The Many Lives of Sexta Sertorius
Chapter Two

The fortified city of Caffa (Modern day Feodosia, Crimea) – 1357

'…you, child, are unique among all the creatures that walk upon this earth,' Quintus said.

'You mean there are others like you?' Sexta breathed, her eyes wide with wonder. 'Tell me about them… Please.'

So her guide and protector began to tell her everything he knew about the Ancients and the other Born. He told her of Primus, the tortured soul who grew to hate his Sire, Erlik of Siberia. He told her of Secunda, the daughter Born to the Ancient known as Yama of China, raised by loving human parents and now a champion of all who are weak and oppressed. Sexta thought she could detect some sympathy in Quintus for Primus and much admiration for Secunda and she wondered if he had ever met either of them but was loathe to interrupt him to find out.

He continued the tale of the Ancients arising from Ukraine, Sudan, Kashmir and Iran – mighty beings that took the names Wormwood, Kush, Ravana of India and Babylon. Ravana and Babylon had no Born and, despite Primus' inept and drunken efforts to challenge Erlik, they were not yet considered the most fortunate of Ancients. Nor was the seventh Ancient, the Master, the young rebel who Sexta knew to be Quintus' Sire, believed to be cursed with two Born.

Sexta listened to the tales with rapt attention but when she heard this last piece of information, she exclaimed, 'Is it me, Quintus? Am I the Master's other Born? Am I your sister?'

She was oddly disturbed by the thought of any familial relationship between them, even one as tenuous as being the Born of the same Ancient. Quintus seemed to have noticed her disquiet because he stared at her, examining her face so intently and for so long that she sighed with relief when he finally dropped his eyes and shook his head.

'No, child. You are no more my sister than you are my daughter. Most of the Born were created soon after their Sire's naissance, when the Ancient was still inexperienced and careless. Tertia was the same…'

'Nearly two millennia ago,' Quintus began, 'the seventh and final Ancient, the Master, first took human form as an Onondaga brave. The newly risen Master returned to his host's village driven by the longing for his Loved Ones. The entire tribe that followed The Master as his first minions included an expectant mother. Tertia, so named by posterity because she was the third Born, was the daughter Born to this woman.

'When the baby was born, her turned mother raised her but all the time the Master was watching Tertia, studying her – wondering if she could be a host or vessel for crossing the water back to the other Ancients. He realised that she could not be controlled but his arrogance would not allow him to register her as a potential threat.

'The Master tested Tertia with streams. She hated it as much as I do, so she resisted. He pushed and pushed, desperate to reunite with the other Ancients, until Tertia panicked and attacked him in a frenzy. He had to kill her.'

'But how do you know all this?' Sexta asked into the pause. 'Especially Tertia's story. It happened so far away - no one alive could have told the tale.'

Quintus gave her a tiny smile and, stepping back, he gestured at the work on his desk introducing it simply as, 'Filii de opacare, The Sons of Twilight.' Sexta moved to examine it, glancing up at Quintus as she passed in front of him. He took a further step away, as if he felt she was still too close to him. She bit her lip, trying not to take it personally.

On the desk, fragments of papyrus had been pieced together and Quintus was in the process of transcribing the text into a leather-bound book. Sexta looked back at him again, puzzled and slightly disappointed. 'It's all in Latin, Quintus. Why have you never taught me that?'

'It is the language of religious cant and intransigence, Sexta. You do not need it.'

'It's the language of scholars and the learned,' she argued. Then, feeling a more conciliatory tone was called for, she added quietly, 'It's your language, Quintus. I would like to know it.'

He looked at her for a moment and then changed the subject, saying, 'Don't you want to hear about Quarta?' He gestured for her to retake her seat opposite. Sexta would much rather have heard about Quintus but she knew him well enough not to press. Besides, she was curious, so she sat down and tried to be patient.

With the table once again safely between them, Quintus continued his tales of the Born. 'Quarta, or Lady Quartz as she eventually styled herself, was the daughter of a grateful prostitute and her rescuer, recently infected by one of Kush's spawn. For some reason, the infection so early in pregnancy meant that the newBorn girl was closer in form and function to her strix Sire than any of us…the first three half-breeds.'

'So…her "Sire" was that still considered to be Kush, even though it was his offspring that infected her parents, rather than Kush himself?' Sexta interrupted.

Quintus nodded. 'That is so.' He paused as if wondering whether to add something else. He opened and closed his mouth once before saying, slowly and carefully, 'It was thus also with you. When I brought you before the Ancients as a baby…please do not interrupt… Wormwood instantly claimed you as his Born although I personally slew the actual strix who infected your mother.'

While this account was completely true, Quintus had omitted one tiny particular in order to spare Sexta's feelings…or perhaps to spare him from her condemnation.

Quintus' face betrayed some guilt but Sexta was too preoccupied by this new information, trivial though it might seem, to observe it. She had always known that Wormwood of Ukraine was her Sire – his possessive demeanour towards her at each annual examination allowed no doubt - but she had assumed that he had turned her mother directly.

Quintus, for his part, resorted to his default system and pretended he hadn't strayed from Quarta's tale. 'The Lady Quartz was a three-quarter-bred,' he continued. 'Definitively "Born" because she was free of bloodworms but her eyes were large and liquid-black like those of a strix. In fact, as far as I am aware, they still are…'

'She's still alive? You met her?' exclaimed Sexta in awe. 'What about Primus and Secunda?'

Quintus hesitated. His acquaintance with the fourth Born was straying into dangerously private territory for him.

'Quartz is the only one I've met personally. She is the Born who made our Sires fear us and try to suppress us – to prevent our creation…Except for you, Sexta,' he mused. His thoughts drifted, wondering why Wormwood had permitted, nay encouraged her existence.

He recalled bringing the infant to them, unsure of what she was - a turning strix-babe, doomed to starve and "cave" until a horrified human found and killed the shrunken malformed thing, or the first human to survive the infection unharmed. Was it…was she…an object of pity or a new hope?

He should never have taken her there. He should have killed the baby where she lay but he couldn't, not after… Or he should have found a married Sun Hunter to take care of her. Someone who knew her special dietary needs yet could steel themselves to release her if she turned out to be a simple strix.

Simple…! Simple was the last thing Sexta had turned out to be.

'Please, Quintus?' Sexta begged, drawing him back and catching him slightly off guard. She felt awkward now, absently excavating the grain of the desktop with her thumbnail but again she plunged on. 'You've never told me your story…'

He stared at her for long enough to make her squirm in discomfort. Then he sighed and told her.

He told her of the Master in the body of Thrax, associate of the depraved emperor Caligula; the weekly tributes of virgin slave girls; the ritual feeding on the pedestal; the early pregnancy detected in one girl after Thrax had begun to feed; Caligula's paranoia requiring Thrax's presence and the guards' incompetence in allowing the infected girl to escape.

He recounted his birth in a cave as his turning mother headed south for her Loved Ones; his life as a god amongst men; his career as a warrior and gladiator; even his meeting with Lady Quartz in the Ludus Magnus in Rome and their doomed partnership as a gladiatorial team. Quintus omitted nothing. Nothing that is, except for any mention of his wife and adopted daughter…