Successio

by Alison Morton

  I hurried along the cream corridors, el-pad in hand, my sandals scarcely sounding on the polished wood floor. I smiled at Rusonia as I entered the anteroom.

  ‘Go straight in, ma’am, he’s expecting you.’

  Nevertheless, I knocked on the door and waited, my nerves jangling. For Juno’s sake, I wasn’t some lowly recruit in disgrace. I heard nothing; I knocked again and went in.

  The legate’s office was a large room, located in the corner of the building, with floor to ceiling bulletproof windows on two sides. The regulation cream was broken up with a lot of bookshelves, some prints and maps and a display cupboard. The little gold eagle I’d bought him at Christie’s on our previous trip to London glistened behind the glass doors as it reflected the early morning light. Unlike other people’s offices, the large meeting table was paper-free.

  He was sitting behind his desk, head down signing some document. He finished, closed the folder, put the top back on his pen, laid it on the desk and looked up. I was shocked by the dark shadows under his eyes and taut lines around his mouth. What in Hades was happening to him?

  I half-extended my hand, instinctively, but quickly drew it back. We were in our work environment; he the unit head, me a senior officer, but under his command. Not easy, but we’d made it work over the years.

  ‘Sit down, Carina,’ he said, waving me to the chair opposite him. ‘Two things. Firstly, I’ve had a complaint from Colonel Branca. She’s aggrieved that she wasn’t at the recent liaison meeting and you saw fit to carry on without her. She felt slighted to have been “relayed instructions via a junior officer.” Any comment?’

  Gods, he was all business this morning.

  ‘It was a periodic meeting, with a month’s notice. We were to address training needs in light of the recent overseas exercise.’ Since I had nothing to lose, I let him have it. ‘Training has been both inadequate and poorly organised this past year and operational arms are suffering as a result. If I may speak so freely, Colonel Branca has little interest or motivation for her job, to the extent of negligence where people may get killed or injured as a result.’

  ‘A serious charge.’ His voice was grim. ‘Can you substantiate it?’

  ‘How much evidence do you want?’

  ‘Then why haven’t you raised it before?’

  I gasped. Anger swept up through me. ‘May I bring the Legate’s attention to my report last month and the report after the winter warmer exercise?’

  Both had highlighted serious training defaults. Hadn’t he read them?

  ‘I raised them with Colonel Branca, but she considered you were exaggerating.’

  ‘She what?’ I took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t think to discuss it with me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Not your domain.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  He leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘I forget how argumentative you are. Yes, that’s it. I’m perfectly aware she hasn’t been the most effective training officer we’ve had. Her departmental staff has managed well, though.’

  I was bursting with my own opinion, but kept it to myself, remembering Nonna’s advice.

  ‘This brings me neatly to the second thing. Effective tonight at 18.00 you’re relieved of your command of Operations.’

  No!

  I stared at him. I couldn’t move. I ran his words through my head again. Why? Gods, it was unfair. Just because I’d criticised a useless but well-connected old lush. Was Conrad getting personal here? Was he resentful of how I’d reacted to Nicola’s letter? No, that was so out of character for him. I had no option but to accept it, but throwing me out of the job he knew I loved was unbelievably severe.

  Then I spotted tiny creases around the edge of his mouth that had nothing to do with his tiredness.

  ‘You’re taking over Training and Personnel on promotion, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Congratulations.’ And he smiled at me with the warmth and sparkle of normal times.

  ‘You—’

  ‘Yes?’

  I swallowed. Hard.

  ‘You… you surprised me, that’s all.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘You are such a liar.’

  ‘Yeah, well. That wasn’t nice.’

  ‘But fun.’ He smiled.

  I didn’t think so, but he had a more robust sense of humour than I. I think most men did.

  He went over to his coffee machine and brought me back a cupful to which he promptly added a slug of brandy.

  ‘For the shock, of course,’ he said and winked.

