by Cass Morris
AUTUMNUS
Splinter the Fifth
The cracking season.
That was how Corinna thought of autumn. A season when everything started to fall apart. Proserpina descended to the Underworld, Demeter mourned, and the world slipped away from health and into trembling decay. Others might think of harvests and hunts and elections, but Corinna saw the edges of the world crisping and crackling and crumbling. Every fallen leaf a wound.
It would knit itself back together in a few months’ time, of course, ragged flesh cooled with the winter rains and well-stitched by spring’s greenery. ‘But someday, some year, maybe not . . .’ Perhaps there would come a time when infection would set in and the world could not repair itself. The cracks between the worlds could widen, gulfs and breaches too great ever to be repaired. ‘What fine chaos that would be.’ Perhaps it had been so, in the earliest days of the world, when the gods-before-gods reigned. Discordia was born then, the daughter of dark night. And all the other children of Nox, too, noble and ignoble both: spirits of sleep and death, dreams and nightmares, fate and vengeance and slaughter. ‘Such things thrive in a broken world.’
Corinna knew this, and her heart yearned for it. Order crowded out splendor, and ever had. Men put laws around the world to try to tame it, but surely the grandchildren of Chaos could not forever be mewed up within such boundaries.
‘The dead can pass through to us, through those cracks. If they were wider, maybe we could pass the other way. Maybe we could reach not just the world of the dead, but the world of the gods. Or other worlds yet unknown . . .’
Corinna walked barefoot in the street, the autumn wind catching at her unbound hair, and she smiled to think of such a possibility.
XXXIX
City of Aven
Latona nearly collided with her husband in her haste to depart the house. ‘Damn, damn, and damn.’ She had hoped to get out before Herennius returned from the Forum. A message had come, about a Discordian curse breaking out in a warehouse connected to the Domitiae—the sort of fiend that manifested in daylight, and Latona was determined to do something about it.
Herennius caught her by the arm, harder than was truly necessary, since she’d already come to a halt in the vestibule. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”
“To see Vibia Mellanis.” It was not a lie. She’d sent a message for Vibia to meet her at the southeastern end of the Circus Maximus, so they could walk together—in the protective company of Merula and whichever bodyguards Vibia chose to bring along. The afflicted warehouse stood in the Velabrium, the crowded market district wedged between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills, a short distance from the Temple of Portunus—the god of keys, and thus one with dominion over Fracture. Latona hadn’t yet decided if that was a good or ill omen.
Herennius’s expression darkened into a glower. “Vibia Sempronia, you mean?”
Latona lifted her eyebrows. “Yes.”
“Sempronius Tarren’s sister.”
“Yes,” Latona said, her shoulders drawing together and a tension stretching down her arms. “All his life, so far as I understand it.”
Herennius’s lower lip bulged out slightly, then he huffed. “I had not realized you and she were so friendly.”
“Our families are closely allied, which has been a boon, considering his recent victories.” The story of the Battle of Toletum had been the talk of Aven since word arrived at the end of September, and all the Popularist families had been celebrating. “And we are both mages, besides, and with the Cantrinalia coming up—”
“I’ve had a complaint about you.”
“A complaint?” Latona echoed, with a scoffing laugh. “As though I’m some negligent foreman on one of your farms?”
“From Aemilia Fullia,” Herennius went on, ignoring her protest.
Latona swayed back slightly. “If Aemilia has a problem with me, she can—”
“Apparently she has tried to reason with you, but found you recalcitrant.” Herennius’s upper lip curled. “Which is not much of a struggle to imagine.” Latona tried to pull her arm away from him, but he jerked her back—and this time, it was Merula’s tension she sensed, spiking like a legionary’s pilum, ready for the throw. “Is it true?” he demanded. “What she says, is it true?”
Latona cocked her head slightly, a false smile on her lips. “You would have to enlighten me as to the nature of her complaint.”
