Muses of Roma (Codex Antonius Book 1)

by Rob Steiner

  She went to the sleeper crib and looked through the window on top. Dariya seemed dead. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, which enhanced the death pallor considering her normal skin tone was a west Persian bronze. Her chest did not rise, at least not that Lucia could discern. The cribs did not freeze sleepers, per se, but slowed their metabolisms to just a few percentage points above clinical death. Dariya could stay like this for a hundred years before the sleep took its toll on her body.

  “I'm sorry for this, Dariya,” Lucia said to the pale woman inside. “I'm sorry I wasn't quick enough on Menota. You're a pain in the ass, have been since I met you. But you didn't deserve this.”

  Lucia placed her hand on the window above Dariya's face. The window was cool, more from the chill of the cargo hold than the well-insulated sleeper crib.

  “Kaeso and Nestor are on Terra looking for the Consular Heir who supposedly has a cure for you. Can you believe that? It’s insane. I guess I'm not optimistic, to be honest with you. I know you appreciate honesty. I know you'd be the same way with me.”

  Lucia smiled. Dariya was nothing but honest with Lucia since the day Kaeso hired her and Daryush. In most cases, it was her honesty that made them fight more often than they got along. Lucia understood why; Dariya was just like her.

  “But if anyone can do it, the Centuriae can,” Lucia continued. “You wouldn't believe the things he's told us over the last few days, or the things that’ve happened.”

  Lucia shook her head. “All we wanted to do was stay out of everyone’s way. Now we're in this international crisis and going up against both sides. I don't know what we're thinking. Of course, I don't know what else we could do.”

  Lucia surveyed the empty cargo bay. It had been far too empty the last few months. That was why Kaeso took the Menota job. She could not fault him. All he wanted to do did was keep his crew fed, his ship flying. He was being a centuriae. Lucia longed for those days again, where their biggest worry was finding a job. Looking back, she realized that despite the fights with Dariya, or the breakdowns, or even hunger, those were the happiest days of her life.

  She looked back at Dariya. “Whatever happens, I just wanted you to know that I always respected you. Even when we fought. I...well, I just wanted you to know that.” She grinned. “Because I'd never tell you this while you're awake.”

  Lucia was about to leave when she noticed something on Dariya's left ear. A fine webbing of hair-thin red veins covered the entire lobe. Lucia moved to the other side of the sleeper crib and saw the same thing on Dariya's right ear.

  She tapped her collar com. “Blaesus.”

  “My dear.”

  “Did Nestor mention the first signs of Cariosus infection?”

  “I believe he said blood-shot eyes and pale, almost translucent skin.”

  There was no way Lucia could check Dariya's eyes. Her skin was more pale than usual, but it still might be a symptom of the sleeper crib.

  “What about the ears?”

  “Let me check Nestor’s files,” Blaesus said. “Here we are. One file says if red veins appear on the ears, the Cariosa has 48 hours before full symptoms manifest.” Blaesus paused. “Please don't tell me you see that on Dariya.”

  “Both ears.”

  “Not good,” Blaesus said. “It's progressing while she's in the crib. No known disease does that. We should tell Kaeso.”

  “No,” Lucia said. “They know time is short. They’re going as fast as they can.”

  “But maybe Nestor knows—”

  “Nestor can't cure the Cariosus,” Lucia said. “The sleeper crib was our only chance to delay it. All we can do is wait for them to get back with this cure. I’ll tell Daryush, though.”

  Lucia gave Dariya one last look and then left Cargo One.

  She disturbed herself when she realized she was wondering how to dispose of Dariya once the Cariosus took her.

  35

  Kaeso and Nestor walked the two miles to the Via Decianae at the base of the Aventine along the stinking banks of the Tiber River. Sewage odors wafted from the river just beyond the dilapidated townhouses on his left. Few people walked the cramped streets, as almost all the buildings were either boarded up or abandoned, a rare sight in a city as overcrowded as Roma. Kaeso had never been to this neighborhood, but he knew it to be one of the city’s poorer.

