. “Fishing for sympathy wasn’t one of the tricks you used. Word of advice: not a good time to start.”
“I don’t, I –” He ran his hand through his short hair, and frowned. “How come you didn’t find me sooner?”
“Enlighten me: Do I explain myself to you now?”
“No.” He looked almost scared. “No, I apologize. I am aware you can have me dispatched to the coal mines. Easily so. But on the off chance you’re not about to, please give me the opportunity to save my contract. You can void it, I realize. I didn’t observe it for four years, even if I was unaware of it, and the fee would have meant nothing to you, because I couldn’t find work and I barely made ends meet. I’m not making excuses. They wouldn’t hold in court against you. It hangs over my head, and you were right, I can’t run forever.”
“Why couldn’t you find work? You have the skills.”
“I had no papers,” Kreso stated simply. “No reputable surgeon would touch me.”
Fabien had’t considered it, but it explained the state he’d found Kreso in the last time. “I could write you a letter of recommendation. I’ll keep it polite and leave out the poisoning.”
“I deserve that, as well,” Kreso said, and the way in which he was so completely resigned to Fabien’s sarcasm got under his skin. How he appeared so damn stoical and honest, and that was the problem, wasn’t it, how Fabien had never been able to tell with him. “But I am working now. I’m in your debt, so if you’d name your terms?”
“Your sense of honour is very peculiar. You want to give me money? You haven’t even thanked me.”
Kreso shivered. It was a warm, late spring afternoon, but he shivered like a man that suddenly found himself in the middle of a blizzard.
“I will if you want me to.”
Fabien stared at him. Kreso’s words were so very familiar. Everything about him was, his voice, his eyes, the way he held himself. But he didn’t know the man before him. He’d imagined himself in love with a stranger.
“I’ll consider it,” Fabien said. “Where are you staying?”
“An inn in the port,” Kreso said, drawing his brows together. “The Nesting Lark.”
“I’ll let you know,” Fabien said, and turned his back to him, vowing to himself he would never ever set foot in such a place.
His determination lasted for three days, during which the debated endlessly whether to send Mario. On the morning of the fourth, Fabien was wandering through the port district, searching for a bloody tavern in the middle of nowhere.
Around him, the city pulsated, swamped with people who laughed, cried, fought, bargained, or crafted. Occasional lovers embraced in remote alleys. Somewhere, a young woman was singing her child to sleep. He went on and around, reluctant to ask for directions. Yet another small square, another dirty, narrow street that looked no different than the rest of them, and Fabien suddenly spotted the small, rickety inn.
The large room of the Nesting Lark was dim and empty, only a couple of travellers sipping their wine at the bar. Surprisingly, on the inside the tavern looked well-kept and clean enough, the early hour possibly keeping the clients away.
As he stepped in, a bar maid made an appearance, fussing over him all flustered. Fabien slipped her a silver coin, and moments later, Kreso descended from his room on the upper floor. He spotted him at the more remote, corner table he’d chosen, and bowed his head to him silently from a distance, his face carefully blank. He’d addressed Cassius as ‘lord’ back at the villa, inferring his status correctly despite the uniform. He was trying not to attach any meaning to how he hadn’t called Fabien anything at all, able to tell this, too, would be so familiar, and easy: obsessing over Kreso’s every word or gesture, trying to make sense of him and his actions once more.
He didn’t sit, and Fabien didn’t invite him to. Instead, he reached inside his pocket and threw the first paper on top of the table: Mother’s letter.
“I was always going to because my mother asked it of me. It took me a while to work out the hows.”
Kreso’s eyes were burning, the paper shaking in his hand. “You’ve known all along?”
“Since the reading of the will.” He studied his expression, quick to notice what was lacking there – surprise. “So have you.”
“It had been our arrangement from the beginning,” Kreso said evenly. “My freedom for her secret. She went back on it eventually.”
Fabien reached for the second paper. Kreso’s words explained many things, many struggles, maybe even Kreso’s original anger towards him. If only it wasn’t too late to make a difference.
“This is mine,” he said, taking the letter from Kreso and pushing the new paper into his hand.
“This one is yours – a legal document that settles your debt to me. This business between you and me is done.”
Kreso kept looking reverently at the paper. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Fabien said.
Watching him from under his lashes, Kreso said, very carefully,
“I’m a liar.”
Fabien raised no objections to the statement, but it was nonetheless a nonsequitur. “Your point being?”
“You didn’t use to be one.”
Fabien burst into laughter. “There is no limit to your lack of respect, is there? Go on. It’s almost entertaining.”
“You know some of it was real,” Kreso said. Slowly, forcing the words out, his face turning crimson.
“Not what you said the last time.”
“I know what I said.”
“But it’s not so, because you are a liar. Alright. Some of it was real. Can you name which part?”
He shook his head slowly, dejected. Fabien pushed his chair back and stood up. “If only you would’ve been more patient. One more day. You would’ve walked away free and rich.”
Kreso held his eyes. “Would you have allowed me to?”
“Would I have allowed you?” The anger he’d pushed down surged like the tide. “I never looked for you. I could’ve had, but I haven’t, not once. I only came last November because I’ve been told where you are. I only came to end it. I got the message clear when you left me after sex.”
Kreso stared at him stunned. Fabien threw silver on the table and stormed out of the inn without throwing him a second glance.