by Cass Morris
“I understand—that is, I have heard—that you’ve made a practice of working your gods-given gifts out here.” Aemilia gestured to the garden around them, as though the idea of magic in such a space was somehow unfathomable.
Latona furrowed her brow. “Do you have someone spying on me?”
Aemilia gave a hollow laugh. “How over-dramatic,” she scoffed. “Though perhaps that shouldn’t surprise me.”
“I should rather call it analytic.” Latona’s hands settled on her hips. “What I’m doing is Spirit work. Invisible. You don’t have any magic.” She gave that a beat to hit and was somewhat gratified to see Aemilia’s cheek twitch in irritation. “So I have to wonder who informed upon me.” Latona felt her lip curling slightly; the idea that someone was reporting on her use of magic to an authority figure reminded her too nearly of the days of the Dictatorship, when Horatius Ocella had done all in his power to cajole, threaten, and suborn mages to do his bidding—and when he ruthlessly persecuted those who refused his commands.
“A concerned citizen, that’s all,” Aemilia sniffed. “Someone who knew I would take an interest in a devotee of Juno who had strayed outside her proper bounds.”
Latona thought about pressing the issue of the informant’s identity further, then decided against it. If it seemed necessary, she could put her older sister Aula on the scent. There were few enough mages with reason to report to Aemilia; fewer still who could have seen Latona’s magic in effect. Not all elements bestowed the ability to see magical signatures: Spirit, Air, Water, and Light owned that talent. The field would be narrow, and Aula would relish ferreting out a tattletale. “I can’t see where it’s any concern of yours,” Latona said. “I’m a free woman, exercising my gods-given talents in accordance with the leges tabulae magicae.”
“Just because what you’re doing is permissible doesn’t mean it is right.”
Lucretius Rabirus had said something similar to her the year before, and Latona hadn’t liked it any better then.
“It is my duty,” Aemilia continued, drawing herself up pompously, “to counsel mages blessed by Juno, even if they are not under my direct supervision in the temple.”
“Consider me counseled, then.” Latona could not keep sharpness out of her voice. A silken touch and deference had never worked with Aemilia before, and she was tired of futilely resorting to such measures just for the sake of civility. “You disapprove of my intentions. I intend to act nonetheless. We are at an impasse.” She spread her hands. “What more is there to say?”
Aemilia’s expression was somewhere between irritation and condescension. “Your humors are still clearly unsettled, which is why you remain determined to impose yourself on affairs that do not concern you. I am only trying to spare you a great deal of frustration and embarrassment.”
Latona clenched her jaw so tightly that it sent a line of pain up into her temples. “I find myself unable to understand,” she said, forming every word carefully, lest less-gentle ones escape her lips, “why a devotee of Juno should not interest herself in public affairs. She is the Queen of Heaven. She rules on Olympus.”
“Second to her husband,” Aemilia said pointedly. “He rules the public world, and she the private. That is what we should seek to emulate.”
Latona shook her head, though more in dismay than anything else. It was exhausting, encountering this opinion in a woman who had the power and position to do so much more, who could open so many doors, if she would only take the trouble to do so. “We are not Athaecans, to keep women mewed up behind walls.” She gestured in vain at Aemilia herself. “We can do better, Aemilia. Nothing you say will convince me that is not what Juno intends.”
Aemilia’s dark eyes flashed bitterly. “It is not for you to tell me what Juno intends. I interpret the goddess’s will here in Aven, not you.”
‘It might have been me,’ Latona thought, with no less acidity than she saw written on Aemilia’s face. ‘If you hadn’t chased me out. If you hadn’t been so scared of a child’s potential to become a rival. I might have been High Priestess of Juno, not you.’
She said only, “Your view diverges significantly from Gaia Claudia’s. She taught me. You declined to do so. Is it so startling that I absorbed her philosophy rather than yours?”