  *

  Branca was ‘retired’ on medical grounds. She had to get dried out as a condition of drawing a full pension, which I thought was fair. Although I was functionally in charge of such things now, I lost interest once I’d seen the mess she’d left the department in. Branca’s executive officer, Captain Petrus Sergius, had held it together as much as he could. His human resources background before joining the PGSF had been invaluable. No, it had pretty much saved it all from going under. I was mentally exhausted, but in a way grimly satisfied, after our long hours hammering out the new framework.

  ‘Thank you, Sergius, good session. Let me have the budgets as soon as you can. Last thing, can you open up a feedback mailbox on the department intranet?

  ‘Do you mean like a suggestions box, ma’am?’

  ‘Exactly so. I want input from everybody.’

  His grey eyes looked wary.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Colonel Branca expressly forbade such a thing and made it a disciplinary.’

  I couldn’t believe it. She really had made the rules up as she went along.

  ‘Well, Sergius, news for you. I want to know. You might find a revisit to the legate’s standing orders about transparency and teamwork of, what, nearly eight years ago, worthwhile.’

  His face closed down; he tightened his mouth, his eyes lost a little light.

  Oops.

  ‘Don’t take it badly, Captain. You did a great job. Now you’re going to help me do a better one. Besides,’ I grinned at him, ‘apart from knowing what they’re bitching about, we may learn something ourselves.’

  ‘Very well, Colonel, I’ll get it set up.’

  Colonel! I’d have to get used to being called that.

  He ran his fingers along the side of his el-pad and hesitated.

  ‘Something else?’

  ‘It’s something Colonel Branca dealt with. It’s done, but—’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘It’s fairly routine, just a follow-up after the recent exercise.’

  ‘Okay, Sergius, let’s get a few things straight if we’re going to work together. I don’t play games with colleagues – I don’t have time. If you have something to say, say it. I really don’t mind if it’s as trivial as somebody sniffing in a different way, or a major attack. If it has any significance, or it’s bothering you, you tell me. Use your judgment, sure, but err on the telling side. Okay?’

  He nodded, looking a little defensive. He’d get used to me, I hoped.

  ‘It’s a mail we had from the English liaison officer, Browning, enquiring about a familiarisation visit.’ He paused, looking awkward. ‘Although it was addressed to you, it got routed to us as it had a training code in the reference. I suggested forwarding it to you, but the colonel insisted we deal with it and replied that we were too busy to entertain such informal trips.’ He threw a speculative look at me and decided to stop talking.

  Good move. He learned fast.

  ‘Okay, Sergius. Thanks for telling me.’ I couldn’t take it out on him. ‘Forward it, and Branca’s reply, to me ASAP. I’ll sort it out with Captain Browning.’

  He looked relieved.

  ‘Oh, and don’t call them English. They get seriously miffed if you get their complex nationality thing wrong. Their naval and air forces are “royal” and their army “British”. And for Jupiter’s sake don’t ever call any Scottish people English. They have this love-hate thing. Yo
u‘ll know how annoyed they are by how hard they hit you.’ I grinned. ‘It’s a bit like Castra Lucillans and Brancadori.’

  *

  After Sergius left, I called Colonel Stimpson’s executive assistant at their base in the west of England and she patched me through to Michael.

  ‘I don’t know how to apologise for my predecessor’s rudeness, Michael. She somehow didn’t pass your message to me. Of course, we’ll be delighted if you can find time for a liaison visit. How long can you stay?’

  ‘I was thinking of a week to ten days, if you’ll have me. I might add on some leave I’ve got due.’

  ‘Great, I’ll get a programme drawn up for the official visit. Is there anything you particularly want to see or anyone you want to meet in your free time?’

  ‘I’d very much like to have a look inside your university, if that can be arranged.’

  ‘Sure, easiest thing in the world.’

  ‘I’ve also got a little bit of news for you, but we’ll talk about that when I get there.’

  ‘Don’t be such a tease, Michael. What is it?’

  ‘I’d rather not say over the phone.’

