From Unseen Fire

by Cass Morris

  “The lad’s right,” Strato said, getting to his feet. His voice boomed sufficiently to quiet all the others, though Buteo and Rabirus still had their heads bent together, furiously whispering. “If we let these Lusetani bastards nibble at one province, we’ll have trouble on all fronts before long. We’ve just gotten the Vendelicians quiet, but they’d start up again if they thought we lacked strength to resist. And then what? We become easy prey for all the old enemies still holding a grudge—Numidians and Pannonians and Armoricans. Who knows what fool ideas the Menaphon might get into his head down there in Abydosia? Even the Athaecans might find a backbone, and then where would we be?”

  “Back where we were four hundred years ago,” Buteo said, though he spoke it with pride, not as a detriment. “Honest and pure, undistracted by these—these frivolities!”

  “I am surprised at you, friend Buteo,” Sempronius said, though his tone was neither surprised nor friendly. “You, who have such reverence for our noble forefathers, would see us lose all that they have gained?”

  Buteo spluttered some sort of response, but it was lost in a buzz of accusations and reproofs from one side to the other. Galerius raised his hand for attention, then stood when the interim censor nodded to him. “Sempronius Tarren has the right of it when it comes to electing new positions. We ought to start fresh, rather than rewarding Ocella’s promotions. However,” he added, “I cannot share his certainty on the matter of Iberia. We simply do not know enough yet. I propose this: that we set our elections for December, if our worthy interim censor believes he can continue to govern the Senate until then. This will give us time enough to sort out matters both domestic and foreign. The people can then make the best possible decisions, and we can decide the Iberian matter with a full Senate, not the scraps of one.”

  “We cannot wait that long.” Sempronius’s feet were firmly planted, as though a strong enough stance would ward off opposition. “Each boat arriving in Ostia carries new tales of woe. What further proof do we need that the gods require our action?”

  “Be reasonable,” Galerius said. “We can hardly focus on a war effort while the Senate is still at such depleted numbers. We must see things done in the appropriate order.”

  Strato’s mouth was set in a thin line, and his chin had a stubborn angle to it, but after a moment, he nodded. “It may be for the best—if we may be assured that the matter will remain up for exploration and debate in the meantime.” He cast a dark look at Rabirus and Buteo. “Silence will serve no one, and the people of Aven have a right to all intelligence pertaining to the security of our provinces.”

  Buteo purpled, ready to start up again, but Rabirus laid a hand upon his shoulder, silencing him. They were both watching Sempronius, who clenched and unclenched his right hand, but eventually nodded, too. “December, then.”

  * * *

  Sempronius was careful to keep his expression stormy until he was well out of the Curia. He exchanged few words with anyone as he passed, only a brief promise to call upon Aufidius Strato and Rufilius Albinicus soon. They were neither of them staunch Popularists, but they were men of war, and Sempronius intended to secure their support as firmly and rapidly as he could. Only when he had passed the Circus Maximus, on his way towards his home on the Aventine, did Sempronius allow himself to relax.

  “Sempronius! Hoy, Sempronius!” He paused at the call and turned. Autronius Felix was bounding across the street, his brother Marcus trailing behind him with an apologetic grimace. “Marcus just told me—you’re for war in Iberia?” Felix, on the other hand, looked like Saturnalia had come early. “What can I do? I can’t believe the bastards—”

  “Felix!” Marcus smacked him in the back of the head.

  “Well? They are! I can’t believe they’re making you wait till after the December elections to start planning.”

  But Sempronius was laughing, shaking his head. “That went better than I could have expected. I assumed Lucretius and Buteo would want to delay me—but to have it come from Galerius? My known friend? Fortuna smiles on me.”

  Marcus and Felix exchanged confused looks. “Er, Sempronius?” Marcus asked. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning.”

  Sempronius clapped Marcus on the shoulder. “Marcus, there’s no point in rushing towards war. We need to prepare for it, most certainly, but no legions could move now, with autumn setting in. We can’t risk the storms at sea in the autumn, and we’d never get provisions enough to make it over the Albine Mountains, not with snow slowing us down as soon as we reached the heights.”

  “Then why raise the matter to begin with?”

  “It gets the idea in everyone’s heads.” The answer came not from Sempronius but from Felix. “And with Aufidius insisting it remains in discussion, by the time the official vote in December rolls around—” He spread his arms wide. “Everyone will think of it as a done matter! And it’ll better your chances in the praetorial elections, if the people are excited for a war they see as your project.”

  “You think you’ll convince them later?” Marcus asked.

  “I won’t need to,” Sempronius said, starting to walk again. The Autroniae fell in step beside him. “The Lusetani will do that for me long before it comes time to vote.”

  “If you get the common folk talking of it, they’ll demand action,” Felix said. “Half raging to defend the honor of Aven, the other half hungry for spoil and new trade ventures. Rabirus and Buteo won’t be able to stand in your way if all the city cries for war.”

  “But you’ve handed them a win,” Marcus said. “You allowed them to score a point off of you—”

  “But gave nothing away!” Felix said. “What a hollow victory for Lucretius Rabirus.”

  “I don’t doubt he’ll realize it soon enough,” Sempronius said, “though Buteo may not have the wit to. And in the meantime . . .” He cast a grin over his shoulder at Marcus. “You notice how easily my suggestion about sloughing off Ocella’s appointments went over?”

  Marcus blinked. “Well, yes . . . Rabirus and Buteo sort of . . . forgot to argue with you about it.”

  “Because you dangled such juicier bait in front of them with the Iberian business,” Felix said. “Oh, you clever devil.”

