by Cass Morris
Latona stayed, tormenting them with pleasantly nugatory conversation, until someone else caught her eye: Salonius Decur, a member of the Augian Commission. Not one who had given her cause for concern in the past—he had never been part of Ocella’s court, that she could recall, nor did he have strong family ties to any of the Dictator’s creatures—and so, perhaps, he was someone she could speak to. “Do excuse me, ladies,” she said, rising from the couch and trying not to give outward sign of her satisfaction at how close Memmia appeared to apoplexy. “Have such a pleasant evening.”
XXIII
Alhena had officially reached the point of the evening where she stood against a wall next to some over-achieving shrubbery, not sure if she more hoped to be or not be noticed. It never took long after a social meal for this to happen. Alhena could manage perfectly well through dinner, since the seating provided her with conversational partners, but as soon as people began to mingle, she lost her tongue. She’d never managed the art of striking up an unsolicited dialogue or of gliding into a conversation and inserting herself effortlessly into the discourse. ‘Why is it so easy for Aula and Latona?’ Miserably, she slouched against a pillar, wishing that at least one of the boys with wine would wander past and not mistake her for an exceptionally well-painted statue.
“Hoy, Alhena!” a cheerful voice called. A grinning Terentilla approached and shouldered her playfully. “Who’re you hiding from back here?”
“I’m not hiding.” Feeling awkward, Alhena smoothed out the front of her gown. “As if a girl with my hair who’s taller than half the men in the room could hide,” she grumbled.
Tilla laughed. “You do seem to have grown even since spring. Don’t sound so cross about it. Fortune smiled on you! Everyone thought I’d be as tall as my stately sister, but I’ve stopped a bit short.”
“Have you?” Alhena cocked her head. Tilla was nearly her height and far more muscular. She was wearing a plum-colored Athaecan-style gown tonight, knotted up over one shoulder and belted beneath her breasts, and her raven hair was in a simple plait that hung limply over her shoulder. “I think she just looks taller because of how she has to wear her hair.” The Vestal Virgins had a traditional style, wound with cords and piled into a cone on top of their heads.
Tilla gave another bright laugh, and Alhena found herself blushing, pleased to be thought amusing by someone with as much personality as Tilla. “You know, you may be right! I’m going to tell myself so, anyway, to soothe my bruised ego. I—” She broke off, reaching out to snag two cups of wine from a passing platter. Pressing one into Alhena’s hands, she resumed, “Well, I’m hiding from my father. He’s been trying to introduce to me to young men.” Tilla rolled her eyes. Alhena noticed how long and dark her eyelashes were, though she doubted Tilla used kohl or burnt cork on them as Aula did. “What a bore.”
“Mine, too,” Alhena said. Aulus hadn’t made any efforts in that direction so far, not really, but it gave her something to talk about. He would, Alhena knew, because he’d started joking about it. “Aula’s trying to hold him off for both of us until more suitable candidates return from Iberia.”
“Yes, I can’t say I care much for the selection available tonight.” Tilla snorted into her cup. “But honestly, who would choose one at all if we didn’t have to?”
Alhena blinked a few times, startled that Tilla would put it so bluntly. ‘Well, if anyone would . . .’
“I mean, men are decent enough in their ways,” Tilla went on, with the air of one making a gracious allowance, “but I confess, I find it a bit hard to imagine yoking myself to one.” She jostled Alhena with her shoulder again. A little of the wine sloshed out of Alhena’s cup onto her fingers, and she took a quick sip to lower the level in the cup before Tilla’s exuberance caused further upset. “Least you’ve got your sisters for examples, eh? Quinta’s no use at all to me in that regard!”
“I do . . .” Alhena said, carefully. “Aula enjoyed being married, I think. As far as I remember, anyway.” A bit of color came to her cheeks; she’d been too young to be privy to conversations on the advantages of wedded bliss when Aula had first wed, but she’d heard plenty enough in the years since. “But she enjoys the independence of widowhood, too.” Latona, she declined to comment on; marriage had done her no favors thus far, but Alhena suspected a different choice of bridegroom might alter Latona’s opinions considerably. “But you—” Alhena ducked her head. “I mean, with your magic—if you pledged yourself to Diana—” Attaching herself to a temple wouldn’t get Alhena out of marital entanglements, as Proserpina demanded no celibacy from her devotees, but the acolytes of Diana were another story.