  We had one of the most secure military comms systems in the world; even Fort Meade in the EUS had a problem listening in, and I doubted he was using a public payphone either. So what was the problem?

  *

  Nine days later I met Michael off his flight. I threw my weight around and took our wheelbase out airside and had him disembarked first. My driver loaded his bags, we processed him through the military side of Portus Airport and were soon on our way back to the PGSF building. He couldn’t resist gaping like a tourist at everything. I recalled how entranced I’d been by it all when I’d arrived fifteen years ago, so I gave him the running commentary as we drove along. Cream stone with terracotta roof tiles mixed in with tall, much grander blocks and modern buildings standing alongside older ones; somehow it all fit together.

  In the centre, we drove past one side of a huge open square, surrounded on the other three sides by a forest of stone columns and grand buildings – the forum – containing various public offices, including the Senate. The smaller ones were mostly temples. When I’d first caught sight of it, I’d thought it looked like a sword-and-sandals movie set with extras going up and down the steps, but in normal twenty-first century clothes.

  Twenty minutes after we left the airport, we were skirting a hill rising steeply to an old castle ruin perched at the top of a cliff commanding the whole river valley. Halfway up was a beautiful stone house, the Golden Palace. With long single storey wings running out from each side, it looked like a bird poised for take-off.

  I wasn’t sure how much English my driver understood, so describing the scenery kept us to general topics until we were safe inside my office in the PGSF.

  At the guard post, I’d retrieved a slim metal wristband with a tiny screen and clipped it on Michael’s wrist.

  ‘It’s an ID and commset combined. Don’t forget to wear it at all times, otherwise you’ll have sudden company in the form of a security detail. If the guard watch office sees a biosignature in the building without an ID attached on their screens, they automatically respond. Pretty robustly.’ I grinned at him.

  ‘Consider me warned,’ he smiled back.

  ‘C’mon, I’ll take you on the short tour before lunch.’

  One military unit headquarters is pretty much like any another, but our sports area included a sand-floored arena and the armoury for bladed weapons. Michael was drawn to the small museum and talked in his stilted Latin to the curator. Marcellus Vitus had been the primipilus, the most senior enlisted man, before his retirement three years ago. He just knew everything, so I listened carefully too.

  ‘I’d like to have another chat with Vitus, if that can be arranged,’ Michael said as we made our way to the mess area.

  ‘Sure, I’ll—’

  ‘Carina! Where’ve you been? I get back and you’d vanished. Oh, congratulations, by the way.’

  Daniel. Now unit deputy, he’d been my buddy since we were junior officers together. Well, apart from a really frosty period seven years ago after the final Pulcheria operation. That had lasted a whole uncomfortable year. Eventually, he’d thawed and we’d mostly regained our friendship, but with a tentative note still hanging there.

  The teasing expression in his dark eyes now was matched by his infectious grin.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ I said formally, locking down my answering grin and switching to English. ‘May I present Captain Michael Browning, of the British Army special forces? Michael, this is Colonel Daniel Stern, the deputy legate.’

  ‘Oh. Morning, Captain. Good to meet you. You’re with us for a couple of weeks, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, I am, sir. We’re scheduled to meet tomorrow, at 11.00 hours.’

  The two men assessed each other. Daniel broke first, smiling, took the Brit’s arm and pulled him along. ‘Let’s grab a beer then, before lunch, and get to know each other.’ He turned his head over his shoulder towards me and winked. ‘You can run along now, Lieutenant-Colonel,’ he said. I said nothing, but smiled to myself as I walked back to my office, pleased the two men had gelled so quickly. I glanced at my watch. Half an hour before lunch. I’d quickly check my desk and join them in the bar.

  ‘Colonel,’ a sombre-faced Sergius greeted me. He had a naturally solemn expression, but now his features looked pinched in. ‘Something unfortunate has occurred.’

  Not my grandmother. Please Juno, no.

  ‘What? Is it the Countess?’

  He shook his head, but looked as if he was eating stale field rations. He shuffled his feet and looked away. Sergius’s carefulness was starting to annoy me. Didn’t he ever take a risk?

