by Cass Morris
Her thoughts were broken by the sound of rapid footsteps, coming down the path from the house. Latona burst around a corner, pebbles skidding beneath her sandals. She was, as Aula had predicted, drenched. Her overgown was still looped into her belt, her skirts plastered to her thighs. Her hair had fallen nearly completely loose of its pins, hanging limply over her shoulders. What struck Alhena to the core, though, were her eyes, the emerald green fervent, just shy of wild.
“I think,” Aula said, clutching Alhena’s arm, “we may have discovered the source of your apprehension.”
XVII
“We failed.”
It had taken a cup and a half of wine before Latona could speak the words she didn’t want to admit. She, Vibia, and Merula had all changed out of their sodden clothes and toweled off their hair as best they could, then settled onto couches to explain matters. Aula had called for dinner, but Latona had no appetite. She was only grateful that her father wasn’t present, but taking his own meal with Appius Crispinius on the other side of Stabiae. She didn’t think she had the strength left for any subterfuge.
“It was more than we were prepared for.” Vibia’s voice was still thin, lacking its usual briskness. Unlike Latona, though, she had plenty of stomach for her food, tucking into boiled eggs, sausage, and an entire dish of cherries.
‘The fiend must have drained a great deal of strength from her,’ Latona thought, ‘and she needs to replenish herself.’ However enervated Latona’s limbs, it was not enough to overcome the nauseated pit in her stomach.
“It’s a latifundium, at least,” Vibia continued, in between bites. “They’ve plenty of other fields to work. That one will yield nothing this season. Imagine if the poor wretches had to depend on it alone.” She spat a cherry pit into her napkin. “Perhaps they can clear the other fields before more misfortune befalls them.”
“Who owns that latifundium?” Aula asked. “We must find out and write him. Let him know it is no fault of the farmers.”
“We should,” Latona agreed. “But it isn’t enough.” It wouldn’t make the grain grow, or the fiends depart. “What can we do?” She prodded moodily at a dish of currants and blackberries, persuading herself to take an interest in consuming them. “We couldn’t fix the problem, so what can we do?”
“We send for priests of Ceres, to bless their fields,” Vibia replied. “Tell them to sprinkle sacred water and pray that clears away the curse. I can’t think what else.” She rubbed at her forehead. “It may work. I still get the sense that this is all . . . experimental. I mean, why torment a bunch of poor farmers, chosen at what seems to be random?”
“I wonder if it is random,” Aula said, her eyebrows arching significantly. “Another reason to find out who owns that land.” They knew by now it was not targeted at Vitellian clients and tenants, but considering Lucretius Rabirus’s willingness to contract with a Discordian, Latona could not help but suspect that other Popularists might be the focus of the curses.
“Could you get any sense of what they were planning?” Alhena asked.
Vibia shook her head. “Not from the lemures. They’re not human, they don’t think like humans, so they can’t plan. But they have desires. They have intentions.”
“Hungers,” Latona said.
Vibia nodded. “Creatures of instinct, really. Tonight, they will have had a glut, and we may hope they will lie quiet for a while afterward. They are not men, to hunt for sport.”
“Not on their own, perhaps,” Aula said. “But they are driven by men, or women, who might.”
They all fell silent, pensive, and then Latona felt a nudge on her leg. Vibia, still lying flat on her stomach, had reached over to prod her. “We did the best we could,” she said, some of the accustomed sternness entering her tone. Latona had never thought to find it comforting, but it left no room for self-pity or doubt. “It is no fault, no failing of ours, that what we faced was beyond our knowledge or capacity. We will try again, better prepared. That is the most anyone could expect.”
It made sense. And Latona was grateful, that Vibia’s forthrightness could cut through to unassailable facts, stripping away blame. ‘But I still expected more of myself. And if the farmers did not expect, surely they hoped.’
