by Cass Morris
* * *
As Latona departed the Temple of Venus, she saw a familiar face leaving the goddess’s cell: tall, lovely Maia Domitia with her dark curls and big eyes. She smiled and raised a hand in salutation when she saw Latona. “Any news?” Maia asked in a low voice, when they drew near enough together.
“Not today.”
“Fortuna bless us,” Maia sighed. “I was going to call on your sister. Are you headed that way?” Latona nodded, and together they started toward the Palatine.
They walked together under a brilliantly blue sky. Maia pulled her mantle around her shoulders, but Latona nudged hers back, a lavender fall over her bright hair, so that she could feel the sun on her arms. She wanted to soak up as much of it as she could before summer ended. ‘And freckles be damned.’
“I expect you were visiting Rubellia on magical matters,” Maia said as they crossed the Forum toward the southern side of the city.
“I was,” Latona said. She had not told anyone outside the household about her newfound ability, excepting Rubellia, so she said, “Practicing empathy. That’s rooted in both Fire and Spirit, you know. And Rubellia has more expertise with it than anyone else in Truscum.”
Maia grinned sideways at her. “She’s quite a marvel, isn’t she? Does it—does the empathy help with the—the matter?”
Latona didn’t question Aula’s decision to trust Maia Domitia with their campaign against the Discordians. Maia was as well-connected an ally as they could hope for, and she had a good head on her shoulders. So far, though, she seemed fluttery and ill at ease with the whole concept. ‘I suppose I can’t blame her. She’s not a mage nor related to any. No wonder she’s a bit . . . out of her depth.’ So Latona nodded. “It does. It helps us find where there’s trouble, and I can use that skill to bolster Vibia and keep her steady when she’s unraveling a charm.”
Latona could tell Maia didn’t fully understand, but she was clearly listening carefully anyway. “Well, your reason for being at the Temple was nobler than mine,” Maia said.
“And what were you up to?”
“Asking the Lady Venus for help in sorting out my marital future.” With a sigh, Maia cast her eyes skyward. “I’ve got a few prospects, but none bring enough to the table to impress my brothers.” A slight smirk. “Or me, for that matter.” Maia huffed slightly, blowing loose hair away from her face. “Sometimes, I swear, I wish my husband hadn’t been so damned honorable and had just taken the bribe Ocella offered. He’d still be alive, we’d have a fine piece of property near Crater Bay, and it’s not as though I’d be any worse off.”
Latona blinked several times and came to a sudden halt beside a juniper bush, not sure she had understood properly. “Maia—” she began, delicately, and then, as Maia stopped and turned to face her, found she had no idea what to say. Familiar coldness rose in her chest, the paralytic fear that froze all the fire of her nature in her blood. “Maia, do you—When you say taken the bribe—”
“Oh!” Maia laughed in a way that Latona knew all too well—a breezy disregard that bespoke past pains, aching beneath. “I’m sorry, I thought for sure Aula would have told you, the way her tongue runs on.”
“Aula seems an incurable gossip, I know,” Latona said, “but you’d be astonished what secrets she can keep, when they matter to someone she cares about.”
Maia smiled. “You’re right. That was ungenerous of me. I just assumed . . . Well, you’re not just anyone she’d be telling tales to. Everyone knows how close you two are. And particularly with what . . .” Her hand made a circling gesture as her typically perky voice tripped over itself. “Er. That is. I mean to say . . .” The affected effervescence drained away, her shoulders drooping as she looked down at the uneven gray stones beneath their feet. “Dis take me. I’m sorry, Latona, I don’t know any gentle way of putting it, and I’m afraid I’m prattling. You and I . . . We weren’t on Capraia at the same time, but . . .”
Latona sucked her breath in sharply. There had been rumors about Maia and Dictator Ocella, if fewer and quieter than those about Latona, and Latona had never known how much to credit them—and she was certainly in no position to judge, whatever the truth turned out to be. “Oh, Maia,” Latona sighed, reaching out for the other woman’s hand. “I’m so sorry, my dear.”
