by Cass Morris
The medic let the door swing closed, leaving the legionaries alone with their misery once more. Vitellius staggered backward a few more steps, nearly colliding with Mennenius. “What—how—” He turned a stricken gaze to the medic, then to the Iberian healer. “Tell me this isn’t as bad as it looks. Tell me it isn’t—it isn’t—” He could not bring himself to say the word aloud.
“It does bear similarities to the red plague that visited Aven some years ago,” the Aventan medic said. Vitellius’s shoulders sagged. “But it is not precisely the same. There may be . . .” His voice squeaked with desperate hope. “There may be easier remedies. Or perhaps it is less . . . less . . .” Helplessly, he looked to his Iberian colleague.
The Iberian healer made a feeble gesture with both hands. “I cannot say what this is. We shall treat it as best we can. The fever is the greatest danger, it would seem.”
Vitellius rubbed at his forehead with the heel of one hand. “How? How did this happen? There hasn’t been unusual illness in the city since we got here, so why now?”
“They were both on duty last night.” Mennenius’s voice, just behind him. “During the Lusetani attack.” A pause. “They were on the walls when that mist rose up.”
XXV
City of Aven
The days of the Ludi Athaeci were the hottest of the summer.
For the heat itself, Vatinius Obir didn’t mind. He knew heat, from his hometown of Walili, which the Aventans called Volubilis. Knew cold, too, for as a youth he had visited the great mountains that rose up beyond the cedar forests south of that place. Weather never troubled Obir much, for it was simply dealt with, to his thinking. Put more clothing on, or take off as much as you could manage without offending anyone. Easy.
What troubled Obir about this heat was that it seemed to be driving the city mad.
“Explain yourselves.” He folded his arms across his chest, glaring at the men who stood across from him: an assortment of boys and men, all sporting bruises and scrapes. When no one immediately ventured a narrative, Obir settled his weight back against the edge of his desk. “Explain yourselves now, before I have cause to grow angry.”
“It was only a tussle,” said one, who divested himself of his sullen attitude at an arch of Obir’s eyebrow. Standing up straighter, he went on, “With the boys at the Volscian Gate.”
At least they had not caused a ruckus with their neighbors on the Esquiline Hill. Some of the collegia in the city were brutes who preyed upon their neighborhoods, beating payments out of shopkeepers and artisans in exchange for dubious protection against other thieves. Obir disdained such practices—and furthermore, his patron Sempronius Tarren had forbidden them. Obir’s men kept order in their neighborhood, settled disputes between their own, and dealt abrupt justice to outsiders who tried to muscle in. The Esquiline had flourished for a decade as a result, and Obir found his neighbors quite as generous in their security as they would’ve been in fear. It would have been an indignity and a hassle, if his lads had caused trouble in their own territory.
“We were just scouting out, I swear it, captain. We’d heard about someone giving trouble to our fullers on the corner there, you know, by the—”
“I know where our fullers are, yes. Stop stalling.”
The youth’s shoulders hunched uncomfortably. “Well, the Volscian boys were there, and they . . .” He rubbed at his creased brow. “They were . . .”
“Yes?” Obir spread his hands. “I will be disappointed if you lose your tongue so soon after finding it.”
“That’s the trouble, sir.” This, from another of the lads, wiping at his bloody nose. “We can’t quite recall what started it.”
“You can’t recall?” Obir looked from him to the others. “Did they knock your heads about that badly?”
“They’re telling the truth.” A new voice, accented more heavily than Obir’s, but with a different flavor: one that spoke of dark northern forests and a swift-flowing river, rather than arid foothills and red earth. Ebredus, Tennic-blond and tall as one of the trees he worshipped. He was scarred all over and marked with ink as well, but Obir saw a fresh gash upon his cheek.
“Don’t tell me you were part of this!” Obir expected better; Ebredus was a man his own age, and like him, had come to Aven by way of a legion’s auxiliary service. He didn’t have citizenship, like Obir, but he had made his home in the city nonetheless. “Did all of you leave your good sense in bed when you rose this morning?”
