by Kyle West
Anna walked closer to the construction. She could hear men shouting, foremen calling orders, the scratching of sleds as they loaded new stone blocks off the trucks. Massive wooden pulleys and cranes, all powered by animals and men, hefted the stone blocks into position. Hundreds of men worked day and night to make those walls rise — walls that, once completed, would rival Nova Roma’s in size and thickness. Samuel would accept nothing less, and neither would his architect, Valencia.
Even so, those walls weren’t rising fast enough — not when potential enemies lurked on all sides. First, there were the provincial governors, whose ambition was only checked by Augustus — governors who were jealous of Colonia’s wealth and enraged by the slaves it harbored. Then, there was Onyx Black in the west, governing California. Already, he was causing trouble by scrapping Bunkers in El Yermo’s territory. Samuel did what he could to protect what was his, having both Char and Marcus training new men for the Colonian militia as fast as they could. It wouldn’t be long before either the governors or Black made a move, perhaps in tandem. Once the walls were completed, Colonia would be much harder to assault, so long as there were men to protect it. And many of the weapons and much of the ammunition scrapped by Samuel were kept in reserve, meaning Colonia would outgun most of its opponents — at least for now.
“Senator Keener?” a female voice queried.
Anna was broken from her thoughts, and somewhat surprised to see her assistant, Clara. Anna had meant to come out here alone, but the blue-eyed Clara always had a way of finding her. What was more, four brawny men stood behind her, each armed with a sword and a handgun.
“What’s this, Clara?” Anna asked.
“Your guard, Senator.”
“My guard? I hardly see how that’s necessary.”
“It is,” Clara said. “At least for now.”
Clara hesitated, and Anna knew that she had disturbing news. “What happened?”
“There...there was an attempt on Samuel’s life at the dock in Coloso.”
Anna felt her blood go cold. “What? Is he all right?”
Clara nodded. “Yes, he’s fine, but two of his men were killed in the fighting. He’s returned to the city.”
“Who did it?”
“I don’t know, Senator, but I guess it was one of the governors, or maybe even Black. They have the most reason to see Samuel dead.” Clara looked at Anna, her eyes concerned. “And they have as much reason to see you dead, too.”
Anna’s eyes took in the guards. She didn’t know any of them; they must have been cobbled together last minute. If Anna was forced to use a guard, they would have to be men of her own choosing. For now, though, this would have to do.
“Lead me to him,” Anna said.
“Actually, that’s the reason I came here. Samuel’s called for an emergency session of the Senate.”
“Let’s go, then,” Anna said.
Clara and the silent guards led Anna from the city’s perimeter and onto its main street. The streets were bustling with activity, and the crowds parted as Anna and her guard made their way toward the city center.
On either side rose buildings, mostly of wood, but there were a few of stone here and there. The streets were a maze, as the city had grown so quickly that there had been little time for any planning. Only the inner city — the part with the Senate House — had streets laid out in a basic grid pattern.
They made a final turn until they were in Colonia’s central square — often called the Plaza of Sands by the people, because of all the dust that permeated the air from the constant flow of traffic. The Senate House rose on its far end, on slightly elevated terrain. It had been of Valencia’s design as well, and though small, was adequate for its purpose. It was built of sandstone and a steep roof of red stucco, the only adornment being the six red columns supporting the awning above a set of wide stone steps. Though the design was basic, the fact that it had been raised in only six months was more impressive. It had been Valencia’s first project upon arriving in the city, and he was now focusing all his efforts on the walls.
Anna joined the stream of senators walking up the steps. Ever since the Senate House was completed, the dress code of the senators had grown to match. They mostly wore finer clothing on planned sessions, but now they were caught in their day-to-day wear. Anna spied Lyle Bates, a swarthy, bearded foreman who must have rushed over from the wall, his work clothes dusty and worn. There was Emilio Zapata, one of the many slaves of Nova who had found a better life in Colonia. He operated a business running barges up and downriver. The only person well-dressed in pants and a jacket was Franco Anatolia, which was fitting, as he was a tailor.
