Crowns of Rust (Kingdoms of Sand Book 2)

by Daniel Arenson

  "Senator Cassius!" said the guards, saluting him.

  "It is done," he told them. "Now come, quickly. We gather the Magisterian Guard, and we march to the Senate. This city will soon crack and bleed. It will be our task, friends, to hold civilization together."

  OFEER

  Bells clanged across the Acropolis. Magisterians ran, armor clanking. Men and women cried. Senators raced down the marble halls, sandals clattering, togas fluttering. And all the while, those horrible bells, that deafening sound. Clang. Clang.

  Ofeer panted. She raced outside onto the cobbled road and stood between the palace, the bathhouse, and the library. Everyone was running back and forth, and all the bells in all the temples were ringing. Above her, he soared—Emperor Marcus Octavius, a great statue all in gold, a hundred feet tall. Crows stood on his head, cawing, crying out with each clang of the bells.

  "What happened?" Ofeer asked a pair of soldiers, but the men ran on.

  A senator raced her way, clutching his ample gut.

  "Dominus!" she said. "Why do the bells ring?"

  The portly man ran by her, calling out for his comrades to head to the Senate.

  Ofeer's head spun. She kept seeking Valentina in the crowd—her only friend here—but couldn't see the princess. Finally she caught hold of a young slave, a Gaelian girl with blond hair and blue eyes.

  "What's going on?" Ofeer said, clutching the girl. "Tell me."

  The slave stared back with wide eyes. "He's dead!" she whispered.

  Ofeer felt a chill. "Who?"

  "The emperor." The slave covered her face, trembling. "Emperor Marcus. They say he slipped in the bathhouse, that he banged his head, that he drowned in the water. They say the senators are trying to reform the Republic, and that Porcia went to summon her legions."

  The girl ran off, and Ofeer stood still, for a moment overwhelmed.

  My father is dead.

  "Ofeer!" rose a cry somewhere in the distance, a cry twisted with rage, with madness. "Ofeer, you goddamn bastard! You knew! You knew!"

  Seneca.

  Ofeer sucked in air, terror leaping through her.

  Marcus told him. Before he slipped and drowned, he told him.

  "Ofeer, I'm going to gut you like a pig!" the shout rose.

  She could still not see Seneca. Hundreds of people were rushing back and forth through the Acropolis. The bells clanged. The crows cawed.

  Ofeer ran.

  She raced downhill along a road, heading toward the Acropolis wall, the border separating it from the city that spread around it.

  When she reached the archway that led into the outer city, Ofeer paused and gasped.

  Soldiers were marching into the Acropolis. Not only the usual guards who patrolled here, but an army—hundreds of soldiers from the Magisterian Guard, marching together. At their lead walked a senator—frail, old, withered, but with square shoulders and a raised chin. It took Ofeer a moment to recognize him. It was the fool! The memento mori she had seen here in the Acropolis, a dancing idiot with a long white beard and loincloth—only that beard was gone now, and a fine toga draped across him. Behind him, the Guard kept pouring in.

  "To the Senate!" cried the fool-turned-senator. "The tyrant is dead! Aelar is a republic again!"

  Ofeer took a deep breath and ran. The doors were open. The soldiers kept streaming in. Nobody was paying any attention to a young slave. As the soldiers marched, Ofeer ran by them, slipping out the gates, leaving the Acropolis behind. The crows bustled above.

  "Ofeer!" Seneca's voice rose somewhere in the distance.

  Clang. Clang.

  Caw! Caw!

  The sandals of soldiers kept clacking. Seneca kept shouting. Ofeer kept running.

  Outside the Acropolis, the city was a warren. Gone were the marble halls and fine columns and meticulous gardens and priceless statues. Here was a crowded labyrinth of brick apartment blocks, rickety wooden houses, roads no wider than her arm span, and a million citizens, servants, and slaves. All the city was bustling. The word was spreading here too.

  "The emperor is dead!" cried a man.

  "Marcus is dead!" rose another voice.

  Some people were weeping, others cheering. Down the street, men were smashing into shops and looting, and one man was beating another. A dog raced down the road in terror, whipping his way through the crowd. Ofeer could no longer run; the streets were too crowded. She had to elbow her way through, and still she heard that clanging of the bells, the cawing of those crows, a din that never stopped.