  The closer they got to the river, the more it smelled. Many of the steel mills that once lined the Tiber and supplied Roma with its meteoric growth had closed and moved to other locations in Italia and Europa. But waste from the last one made this neighborhood a cesspool. He even heard the humming mill machinery a mile upriver.

  “So which house is it?” Kaeso asked.

  The rundown townhouses stood on the right side of the street, while a sidewalk and the river were on the left. On the Trastevere across the river, lights twinkled from elegant apartment buildings. But on Kaeso’s side of the river, the homes were dark and vacant. There were just as many overgrown lots as there were buildings. Crude graffiti covered whatever structures still stood.

  At least the area has one thing going for it, Kaeso thought. It'll be easy to spot surveillance.

  Nestor strode down the street, peering at the numbers on each townhouse. Sometimes he had to walk up to the doors and clear away some ash or dirt to read the numbers.

  Midway down the street, Nestor stopped on the sidewalk in front of a dark townhouse. “This is it.”

  “You're joking.”

  “I wish I was.”

  Kaeso grunted.

  The townhouse was mostly intact, but a fire had blown out all the windows and doors years ago. Weeds and saplings grew all over the yard. A dim glow seeped into the front room from a hole in the roof—

  The glow vanished.

  “There's someone in there,” Kaeso said.

  A man's voice yelled from the house. “Get on the ground now, or you die.”

  Kaeso and Nestor froze, glancing at each other.

  A pulse bullet tore the ground to Kaeso’s right.

  “Now!” yelled the voice from the house.

  Kaeso and Nestor slowly lay on the broken concrete sidewalk.

  “Put your hands your heads.”

  Kaeso and Nestor complied. The fact they were alive, and the absence of Praetorians swooping down from flyers, suggested the people in the house were either criminals or Nestor’s Saturnists. The man spoke with a Roman patrician accent, so Kaeso bet on the latter.

  Once Kaeso and Nestor were on the ground, two men emerged from the house with pistols aimed at them. They wore workmen's clothes, and while they seemed to know how to hold their guns, they did not move with the predatory grace of a Praetorian.

  “Easy, friends,” Nestor said. “I think we have a misunderstanding. Tell me, how many children did Cronus have?”

  The men paused. While Kaeso couldn’t see their faces in the shadows, their silence said they thought about Nestor’s question.

  One of the men took out a com pad, tapped a few keys, and then held it to his ear.

  “They asked how many children Cronus had.” The leader listened and then said, “Understood.”

  “Get up,” the leader said, putting his com pad away. “Keep your hands on your heads.”

  Kaeso and Nestor obeyed his commands. While the leader kept his gun aimed at Kaeso and Nestor, he motioned for them to follow the second man into the house.

  The house looked just as bad on the inside as the outside. Blackened debris crunched beneath their footsteps. In the gathering room, a cracked video screen covered the south wall. Burned couches lay on their sides, and soot covered the once colorful frescoes on the walls. A thick smoky odor blanketed the room’s dampness and rot.

  The man in front of Kaeso led them further into the house to what was once the kitchen. A door sat open door in the back, with stairs dropping into blackness. The man pulled out a small light and shined it down the steps, then descended. Kaeso followed.

  The basement was in much bette
r shape than the house above. Although garbage from its years as a haven for the drug addicted littered the corners, at least the walls and floor were not cinders.

  The man’s light illuminated a woman standing in the far corner with folded arms. Kaeso started. She was well-dressed and every bit the Roman matron, adding to Kaeso's surprise. The man turned off his light just as the woman turned on an electric lantern. It emitted a harsh white light that cast sharp shadows on the walls. She walked to Kaeso, held the lantern up to his face. Kaeso returned her stare, trying not to squint in the light. She then studied Nestor the same way.

  “Who asked about the children of Cronus?”

  “I did,” Nestor said. “So, my lady. How many children did Cronus have?”

  She paused. “Who is Cronus?”

  “Forgive me,” Nestor said quietly, “I meant Saturn.”

  The woman nodded. “Put your hands down.”

  Kaeso dropped his hands and asked Nestor, “Saturnist code?”

  Nestor grinned. “Umbra isn’t the only outfit with secret codes.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “Where do you think Umbra got the ideas for its codes?” She turned back to Nestor. “So, brother, what brings you to this lovely sanctuary?”