They all looked at Anna as she and her guard passed. They spoke in whispers, and many of the eyes held fear. Anna was afraid, too, but she couldn’t show it — not when she had been elected Aedile alongside Valencia, a position which gave her the responsibility of overseeing the city’s public works. Colonia’s provincial senators had been given the same rankings as any other in Nova Roma, and as governor, only Samuel had a place in Nova Roma’s Imperial Senate.
When Anna entered the Senate House, well-lit from its high windows, the other senators followed in from behind. Clara and Anna’s guards remained outside; none but senators were allowed in the House while it was in session, though spectators could listen from outside the doors. On important matters, a caller often shouted to the crowds who were too far to hear anything going on inside the House. The House consisted of three rows of stone benches on its either side, facing each other. On the opposite end of the open House doors was the governor’s chair. A few senators had already taken their seats. Anna took her seat on the front row, near the governor’s chair on the other side.
Of Samuel, there was no sign. A few minutes passed, during which the rows filled even more. Michael and Lauren entered, the former in combat fatigues and the latter in plain pants and a dusty white shirt. It was clear that she had been interrupted in some type of work. It was a relief for Anna to see their familiar faces. Of all the senators, those she had fought with were the only ones she could fully trust. Upon seeing Anna, Michael and Lauren made their way over.
“Where’s Samuel?”
“Coming soon, I hope.”
Anna noticed that the senators kept stealing gazes at her, as if she would know what to do.
Anna’s thoughts were broken when Samuel entered the Senate House, followed by Ruth. Everyone stood out of respect while Ruth went to sit by Lauren. Samuel walked toward the Governor’s Chair.
The entire senate was quiet, save for several coughs or the scraping of feet on the floor stones.
It was only when Samuel took a seat that everyone followed his example.
To Anna, Samuel looked worn, for lack of a better word. His face was still full, his jaw chiseled, and his body strong, but she could see it in his eyes. He was tired. In a way, Anna thought governing Colonia might have been harder for Samuel than all the fighting he had done during the war. Now, he fought a different kind of war — a war having far more to do with the mind than anything else.
“If you are here,” Samuel began, his deep voice echoing off the walls, “then you know the reason for this meeting. My guard and I were attacked in Colossus. Six men, armed with swords and guns, fired on myself and my guards. Though outnumbered, we fought and killed four while the other two fled. We learned nothing about who they’re working for, but I ordered one of my guards to track the ones that escaped. Until we hear from him, we won’t know who for sure who it was that ordered my death.”
As Samuel spoke, his scribe feverishly wrote on a piece of paper. The sound of his pen scrawling was the loudest thing in the quiet chamber.
“Though my attacker’s identity is not known, it doesn’t take much imagination to make some guesses. I need not name any names here; all of you know of my rivals, and it could have been any one of them. Perhaps all of them. What do we do, then, with the information we have? Of course, the first thing I ordered was for a
message to be transmitted to Augustus through my contact in Nova Roma. According to him, the Emperor is indisposed; when I left Nova Roma, he was preparing a campaign against the tribes raiding the border towns in the south, so he may have already set out. Whatever the case, the Emperor is too far to help us here. We are on our own for whatever comes.”
Left unsaid, Anna thought, is how the Emperor might want us to be on our own. Anna knew the Emperor might support the governors over Samuel. After all, it was Samuel that was defying the Emperor’s slavery edict, and having the governors take care of Samuel could certainly make things easier for him. Surely Samuel knew that, and Anna was sure some of the senators knew it as well. Samuel wouldn’t say that directly during session, however.
“What do we do, then?” Samuel asked. “The answer is simple: we keep working. We keep building our walls, and the news of the attack will only spur our men on harder. Before this year is out, Colonia will have the largest walls in the north. That my enemies have resorted to these tactics tells me they are afraid of openly defying me. The Emperor would not have his governors fighting, and once I find the one who instigated the attack, I will have everything I need to show Augustus.”
