by Cass Morris
The alternative was that the poisons tested on plants might prove equally destructive to living creatures. ‘Some assassination scheme?’ If the Optimates were behind it, their most obvious target—Sempronius Tarren—was also nearly impossible to reach, half a continent away in Iberia. ‘But there are others.’ Galerius Orator, for one, the appealing and popular consul, or any of the men who looked to take his place. ‘Or . . .’ A chill settled in Latona’s stomach like a stone. ‘Or the Discordians might be looking to eliminate inconvenient mages who are interfering in their affairs . . .’
The sky seemed to be darkening, though it could be nowhere near sunset yet. What had begun the day as fluffy white clouds were turning dark and flat. “Think we should be heading back, Domina,” Merula said. “Could be a storm, coming in off the water.”
Latona glanced up, her nose crinkling. “I think you’re right. I hate to leave the job unfinished, though.”
“It might be the best thing, really,” Vibia said. “Rainwater to wash away the grave dirt. I don’t know how we’d manage cleansing this much territory ourselves.”
“I’m exhausted just at the thought of it.”
“Perhaps if—” Vibia halted abruptly. When she spoke, her voice was faster and even more clipped than usual. “Something’s happening, Latona. I don’t like it.”
A low-pitched keening did not so much break the quiet as insinuate its way into it. Latona’s arms prickled as every hair stood on end.
Something took shape before her eyes, rising up out of the soil. A wisp of smoke without fire, thin at first, then stronger and larger. It wound its way around a healthy stalk, embracing it like a lover—and then, before her eyes, the wheat turned first sickly pale, then charcoal gray, shriveling and curling like a singed hair.
It was being devoured.
Once the transformation was complete, the twining smoke-creature moved on to another stalk and began again, just as another sprang up on the other side of them. “These are different.” Vibia’s breath was shallow, almost panting. “Not the same feel. Not at all.” She was blinking more than usual, her gaze shifting each time her eyelids fluttered closed. “It’s not poison. The ground. It’s not poison. It’s food. Food for fiends.” Her eyes had gone too wide, the whites shockingly visible around the dark irises. Vibia swayed, her shoulders sagging for a brief moment, before she snapped upright as though jerked by a hook. “Run!”
And Vibia bolted—but the wrong direction, further into the field rather than toward its border.
Merula reacted first, leaping after Vibia like a hound after a hare, and Latona followed, crashing through the grain. Latona skidded to a halt after a few paces, though, when one of these strange new lemures swooped right in front of her. She darted instead down a different column of grain, off to the right. Ahead, she could hear crunching and crashing: Vibia still running, Merula still in pursuit.
The grain scratched at Latona’s bare arms and calves as she ran, and she hoped none of the pricks were enough to draw blood. If grave dirt could be made into food for fiends, the gods only knew what the blood of a Spirit mage might do for them. Pinarius Scaeva’s words from the past year haunted her: ‘Do you have any idea how delicious it is, to break and devour a power that radiant?’ Terror tightened in her chest, as it had when she found the first Discordian remnant with her sisters, but she could not allow it to trip her up.
After a moment, the sounds of the chase came to a halt. Had Vibia stopped running? Or had they gotten too far away to be heard?
Then, an opening in the press of vegetation, where the wheat stalks had been not just shriveled but shredded. Beyond were four of the spirits with nearly opaque forms, smoky and hovering, and Vibia Sempronia in the middle, looking less composed than Latona had ever seen her. Her sable hair had come half out of its pins and her mantle was dragging in the dirt. Her feet seemed mired in place, and as the four lemures bobbed around her, her upper body lurched toward them. Her jaw hung slack, and her eyes were not her own. On the far side of her stood Merula, legs and arms both splayed wide as though ready to grapple with Vibia—but she shuffled back and forth, unable to get through the lemures.
“Juno help me,” Latona breathed, bending forward to rest her hands on her knees while she analyzed the situation. Whatever had woken here, it was far worse than the umbrae they had encountered before. Those were unsettling; this, horrifying.
