Heavy gloved arms ran down my abdomen, patting me. I was naked, and I'm sure they needed me to be. They handed me my rags and kicked me through the door, back outside to the main circle. We were all here. Some of us more bruised than others, one man with his ear hanging by a limp piece of cartilage. He tipped his head so it clung to his face. I stood there, putting my tunic over myself. This was not mine. It smelled much worse than mine. Hannibal came down, his giant claymore by his side. It dragged against the floor and I heard him before I saw him. I did not turn my head, only inspected my surroundings. Lines of men. A circle of guards. Us atop Shrieker’s Veil, a round cobblestone platform with shanty-shacks formed out of stone and metal. Storage boxes. The slave-holes where we slept, metal grates all about the floor.

Hannibal walked over them. His sword hitting a hole and echoing. Tall and proud, hook-nosed. He looked at us.

  “Stand to attention.” He said.

  We turned to him. The lighthouses behind him, land beyond those. The curvature of the planet hiding that shrunk form of society out in the coast far far far beyond. Archers kept their aim from wooden scaffolds. Everyone was on edge. We’d just done a little miniature riot after all.

  “Every one of you should be executed.” He said.

Someone sprung out.

  “I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t involved. I followed the rules.” This desperado came out from the ranks behind me. He shoved me and prostrated himself and crawled towards Hannibal’s feet, his hands thin and spiderlike. Hannibal stepped on them. The beggar cried, he returned his hands back near his chest.

  “Is there anything the rest of you would like to say?” He asked.

  All of it had probably put him on edge, because he kept his eyes on me. Ritcher’s little talk, the sudden push for them to leave, this riot. Happen chance, some of them. Premeditated, others. It seemed now, standing at attention, that he would take out his sword and kill us all. In a swing. Or perhaps with a mass execution. All of us top level men.

  “Why should all of us die for sins of one man.” I said. “That would be unjust. Certainly, unfair.”

The men turned to look at me, sweat rolling down their foreheads. Hannibal walked over.

  “And who would that one man be?” He asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. Too much action. I couldn’t quite see the figure. Though I think he was one of your boys.” I said.

  “My men are allowed to treat you as they see fit.”

  “Then why are you so surprised that violence springs from their treatment?”

He narrowed his eyes and stepped back some. His hand on his hilt, his heavy boots clicking against the stone. He waved the soldiers.

  “Take them back.” He said. “Except for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Virgil.”

  “Who’s Virgil.” I smiled. “I don’t even know my name.”

We didn’t say much on the way to his dining room. I didn’t know Shrieker’s Veil had rooms like these. You get so used to the chains and the whips and the cobblestone that it all becomes a blear of dark blue and gray and black. The dull palette of a rotting corpse, and us at the belly of it. Here though, there was a vibrancy to the room. The colored flags rolling down the sides as we entered the room, the furniture a nice dark oak. A long table at the center of the room, walls of art of varied sizes covering the stone behind. Giant columns of wood, accented some pale color. Rugs. And Rugs. And Rugs. A small room. A book case to the side with no names on the spines of the books, though a familiarity. Perhaps I read some of them in another life.

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  We did not share words entering the room. There were no guards. He sat at one end of the long table, and me at the other. His sword was halfway out. Not that I could blame him. On my end there were no candle sticks, no weapons immediately to my touch. Guards were posted along outside, still readily available to swing.

  The door was not locked. The windows were open and pushed along a breeze.

  “How much do you know?” He asked.

  I folded my arms and leaned back. The sun caught me for a bit, just a moment as I shook back and forth in my chair.

  “I told you, I don’t know anything about Chaucer’s plan.”

  “Not that, you fool.” He said. “You know what I’m talking about. Stop playing stupid.”

  “I don’t play anything.” I said. “I simply exist. And any conversation or jogging of memory or any such thing you think I’ve done is your problem. Not mine.”

  “Oh? So you’re not curious about yourself?”

  “Every man is curious about themselves.” I said. “I just know my limitations, is all.”

  “Let me remind you that your existence hinges on my consent. And telling falsehoods makes me reconsider my consent.”

I leaned back and felt the seat on my spine, my body so heavy and sunk into the cushion that I could feel it wrap around me like a blanket. I sat and watched and searched my head and wondered heavy on the subject at hand. A snappy comment perhaps, a rebuke, a sentence to stall. To shock. I looked at Hannibal and felt in my pit. A familiar feeling. Contempt. Hate. Something I hadn’t felt in a while and if I had, it had been so unfamiliar. Like most things used to be. Emotion has to be comparable to past experience to gauge it. It’s what seperate a dislike from a contempt to a hate. The truth is, looking at Hannibal, I did not really want anything else but to hate him. I pitied him. Pitied killing his brother, pitied forgetting about it. I pitied his situation. But all the understanding did not change what I felt.

I raised my finger. Tried to word something. Paused and leaned back. I rocked, my face falling and my eyes narrowing.

  “I don’t know a thing.” I said. “I don’t remember anything. Not for you, not for me.”

  “This type of attitute is not going to get you anywhere.” He said. “Starting tomorrow you will be back in the chain room. I am going to make you suffer.”

  “I’m sure you will.” I said. “You will do what you have to do. What you can’t help but to do.”

He stared for a while. I felt the flag flicker behind me, a draft from the window. I tapped my seat and Hannibal pointed me out the door. There guards returned me back to my hole in the floor all in an impressive pace. Leaving was definitely faster than coming.

  I looked up to holes in the ceiling, the gaps of light shifting from holes being shut by a cover. Manhole sealed, the air suctioned out from the rims of the metal cover. Darkness came to me though it was midday. I would have preferred laboring. I would have preferred bad situations to the worst one I was currently in. There will be days I will wish for worse, I heard it said to me once. I never knew what it meant. At that time I Must have been too young to understand how deep solitude can run. And perhaps my life was too good to imagine a worse to which I would love to retreat to. It must have been strange to me, at the time.