by Cass Morris
A spear of Numidian design, Sempronius realized.
He sat up, spine straight, with a shock of realization. “Lady Hanath.”
But why? He had included the formidable woman on his war councils, had taken her advice, had listened to all the information she could provide about the Lusetanian magic. ‘What am I missing? If she is the key to this, somehow . . . then what shape is the lock?’
XXII
City of Aven
Latona would have appreciated more time to re-acclimate herself to the city—and to her husband—before making a public appearance, but the night after the Vitelliae returned to Aven, she received an invitation to a dinner party thrown by Galerius Orator and his wife Marcia Tullia. Herennius accepted for them both before Latona even knew about it. ‘Perhaps just to prove to anyone in town that his wife has not, in fact, abandoned him,’ she thought as Merula plaited her hair into a coronet. A simple style for a formal dinner, but it was too hot to contemplate letting her curtain of hair hang down her back. She pulled a few tendrils out to frame her face.
When she joined Herennius in the atrium, he looked her up and down, frowning. “Is that new?”
Latona had chosen a soft, grassy green gown and a contrasting currant-colored mantle for the occasion. In deference to the heat, she was wearing the lightest-weight sleeveless tunic she owned and had draped her gown loosely over her curves. “It is,” she said. “I had it commissioned before I went to Stabiae, and it was delivered in my absence.” When Herennius continued to glower at her, she added, “It wasn’t costly, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s a bit . . . daring. Don’t you think?”
“Everyone’s fashion turns daring when the heat rises,” Latona quipped. Herennius himself was in a short-sleeved tunic of a similar color to her mantle, which Latona found unexpectedly irritating, and a loosely wrapped orange cenatoria instead of a formal toga.
“Galerius has invited moderates as well as Popularists tonight, you know,” Herennius added.
“I’m sure we all feel summer’s burden the same, no matter our politics.” Latona gestured to the door. “Shall we?”
The receiving line at the Galerian domus was not long, and they were soon inside, where Latona was almost weak-kneed with relief to see her father and sisters. Aula was in a gown of bright sky blue, with her mantle closer to sapphire and her gown even more loosely belted than Latona’s. Alhena was in lavender, modestly tucked and folded despite the clinging heat. “Latona! There you are. How lovely all my girls look!” Aulus proclaimed, kissing her cheek. Then he shook Herennius’s hand. “I’m glad you’re with us tonight, or I should be even more desperately outnumbered.”
“Another reason to look forward to the war ending, sir,” Herennius said. “Your son will be able to help us match things up.”
“Except that Gaius will need a wife once he gets back,” Aula tossed back, grinning. “And, Father, if you’d like any suggestions on that front, I have had some thoughts on the matter—”
Aulus waggled a finger at her. “I’d rather hear that you were sounding out new husbands for yourself.” Aula rolled her eyes theatrically, prompting Aulus to add, as if it were a concession, “Or for Alhena!”
Latona felt a surge of anxiety from her younger sister, so she clapped her hands delicately. “Shall we see who else is about?”
Aula took the hint, linking her arm through Alhena’s and steering them toward the garden. “Leave us to our gossip, gentlemen, and go make yourselves useful debating some terribly important policy or other,” she chirped over her shoulder.
Latona caught a glimpse of Herennius’s scowl before they swanned off; likely he couldn’t decide whether or not Aula had just delivered him a veiled insult.
“Maia Domitia should be around here somewhere,” Aula went on, “speaking of husband-hunting. She thinks if she can find a suitable match before her brothers get home from Iberia, they’ll just accept her choice rather than trying to influence her.”
“I imagine she’s right,” Latona said, scanning the crowd for their friend’s glossy dark hair. “Maius and Septimus just want her safely wed.” Maia’s first husband had been one of Ocella’s victims, leaving her with two small daughters, near Lucia’s age, to care for. “I doubt they’ll be too particular about it—though who she thinks there is to choose from with most of the Popularists out of town, I’m not certain.”
