Give Way to Night

by Cass Morris

“It certainly is.” Now that they were close, Latona could feel it pulsing at her, that sense of utter wrongness, of disruption to the natural flow of the elements around her. “It’s not quite like the last one, though. In the grove, we just had to clear away the offal, and then I was able to cleanse the area. This feels . . . different.”

  Vibia’s lip was curled in distaste as she glared at the offending Discordian charm. “Just tossing it over the fence wouldn’t do any good. We’ll have to unravel its power.” She glanced up, as though seeing something Latona couldn’t. “Then, I think, cleansing. Though perhaps better to come back and do that by daylight.” Vibia sighed, rubbing her forehead. “I think I know what to do. Just . . . keep near me, would you? In case it’s worse than it looks.” As Vibia bent down to the bundle on the ground, delicately keeping her knees off of the damp earth, Latona stood at her shoulder.

  “Do you mind—” Latona started, then cleared her throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “I may be able to, ah, support you. With Spirit magic, that is.”

  Vibia looked over her shoulder at Latona, and for a moment Latona thought she saw annoyance in those dark eyes. But then they softened, and she nodded. “Yes. Anything that might help.” So Latona laid her hand on Vibia’s shoulder, drawing up the sensations of power and solidity and trying to channel them into Vibia.

  “It may not like what we’re about to do,” Vibia warned, “and I really am not sure what that might mean. If it starts to get to you, just—slam it out. Remember that it lies.”

  * * *

  As soon as she touched the bundle, Vibia wanted to vomit. “Definitely Discordian,” she said. “It has the reek . . .” Not exactly the same as that which she had encountered on Autronius Felix the previous summer, but close. A different worker, but a similar tool.

  She hated to admit it, but Latona’s presence was a comfort and a help. With the Spirit magic seeping into her, Vibia felt stronger, more capable, and she was able to grasp the bundle in her hand without flinching away from it. ‘So long as I don’t think about what’s probably in it.’ It seemed to pulse back against her. In recognition of another Fracture mage? Or in defense against her intents?

  ‘Unwind,’ she thought, focusing her magic on whatever was inside the bundle. ‘Unbind. Fall apart.’ Vibia tried to probe gently, unsure of how it might respond to more force. The Discordian charm was like a shim, jammed into a crack in the world to keep it open—something broken, and then locked into place. The raggedness of it called out to her. Some Fracture mages would have felt the compulsion to widen the breach, to keep tearing at the world’s fibers, but for Vibia, things ran differently. She had trained her mind to find such shredded edges in order to smooth them out, like a surgeon who had to know how a leg was broken in order to set it.

  As Vibia probed, she could feel the shade losing form, but not power. The humid night felt cold and clammy. Latona was shivering slightly, though her hand stayed firmly on Vibia’s shoulder. Through the fabric of her tunic and gown, Vibia could feel the heat of her, bolstering against the invasive chill—though at times almost uncomfortably warm, as though she were being slightly sunburnt where Latona’s fingers touched her. ‘Sweet Fortuna, does she run this hot all the time? Or only when performing magic?’

  As Vibia continued to work, a faint wailing started up behind them. “Don’t turn,” Vibia said. “That’s what it wants.” She furrowed her brow. It also wanted her to lose focus, which meant what she was doing was working. ‘Unwind, unbind. This charm falls apart, and the jagged edges of the world will fit neatly back together again. Unwind, unbind, and send this shade back to Pluto’s realm where it belongs.’

  The wailing grew louder, and a sudden breeze kicked up, blowing at the women’s clothes. Merula had a dagger in her hands and was twirling it distractedly. ’As though that will do anything to a shade.’ But Vibia supposed she could not fault the girl her instinct to defend herself and her mistress. Latona’s fingers pressed a little harder into Vibia’s shoulder. ‘I can do this. I am doing this.’ The charm was unknitting between her fingers, something within breaking loose and starting to rattle.

