Nine
Asariel 9:33 Dragon
Junia slowly removed the scarf from around her neck.
The physician scrunched his nose as he looked at her, before he turned and began digging into his bag full of tools.
Junia lifted her eyes toward the ceiling, the same distant, vacant expression that had been there for the three weeks since. The light that had once been there had gone out, almost completely. Ever since, she had rarely left her bedroom. When she did, she moved slowly through the house, barely there, like a ghost haunting the estate. She spent the time alone, with the door locked, allowing no one in, drowning in grief.
Magister Arrentius had finally convinced her to let him and him alone into the bedchamber.
He had called the physician the next day out of growing concern for her well-being.
He now sat in the chair behind her, where he could watch the physician without his wife having to look him in the eye.
Valerie had insisted that she, too, be allowed into the room for the examination. After a shouting match that lasted several minutes of elevating volumes between her and her father, she had successfully browbeat him into giving in to her demands.
Valerie has asked Cassius to come with her. Ask would actually be the wrong word, as she had more so demanded that he come along. She didn't say why, but from the twisted look of anguish written across her face, he knew she ordered him because she was scared to go alone.
Magister Arrentius hadn't objected when the two teenagers had slipped quietly into the sitting room after the physician arrived. Junia didn't pay them any mind, her gaze distant and vacant.
"Let's see what we have here," the doctor said as he retrieved a small mirror from his bag. "Please, open your mouth."
Junia swallowed and obeyed, although her eyes were still fixed toward the ceiling. The physician went to work, holding her tongue down with a depressor as he probed into her mouth with the small mirror, glancing into the back of her throat. After a few moments of looking, he pulled his tools out and set them aside.
He placed his fingers under her chin and began to gently feel the edges of her jaw and toward her neck, testing the flesh with gentle squeezes. He stopped and concentrated as he reached the back of her jaw, feeling the nodes and glands at the top of her throat.
He bent down slightly, examining the tissue on her throat, furrowing his brow this way and that as he looked it over before moving on.
He stopped to listen to her breathing. He examined her eyes. He probed with his fingers around the back of her head, just under her skull and down her spine. He apologized in advance for the intrusion before he pressed on the tops of her breasts. He held her wrist and closed his eyes and he counted heart beats in his head.
At the end of it all, he picked up his tools again and looked inside her mouth and down her throat a second time before he stepped back and placed his hand on his chin.
"I apologize, Magister Arrentius, but based on my exam, I can't find anything physically wrong with your wife," he said, tilting his head again as he looked at the scar tissue on her throat. Junia lowered her head and looked vacantly at her hands folded in her lap.
"How could that be?" Flavius asked, sounding desperate.
"From what I can tell there appears to be no structural damage to her larynx. No obstructions or masses that I can detect. Her throat is not swollen or raw. Her heart and lungs appear to be in perfect working order. I even searched for other tumors around the skull, spine or chest that might be causing an indirect effect by putting pressure on nerves and can find nothing," the physician explained. "It's possible the problem could be caused by mass too small to detect via manual stimulation, but if that were the case I would expect to see other symptoms — fever, pain, seizures. She's had none of that?"
"No," Magister Arrentius said quietly, sounding slightly defeated.
"Then I'm afraid I have no better medical explanation," the doctor said. "I'm sorry."
Flavius ran his fingers across his forehead and took a deep breath, then rolled his hand into a fist and slammed it into his knee.
"Then why can't she speak!" he demanded, his anger flaring.
The doctor paused a moment, letting Magister Arrentius calm, before he began. "My best explanation is one of two possibilities. As I understand, following her recent… traumatic incident, that it is most likely the part of her mind that controls speech has shut it down, whether temporarily or not, in response to the trauma. That is rare, but does occur sometimes if people go through a particularly harrowing experience. It may resolve itself over time or it may not."
"And the second?" Magister Arrentius urged.
"The second is a much simpler explanation," the doctor said. "It may be that she can speak and simply has chosen not to at this time."
The doctor watched for any reaction from Junia. She made none, sitting still and continuing to gaze down at her lap.