  She kept moving farther and farther from the Acropolis, heading deep into the maze of Aelar, this endless city, moving between peddlers, workers, scribes, slaves, soldiers, vanishing among the towering buildings, an ant in an endless hive. She felt again like she had in her dream, seeking a place to relieve herself, a place far from spying eyes and prying hands, finding no sanctuary.

  Finally Ofeer made her way into a mausoleum between apartment blocks and a tavern. It rose several stories tall, the walls lined with hundreds of alcoves where the dead rested, like a great beehive for the fallen. Between the dead, Ofeer sat down and pulled her knees to her chin. She hugged her legs, shivering, alone in darkness, lost in a city far from home.

  In the shadows, Ofeer found herself reading the words engraved onto a tomb before her. It was the tomb of a baby. The child had died at the age of only eleven months. As she contemplated the epitaph, Ofeer realized that she had not bled for . . . not since she had met Seneca. Not since that time they had slept together in the cave on the hills.

  She placed a hand on her belly, and Ofeer knew the truth, could feel it as if she were a lumer.

  She was pregnant.

  SEPTIMUS

  He marched through the Acropolis, shoulders squared, chin raised. For the first time in seventeen years, not dancing or limping or playing the fool, not bearded or disheveled. For the first time in seventeen years, a lord of a civilization—Septimus Cassius, senator of Aelar.

  Behind him marched his soldiers, five hundred men of the Magisterian Guard, their sigil a laureled eagle. For generations, the Guard had protected the city of Aelar and its rulers. While the legions fought on the frontiers of the Empire, the Guard had protected the heart of the civilization, watching that heart rot, watching a tyrant and his sadistic children wash their nation with blood. Now it would be the Magisterian Guard—defenders of the city—who returned it to righteousness.

  "The tyrant is dead!" Septimus cried. "The Senate rises again!"

  The bells chimed across the city. The sandals of the soldiers clanked across the flagstones.

  People rushed about the Acropolis around them—priestesses, lumers, servants, slaves. The palace rose to the right on a hilltop. To the left towered the Amphitheatrum, the largest structure in the Empire, its tiers of arches gilded in the sunlight. On the highest hill rose the three golden statues: a statue of Porcia, of Seneca, and of Emperor Marcus Octavius, all in splendid armor, all watching over their domain.

  These statues will soon fall, Septimus thought, and the Octavius family will be nothing but a memory, a cautionary tale to those who would try to seize an empire for their vainglory.

  Ahead rose the Senate. A portico of granite columns formed its entrance, holding a triangular pediment engraved with the forms of past senators. Beyond the vestibule rose a great rotunda, larger than any temple in the Acropolis, supporting a massive coffered dome worked with silver. Once this building had been the center of Aelar. For five hundred years, senators here had ruled over a grand republic of enlightenment.

  Then you came, Marcus Octavius, Septimus thought. Then you, a general risen from the legions, crushed my family, bought some senators, murdered the rest, and made this building a mockery of what it had been—as you made me a mockery. But your palace will fall. The Republic will rise again.

  More senators came to join him—the elders, those who had served in the Republic twenty years ago, those who were still loyal, those who remembered the time they had rei
gned. Other senators—puppets of the Octavius family—stared from the sidelines. A few fled, racing into the city. Others raised their chins and came to join Septimus, perhaps still harboring some loyalty to the ideals of the Republic, perhaps simply changing their loyalties to suit the victors of the day. Soon dozens of senators were walking with Septimus, all in white togas, their soldiers marching behind them.

  As Septimus approached the Senate, soldiers stepped forth—men of the Imperial Cohort. Here were Marcus's personal bodyguards, gleaned from the Magisterian Guard for their unquestionable loyalty and cruelty. A hundred of them spread out, blocking Septimus's way. Each pointed a javelin, and red crests rose from their helms. Two-headed eagles reared on their shields, wings spread, heads topped with crowns.

  "Your lord is dead!" Septimus boomed. "You have failed at your duty. The Magisterian Guard, to which you belong, now serves the Senate. Lower your spears and shields, and let the new lords of Aelar step forth."