Worse, she couldn’t sense Vibia’s emotions. There was nothing of her there, just a blank. Merula’s energy, tense yet eager, crackled like the lightning that would soon break above them. But from Vibia, nothing, not even the low hum of energy she would have expected from an animal. It was as if Vibia had simply ceased to be present.
‘They’ve been opening cracks between worlds and summoning demons through. What if this time, they’re trying to take something back with them?’
Latona started forward, but when she drew nearer to Vibia and the demons, her whole body reeled as though she had been struck. The sensation was, unfortunately, not unfamiliar; Scaeva’s magic had had a similar effect, as though able to physically repel her. She reached out with her magic instead, focusing her energy on just one of the fiends. ‘Perhaps, if I can pluck their energy away from her, one at a time . . .’
A tugging pain in her chest alerted her to her error, and a strange taste blossomed on her tongue, sour-sweet like an overripe citron, overpowering the cinnamon-spice of her own magic. ‘The fiend’s magic? Or could that be the signature of whatever Discordian summoned it?’
Latona had no time to contemplate the thaumaturgy, however. Instead of being dispelled by her magic, the fiend had latched on to it, drawing her power out and seizing it, claiming it. For a moment, the hovering spirit glowed brighter, a color like the moon behind clouds.
This, too, Latona had felt before, when Scaeva attacked her. Then, it had been as a harpoon shot straight through her core, a wrenching pain, and she had not had the strength to take back control.
But Latona was not who she had been at the Aventine fires. She had thrown less of herself out to begin with, and so there was less for the fiend to sink its supernatural claws into. And this little fiend did not have the focused malevolence of Pinarius Scaeva. It tugged on her by instinct, not willpower. With effort, Latona was able to withdraw the tendril she had extended, pulling her magic back into herself.
One of the lemures descended upon Vibia. For a brief instant, its form merged with hers. Latona stepped forward again, only to again be sent reeling by the force of the Discordian magic.
By the time she straightened, Vibia had turned toward her. Her face was ashen as the embers of a long-cold hearth, and her head lolled as though her neck were hardly able to support it. Her dark eyes had gone entirely black. ‘Not good, not good.’
Some power emanated from Vibia’s form now, but it was not Vibia. It didn’t feel human at all, didn’t have the symphony of energies that made each person unique. This was raw and hungry, a gaping pit of sensation and emotion, as though Pinarius Scaeva’s maw had taken human form.
‘Come on, Latona, think. ‘Fire protects,’ so the charm says. But you have no Fire here to draw upon!’ She thought of the mages of legend, who could call flames to their fingertips, conjuring them out of nowhere, and she ached for such a power.
“The fiends hunger,” Vibia said, in a voice that was not her own, faraway and ringing as though spoken through a metal tube. Latona’s arms shivered, but she ground her heels into the dirt. “The fiends hunger,” the thing that was not Vibia repeated, then, “and humanity is such a sweet dish. Sweeter ever than dirt and grain and trees. What life is here.” The sickly smile that crawled over her face showed too many teeth. “What life there is in cities. In your city.”
A blast of chilly air tore through the field, snapping and cracking the stalks of wheat. Latona wasn’t sure if it was natural or an effect of the Discordian magic, until a roll of t
hunder pealed overhead. ‘Please, please,’ she thought, ‘let Vibia be right about rainwater dispelling this, because I have no idea what to do, Juno help me.’ Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do!’ What fools they had been, to try to take on such malice by themselves.
“We will devour you!” the fiend inside Vibia screamed, its sepulchral tone melding with the howls of its fellows in a harrowing cacophony. “Flesh is sweet and souls are sweeter and mages sweetest of all! We will have you, and your magic, and your strength will be ours!”
A flash of lightning cast the whole world into sudden, stark relief. Vibia’s head snapped from side to side, and her fists clenched. “No!” she cried. Her eyes flung wide, the whites showing again. “Latona!”
Merula saw her opening. She hurled herself at the slender Fracture mage, hooking her arms behind Vibia’s elbows and using that leverage to drag her away from the lemures.
