"Like unto like. Will it console you to know, Cimbrian, that she has divorced me? For she grows great with no child of mine, a brat I would surely drown were it dropped in my house."
Eodan felt a dull pleasure. This was no decent way to hurt an enemy, yet what other way did he have? "So now your hopes for the consulate are broken," he said. "That much service have I done Rome."
"Not so," Flavius told him. "For I allowed the divorce in an amicable way, not raising the charges of adultery I might. Thus her father is grateful to me." He nodded. "There are troublous years coming. The plebs riot and the patricians fall out with each other. I shall rise high enough in the confusion so that I will have power to proscribe your bastard."
It had never occurred to Eodan before, to think about the by-blow of his women. He had set Hwicca's Othrik upon his knee and named him heir, but otherwise—Now, far down under the seething in him, he knew a tenderness. He could find no good reason for it; there was a Power here. He would have chanced Mithradates' wrath and broken the neck of Flavius, merely to save an unborn child, little and lonely in the dark, whom he would never see. But no, those guardsmen drilling beneath the walls would seize him before he finished the task.
He asked in a sort of wonder: "Is this why you pursue me?"
"I bear the commission of the Republic."
"The king spoke truly—they are not that interested in one man. This decree is a gesture to please you, belike through your father-in-law. You are the one who has made it his life's work to destroy me."
"Well, then, if you wish, I am revenging Cordelia," said Flavius. His eyes shifted with a curious unease.
"I spared you at Arausio. And what was Cordelia to you, ever?"
"So now you call up the past and whine for your life."