II
Another several minutes of conversation with Aemilia yielded nothing fruitful, except in giving Latona a few choice morsels of Aemilia’s sanctimonious condemnation to chew on as she walked home. Aemilia had departed, annoyed that Latona had refused to conciliate herself to continued hobbling of her talents; Latona had departed, annoyed that she could not give the High Priestess of Juno a thick ear.
Her mood was not improved by encountering her husband almost immediately upon re-entering their domus on the Caelian Hill. Just the sight of him provoked an internal sigh. Once, tolerating him had been easier. Their relationship had never been particularly cozy, but at first, Herennius had treated her with honor and regard, and she had been able to muster up a species of affection in return. Over the years, that cordiality had deteriorated under a number of stresses. Some she could lay at Dictator Ocella’s doorstep—or, rather, at the base of his mausoleum. Others were the natural result of their opposing personalities and goals. Now, having tasted true passion, knowing what it felt like to have the true admiration of a worthy partner—Latona could no longer pretend in the way she once had.
Yet she chided herself for her lack of patience with him. Herennius could be no other than he was: a man of middling attraction and minimal ambition. Many women would have been grateful for such a husband. If he was not handsome, neither was he ill-favored, and his broad face was honest. He was honest, if only because he lacked the guile and intellect to be aught else. He had money enough to keep any woman content, which would more than make up for his lack of political initiative in most women’s assessment, and he did not have a voluptuous nature. He insisted on his husbandly rights infrequently, and if Latona ever managed to produce a child, would likely avail himself of them even less.
‘The right man for someone else, perhaps,’ Latona thought, ‘but not for me. Not now.’
All the same, she tried to put on a smile for him. If domestic felicity was too much to hope for, she could at least aim for tranquility. “Good afternoon, husband,” she said, unwinding her mantle from around her shoulders. She had to unpin it from her hair herself; Merula’s hands were still occupied with the bowl they had placed the burning embers in, and neither of them wanted Herennius asking questions about that.
“Where were you?” Herennius asked, in his usual abrupt fashion.
“The garden behind the Temple of Tellus.” That much, at least, she could be honest about—even as she draped her mantle over Merula’s shoulder, allowing Merula’s quick hands to shift the bowl underneath it. “It’s a pleasant day, don’t you think?” Herennius grunted in response; he’d been out, Latona knew, with his clients, but he was not a man to observe the fragile blossoms on the trees or appreciate the playful vernal winds. “We’ve an invitation to dine with my father tonight,” she said, crossing the atrium toward her husband. “Aula’s note said she had fresh lamb, and—”
“I’ve already accepted an invitation to dine elsewhere,” Herennius said, and named his host as one of his friends with a neighboring estate in Liguria; no one of importance in the city. “You should go to your father’s, though,” he said. “Give him my regrets.”
They were both trying, Latona could tell, not to show their relief at having an excuse not to dine together. “That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said. “I’m sure my father would be pleased to share a couch with you some other time.”
“There’s mail.” Herennius’s voice had a sudden hard edge. He gestured to a table at the side of the atrium, where a folded packet of papers sat waiting. “I believe some of it came from Iberia.” Latona felt her heartbeat speed up. “From your brother, I presume?”<
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“It must be,” she said, infusing her voice with a casual airiness she did not feel. She forced herself to walk slowly to the table, lifting the packet without looking at it. “No doubt Father has one as well.” She graced Herennius with another smile. “That Gaius can get letters out at all must be good news. Last we heard, he was worried the Lusetani were cutting off the couriers’ routes.”
“I only wondered,” Herennius said, his tone still sharp, “because the messenger said they’d been delivered by way of the Tenth Legion.” Latona allowed herself only a blink in response. “Not the Eighth. And Gaius Vitellius is with the Eighth, is he not?”
“A portion of it,” Latona said, affecting unconcern. “Perhaps the messenger was mistaken.”
“Sempronius Tarren is leading the Tenth, is he not?”
Latona’s heart suddenly felt too large, too loud inside her chest. “I believe so.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Or was it the Fourteenth? Aula would remember, I’m sure. I can ask her tonight, if there’s some reason you’d like to know.”