Maia pressed Latona’s hand gratefully, but then withdrew it, waving dismissively. “I’ve long since stopped being troubled by it. Or so I tell myself, at least, and most of the time it’s true. It’s why my brothers had to leave, you know. They were plotting to murder Ocella for it, and I had to beg them to leave the city so they wouldn’t suffer my husband’s fate.”
“And he suffered because . . . I always thought it was purely political.”
Maia shook her head. “Not purely.” A snort. “Nothing pure about it. Ocella offered him—not directly, of course, but through one of his creatures—a fine estate taken off of some dead senator or other, down near Baiae.” She sighed. “But he refused and let his throat get cut, the blessed fool, and Ocella had me anyway.”
Latona didn’t know what to do. She wanted to embrace Maia; she wanted to run away, as though that would leave behind the hated memories surfacing again now.
After a moment, Maia smiled and looped her arm through Latona’s, and they continued walking. “Anyway, I’m afraid I liked my husband well enough that it’s hard to imagine allowing myself to be matched to a total dullard for the second. I’d like someone willing to be a good father to Neria and Nerilla, and it’s ever so hard to find someone willing to take on daughters. Well, Aula could tell you—”
* * *
Amber and glass beads, jasper and carnelian, lapis the color of the sky and topaz bright as the sun. Aula picked thoughtfully over them all, testing their weight, passing them to Helva for second opinions of their quality. She was of a mind to get Lucia some jewelry for her next birthday. Nothing too fancy or expensive, of course, but something that would make her feel a bit more grown-up on the occasions she was allowed to wear it. Lucia had mooned over her aunt’s pearls at Latona’s birthday, and Latona had let the girl play with them a bit. ‘She’s too young for those yet, though,’ Aula thought as her eyes roved over strands of brilliant white, burnished gold, soft pink, and inky blue-black.
There was gold and silver a-plenty, too, molded into all sorts of shapes, from acorns and leaves to the heads of lions, panthers, snakes, and other creatures. “I wonder if we’ll start seeing western styles again, once the Iberian war is over,” Aula said, running her thumb over the curves of a wolf-headed bracelet. “You remember after the Albine wars? All those heavy necklaces. I don’t care for them.”
From the market, Aula, Helva, and their retinue walked down into the Forum. Few days passed when Aula was in the city and did not at least wander through. Sometimes, it was no more than a leisurely stroll, but usually, there would be something worth hearing, from a newsreader if not from a speaker at the Rostra.
Arrius Buteo held the vaunted position atop the speaking platform when Aula first grew close enough to hear. One of his usual tirades, she assumed—but he seemed to have gathered more of a crowd than usual. “The problem with so many of our friends racing off to Iberia,” Aula commented to Helva, “is that it cedes ground here to the Optimates.” And an election was coming, just three months away.
Aula planted herself a short distance from the Rostra, but directly in Buteo’s line of sight. A bit forward, perhaps—the area was no longer forbidden to women, but it was not usual for them to linger there. Doing so was, at least in the minds of the Optimates, a sign of imprudence and unwomanly ambition, but Aula didn’t care. ‘Let him see me. My menfolk may not be here, but he should damn well know the Popularist cause is not abandoned in their absence.’
Buteo’s theme this day was of a moralizing nature. “Our men are either warmongering brutes, ambitious and covetous—and yes, yes, you know of whom I speak!—or else they are
slothful, wasteful creatures, dressing themselves in silk and eating honeyed dormice like Parthian potentates!”
“Mercy,” Aula murmured to Helva, “I wish I knew what parties he’s been going to.” Helva blew air out through her nostrils, as much of a laugh as Aula was likely to get from her in public.
“Can such men be expected to lead a great nation?” Buteo went on. “Can they be thought to demonstrate purity of mind and true piety of the heart? And our women! Our women have not the steely virtue of their mothers and grandmothers, but paint their faces and strumpet themselves! They do not keep to the home, they neglect their children’s education and the proper oversight of their households, in favor of walking the streets and inserting themselves into public affairs!” Aula didn’t think she imagined the glare that Buteo sent in her direction. “How sad for our nation, when we cannot even count on feminine constancy to guide us!”
