by Cass Morris
Eventually, with regard for the propriety requiring him not to monopolize the hostess, Sempronius yielded his seat to old Gnaeus Autronius, father to Marcus and Felix. But as he rose, his fingers brushed, ever-so-lightly, against her shoulder. It was almost imperceptible, nearly too feathery to notice, and yet Latona felt like she’d been scalded.
* * *
Though now officially belonging to the Herennian household, not the Vitellian, Merula had nonetheless assumed a position of responsibility when it came to organizing the festivities. While Helva handled the niceties of decorations and menu-planning, as well as keeping the extensive guest list locked safely in her head, Merula applied motivation to the rest of the household, chivvying the cooks along, terrifying the servers into precision of movement, keeping the entire feast on schedule. Between her imposing presence and Helva’s demanding standards, everything had gone quite smoothly. After the fruits had gone up to the tables, both women took a moment to step out onto the porch that ran behind the kitchen and breathe in the crisp night air. Soon, they would have to help with ushering the guests back out, making sure everyone’s cloaks and mantles got back to them—but, in silent agreement, they had decided to reward themselves with a brief respite.
Almost immediately, however, a strange orange glow from beyond the wall caught their attention. “Fire?” Helva questioned. It was the fear of all Aven. Flames could leap so quickly between the houses in the city, butted up against each other as they were. Merula rushed to the gate and poked her head out.
“No,” she called back. “Is something, though—not sure. Come look.” Helva joined her at the gate. The side of the house faced down the Palatine Hill and out towards the Esquiline. Away from the noise of the kitchen and the music suffusing the party, the servants could now hear a dull roar coming from the streets below. A line of torchlights wound its way from the Subura and up the base of the Esquiline Hill.
Helva and Merula glanced at each other, then turned in unison and bolted back through the gate and straight through the kitchen door.
VI
Helva found Aulus and his eldest daughter sitting together with Galerius Orator, and after a quick calculation, Helva thought it appropriate that she share the news with all three. “Domina, Dominus,” she said, her voice low and even. “Forgive my intrusion—”
“What is it, Helva?” Aula asked, sitting up straighter. Even Aulus did not object, knowing that Helva would hardly interrupt them for anything trivial.
“I thought you ought to know. There appears to be something going on over on the Esquiline Hill, near the Subura. Some unrest.”
Aulus and Galerius both rose slowly, glancing at each other. “We should go see what we can learn,” Galerius said.
“Yes,” Aulus said, scanning the room. “Let’s gather a few of the calmer heads. Not too many, though. We don’t want to provoke anyone. Aula, my dear, keep everyone else here and entertained until we return.”
Aula nodded, then looked at Helva. “Helva, find the usual boys to accompany Father. Haelix and Pacco, to be sure.” She dropped her voice to give a distinctly unladylike order. “Tell them to take clubs. There might be a need to knock some heads.”
Merula’s explanation to Latona was more abrupt. With no apology, she simply dipped behind her mistress’s ear and said, “Riot on the Esquiline. Looks big.”
Latona’s eyes shot wide. She murmured an apology to Gnaeus Autronius—“Just a small matter that needs my attention, do excuse me”—then rose from her couch and took Merula to the lee side of a column. “Explain.”
“Don’t know much more, Domina. Helva and I are standing on the porch, we see lights and fire, hear shouting. Her eyes are better in the dark, you know. She thinks there is some uprising in the Subura, moving up the hill.” Merula jerked her head towards where Aulus and Galerius had their heads bent in urgent conference. “I am thinking, if it is so, the important men in this room will wish to see to it, yes?”