“That you have been—” Finally he released her, so he could gesticulate wildly with both hands. “—gallivanting around the city, inserting yourself where you’re not—”
“Where I have been asked to intervene,” Latona said. Herennius blinked in astonishment to have been cut off. Latona’s teeth were on edge. ‘I took this chiding from my father, but by Juno, I will not take it from you.’ She drew herself into a solid and balanced stance, lifting her chin. “I am a mage. People in this city have been afflicted with magical troubles. It is my duty and my honor to help address them.”
Herennius wagged a finger at her. “It is the prerogative of the Augian Commission to investigate and deal with such matters.”
“The Augian Commission refuses to acknowledge the problem exists.” Latona’s voice was crisp and tart as a fresh apple. “Think of it as charity work, if it soothes you to do so.”
“Aemilia Fullia asked me to take you in hand.” He made as if to grab her again, but Latona twisted out of his reach. His face flushed, embarrassed at the fumble, and he did not try again. “To put a stop to your unwomanly ambition.”
There was heat building in her blood, warmth pooling in her palms. “Yes.” The word hissed slightly. “That does sound like dear Aemilia.”
Herennius’s dull eyes blinked rapidly in befuddlement. “She’s the High Priestess of Juno. You owe her your deference.”
“I owe what I am to Juno herself, and to Venus, and I shall do as they bid me.” Latona pivoted away from him and stalked toward the door. The slave stationed there was gaping at the scene, so Merula pushed him out of the way and opened it herself.
“Do you truly have no care for how your actions reflect on your family?” Herennius bellowed. “On me? On your father and brother? People are talking.”
She stopped at the door, hand against the frame. Yes. People were talking. Aemilia Fullia was talking, and probably Arrius Buteo and his cronies. Once, such rumors would have been enough to intimidate her. But people were talking on the Esquiline, too, and in the overlooked corners of the city, and the word they spoke was “defender.”
She could never explain that to Herennius. Hard enough, to break through to her father. Herennius would never, if he were given a hundred lifetimes, ever understand.
Latona turned, fire-eyed, back to her husband. “Let them,” she said. “Some things are more important.”
* * *
When Latona turned up outside the Circus Maximus, color was high in her cheeks, and her jaw was set so hard her teeth were grinding. ‘That can’t be a good sign,’ Vibia thought. Not this the elegant dinner-party conversant, nor the doggedly determined mage who had tramped across muddy field with her skirts around her knees. Latona’s eyes were half-wild, almost rolling, and Merula, at her side, had an expression of concern on her boxy face.
‘No sense being tender-footed about it,’ Vibia thought, and bluntly asked, “What on Tellus’s good green earth is the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Latona bit off. Then she gave herself a shake, though little of the tension left her. “My husband. He’s just—” She blew air out through her nostrils. “He’s not an easy man.”
Vibia gave silent thanks to Juno and any other responsible gods, once again, for Taius Mella. Trusting, supportive Taius, who when she said she needed to be about on mages’ business, supplied her with whatever she said she required—even when that meant giving her a pair of well-muscled bully-boys to accompany her into a less-refined part
of the city. “Are you going to be all right?” When Latona made a dismissive noise, looking off into the distance and waggling her fingers, Vibia shifted to stand directly before her and snapped her fingers once, right in front of that pert little nose. “I mean it. If you’re distracted, this will be a disaster. I shan’t blame you if you need to take the time to pull yourself together, but I most definitely shall if you charge in with scattered wits and get us both in trouble.”
Affronted defiance flared briefly behind Latona’s eyes, but swiftly settled. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.” Her posture deflated, and she passed a hand over her eyes. “I can use this emotion, not let it control me. I promise.” The vow, Vibia suspected, was not entirely directed at her. “And the walk will do me a world of good.”