Buteo continued in this vein for another few minutes, and Aula was on the verge of leaving, suspecting he would begin repeating himself, when he handed the Rostra over to another man: Decimus Gratianus, who had been beaten out for the consulship the previous year. To Aula’s shock, he began by addressing the lemures which had troubled the Subura and the Esquiline.
Not in so many words. He referred to “recent trouble in our city’s humblest neighborhoods” and to “distressing circumstances.” He did not speak the name of the lemures here in the Forum. He said nothing, in fact, that could have drawn accusations of histrionics or sensationalism upon him.
‘How many people even know what he’s talking about?’ Aula glanced at the faces around her. ‘Or do they think he’s speaking of . . . of fights and poverty, perfectly mundane ills?’ The words could cut either way—vague yet pointed, if you knew what to listen for.
“I have heard some say,” Gratianus went on, “that these people have somehow brought these visitations down upon themselves. That they must be deficient in some way, must have neglected their household shrines or in some other way offended.” His head wagged with an affectation of sadness. “Good citizens, I will not say such things. The afflicted households and insulae are no more the cause of the ill than the rest of us. They are merely the first to be struck, as the gods cast judgment on the city.”
“Oh, he’s good,” Aula murmured to Helva. “Better than Buteo, to be certain.” And that worried her.
“We have all erred, my friends and neighbors! We have all erred. When omens such as these manifest, we must read in them the gods’ displeasure. And then we must ask: what have we done, to cause such wrath? Good citizens, I can tell you.”
“Of course you can,” Aula muttered, shifting her weight to one hip and folding her arms over her chest.
“Aven has strayed from its sacred course! We have become a profligate people, seduced by luxury and an easy life! As Aeneas wandered the oceans in search of a home, we now wander in a moral desert, lost even to our own best interests. Would not our grandsires, the noble twins Romulus and Remus, be ashamed to look upon us now, to see how much we have diluted the traditions they set down?”
‘Why, Gratianus, I hadn’t realized what a clever eel you are.’ Aula could feel her upper lip curling in distaste. Invoking Aeneas, Romulus, and Remus, talking about diluted traditions, decrying luxury and vice—all were ways of blaming foreign influence. As the Optimates painted the scene, Aven was all things good and righteous; eastern indulgences and western barbarians brought her low. And from that line of thinking, how easy to blame those traders who came and went from the city, peddling their degradations and bleeding Aven not only of its wealth but of its virtue, or the families who came seeking Aven’s promised safety and made themselves at home, setting poor examples for their neighbors and infecting upright Aventan tradition with lesser customs. How easy to blame those who didn’t belong. ‘Never mind that Aeneas was a stranger here himself, or that Romulus and Remus founded Aven in the company of thieves, brigands, and whores.’
Another thought struck her. ‘We know the Discordians are targeting the less-wealthy districts of Aven. I wonder if they’re also targeting the places where more immigrants live.’ They had thought the Discordians were simply picking on those least likely to defend themselves or have the ability to call for aid, but what if there was a deeper purpose?
Gratianus continued: “We must think, good citizens, my good friends, on all the gifts the gods have given us: this magnificent city, surrounded by good earth, nurtured by a bounteous river. We must make choices that honor these gifts, choices that show us to be as the gods wish us: dutiful, morally upright, prudent, and dignified. I am certain you will all remember this in the months to come, as you hear from those of us who seek positions of public trust.”
As he stepped down, making room for some weak-chinned aspiring quaestor, Aula turned away, pointing herself back toward the Palatine Hill. “Helva, I need you to make a list for me.”
“Of course, Domina.”
“Every Popularist senator left in the city. Those not on campaign or serving as magistrates elsewhere, I mean. If they’ve just been in Baiae for the summer, I want their names.” The promise of autumn was entering the air, in occasional crisp breezes that disjointed the humidity, and even the most resolute of the vacationing patricians would be closing up their villas and returning to Aven at the end of September. “We need them out here, speaking against Buteo and his ilk. I must see who I can convince.” She wasn’t trying to get her father elected this time around; censors held their office for five years. That left her attention open to influence their allies toward other goals.
