From The River To The Sea - An Excerpt From The Old Empire, Book 2 (forthcoming) by M. K. Dreysen

Have you, dear reader, had your moments? The little triumphs, I mean. Exertion and striving and the grasping within your hands...

And then always someone to take that moment away from you? For some of us, anyway. You and me, dear reader, and our poor brethren. Forever at the mercy of the tragedy of little wins, and the tiny inevitable losses.

Peon and Rudolphus and Aeneas are our brethren, dear reader. They carry many scars, almost all of them well earned. Most of them bone deep, carved there by those always ready to take. Yes, indeed, these three are, as you might know, travelers of the road of tears.

Which... which also means that Rudy and Aeneas and Peon have their little preparations. Their little defenses. Against those that might waylay them when they journey...

From The River To The Sea - An Excerpt From The Old Empire Book 2 (forthcoming), by M. K. Dreysen

The guest left her hosts and returned to the villa. The evening might well have been young by some standards. But when traveling, she preferred to let the night owls remain safely unobserved.

She did not work through protective rituals upon entering her rooms. Nor did she make a practice of the more mundane rituals of spycraft. Some of this, she told herself, was simply lack of necessity.

The scholastic community she'd begun her career in was possessed of many failings. Physical skulduggery not being one of the more prevalent of those. She knew intellectually that the work she now pursued lay in a slightly different world.

One much more likely to attract the sort of person who'd make it their business to inspect a traveler's rooms when the traveler was otherwise occupied. But, to date, this concern remained purely theoretical.

And so she entered her rooms without looking for disturbance. Raising and testing wards. Assessing her security. For this trip, Vioncala told herself, and a few more, she could set aside as unnecessary the paranoia that should come naturally to the new job.

Across town, she knew, Gregory, her employer's chief representative here, settled himself into bed. Trinian, Gregory's second, allowed himself another beer, but otherwise pursued a similar route. Their day's work began early.

Vioncala let the links to their minds fade to bare whispers. She had promised Gregory and Trinian that she would meet them tomorrow at the factory. But only around mid-morning.

She had work yet to do this evening.

Vioncala prepared for this work by first filling the kettle, then setting that kettle over the fire. She set tea in a cup, and a chair before the fire. Not too close, enough to feel the flicker of heat.

Not so close she'd pitch herself into the fire if something went wrong.

Only then, preparations in place, did Vioncala remove her cloak and outer garments and lay them across the table. This done, she pulled the steaming kettle and set it aside for a moment while she stretched and settled her mind and body.

The moment was coming. So Vioncala poured hot water into the cup. Set the kettle close enough to the fire so that it would remain warm but not boil, and sat in the chair. Where she let her mind drift.

Through the villa. The streets. Past Trinian's home. A few blocks more and her spirit passed the villa of the governor; splendid, large enough to host multiple visitors of high status in the Empire. Or those with money enough to pretend to it.

Her path roughly paralleled the river. East, opposite direction of that she'd travel in the morning to get to Gregory's factory. East, away from the Empire.

Toward the ghosts.

She'd known of the temple long before she'd heard of the family who now employed her. Or their factory. When Marcio had first approached her, and mentioned this town and Gregory's factory as one of his family's, she'd thrilled slightly in recognition.

Here, so very close to the Bosporus, the temple's location hinted of Homer. Of Troy. Naturally enough, the Empire's scholars alternated between fevered dreams of their city's founding and the apostate's mistrust of the nature of miracles.

The ghosts insured that few of them attempted the expeditions necessary to make the choice between the two poles. The ghosts, and whatever else the temple might use to guard its secrets.

Vioncala let her spirit drift close enough so that the temple filled her mind's view. And no further. In this form, she could listen to the traitor and the general discuss their responsibilities. She could feel the breath of the adulterer's mistress. Capture the gleam in the burglar's eye.

Ghosts couldn't have cared less. In this form she was just as mortal, just as subject to their predations. If not more so. No, she remained here, just shy of the temple steps. And waited.

For the three tomb robbers to step between the shadows.

Rudolphus. Almost wider than he was tall. Aeneas. "Named for the hero, of course." And Peon. "Because it makes people giggle."

She'd shared passage with the three, ahem, "heroes". Smiled at their stories; ignored Aeneas's clumsy attempts at seduction.

All three had discipline enough so that Vioncala had needed to infer their purpose and their destination. They'd given no hints; slipped not at all.

They'd spoken only of their past adventures together. Peon it had been, according to Rudolphus, that had liberated the Old Dowager's ransom from the kidnappers after her release. "I held him by the ankles while he did it. Yanked him up like a mullet on feast day."

"Yeah, and my feet still ache when a storm comes on, you big oaf."

Aeneas blushed in his turn, when Peon spoke of his friend's sword work. "He faced twenty, no, thirty guards in Mennola's palace, the day we recovered the General's plans. By himself, he did, while Rudy and I searched Mennola's office."

"More like three," Aeneas admitted when Peon was done.

Peon shook his head at his friend's modesty. "Bloody hell, Aeneas, don't you ever want to get paid what we're worth?"

The friends told of Rudy's strength; Peon's cunning. Aeneas's knack for being in just the right place at the right time.

Vioncala applauded each story. When necessary, she called "Bullshit!"

She admired their heroic ability to tell all of these stories without once referencing the town that lay at the end of the boat ride. Vioncala knew stories, legends. Whether the adventures Peon and his friends related were true or not, their self-control testified to their professionalism.

Vioncala had been impressed.