Magister Arrentius huffed, rocking in his seat. He slapped his knees again as stood from his chair. "No!" he shouted. "That doesn't explain that mark on her neck and it doesn't explain why she doesn't make a sound. Any sound. Not speech, not laughter, not sobbing, not even a grunt or groan. Nothing!"
"Father…" Valerie said to try to stop him as his voice elevated.
"No!" he shouted at her to quiet her. "I want an answer!"
"I'm sorry, my lord," the doctor said calmly. "I can't-"
"That's not good enough!" Flavius continued to shout as he grabbed the doctor by the front of his shirt. "What is wrong with my wife!"
"Magister Arrentius, please-"
"Father, stop!" Valerie shouted.
Flavius shook the man. "Tell me what is wrong!"
"I-"
"Stop it!" Valerie screamed and was about to stand from her chair. Cassius reached out and stopped her, holding her arm before she was able to get up to try to stop her father from throttling the physician.
"Look," he said quietly, gesturing toward Junia.
Valerie stopped and looked at her mother, who now had tears running silently down her cheeks. She didn't lift her head, but raised her hand and reached out, touching her husband's elbow.
Flavius nearly jumped at the contact as his head snapped to the side, looking down at his wife's shaky fingers lightly touching his arm. He released the physician with a shove and the man stepped back, collecting himself before he quickly began scooping up his tools into his bag in preparation for a hasty escape.
Flavius dropped to a knee in front of his wife, taking her hand and holding it in his. "Junia, Junia my sweet. What is it? What's wrong?"
She lifted her tear-glassed eyes to look at her husband and lifted her other hand, making a scribbling motion in the air slowly.
"Paper!" Magister Arrentius said sharply as he turned his head back toward the children. "Get her paper!"
Cassius jumped up from his chair and ran out the door, down the hall to the study, quickly scrabbling through the desk to find a sheet of paper and Magister Arrentius' ink and pens. The room was dark as he pushed aside documents and tossed open drawers until he found the supplies he needed, then ran back to the bedroom. He presented the supplies to Magister Arrentius, who handed them to his wife.
She lifted her hand from her husband's grasp and dipped the pen, resting the piece of paper across her left leg. She pressed the point to the paper and stopped, her entire arm seeming to shake as tears continued to roll down her face without a sound escaping from her lips.
I'm sorry, she wrote first.
Then, underneath it: It's my fault.
"No," Flavius said, cooing to her. "No, it's not."
Junia disagreed, nodding her head up and down as she continued to write.
I would give anything to give you a son.
"Don't worry about that," Flavius said. "All I want is for you to be better."
I won't be. Ever.
"No, we'll find a way," Flavius disagreed.
You won't.
I did this to myself.
Flavius read that, looked at her throat and then turned his head toward the doctor. "You said there was nothing wrong with her throat!"
"There's not!" the physician said frantically. "No bruising, no scar tissue, no inflammation, no-"
"She just said she did this to-" Flavius was quieted by the touch of his wife's hand again. She was already writing again when he turned back to her.
He speaks truly. It's not that.
"That, that doesn't make any sense," Flavius stammered. "I don't understand. Is it like he said, that you're trying to speak but can't? The trauma?"
No.
"Then what? What happened?" Flavius said, his voice cracking as his eyes went dewy, too. "Please, please, tell me. Whatever it is, I just want to help."
Junia's lips twisted. She blinked and a renewed flood of tears washed over her cheeks. She was trembling all over, her hairs standing on her arms and her skin prickled with goosebumps. Her hand shook as she reached to dip the pen again and lowered it slowly to the page, the pressure of pressing down the point the only thing keeping her arm from rattling off her body.
A large black spot formed where she held the point of the pen down, paralyzed and unable to move. She looked up, glanced at her husband, her daughter and Cassius. Her entire face shrunk, compressed by the strain of shame.
Her chest racked. There should have been the sound of sobbing except for the fact that she could produce no sound, not a word or a whisper or a whimper. It was as if they looked at her behind thick glass, where they could see the motions but not hear anything, even though she sat right in front of them.
"Junia," Flavius pleaded from his knees on the floor, his fingers fumbling to hold her leg, his battle lost as tears dropped from the corners of his eyes, too.