  A high-pitched whistle split the air—no, not a whistle, a scream, the shade protesting its banishment. Vibia gasped as the bundle disintegrated in her hand, the fabric rotting a hundred years in an instant. She had only a brief glimpse of what lay within, bird bones and other viscera, before those, too, dissolved into dust. “Ugh.” She held her hand out away from herself as she stood up. ‘Why is it always me that ends up with poisonous magic on my hands?’

  Someone had come out of the nearest hut; Vibia recognized him as one of the villagers that Latona and Alhena had spoken to the day before. ‘Bless him, he’s got a scythe and everything.’ The man had rushed out in his tunic and bare feet, gripping the farm implement like a weapon.

  “Ladies!” he said, coming forward. “We heard such a cry—Are you well?”

  “We are, I thank you.” Latona regained her composure as easily as she might draw a mantle over her head—or did it only seem so? Unless Vibia missed her guess, Latona was putting out Spirit magic, a glamour of confidence, to try to calm the peasant. Vibia’s Fracture magic could still sense her unease, bubbling below the surface. ‘How often does she do that?’ Vibia made a promise to herself to keep a closer eye on the ambitious Vitellian at social events in the future. There might be much to learn about the undercurrents of her emotions.

  “I think we’ve taken care of this problem, at least,” Latona went on. “That particular shade shouldn’t trouble you again.” She glanced over at Vibia, who nodded tightly. “But you should be on the lookout. Someone planted a charm to draw it here. They may return and try again.”

  The villager’s brow furrowed. “But . . . why would someone do such a thing?”

  Vibia was at a loss to explain that, herself. What benefit could there be in frightening a village of two dozen peasant farmers?

  “I don’t know,” Latona said—and there, Vibia felt the dichotomy between her words and her feelings again. Not a lie, not quite, but not the whole truth, either.

  ‘She may not know,’ Vibia thought, ‘but she suspects.’

  Latona strode forward to the villager, smiling. “I am glad you came to the Temple of Proserpina with this information, so that we might know of it and address it. Rest assured that I will be doing everything in my power to figure out who sought to harm you and why.”

  “They—they will hear of this? In Aven?”

  “Someone certainly will.”

  Again, the duality. ‘What game is she playing at?’ But her smile was like the dawn breaking—a blast of genial energy, putting the villager at his ease.

  “If anything else happens, you may send to me. I will be at the Vitellian villa in Stabiae for most of the summer, but if a message fails to find me there, our domus in Aven is well-known.”

  “Of course, Domina,” the villager said, bowing his head. “If there is anyway we can repay—”

  “Live good lives,” Latona said. “Take care of your family. Be kind to your wife and children, your servants and slaves, and honor the gods. That is all the repayment I need.”

  ‘Lady Bounty,’ Vibia thought, a bit sourly. It seemed to come so naturally to Latona, the grace and ease when interacting with these people. Vibia held them in no disdain, as some patricians did, but she never knew quite what to say to them.

  “Your carriage is nearby?”

  Latona nodded. “We left it up at the main road, with some of our men.”

  “Let my boys walk with you that far, please. It’s so late . . .”

  “We would welcome the company.”

  The villager’s boys, lads of ten and twelve, trotted on either side of the ladies and Merula as they wound their way back up the dirt road toward the main road, where the carriage waited. They were quiet, awed, at first, but Latona drew them out with gentle questions, and soon
they were telling tales of what the shade had done in the village over the past few nights. Nothing too dire or jeopardizing—sudden appearances in the night, wailing and crying and generally not allowing anyone to sleep—but Vibia could feel the frisson of fear running beneath the boys’ bravado in relating their stories. Everyone knew such things could happen, but they weren’t supposed to. If you lived rightly, if the priests performed the proper rituals, then shades and spirits were meant to stay in their place. For an adolescent boy, it might be exciting—but also an uncomfortable lesson that the world was not so safe a place as the innocence of youth might presume.

  The ladies bundled themselves into the carriage, crawling in among the pillows and light blankets placed for their comfort. Latona offered to let Merula join them—without, Vibia noted, seeking her approval—but the girl preferred to sit outside, next to the driver. “Is she sweet on him?” Vibia asked yawningly, settling herself in.