“Of course, Domina. I’ll have that for you after supper.”
“Thank you, Helva,” Aula said. ‘And if I must write their speeches myself, then so be it.’
* * *
The little park behind the Temple of Tellus was as close to wilderness as one could get inside Aven, and so it was one of Terentilla’s regular haunts. She and Alhena sat beneath the thick branches of a myrtle tree a short distance from the main path. Their attendants sat nearby; Mus was plucking flowers and weaving them into a garland.
“I’m happy to help, but I don’t know what good I’ll be.” Tilla’s brown shoulders moved in a graceless shrug. “I wouldn’t know Fracture magic if it bit me, I’m afraid.”
“You’ll know,” Alhena said darkly.
“I suppose you’re right,” Tilla said. “But what should I do, if I encounter something?”
“For now? Just . . . tell us.” Alhena gave a little sigh. “Tell a priest or another Spirit or Fracture mage, if you know one you trust and who you think will be up to the challenge, but . . . we’re trying to figure out who’s behind all of it. And maybe knowing where everything’s happening will help.”
Tilla ran her hands through the grass beneath them. Her face had gone still and keen. ‘Like a hunting animal,’ Alhena thought, ‘settling into the stalk.’
“You said your sister had already tried to sound out the Augian Commission?” Tilla asked.
Alhena nodded. “And she met with little luck. They thought her a hysterical female, overreacting to something perfectly normal.”
Tilla rolled her eyes. “Never liked them. Half of them were in Ocella’s pocket, and the other half were too lazy to care about the corrupt half.” She blew out a puff of air, moving a dark lock of hair out of her eyes. “Quinta doesn’t like them, either. But don’t you dare tell anyone I said that!” she rushed to add, eyes going wide with horror.
“I wouldn’t!”
Tilla relaxed. “Couldn’t have it getting out that a sacred Vestal didn’t trust the sacred Augians. But . . . she doesn’t.” Tilla’s eyes flicked about, as though to see if anyone was listening, but there was still no one anywhere near them. “She doesn’t even think the Commission should exist, come to that. Says it’s a political cudgel, stripped of the piety and humility that should attend the mages’ holy trust.”
That did sound like the verdict of a Vestal Virgin. “I think they may have started out with good intentions,” Alhena said, thinking of all the history books she had read while trying to help Latona find useful thaumaturgical treatises. “A check on mages’ power, as a tribune of the plebs can check the Senate.”
“Yes, well,” Tilla said, sounding unimpressed, “a great many things begin with good intentions that end elsewise.” Alhena could find nothing to disagree with in that assessment. “I’ll do what I can. I trust Latona. She’s good and brave, even when it costs her to be, and I like that.”
Alhena’s chest swelled with affection for Tilla and with the relief of knowing she had sounded out the right person. “She is,” Alhena said. “I don’t think she even always knows it, but she is.”
A guileless grin came over Tilla’s face. “Your family, like mine, breeds remarkable women.” She reached over, tweaking Alhena’s hair playfully. “You included.” Alhena knew she was growing pink-cheeked and knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. “You should wear your hair down more. It’s so lovely like this.” Tilla lifted a portion of the bright red curtain, fluffing the curls out. “I don’t know how you keep it knotted up so tightly most of the time. Doesn’t it give you headaches?”
Alhena wasn’t usually the teasing sort, but she felt easy enough with Tilla to be emboldened. “You only say that because your hair’s never met a pin it liked.”
“Too true!” Tilla laughed, and Alhena was terribly glad she hadn’t given offense. “I can’t abide constrictions of any kind, really. Lucky it was Quinta and not me who was favored by Vesta!”
Alhena joined in her laughter, but then said, “If you had been, you might be more like her, and she more like you. Our elements may not define us, but they help to shape us.” More strongly in some than others. Tilla was as near a mortal incarnation of wild Diana as she could imagine, and Ama Rubellia a perfect vessel for Venus’s power, but Vibia Sempronia had gone the other direction from her natural gifts, taming the unpredictability of Fracture with tight control. ‘Still a shaping, though.’