Junia closed her eyes, swallowed the next silent sob that came up and returned to the paper, willing her arm to finally move as she lifted the pen from the dark black blotch to the clear space just underneath it, penning out the answer in shaky script.
A demon.
Asariel 9:41 Dragon
"Are we ready?"
Lysander gave the bag a shake, the wooden cubes inside rattling against each other as he looked around the table.
Cassius looked at the board where the scores were scrawled out in chalk. Flavia was in a distant last place, on account of her age. Cassius was second to last, having a miserable outing. Kordelia had slipped ahead of him in the last two rounds, even despite being several years his junior. He was more than fifty points behind Valerie, who was trailing Lysander by three at the moment as the two had jockeyed back and forth, changing positions round to round.
No one was even close to Junia, who held a commanding lead over the table.
Andria was resting, requiring more time for sleep on a daily basis as she was now rapidly approaching the final months of her pregnancy. Magister Arrentius had declined the invitation to play, having numerous new military reports to attend to from the Venatori front. Nobody seemed to know where Servilia was, although the assumption was that any mud puddle that could be found on the estate grounds would be more appealing to her than word games ever would be.
"Just drop them already," Valerie said, her eyes narrowed and ready to strike.
"Flavia, dear, if you will," Lysander asked.
As the youngest, they had appointed her in charge of the minute glass. She picked it up and gave it an emphatic turn upside down, starting the sand from the top to the bottom of the container.
As soon as it touched, Lysander spilled the bag of blocks, quickly pressing the sixteen cubes together to form a square.
Cassius scanned the letters showing, quickly eyeing them and trying to rotate them in his mind as some letters were right side up, others upside down and others turned one quarter left or right. Junia was already scribbling, not even looking down at her sheet, instead her eyes darting over cubes as she scribbled words one after another.
No S. There was an -ING combination in the upper right corner, but the letters around it were poor. Not a single A on the table either.
He started jotting down words, remembering half the reason he was losing so badly was because he spent too much time looking at the table instead of just getting down whatever he saw first. Junia seemed to catch every complex word, but the others were beating him simply because they could produce a volume of simple words while he lagged behind trying to be clever.
Letters and words had never been his strongest suit. Before he had come to the Circle, there was no one who could have taught him to read or write. Both of his parents, poor farmers, were illiterate and there was no time — or money — for paper and pens when there were fields to be planted and harvested and livestock needing tending.
His first year in the Circle had been one of brutal instruction in letters and numbers in an effort to get him in one year's time close enough to noble children who had been learning those things since birth. During his early years he never felt comfortable with a book under his nose or a pen in his hand, although the kinder instructors had encouraged him that he was picking it up much faster than some of the other commoner children.
Their praise had been validated when he had been chosen for the page program and sent to serve at the Magisterium in Minrathous. While much of the job was running errands for the Magisters, the ability to read and write well were prerequisite for the job, as a page needed to be able to serve their assigned representative in whatever way needed, whether it be reading documents or drafting letters and legislation.
Cassius had found some joy in drafting personal correspondence during those years, either relaying Magister Arrentius' words back to his family or, more often, writing them himself when his lord was too busy to attend to the matter himself.
Although the Magisterium's post was officially meant for business matters only, his terms spent in Minarathous were highlighted by the arrivals of letters from Valerie addressed specifically to him, with the opportunity to sneak his own letters, written in the late hours of the night after Magister Arrentius had gone to his rest and snuck in the middle of the stack of more official documents to be sent and therefore never noticed by anyone who might object to their exchange.
Those years of semi-illicit correspondence with Valerie weren't helping him much now as he struggled to link words together on his sheet, watching the sand drop faster and faster in the glass next to Flavia.
"Time!" Flavia announced as the last grains of sand slipped between the midpoint of the minute glass.
Cassius looked down at his list of words, fearing another miserable round that was likely to end with few new points added to his total.
"A challenging round," Lysander commented as he placed his pen down on the table and looked over his sheet. "Although I do believe I may have found a few that even Lady Junia may have missed this time."
"Doubtful," Kordelia scoffed.
Valerie frowned as she counted the words on her list, obviously not pleased with her performance this round either. "Go ahead, Mother," she said. "Embarrass us again."
