Give Way to Night

by Cass Morris

  Latona’s hands pressed tight into her blanket. A bitter tonic—but she trusted her sister’s intuition. “Very well,” she said. “But I want some red-dyed wool all the same. I’ve been a fool.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. An embarrassment, not to have thought of it sooner, but it was such a military thing, so far removed from the domestic mural of her life. “We should be wearing these charms ourselves, and that much, I can certainly accomplish.”

  “Armor of our own,” Aula said. “Yes. That should help even the odds.”

  XVIII

  City of Aven

  Consul Galerius Orator had braced himself for a tumultuous year in office, considering the turmoil that had preceded the elections. Yet, so far, it had passed relatively peacefully. Oh, busily, to be sure. The backlog of issues needing the attention of the Senate and Assemblies was immense. Dictator Ocella had hoarded the public treasury, unwilling to release funds for anything he deemed insufficiently critical. As such, many repairs to public buildings had been overlooked, many legal disputes had been left unresolved, many records and registrations had fallen into chaos. Galerius’s first major initiative was overseeing an internal census of Aven’s municipal employees, determining what they had done in the past several years and where resources might need to be reallocated.

  ‘Not,’ he thought with a wry smile, ‘the sort of measure which gets a man into the annals of history.’

  Such had never been Galerius’s aim. He wanted to serve, and if a pedestrian task was what the Fates demanded of him, then he would complete it with all the diligence and careful attention of his nature.

  As for the Senate, strife there had limited itself to a manageable level of bickering and squabbling. Arrius Buteo, the aging champion of the Optimates, would stand up at any opportunity and decry the many degradations of the modern state, but he mostly seemed interested in hearing his strident voice echo through the Curia chamber. ‘Perhaps losing the consulship hit the Optimates harder than I had imagined.’ Galerius himself was a moderate, and he would have entertained whatever legislation had passed in front of him, at least in theory. No matter should be beyond debate. But his co-consul, Aufidius Strato, was a military man with a forbidding glower. He did not suffer fools—and he had made plainly clear that he considered Buteo a fool of the grandest caliber. He would not look favorably if Buteo left off ostentation and actually moved to putting forward legislation.

  The thing was, no one seemed to want to introduce much new legislation for debate in the Senate and consideration by the Assemblies. Galerius didn’t mind; it gave him more time to focus on setting the state back to order. But it did seem odd, that following the first elections after the death of a Dictator, the Senate had grown timid.

  When he opined on this to his wife, Marcia Tullia, she gave a small smile. “Well. It is summer. Half the Senate is in Stabiae or Baiae, if they’re not overseas. And of course, the Iberian war has neatly removed two pillars of the opposing factions from the city for the whole year. Small wonder you’ve a quieter time of it inside the Curia.”

  And that was true. Without Sempronius Tarren and Lucretius Rabirus going for each other’s throats in the Curia, the other Optimates and Popularists appeared content to snipe informally only, without dragging the law into it.

  Not that the gentlemen in question had gone unheard from. From hundreds of miles away, they made their voices known. Throughout the spring and early summer, the Senate of Aven had been subjected to a regular torrent of letters from Sempronius, chronicling everything from new villages dotting the rivers to the consumption of grain by the legions. Rabirus had gotten a later start and was not so thorough a correspondent as Sempronius, but he had not allowed his rival’s volley of paper arrows to go unchallenged; his own messages spoke of the quiet mood in Gades, the peaceful attitude of the nearby tribes, every letter constructed to make Sempronius’s look like warmongering hysteria.

  In the hottest part of the summer, it was rare that the Senate could scrape together a proper quorum. As such, Galerius had withheld his latest news for a few days. He had informed Strato, who agreed that the report was grievous enough to warrant waiting for a market day, when more senators would travel back to the city for business.

