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saw, and then I threw up, bending over with my hands upon my knees, my sword
still gripped bone-tight. Reeling with nausea, and fearing I
might fall into the blood, I staggered backward, groping behind me for
something to support my weight, and I found Dom. My hand touched his face,
warm and alive, and I recoiled with a scream of fright, my sword arm swinging
high to strike my assailant down.
But I did not strike. For I saw his eyes immediately, then his face, and then
his condition. He was wedged almost upright, hunched over, his knees almost
giving way, in a corner behind the door, and he was dying. His left hand hung
by a flap of skin from its wrist, where he had chopped it off, and most of his
life's blood was already gone. His eyes were ghastly in the whiteness of his
face, but they seemed clear and lucid. He knew me. We remained there, immobile
as statuary, for what seemed like a very long time before I lowered my sword.
Dom's own sword, a fine, sharp one that I had made for him, lay by his feet.
When I moved, so, too, did he, gesturing with that grotesquely flopping hand
towards the bed and its horrid burden. The movement brought a feeble jet of
blood spurting in my direction and I remembered another handless arm that had
saved my life in battle long ago, allowing me to be crippled rather than
killed.
"Cylla..." His voice was little more than a wheeze of sound. "She mocked me,
Publius..." I remained motionless and he went on. "Railed at me... Laughter...
Struck me ... Tried to kill me." His eyes looked towards the bed and back to
me. "Said everybody knew, Publius... everybody knew... servants ...
friends... all knew. Did..." He sagged, then drew his head back with a great
effort, fixing me with rapidly glazing eyes. "Did you...?" His strength gave
out and he fell to his knees before me like a supplicant. Then his eyes rolled
back into his head and he pitched forward on his face. I did not bend to feel
for a pulse.
Dom was dead and the better for it.
I can remember walking from that house in a state of absolute calm, picking my
way with care to avoid the blood as much as possible. I crossed the courtyard
to the gate where my horse stood waiting for me,
far enough removed from the smell of blood to be unaware of it but sidling
nervously, nevertheless. The first, heavy raindrops fell and turned into a
downpour as I squatted on my heels against the wall outside that dreadful
place. And in my mind I saw nothing of the slaughterhouse, only my good friend
Dom looking at me with his incomplete question: "Did you... ?"
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We found a gibbering, hysterical survivor in the cellars, a woman who had
managed to escape with only a minor slash wound. She told us of Dom's rampage,
of how he cried only
"Did you know?"
before he cut down each living soul he met, and, when he could find no more to
kill, ran screaming from the villa.
We burned the Villa Titens and all that it contained, removed its stones and
ploughed the ashes under, leaving no sign of its existence in our lands.
It did not occur to me until long afterward that Cylla could not have been in
the forest glade that afternoon.
V
The Titens affair affected everyone in the Colony, drawing a cloud over our
little society, a pall that coloured every aspect of our lives for a long
time. It seems strange to me now, however, that Caius and I
barely discussed the matter after the first shock had worn off. We spoke of it
in detail in the days that followed that dreadful afternoon, but then, by
mutual consent, we consigned it to the past along with its principals. We had
too many other things claiming our attention, all of them concerned with the
ongoing life around us, for which we were responsible. Luceiia, however,
continued to think about the Titens household and the situation that had
prevailed there, and, as in all things she turned her mind to, she considered
it logically, analytically and exhaustively, arriving in due course at a
conclusion she wished to share with me. That sharing became a night-long
discussion that lasted well into the dark hours before dawn, with she and I
seated on either side of a glowing brazier in our chamber while the rest of
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