Herennius’s eyes flicked down to the papers held in Latona’s slender fingers, then back up to her face. “Just a husbandly interest,” he said, the edge in his voice turning toward a snarl, “in who my wife corresponds with.”
Latona raised her chin. “I correspond with many people. I can’t imagine what interest you would find in the vast majority of my letters.” She held the packet out toward him. “By all means. Investigate further, if it would put your mind at ease.”
Herennius’s fingers twitched. For a moment, Latona thought he might call her bluff—but then he seemed to determine that it would be undignified to do so. “Just have a care,” he grumbled, turning away from her. “You and I both know you can’t afford to be the target of unseemly rumors.” With that last loosed arrow, Herennius shuffled back into his room, summoning a slave to help him change for dinner, and Latona finally released the sigh that had been caught at the back of her voice.
Magical energy prickled in her right hand. Fire and Spirit, ever rooted in a mage’s emotions, asserted themselves more forcefully on days she had been deliberately practicing. ‘A year ago, I might have set the room on fire after that conversation.’ A year ago, she had set the room on fire when her magic spiraled out of control after a pique. Not directly; no mage since the Age of Heroes had been able to create fire out of nothingness, to snap their fingers and summon it. Latona could, however, increase the size of an already existing flame, and the previous summer, in the wake of Dictator Ocella’s death and the turmoil that followed, Latona’s powers had fallen into the habit of overheating lamps until they exploded.
She gave her hand a sharp shake, dispelling the swelling energy. The lamps on the nearby altar flared gently, then subsided.
Control was important for all mages, and for those blessed with volatile elements most of all. But control, she had learned, did not have to mean suppression.
* * *
Latona read the letter in the privacy of her own room. Herennius had been mistaken—or else deliberately trying to trap her. The letter had not been posted from Iberia, but from Nedhena, the legion-founded town on the north side of the Pyreneian Mountains. The paper was cheap and flimsy, the hand imperfect with too-quick strokes, but just the sight of it warmed Latona. She took delight in knowing that Sempronius had written the letter himself; she could tell the difference between his slightly smudged strokes and the precise lines his scribe inked onto the messages sent to her father. Thinking of his fingers gripping the stylus, imagining his face as he composed the words, an unbidden smile found its way onto her lips.
“You keep looking like that every time he is sending you a letter,” came Merula’s accented voice from behind her, “and I am thinking you are not keeping secrets much longer.” Latona submitted to her attendant’s chiding as readily as to her quick hands, which moved to unfasten the copper-tipped ties on her gown. Merula, a Phrygian-born slave, had been given a gladiatrix’s training to act as bodyguard to her mistress, in lieu of the decorative arts or household management skills that a lady of Latona’s class would typically seek in an omnipresent servant. Merula considered it her duty to protect Latona in ways other than the physical, and lately, that concern extended to reminding Latona of the legal perils of adulterous behavior. Latona knew the dangers, knew how foolish and incautious she had been the previous winter, when for once she had chosen to give her heart free rein.
She could not be sorry for it. That Saturnalia had liberated more than her fleshly desires. In letting heat and passion consume her, Latona had discovered just how much of Venus’s fire truly lived within her—and how small and sad she had allowed her world to become.
As Merula worked around her, stripping off her day garments and tying her into a gown more suitable for dinner, Latona lifted the letter and read.
Its tone was the same as the others she had received from Sempronius since his Januarius departure from Aven: friendly without overt intimacy, no hint of impropriety, no pet names or endearments. Much though she might have wished for messages of greater passion, the absence of ardor was safer. If Herennius did take it into his head to open his wife’s mail, he would find nothing incriminating.
‘. . . Eager as I am to reach the Iberian plateaus, I admit that Maritima is not without its charms. One can easily see why the Tyrians settled here when they fled burning Ilion—and why plundering pirates have been drawn to the region equally as long. The land is well-watered and verdant, and the sea at Massilia is even bluer than that of Crater Bay. We did not tarry long in Massilia herself, but I liked the feel of the old place. Not as large or messy as our beloved Aven, but it seems all the peoples of the Middle Sea have left residue of themselves here, carved into the white rocks of the Maritiman shoreline.