“I doubt she’d mind an older fellow, past his military service, if he offered money and comfort enough,” Aula said. Out of the corner of her eye, Latona saw her sister grin. “She’s not as wantonly lustful a creature as I am, after all. And a man who already has an heir secured might not mind that she comes with two daughters attached. But she might also be sounding out some fathers on their sons’ behalves.”
“Well, if nothing else, we should give her our support.”
As Herennius had predicted, the crowd at the Galerian domus was more mixed than the Vitelliae’s usual cohort of liberal-minded friends. Aula squeezed Latona’s elbow, groaning. “Oh, gods, don’t look now.”
“I don’t know why you say that, when your intention is clearly that I do so.” Near one of the trellises sat a knot of Optimate wives. Willowy Memmia was wife to Arrius Buteo’s ally Gratianus, while stocky Gratiana was his elder sister. With them was Glaucanis, pale as milk and prettily rounded, the wife of Lucretius Rabirus. Seeing them, Latona stifled a groan. “Juno’s mercy . . .”
“I thought the advantage of Decimus Gratianus losing his bid for the consulship last year,” Aula grumbled, “would be that we wouldn’t have to endure him and his womenfolk on social occasions.”
“Our world is too small for that,” Latona said, “and evidently Galerius and Marcia are making a conciliatory effort.”
“What are you two whispering about?” Alhena asked, plucking Aula’s sleeve.
“Mean cats,” Aula replied.
“Come on,” Latona said, trying to affect a cheerful countenance. “I’m sure Marcia has more sense than to have seated any of us next to them, at the least.”
* * *
Marcia’s hostessing skills were all that Latona had anticipated. Latona found herself sharing a couch with a member of the Pontifical College and Rufilius Albinicus, the famed general past his campaigning years but nonetheless full of opinions about the Iberian venture. Across the room, Aulus had been placed next to Marcia herself, no doubt a recognition of his censorial office, while Aula was between an older senator and one of this year’s aediles—both men of moderate political inclinations, unlikely to provoke the sharp side of Aula’s tongue. Alhena was less conspicuously placed, sitting with Crispinilla and one of the younger Fabiae daughters at a lower table. Latona silently thanked Marcia for her kindness in making that concession to Alhena’s shyness.
Thanks to Marcia’s careful tending of the seating chart, the meal itself passed with only pleasantries. ‘The advantage to so many Popularists being out of town—and the number of Optimates who followed them—is that it leaves enough moderates left to serve as a buffer,’ Latona thought as the tables were cleared away. Some of the assembly might depart now that the meal was finished, but Marcia had arranged musical entertainment and opened plenty of amphorae of wine for those who wished to stay and mingle. A glance at her husband let Latona know that they wouldn’t be going home anytime soon: Herennius was with her father, both deep in conversation with several of the men who owned immense latifundia in Umbria, those giant farms which were, in theory, subject to regulation by the censors. Aulus was no doubt giving them a piece of his mind based on his observations around Crater Bay, but Latona wondered whose side her husband would come down on. Economic interests tended to surmount ethical quandaries in his mind.
Aula darted up to her side, a goblet of wine in each hand. She passed one to Latona, taking a deep swig from the other. “Caecilia says her husband is going to stand for consu
l this year.”
“Quintus Terentius? Truly?”
“So she says, and I expect she’d know better than anyone.”
The Terentiae were an ancient family, with roots going back to the days of the kings, but many of the Optimates viewed them as unacceptably odd. They were well-traveled and had a habit of making marriages outside the usual bounds of Aventan society; Terentius’s mother had some connection to the Palmyrean royal family, and other generations had married nobles from Athaecum and even Numidia. Terentius himself had chosen an Aventan bride, had two sons dutifully preparing themselves for the cursus honorum, and one of his daughters was a Vestal Virgin, as unimpeachably Aventan as you could get. The other, though, was Latona’s friend Terentilla, an Earth mage who had been allowed to take after her patroness, the goddess Diana, and run rather wild. Open-minded and, in the eyes of many, far too permissive, the Terentiae were of the Popularist faction, but Terentius had never before evinced much ladder-scaling ambition.