Tilla gazed up at the ceiling, wagging her head back and forth. “I could. Papa wouldn’t prevent me, I’m sure.” Her lips curled in a mischievous grin. “In fact, it’d be just the right sort of eccentric for our family, to have two daughters pledged to virgin goddesses, wouldn’t it? And it’s not as though he hasn’t got the boys to give him grandchildren to dandle about.” She rolled her shoulders. “But no. Tempting though the thought has always been, I’m afraid I’m terribly afflicted with a sense of duty to my family. So if Papa thinks it best that I wed, then wed I shall.” She shrugged, as though it were merely an inconvenience. “I figure if I don’t put up too much fuss, he’ll be more likely to pick someone who will let me do as I please.”
“It’s an idea . . .” Alhena mused. Latona was transparently happier the more her husband left her to her own devices.
Tilla shifted her wine to one hand and slipped the other around Alhena’s waist. “Come on,” she said, those deep dark eyes sparkling with mischief. “You’re too lovely to stay hidden behind a column all night, even if we don’t want any courtship thrust in our direction. Maia Domitia got our lady host’s permission to start up a friendly game of dice in the garden.”
“Oh,” Alhena said. “It’s Aula that’s the gambler. I don’t even know how to—”
“I’ll teach you!” Tilla’s fingers tightened warmly around Alhena’s waist, and Alhena felt then she’d agree to just about anything, if it meant staying in Tilla’s company a while longer.
* * *
“Commissioner Salonius,” Latona said, approaching the portly man with her best charming smile. She could use no actual charm, of course; like all members of the Commission, Salonius was a mage with a highly developed talent for sensing the elements at work. ‘Is he Light or Air?’ she tried to recall. Not Water, she thought, and she would’ve known if his talent were in Spirit. ‘No matter, really.’ Whatever the origin of his blessing, if she attempted to use Spirit to influence him, he would smell it out immediately.
“Lady Latona,” Salonius said, inclining his head toward her. “Well-met. You and your sisters make quite the pretty party, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“I don’t,” Latona said, “and my sister Aula would mind even less, I suspect.” She deliberately used a bright tone that bordered on indulgence; men in positions of authority like his, she found, liked women who were just short of simpering. Not so insipid as to annoy, not so sharp as to threaten. A fine line, but one which Latona had learned to trace with exacting precision.
“You’ve been summering with your family in . . . Pompeii, is it?”
“Stabiae,” Latona said. She noticed that Salonius’s cup was nearing empty, and she gestured for a nearby server to refill it.
“Yes, Stabiae, that’s right—Oh, very good, thank you, m’dear. Your father’s doing work with the census?”
“Indeed. He’s been visiting some towns in the area that had discrepancies.”
“Good, good.” Salonius shuffled his weight, his gaze starting to wander.
Unwilling to surrender his attention so swiftly, Latona rushed on. “Commissioner, I encountered some strange occurrences—strange magical occurrences—in Stabiae that I should like your opinion on.” As anticipated, that snapped his focus back to her. “My sis
ters and I came across a gruesome display in the forest, an animal sacrifice with a malevolent feel to it, and soon thereafter—” In brisk terms, Latona outlined their discoveries of the lemures.
She didn’t get far, though, before Salonius waved a hand. “These peasants see fiends and frights everywhere. Probably they were looking at a low crop yield, eh? And some unhappy landlords? Well, what better than to blame it on spirits?”
Latona’s heart sank. ‘That is not an encouraging attitude.’ Nevertheless, she tried again. “But Commissioner, I saw them. I visited the people who were haunted, and—”
Salonius’s nose twitched. “Now then, Lady Latona, let me ask you—This farm, was it in good condition?”