Vibia fought with astonishing strength, the fiend within her struggling both against Merula and against Vibia’s own attempts to wrest control of her body. She scratched and kicked, even tried to crane around and bite Merula. Yet though Merula was half a head shorter than Vibia, the Phrygian girl was much stronger than the Aventan woman and trained in the arts of combat. She knew how to use her solid musculature to advantage, and she ignored what blows Vibia was able to land.
“Drag her as far away as you can, Merula!” Latona shouted over the wind. She couldn’t tell by looking at the ground how much of it might be sown with grave dirt, but she hoped they would soon step out of the fiends’ reach. The fiends shrieked their displeasure, swooping toward Latona—but they could not seem to quite reach her. ‘Are they repelled, as I am? Why aren’t they possessing Merula? Is it only because Vibia is herself of Fracture that they have the opening?’ So many questions and no time to answer them.
Then, after another brilliant white flash and a crack of thunder that Latona felt in every bone, the heavens opened. A pelting rain poured down, cold and merciless. The shrieking of the lemures turned to a piercingly high whistle, and then they vanished. Vibia suddenly went limp, crashing to the earth and dragging Merula to a lurch.
“Let her go,” Latona said, rushing to Vibia’s side.
“It may be she is faking, Domina.”
“No, she’s out cold.” Latona had felt it like the snap of a bow, the fiend leaving Vibia and her own anima recoiling into place. “Whatever was in her has lost its strength.”
Latona went to her knees, clasping Vibia’s pale, angular face between her hands. She gave Vibia’s cheeks a little tap, and when that did not rouse her, called up Spirit magic. “Sweet Juno, restore her to herself. Blessed Juno, give me the strength to bring her back.” These words she repeated, over and over, until the taste of cinnamon blossomed on her tongue.
When Vibia’s eyes fluttered open, dark and watery and entirely her own, Latona almost sobbed in relief. Vibia coughed, then spoke, her voice creaking. “Latona. Latona, those things, I can’t.”
“Tell me later.” Latona looked up. “I’m so sorry, but you have to get up.” Vibia winced at the very thought, but she managed a weak nod. “Merula, help her. We have to get out of this field.” She slipped her hand around Vibia’s waist for support as Merula draped one of Vibia’s arms over her shoulders and began to haul her up. “I’m sorry. I know you’re exhausted, but I have no idea how far we may have to walk.”
* * *
A sense of apprehension had hung over Alhena all day long. “The trouble is,” she told Aula, as they strolled under the eaves of the peristyle garden, with rain cascading down into the pool in the center, “I never know what to make of it. Am I apprehensive because of my gifts? Because something’s going to happen, and I don’t know enough to make any use of the feeling? Or am I apprehensive because, well . . .” She made a vague gesture at herself. “Because it’s just who I am?”
Aula jostled Alhena’s shoulder affectionately. “Oh, my honey. You are much too hard on yourself, in either case. At least we know Gaius is safe! There’s good news!” Letters had come for Aulus that afternoon, including a packet from Iberia. Seeing that one bore their brother’s tribunal seal, Aula and Alhena had been unable to resist opening it. Waiting the long hours until Aulus returned from his work would have been torturous; they read enough to assure themselves that Gaius lived, if in dire circumstances.
“We know he was, several days ago,” Alhena pointed out glumly. “Anything could have happened since that letter went out.” She hugged her arms close to her chest. “I wish you would let me go with Latona and Vibia.” It had become a familiar grumble. “It’s broad daylight this time—well, it was when they left, anyway.”
“And you see what good sense I have? They’ll be soaked through if they haven’t gotten back in the carriage yet.”
Aula’s fingers were ever in motion, always needing to touch something—her hair, her clothes, trailing through the water of a fountain, stroking the soft petal of a flower. Alhena walked tightly, folded in on herself. She envied her maidservant, Mus, for her slight stature. Alhena was unfashionably slender and glad for it. Without Aula’s fertility-promising hips or Latona’s graceful curves, she attracted less attention. But she just kept getting taller, and a tall girl with blazing red hair drew eyes wherever she went.