“Well, good,” Latona said. “I was wondering who would step up for the Popularists.”
Aula took another drag of her wine, glancing about the room. “I’m going to go find Maia. She was sitting next to Old Crispinia during dinner and looked to be having a merry time, so perhaps she has some amusing story to pass on. Are you coming?”
“In a moment,” Latona said. “I want to look at the new frescoes Marcia had painted.” She gestured at the walls lining the peristyle garden. “Rubellia saw them earlier this summer and said they’re lovely.”
Aula tittered. “I never thought Marcia Tullia, of all people, would succumb to modern trends in interior design.” She tweaked one of Latona’s curls. “All right, my honey, come find me and Maia when you’re done admiring.”
* * *
Marcia’s new frescoes combined the traditional narrative pictures with the new fashion for suggested architectural elements, with columns and arches giving the impression that any onlooker was watching the scene within through a window. ‘Or perhaps on a stage,’ Latona thought, strolling along the colonnade at the far side of the garden, taking in the quiet elegance of the paintings. Appropriately, the scenes were those from the life of the hero Ulysses—beloved by Minerva, aided by Mercury, the gods who governed the element of Air and who had blessed both Marcia and her adolescent son. In one, Ulysses was outwitting the cyclops Polyphemus; in another, Mercury offered him the magical herb that helped him resist Circe’s charms.
Latona wondered if the painter was one of the mages of the city who specialized in such artistry, a Light mage with a keen eye for color, perhaps, or an Earth or Water mage who could manipulate the subtle interplay of dyes and pigments. Certainly Marcia could afford to engage the services of one so talented.
As Latona meandered, contemplating the delicate brushstrokes in a rendering of Minerva drawing down a mist to disguise Ulysses’s passage, she was halted by the sound of her own name—not called out to her, but spoken in a scandalized whisper.
“Vitellia Latona? You can’t be serious.”
“Now, Memmia, you know how little I like to speak ill of anyone, it’s just that—”
“Glaucanis, you’re being tedious. Spit it out, if you have something to say.”
Latona halted in her steps. Memmia, Glaucanis, and Gratiana, on the other side of the trellis—obscured from her sight, and she from theirs, by the thick weft of ivy and flowers that covered the wooden structure. Talking about her. Latona’s cheeks flushed. ‘Why? What in Juno’s name for?’
“Well, you know I’m not one for gossip,” Glaucanis began, in the conspiratorial tone only perfected by veteran gossips, “but everyone who was at Ocella’s court knows what she got up to, even if they’re all too polite to mention it now. It wasn’t only her magical gifts he was interested in—though of course he put those to use as well, had her reading emotions and reporting to him if anyone was acting shifty. Quite the little spy.”
Latona’s fists clenched so hard that her nails pressed painfully into her palms. The unfairness of the accusation set a fire in her heart. The Dictator had commanded the use of her gifts that way, true—and she had given as little as she could get away with. She had spent so much effort convincing him that her powers were cripplingly weak that she had started to believe it herself.
“Anyway,” Glaucanis went on, “her real talents weren’t those on public display, if you take my meaning.”
“Is that fair?” Memmia’s voice was wavery, and Latona was absurdly grateful to her for it. “She’s hardly the only one to have fallen prey to the Dictator’s, uhm, unsavory proclivities.”
Glaucanis, on the other hand, Latona could happily have slapped. “Oh, she wasn’t prey, my lamb. Everyone thinks it’s her sister who’s got the ambition in the family, but mark my words, Lady Latona is the one who sets her sights the highest. And having had a taste of sitting in power’s lap once, who’s to say she wouldn’t like to try it again?”
Latona was mildly worried her nails might’ve been drawing blood from her palm now, but the pain was welcome, a distraction that might keep her from losing control of her magic and setting half the room ablaze. The flicker of a dozen lamps reached for her, eager to respond to her heightened emotions, and only wrenching control over her Fire magic kept them from flaring.
