Author's note: As it does take me a while to add new chapters, I've decided to try adding lists of relevant characters at the beginning of each chapter. It won't include characters whose appearance would be a spoiler, or characters who I introduce within the chapter itself.
Main Characters:
Magnus - Imperial Praetor (elite military title), Dracian ethnicity.
Lilah - Regiment medic, captured slave, Ilythian.
Supporting (Imperial):
Saphir - Magnus' personal slave, serves as a groom to Lilah since her capture, undetermined mixed ethnicity.
Daegon - Magnus' personal guard, tasked currently with protecting Lilah, a Gauthrien.
Legatus Hesiod - A prominent political figure in the Imperius, recently arrived in camp. Part of the Imperial house.
Vero - Consular (common political title meaning official advisor) and spymaster. Dracian. He gave Lilah to Magnus. He oversees the initiation and training for the most desirable slaves, those intended for the Imperial house.
Pontius - A consular who overseas initiation and training for the largest bulk of slaves, including concubines and gladiators. Dracian.
Jadir - Consular overseeing the training of the slaves deemed undesirable for pleasure or fighting. A Southern Islander.
Cato - A Praetor with a particularly contentious relationship with Magnus. Dracian.
Ariadne - An aloof Praetor. Undetermined mixed ethnicity. Part of the Imperial house.
Ajax - A Praetor and former gladiator with the love of the common people. D'Azurian ethnicity.
Supporting (Illythian Regiment):
Elspeth - Illythian medic who served alongside Lilah. She and Lilah share a contentious relationship.
Mairi - Illythian medic who served alongside Lilah. Lilah feels protective of her.
Antony - Alias: Xavier. A Valencian aristocrat who joined the Illythian militia. Upon capture, he pretended to be a Navarrene merchant, potentially entitling him to Imperial citizenship.
Diarmund - Illythian soldier instructed to guard the Illythian medical team. He took his failure hard.
Eris - Soldier with the Illythian regiment. Rumored to have evaded capture.
~ * ~
"I can help him," the angel said.
Magnus let his eyelids fall shut as he listened to the argument continue above him. For now, he would need to focus on breathing carefully—on surviving.
"Our own soldiers—," said another woman's voice, low and hard.
"We haven't
found
any of our soldiers—not alive," said the angel, and while her tones were altogether a great deal more gentle than the other woman, there was a fierceness to her resolve. "Take him captive, Eris, by all means—but I won't just leave him here to bleed out."
There was a pause. Death and indecision hung on the air.
"Alright," said the other woman grudgingly. "But we're not just sitting here like prey. Have you patched the wound?"
"Yes, but—,"
Magnus was lifted swiftly and draped over a shoulder—his brain, hazy with blood loss as it was, worked to reconcile the ease with which he was lifted and the slender arms and shoulder doing the lifting. He wondered again if he might actually be hallucinating.
"Eris, gently!" the angel cautioned, the musical tones stern in a way that might have been adorable were his gut not wrenched in agony.
His carrier gave a hard laugh in response. "I'm being gentler with him than the commander will be. Let's go."
~ * ~
Magnus maneuvered through the encampment, displays of debauchery surging all around him. There were slaves, bound and writhing, and a surplus of legionnaires to ravish them. Indeed, many of them seemed to think of little else. Magnus observed one pitiful beauty who had been reduced to sobbing pleas as two legion soldiers savaged her mercilessly. One of them held a candle in his hand, occasionally dripping the red wax over the girl's pert nipples while the other entered her roughly from behind.
Magnus walked past.
There was Vero, standing at the mouth of a particularly large tent, flanked by a dozen guards.
"Consular," said Magnus, by way of greeting.
"My liege," replied Vero, pulling his eyes away from the sight of several rowdy soldiers being hauled toward the disciplinary barracks.
"I understand you have a few of the regimental medical corps in your keeping."
"Two," said Vero. "I can escort you inside for a viewing now, if you wish. We're keeping all the slaves intended for the imperial household cloistered, just to be safe."
"A little later perhaps. At the moment I'm seeking out Pontius." Magnus said, not bothering to accord the man his title.
Vero's expression was mild, but Magnus saw something flicker in his eyes. The rivalry between consulars was frequently fierce and notoriously underhanded, and Magnus had a suspicion that Pontius was not particularly popular.