“Yes, yes, they will.” Latona noticed who else was rising: General Aufidius Strato and Sempronius Tarren, apparently summoned by Galerius, and young Felix, whose eager expression indicated he had sensed action and did not mean to be left out. “Merula, have someone fetch their cloaks. No togas, they won’t want to be encumbered.” Merula darted off, and when she returned a moment later, ahead of several other slaves attending to the departing men, she had her own cloak on and casually handed Latona’s mantle to her. After only a slight hesitation, Latona took it, swung it over her shoulders, and pulled the edge up over her head. She could not put a name to the impulse that had seized her, but something was prickling at her, urging her out into the streets, despite the danger that surely roiled there. With Aula cheerily diverting the attention of the other guests onto a pair of dancers hired for the evening, Latona slipped out the door with a dagger-bearing Merula at her side.
* * *
As Sempronius and the others descended the Palatine Hill, the dull roar from the Esquiline grew louder. Sempronius could see that the mass of bodies was moving with purpose, and from the tone of the clamor, he assessed that it was not a benevolent one. At night, the streets of Aven were usually clogged with delivery carts, not with human bodies, but this crowd seemed to have driven all other traffic away. If it was not quite a full riot yet, it was well on its way. “What set them off, do you think?” Felix asked, as the little group hurried across the Via Sacra.
“I think we’ll know better when we can see where they’re heading, precisely,” Galerius said.
“We should have expected this,” Sempronius said. “I’m only surprised it took this long to erupt.” It had been on his mind for several days, that, with the funeral past, certain factions might finally feel brave enough to assert themselves. He knew of several potential targets for mob rage who lived on the Esquiline, not so much the arch-conservatives who had sided with Ocella out of genuine moral fervor, but the wealthy equestrians and lower-ranked senatorial families who had seen in the Dictator a path to greater glories. If the unrest had first stirred in the Subura—ever a cauldron likely to foment civil disturbances—then the Esquiline was the nearest location where anyone worth harassing would be. If not contained, however, the trouble could quickly spill into the rest of the city.
And then a sickening thought occurred to him. He stopped in his tracks, grabbing Galerius by the shoulder. “The Maloricae. Where do they live?”
Galerius blinked, then his jaw fell open as he understood. “Oh, sweet Juno’s mercy,” he said. “Ocella’s children.”
As the realization rippled through the rest of the group, they all quickened their pace. Every man of them had reason to hate Ocella, but the need to protect children—innocent boys, and patricians of ancient blood, besides—demanded immediate action.
The din grew louder as they ascended the Esquiline Hill, and the press of bodies became so dense that they struggled to stay together as they shoved their way through. Some had begun pitching stones at the shuttered windows of nearby houses. Some buildings had simply been closed up, but others now had men of their own standing outside, holding clubs or iron rods. “The Maloricae domus is on the other side of that tavern,” Galerius said, or rather shouted in Sempronius’s ear, so loud had the crowd grown.
Sempronius looked where Galerius indicated. “We’ll never fight our way through that.” They were already being roughly jostled by the bodies crushing in around them. “We have to bring this under control first.”
A crash from a nearby building caught their attention: a door had given way, and the mob surged in, smashing pottery and glasswork, pitching furniture out into the street. Inside one of the nearby houses, a woman was screaming hysterically, and the men in the crowd were growing rougher. Their pitched stones hit backs and heads, not just shuttered windows. “The only thing that will control them,” bellowed Aufidius Strato, “is a firm hand!”
A surge in the pack of malcontents pushed seve
ral of their party into a knot of men guarding the door to an impressive and clearly new-built house. Suddenly there were hands, hands everywhere, shoving at their backs, clawing at their garments, buffeting them between the seething mass of bodies. Sempronius was loath to answer with violence against Aventan citizens, but he also knew that the time for pacifist measures was after a riot, not during one. Someone’s nails scratched at his forearm. Aufidius flattened a man who had the temerity to tear the shoulder seam of his tunic. Felix was brawling as enthusiastically as any of the rioters, though by both nature and training, he was far more fit to do damage. One of the Vitellian bodyguards who had accompanied them brought his club down too hard on someone’s arm, and Sempronius heard the sickening crack of a bone splitting. As the man fell back, howling in agony, the mob answered his cry with their own, shouting in fury and indignation. Weaponless himself, Sempronius had to deliver a swift jab under one man’s chin to keep him at bay, and then he saw a metallic flash in the crowd. Swords were forbidden within the city, but few men were so poor that they did not have at least a little eating dagger to their names.