“I cannot explain it, captain,” Ebredus said. His face was stoic as ever, but his pale eyes held a hint of shame. “I would swear to you that no harm was meant, on either side. We stepped off the curb, and then . . . then we were fighting. They must have said something.”
“We stopped when the priest of Concordia came!” one of the younger boys exclaimed, as though it were some sort of defense for having brawled to begin with. “You know the one, the Air mage from the temple on the other side of the Clivus Patricus—”
“Enough.”
The boy’s words pricked a reminder at the back of Obir’s mind: another day, when men had come to blows and could not be stopped, except by magical intervention. Nothing more had come of it then, so far as Obir knew. ‘But this . . .’
For now, order had to be maintained. “Now look,” Obir said, straightening to his full height. He had the advantage of everyone in the room except Ebredus in that regard. “The city’s crowded for the games. Lots of visitors, lots of traders, lots of chance for trouble. But people need to feel safe here, yes? When the Subura scares them off—” One of the boys spat on the floor at the mention of their rivals. “—then I want them spending their coin on the Esquiline. But they’re not gonna do that if they see you ugly brutes brawling in the streets, eh?” He gave the nearest boy a slight cuff. “So go make yourselves useful. Find the travelers, hustle them into our inns and taverns. Make sure Ferinna and her girls and boys get good custom. And if you can’t do your jobs without bloodying yourselves up, might be you’ll find yourselves cleaning out the latrines for the whole neighborhood.”
They dispersed, with hangdog expressions and mumbled apologies. Ebredus in particular ducked his head and tugged at his forelock. “Will not happen again, captain.”
“It better not!” Obir growled, though his thoughts were more of a prayer than a command. ‘Let this be only an oddity. These hot days madden the blood, and no surprise if the fool boys were too embarrassed to tell me what started the fight. No surprise if they broke it off when they saw a priest.’
Still, the memory discomfited him. The previous year, he and his boys had been the ones breaking up a fight—in the Forum, of all places, during the campaign season. Autronius Felix and some of his friends, supporters of Sempronius Tarren, had scuffled with men loyal to Sempronius’s opponent. They had fought like men possessed, all of them, and only halted when Felix’s brother, an Earth mage, cast his magic into the ground around them. Sempronius had hauled Felix off for answers, but if he had ever gotten any, Obir knew nothing of it. He had wrangled the other Popularist fighters to their homes—with the help of his brother, Nisso, who had died not long after, defending Sempronius against an assassination attempt.
It had been Nisso who had first learned of that fight, in fact, when the Lady Latona’s maidservant burst into the collegium’s tavern, seeking aid. ‘How funny they looked.’ Nisso had been taller even than Ebredus, and the girl Merula scarcely came up to his chest, for all her ferocity. ‘A bantam facing off against a stork.’
The memory put a pang in Obir’s chest. Nearly nine months now, he had led the collegium without his brother at his side, and there was no day he did not feel the loss. Obir trusted his men, and the women who worked for the collegium, too. Some had fought alongside him in Numidia; others had been on the Esquiline even before he’d taken control of the collegium from its previous captain and had assisted in that struggle. But none were his bro
ther. None had shared hearth-space with him all his life, and none knew his mind so well. If there were trouble brewing in the city, Obir would need a strong partner at his side, but it was hard to learn to trust anyone as he had trusted Nisso.
‘Oh, brother, would that you were here.’ But as soon as he thought the words, he cast his eyes to the earth and made a quick sign with his right hand. Calling upon the dead in such a way could disturb their spirits. ‘And that’s the last damn thing we need now.’
* * *
On the morning the games began, the city went quiet everywhere except the Circus Maximus, with all attention streaming there. The Circus could hold a quarter of the city’s population, and many of those denied admission would be thronging around the stadium, peering in through the tunnels to catch a glimpse, or simply waiting to hear news of victors and wonders. Inside and out, they drank and ate and cheered.
