‘I remember him trying to pump me for information.’ I turned to the American. ‘Head of station now, I presume? Or are you merely supporting an illegal coup and a brutal regime?’ I couldn’t even be bothered to throw him a contemptuous look. He provided Caius’s technical equipment – I’d found the documents proving it during our undercover mission – and probably funding, too. My old spymaster associate Plico had always thought the EUS had expansionist pretensions, even if only into the Indigenous Territories or French-speaking Louisiane on their own continent. Something about wishing to be an imperial power like Ancient Rome. But what were they doing here?
‘Really, Aurelia, that was uncalled for. You will apologise to Mr White. Now.’
Caius’s voice was as hard as steel. I blinked and glanced at his face. His eyes were like agates and as unforgiving. Apart from my self-respect, I had nothing to lose with a few words. And this was no time to be precious.
‘I deeply apologise, Mr White, for wounding your feelings,’ I said in English. ‘I would not for the world have you believe that I harbour anything but the warmest feelings for you and your sterling work.’ I made an exaggerated bow in his direction to ensure he knew exactly what I meant.
‘So sincere,’ Caius said and smirked. Even White had the grace to glance away. ‘Well, I’m a man of my word,’ he said and stood up. ‘Your gypsy, ah, Hungarian friend, is released from my custody.’
I closed my eyes for a nanosecond and released my breath slowly. Thank Juno, Mercury and every other god on Olympus.
‘However, Mr White and his friends would like to speak seriously to him about the destruction of some valuable property belonging to the EUS government, so naturally I am cooperating with our closest ally. He has a helicopter waiting for him. I do hope your women don’t shoot it down.’
He couldn’t do that. My hands shook. I clamped them to my sides.
‘You promised.’ I could only whisper, my mouth was so dry. ‘You promised to let him go.’
‘No, I promised to release him from my custody. You need to pay more attention to what I say, Aurelia. So incompetent.’ He smirked at me. ‘You will obviously wish to say a few words of farewell. I will permit this, but regrettably, not in private.’
He stood, strode over to Miklós and ripped the thick grey tape off his face. Miklós flinched at the shock and sucked in his lips, then coughed.
‘I’m so sorry, drágám,’ he said. ‘They ambushed us. One of his informants—’
‘No, don’t.’ I touched his lip with my fingertip. ‘I can’t tell you the agony of seeing you used here by this bastard to get at me,’ I said softly. ‘I will find you, wherever they hide you, whatever they do. You know I have always loved you and always will.’
‘And I you.’ His eyes were liquid and his smile sad but beautiful. ‘Just remember Vienna.’
At Caius’s nod, White’s two stooges came over. I stood between them and Miklós. It was unbearable. I might never see him again. I folded myself into him and enveloped him in my arms. He gave a deep sigh as his neck touched mine. Tears flowed down my face. I was pulled off by Caius’s guards and held while White’s men marched off with the other life of me.
I wanted to retreat, to fall into a heap, to withdraw from this plane of existence, but I had a monster to deal with. One who had destroyed my world.
‘Now, Aurelia, you have to send a little message,’ he said. ‘And if you make even the smallest mistake or attempt to send a covert meaning, I will rescind my generous gesture to Mr White and shoot your lover in front of you.’
I nodded. I looked at the floor; the rest of the world wasn’t worth looking at.
‘Now, I have to ensure you won’t get up to any of your tricks on our way to the radio room. You have the choice – the indignity of being shackled or you can give me your word of honour.’
Merda. I would be as trapped by my word as by cold steel around my wrists. And he knew that, the bastard. But what did anything matter now?
‘Well?’
‘I give you my word of honour,’ I muttered.
‘At last, you have learnt to submit. Far too late, of course.’
My heart was breaking and he was still trying to score points.
‘You see, you are just a woman like all the others, full of sentimental nonsense, unable to make a decision except through your emotions.’
‘At least I’ve known the strongest emotion humans can experience. Nobody has ever loved you, Caius.’
