by Cass Morris
Lucretius Rabirus, though, had escaped the initial reprimand. All through the winter, while Sempronius trained his troops on Ligurian fields and while most of the city settled into doldrums, Vibia had contemplated the right way to reach him.
A curse tablet was the surest method. A sheet of hammered bronze, inscribed with a lead stylus, so that Vibia could be excruciatingly specific. Sitting in a doorway one cool spring evening, with lavender twilight streaking the sky above her garden, Vibia had channeled all her fury, her affront, her horror at what Rabirus had done and had driven it into the metal. The gods would see him punished for his perfidies, she was certain; they could have no cause to deny her petition, rendered with righteous fury and precise piety, and they would deliver to him mishaps, ill fortune, and the frustration of his most dearly-held goals.
The trouble then was delivering it. A curse tablet might work if buried at a crossroads or cast into the river, but best of all was to get it into the possession of the cursed individual.
As a slender youth with dark curly hair crossed the forum toward her, Vibia considered that for once she had cause to be grateful for her brother’s habits of associating with the less rarefied elements of Aventan society.
“Hail, Domina,” the lad said as he pulled his gawky limbs to a halt in front of her and gave what was clearly meant to be a respectful bow, though it came off as a bit of a spasm.
Vibia inclined her head in a nod of acknowledgment. “You are Eneas of the Pipinos?”
“Indeed, Domina.” Another awkward bow. Taking pity on the young man, Vibia tried to relax her posture a bit. “I am here to fulfill my obligation to your noble brother.”
Young Eneas was a freedman—one of Sempronius’s, and his client still. As a child, he had worked at the family’s country estate, but in his tenth year, he manifested magical gifts, earning him his freedom and setting him on the path to a new career. Eneas’s talents lay in Water and Fracture—weak, but enough to give him a keen sense of storms, when they would appear, how they would move, how to avoid them. Valuable skills on the seas, and he had made good use of them. Young Eneas would likely gain a captaincy of his own before his twenty-fifth year, if he could muster some gravitas to go along with his magical gifts, but for now, he served as sailing master upon the ship that would carry Rabirus to Gades.
More luck, or more of Fortuna’s favor, Vibia hardly cared which. Had it been Sempronius being ferried across the Middle Sea, he would have gleaned the names and personal histories of all the ship’s officers within two days. But Vibia knew her target; Lucretius Rabirus was unlikely to trouble himself with even the captain’s name, much less the lower officers, and so he would never know that one Eneas Sempronianus guided his path to Gades.
Vibia waved her attendant forward, took the basket she carried, then dismissed her along with Taius Mella’s escorting guards. “Wait by the temple steps.” Her attendant was a good girl, and Vibia had no cause to distrust her husband’s men, but the fewer ears that heard a thing, the fewer tongues that could ever speak of it. Only once they were out of earshot did Vibia draw the curse tablet from the bottom of the basket. Though it was no longer hot to the touch, as it had been while she worked on it, she kept it wrapped in a simple homespun cloth. She never liked to touch her own works once they were complete; it seemed impolite, as though it implied that she needed to keep tampering rather than trusting the gods to keep up their half of the bargain.
Eneas put out a hand to receive the tablet, but Vibia did not hand it to him immediately. “Look at me, Eneas,” she said, in a tone meant to impress upon him the gravity of the situation. “Your patron’s life may depend upon this.” The lad’s pale eyes went wide. “Praetor Rabirus means him harm. I do not intend to let that harm come about, and I don’t think you would wish to, either.”
“Of course not, Domina.”
Vibia nodded, pleased by the earnestness in the boy’s voice. The loyalty Sempronius inspired was sometimes unfathomable to her, and gaining it led to what Vibia considered indignities beneath his station, but it had its uses, she did admit. “You will have access to the man and his quarters, no doubt. I need you to make sure this ends up in his possession, but beneath his notice.” She held the tablet towards Eneas, who reached reverently for it. “In his trunks,” she instructed, not yet releasing the tablet. “Something he will take with him if he leaves Gades. Something that he will share a roof with, at all times. Buried and hidden as best you can.”