Here, standing in spirit outside of the tomb's entrance while the three adventurers traversed moonshadow to join her, she was even more impressed. The three might well be fools, but they came to the work honestly enough.

She gauged the tomb robbers, and their gear. Ropes. Cunningly wrought lamps. Hammers and other hand tools. Satisfied that they'd thought it through, she turned her gaze back to the temple.

It had begun life as a cave. Over time, patiently, its devotees had carved stone and shifted dirt for their purposes. Somewhere along that path, marble and sandstone had entered the picture, and the outer portico took shape in graceful pillars and polished steps.

Vioncala didn't will her spirit forward to examine the faint traces of carving. Nor to follow the tomb robbers as they crept into the cave's opening, yawning from the center of the portico.

She waited. After the whispers between the three faded to silence. After the ghosts shifted from weighing her own presence to following the tomb robbers into the cave complex.

Time passed; shouts came from within the bowels of the earth. The cave shaped the calls into a percussive mumble. Finally, Rudoplphus stumbled out of the cave mouth and down the steps. The ghosts rushed from the cave in his wake.

When Rudolphus stumbled and fell to the grass, just a few faint yards from the stone steps of the portico, the ghosts drifted back, away from the boundary.

Vioncala waited a moment or two more before moving her spirit to Rudolphus. She paused to gauge the response from the tomb's guardians. When the ghosts remained within the boundary of carved and polished stonework, Vioncala knelt her spirit form next to Rudolphus's still body.

The big man's skin was covered in wounds. Raw and torn; she traced them. Most began to close of their own accord. The ghosts could, did, wound the living. Temporarily, as Vioncala witnessed.

A few tears remained, though, the blood slowly welling. Vioncala examined Rudy's fingers, noted the blood beneath his fingers. The big man had torn at his own face and throat. She wondered, briefly, what exactly the ghosts had shown the man.

He still breathed. Vioncala gauged the wounds remaining; Rudy would live, and pick up a few scars. She'd best be quick, given what she'd heard of the man's constitution. Here, away from the ghosts and the tomb, he would recover well and soon.

None yet, so far as Vioncala had been able to discover, had returned with ought but small treasure from the tomb. Coins, a goblet, and a plate. These few objects had been sufficient to set Rome's scholars ablaze, but starved for more. Had Rudy returned something more substantial?

Vioncala ran her fingers over his pouches and vest. A few more coins, here and there. Two of silver, five of bronze or copper. More images of heroes and kings long forgotten. Their images, when brought to the world, would once again send her former colleagues to their Homeric scrolls, desparate to be the first to connect the coinwork to the names found there.

"Ah," she told herself. "Now what have we here?" Vioncala focused, and pushed Rudy's hand. When it opened, she whistled.

There, resting on the big man's open palm, lay two very much more substantial additions to the tomb's revealed treasures. A gold coin, or perhaps a medallion, since the gleaming circle of metal was almost three times the diameter of the Roman penny. And rather than a hero's visage, in the uncertain moonlight Vioncala could just make out two indistinct figures, holding something between them.

The other treasure lying across Rudy's palm was a darkly tarnished silver wand, almost six inches in length. She traced this with her finger, unsure of details given the poor light, but her spirit's senses tuned enough to feel the carved reliefs decorating the wand's facets.

"Which one?" she wondered.

Rudy stirred, shifted.

"Shit," Vioncala muttered. Time had run out. She didn't fear that the man would see her and know her; the three tomb robbers had no sensitivity to the world Vioncala used to move her spirit. She'd made sure to check that on the boat.

But if he closed his hand around his treasures, she'd lose the chance. The more aware he became, the less her present form could influence... "Now or never, girl, decide."

In another life... but no. The wand told a story; the gold told a story. Vioncala concentrated, and then did something a colleague had once spent years arguing could not be done.

She reached down with her spirit's hand and picked up the coin. Focused, drawing strength across the distance, she held the coin in her own palm. Closed her fingers over it.

Felt it disappear from her spirit's grasp. And then reappear in her physical hand some three miles away. Vioncala smiled, her lips curling on both aspects of her self. "Leonius, if you only knew."

Satisfied, Vioncala turned from Rudy, stirring himself awake now, and the tomb, and whatever else it might conceal.

And then she dissolved her spirit projection, awakening to a complete smile, a full laugh, and a fistul of new wealth.

The fate of Rudy and his friends left her mind immediately.

Rudy, on the other hand, had a harder time letting go. He rolled over, tasted the all too familiar blood on his lips, and tucked the wand away with the rest of his finds.

He remembered the coin; wished he'd managed to bring it, but gave no thought beyond that to the medallion. "Moment's over, bucko, time to move on."

Time to find the rope. Rudy stood up, shuddered and almost fell over at the pain. It began at his temples and broadcast to everything between head and feet. "Fuck."

When the pain passed, he paced, slowly, in front of the portico, careful not to touch the steps. "There you are," he muttered to the rope. "Come to papa."

The big man knelt, grasped the rope, and began to pull. One slow, steady, heavy yank at a time. "One of you bastards had better have grabbed that statue, you hear me?" he called into the portico and the cave's yawning mouth it concealed.

At the other end of the line, the one tied first to Aeneas, shuddering and incoherent, and then passing on to Peon, giggling and holding onto his sanity by the barest grip, Peon heard his friend's words echoing in the dark. Then he felt the tug of the rope. When he started sliding across the polished stone floor, Peon let his laughter loose to return to Rudy.

To let him know they were still alive.

And that Peon did indeed cradle the bronze, gold, and ivory statue against his chest.