And, strangely, it did seem to. For Vibia, there was little pleasure in navigating crowded streets, but Latona seemed to come alive as they walked with the stadium, quiet today, on one side and a tight-packed row of workshops and merchants’ stalls on the other. Her eyes lost their faraway furor and instead looked to the colorful trays outside the shops with evident interest, no matter if they displayed glass-beaded jewelry, painted dishes, or flowers and figurines intended for temple devotions. To Vibia’s ears, the cacophony was an irritation and the scents almost overwhelming: smoke from bread ovens and workshop forges, chisels hitting stone, hammers striking metal, fish and spices all mingled in confusion, vendors crying out enticements or cursing at their neighbors. Yet Latona seemed to relish it. Her step became lighter, her limbs looser, her eyes brighter. When she nearly tripped over a pair of girls who ran into the street, chasing a yellow cat away from their pastry stall, she laughed, catching one of the ragged creatures before she tumbled into the dirt and setting her back on her feet.
‘Perhaps it’s a Spirit thing.’ All magical power came from somewhere, after all. Vibia drew upon breaks and boundaries for hers, but Spirit’s power was bred in life itself.
‘The Spirit can’t be all, though, for Sempronius is like that, too.’ Her brother could scarcely walk from one corner to the next without encountering something that delighted him or someone to talk to. His enemies called it a ploy, but Vibia knew the truth: he simply liked people.
They were met near the Temple of Portunus by a gray-haired man with a scar upon his cheek. A former legionary, Vibia guessed, who had served his time under the banner before making a life in the city. Like Sempronius, the Domitiae had patrons among the city’s collegia, and the man identified himself as second-in-command of the upper Velabrium. “Ladies, I am bid to bring you to the afflicted place,” he said. His voice had the gruff and untutored tones of southern Truscum. “It’s safe enough,” he said, glancing at Vibia’s club-toting attendants, “but ’s a bit of a warren, if y’take me. Easy to get lost, so stay close.”
The day seemed to grow darker as they cut through the narrow streets of the Velabrium, where the buildings were in some places so close together that their little group could only pass single file. ‘Gods, what a fire trap.’ The blaze on the Aventine the previous year had been bad enough, but a fire here would be utterly ruinous. ‘So why not attack here, if the Optimates wanted to cause a real disruption?’ The answer, she realized, was likely that the Optimates themselves had major investments here, but few in the Aventine docks and emporia.
Vibia felt the warehouse, full of throbbing malignancy, even before their guide paused in front of a door, wide enough to admit carts, and nervously gestured. “This is it, ladies. We think . . .” He glanced over his shoulder, as though afraid the building was listening to him. “There have been accidents here, more than seems regular. We thought it odd, but . . . there were so many possible reasons.” His hand circled in the air in front of him. “New slaves, poorly trained. A drunk foreman. Someone stealing things in the night and not putting the crates back where they belong. Simple explanations, yes?”
‘Yes,’ Vibia thought. ‘The same simple explanations the Optimates are pushing in the Forum. Negligence. Slack morals. People from elsewhere who don’t know how to do things properly. And the gods punishing us all for allowing these degradations.’ She folded her arms tightly, clutching at the fabric of her tunic, at once eager to get on with it and wishing she could run away. Within the warehouse walls, a horrid ache cried out for attention.
“Then, we started seeing . . . things.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “First we thought it was smoke—and you can imagine what an alarm that set up—but then . . . then it was different. Some of the workers, they started . . .” His brow creased. “Dunno how to explain it, really, ladies. They weren’t themselves. Started picking fights out of nowhere. No words, even, would just haul off and punch someone.”
Vibia met Latona’s eyes with a sidelong glance. ‘True to the pattern.’
“Then some started falling down, shaking and sweating like they’d been cursed by Apollo,” the man went on. “None ever had troubles like that before. We’ve done all the proper sacrifices, had a priest come in and cleanse, but it keeps . . . it keeps . . .”
Latona stepped forward, laying gentle fingers on the man’s shoulders. “We shall do what we can. Open the door, please.”
Vibia checked the pins holding her crimson mantle in place. Already it was growing warm. Merula had a crimson scarf now, too, knotted around her head to hold her dark hair back from her face, then woven into her plait. Vibia’s men would remain outside, but Merula refused, as ever, to be left behind. ‘Just as well. Latona’s the only one not wearing her own weaving, so it might be her that needs the tackling this time.’