Junia smiled and placed her sheet on the table. Valerie scooped it up and then rolled her eyes and groaned. "There has to be forty words on here," she complained after a quick glance.
Cassius looked down at his sheet. He had fourteen written down. Valerie began to read from her mother's list.
"Tin. Tine. Ting. Tinge. Nigh. Night. Tight. Tighten," Valerie started, working through the long list of words drafted by her mother as they crossed matching entries off their lists one by one. It didn't take long for all of Cassius' entries to be eliminated, leaving him with no new points on the round.
"How about 'potent?'" Lysander asked, interrupting Valerie as she was reading.
Valerie stopped and scanned, "Potent, yes. As well as intent, intention and contention," Valerie added.
"Of which I have none," Lysander said, dipping his head in deference to the magister's wife. "Yet again, you prove yourself the greater, Lady Junia."
"Kiss ass," Kordelia muttered under breath, quiet enough that only Cassius could hear her. He smirked and she did too, shooting him a sideways glance.
Over the recent weeks, Lysander Vespasian had continued to do whatever he could in an attempt to ingratiate himself to the Arrentius household and appeared to be having success in doing so.
Flavius, most of all, had taken a shine to the presence of the new Laetan in their household. Junia seemed to like the young man too and he had specifically won her over by playing her four-stringed lute, to which they had traded back and forth and she had shared some advanced techniques with him. He had won over Servilia with piggy-back rides and running foot races against her, while gaining Flavia's approval had been as simple as sneaking her candies.
Kordelia's disposition toward the suitor remained particularly frosty, although Lysander had not abandoned trying to engage with her, even despite his so-far failed attempts to puzzle her out as she continued to present new and unique obstacles every time he came around.
Andria seemed to have no personal opinion positive or negative toward him, but instead had based her approval on him primarily from her conversations with her older sister and her opinion of the man. That being said, she liked him, which reflected Valerie's attitude toward the prime suitor her father had selected for her.
Lysander had found his place in the household, although Cassius couldn't help shake a feeling that something was out of place. Kordelia had bluntly stated to his face with a smirk that it was simple jealousy at being replaced as the golden boy of the house. Cassius was self-aware enough not to discount that, in part, although there was something else, an intuition that he could not put to words but that continued to gnaw at the corner of his mind.
The suitor had done or said nothing untoward and given no overt reason to conjure mistrust, and yet, Cassius found it difficult to lower his guard in the man's presence.
"So that's another sixteen points for Lady Junia," Lysander announced as he tallied the score sheet, "And… zero for the rest of us."
"Be thankful my mother is so skilled or you'd look even more pitiful," Kordelia whispered to Cassius, continuing to goad him. Sadly, she wasn't wrong.
Lysander scooped up the cubes back into the bag and began to shake it where there was a light tap on the door frame of the sitting room. Their eyes turned toward the bald-headed slave standing in the entry.
"My apologies, domina," he said addressing the lady of the house. "Magister Arrentius has requested the presence of Master Vespasian and Master Terro in his study."
Lysander gave the bag one final shake and rested it on the table. "I suppose that brings an end to our game, if we may be excused," he said, bowing his head respectfully to Junia, who nodded her assent. "It may be for the best, as you have proven without a doubt yet again to be our superior."
Junia smiled politely and placed her pen and paper on the table as their game ended. She then looked back toward the slave waiting in the doorway and held her hand out flat, adjusting its height above the floor.
The slave understood her gesture. "Yes, domina. Miss Servilia is in the kitchen with the cooks."
Junia rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"Probably chopping onions," Valerie added. "Or peeling potatoes."
That sounded about right. Despite the command from her father and mother, Servilia still often snuck down to the kitchens to spend time with the slaves there. The women working there, mostly older women who had birthed children of their own at one point or another, swore they did not mind her and that she stayed out of their way, but Servilia's parents objected less on the grounds of her safety or presence and more on the continuing struggle to try to impress the concept of her nobility upon her.
"I will collect her, mother," Valerie offered, to which her mother gave an appreciative nod.
"I apologize, but I must bid you farewell for now," Lysander said to Valerie, holding her hand and lifting it to lightly kiss her knuckles. "I shall return as soon as I am able."