  Yet these bodyguards were too well trained—chosen young, tortured, broken, their loyalty beaten into them, more loyal to their dead emperor than the Guard in which they served. They were more machines than men now, and even with their emperor dead, they would fight.

  With a great cry, Marcus's bodyguards tossed their javelins.

  Magisterians stepped forth, shields raised.

  Javelins slammed into the wooden shields, into armor, into flesh. Several soldiers fell dead. Several senators fell too, javelins piercing their torsos.

  "Cut them down, Magisterian Guard!" Septimus cried, hand raised. "Cut our way to the Senate! Fight—for the Republic!"

  Roaring for battle, the soldiers charged, drawing their swords. Marcus's guards drew their own blades and ran to meet them. Swords sang. Blood washed the Acropolis. The corpses littered the road and grassy hills.

  Septimus pulled a javelin free from a corpse. He had never served in the legions or the Guard, but he was a warrior of the Republic, and he would fight for it. He thrust the javelin with his men and cut a man down, moving always forward.

  "To the Senate!" he cried. "The Republic rises!"

  "The Republic rises!" cried his fellow senators, and they too lifted weapons, and they too fought against the remnants of Marcus's tyranny.

  With blood, with death, with sacrifice, they cut their way through. They tore down the last of the Imperial Cohorts, and they stepped over their corpses, climbing the hill toward the Senate.

  Septimus led the way, his toga red with blood, still holding his javelin. He climbed the stairs, passed between the portico's granite columns, and entered the vestibule. His fellow senators walked behind him, leaving the Magisterians to surround the building.

  Down a tiled hallway, Septimus entered the rotunda. Here was a massive round chamber, among the largest in the Empire. Columned arches rose along the walls, and between them stood marble statues of fallen senators, those who had built the Republic. Above them rested a great ring of marble, wide as a city road, engraved with mythological scenes, showing the founding and history of Aelar. Higher up spread the largest dome in the world, coffered and worked with silver and gold, rising toward an oculus that let in the sunlight. Three hundred wooden seats stood in rings here, surrounding a stage.

  Septimus walked onto the stage, as he had countless times before the fall of the Republic. He stood at the pulpit, and he looked upon his fellow senators. Some were wounded. Others were of questionable loyalty. A few Septimus knew would defend this hall with their lives.

  "We will send the word across the city!" Septimus said. "We will spread the news around the Encircled Sea! The Empire is no more. The Republic stands again!"

  Across the hall, the senators raised their hands and their voices.

  "Hail the Republic!" they cried. "Hail Septimus Cassius!"

  As they roared their approval, a flash of white caught Septimus's eye. He turned toward the doorway, and he saw a young, pale woman step into the rotunda.

  Warmth and love filled Septimus's heart like melted butter.

  I did this for you.

  He reached out his hand to her. "Come, my daughter. Come stand at my side, Valentina Cassius."

  PORCIA

  She stood in Aelaria Maritima, clad in armor, crying out for glory.

  "Legio II Stella Mare! Hear me! Our war has not ended!"

  The five thousand troops stood before her, all in armor, shields and spears in hand. The sunlight gleamed off their helmets. Around them rose the walls and towers of Castrum Aquila, the portside fortress of Aelar, a garrison between city and sea. Past an archway and boardwalk rose the masts of the fleet. At her feet lay the headless corpse of a slain senator, a traitor who had come here to raise these men in rebellion.

  "Legionaries!" Porcia cried, raising her spear. The severed head of the senator dripped on the blade. "See what happens to traitors! The senators turn against us. The Magisterian Guard, tasked with defending this very city, has turned against us. They murdered my father!"

  The legions were trained for silence, for perfect discipline, yet now the five thousand men cried out in rage.

  "Hail Empress Porcia!" shouted one.

  "Hail Empress Porcia!" they cried together.

  "You fought in Zohar!" Porcia said. "You crushed the walls of Gefen, and you defeated the Gaelians at sea. You returned here as victors, yet did any honor await you? No! Your emperor instead lies slain, and the conspiring senators have turned your own brothers against you. Perhaps the Magisterian Guard—a fat, lazy force which has never fought in a campaign—has defected. But the legions still stand! We are still proud! Hail Aelar!"