‘I could get out,’ he thought. A little Shadow magic was all it would take, enough to make him not invisible but un-noticed, such that he could slip away. But that would be the action of a coward. He needed to control the situation, not escape it.
One older man, trying to escape the fray, got shoved down, his head dropping out of view as the mass of bodies pulsed in the street. Sempronius was not near enough to help. ‘And if he’s the only man trampled tonight, it will be a miracle.’
“Hey! Hey! You sons of bitches, listen!” One voice, pitched high and loud, carried over the crowd, and something in it made at least a few of the brawlers take notice. A dark-skinned man, near a head taller than his fellows, was pushing his way toward the senators. As he approached, he whacked one of the more enthusiastic rioters upside the head, then grabbed two more by the tunics, growled something at them, and shoved them backwards.
“Vatinius Obir!” Sempronius called in recognition. He was Mauretanian, an auxiliary soldier rewarded with citizenship for his exemplary service during the Numidian wars. When his years under the standard were done, he and his brother had settled on the Esquiline Hill to work for a crossroads college—one of the sanctioned civic clubs responsible for the upkeep of the shrines positioned at every major crossroads—and they had become clients to Sempronius Tarren. “Obir!”
“Sempronius Tarren?” Obir called back. “Stupid sons of— Stop fighting! Don’t you know who that is? He’s no enemy of yours!”
Enough of the combatants listened to Obir that it gave the bodyguards time to form a cordon around the embattled senators. “Obir, what’s going on? How did this start?”
Obir’s brief explanation confirmed that it was as Sempronius had guessed: discontents in the Subura, most of them men of the ever-bellicose neighborhood collegia, had taken it into their heads to exact belated revenge for the crimes of Ocella’s reign. With the Dictator dead, cremated, and past retribution, their sights had fallen on his allies. “But not you, Sempronius Tarren, you have no need to worry,” Obir said, with what he clearly thought was a reassuring smile—even as, somewhere behind him, Sempronius could hear the wet thud of a fist hitting flesh. “Everyone knows the bastard chased you out of town. You had no part in his wickedness.”
The crowd surged again, and the bodyguards struggled to hold their footing. Jostled, Sempronius set a hand on Obir’s shoulder to steady himself. “Obir, you have to help us quell this riot. We think some of these men mean to storm the domus of the Maloricae and kill Ocella’s sons.”
“The little babies?” Obir’s eyes flashed, all the joviality leaving his face. “That would not be right with the gods.” His attitude was not unusual in the city’s collegia. A little fighting and thievery was one thing, but the murder of children was something only the lowest of the low would consider. “Say no more. We’ll get you to the house.”
“It’s on the other side of the tavern,” Galerius supplied. “I believe it’s the house with the green door—”
Obir nodded. “This is my neighborhood, Senator. I know the place. Hey! Nisso!” Another tall, dark man pushed his way to Obir’s side. He wiped at his bloodied nose as he approached, but he was grinning, apparently enjoying the brawl. “Brother, the noble Sempronius Tarren requires our assistance.”
Obir swiftly explained what needed to be done, and why, and Nisso’s expression turned serious. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly, a pattern of two short calls and a long. A number of heads turned towards him, and those men left off their shoving and punching in order to rally to the brothers. “Military discipline in the college, friend?” Sempronius asked Obir.
“Whenever possible, Senator.”