“I—” Latona blinked, not sure what that had to do with anything. “Well, the first one we visited was an orchard in a very small town. I’m not an expert on such things, but it looked to be poor soil. Of course it was early summer then, and there hadn’t been much rain—”
“Yes, yes.” Salonius nodded, as though her words had somehow confirmed something in his mind. “If the peasants were so neglectful of their fields—”
“Orchards,” Latona cut in, annoyance growing.
“Orchards, then. If they were neglectful of their duty in one regard, I mean to say, it follows that they may well be neglectful of their duties to their household gods as well.” He circled his hand in front of his chest, affecting the lecturing air of a magister. “It’s often so, you know, where there isn’t a firm overseer or landlord. People get lazy, they forget to do the proper rituals.”
“Commissioner, I saw no sign of—”
“Early summer, you said it was? So that would be just after the Lemuria! Well, that explains it, my dear, surely these peasants simply failed to—”
“Commissioner!” Latona said, rather louder than she had intended. “It was Discordian magic, I felt it.”
That brought Salonius’s pontificating to an abrupt halt.
Latona took a breath, steadying her voice. “And it was not only in one place, but in many. This was done to the farmers, not something they brought upon themselves.”
Salonius’s brow creased. “Lady Latona, I am compelled to ask how you would know to identify Discordian magic upon encountering it?”
‘Damn.’ Latona didn’t want to draw attention to Vibia, not with how poorly the conversation was going, so she chose her words delicately. “My Spirit magic recognized its inverse. The inimical element. But I have felt the magic of Janus and Fortuna, and this . . . this was not it.”
“My dear,” Salonius said, with the sort of smile that parents used on small children when they were on the verge of running out of patience with juvenile antics, “don’t you think it’s possible you’ve . . . misinterpreted something? I mean, Discordian magic being practiced on some little farms around Crater Bay? What possible purpose would that serve?”
Latona could scarcely speak around the tightness in her jaw. “That is precisely what I was trying to figure out, Commissioner—what I hoped you would be able to help with.”
Salonius rubbed at his brow with a sigh. “I can send someone down there to look into it, but I’m sure we’ll find it’s just as I’ve said. Was there anything else?”
Only with effort did Latona keep her face placid. Another skill she had learned in Ocella’s court and longed to abandon. But she would get nothing more out of Salonius Decur, she could see that now. ‘Why was I foolish enough to try?’ But it wasn’t foolish. The Augian Commission was precisely who she should have been able to take this to. ‘They are, after all, only men.’ They had men’s prejudices. “No, Commissioner,” she said, once she trusted her tongue to sound sweet and deferential again. “Nothing else.”
Salonius’s shoulders dropped almost imperceptibly. Evidently he was relieved that she was not determined to pursue the matter any further. “There, there, you mustn’t feel bad about it. Even if they were just the product of poorly tended altars, no doubt the lemures gave you a fright. It’s the heat, you know,” he added, patting her shoulder paternally. “And all that sun, down there at the shore. Inflames the brain, yes. And women are so much more susceptible to such things, you really must take care.”
Latona had to look down, under the guise of nodding in bashful agreement, so that Salonius would not see the rage in her eyes. ‘I will not set Marcia’s lovely sitting room on fire. I will not. Whatever the provocation . . .’ Another steadying breath, and for the second time that night, she peeled her magic away from the flames in the room. How eager they were, to dance at her command. “You’re so good to be concerned, Commissioner,” she said.
She didn’t think he could have disappointed her any more, but then, with another condescending pat, he said, “Ah, look. Here’s your husband.”
* * *
Salonius did not go directly home after the Galerian dinner party. He made his farewells, to his hosts and friends alike, and sauntered northward. Around him were four attendants, each bearing two torches; two walked before him, and two behind, casting a wide circle of light around their party. Instead of crossing to the east of the Subura, however, he continued straight past it to the low slope of the Quirinal Hill.