Unless he isn’t on your side, Anna thought. You’ve always been too trusting of him.
Anna could feel that a similar sentiment stewed among the senators. The majority hated Augustus — it was the reason they had come north in the first place. Many had been slaves under his regime. Others had been poor, and in Colonia they had found a new life. Native Wastelanders had found a new home in Colonia, and for the first time in decades and with the threat of the Radaskim quelled, people felt safe. Samuel wanted the peace to last a little longer, but the attempt on his life was a direct challenge to that.
Anna wanted Samuel to act, not stick his head in the sand — but what that action could be, she couldn’t say. And from the looks the other senators were giving him, they were of a similar mindset.
“Governor Neth,” came a confident voice from the other side of the stands. “If I might have a word?”
The voice belonged to Victor Thomas, and leader of a faction — called the Separatists — that was directly opposed to Samuel. Thomas was an old American — at over sixty years of age, he had survived slavery in Nova Roma for three decades, and no one hated the Emperor more than him. One could see the toll it had taken in the myriad of lines etched deeply into his face, and his brown eyes burned with vitriol. It was that passion, that hatred, that had others of a similar mindset following him.
“Yes, Senator Thomas?”
“Do we need to dance around the issue? Can we not admit that it is Augustus who wants you dead, or are you going to pretend that his interests and ours align?”
Behind him, other senators of his party began to murmur their agreement. The Loyalists, among whom Anna sat, were silent. Samuel didn’t look at all fazed by Senator Thomas’s challenge.
“Senator Thomas, I just returned from Nova Roma and I can assure you, the Emperor is behind us. When we established Colonia, he agreed to let us have our own laws and our own Senate, knowing the cultural differences between our two peoples. In return, we would owe our loyalty to Nova Roma. When you were sworn into the Colonian Senate, you yourself took that oath — as much as it might have irked you. Augustus and I talked at great length during my visit for a solution — solutions I intend to lay out before the Senate today. With Augustus’s backing, the governors and Black will have no choice but to back down.”
Thomas laughed, openly and loudly. “Let’s hear it then, Governor. I’m sure we will all be entertained.”
Senator Thomas sat down with a flourish, and all eyes went to Samuel.
“The Emperor is pleased with Colonia,” Samuel said. “And I was pleased to present all the great strides we have taken. After a mere two years, we are one of the north’s most prosperous provinces. The Emperor told me, privately, that he would let Colonia remain slave-free, only he has the interests of all of his Northern Provinces to protect. The solution we came up with together I will lay before you now.”
The entire senate went quiet, and from the look on Thomas’s face, none of what Samuel said had swayed him.
“Beginning this July...” Samuel paused, and from the way he paused, Anna knew it was not going to be a popular announcement, “any immigrant arriving in Colonia must present proof of Novan citizenship in order to be accepted into the city.”
Thomas and his supporters began, all at once, to argue against it. Samuel merely waited for the arguing to die off before continuing.
“No immigrant who is already settled into the city is in danger,” Samuel said. “This would only apply to new immigrants arriving, beginning in July.”
July was only a month away. It wasn’t much time for Colonia to implement the new measure, but Anna supposed it could be done. She knew Colonia could not continue growing unabated forever — and it could have been that Augustus had ignored this problem for so long, knowing the importance of having as many immigrants in Colonia as possible to man the scrap caravans, social status be damned. But now that the city was flourishing, Augustus had to bow to the will of his governors. He couldn’t not address the problem — not forever, anyway. There was the problem of Colonia growing too much, too fast. Already, food supplies had been stretched thin. Work was still undergoing to retool Old World irrigation equipment to water farms along the Colorado, but it would be years before Colonia was self-sufficient. Until then, the city relied on grain shipments from Nova Roma, which came in through Colossus. Governor Vasquez of Baja California was openly hostile to Colonia, and only Augustus’s influence kept him from bottlenecking the city’s food shipments altogether.