  Latona smiled. “I don’t think so. But she had a fright this evening, whether she admits it or not, and she’ll be wanting to work that out under less scrutiny.”

  Vibia tilted her head. “You understand her well, I take it?”

  “I hope so,” Latona said. “She and I . . . She’s been with me ever since I left the Temple of Juno. I trust her with my life. There are many understandings between us.”

  Vibia nodded, though she still found it unusual. Her own servants were well-treated and well-fed, the freedmen and slaves alike paid well for their efforts, the slaves manumitted in due course. But she could not consider any of them her friends, as Latona plainly did her girl. But Vibia shrugged that off. All three Vitellian women seemed to have that oddity about them, unusually attached to their personal attendants. ‘Perhaps it is a family tradition.’

  They rode in silence for a short time, but neither woman seemed likely to drop off to sleep. Vibia could hardly see Latona in the darkness of the curtained carriage, but the other woman was far too fidgety to have nodded off. After a bit, Vibia ventured the same question that the villager had asked, as much to see if Latona would give her the same answer as anything. “Why there?” she said. “This is Discordian magic, and it’s not some over-talented but under-taught kid messing about. It has a purpose. It has finesse. So why target that poor little village?”

  Latona drew in a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. “I don’t think they were targeted,” she said. “I think they were practice.” Words left unsaid hung in the air; Vibia could feel the tension of Latona feeling her way through the problem. No untruthfulness now, though, no skirting the issue at hand. “Pinarius Scaeva may have been acting alone, at Lucretius Rabirus’s direction,” Latona said after another moment had passed, speaking slowly, as though still piecing the thoughts together. Vibia waited patiently for her to assemble them. “But he did not learn his Discordian magic in isolation. Someone taught him. Someone planted that charm in the orchard. Someone left that carcass in the grove.” The curtains wafted, and a thin beam of moonlight fell on Latona’s face. Her thoughtful frown reminded Vibia of Sempronius, puzzling out some political tangle. “Someone taught Pinarius Scaeva, and someone learned from his haste.”

  “Learned to move more slowly?” Vibia said.

  “But also learned that there are openings in the city . . . that Discordian magic has a path it may follow . . .”

  “With the city still recovering from Ocella, that’s not much of a surprise,” Vibia agreed. “The temples are still putting themselves back together—”

  “So many mages died during Ocella’s reign . . .”

  “—and so many of the powerful men who survived have now gone to Iberia.”

  “Someone is pressing an advantage, but delicately. Someone with more subtlety than Pinarius Scaeva had.”

  Vibia drummed her fingers against her lap. “Do you think this person is also taking orders from Lucretius Rabirus?”

  “I don’t know.” The moonlight lit a wry smile on the younger woman’s face. “Are Fracture mages typically given to taking orders from outside their own prerogatives?”

  Vibia snorted. “A fair question,” she said. “And my answer would be, any Fracture mage who has gone over to Discordia is unlikely to act for any but his own reasons.”

  “Or hers,” Latona murmured. “We shouldn’t assume.”

  “No,” Vibia agreed. “Though everything I’ve encountered so far has had a masculine feel to it.”

  “Still . . .” Latona’s voice was drifting far away, though Vibia did not think it was sleep finding her. Rather, she was descending into her own thoughts, and Vibia was content to let her. “We should not close our eyes to any possibilities . . . Men underestimate women enough as it is. We should not join in their error.”

  AESTAS

  XIV

  Near Toletum, Central Iberia

  Vitellius’s early letters had been insufficient warning.

  Hanath had better prepared Sempronius, on that first evening in Segontia, and then during the march toward Toletum. Reading words written on paper was one thing; hearing a tale of ghastly hauntings from the lips of one who had seen them, quite another. But nothing compared to the specters themselves.

  Sempronius’s legions first encountered the akdraugi when they were, according to Hanath, yet a day’s ride from Toletum. They struck as dusk fell, while the legionaries were still making camp. A sudden chill rolled through the air, and at first, Sempronius looked to the skies. Thunderstorms blasted the plateaus in central Iberia regularly during the summer, and the legion had had several drenchings since leaving Segontia. So he looked for lightning, wondering if his men would have enough time to finish pitching their tents for shelter.