He flinched. Then I saw the anger in his eyes. He raised his hand and I prepared myself for the blow. But it never came. Slowly, he let his hand drop. Perhaps he realised he needed me whole and alive, at least until I’d spoken to Volusenia.
He shoved me through the door and we traipsed along the corridor to the palace communications room, full of screens, banks of radios and printers. But it was deserted apart from two uniformed nats. They turned as we entered.
‘Send a message to the women’s rabble that their commander wishes to speak to them. Set up a voice channel so they know it’s her.’
While the operator fiddled with frequencies and sending an initial message by telegraphy, I looked round the room. There were at least a dozen workplaces, all with folded card notices with station names. Pencils, logs, dirty coffee cups were strewn around. Headphones thrown aside. Manuals in English. Columns and figures chalked up on a situation board on the wall ended with a last acronym FUBAR – Fucked Up Beyond All Relief. They’d all gone. The Americans had gone, and so had most of Caius’s own people.
I sat down at the set Caius’s operator indicated and flicked the switch to receive.
‘Mitela? Aurelia Mitela?’ Volusenia’s strained voice crackled out in the empty room.
‘Please observe correct protocol, Colonel,’ I replied in the coldest voice I could muster. ‘You will address me, as always, as domina.’ I prayed that would put her on her guard. ‘I have new orders for you.’
A pause.
‘Of course, domina.’ Her voice sounded subdued.
‘And you do not need to run them past that child, Silvia. Her opinion is of no consequence.’
‘None,’ she replied. She sounded deferential now.
Had Volusenia caught on?
‘I have taken advice from the first consul and we have agreed that all six columns are to withdraw at least to the outer city limits. I will issue further orders in four hours’ time.’
‘I understand, domina. I shall inform all the subordinate commanders.’
‘With immediate effect, if you please. Out.’
I pushed the switch down to cut contact and bowed my head.
43
His goons threw me in a cell in the guardroom. It smelt of urine and terror. A light hung from the ceiling on its twisted flex. Ten minutes later a tin mug of water and a chunk of bread were pushed through the slot at the bottom of the metal door. I was almost too tired to eat or drink but my empty stomach won. After I’d devoured them, I flopped onto the wood bench.
Was Miklós still alive? What would Caius do with me now? Would Volusenia understand my hidden message? Had I betrayed my country yet again? Despite these questions whirling round in my head, I couldn’t stay awake to think about anything. I closed my eyes, heavy with nervous exhaustion, and fell into oblivion.
* * *
The bench shook and I was thrown onto the concrete floor. The noise, gods, my head rang. Was it the end of the world? Another thunderous blast. The wall shuddered and concrete dust showered down on me. I coughed as I dragged myself up in the gloom. It must be five or six in the morning. I staggered over to the far wall but it was impossible to reach the tiny window slit at the top. Firing. Automatic gunfire. Shouts, a scream. Feet pounding across cobbles. I pounded on the metal door.
‘Let me out of here!’
If another mortar hit the wall, it could fall and crush me. I wouldn’t even be able to climb out.
Nobody came.
More shelling. After another long ten mi
nutes, I heard footsteps in the corridor outside my cell. I stood back. Caius’s goons barrelled in, grabbed me and pulled me along. I shook one off, but the other one smacked me on the head. I was stunned for a few seconds but they kept pulling me along up the stairs and eventually into the atrium.
Shards of glass and plaster lumps lay scattered on the floor. Shouting and gunfire all round us. Two armed figures raced past through the atrium garden heading for the side entrance. Purple and yellow armbands. Our people, imperial troops. But they didn’t see me through the clouds of dust filling the air. Caius stood, legs braced, watching it all, but with an unfocused gaze. He brought his hand up to cover his eyes. And I caught a mumbled ‘No!’
I heard footsteps behind me, slow at first, but then retreating fast. His last two faithful bodyguards were deserting him. Even they had seen the game was played out. Caius and I were alone in the destruction.
‘You!’ He waved his arms at me. ‘You caused all this. The end of my dream.’