  "Hail Aelar!" they cried together, five thousand voices.

  Porcia mounted her horse and dug her heels into the beast. The animal reared and kicked the air. Porcia shook the severed head off her spear and raised the bloody blade high.

  "To conquest!" she shouted. "To victory!"

  She rode out through the castle gates, emerging onto the city street. The port spread to one side, full of hundreds of ships—among them the ships that had brought this legion home from conquest in Zohar. Ahead spread the city—the greatest city in the world, the center of an empire, home to a million souls, a hive of towers, domes, temples, the glory of her family. Porcia rode, and five thousand infantrymen marched behind her.

  "It will be your head on my spear next, Septimus." She licked her lips. "I can already taste your shriveled heart."

  As they moved along the street, people rushed back from their way, lining the roadsides, peering from windows and balconies. Buildings soared at their sides, seven stories tall, and alleyways snaked between them.

  "Traitor!" a voice rose from the crowd, and a rock flew and slammed into a legionary's armor.

  Hisses rose from the street.

  "Hail the Republic!" rose a distant cry. A chamber pot flew from a balcony, shattering on a legionary's helmet, spilling its foul contents.

  "Fuck Octavius!" shouted a man, hidden in the crowd, and a rotten egg flew and cracked against Porcia's breastplate.

  Porcia rode on. Chin raised, she turned toward her legatus legionis, the commander of this legion, a tall man with a scarred face.

  "Burn them," she said. "Burn down these blocks."

  The general stared back, eyes hard and voice gritty. "My empress, the streets are narrow, and the fire will spread quickly."

  She raised an eyebrow. "We'll be protected within the Acropolis walls. Burn these rats."

  The general nodded and turned to his soldiers. As they marched onward through the city, they kindled their arrows and drew back their bowstrings.

  The people cried out and fled.

  The flaming arrows flew. Some sank into the rickety wooden buildings of the poor, and the fire spread across the walls. Other arrows slammed into the onlookers. A child clutched his chest ahead of Porcia, falling dead, the arrow still burning. She ran over the corpse with her horse and kept riding.

  "You will kneel before me, Aelar!" Porcia cried as she rode. "Y
ou will kneel before your empress, or I will burn this whole city to the ground."

  The fire spread. People screamed. A man ran burning through the streets, a living torch. Enemies. Traitors. All of them—traitors! Servants of the senators. Murderers—all of them! They had murdered her father. But they would not murder her. They would kneel, or she would kill them—every last one—and reign over bones.

  "They killed my father," Porcia whispered, fists clenched around the reins. "This city will bleed."

  People were now fleeing before her. No more rocks were thrown. Hundreds tried to escape the legionaries, cramming into alleyways. A girl fell, trampled by the crowd. Porcia rode onward, and behind her the five thousand marched, and the fire painted the sky red.

  Outside the Acropolis walls, they waited.

  "The Magisterian Guard," Porcia hissed. Her grin grew, so wide it hurt her cheeks, and she licked her lips.

  They stood there, thousands of them, guarding the archway into the Acropolis, topping the walls, protecting the senators within. Porcia reined her horse and raised her spear.

  "Magisterians!" she shouted, hoarse now. "Marcus Octavius is dead. I am his firstborn daughter, Porcia Octavius, his heir. Join me! Join me and we will rule this empire."

  They stared back, silent.

  One among them stepped forth, an officer in gilded armor, a great red crest on his helmet. He held shield and spear.

  "You will not pass, Porcia Octavius," he said. "With Marcus's demise, the Senate has taken emergency command of the city, until a more permanent arrangement can be decided upon. None may enter this place while the senators deliberate."

  "The senators can suck my cock." Porcia snarled, dug her heels into her horse, and charged.

  The officer ahead raised his sword.

  Porcia steadied her spear.

  Outside the gates, they crashed together. Her spear drove into the officer's shield, punching through it, yanking it from his grasp. The man spun aside, blade flying, driving into her horse, cutting deep into the flesh. The stallion screamed, blood gushing, and reared. Porcia fell from the saddle, slammed onto the ground, and thrust her spear, parrying another blow from the sword.