After a moment of uncomfortable quiet, Aula gestured for one of the nearby slaves. “Would you fetch me those letters that arrived from the city this afternoon? Thank you.” She lifted her cup of wine. “Well, Vibia, I’m dreadfully sorry that we haven’t been able to furnish you with a more relaxing vacation.”
Vibia gave a soft snort. “I hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that ‘relaxing’ is not, precisely, the word I would associate with the Vitelliae. I might not have known exactly what I was in for, but . . .” She seemed barely able to summon the energy for a shrug. “I knew I wasn’t coming to Stabiae for a lark.”
The slave returned with a small stack of letters. Aula took them all, flicked through, and withdrew one from the pile. “Perhaps this will bring you some comfort,” she said, passing the paper over to Vibia.
Vibia’s face softened from its accustomed angles. “From my brother?” she asked. As Vibia took the letter, Latona felt herself leaning forward as well, her heart suddenly a-flutter between her ribs. She had to school her expression into far milder interest than she felt.
Aula nodded. “Father’s received enough of them that I can recognize the seal.”
Vibia rose from her couch. “Ladies, I think I will retire.”
“Of course,” Aula cooed. “After the day you’ve had, I’m astonished either of you are still conscious.”
Vibia locked eyes with Latona. “Get some rest,” she said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I vow it by Fortuna and Janus.”
“By Juno and Venus,” Latona promised. “Somehow.”
Vibia’s lips twitched slightly, and then she strode off to her chamber, letter clutched in her hand. Latona’s heart gave a painful twinge. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she told herself, swirling the wine in the bottom of her cup. She knew how often messages were passing from Iberia to Aven, thanks to the Air mage Sempronius had contracted, and she didn’t expect a letter for her in every packet. It wasn’t as though she wrote to him on a daily basis. She had only just alerted him to his sister’s presence in Stabiae, and she had not dared commit more than the vaguest outline of their troubling discoveries to paper.
Still, the ache persisted. Knowing there were words he had written, here under her father’s roof, but that they were not for her—
“Oh, don’t look so forlorn,” Aula said, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t want to say it in front of Vibia, but you received a letter, too.” Latona’s hand was out before she was conscious of having told it to extend itself. Aula snorted. “It’s in your room, you goose. Tucked beneath your jewelry box. You think I’d be flashing it about in front of her?” She snorted, popping a blackberry in her mouth. “Do give me a little credit. There’s one from Gaius, too.”
Latona bolted upright and started untangling her skirts. “You should have told me earlier.”
“When, pray tell, was there time, in between you barreling home, drenched as a naiad, and—Vibia?” Aula looked down the colonnade, brow crinkled as Vibia skittered back into the room, looking cold and serious. “Is something wrong?”
The very word struck an icy bolt of horror through Latona’s whole being. ‘No. No, if the worst happened—It could not be—News of his death would not arrive in a letter with his own seal—’ But the terror seized her nonetheless.
“Read this,” Vibia said, thrusting the letter in front of Latona with white fingers, “and tell me if these akdraugi don’t sound familiar.”
Latona looked where she pointed, about a third of the way down the paper. It took a moment for her eyes to focus past her dread, another for the written words to penetrate her spasmodic thoughts. “Lemures,” she breathed, looking up at Vibia with wide e
yes. Alhena came half out of her seat, making as though to shift beside Latona to read the letter as well. She hesitated, though, until Vibia nodded her assent. “He’s describing lemures.”
“In Iberia?” Aula asked. “How—?”
“It may not be exactly the same,” Alhena ventured, as her pale eyes scanned the paper. “The wolves of Truscum are not the same as the wolves of Vendelicia or those of Phrygia.”
“Yet all will hunt.” After the tart retort, Vibia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Forgive me. It’s only . . . My brother speaks of the Lusetanian devils in the same terms I would use to describe lemures, if I were someone with no magic to help me discern their nature. The haunting sensations, the mind-muddling—these are what we have witnessed, here.”
But Latona shook her head slowly. “Like, and yet unlike. He reports that they roll in like a fog, and he gives no indication that they are anchored to a particular place, to a rip between the worlds created by some charm. They seem to be summoned on the spot by the Lusetani mages.”