Valerie smiled. "Until then."
There was a pause as the two realized all eyes were on them — Cassius watching, Junia smiling, Flavia half paying attention as she flipped the minute glass over and over between her fingers, and Kordelia scowling — before Lysander released her hand and stood up from the couch and gestured toward the door.
"Shall, we, Cassius?"
"I'll just go back to my room and sit there by myself," Kordelia announced with a huff, adding, "Not that anyone cares."
Her mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she just shook her head slightly at her middle daughter's behavior and Valerie shot her a disapproving glance.
"Have fun then," Cassius teased as he plopped his paper and pen into Kordelia's lap and pushed himself up from his chair, turning toward the door. Lysander fell into step behind him as the slave stepped aside to allow them out into the hall, bowing his head and keeping his eyes to the floor as they passed.
Now away from the sitting room, Lysander increased his gait to come up alongside Cassius as they headed toward Magister Arrentius' study.
"Well, that was a beating, was it not?" he said, referring to their word game.
"Lady Junia is incredibly sharp," Cassius answered in noncommittal fashion.
"I was impressed by Valerie's performance as well," Lysander said. "I wasn't aware she was so deft with words. I thought I would have the upper hand."
Perhaps it was comments like that, a back-handed compliment built on the assumption that he might be naturally superior to Valerie, that perturbed Cassius. The man did have skills and faculties, but at the end of the day he was still Laetan, regardless of how often he liked to talk about his grandmother and the now-diluted Altus blood she had gifted him. Even if Valerie didn't have the gift, she was still born and raised in one of Tevinter's high houses. Add to that two exceptional parents and there was little other choice but for her to turn out exceptional as well.
"You'd be wise not to underestimate her," Cassius said, hiding his disdain. "She's full of surprises."
Lysander clapped Cassius on the shoulder and laughed. "As I'm finding out, friend."
They arrived at Magister's Arrentius' door and he looked up from his stack of papers at seeing the motion in the entryway. His foot was elevated and resting atop a cushion, free of both shoe and sock today. It had taken a little while, but eventually the discomfort of appearances had led Flavius to abandon pretext and expose his malady in front of Lysander. It was not a closely held secret that Flavius was in poor health, but still, secrets in the Imperium had value and teeth, so to present himself such in front of a relatively new outsider was a sign of trust, one that Vespasian had understood.
The joint on Magister Arrentius' big toe was especially swollen and red today, worse compared to most days. No doubt it was causing him all kinds of anguish.
"Good news, my boys," Flavius said as the two men sat. "There's been a falling out with some of the senior leadership among the Venatori since Alexius was captured by the Inquisition. The Elder One felt a change was required, to address these failures. As such, the Venatori have tapped me to direct our military logistics in the south and coordinate our troop movements and supply lines."
"An honor, Magister," Lysander chimed in.
"An extreme honor and responsibility," Flavius agreed. "The first shipment of documents arrived today and more are supposed to be coming. This is the opportunity I've been looking for, one that will bolster our name and standing."
"If we do well," was the unspoken qualifier to the end of that statement, Cassius knew as he nodded in understanding. "I am at your service, as always."
Flavius nodded his approval. "Lysander, though I know it is not your place and not your burden, I would ask your help if you're willing to give it."
The young man didn't hesitate. "I would be honored, Magister Arrentius. I will be happy to assist you in any way possible, and to be of service to the Venatori cause. House Vespasian does not have many resources, but if I might make myself useful here, please, do not hesitate."
Flavius smiled and pointed at Cassius with one of his papers. "I told you, didn't I, Cassius? This one, he's a good man."
Cassius nodded, but didn't respond.
"First thing's first, though," Flavius said, cutting right to business. "We need to get a firmer grasp of the situation as it stands. Our forces are spread across five nations, both conspicuously and not. We'll need to get a grasp, to the best of our ability, as to where our armies and agents are and what their needs are. Information travels slowly by road, so we must understand that, at the farther reaches of our influence, our information will be less reliable."
Cassius had learned that lesson first hand, after his capture in Ferelden. His maps and reconnaissance had been horribly outdated. They had wandered in the wilderness trying to make sense of poorly written notes from scouts and spies in an effort to complete their mission. It had ended in disaster.