‘A dream that was everybody else’s nightmare.’
‘Gods, you are still so bloody sententious. Don’t you ever give it a rest, Aurelia?’
He strode over to me, hands like grappling hooks, his face twisted with rage. I dodged him. He was so strong that if he got his hands round my throat again, he’d choke me to death. I crouched, ready to attack. I’d go low for his crippled foot. I launched myself, my elbow jabbed his stomach. I sprang back, throwing my weight on my back foot, and brought my front one up to smash down on his.
‘Stop!’ A pistol barrel aimed right at my head.
Merda.
‘Hands on your head.’
I hesitated. He struck my face so hard I almost fell. I pretended to stumble a few steps more than I needed to, then took a deep breath and launched myself at him, bodyslamming him to the ground. He was winded and couldn’t move for an instant. Catching my breath, I looked round desperately for something to tie him up. He started to get up, so I rammed my foot down on his back, my heel hard into his kidneys. He grunted and flopped back to the floor. I didn’t know what else to do so I thumped him on the head and he passed out.
* * *
‘It was hard work, but here we are.’
Volusenia was calm now and gulped down tea in the palace kitchen, the only part still undamaged. I was holding a wet pad to my face where Caius had hit me. It hurt like Hades and I’d have a purple face tomorrow. But that was the smallest blow he’d dealt me. I hadn’t had time to tell Volusenia the whole story. I would have to keep my heart’s loss inside for a while.
When Volusenia had burst through the hole left by the destroyed atrium windows, the fire in her eyes had been intense, pumped by adrenalin. The rest of her detail were the same. Soldiers fighting their war.
I’d been struggling to tie Caius’s hands behind him with a flex from a table lamp but it was slipping. Now he was in the most secure cell in the guardroom, shackled to the wall from his ankle and under twenty-four-hour watch.
‘Thank Mars you understood my message,’ I said.
‘Well, you can be snotty sometimes but not that bad.’ She grinned. ‘When you mentioned six columns instead of four, I knew I had to take everything you said as bollocks.’
‘Excuse me, Colonel.’ A young orderly hesitated. She couldn't have been more than seventeen. ‘The imperatrix presents her compliments and asks that you attend on her in the state drawing room. And the consiliaria.’ She glanced at me, then blushed.
‘Thank you, young lady.’ Volusenia nodded at her. ‘Well, we’d better cut along then, consiliaria,’ she said.
* * *
Silvia Apulia stood in front of her mother’s carved chair. I glanced around. Calavia, Quirinia, Aquilia and some of the junior commanders, and a little to one side, Quintus Tellus with his arm around Conradus’s shoulders. The boy stood straighter than I’d seen him for a while and he looked around in curiosity rather than fear. But I was surprised not to see Junia. People drifted in, until we were about fifty or so. White sunlight shone through the broken windows. And dust still floated in the air. Silvia waited until everybody present was quiet and still. She was dressed like a wild mountain guerrilla, complete with long boots, rough jacket and scarf hanging across her chest. Smuts and concrete dust were her make-up. But she stood erect and moved her head in a composed, almost regal way.
‘Thank you for coming. I know there’s so much to do. I will only be a few minutes. This last year and a half has been horrible for us all. The next few will be nothing but hard work. My heart goes out to those who have lost people.’ Her eyes swivelled round and rested on me for an instant. ‘But also to those who have been lied to. Now we must look after them all as well as reinstate order. Colonel Volusenia and the Praetorians will head up a security force until we can organise a new law and order service to replace the vigiles.’ She paused for a moment.
Quirinia bent over and whispered something to her. Silvia nodded and continued. ‘Consiliaria Quirinia will organise food supplies and the reconnection of water and electricity. She and Regulus will get the buses and trains running again – the tasks of a new Agrippa.’ And she smiled broadly at Quirinia, who blushed. Then Silvia looked direct at me. ‘We need to reassure our legations abroad and our friends in overseas governments, but first we need a new government here in Roma Nova. So I need Aurelia Mitela to form a new imperial council and reinstate the Twelve Families.’