“I grant those points. Related creatures, then—and perhaps they can be defeated in similar ways.”
Latona’s hands fell into her lap. “We’ve only half-figured out how to defeat our variety,” she said heavily. “How are we to advise him what to do, half a world away? We can’t send him a useful Fracture mage in the post.”
“I will tell him what we do know,” Vibia said, “and keep him apprised of further developments.” Her brow was deeply knitted, her eyes focused distantly rather than at any of the Vitelliae. “Strange, that such similar spirits should arise, so far away . . .”
That pronouncement hung in the air like a storm cloud for a long moment, before Aula broke the silence with a thin sigh. “We live in tumultuous times, I’m afraid.” She rose from her couch and put a hand beneath Latona’s arm, urging her up as well. “Come on, my dear. We’ll all be the better for some sleep.”
At first, Latona wasn’t sure what had prompted this sudden concern for her somnolence, and then Aula’s true aim dawned on her: to get Latona away from Vibia, to examine her own letters. “Yes . . .” she said, allowing herself to be drawn up. “Vibia, please tell your brother . . . well, tell him whatever you deem useful. Tell him we are doing our best, here, and shall do whatever we can to help him—and the legions—out there.”
“I’ll think on what to tell him. And we’ll . . .”
“We’ll try again,” Latona said, even as Aula continued to steer her away. “We’ll learn, and we’ll win. We have to.” Vibia looked approximately as convinced as Latona felt, but that thin thread of surety was the best they were likely to achieve that night.
* * *
As soon as they got into Latona’s room, Aula nudged her ungently toward the table with her jewelry box. “Go on. I want to know what’s in your letters.”
Latona’s face folded in a scowl as she took up the papers: one with Sempronius’s falcon-in-flight seal, the other with the seal of a military tribune. “If you think I’m going to let you read—”
“Oh, I don’t mean all of it. If I were that determined, I’d have popped the wax and resealed it.”
“Aula, you are utterly impossible.”
“She’d do it, too,” Alhena intoned from the doorway. “I’ve seen her do it to Father’s.”
Aula’s eyes narrowed at their younger sister. “Oh, do come in, if you must, and shut the door.” Alhena did as bid, but that didn’t stop Aula from complaining, “Subterfuge was much easier to achieve when you were too small to be included.”
“You’ll just have to get a bit cleverer about it then, I suppose,” Alhena retorted, unflustered. For Latona, she had a softer tongue. “What do your letters say?”
“I haven’t had the chance to read them!”
“If you’re too nervous—” Aula began, her fingers twitching toward the papers.
Latona snatched them away from her. “No, thank you, I rather think my wits, enfeebled though they are, are up to the task.” She sat on the edge of her bed and looked between the two letters, feeling a twinge of sororal guilt when she decided to open Sempronius’s first. ‘Sorry, Gaius.’ For the moment it was enough to know that he was alive and well enough to send a message. A woman in love had to be afforded some indulgence in her priorities. Latona tried to ignore her sisters’ eyes on her, avid and anxious, as her eyes flew over Sempronius’s words.
He had evidently written in some haste, for the penmanship was even worse than usual.
‘My friend, Vitellia Latona,
‘I have written before, inquiring of your thaumaturgical studies. I must ask again now, with a more personal interest in the answer.’
She read swiftly, knowing there would be time to savor each turn of phrase later—once she had satisfied her sisters’ curiosity. “He tells me the same story as he told Vibia, only—” Toward the end, a note of optimism, and one which made Latona draw in her breath sharply.
“What?” Aula asked. “Latona, what is it?”
Latona pressed her fingertips to her lips, allowing herself a moment to revel in the warmth that spread through her whole body, finally chasing away the damp chill of the dousing rain. ‘I saved him,’ she thought, and nearly laughed with pride. ‘My magic. I did that.’
“Err, Latona?” Alhena said, with a note of concern. “It’s gotten rather . . . brighter in here.”
