Old Soldiers Never Die by Author Name

Author:Author Name
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-03T09:11:30+00:00

I’ve been shouted at by far more intimidating specimens in my time, none of whom could hold a candle to the proctor of my old schola progenium (although the odd daemon came close), so the prospect of gubernatorial ire left me completely unmoved. ‘I brought your lunch,’ I said, although for all I knew the tray could have been left at breakfast time, and carried on walking towards him unperturbed.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Jona said, the anger in his voice replaced by uncertainty; something I’ve frequently observed happens if you respond to an aggressor in a manner they’re not expecting.

‘You must be,’ I insisted, the vague sense of something being wrong that had settled over me at the discovery of the tray outside intensifying as I drew closer to the desk. I put the meal down on top of the papers littering its surface, and got my first close look at the man. ‘Throne on Earth, you look terrible.’

‘Too much work.’ His face was flushed, and swollen, the eyes febrile. ‘But everyone’s overstretched. Have to set an example.’ He coughed, turning his head away, and the scratch on his cheek from the scuffle in the cathedral came into view. I’d have expected it to have healed by now, but it was livid and swollen, badly infected.

‘You should still get some sleep,’ I demurred, fighting the impulse to back away. If he was contagious enough to have passed the infection on to me, I’d have been a dead man the moment I stepped through the doorway in any case, which was hardly a comforting reflection.

‘Sleep. Yes, good idea,’ he agreed, rubbing his eyes. ‘Don’t know why they’ve got the heating on this time of year. Do you?’

‘I’ll look into it,’ I assured him, my mind whirling, assessing the implications of this horrifying development. We had to keep his condition a secret, that much was certain. The governor was a symbol of the Emperor’s protection, at least in the minds of most of the populace, and if it got out that he’d succumbed to the sickness, the civil disorder we’d seen already would increase a thousandfold. Not to mention the fact that the minute his relatives discovered the truth we’d be up to our ears in fratricidal nobles, scrabbling to fill the vacant throne, and we had enough distractions to deal with already.

I skirted the desk, keeping the ornate slab of polished wood between us as though that would be any barrier to an airborne virus, looking for a vox. It was right where I expected it to be, and I lost no time in using it.

‘Magos Moroe,’ I began, as soon as the cogboy’s face appeared in the pict screen above it, ‘there’s been an unfortunate development. Your assistance, and your discretion, are both required.’

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