Things were calmer on the far side of the Forum, beneath the shady greens in the garden behind the Temple of Venus. There, Latona sought the counsel of the High Priestess, Ama Rubellia.
Venus had done well by her chosen votary; Rubellia had amply rolling curves and glossy dark hair, with warm brown skin that fairly glowed in the summer sunlight. Well into her thirties, Rubellia exuded not only sensuality, but a quiet self-confidence that Latona had long envied. If Rubellia had ever felt anything less than certain of her place in the world and the gods’ plans for her, Latona had never seen sign of it.
Latona had written Rubellia from Stabiae, but there had been so much she had feared to commit to paper. As the two women sat beneath myrtles and oleander, with a bowl of iced wine and a vermilion dish of pine nuts between them, Latona filled her friend in on the full story, from Alhena’s summons to the fiends that had nearly felled Vibia. Rubellia’s lovely face grew grave as the tale went on, but she never interrupted. Only when Latona had finished telling her of Salonius’s utter dismissal at the Galerian dinner did Rubellia release a tense sigh and speak. “Well, my dear, I won’t say you were wrong to try and find support from that quarter, but neither will I say your initial instincts against trusting the Commission were ill-founded.” She shook her head, long carnelian-and-gold earrings jangling. “Ocella used them as a tool for harassing and hunting his enemies, but he was not the first. Their order has long strayed from its noble purpose. They expect to know what advantage is in it for them, what payments will be forthcoming, before they deign to stir themselves.”
“The name of the Augian Commission still inspires fear and good behavior among mages, but it seems their enforcement has become . . . selective.” Latona’s eyes went skyward. “I knew Ocella had corrupted some of them, but I did not think to find the rest so feckless. And if we are on our own to deal with this menace . . .”
Rubellia’s well-shaped eyebrows arched. “On our own?” Her laughter always rang as clear as bells, even in dire circumstances. “Latona, dear one, there are more than three hundred mages in the city. Fewer who have talent strong enough to combat the forces of Discordia, I’ll grant you—”
“Far fewer,” Latona said. “And I say that not to disparage a man or woman among them, but sweet Juno, Vibia and I barely got past the last trap they laid, even with the benefit of education and preparation.”
“So we must educate and prepare others.”
Latona thought of the Cantrinalia ritual, the sacred power of so many mages joined together, warm and glowing. What a thing it would be, to harness that fellowship toward a worthy cause! But Latona doubted it could be done as easily as imagined. “Commissioner Salonius made it clear he thought I was addled. Others will think the same.”
“Some others. Not all.”
“All the same, I can’t say I’m eager to gain a reputation as a madwoman on top of everything else.” Latona grabbed a few pine nuts and rolled them in her fingers, remembering what others already said of her. ‘A barren harlot. An ambitious conniver. A little spy.’ She pinched one nut between thumb and forefinger till the shell popped and the soft seed popped out. “And even if I could lay my vanity aside enough for that—”
“It’s not vanity.”
“—it wouldn’t help in persuading anyone.”
“Likely not,” Rubellia agreed. “So we must start with those we can convince, and have them keep alert for any trouble in the city like those you had in Stabiae.”
“Rallying our friends may not be enough. The power of those things, when they had Vibia . . .”
Rubellia gave a smile that spoke of total confidence. “Then we must also make ourselves stronger.”
* * *
Merula was missing the first day of the games, but she didn’t much mind. The atmosphere outside the Circus Maximus was as lively as within the stands, and the first day was less interesting than the second would be. It mattered little that, as a slave, she could not get into the stadium on her own to see today’s hunts and races; tomorrow, she would accompany the domina to see the theatrical presentations and the gladiatorial matches.
Still, the domina had given her coin and told Merula to go enjoy herself for a few hours, while she sat in the Temple of Venus with the priestess, so enjoy herself Merula would. She wandered through the crowded streets surrounding the Circus, snagged a hot sausage and a handful of cracked nuts from a thermopolium, and wondered if any fights would break out during the racing. The four teams—Reds, Whites, Greens, and Blues—had ardent supporters, all, and none of them took losses lightly. A bit of rowdiness would not go amiss, so long as she got back to the domina before she needed to be collected for supper.
