Rome: The Emperor's spy

Epilogue

The ship sailed due west, down the line of the setting sun. Late in the evening, Math moved to the bow to catch the last of the failing light. Between one breath and the next, he saw the sun set fire to the world. What had been tints of flame on the bow-wave spread out and out across the wide sea until the whole blue-grey glittering ocean became a bed of living flame too bright to bear.

He closed his eyes. The fire grew stronger behind the dark of his lids, rising from sea to sky. A hand reached through it. He extended his own hand in response and felt it grasped by a dry, firm grip.

‘Welcome. I had hoped it would be you.’

The voice was Shimon’s, the peaceful voice of a man come home to himself.

Math opened his eyes. Hot fire continued to rise to the sky, blotting out the sunset. It filled the whole of the world, from horizon to horizon, with living flame; the ship was gone.

Shimon was the fire’s centre, standing upright, bound to a stake. Beyond and behind, men and women watched in their straggling hundreds, huddled in groups together. Their mouths were open, shouting. No sound came, not even the roaring flames.

‘Math?’ Shimon spoke in the silence in his head. ‘Could you assist me?’

Math had no idea what to do, and then did. He reached a hand out to untie the bindings that held his friend. The fire did not touch him.

‘Thank you.’

Stepping free, Shimon rinsed his hands and face in the flames as he might at the morning’s water trough. He looked past Math. His face, cast in shimmering gold by the fire, became radiant with a new joy.

‘Lord.’ He made to kneel. A man came forward from Math’s left, and caught him, saying, ‘Don’t kneel, my friend. All kneeling is done. You have done all that could have been asked of you, and more. Be safe now, and well.’

They embraced, two men of same height and same build, only that Shimon was the elder by three decades.

A woman came, wreathed in flame and sun. Her hair was black smoked silk. Her eyes were almonds. She said, ‘Shimon,’ and it was a summoning and a welcome and a thanks. The fire consumed them, all three.

‘Math.’ Valerius’ voice reached for him. ‘You need to come back now.’

Hannah’s face grew from the fire. Ajax was a bear, hunting the sunset. Pantera had blood dribbling down over one eye.

Math closed his own eyes and opened them again. The faces vanished, replaced by the darkling waves. The sun was old and almost set. It laid beaten copper on the ocean.

Valerius sat beside him looking vaguely ill. ‘What did you dream?’ he asked.

‘Shimon’s dead,’ Math said. ‘He wants us to know that he’s safe and beyond pain. And Hannah’s mother sends her love to all of us.’ He turned, to look into the black eyes. ‘Pantera will come and find us, won’t he? Later, when he’s killed Saulos?’

‘The god holds that man close,’ Valerius said. ‘When he’s killed Saulos, if he can travel to join us, he will.’

He left soon after that. Math stayed at the bow until the sun’s last bruise left the waves and the moon rose to salt them silver, colour of new hope, and new life.

Then he sent his mind forward to the land ahead, to the sisters he had never met, that she might know he was coming, and might dream a safe journey home.