Eneas ducked his head, blushing. “I think I can do you one better, Domina.” When her fingers finally released the tablet, he turned it over in his hands. “This is thin enough . . . I have a friend on board who knows how to fit a false bottom onto a trunk, or a false top into its lid.” Vibia forbore from asking how Eneas’s friend knew this; smuggling was a time-honored illegality at the Ostian port. “It may take some doing, to get enough time . . . but it will be done, Domina. I swear to you.”
Vibia smiled, glad the boy was cleverer than she had initially assumed. “Praetor Sempronius will be most grateful,” she said, “and I will be sure he knows to whom he owes that gratitude.”
The lad slipped the tablet into the pouch hanging at his waist. “I know he does not forget his friends, Domina. I was so happy I became a man last year, so that I could vote for him. The whole crew—we journeyed to Aven just for the election.”
‘Baffling,’ Vibia thought, ‘but useful.’ Aloud, she said, “Your trust is well placed, Eneas, and we thank you for your bravery. Go with the gods, and Fortuna bless you.”
Eneas nodded his farewells and darted away, and Vibia returned to Ostia’s forum, where Taius Mella greeted her warmly. “All is well, I trust?”
“Quite so.”
“Excellent! Glad to hear it.”
And that would be the end of it. Taius Mella was, in Vibia’s opinion, an excellent husband: devoted without doting, supportive without interfering.
Vibia liked it when her life arranged itself tidily.
* * *
City of Aven
For an old man, Arrius Buteo had a powerfully resonant voice, carrying across the Forum, high and sharp over the conversations of lawyers and tradesmen.
“—These foreign luxuries, these decadent indulgences, they degrade our moral character! You may think, good citizens, that there is no harm in a silken tunic, no danger in a gold chain, no threat in saffron and snails—but these are the weapons with which cowards fight their wars! Nations which cannot defeat us in battle seek to corrupt us from within! Such excess, such extravagance, it makes us weak. How long can Aven stand as the moral example of the Middle Sea, when we invite such unseemly opulence into our homes?”
Aula, eldest of the Vitelliae daughters, clucked her tongue. ‘What a pompous fool. Aven was founded by thieves, brigands, and harlots. And if I were a man, I’d tell him so right now.’
She stood as near the Rostra as she could manage without getting glared at. She had dressed with care to look virtuous, her gown modestly draped and her mantle drawn up over her bright copper hair, though she knew it would not be enough to deflect criticism. There were still those in Aven, particularly among the Optimates, who thought the Forum ought to remain a thoroughly masculine space, tolerating only the strictly necessary priestesses and slaves. When matrons like herself took an interest in public affairs, they considered it an inappropriate intrusion at best, a sign of imminent social collapse at worst. Her mere presence was a disruption, so far as Buteo and his ilk were concerned; her voice, upraised to challenge Buteo, would be utterly intolerable. An impish twitch inside almost prompted Aula to present just such a provocation—but no, that would be a step too far. However richly Buteo deserved a dressing-down, Aula would not risk a brazenness that would shame her family and jeopardize her father’s and brother’s careers. Aulus’s position as censor was secure for the next few years, but it was an office that attracted a great deal of scrutiny,
and while Gaius’s campaign in Iberia had already made him something of a legend, he would need a solid grounding when he came home to stand for office himself. So Aula held her tongue.
Aula considered it her duty to her family to listen to the talk in the Forum, even when it was Buteo’s moralizing drivel. “I thought perhaps he’d have changed topics by now,” she commented to Helva, the Athaecan freedwoman who served as her attendant and managed much of the Vitellian household.
“No,” Helva commented dryly. “He’s even using the same phrases, word for word.” Helva would know. She had the magical gift of a perfect memory, bestowed upon her by Saturn, one of the patrons of Time. “He might at least switch up the adjectives.”
“I suppose there are only so many words for ‘indulgent’ in our language,” Aula said, rolling her eyes.