‘How dare she? How dare she?’ Latona had bartered herself for Aula’s safety, and Lucia’s, while the blood of Aula’s husband was still pooling on the floor. ‘All I did, I did for them, while Glaucanis lapped up the benefits of having a husband whose hands were filthy with doing the Dictator’s bidding.’ The accusation would have been insult enough coming from another woman. From Glaucanis Lucretiae, the hypocrisy was maddening.
Gratiana snorted, sounding very like her brother. “Much good may it do her to try her wiles on our current consuls. Galerius is uxorious, and Aufidius Strato wouldn’t notice a naked woman in front of him unless she had battle plans painted on her tits.”
“Gratiana!” Memmia squeaked in objection.
“Well! He wouldn’t.”
“I’m just saying she bears watching, is all,” Glaucanis said, her voice falsely light. “It’s not as though Galerius and Aufidius are the only men of consequence that she might set her sights on.”
Latona’s rage gave way to sudden fear. If Glaucanis mentioned Sempronius . . . ‘No. She can’t know anything. We were—’ But the thought caught in her mind like a rabbit in a snare. They hadn’t been careful. Much though Latona tried to blame it on the Saturnalian revels or years of pent-up deprivation, she knew what choice she had made: to cast caution aside right along with her gown. ‘And Sempronius made that choice too, even knowing what a scandal could cost us both.’ For him, demolition of his political aims; for her, utter ruin among society and the subsequent havoc wreaked upon her father’s and brother’s careers. Together, perhaps, the utter devastation of the Popularist cause, the abandonment of their shared dream of Aven-that-could-be.
At the time, it had felt not a mistake, but an imperative, a marker placed for them on a course set by the gods. ‘A glory, a sublime gift of a moment.’ Harder to hold on to that feeling, separated from her partner in transgression by months and so many miles.
Tangled in that unpleasant contemplation, Latona waited to see if Glaucanis was about to link her name to Sempronius’s. Surely, if anyone had a vested interest in spreading such a juicy morsel of news, it would be the wife of Sempronius’s great enemy. Who else could profit so much from the discovery of Popularist imprudence and ignominy? But to her great relief, Glaucanis seemed to have nothing else to offer, for it was Memmia who spoke next.
“I still think you’re being unfair. That provincial husband of hers would put her off if she really behaved as you say.”
Latona held in a sigh. There was the reminder she’d been searching for, of why she hadn’t yet put off Herennius. A husband, no matter how boorish, was a shield aga
inst the spear-thrust of many-tongued Rumor.
“True.” Glaucanis drew out the word in a sing-song. “After all, it’s not as though she’s given him any children to be grateful for.”
The temporary relief of finding her secret safe was replaced with the painfully blunt impact of that undeniable truth. Glaucanis might have only had one son to her name, but she had that, at least. Latona, favored one of Venus and Juno though she might be, had no children and a husband she could barely tolerate sharing a roof with. ‘What a mockery.’ The multi-fold unfairness of it—unsuccessful in a marriage that she did not even want, publicly judged for that failure, barred by custom and circumstance from reaching for true happiness—roiled inside her like bile, sour and poisonous.
A wicked impulse struck Latona. She could take what she felt now—the shame, the revulsion, the mute fury—and turn it back around on the gossips. She could flood them with those negative emotions, then amplify those feelings until they wept. She could turn their own hearts against them. They would be humiliated and have no idea why.
Latona crinkled her nose, surprised at herself. ‘I’m not sure what’s worse, if that was my own idea or the result of some Discordian taint lingering on my soul.’
Instead, she lifted her chin and smoothed out the soft linen folds of her gown. ‘I don’t need to abuse Juno’s gifts to make them feel ashamed of themselves.’
Beaming brightly, Latona took the long way around the trellis, so that they would not know she had been eavesdropping. Then she strode to the couch adjacent to theirs and dropped elegantly onto it. “Ladies,” she said, “good cheer. What a fine pair of flautists Marcia’s hired this evening, don’t you think?” Memmia turned as red as the couch cushions, Gratiana fiddled anxiously with her earrings, and Glaucanis looked as though she had swallowed a frog. ‘And if any of you choke on your shame, I shan’t be sorry.’