It was quieter inside the warehouse, with the noises of the market muffled, particularly once the door slid shut behind them. For a panicked moment, Vibia feared this was a trap: that the door would be bolted behind them, that the Discordians or the Optimates or whatever hellish alliance bound them together had discovered a way to eliminate the women who were undoing their work.
‘Breathe. Your own men are outside, and armed. They would not allow that.’
XL
Latona could feel the tear in the world, horribly strong and more tangible than any they’d encountered before. She remembered losing teeth as a girl, her tongue probing the strange gap in her mouth afterward. ‘Not just a tear, this time . . . a sinking hole, a widening breach . . .’
Pain tightened beneath her heart. ‘The last time I was in a warehouse like this, I almost died.’
She could not let panic take control of her. She thought of the first Discordian grotesquerie she had discovered, on the hill in Stabiae, and how her sisters had helped her then. ‘With me,’ she heard Alhena’s voice in her mind. ‘With us.’ For them, as much as for the rest of Aven, she had to keep her head, no matter how great a challenge the Fracture magic presented for her composure.
This place was nowhere near so empty as the Aventine warehouse. Crates upon crates were stacked in neat rows. Dust swirled in the pale shafts of light created by thin windows at the top of the walls. A few oil lamps hung near the door; Merula carefully took one down, wrapping the chain around her hand. “Flames for you, Domina.”
Latona nodded her thanks. The more Fire energy she could draw upon, the better defense she would be able to mount. Swallowing around the lump in her throat, she looked to Vibia, waiting for the Fracture mage to point them in the right direction.
All the color had drained from Vibia’s face, and her fingers were plucking at her mantle, fanning it up off her shoulders. “It burns, Latona.” Her voice was still her own, but strangely hollow. “Much worse than before. It hurts.”
Latona caught her fingers and pulled them away from the fabric. “Let it lie. It’s working.”
“I know, I know . . .” She took a step forward, gesturing Latona and Merula along.
The air grew thicker as they trod deeper into the warehouse, or perhaps it only seemed so. Quieter, too, insulated by all those crates, until Laton
a felt certain that she could hear her fellows’ heartbeats. Or could she only feel them, thrumming through her Spirit magic?
Vibia sucked in a breath. A smoky wisp had appeared, a few paces ahead of them, hardly visible at first in the gloom. It spread itself out over the edge of a crate, and as the wooden slats began to crackle and splinter, the fiend grew larger and brighter. In another moment, there were others, directly in front of them and spreading down the next row.
“They’re calling me,” Vibia gasped. “Can’t you hear them?” She staggered forward, one hand outstretched, then shrank back. Nearby, one of the crates cracked open, its slats shattered by the fiends’ devouring force. Lentils spilled forth, clacking and rattling as they poured onto the dirt floor.
‘If they’re attacking the food stores—and now, just after the harvests have come in—’
But there was no time to think of that now. More and more of the fiends appeared, hovering around the women. ‘Evidently we make a choicer meal than lentils or scraps of wood.’ They were clustering closest to Vibia. She remembered Pinarius Scaeva telling her how sweet it was, to devour another mage’s energy; perhaps that was why few showed any interest in Merula. ‘Why Vibia and not me? Even with the mantle on, they’re aiming for her.’ Like calling to like, perhaps; Fracture magic seeking its own level.
Latona reached out with Spirit, trying to grasp the flow of energy between Vibia and the spirits. They were trying to open chasms around her, aiming to suck her and her power in; Vibia, in turn, had dug herself magical gulches as a defense mechanism, but she could not keep up with so many at once. The smoky forms danced and darted toward her, seeking out vulnerable points both physical and spiritual.
Latona closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again with her magical senses better primed. She almost wished she hadn’t, so bright was the red glow that met her. The scarf in Merula’s hair glowed softly, but Vibia’s looked like iron in a forge, heated nearly to the melting point. No wonder Vibia wanted to tear it off. ‘It’s working harder, but it’s working. They can’t possess her while it does. I hope.’