  “We're searching for a woman and a boy,” Nestor said, then gave her a hard look. “The boy resembles the Consular Heir.”

  The woman gave him a tired smile. She turned and went to a power conduit on the wall behind her. She pulled the unit back on hidden hinges to reveal a door pad. She put her left hand on the pad. It glowed, and then a click sounded from the wall to Kaeso's left. The woman ran her hands over a stone block and then pushed open a door built into the wall.

  In the room beyond, light globes on the ceiling bathed the room in a soft orange glow. The room was twenty feet wide and long. A tabulari sat on a desk to Kaeso's left, several chairs and a couch on the right. In the back of the room was a larger couch where two forms lay wrapped in a blanket. A brown-haired woman slept on her side facing the door, her arm draped over a sleeping boy in front of her.

  Kaeso would not have recognized Spurria if not for her eyes. They were set wide apart, with thin brows. The same as Petra's.

  36

  Lepidus raised the dead man's head by the hair and looked into his dilated eyes. He checked the man's pulse. Nothing.

  “Servius!” he shouted into the man’s ear.

  Disgusted, Lepidus let Servius's head loll. He'd only taken two fingers, and the man drops dead of a heart attack. Lepidus wanted the foreman's screams to last much longer than two minutes. He was not surprised, though. Nothing was going right today.

  “Get another one,” he told Appius. “Someone younger.”

  Appius untied the old foreman's arms from the chair's armrests, hoisted him over his shoulder, and carried him out the office door. He dumped him in the middle of the room where the other Julii employees sat on the floor, their hands on their heads and Praetorian Guardsmen with pulse rifles pointed at them. Through the office door, Lepidus saw the terror in their eyes when they noticed the bloody stumps where their dead comrade’s fingers used to be.

  Appius studied the employees and then pointed to a blond-haired man in his twenties.

  “You.”

  The blond man gasped as two Praetorians lifted him off the ground and dragged him into the office where Lepidus waited. They sat him down in the chair where the older man died and tied him to the bloody armrests. After securing him, the Praetorians left the room. Appius shut the door and then leaned against it with folded arms.

  The blond man's breathing came in gasps and tears brimmed in his wide eyes. Lepidus thought Servius’s two minutes of screams might be enough for this one.

  Lepidus finished wiping his bloody hands in a dishtowel, then tossed it on the desk behind him. He clasped his bloodstained hands in front of the blond man. The man couldn't take his eyes off Lepidus's hands.

  In a kind, patient voice, Lepidus asked, “What is your name?”

  “De-Demeter, my lord.”

  “Demeter, do you know why I'm here?”

  “N-No, my lord.”

  “I'm here because your domina has betrayed the Republic, the Consul, and the gods. I need to find her. Where is she?”

  Demeter’s brimming tears spilled down his cheeks, and he sobbed. “I don't know, my lord, I wish to the gods I did, but I don't. The domina bought me three days ago, she's rarely spoken to me, I only get my orders from my foreman.” Demeter glanced at the pool of blood on the floor next to the chair. “Oh, blessed gods, don't kill me.”

  Lepidus leaned forward and gently stroked the young man’s hair. “Shh, Demeter, I don't want to kill you. To tell you the truth, I hate killing. But it is not up to me to decide these things. I am a tool of the gods, and if it is their will that I kill a man to obtain the information I need, then I will do it.”

  Demeter continued to cry.

  “If you tell me anything about Gaia Julius that helps me find her, the gods will reward you a thousandfold in Elysium.” Lepidus raised Demeter's chin. “And I will let you live.”

  “I don't know,” Demeter said through sobs.

  “Think,” Lepidus said soothingly. “Do you remember a woman and a boy? Both have dark hair. They were dressed like beggars, but the boy would’ve acted like a patrician.”

  Demeter continued to sob, but then his eyes darted back and forth, as if thinking hard. His sobs calmed, and he looked at Lepidus. “I remember them. Yes. They came into the cafe through the back entrance, the slave entrance, I mean. I thought it odd because the boy did not carry himself like a slave. More like a patrician, as you said.”