Anna could see Samuel’s logic, though turning away all those escaped slaves would not be a very relishing task. As one of Colonia’s four Aediles, that responsibility might even fall on her.
Before Senator Thomas could get another word, Anna stood. All went quiet.
“Governor Neth is right. How long can we openly defy Imperial law and get away with it? How long before the provinces take measures into their own hands?”
“They already have!” Thomas shouted. “They tried to kill our governor!”
“I condemn the attack, as would any right-thinking person here. But my point still stands. How long can we push the Northern Provinces before they take even more drastic measures? They have the weight of law behind them — like it or not, slavery is legal in the Empire. Like it or not, it’s by the hands of slaves that our bellies are full, and it will stay that way until we can rebuild farming equipment.” Anna left a counterpoint unsaid — that farm equipment might never be rebuilt, but she wasn’t going to detract from her own argument. “Perhaps Augustus has said Colonia is exempt from having to follow this law, as part of the terms for its founding, but nowhere does the law grant us the right to harbor people that, by Novan law, are slaves. I don’t agree with it, but I am wise enough to know that it’s not something we can openly defy. I don’t need to remind you that Colossus controls the point by which most of our food and materials enter.”
“Then let’s take Colossus!” a new, unknown voice said.
Anna couldn’t see the source of the voice, but slowly, everyone turned their heads, their gazes fixating on a strong, handsome man in his mid-twenties. He sat on the top row, and despite the fact that he wasn’t a high-ranking senator, he carried himself as if he were.
“That is foolishness!” Samuel said. “El Yermo is a loyal province of the Empire, and it will never be anything but a loyal province of the Empire. You would risk rebellion, and for what? We rebel, we take Colossus, and then we are crushed by Augustus’s legions!”
“Not when those legions are suppressing invasions in his south.” The senator, whose name Anna couldn’t remember, smiled. “The Empire is weak, Governor. It can’t protect us from the provinces for long. Like it or not, there will be war. Better to accept it than deny it.”
“No,” Samuel said. �
��It is too soon to be talking about such drastic measures. The Northern Provinces’ legions would be more than a match for our militia. And I will not entertain talk of treason in this House.”
The entire Senate broke into argument. Each faction — the Loyalists versus the Separatists — were going at it again. In the past, the Separatists had always advocated a peaceful solution to gaining a free Colonian state, but things were different now. Apparently, gaining a free state at any cost was better than not gaining one at all. Loyalists, meanwhile, wanted to remain a part of the Empire, even if it meant conceding to some of its demands. While Samuel did his best not to align himself with either party, as did Anna and the rest, he was often painted as a Loyalist, and what he said so far would only cement that image.
Of late, the Separatists had been demanding increasingly brasher measures, but never had anyone suggested anything as far as openly attacking the Empire. Samuel was right; it was treason. Anna could only wonder how long it would take before news of this reached Augustus’s ears.
After a minute, the furor calmed, and Samuel once again had the floor. The intensity of his gaze quelled the last of the murmurs.
“What is your name, Senator?” Samuel called out. “Who are you to speak so boldly during this session? What works have you done to add to the weight of your words?”
The man stood, meeting Samuel’s stare. “My name...is Murmillo. I was a slave from my youth in the province of Sonora. A gladiator.”
Anna felt herself become stirred by those words. She remembered her time as a gladiator, however brief, and sympathized with the young man.
“When we heard of Colonia, the city of freedom, my friends and I managed to escape our captors, killing many in the process. Through many trials, we arrived in Colonia, free at last. You yourself assigned me to a scrap caravan — you probably don’t remember, because I’m sure you’ve done this for many escaped slaves.” Murmillo put a hand over his heart. “For this, I thank you. Bunker 24 was discovered soon thereafter, and as part of the caravan who found it, I was entitled to a share of its profits. Hence, how I am here — from slave to senator in less than two years.” He looked at those around him. “I’m sure many of you can say the same.”