Between the Vitellian bodyguards and the men of Obir’s college forming a cordon around them, the strange group of senators and erstwhile rioters began making headway through the crowd. Obir and Nisso cursed and punched with liberty. “It’s the Suburan scum, really,” Obir called over his shoulder to Sempronius. “Our boys just like a good fight. Men from the slums—” His fist connected with the jaw of a short, screaming rioter. “No respect for how we do things here!”
Though they progressed faster with the Vatiniae’s help, it seemed to take hours to wind their way around the tavern to the street on the opposite side, and Sempronius cursed every second of delay. Even as he worried over getting to the boys in time, he was forming plans for what they could do to bring the riot under control, lest it inflame the entire city.
* * *
‘What was I thinking?’ Latona hugged the wall as they approached the top of the hill’s western spur. She could not put a name to the impulse that had driven her out into such chaos, and with screams echoing in her ears, she was beginning to severely regret giving in to it.
Merula had snatched a small torch from somewhere and was brandishing it as though she were as likely to knock someone over the head with it as use it for illumination. Her other fist clutched her little curved dagger. Latona had her hands full of her skirts, and her feet were reminding her just how ill-suited fashionable sandals were for a trek down one hill and up another, particularly at a trotting speed.
Latona drew near to the shelter of a wall, finding a small nook between two houses. The sun had been down for hours, but the night had grown hotter, though Latona was unsure if that was due to the heavy humidity in the air or the close press of sweat-drenched bodies. Most of the fighting men were focused on battering down doors, but some nearby were starting to notice Latona’s incongruous presence. Two suddenly advanced on her, and Latona had no intention of finding out if they had robbery or rape on their minds. Merula jabbed at one of them with the dagger, drawing a prick of blood from his arm, but the other got close enough to pull on Latona’s mantle. “Lady. Hey—”
Merula made to slash at him as well, but Latona flung out a hand, palm out, and the flame from Merula’s torch flared brightly, licking out towards the would-be assailant. It cast a red glow, heating his skin until it raised into blisters, pink and puffy. Eyes wide with fear, he backed away, clutching his wounded hand to his chest. “Well, Domina,” Merula said, “that will be making them think twice, at least.”
“Yes . . . but what are they doing to the women who can’t set them on fire?” Latona muttered. Unfortunately, she knew too well. She had stood by in Ocella’s court, terrified for her own life, for Aula’s and Alhena’s and Lucia’s, as the Dictator and his cronies did what they pleased with whom they pleased. She, at least, had made a bargain, but others had not been given even that much choice. She had told herself she couldn’t save everyone. ‘But I could have done something . . . I chose not to . . .’ Ocella had watched her too closely; any sign of defiance would have put the knives back at her family’s throats. Pain and terror had reached out to her from behind closed doors, and she had turned aside. ‘It wasn�
��t only your own body you purchased their safety with . . .’
She could turn around, walk away. She could leave this part of the city, rush back to the Palatine, where she would not have to hear anyone’s screams, nor put her own fears to the test. ‘And what sort of woman would that make me? Ocella’s not here now. I don’t have to be afraid.’
In defiance of the dead Dictator and every soul bruised on his account, Latona closed her eyes and reached out with Spirit magic, searching within the whorl of unpleasant emotions surrounding her for a familiar thread—someone who felt as Aula had felt, that night Ocella’s men came to her door; or a ripple reminding her of what she had sensed too many times in the Dictator’s court. Opening herself in such away invited so much else in, though: the hot burn of rage, the acid tang of bitterness, the cold tremor of fear. ‘Concentrate, damn you.’ Filtering out unwanted emotions was something all Spirit mages had to learn to do early on, or risk madness. ‘Just find what you need . . . There!’
Like iron to a lodestone, she followed the sensation to a nearby building where the front door had been smashed in. As she stepped inside, picking her way over splintered wood, screaming echoed from somewhere upstairs. An insula, like thousands of others crowding the city: five stories tall, with apartments built around a central courtyard, the plaster on its walls cracked and flaking. “This way, Domina,” Merula said. “The stairs will be over here.”