He knocked at the door of a modest domus, but one whose furnishings and artwork spoke of ancient wealth. The door-slave greeted him first with a scowl for the late hour, but his expression melted into concern when he recognized the caller. “Commissioner Salonius, sir. What brings you to—”
“I need your master. Quick.” As he stepped in the door, he told his attendants, “Stay here. Remain vigilant.”
Salonius paced in the receiving room, uneasy in the shadows cast by the single flickering lamp the slave had lit for him. In a moment, he was joined by a tall man dressed only in a roughspun sleeping tunic, his fair hair near as bright as the flame. He was younger than Salonius, but held himself with such dignity that it was impossible not to show him deference. Durmius Argus, a mage of Spirit and his fellow Commissioner.
“Durmius, my friend.” The air hung heavy and damp, even inside the well-appointed house. “We have a problem.”
XXIV
Lusetani Camp, Near Toletum
The ground to the south of the camp was soaked with blood, staining the ocher dirt a deeper shade of brown. So it would stay, until some summer storm came to wash it clean—and even then, Ekialde suspected, the earth itself would remember, in its bones, what had been done here.
Bailar had explained it all, and it made perfect sense to Ekialde. They could only summon so many akdraugi. This, they had known. Even with the magic-men Bailar had accumulated from the allied tribes, there was a limit on what they could safely pull across from the world of the dead. So now, with the new Aventan legions arriving and surrounding the peninsula on which Toletum stood, they had to change tactics. Akdraugi, more mobile and easily deployed, had been the correct choice to assault the legions in the field. And now, for the city, they had to call on a manifestation that was harder to summon, but capable of working long after the men whose lives paid for its power had bled their last. A pestilence, Bailar promised, though he confessed he did not know how it would present itself. No one had worked this magic in many generations, after all. Bailar was an innovator and a visionary.
Bailar thought this sacrifice would work better if it harnessed the power of Aventan blood, turning it against its own people. Unfortunately, Aventan prisoners were hard to come by. The legions had quickly learned to disengage from battle when the akdraugi raged, and when they did fight, in their tight lines, behind their shield walls, they presented little opportunity for the Lusetani to carve a few hostages away from the whole.
‘They have a coward’s way of fighting,’ Ekialde thought. How was a man to earn glory and honor in such a fashion, if he could never stand apart from the throng? ‘An offense to Bandue, surely. How does their own war-god stand for it?’ Yet it was, he had to admit, f
rustratingly effective.
With no Aventans on hand for the sacrifice, Ekialde sent instead for prisoners that the Vettoni had taken from the enemy tribes. ‘They invited this death,’ Ekialde told himself. ‘They are traitors. They had the opportunity to join with us, and instead chose allegiance to a foreign power and the gifts it promised them.’ Another voice in his head, which sounded a lot like Neitin’s, told him that many men and women would prefer peace and wealth to war and uncertainty. That voice spoke to him less often these days; he could not allow it to seed doubt or shame. He had to be stalwart, focused. ‘I am erregerra, beloved of Bandue. He blesses the course I have chosen. To doubt myself is to doubt him, and to doubt him is sacrilege.’
Three score men and women were stripped naked, bound with rope, and flung to their knees, there in the bloodstained dirt, where others had met a similar fate to summon the akdraugi. Never so many at once, though. Bailar assured him the quantity was necessary. From one mass sacrifice, the magic-men would be able to call up the pestilential power more than once, if Bailar chose their days correctly. Ekialde did not understand the reasons; that was for the star-readers to ascertain. All Ekialde needed to know was what must be done, what was necessary for victory.
‘What Neitin would think of this . . .’
Ekialde had not returned to the larger camp around the riverbend, where his queen and the noncombatants waited, since the day after Bailar had marked his skin. He told himself that his presence on the siege line was necessary, all the more so now that Aventan reinforcements had arrived. Their western force had not quite cut off contact between the two Lusetani camps, particularly not since the magic-men could summon distracting akdraugi to cover transit—but still, it was a risk, and should the erregerra risk himself so? His capture would mean the end of the entire endeavor. The Vettoni and other allies would disband immediately, and even the Lusetani would take such ill fortune as a sign that Bandue had withdrawn his protection.