  Not everyone returned, but the Curia was closer to its usual capacity than it had been since mid-Junius. The rows of wooden benches were filled with men in their striped tunics and togas, and the mages of the Augian Commission stood on the floor near the consuls’ chairs, ever alert to violations of the lex leges magiae. Galerius rose, signaling his intent to speak rather than open the floor for commentary and debate. He had a boy with him, a public slave, bearing a basket full of scrolls and papers.

  “Venerable fathers,” Galerius said, pitching his voice above the few men still chatting. “Well met. I hope we shall be able to conclude our business swiftly.”

  A general favorable muttering answered him. Quite apart from the desire many men had to get to their business or to parties, the Curia was stifling. Aven had dubiously enjoyed half a month of unrelenting sunshine. Summers in Aven were always dry and hot, but this Quintilis seemed to have taken a particularly scorching turn. Everyone would be glad to leave the stuffy chamber and be able to change into less formal clothing.

  “I have received another letter from the honored praetor, Sempronius Tarren.” Galerius had, in fact, received three in the time it had taken to assemble a quorum, but he thought a bit of conflation no true deception. “I believe it bears a full reading—”

  Unsurprisingly, Arrius Buteo voiced immediate objection. “Must we endure another of these self-aggrandizing tales?” he sneered. “We have heard enough from sly Sempronius. We know every mile he has tread since leaving Liguria! And how many talents of silver he has paid out as wages, how much grain he has carted up from Tarraco, how many times it has rained in Iberia since the spring. I am only surprised that he has not quantified the shits taken by the auxiliary horses!”

  “Give him time,” muttered Decimus Gratianus, another of the prominent Optimates, whom Galerius and Strato had beaten out for the consuls’ chairs the previous December.

  “I am aware,” Galerius said, leveling his gaze at Buteo, “that some of you believe these accounts to be excessive in their detail. I assure you, I would not waste your time with excrement, equine or otherwise.” This parry earned Galerius a few approving shouts and claps from the Popularists and moderates. Buteo looked about to say something else, but Licinius Cornicen—ever among the most practical of the Optimates—leaned down from his bench to place a hand on the older man’s shoulder and hiss in his ear. Buteo settled, his mouth closed, though he did not look pleased about it. “I only wish,” Galerius continued, “that all of our number were here to bear witness to these words—but I have no doubt that the news will spread to them swiftly. Indeed, all of Aven will know the general shape of it soon, but we, reverend fathers, ought to be in full possession of the facts before we step out into the world.”

  Galerius turned to the boy standing behind him, took the top letter off of the pile, and began to read.

  “‘Reverend Fathers of the Senate, I regret that I must write you with ill news and dark tidings. I have brought the Eighth, Tenth, and Fourteenth legions near to Toletum, but our journey has been more arduous than expected—not due to any normal toil, nor even due to pitched battle. No, what we have faced on our journey south has been trouble of another kind: metaphysical and magical. And I fear that what we have encountered is nothing to what those cohorts trapped inside Toletum have suffered.’”

  A few of the senators began murmuring to each other at that, some curiously, some dismissively. Galerius wished that Aulus Vitellius were among those present. It had been his son, after all, who had first warned the Senate that dark magic was afoot in Iberia, and his son who was now leading the men trapped behind Toletum’s walls. But the censor was serving Aven in another capacity, tending to the electoral and tax r
olls in southern Truscum, and Galerius did not think the news could wait long enough for him to return.

  Galerius read on. Sempronius told a harrowing tale, to be sure, of fiends raised on the battlefield. That alone was enough to shake some of the men present from their skeptical disdain. Raising spirits was one thing, by itself; the priests of Aven had been known to do so on occasion, though rarely in recent history. Lemures could trouble citizens who were not diligent in their respects to their household gods, and everyone was a little tense on the days that the mundus was open, in case any malevolent spirits should decide to walk abroad in the city. But such things were rare. Lemures never appeared in large numbers, certainly never enough to overwhelm an army, and the very idea that they would be called upon in combat was anathema to Aventan thinking. To Athaecan and Tyrian, too, for that matter. Their gods did not allow it. The Iberian gods, it seemed, were untroubled by the need to keep magic and warcraft separate.

