Wayfarer

“Why would they need to?” Nicholas asked. “I thought they were renowned for their military?”

“They are a fierce people,” Remus said, his voice sounding steadier the farther they walked from the city’s center, away from anyone who might overhear them. “Every man, woman, and child is or will be armed and expected to fight. Each home is a fortress in and of itself. They are rebuilding their arsenal.”

“What happened to their original weapons?” Nicholas asked.

“When the Romans landed on these shores, they demanded hostages and the whole of the city’s arms, which they were given. But that was not enough—they wished for the complete surrender of the city. The Carthaginians defied them, taunted them, even tortured Roman prisoners in full sight of the Roman army. And so it goes.”

“The Romans are building something out in the harbor, aren’t they?”

Remus gave him an exasperated look. “A mole, yes.”

As he’d suspected—moles were massive structures, built from rock, stone, or wood, to be used as a kind of pier or breakwater. In this instance, it would seal up all of the warships he’d seen in the military harbor.

As the sun started to climb, they began their ascent up the hill toward the citadel that overlooked the harbor—Byrsa, the old man called it.

Nicholas kept his head down as they moved; the men and women here wouldn’t be alarmed or find his dark skin particularly noteworthy, but he knew from long experience that men were unlikely to remember someone who didn’t meet their gaze. His sandals shuffled along the worn stone, his thoughts dwindling to merely left, right, left, right, to order himself to keep going. He didn’t look up until he was met with the sight of feet less than half the size of his own, bare and covered in cuts and sores.

The dark-skinned boy stepped aside quickly, allowing Remus, who was building speed like a churning storm, to hobble past. Sophia slid around Nicholas, shooting him an irritated look as she continued on ahead.

The boy couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, Nicholas decided—too small, and wasted to the very bone. His tunic hung off his shoulders in tatters, knotted here and there in awkward lumps to keep it on him. The boy met his gaze from beneath his mass of matted hair. His dark eyes were bold with pride, in absolute defiance of his dismal state.

Nicholas knew that look well; the pride meant going hungry in silence, rather than lowering oneself to asking for charity, to begging. He’d been the same way, even as a slave, even once he was freed by the kindness of the Halls. If the captain hadn’t force-fed him the first few nights, Nicholas wouldn’t have eaten at all.

You’ve the pride of Lucifer, Hall had informed him. It’s the only thing that family gave you, and believe me, you don’t need that inheritance. Unbidden, his mind drew up the image of the child he and Sophia had seen earlier in the night, dead and wasted away from disease and hunger, left in the street like a common animal.

Nicholas gave the boy a tentative smile and lifted his bag from his shoulder, carefully removing the few things he might need from it, leaving only the food. The leather bag’s design was simple enough to pass for something created in this time—and he doubted the boy would take care to notice it much at all. Careful not to say anything, he held it out toward him.

The boy stared at him, and Nicholas knew the moment he’d understood the gift. He snatched the strap of the bag from Nicholas’s hands. Nicholas let out a faint laugh, but as he turned away, a small hand caught his wrist, forcing him to turn back around. The boy’s fingers disappeared inside of his shirt, and he tugged off a thin strand of leather Nicholas hadn’t noticed before. Dangling from it was a small pendant, just smaller than Nicholas’s little finger. The boy held it up, gazing at him with fierce, dark eyes until Nicholas took it.

A trade, then. Nicholas nodded in thanks, and the boy turned and ran, never once looking back. He studied the unexpected gift, holding it up to the light. It was a face—glass that had been painted or colored somehow, and shaped to resemble a man with a curling row of hair, dark brows, large eyes, and a rather magnificent beard that extended from his chin in ringlets. An amulet, perhaps?

He shifted the objects he’d retrieved from his bag in his arms, and, with enough care that his hands shook from it, slid the glass bead onto the leather cord around his neck, next to Etta’s earring.

“Carter!” Sophia barked.

Nicholas’s long legs devoured the distance between him and Sophia and Remus, who had watched the exchange with suspicious eyes. He didn’t look back—didn’t want to give the boy the opportunity to refuse his gift.

Stay alive, he thought. Stay alive. Escape.

“You are ridiculous,” Sophia said in a low voice. “How will you continue to play the hero if you don’t eat?”

“I’ll find something else,” he said. I’ve gone longer without.

Hunger was tolerable. The alternative was to be haunted by those eyes, by the bitterest sort of regret that wouldn’t ever dissolve, no matter how much sweetness the years brought. It wasn’t a weakness to have those thoughts, to feel that need to help another, to save lives. It made one human. He couldn’t help but think that the travelers had fallen too deep into the practice of being silent witnesses. It drained the empathy from them, allowed them to build a wall of glass between themselves and suffering.

Sophia looked at him, making a strained sound. “All you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable. Isn’t it better to go this way than suffer what the Romans have in store for him?”