"We'll need to coordinate money, supplies, weapons, equipment. But most importantly and of highest concern to Calpernia right now is our relationship with the dwarven realms and our supply line of lyrium. We need to shut down the propaganda campaign being forwarded to smear our cause and to keep ourselves inserted in the good graces of the merchants," Flavius continued.
Cassius listened as the magister continued to rattle off tasks, setting clear and concise objectives and prioritizing on the fly. The man's mind was a beautiful machine when put into action. Every moment of his life he had been groomed to lead. And, given the opportunity, watching him work was like sitting in front of a powerful orchestra, perfectly in sync and at the whim of every motion of the conductor's hand.
As he looked upon his master, it was as if the years began to roll back before his very eyes. His gout, his weight, his declining health, the worries and pressures bearing down on him and his house all seemed to fade away as he was re-energized, reborn a new man with a purpose and the fire inside him to break down any wall that might put itself before him.
Cassius glanced at Lysander, wondering if that man realized where he sat and what he had the privilege of bearing witness to. He had been in the Arrentius household for a matter of weeks, far too short a time to truly understand the world he had entered. Far too short a time to know Flavius, his family and the workings of this house.
"Do you have that, Cassius?" Flavius asked, snapping Cassius back to his full attention.
"Yes," he said, scribbling down the task. "Of course, my lord."
—-
"I thought I might find you here."
Cassius glanced up from the pages he held before his face as he completed a reinventory of the Venatori troop numbers. There were dozens of individual reports of unit strengths and training rosters, but nowhere had anyone thought to total, organize and analyze those figures, a problem that Magister Arrentius sought to remedy immediately and set Cassius to as highest priority.
Flavius was in his study drafting letters to be sent to invite key stakeholders to Asariel to meet with him, while Lysander had been set to taking stock of all of their suppliers for everything from lyrium to cheese and everything in between if it was being used in any Venatori military application.
Valerie swayed as she approached, the sun mottled over her figure as it bled through the canopy of the pear tree, beams of yawning orange light of the approaching dusk illuminating her.
Cassius moved to stand but she held up a hand to stop him, seeing the pile of documents he had created around him like a nest. Instead, she came to his side, pushing her dress under her legs as she sat next to him, resting up against the trunk of the old, flowering tree.
"It's quiet here," Cassius explained. It was a poor explanation, as there were many rooms that would be equally quiet were he to shut the heavy door and inform the slaves he was not to be disturbed. Truly, though, sitting underneath the pear trees in the garden was one place in the manor that gave him a great amount of peace, the perfect place to center his mind when he needed it.
Valerie glanced at the canopy overhead, at the flowers on the branches and the way the petals tended to fall like snow when a strong breeze picked up to rustle them.
"I've always loved it here," she said as she glanced back over the papers Cassius was still attending to. "I still remember the many days we spent sitting here, talking for hours, when we were younger."
"You used to command me to spend time with you," Cassius reminded her as he squinted to try to decipher a messily scrawled report. Was that a one or a seven? Did this lieutenant take fifteen men toward Val Foret or seventy-five? Seventy-five seemed a bit high.
"You never objected," Valerie said.
"That's the thing about commands," Cassius said, holding the pen between his teeth for a moment as he flipped to the next page. "I can't object to them."
"So you're saying you didn't want to spend those days with me?" she pressed.
Cassius smiled. "No, only pointing out that you didn't give me a choice."
"Well," Valerie said with a shake of her head and feigned insult, "I can go now, if you so choose."
"No," Cassius said, lowering the papers. "I think it's about time for a break anyway. My eyes are set to cross if I don't."
It would take several hours more to complete his task, at least. If he could sneak in a quick dinner, he could get back to work and work through the night in hopes of being done before daybreak. Flavius hadn't given him an exact deadline, only that he needed it "as soon as possible." But Cassius knew the man well enough to know that meant he would want it by the morrow. That was possible, so therefore would need to be.
"Is Lysander busy?" Cassius asked.
"I don't know. I didn't check," Valerie said. Cassius raised an eyebrow at that. Valerie shrugged. "If I'm being honest, it's nice to have a little break from him."
