The Centurion's Woman

Chapter 28

        Maybe she had decided she didn't want to look. Did he really want her starting to? The small voice in his mind pestered as she leaned forward and kissed him deeply, her legs straddling his waist and her arms around his neck, her hair falling around him and closing off the rest of the world.

        What he did want was suddenly very simple. He wanted her lithe body strong and healed. He wanted her to speak his language so he could know her mind clearly. He wanted his children at her feet, born of her womb and fed from her breast. Would he still have that if her father was found? He kissed her back more forcibly, burying his hands in that cascade of autumn hair, deciding not to ask about her father until he had to. Hopefully well on in years from now when his claim could not be challenged by even the most powerful of men. When his children were grown, and he was old.

                                                                ***

        Brasus arrived carrying breakfast and news that would have put Ixillius off his had he not been so hungry. Minerva's 1st would be gathering in entire at the ninth hour of the morning to witness the punishment of Valerius and his friends. Brasus had met with the messenger intended for Ixillius and brought the news in person, sending the boy quickly on to his next reportee. Listening to Brasus list the other offenses that had been committed up to and including yesterday morning, Ixillius ate mechanically.

        Alex wolfed down everything left on the plate, thankfully spared from any understanding of the morning's conversation.

        "Busy night?" Brasus asked, voice innocent, eyes hovering at her neck where the collar should have been. "I'd have thought your late return would leave the Lady too tired to take interest."

        "My Lady has many virtues," Ixillius replied with a smile matching his Optio's exactly. "One of which is finding all kinds of trouble whenever she leaves this room," he added with a frown.

        "So there's a truth behind the rumors passing through Bonna as quickly as fire this morning?" Brasus asked, suddenly keenly interested.

        "Possibly more than one. What have you heard already?" Ixillius stood in preparation to leave, stopping for Alex as she reached over and began tightening the last fastenings on his armor.

        At that moment, Verus and his Guard Commander entered without knocking.

        "I had the pleasure of half a breakfast with Quintus Abelardus today," Verus interrupted, closing the door and clearing the plates off the table while motioning his Guard Commander to lay his burden of paper and stenciling charcoal in their place. "And during my typical morning rant he reminded me of a splendid trick of your Lady's, if I may borrow her for a moment?"

        "We were actually just discussing her," Ixillius answered, unsurprised at his old commander's sudden appearance after the letter describing the events of last night.

        Verus scanned over his previous Optio and Alex, a mocking frown pulling at his brows.

        "There was a time when I would have caught you washing just now."

        "I learned quickly to always be just washing the day after interesting events," Ixillius grinned. "You listened better, sir."

        Verus barked out a laugh.

        "As your Lady's hands are currently busy, and that is what I need of her, please continue speaking of her," Verus replied, settling onto the vacant stool.

        "Well," Brasus cleared his throat, "the details I'll now leave out, sirs, but the rumors have said that last night Lady Traversi appeared at will from only shadow, called a sword to hand from thin air, calmed a stallion bred from the gods' own stock, was attended on by the First File Celsus Calix," he nodded to Verus, whose eyebrows were still peaked at the use of 'Lady Traversi', "using just her familiar name as reference, could command said godly beast – the stallion, not Celsus Calix – to battle with the language of Olympia spoken from her own mouth, and then she seduced him – the First File, not the stallion – into a private attendance from which his Optio then escorted her return to you. This morning, your Lady did sprint half naked without a whit of notice to the cold, at times turning into a kite to fly with the lame bird she uses to pass messages to Him We Don't Name, attended by the Legionnaire whose soul she owns after the 1st and 1st slaughtered him at the baths and she returned him to life unscarred." Brasus paused, and then added to Ixillius, "you, my poor man, are now a dupe whose mind and heart are lost to an Underworld's born nymph, and you'll soon be the sorry fool at the center of a cautionary tale against rescuing strange maidens from holes in the ground."