  With his keen rhetorical eye, Galerius appreciated how Sempronius told his story. While Sempronius’s speeches in the Curia were elegantly constructed, and while his missives from the field had been perhaps excessively detailed, in this account, he resisted embellishment. He also kept himself out of it, presenting the tale dispassionately, an observer rather than a participant. Not only would that undercut accusations of sensationalism, it also avoided placing Sempronius in a position where he looked weak or afraid.

  “‘These akdraugi, as the Iberians call them, do not behave quite as our lemures,’” Galerius finished, “‘but I must think they have some similar origin. We believe they have been responsible not only for fatigue but for deaths inside Toletum. I have put our best military minds alongside the expertise of our Iberian allies to find a way to defeat them without incurring terrible losses. I intend soon to write to you of victory.’”

  And that was Sempronius all over: speaking his intentions for men and gods alike to hear, then willing them into existence.

  “‘I remain, reverend fathers, your dutiful servant, Praetor Vibius Sempronius Tarren.’” Galerius let the scroll slide closed, then passed it back to the public slave behind him. He gazed over the assembly, taking in the faces: concerned, astonished, aghast, skeptical.

  And, in Arrius Buteo, vindicated.

  All too aware of what chaos he was about to unleash, Galerius said, “I open the floor for discussion,” and eased back into the consul’s chair.

  * * *

  The tales of haunting Lusetanian fiends were not new to Marcus Autronius, sitting next to his father on one of the uppermost benches in the Curia. They were neither of them important: Gnaeus, a man whose mercantile forbears had given him just enough wealth to drag the family into the senatorial class; Marcus, an Earth mage who could never look to any higher office than that of a simple senator, thanks to the lex cantatia Augiae. But Marcus’s brother Felix was Sempronius Tarren’s right hand, and though Felix was generally a poor correspondent, the encounter with the akdraugi had moved him to some eloquence—or, at least, effusiveness. Sempronius’s account gave Marcus a clearer idea of what had actually happened.

  Buteo was on his feet. “Well, this just proves it! He’s unfit for command! Fiends and hauntings—these are children’s stories!”

  Galerius gave Buteo a severe look. “Can you really dismiss the account of a fellow senator—a praetor—so easily?”

  “Of that man? Of course!” Buteo’s hawkish face was as unyielding as ever, but around him, Marcus observed that the other Optimates looked less certain. Restless unease had crept into the Curia. The story Sempronius Tarren told was unusual and unlikely—but not impossible. They would have preferred that it be impossible, that he had written of some catastrophe out of the age of legends: Iberian mages summoning burning rain or tornadoes, or turning themselves into monsters with fangs and horns. Such fantasies would have been easier to dismiss. This story had the smack of truth about it. All men knew the danger of the lemures and other spirits, and what Sempronius described did not seem far apart from their world—not nearly enough for comfort.

  “He has included, also, the sworn testimony of Generals Onidius and Calpurnius, as well as Tribune Autronius Felix,” Galerius said, lifting another three scrolls from his pile. “Do you doubt them, as well? Do you call them liars, or mad?”

  “It is possible for those who are not mad themselves to be taken in by those who are. And it is certainly possible for good men to be deceived—inveigled, beguiled by a silver-tongued trickster!”

  “If he were lying,” Quintus Terentius broke in, “it would be an awfully bold lie, considering every man of his legions could speak the truth about it once the campaign is over.” In Sempronius’s absence and with Aulus Vitellius seeing to his censorial duties, Terentius had stepped up as the most prominent speaker for the Popularist faction. “If he were mad, surely Onidius and Calpurnius would have relieved him of command by now. And I feel I must point out that this report concurs with everything that young Gaius Vitellius has written during his vexillation.”

  “Young Vitellius,” Buteo spat, “has been spinning such fables for a year. His word is no more to be trusted than Sempronius’s.”