"I believe he has retired to his personal tent, Praetor. With a companion," Vero said, his mild expression insinuating in a way that left Magnus in little doubt of the sort of companion he meant.
Or so he believed. When Magnus entered the tent, letting the curtain fall behind him silently, he expected to find Pontius molesting some mewling Illythian captive.
What he found was a female legionnaire—young by all appearances, clad in imperial regalia, servicing Pontius on her knees.
"That's it," Pontius growled, his eyes rolling back. "You've as much natural talent as any slave I've trained." The girl responded with a very wet sound that might have meant anything, and Pontius groaned, sagging in his chair.
Magnus considered interrupting. A quiet clear of his throat, and he could have the two of them scurrying to attention. In the end, he didn't need to. As he stood in the doorway, arms crossed as he leisurely considered his options, Pontius' eyes opened. He blinked, and pushed the girl away. Magnus, not bothering to look, had an acute sense that whatever endowment Pontius possessed had shriveled at the sight of him.
"My liege," said Pontius in a strangled tone as he hooked the latch on his trousers. His skin, already pallid, looked a tinge more green than usual. He cleared his throat. "May I be of any assistance?"
The female legionnaire stood, back straight, as correct and implacable as if she had been preparing for a formal inspection rather than sucking off a repellent politician old enough to be her father only moments before. She did look young, perhaps twenty. Her skin was dark as mahogany and her hair was thick with tight curls, indicating D'Azurian heritage. She didn't look much like Lilah, and yet there was something in her air—an internal dignity and solemnity—that struck Magnus as reminiscent.
Magnus debated. Strictly speaking, there was nothing prohibited about their antics. But even in the midst of an imperial party, where most soldiers in the encampment rutted amongst themselves and with war captives, there was an element of the sordid to this. Most particularly the fact that Magnus doubted that both of them went into this encounter with equal enthusiasm.
He addressed the girl.
"Your name?"
"Cybele, sir. Actarius to the camp steward."
Ah. A clerk. Several aspects of the scenario clicked into place. Encampment clerks usually kept on the back lines and were assigned the duty of record keeping and organizing communication between their superiors. They were also frequent targets for abuse due to their relative safety in comparison to other legionnaires and an unfortunately frequent duty as the bearers of bad news. She would have been tasked with assisting Pontius without a second thought.
"You were assigned to Consular Pontius in overseeing his arrangements for the party?"
"Yes, sir," she said, and while she maintained her stoic pose, something in her eyes willed him to understand her position. A Consular had power a low ranking military recruit could only dream of.
Magnus' eyes flickered to Pontius, and back to her. "Wait outside, legionnaire."
She obeyed silently, and Pontius made an attempt at his usual ingratiating tone as she stepped through the entrance. "My liege, if I have overstepped a boundary-,"
Magnus waved a hand dismissively, as though it were already forgotten. It wasn't. Magnus was very intrigued to learn that Pontius could have a horde of nubile young captives that he might toy with without anyone batting an eye, yet he would seek out a more taboo option for its own sake. In the eyes of the Imperius, bending a slave to one's will was one thing, coercing an imperial soldier was quite another.
Still, no point stirring the water unnecessarily.
"I've come about a purchase, Consular," he said, and though his voice was as mild as ever, the gaze he fixed on Pontius was raptor-like.
Pontius fidgeted uneasily, and Magnus sensed a "my apologies, Praetor," in the air.
"Ah, my liege," said Pontius. "I ought to warn you that I have received a great many inquiries tonight—,"
"The cherub girl," said Magnus. "Mairi."
Pontius' lips were white. "Purchased, my liege. Praetor Cato came to me shortly after her performance in the area."
Magnus was very still. He wasn't entirely surprised. In attending to Lilah after her own performance, he had left a window of opportunity open for his rivals. Cato was just the person to take that opportunity. There could be little doubt that the appeal of beating Magnus to the punch had lured Cato far more than any particular charms the girl might possess. For all the man's failings, Cato knew enough to pounce when an enemy showed it belly.
"A different inquiry, then," Magnus continued briskly, as though it were of no matter, "Diarmund O'Con...Something," Magnus said. Illythian surnames—especially northern ones—were frequently considered unpronounceable by people outside of the country. "He was captured in the same raid."
This time, when Pontius' lips turned even more pale, Magnus
was