  But then he heard it—the high-pitched keening, impossibly loud, as though a funeral approached with hundreds of paid mourners shrieking grief to the heavens.

  Sempronius rushed to the center of the camp. From there, he could look out all four sides at once, down the via principalis and the via praetoria. The wailing gave him no indication what direction the fiends might be approaching from. His guess was that they would come from the southwest, toward Toletum—but he would not allow such an assumption to leave his troops vulnerable. Even as the thought struck his mind, however, he felt it slipping away. A fog was closing in on the camp from the south, and Sempronius felt it infecting his mind as well, softening the keen blade of his wits.

  ‘None of that from you,’ he thought, pushing back against it. Sempronius knew how to clear soporific magic from his mind, thanks to his long working with Shadow. Sleep and dream magic had never been his particular strength, but he knew the theory behind them, and whatever effect the Iberian magic was trying to have, it felt kin to Aven’s Shadow. He wiped away the cobwebs, assessing the best way to help his men do the same.

  “General.” Hanath had appeared at Sempronius’s side and grabbed his arm. He saw several of the nearby soldiers startle, that a foreign woman should dare to touch an Aventan general without explicit permission, but Sempronius did not think this was the time to prize social niceties. “General, you must have your men form ranks, immediately. If the Lusetani behave here as they do at Toletum, they will attack while the akdraugi make you weak.”

  Sempronius nodded his understanding and gave the signal for the men to re-don their armor and form lines. Even as they did so, however, he wondered: would an attack come? If it did, might that be a sign that the forces surrounding Toletum were thinner? Or did the Lusetani have enough men to attack the city and the field at the same time?

  As the legions formed up at the edge of camp, Sempronius sent an aide to tell the drummers and horn-blowers to strike up a tune. Hanath nodded approvingly; she had already told him of the bolstering counter-effect strong music seemed to have. Sempronius’s aide brought him his own armor and strapped it onto him while he stood at the crossroads, dispatching further orders.

  Fortunately, the legions opera
ted with perfect precision in their camp-making, the same way every evening, and the terrain here was broad and flat enough to have presented no challenges for the engineering unit. As such, their earthwork ramparts were already complete, with stakes facing outward. A few moments earlier, and their defenses would have been weaker.

  They weren’t proper walls, though, such as Toletum had, and Sempronius wondered what difference that could make to the akdraugi. The fog was rolling closer, its silvery weight unsettlingly incongruent in their surroundings. Sempronius looked west, toward the setting sun, as though it might be able to help.

  The akdraugi rolled over the camp like a wave. To his horror, Sempronius watched as the soldiers all around him buckled at the knees or stooped from the shoulders.

  The hazy effect that the akdraugi had at a distance morphed as they suffused the camp. Instead of dazed and vaguely sleepy, Sempronius now felt drawn to them, like iron to a lodestone. Shapeless, formless things, all around him, and yet an urge was building in his chest, a strange, compulsive pressure, telling him he should reach out, fall into them, let himself be absorbed. The haunting draw reminded him of the maw that Pinarius Scaeva had created the previous year, when Sempronius had last been in Aven. He gritted his teeth, preparing himself to resist the siren call.

  Yet even as he thought that, even as the fog drifted closer, Sempronius felt its hold on him lifting, his head clearing. He became aware of a warmth at his neck, at first almost unnoticeable, given how hot the day was already. But then it began to tingle softly, and when Sempronius glanced down, he noticed a faint red glow coming from beneath the collar of his cuirass. ‘What in—The focale!’

  The glow was Fire magic, visible to his eyes only because of his own strand of Water talent, and it bore the coruscating signature of Vitellia Latona’s work. ‘Lady, once again, I owe you more than I fear I can repay.’

  Sempronius looked around. His camp aide was nearby; he grabbed the young man by the shoulder, giving him a firm shake. Only with difficulty did the lad drag his eyes away from the fog surrounding them. “Sir?”