Interregnum by S. J. A. Turney Page B

now.”
    Quintillian took a grateful pull on the spirit and coughed repeatedly. His throat spasmed and he leaned to one side, towards the bushes and vomited until he was dry retching. The face of his uncle stared up at him from the grass. Still shivering, he looked up at Athas, his face streaked with the tracks of his sorrow.
    “It can’t be true” he begged of the big sergeant.
    The hulking, coloured man placed a blanket around the boy’s shoulders and sat beside him. He took a swig from the flask and then passed it back to the lad.
    “Quintillian,” he said, “there are some things you have to understand.”
    “About him?” the lad said, his voice beginning to harden again. “A regicide? The man who murdered my uncle? I feel like such an idiot. Why should I need to understand?”
    Athas shook the boy by the shoulders.
    “It’s not that simple” the sergeant said quietly. “Your uncle had lost his wits. We were the last to see it and the last to believe it. There were other officers, even Generals who had wanted to execute your uncle in public. The nobles were calling for it in the city, but no one could decide what to do. You can’t kill a God without repercussions and who the hell would do the deed? It was Kiva who stopped them all. He tried to reason with Quintus, but there was no reason left in the Emperor; none at all. It had to be done, otherwise Quintus would have ruined the Empire or a mob would have got to him and torn him to pieces.”
    Athas sighed.
    “In the end, history remembers that he died in a fire in his palace. He went to the Gods deified and pure and died a hero, albeit a lunatic. People don’t talk about it. Most people are frightened to speak ill of a divine figure, so his name goes unsullied and that’s the way it should be. He’d been a great man for a lot of years before he started to slip. And when the time came and there was no other choice left to us, Kiva did it all, from dismissing the guard to locking the door, starting the fire and watching until it was over. He had to, don’t you see? He wouldn’t let anyone else do it. Couldn’t let them. To kill the Emperor was to kill a God. He would be cursed for the rest of his miserable life.”
    “Cursed?” the boy queried.
    “Can’t you see that in him?” Athas sighed. “A curse? Whether he actually is cursed or just believes it to be so, it’s affected his life ever since. Personally I don’t believe in curses; those of us from the desert lands never really held with the Emperor being a God anyway.”
    The burly sergeant grasped the boy’s shoulder.
    “Kiva did what he had to” he said. “He brought down the Empire with his own hands, but he had to do it; there really was no other way. Hate him now if you must, but try to remember this: you never even knew your uncle. Kiva treated him like a brother. He’s had to live for twenty years with the knowledge that he personally brought down the Empire, destroying the dynasty and executing a friend. You might begin to understand why he sleeps so badly.”
    Quintillian had stopped shaking and, to his great surprise, had also stopped crying. Athas grasped him once more by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet.
    “Perhaps now at least the two of you can talk as men, without all this carry-on” the sergeant said. “And now you need to stand up and straighten out. You’re one of the Grey Company and you need to act like one, or I’ll have to have Marco lash you.”
The lad managed a weak smile.
“I wonder if he knows how much damage he just did?” he said quietly.
Athas sighed.
“I wonder if you realise how much pain it causes him just to look at you?”
     
    Chapter VI.
     
    The sun beat down heavily on the baker’s dozen as they trudged along the road toward the coast. Now that late morning had arrived the heat was becoming unbearable and the dust from the mud and shale road was churned into throat-clogging clouds. The men sweated under their leather and steel