by AJ Cooper
At last the fourteenth day came, and Claudio passed through the Arch of Conquest that marked the entrance to Imperial City. Once inside, Claudio rode in the shadow of the towering apartment blocks. On one of the bare brick-faced sides, an advertisement for the Imperial Arena had been painted: “Glory, Honor, Blood—Two tickets for five silver.” Another came right after it: a picture of a woman in a brassiere and skirt, and the words “Lady Ciutta’s Den—Third Building on Straight Street—Enter and Enjoy.” Claudio immediately looked away, feeling a stab of shame at his countrymen.
The city swarmed with people. A pack of urchins bolted past Claudio as they chased a dog, laughing all the way. A pair of Fharese noblewomen in white gowns approached cautiously from the other direction, their faces hidden by blue veils. A wealthy eastern couple—dressed in purple and glittering with jewelry—pushed through the crowd with a gaggle of slaves, even as they shouted complaints about the “squalor” and “ugly buildings.” More familiar to Claudio, a band of legionaries—on temporarily leave, apparently, and identifiable only by their military capes—stumbled down the way, reeking of alcohol.
The city drew men and women from the four winds.
The Empire itself was much the same, a disparate group of people united by a single force: the proud and intellectual, if useless, east; the rustic, unlearned north; and the west, kindred in blood and vision. Five parts, five peoples, all governed by one.
“One Land, One Vision, One Emperor,” Claudio found himself muttering the Empire’s motto under his breath.
Soon he reached Imperial Square. The people here were clustered even tighter. Merchant stalls lined the perimeter. On the north side was the hippodrome, and beyond it the towering White Palace with its colonnades, domes and immense columns. At once he made his way there.
The guards recognized Claudio and let him into the palace, explaining that he made it just in time for the celebration, that it had been moved back a day and would start tonight at sundown. Hearing this Claudio immediately went to his private quarters—a small marble-floored room on the seventh (and highest) story of the palace. The sun was already dipping below the horizon. Hurriedly he asked a servant for soap and a washing bowl; his skin was caked with dirt and sweat from the long journey, and his smell was less than pleasant.
He remembered that—at least partially—the reason he came was to scope out this new emperor, to see if he fit the exemplar of Anthans, first of the emperors. If he didn’t, he would need to report back to his mother with the grave news, and perhaps do something else.
In time he scrubbed all the dirt from his skin. He donned his nice clothes: a felt hat, a fine tunic of scarlet cloth and short woolen breeches. He glanced at himself in the mirror and adjusted the hat a few times. His unruly brown hair refused fit into the right place. Such fine clothing was not seemly for a man of the knights’ class; it was showy and against what his father Lucento had taught him. But the Augusts and the Imperial Family had, in recent times, taken to excess and showmanship. It was improper for a wholesome Imperial, but, alas, it was necessary for Claudio to dress like this.
He waited until the sun had mostly set before he exited the room.
Inside the grand hall, Claudio realized he was the most humbly dressed of all the partygoers. The men wore silk tunics of rich forest green and dark purple. The women wore billowing dresses of samite, dyed sky blue or flame red and woven with gold or silver thread. Claudio even caught sight of an Imperial woman in southron belly-dancer clothing: in an orange veil, a short skirt and a tight red midriff.
I, Claudio thought, am about ten years behind the current fashion. No, make that a hundred.
“Ah, Signor Claudio!”
He turned around to find a balding old man in a green, silver-embroidered tunic and form-fitting trousers. The purple sash around his chest identified him as a councilor.
“Don’t you remember me?”
“Ah, yes!” Claudio said, and froze, biting his lips as he realized that no, he really didn’t.
“Councilor Bruesio… how could you forget him? No one can!” He was clearly drunk, and the wineglass in his hand lent credence to Claudio’s guess. “The last time I saw you, you were a child. Ten years old, at most, and the son of the most famous legate in the Empire.”
The collective noise of the chatter got to Claudio and he remembered just how truly inept he was in situations like this. He put on fake smile and tried to project an air that said, “I am so happy to be here.” Then he said aloud, “I hear there’s a new emperor.”
“Yes, yes,” Bruesio said. “That is what the whole celebration is about, after all.” He laughed and took a sip of wine. “I like him very much. He is such a good ruler.”
Claudio saw dishonesty in Bruesio’s eyes. He was wise to speak well of him in public; yet self-serving dishonesty always sent Claudio’s blood boiling. “I must go,” he said, and walked off. Claudio could taste Bruesio’s stunned silence in the air as he walked away.
The party went on. The crowd grew collectively stupider as the racks of wine slowly emptied. Claudio had a glass of his own, though he never liked the taste of the stuff. He chatted as little as he could—a silent figure, for the most part, throughout the night, and the lack of acknowledgment did hurt him. But he was not a councilor or even an August; just the son of the most famous—and now deceased—Imperial Knight.
Eventually the identity of the new emperor became clear: a young man, about Claudio’s age, swarthy, with jet-black hair, wearing a white-and-purple robe studded with gems; and—Claudio noted—completely and utterly drunk. What little glimpses Claudio caught of him through the hours included his grabbing women and making lewd gestures, making filthy jokes and cementing it in Claudio’s mind that this young man had two purposes in life: sex and drinking. The imperial office was just a means to that end.
Late in the night, Claudio was stunned to see the girl in southron dress approach him. She tore off her veil, revealing brown eyes and light, sun-kissed brown hair. “Hello,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Claudio.”
“You’re awful quiet.” She smiled, flashing a set of bright white teeth. “Want to know a secret?”
“Erm—”
She was beautiful. “I’m not August. I’m not even of the Knightly class. I’m a girl from Lady Ciutta’s den, nothing special, just a whore from the west side. I don’t know why I’m telling you this but I think I can trust you.”
Her breath reeked of alcohol. Claudio felt duty-bound to take her back to her place of work. “How did you get in here?” he whispered.
“I snuck, and I climbed. The security precautions aren’t as strenuous as people say…”
The Imperial Guard would kill her if anyone besides Claudio found out. “Miss, you need to get out at once. You’re very lucky I’m the one you told.”
“I knew I could trust you.”
Glass shattered somewhere. A few gasps echoed through the room.
A shrill woman’s voice called out, “Someone tried to murder my son!”
The girl was gone.
Claudio rushed over to the scene of the commotion. Julia Seánus covered her eyes with her hands. She shrieked, “Someone handed my son a glass of wine, and Leon tested it, and look at him now!”
The bodyguard—Eloesian by the look of his face and a slave by the look of his simple brown clothing—lay on the floor in a seizure. In his still-shaking hand he clutched the stem of the shattered wineglass.
“I knew some people didn’t like my son!” Julia hissed. “Well I won’t let you kill him! He’s my son, gods damn it all. He’s my son!”
“Calm yourself,” said the councilor from before, Bruesio. The event seemed to have wrenched him from his drunkenness; in fact, it seemed to have sobered almost everyone. In the corner, next to his mother, Emperor Giton stood shaking, face white with fear.
Finally he said something, “Once I find out who did this, I’ll have him peeled!”
Claudio spen
t the night in his room pondering. Things were not well in the White Palace, and he needed to get to the bottom of it. The strange night seemed a blur to him. But despite his reservations he knew he was needed. An assassination attempt on the emperor was rare, even with such a devious and—dare Claudio think it—incompetent boy on the White Throne.
“Yes, I am needed,” he said aloud as he stared out into the lights of the city and felt the cool breeze of the sea. Tomorrow, he would write a letter to his mother. He would stay in Imperial City because duty called.