Buteo had been on this theme for long days now, an effort to muster support for the sumptuary laws he was gamely trying to promote in the Senate. Having failed in his effort to stop Aven from going to war in Iberia, thus expanding their influence and trading networks around the Middle Sea, he had determined to convince the Aventan people that they did not want the resources—and, yes, frivolous luxuries—that such expansion would provide. The Lemuria had put a temporary halt to his public haranguing, and to all civic business. The festival was a time to honor one’s ancestors, but the days were also nefasti, considered unlucky. No legal or civic matters could occur on days that were nefasti, and so, for a few days, the Forum was free of Buteo’s stentorian lectures.
Not that anyone was around to enjoy the quiet. Many citizens in Aven kept within doors during the Lemuria, as they often did on those days in the summer and autumn when the mundus was opened at the Temple of Janus. On such days, the lemures, the spirits of the unquiet dead, could return to earth. Aula herself had stayed at home during the Lemuria, not even venturing out to visit friends. She had never met a wrathful spirit walking abroad, and she had no intention of opening herself to the possibility. She had hoped, upon walking out again, to discover that Buteo would have transferred his vitriol to a new topic, but he appeared to have gone right back into the same stride.
“Well,” Aula said with a little sigh, “I suppose if he’s not going to say anything new, we can go along. I want to see if anyone has any new dangerously indulgent foreign fabrics for me to make some summer gowns out of.” Even though Buteo could not hear her, Aula crinkled her nose in his direction, before pointing herself and Helva toward the markets on the northern side of the Forum.
She was picking through summer-weight linens in a sky blue she quite fancied and a butter yellow that she thought would suit her daughter, Lucia, when she first noticed the man. At the time, she thought nothing of it. He was dark-skinned, Numidian or Mauretanian, but that was hardly unusual, especially in the mercantile parts of the city. He stood out more because he was uncommonly tall. Aula caught him staring at her, but he turned swiftly away when he noticed her looking back. Aula beamed, always happy for her beauty to be the subject of regard.
But then she saw him again, after she and Helva had walked over to the spice markets. Aula had wanted to look over the selection, in case there was anything new or unusual to pass along to her cook. And there he was again, about the same distance away, still watching her.
And then again, another block over, while she was sampling olive oil blends from a Ligurian merchant.
Three times was too many. She had Haelix and Pacco with her as bodyguards, of course; Aula rarely ventured forth without a cordon to announce that she was a protected patrician lady, unlike Latona, who had developed the habit of slipping around the city with only Merula at her side. She wasn’t afraid for her physical safety in this moment. ‘But why on Tellus’s green earth would someone be following me?’
Stomach fluttering, she caught Helva’s elbow. “Helva, turn slowly and look at the tall, dark man over by the garum stall.”
Under the pretense of tucking the fabric of Aula’s gown more firmly into the belt, Helva negotiated herself so that the stranger was within her sight. Her eyes flicked up only briefly as she fluffed Aula’s mantle. “He is familiar, Domina. Give me a moment.” Her brow creased, and Aula knew she was shuffling through her immense mental catalog of every name and face she had ever known.
‘What must it be like, to have a mind with so many library niches, to pull information out of and slot it back in at will?’
Helva smoothed her kerchief back, glanced once more in the man’s direction, and said, “Vatinius Obir, of the Esquiline Collegium. Formerly of Mauretania. Veteran of the Numidian Wars. Granted citizenship for his service. Client to Sempronius Tarren.”
At that, Aula’s posture softened. “Oh! Well, that’s all right, then.” No client of Sempronius’s would mean her harm. She jerked her head in Obir’s direction. “Go and tell him to stop skulking.” Helva arched a thin eyebrow, but she turned away, returning a moment later with Obir in tow. A broad grin indicated he was evidently unworried to have been caught out in his stalking. Aula cocked her head at the man, her hands settling on her hips. “Hail and well met, Vatinius Obir of the Esquiline,” she said, her words a bit clipped. “Do explain why you were following me.”