Latona’s fingers fluttered unconcernedly. “They’ll be fine.” The little flames in the lamps had responded to her emotions without her intending it, yes, but they weren’t out of control. “It’s—it’s good news. Of a sort. It would seem that—” She coughed lightly, mastering the sudden giddiness. “I gave him a gift, before he went to Iberia. A focale I’d woven, like I did for Gaius.” She glanced at the other letter. “He may have a similar tale.”
Aula’s face sharpened in understanding. “One with—” She gestured around at the bright lamps. “With your magic in it?”
Nodding, Latona continued. “He thinks the protective charm works against these akdraugi.” The unfamiliar word had a sour taste, and Latona thought of the signature of the Discordian curses. “It kept him from falling under their sway. He could feel it, warm on his skin . . .” Her fingertips touched her own throat, aching to once again feel his heat. Her eyes lingered on his closing words.
‘Lady Latona, I must tender my deepest gratitude to you, though doing so in words and across so many miles hardly feels adequate. Mars and Jupiter willing, I shall return to Aven and be able to make a better job of it—though I’m not sure all my holdings have enough fruit to fill as many baskets as would be required to honor your talent and generosity.’
She had to laugh. Fruit had indeed been his gift when she had saved his life once before. An appropriate gift from a single man to a married woman, nothing that would raise eyebrows—though he had brought the baskets himself, and Herennius had taken umbrage at that.
‘So perhaps I shall have to dare something more fitting. Until then, know that you are in my thoughts—and if you have any insights as to the nature of these akdraugi, write back in all haste. Many lives may have cause to praise your name, if you can help us defeat this challenge.
‘I remain,
‘Your devoted friend,
‘V. Sempronius Tarren’
Stronger words than he had dared to use before. Because he had written in such haste, not choosing his words carefully? But no, that hardly seemed like Sempronius. Even when impulse took him, there was always swift calculation attending it. So what had been his purpose? ‘He would know I would notice.’
Latona folded the letter and placed it firmly under the jewelry box again, though she knew Aula’s fingers would be itching for it. ‘I did that. I helped him.’ After the utter failure of the day, she had needed that boost, a reminder of the strength she could summon. ‘I just need the right approach . . . I have
to find it. I have to do more to assist the legions, if I can’t find the right answer here. To protect Sempronius, and my brother, and all the men of Aven and their allies who are facing these terrors.’ She drummed briefly on top of the lacquered wood, painted with images of Venus’s doves, then took up her brother’s letter.
He was a less oratorical writer than Sempronius, more sparing in his descriptions. “It seems these akdraugi have been as responsible for besieging Toletum as the living Lusetani,” she said, with sudden hollowness in her chest. Gaius’s letter she had no compunction about handing over to Aula and Alhena for perusal. “I need to write them both back, though I don’t know what to tell them.” Aventan magic could only do so much good in such circumstances, with Mars forbidding its use as a weapon of war. Protection, though, was the domain of Fire. “I should be weaving more. If it can help the legions, protect them against their own breed of fiends—” She started, as though to head to her loom despite the late hour and her own exhaustion, then halted mid-step. “But how can I do that and still tend to the Discordian threat here? There aren’t enough hours in the day!”
Aula rolled her eyes. “You can’t outfit three legions on your own, anyway, not if you wove every hour of daylight from now till the Saturnalia.” Seeing the suddenly mulish expression on Latona’s face, she hastened to add, “That was not a challenge!”
Latona blew out air through her nose in irritation, but after a moment’s consideration, she sat back down.
“Your challenge is in Truscum, not Iberia,” Alhena said. Aula’s and Latona’s heads both snapped toward her, for her voice had taken on the vague echo that meant a thread of Time magic was in it. But she shook her head. “I’m not seeing anything. Not now, I mean. I just . . . I just know. You have helped them both. You will help them again, in the future, in other ways. But for now, the gods want your focus at home.” She gave her head a little shake, and her eyes cleared.