Valerie ran her hands along the sides of her head, pushing her fingers through her curly hair, shaking out the curls over her shoulders and took a deep breath. "It's a little exhausting, to always be on my best behavior."
"I know, it's like you're an entirely different person. 'Oh, Lysander. You're so funny, giggle giggle,'" Cassius teased in falsetto as he pawed his hands at Valerie.
She slapped his hand away, then slapped him a second time on his upper arm, hard. "I'm not like that! Take it back!"
"My apologies, Lady Valerie," Cassius said, now lowering his voice a bit, taking her hand in his. "I would never offend someone so fair and perfect as you with such silly teasing."
He feigned a half dozen kisses toward her hand, with exaggerated smooching sounds with each pucker of his lips. That display earned him another two slaps as Valerie thumped him and gave him a shove, causing him to rock to one side as he laughed.
"Take it back!" Valerie threatened again, her hand raised ready to slap him again.
"I take it back. I take it back," Cassius surrendered as he put his hands up with a laugh. "Although, be honest, my Vespasian impression is pretty spot on, isn't it?"
Valerie smirked and gave him another light shove. "It's not not totally without merit."
Cassius leaned back against the trunk of the tree, looking up toward the walls and windows of the house visible from the garden. The falling sun painted the building in orange and red, shimmering off the glass and looking like flames dancing on water.
Valerie slouched back too, her arm resting against his. She sighed.
"Tell me what you really think, Caz," she asked.
"What does it matter what I think?" he retorted.
Valerie shook her head. "Oh, no, no, no. Don't play that card with me again."
"What card?" he asked.
"The, 'Oh, I'm just a Praeteri so why should I have any thoughts of my own' card," she said.
"I don't do that."
"Yes you do."
"When?"
"You just did it!"
"No, that's—"
"Nevermind then," Valerie interrupted.
Now it was Cassius sighing, as he shrugged his shoulders. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to tell me what you think," she said, narrowing her eyes a bit and making sure to add, "honestly."
What was there to say? If Magister Arrentius had a mind to accept a betrothal offer, there was little either he or Valerie would be able to say to stop it. In the end, this was still the Imperium, where courting was more politics and business than romance. There were exceptions, of course, say, when it came to second daughters, but a first daughter and primary heir to the household? There was no room for feelings in that equation.
But that's not what Valerie was after. She was never after reminders of tradition or duty or responsibility. Whenever he tried to quote those to her she rolled her eyes and groaned in frustration with him. She understand her position in the Imperium, in her own family, to know the walls that confined her. That had never stopped her from trying to climb over them, dig under them or, at times, smash through them, but she wasn't naive to deny their existence.
Cassius glanced around to make sure they were indeed alone and when he confirmed they were, he spoke quietly.
"I don't trust him," Cassius confided. "I can't say exactly why. Maybe it's just the necessary fakeness of this courtship dance, but because of it, I can't say I actually know anything about him beyond the narrow biography he's so ready to spout at any opportunity."
Cassius shrugged again. "But you spend more time with him alone than I do. Maybe I'm off the mark?"
But he found Valerie nodding her head slightly as she absorbed his words. "He's very guarded," she agreed. "And it's fairly obvious he's more interested in my name than in me."
"Absolutely," Cassius agreed without hesitation.
Valerie closed her eyes and sighed again, running a hand through her hair again. "What should I do?"
That question he did have an answer for, one with some confident certainty.
"Talk to your father," Cassius said.
"I'm getting old," she groaned. "He has to do something."
"Valerie," Cassius started, speaking gently, sincerely, "If there is one thing I know more than anything else, it's that your father always puts his family first. You will always have his ear, whenever you need it. Talk to him. He'll listen to your concerns."
"You think so?"
"I know so."
Valerie closed her eyes and sighed again, this time sounded more content than anxious. She leaned into him more, resting the side of her head against his shoulder and breathed deeply, taking in the moment of the dusk settling around them. Cassius allowed himself to relax too, leaning heavily against the trunk of the pear tree as they sat together and stole a moment of tranquility.
"Thank you, Caz, for always lending me your ear," Valerie said.
If she wished to talk, he was bound to listen.
"For you, always."