‘I hope your studies continue well, and that you have not yet had need to strangle Aemilia Fullia or anyone else standing between you and improvement.
‘I remain,
‘Yours in friendship,
‘V. Sempronius Tarren’
Tsking, Merula jabbed a pin into Latona’s hair a tad harder than was necessary to secure the mantle among her golden curls. “Blushing, Domina.”
“I can’t control my skin, Merula.”
“Should be trying.”
Merula only meant it for her safety, of course; she cared, if possible, even less for Herennius himself than Latona did. Latona hated the sound of those words nonetheless, echoing Aemilia’s insistence that she should be trying to be a better wife. Somewhere in the last year, her impetus to make the marriage work had burned away like morning fog under a swiftly rising sun. Now she hoped only to endure it until she could either convince Herennius to surrender his claim to her family’s wealth and connections or else persuade her father to agree there was more advantage in a divorce than safety in the continued bond. ‘Blessed Juno, just let us be rid of each other before things grow worse.’
She wished that her father would see the unsuitability of her match and suggest a divorce. It would look so much better if it was Aulus’s idea. That would pass it off as his pragmatism, rather than risking any aspersions being cast upon her character.
‘Then, if Sempronius comes home safe from Iberia, we might—’
But she stamped down hard on the thought. It did no good to yearn for that which was not yet within her grasp.
* * *
Ostia, Truscan Coast
The curse had to be carefully crafted.
Vibia Sempronia Mellanis wished no misfortune upon the soldiers of the Second Legion, nor upon the sailors ferrying them across the Middle Sea to Gades. At least, no more than ill luck had brought them already, placing them not under the command of Vibia’s brother, Sempronius Tarren, but instead that of Praetor Lucretius Rabirus. ‘Tribulations will find them soon enough under his leadership without any help from me,’ she thought, tucking w
ind-stripped wisps of dark hair back beneath her mantle. She stood in Ostia’s market, near the temple to Volturnus, waiting.
Getting to Ostia had been simple enough. Her husband, Taius Mella, had many mercantile interests in the city at the mouth of the Tiber, which served as Aven’s main port. As a senator, he had to stay one step removed from operations, working through a freedman client, but he liked to check in once a month to keep an eye on things. As luck would have it, this trip coincided with the day that two legions were set to board ships on their way to Iberia.
‘Luck.’ Vibia almost smiled. She did not have magical strength enough to affect the laws of chance, as some Fracture mages could, but she had prayed to Fortuna, and the goddess had answered. All Vibia had to do then was express a fancy to come along, and her husband had been more than happy to make the arrangements. When she told him she needed to slip away for a bit, Mella had kissed her forehead, told her to take care, and sent a trio of slaves along as her escort. “Some business for my brother,” was all the explanation Vibia had given, and it was all that Mella had required. He knew, of course, that he had married a Fracture mage, but Vibia had always felt it more dignified to keep him one step removed from her thaumaturgical endeavors—particularly those which some might characterize as unsavory.
Vibia suffered no crisis of conscience, however. Rabirus deserved everything she could throw at him. He had tried to have Sempronius assassinated at least once, had set fire to Aven to try to invalidate elections that were not going his way, but worst of all, he had engaged the services of the Discordian devotee Pinarius Scaeva. Remembering the foulness that Scaeva had let loose, Vibia almost shook with rage, even months later. ‘Perverted, corrupted souls, the pair of them.’
Scaeva had abused the gifts of the gods, had sworn his allegiance not to Janus or Fortuna, as a Fracture mage ought, nor even to one of the lesser cults, but to Discordia, the lady of strife and misrule, who had no place in civilized society. Had been banished from it, her worshipers driven out of Aven—out of all Truscum. Yet this aberration had remained. For the harm he perpetrated, Vibia had exacted justice, fierce and swift.