Aula plucked a white oleander flower and reached up to tuck it behind Alhena’s ear. “Lovely.”
Alhena smiled, despite the still-buzzing anxiety pulling at the edges of her mind. It was comforting, her big sister’s belief that a bit of loveliness added to the world really could make things better. Alhena could never quite believe it herself, but Aula still did, with unquestioned constancy, even with the horrors she had herself witnessed. Cheering, that optimism could thrive, in the right sort of heart, no matter how it was challenged.
“Perhaps a change of scenery is what you need,” Aula said.
“You just want me farther away from this Discordian problem.”
Aula didn’t bother to address the charge, so Alhena knew she was right. “The Ludi Athaeci are soon,” Aula went on, as though Alhena hadn’t spoken. “I imagine Father will want to go back to the city for them.” Aula plucked another flower. This time she pulled the petals apart, tossing them behind her as she walked. “General Aufidius Strato is sponsoring, and he brought enough loot home from Albina to fund quite a spectacle.” She cast the last few petals into the air above their heads. “And we shouldn’t even have to worry about Father using it as an opportunity to husband-hunt, since so few eligible men will be in town.”
Alhena frowned. “I don’t know if I want to marry, anyway.”
A tittering laugh escaped Aula. It was a little too high and brittle to have been born of amusement. Aula’s laugh always gave her away, to anyone listening carefully, and so Alhena knew that her next words would be half-truth, half-not.
“‘Want’ doesn’t have much to do with it, my darling! It’s . . . what we do. A matter of duty.” She rolled her eyes. “Look at our sister.”
Alhena twisted her fingers together, eyes down on her toes. “Father wouldn’t force me, though. Would he? If I really didn’t want to? If I—if I wanted to stay in a temple, instead?”
This time, Aula paused before replying. “Marrying doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t serve in a temple.”
Most of the temples didn’t prohibit married men or women from serving; only a few of the gods required celibacy from their devotees. Certainly most of the High Priests and the men of the Pontifical College were married. But what man wanted to marry a woman who had to divide her time between her own home and a god’s? Who would care to compete with that devotion?
“But no, pet,” Aula went on. “I don’t think Father would force you, if you didn’t want to.” She smiled sideways at Alhena. “You’ve always been his baby, after all. He wouldn’t want to make you unhappy.”
“He made Latona unhappy.” The words were out before Alhena could catch them.
The mirth fell from Aula’s face. She looked older, when grave concern entered her merry eyes. “Yes. And I suspect he’s learned his lesson about that.” She slipped an arm around Alhena’s waist. “But even that, he did to keep Latona safe—or at least, he thought that would be the result. And he wants the same for you.”
“Safe first, happy second?” Alhena sighed. “I suppose, if one must prioritize . . .”
“Happy is transient in any case, darling,” Aula said. “Safety may be as well, but its loss can be fatal much swifter than the loss of happiness can be.”
They walked a moment more, turning around the statue of Neptune at the end of the garden. “I don’t want to be undutiful,” Alhena said. “I would’ve married Tarpeius as he bid. I knew Tarpeius. There wasn’t discomfort there. But the thought of another man just . . . leaves me cold.”
“I’m sure he won’t wed you to a stranger sight unseen. Some men might, but not Father.”
Alhena frowned again, not sure how to explain what she meant to Aula. It wasn’t only the unfamiliarity. Getting to know a man wouldn’t make her feel any better about it, she was sure. A man, any man, would always be a foreign creature to her. Aula wouldn’t mind doing her duty so much, though she’d doubtless find a way to have her pick of potential partners. But Aula liked men, was interested in them, found them charming. ‘The ones who don’t terrify me,’ Alhena thought, ‘I just can’t seem to summon that much interest in.’ She thought of Aula, flirting at parties with Autronius Felix, Publius Rufilius, the Domitiae brothers, and whoever else caught her eye, and giving all indications of enjoying their attentions. She thought of Latona, whose long-banked passions burned now with such a focus, for a man half a world away. ‘I wonder if I’ll ever feel that sort of . . . fascination with a man.’