Gods, she didn’t want much. But we’d all do it, of course. After all, we were home.
44
Twenty-four hours later I collected my miraculously intact staff car from the square in front of the Golden Palace. The engine sputtered and struggled as I got nearer Domus Mitelarum. The fuel gauge told me it was running on vapour. I abandoned it up the street and hurried to the tall gates guarding my home. Nobody was more surprised than I was when the entry code beeped and the service door opened at my push. I stepped through and was met by a ferocious woman pointing a rifle in my face. I sighed. It would be a good time when that stopped happening.
‘At ease,’ I said.
‘Identify yourself.’
‘Aurelia Mitela, the owner of this domus. Now let me pass.’
‘I don’t know you. Wait here.’
Ironic, kept out of my own house, but she was doing her duty. It didn’t look too damaged; debris swept into corners in the courtyard, the garages still with doors, but only one battered van in the covered area. The honey stone facade was intact, but several windows were boarded or taped up.
A petite brown-haired figure hurtled down the steps. Claudia Cornelia. She threw herself into my arms.
‘Oh gods, oh gods,’ she cried and burst into tears.
‘Steady, Claudia. It’s over.’
‘I know, but I thought you were dead.’ She drew back. ‘I apologise, consiliaria, but I am so pleased to see you.’
‘Yes, I got that impression.’
She sniffed, then grinned at me.
Inside, the atrium looked like a field barracks. Rows of mattresses, camp beds and sleeping bags stretched across one side. In the formal drawing room my mother’s blue velvet covered dining chairs were looking the worse for wear behind trestle tables with radio equipment, files and boxes. People looked up as we entered, but went back to their work after a second or two.
‘We had to use what was to hand, so—’
I laid my hand on her forearm.
‘Claudia, a few chairs and carpets are nothing in the account. But I bet the steward grumbled all the same.’ I smiled at her in sympathy. Milo would have given grumpy an entirely new meaning when the resistance group took over his domain. I’d pulled him out of retirement two years ago to cover the crisis and give the household strong leadership. ‘Where is he?’
She looked away.
‘What happened?’
‘A group of nats tried to storm the gates yesterday. Stupid really. Short of blasting them, those gates are impregnable. I told Milo to ignore them – they were probably lookin
g for easy loot. But he insisted, took a rifle and two pistols, opened the service door and went out and shot them. Unfortunately, they wounded him. Badly.’ She looked away. ‘He refused to be taken to the hospital. He said he wanted to die in his home.’
In his room in the domestic hall, I held the hand of the grizzled old ex-centurion. His skin was near white and tinged with a translucent blue at the edges.
‘Well, that was a stupid thing to do, Milo.’
‘You aren’t the only action hero, domina,’ he whispered, then winced. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.’
‘You’ve saved my house and my people, Milo.’
‘I had to join their crummy movement or they’d have turned me out.’
‘We’ve all had to make compromises these past eighteen months. You are not alone, old friend.’ I pressed his hand gently. ‘You’ve fulfilled your duty well, centurion.’
The shadow of a smile flitted across his lips and he released a deep final breath.
* * *
Five days later, Pia Calavia appeared at my door. I’d just returned from the first imperial council meeting followed by a session with the former Senate president. I’d asked the latter to re-form it and call a meeting so that Silvia could address them and hopefully be given formal consent as their new ruler.
Calavia looked as tired as I felt. She wore standard Praetorian uniform now with the captain’s discs with stylised wreath on her rank badges, but she also wore a protective vest and laid a helmet to one side as she greeted me.
‘Problems?’ I asked.
‘Looters, really, in the Septarium – the poor robbing the even poorer. We’ve just had a sweep through. I’ll be thankful when Consiliaria Quirinia gets this new custodes police service up and running.’
‘If it’s any consolation, the new imperial council session was a long afternoon of self-justification and accusation. In the end I had to screech at them to shut up. Silvia looked appalled. I told them to behave like adults as the country depended on them. I’d take the Septarium any day!’
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