  “Be reasonable, friend.” This interjection came from Licinius Cornicen, among the more sensible members of the Optimate faction. “The reports are in accord. Logic would indicate that—”

  “I don’t care,” Buteo said, his thick eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. “He’s conjured these fables to keep us from questioning whether we should extend command. What has Praetor Sempronius to show for his efforts in Iberia, besides this endless deluge of papyrus? Months he has been on campaign, and he has hardly done more than dispatch a few measly raiding parties!” Buteo gave a thin laugh. “How much easier, to blame fiends and shadows, rather than admitting he provoked this conflict—”

  “Now, that’s unfair,” Cornicen said. “We had reports of trouble long before—”

  But Buteo was hearing no objections. “It was he who drove us into this war, and now he finds himself embarrassed. When I was on campaign—”

  “Yes, do remind me,” Terentius drawled, leaning forward on his bench, “in which rugged hinterland did you serve your years as a military tribune, friend? Ephesus, wasn’t it?” Buteo’s face grew florid as snickering pattered through the ranks of the senators. “I expect you ventured so far as Smyrna, didn’t you? Why, that might have taken as much as three days! Did you get pebbles in your shoes?”

  Buteo spluttered and grumbled his displeasure, but it was Gratianus who stood next. “A proposal, august fathers—” he said, raising a hand to call for order. Marcus couldn’t see Gratianus’s face from his seat, but he did see Galerius’s pale eyebrows arch in tolerant bemusement and Strato’s brow knit in irritation. The consuls had been allowing a fair bit of disorder, but Gratianus was overstepping by behaving as though he had any authority.

  “By all means, Decimus Gratianus,” Galerius said. He did not seem to raise his voice, but he had a pitch that commanded attention nonetheless. A way of re-establishing his authority without losing his dignity. “Let us hear your suggestion.”

  Gratianus’s shoulders straightened. “We ought to refer these reports to the Pontifical College, before we do anything else.” He glanced around; there were a few pontiffs in the Senate, but not many. The pontiffs were usually, though not always, mages, and an ambitious man would get further in their college than trying to scale the cursus honorum, the upper ranks of which would always be denied him. “They are better suited than we to determine the truth of these stories. If indeed there are such apparitions spawning in Iberia, the mages among them may have insights as to their nature, and the College’s annals and records may have information about previous encounters with them.” His hand circled in the air. “From the Tyrian Wars, perhaps. And they may have advice we can pass to those in the field. If they determine there can be no veracity in the tales, however, then it will b
e our duty to determine what is to be done with a commander who would spin falsehoods.”

  It was a good idea. ‘Damn it.’ The last thing the Popularists needed was an Optimate—one who would likely be a candidate for the consulship again this year—looking steady and reasonable while the Popularists reacted to frenzied tales of eldritch horrors. Yet Marcus couldn’t help but be impressed by the balanced nature of what Decimus Gratianus proposed. The Earth of his nature admired that which was solid, measured, slow-paced. He wasn’t like his wild younger brother, always racing from one thrill to the next.

  Galerius called for a vote, and the proposal passed easily. Most of the Popularists—including Marcus and his father, and even the Terentiae—moved to the right in favor of the measure, though many did so while grumbling about unnecessary delays. They could hardly stand against a course of action that might lend pontifical weight to Sempronius’s words, though. Gratianus had neatly trapped them into an accord.

  ‘How many pontiffs are in his pocket, though? Or Buteo’s, or Rabirus’s?’ And then, because Marcus was not a naive man, the thought followed: ‘Or Sempronius’s, for that matter?’

  Perhaps that would be worth looking into. As the Senate moved on to discussing a building request from the master of the Aventine docks, Marcus picked up the wax tablet he typically brought with him to the Curia for note-taking and began to compose a letter to Sempronius Tarren. If he was swift in copying it over to paper, he might be able to get it to Galerius Orator that afternoon—and then perhaps Marcia Tullia would send it with her next bird-borne packet.