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘The DJ Custodes XI Station rang through. They’ve arrested a female juvenile. Drunk in a public place.’

  ‘And?’

  I didn’t particularly care about some stupid kid pissed out of her head. Strictly one for the custodes. Then fear stabbed me in the gut. Please gods, not Stella. Silvia would be mortified. Good thing they’d rung me, not the palace, if it was her.

  Sergius looked down at the el-pad in his hand as if to find some help there. He looked up at me and said in a totally expressionless voice, ‘The name on the arrest sheet is Mitela, Allegra.’

  VI

  ‘Here, Bruna, drink this.’

  A strong, masculine hand bearing a chipped mug came into view, interrupting my study of the skirting in this dismal room. I was crouching over with shame and tension.

  Lurio had greeted me at the station house entrance, dragged me into the nearest interview room, thrust me down on a hard plastic chair and told me to stay there. When he came back, I took the mug automatically, sipped and nearly lost my ability to breathe at the fiery spirit he’d poured into the tea.

  ‘Juno, Lurio, how much have you put in this?’

  ‘Enough to wake you up out of drama queen mode.’

  ‘Well, screw you.’

  ‘Much better,’ he replied and grinned at me. Cornelius Lurio, currently Department of Justice Custodes Senior Urban Cohorts Commander, had been my boss on my first ever undercover operation fourteen years ago. I’d been Senior Justiciar Bruna then, with a minus intention of going anywhere near the PGSF. The false name had stuck, although only used now as my nickname. We’d briefly been lovers during that year Conrad and I had parted. Lurio was one of my oldest and most acerbic friends.

  ‘Look, Bruna, it’s not a big deal. Kids are always doing stupid things. Be grateful it’s nothing worse.’

  ‘But she’s so young. Allegra’s different, she doesn’t—’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody naive! Your fluffy little bunny is like anybody else. We’re always scraping them off some pavement somewhere. Especially the gold-plated ones.’

  I glared at him. He never failed to throw my family’s wealth in my face.

  ‘Yes, yes, you can look all Hades at me, but you know I’
m right.’

  ‘Give me the details, please.’

  He looked at the arrest sheet. ‘The local squad was called by the bar owner who’d chucked Allegra and an older girl out. The two girls had got rowdy and were starting to annoy the other customers. The two of them started running across the Via Nova playing dodgems with the traffic.’

  I swallowed hard to prevent a scream escaping. The Via Nova was not only incredibly busy; it was the site of Conrad’s accident. How in Hades had she got so drunk? That bar owner should be flogged. I would make it my personal mission to have her licence revoked and her business ruined.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When the patrol got there, they found Allegra slumped by the side of the road, weeping, but truculent. No sign of the older girl. They arrested Allegra, put her in a general holding cell with the town tarts and petty thieves. Apparently, Allegra had used some offensive language when she was arrested. The custody sergeant thought it would teach her a lesson.’ Even Lurio looked grim.

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘Don’t go there, Bruna. I can understand why the sergeant did it. The shock often works. But she didn’t realise they were dealing with such a protected little flower.’

  I hated him at that moment.

  ‘She refused to give her name. She didn’t bleat, but as her clothes and accent showed she came from a well-off family, they got permission from the magistrate to scan her.’ He snorted. ‘Imagine the panic that caused when they read her identity on the display! With such a live coal landed in their laps, they called me.’

  Screw the custodes having a bad day, Allegra would have been frightened beyond reason. Not just the custodes, nor the restraints, the arrest vehicle, the humiliation, but the rough element in the holding cell.

  ‘Thank you for contacting me, Lurio,’ I said stiffly. ‘May I see my daughter now?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready? I won’t have a screaming session or cat-fight in one of my stations.’

  Juno, he was all heart. ‘You may be reassured, Senior Commander, that we know how to conduct ourselves, even under trying circumstances.’

  ‘Trying to put me in my place?’ He smirked.

  ‘Just get on with it.’