As she rounded the curve at the northern edge of the valley, she caught sight of a man she knew, amid a knot of others, some of whom looked vaguely familiar: Vatinius Obir, with the men and women of his collegium. They had claimed a segment of the low wall between the street and the stadium, and were sitting on it, straddling it, leaning upon it as they quaffed from clay cups and passed around bags of snacks. ‘I could be having worse company,’ Merula decided and trotted over to them.
“—So the professor says, ‘Damn fool! He’s gone and woken up the bald man instead of me!’” Whatever Obir’s joke had been, it had evidently been very funny, judging by the guffawing laughter the others devolved into. Obir’s dark eyes widened in recognition when he saw Merula. “Oh-ho! Careful, boys!” he cried, affecting an oversized expression of terror. “Here comes a she-hawk who will tear your ears off soon as look at you!”
“As if I could be reaching yours,” Merula said, pointedly looking up at him. Even sitting against the low wall, he towered over her.
This earned another boisterous laugh. “What can we be doing for you, little hawk?” His brow creased slightly. “Where is your mistress, eh?”
“You are not knowing?” she retorted, folding her arms over her chest. Lady Aula had told her about Praetor Sempronius’s plans to guard the domina with his pet collegium. She had wanted to dismiss the notion, taking offense at the implication that she could not keep her lady safe—but there was sense in having more eyes and ears alert for peril, and the men of the Esquiline had proved useful enough in the past.
“We do not follow her every step,” Obir said, unruffled. “Our reach rarely extends below the Forum.”
Merula rolled her eyes. “Perhaps you should be showing me these boys who are trailing my domina, so I am not accidentally slitting any of their throats.”
Obir obliged her, pointing out a few of the younger men with them. “You must come by the collegium sometime to meet the rest of the boys.” He grinned. “Some are even smaller than you, little hawk!” Her scowl had no appreciable effect, and Obir continued in the same jocular vein. “So, I must assume you’re off-duty! Come and drink with us. The Blues took the first two races, so we are toasting their glory.”
“My family supports the Reds,” Merula said, but she held out a hand for a cup anyway.
“And if they win,” said a
rosy-cheeked young man to Obir’s right, “we’ll toast their glory, too. Anyone but the damned Greens, really.” This prompted a rousing chorus of insults and invectives against the Green faction. Merula only shrugged and drank her wine.
“Not interested in the races?” Obir asked.
“I am preferring the fights. Tomorrow, Dimo the Thessalan will be taking all challengers, and Tryphona of Cynosoura has returned from Chrysos just to fight Fair Ariadne.” Merula heard the breathless eagerness in her own voice and scuffed her heel in the dirt. “Or so they say.”
“Ahhhh,” Obir said, crossing one foot over the other. “So who do you favor?”
“Tryphona,” Merula said without hesitation. “Ariadne’s magnificent, yes, but Tryphona’s been the champion across three provinces. It’ll be a fight worth the watching, though.”
“Think anyone can take down Dimo?” asked another of Obir’s men, a squat older fellow. This set off a lively conversation, all the collegium chiming in to agree with Merula’s assessments, or argue with her. They discussed the advantages of different styles, retiarus with net and secutor with trident, round-shielded hoplomachus or the more heavily armored murmillo. Merula allowed herself to be persuaded into putting some money on the strength of her opinions, and she expected to earn a tidy profit off the bets. She was rarely wrong when it came to judging fighters.
Once that excitement faded, and the conversation turned to other matters, Merula took another cup of wine and watched Obir with his fellows. He was always at the center, though not always the focus of whatever happened. The others rotated around him even as they talked to one another, while Obir stayed planted. Though he laughed and joked and drank with the rest of them, his eyes often went above their heads, taking the measure of the area. ‘Watching for threats.’ Merula approved.
