“Only, again I lived.”
“Kinda made me mad, actually. I’m not usually wrong, you know, about people? And man, you could fight. I thought Arcadius was feeding me a load of crap the way he went on about you. ‘The best warrior alive,’ he said. ‘In a fair fight Hadrian can best anyone,’ he said. That was the telling part—a fair fight. He knew not all your battles would be fair. He wanted me to educate you in the world of backstabbing, deceit, and treachery. I guess he figured I knew something about that.”
“And I was supposed to teach honor, decency, and kindness to a man raised by wolves.”
Royce rolled his head to the side and looked at him. “He told you about me?”
“Not everything, just some of the ugly parts.”
“Manzant?”
“Just that you were there, that it almost killed you, and that he got you out.”
Royce nodded. His face drooped, his eyes stared again, his hand absently scooped up another handful of straw to crush.
Hadrian’s eyes drifted around the cell. Centuries of captives had left a dark smoothness to all the stones a bit higher than halfway up, like a flood line. On the far wall, a year’s worth of old hatch marks scratched a pattern that looked like a series of bound bales of wheat. Up in the window, a bird had built a nest, tucked on the outside corner of the sill. It was empty, frosted in snow. Occasionally, he heard a cart, a horse, or the sound of people in the courtyard below them, but mostly it was quiet, a heavy, dull-gray silence.
“Hadrian,” Royce began. He’d stopped playing with the straw, his hands flat, his stare focused on the wall, his voice weak and hesitant. “You and Arcadius… you’re the only family I’ve ever known. The only two people in this whole world—” He swallowed and bit his lower lip, pausing.
Hadrian waited.
Finally he went on. “I want you to know—It’s important that…” He turned away from Hadrian, facing the wall. “I wanted to say thank you for being there for me, for being here. For being the closest thing to a brother I’ll ever know. I just—I just want you to know that.”
Hadrian did not say anything. He waited for Royce to turn back, to look at him. It took several minutes, but the silence drew the look. When he did, Hadrian glared at him. “Why? Why do you want me to know that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me—no, don’t look at the wall; look at me. Why is it so important that I know this?”
“It just is, okay?” Royce said.
“No, it’s not okay. Don’t give me this crap, Royce. We’ve been together for twelve years. We’ve faced death dozens of times. Why is it you’re telling me this now?”
“I’m upset. I’m distraught. What do you want from me?”
Hadrian continued to stare but slowly began to nod. “You’ve been waiting, haven’t you? Just sitting here, leaning against that wall, waiting—waiting for me to show up.”
“In case you forgot, they arrested me. I’m in a locked cell. There’s not much else I can do.”
Hadrian snorted.
“What?”
Hadrian stood. He needed to move. There wasn’t much space but he still paced back and forth between the wall and the door. Three steps each way. “So when are you going to do it? As soon as I leave? Tonight? How about a nice morning suicide? Huh, Royce? You could be poetic and time it with the rising of the sun, or just the drama of midnight, how would that be?”
Royce scowled.
“How are you gonna do it? Your wrists? Throat? Gonna challenge the guard to fight when he brings dinner? Call him names? Or are you gonna make an even bigger splash? Head for Modina’s room and threaten the empress’s life again. You’ll find some young idiot, a big one, someone with an ego. You’ll draw a blade, something little, something not too scary. He’ll draw his sword. You’ll pretend to attack, but he won’t know you’re faking.”
“Don’t be this way.”
“This way?” Hadrian stopped and whirled on him. He had to take a breath to calm down. “How do you expect me to be? You think I should be—what? Happy, maybe? Did you think I’d just be okay with this? I thought you were stronger. If anyone could survive—”
“That’s just it—I don’t want to! I’ve always survived. Life is like a bully that gets laughs by seeing how much humiliation you’ll put up with. It threatens to kill you if you don’t eat mud. It takes everything you care about—not because it wants what you have, or needs it. It does it just to see if you’ll take it. I let it push me around ever since I was a kid. I did everything it demanded just to survive. But as I’ve gotten older, I realize there are limits. You showed me that. There’s only so far I can go, only so much I can put up with. I’m not going to take it anymore. I won’t eat mud just to survive.”