  “Good,” Lepidus said. “Do you remember when they left?”

  Demeter nodded. “The woman left in the night, and the boy left a half hour before you arrived.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  “They got in a van,” Demeter said, thinking back. “A white van w-with a Borum Meats logo on the sides.”

  Lepidus looked at Appius. His apprentice tapped a few keys on his com pad and spoke to the Praetorian on the other end, quietly issuing a bulletin for a white Borum Meats van.

  As Appius spoke, Lepidus continued questioning Demeter. “Do you remember which direction they went?”

  Demeter paused. “I didn’t see the woman leave, but I did see the boy. I was pruning the flowers and wondered why they drove away so fast.”

  “Direction?” Lepidus repeated.

  “They turned left up the Via Nostrumae. After that, I don’t know.”

  Lepidus smiled. “You've helped me tremendously, Demeter.”

  Appius finished his call and motioned Lepidus into the kitchen. Lepidus said to Demeter, “Excuse me. This will be over soon. You've done well.”

  Demeter nodded, relaxing a bit with Lepidus's assurances.

  In the kitchen, Appius said in a quiet voice, “Traffic cameras show a Borum Meats wagon going in the direction the slave said. But the van entered the Murcia Tunnel an hour ago and didn’t come out.”

  “Any cameras in there?”

  Appius shook his head. “They've been down two days for maintenance. Fortuna was with them when they took that tunnel.”

  “Or they knew its maintenance schedule. Send a detail to search the tunnel.”

  “On their way now.”

  “They'll find the van, but it’ll be empty. Tell your men to track all vehicles that left the Tunnel after the van entered.”

  “Time range?”

  “Half hour.”

  “Could be hundreds of vehicles.”

  “I know,” Lepidus said, “but it's all we have.”

  Appius nodded, then pulled out his com pad and made his calls. Lepidus went back to the office where Demeter looked up at him hopefully.

  “Can I go now, my lord?”

  “In a moment. First we need to settle a formality.”

  Lepidus pulled out the hand-held bolt cutters he'd used to dismember Servius.

&nb
sp; Demeter gasped and squirmed in the chair. “B-But my lord I told you what I knew!”

  “I know, Demeter, but the law states that a slave’s confession is valid in court only if obtained through torture. It's an archaic law, going back a thousand years, but it is still the law. I don’t want Gaia Julius gaining an acquittal off a technicality. Now. Do you want to lose a finger or a toe?”

  37

  Ocella thought she was dreaming when she saw the man standing next to Gaia Julius.

  “This man says he knows you,” Gaia said.

  The man stared at Ocella, a nervous smile playing on his lips. “The name’s Kaeso Aemilus. For now.”

  When Ocella found her voice, she said, “But not ten years ago.”

  He nodded slowly. “Our former employer doesn’t let us keep old names.”

  No they don’t. How long did it take me to get used to the name Marcia Licinius Ocella?

  Ocella did many things in Umbra, things she never imagined when she was a civilian. But seeing Petra’s “dead” husband—and Ocella's first love—standing before her was the first time she felt shock since she joined Umbra. She attended his funeral only a year after Petra's. She watched his body go up in the flames of his funeral pyre. This was a dream.

  But she knew she was awake and staring at the man she once loved. He was older and skinnier, but he had the same deep-set eyes, the same strong cheekbones, the same erect posture. Umbra had changed his mouth and nose, made them both sharper. Small scars crisscrossed his forehead, scars she didn’t remember him having. She wondered if he was an Ancile wearing an Umbra cloak, that Gaia had turned her over to Umbra after all. But when “Kaeso” opened his mouth, she heard his voice and knew it was him. Umbra cloaks could do many things, but they could not mimic another person's voice.

  But this man was an Umbra Ancile. He just said so. Ocella was suddenly alarmed, and the urge to embrace this man melted away. If he was Umbra, that meant he was here to take her back to Libertus. She could not allow that.

  “We need to talk,” he said, then went into the basement beyond the safe room. Cordus awoke and gave her a questioning look. She told him it would be all right, and then she followed Kaeso into the basement. He walked up the stairs without turning to see if she was behind him. She was still too shocked to do anything but follow.