Pressing a hand to his chest—which, Aula could not help but notice, was rather impressively muscular beneath the goldenrod-yellow tunic and loose green cloak he wore—Obir gave her a respectful little bow. “Honored lady,” he said, his consonants tapped with the accent of his homeland. “I am sorry if I alarmed you. And, with the greatest respect, I must confess that, lovely though you are to gaze upon, you were not, in truth, my target.”
Aula threaded the edge of her mantle through her fingers. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I must explain much.” His warm brown eyes darted around. “And this is, perhaps, not the best place? May I accompany you to your next destination?”
Aula found herself smiling. “Well, I do adore an intrigue. By all means, let us walk. I suddenly fancy a stroll in the shade.” Behind a nearby temple, they found a broad and open walk, shaded by sycamores. Haelix and Pacco could follow close behind, but so long as Aula and Obir didn’t shout, they were unlikely to be overheard by anyone else.
“I am, as your woman told me you know, client to Praetor Sempronius Tarren,” Obir began his confession. “I served under him in Numidia towards the end of my years as an auxiliary.”
“And you didn’t want to sign on again to join him in Iberia?” Aula teased.
He laughed. “No, no, I have had enough of warfare for one lifetime. War gave me opportunities, true, but now, I am an Aventan businessman, and I am happy with the life I have built here.” He grinned sideways at her, with a familiarity that a prissier patrician lady might have taken as an insult. “Besides, an old fellow like me, to go tramping through the Iberian Mountains?”
‘Old?’ Obir could not have seen forty years, from the look of him, and he did not appear to have gone to seed in the decade since the Numidian Wars had ended. Aula bit back the unladylike commentary, and instead offered, “I can hardly blame you for preferring a life of comfort to the hardships of the legions.”
“Indeed, indeed. And here I am relied upon, a figure of stability in my neighborhood. So, my friend the praetor marched off to war, with all those young men following him, their blood afire, and I stayed behind. But he asked me a favor, before he went.” Aula quirked an eyebrow; he was coming to it, but there was a hitch in his amiable bluntness before he continued. “Praetor Sempronius, he . . . has a great regard for your sister, Lady.”
Aula blinked a few times, but his statement only caught her off-guard for a moment before triumph replaced bewilderment. ‘So the good praetor has set a watch over my sister, has he? Now what in Juno’s grace might have prompted that?’ A question for Latona, as soon as Aula could ask it.
“He asked that I would keep my eyes and ears alert for danger to her,” Obir continued.
>
“Danger?” Aula’s laugh was not quite as unconcerned as she might have wished. A beautiful mage from a prominent family, Latona presented many temptations to the unscrupulous, as they had all learned during Ocella’s reign. “Whatever trouble she might find herself in, I can’t see how it would be enough to warrant monitoring from the leader of a crossroads collegium.” Aula arched an eyebrow pointedly. “Surely you have a great many demands on your time, no matter what favor your patron might ask.”
Obir chuckled softly. “No, Lady, I confess it is not often I doing the watching. The collegium has a great many young lads who need occupation, and they do what I tell them. Good lads, all,” he hastened to add, “have no fear of that. They would run to me, quick as lightning, were there any threat to the lady. I only happened to see you in the market today, and as it is known that copper and gold often walk out together . . .” He shrugged expressively. “My legs were in need of exercise, in any case. I thought I might keep watch a bit, see if the Lady Latona joined you.”
“Reasonable,” Aula murmured. “Does Latona know you and your boys are shadowing her?”
“Ah—no, Lady.” Obir looked only mildly sheepish. “We thought it best to keep a distance.”
“Well, you might do yourself a favor and warn her—or allow me to do so. Otherwise her girl might shove a dagger into someone’s valuable territory if they get too close. Honestly, it’s a marvel Merula hasn’t gutted anyone already.”
Obir laughed. “Yes, I have seen the little Amazon. Your advice is as wise as you are lovely, Lady Aula.” He winked. “I shall give her no reason to use me for target practice.”