  “But Sempronius,” Marcus said, “with Buteo agitating for a reduction of the Senate—”

  “I’m not worried about him. Rabirus is the real threat. Didn’t you notice? Every one of the men who spoke looked to him. That’s a dangerous proposition; to stamp it out, we’ll need men like Aulus and Galerius to stand on our side. Men who are known to sympathize with that affection for days past, but who recognize that they are just that—past.” He grinned. “How fortunate, then, that Galerius’s credit in the Senate remains unimpeachable, since he’s willing to stand up and oppose his known friend.”

  Marcus was agape. “Do you mean to say that you intended that he oppose you on Iberia?”

  “I had hoped someone honorable would,” Sempronius said. “To have it be Galerius? Perfect. He proves to the Optimates that he’s not gone over to the Popularists, but he still keeps them in check as a moderate voice.”

  “But Iberia, Sempronius!” Felix cut in.

  “Yes, Felix, I have plans for that as well. I’ll have to come in first in the lists.” Once, the twelve men elected to praetorships had been assigned their duties by lots following the election, with random chance determining which magistrate would govern which province—and who would remain in the city, seeing to urban matters. Since reforms a century earlier, whomever the electors returned first, with the most votes across all the Centuries, had his pick of any open magisterial positions or provinces. It was one of the modern degradations of the mos maiorum that Arrius Buteo was fond of decrying, but a practicality as Aven’s territories expanded.

  “But what are you after?” Marcus said.

  “Cantabria, I’d bet,” Felix replied. Sempronius gave him a sideway
s smile. “Of course. You don’t just want us to go to war—you want to lead it!”

  Sempronius stopped suddenly, clasping Felix by the shoulder and looking him straight in the eye. “May I count on you?”

  Felix answered with a grin. “Take me to Iberia with you, and you can count on me till you run out of numbers.”

  “Good. If—When I am elected praetor, I’ll want you for my laticlavus.” Felix beamed as Sempronius glanced to Marcus. “We’ll need you for tribune of plebs, if you’re willing.”

  Marcus was staring, slightly agape. “I’m sorry, Sempronius, I still haven’t gotten past the part where you engineered your own upstaging in the Curia.”

  “It’s engineering my election I’m more concerned with now. I need you—both of you—to help me make contacts throughout the city. Friends of your father’s, merchants, farmers, men of the Subura—” Another enigmatic smile flashed on his face. “Ocella interrupted my term as aedile. The way I see it, that means I owe our fair city a great deal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sempronius opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head and started again. “Come to supper tomorrow, and I’ll explain more fully. Bring your father.”

  “Certainly!” Felix said.

  Marcus shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I just hope you know what it is you’re putting into motion, Sempronius,” he said. “Come on, Felix.”

  The Autroniae split off north towards the Quirinal, leaving Sempronius to walk the rest of the way back to the Aventine Hill alone, taking the long way around, through the side-streets and crowded alleys that most men of his class barely knew existed. The Aventine and the neighborhoods that sprawled at its base were an odd mix: half illustrious, half impecunious, where the enclosed homes of wealthy nobles butted up against multi-tiered insulae, homes to dozens of families and freedmen, shopkeepers and clerks.

  Sempronius Tarren lived in his family’s ancient domus on the north side of the hill, near the Temple of Juventas. ‘The Palatine may have the flash and the cash—and, perhaps, the beauty,’ he thought, considering the Vitellian domus. ‘But the Aventine is where our nation began and where it truly lives.’ The city had expanded past its bounds centuries earlier, when the kings of Aven had built themselves new homes on the less-crowded Palatine and Caelian Hills. Certain neighborhoods, particularly those around the Hut of the Twins, retained their historical dignity, but much of the hill had changed as Aven had. A shame, said some of those same men who now inhabited the more fashionable neighborhoods, that the founding hill had fallen so far to now play home to so many immigrants and working plebs. Sempronius saw, instead, great wonder in the mosaic of demography.

  Living on the Aventine made for a hike to and from the Forum, but Sempronius had never minded. He liked strolling, liked feeling the city bustle around him. Today, his senatorial toga made him a touch conspicuous, but many days, if he had no official business, he would forgo the cumbersome garment and pass by unnoticed. He enjoyed the polyglot clamor of the common people of Aven going about their daily lives. Fullers beat cloth, mothers wrangled their children, masters yelled instructions to slaves, butchers hewed meat, vendors hawked wares, all as they had for generations and would do as long as the world lasted.

  Walks like this reminded him of what he meant to achieve—the reason he baited dogs like Rabirus and Buteo with his own flesh. The city had a great and glorious future, and it did not belong only to the citizens of the Palatine. All of Aven’s citizens had a share in the city’s great and glorious future—and Aven’s citizens ought to encompass the best the world could offer, from one end of the Middle Sea to the other.

  The visions that both drove and haunted him seemed to pass before his eyes like ghosts: he could see the streets bedecked with flowers, teeming with new citizens, a flourishing mass of color and sound. Too easily, as well, he could see the buildings crumbling, a dark and oppressive silence falling over empty streets. ‘These risks, this boldness . . . I do what I must to secure one future and avoid the other.’

  Corvinus met his master at the door, ready to unfold him from the toga and pass the cloth to the house slaves for cleaning. “We’ll be entertaining the Autroniae for supper tomorrow. Let the kitchen folk know so they can go to the markets early.”

  “Of course, Dominus.”

  Knowing he could leave preparations well in Corvinus’s hands, Sempronius went to his study, then pulled out parchment and ink. ‘December. Three months. Time enough to get quite a lot done, I think.’

  X

  A few days before the Kalends of October, Aula and Alhena sat together at their looms, though the elder sister was not attending to duties nearly as diligently as the younger. Weaving had never been among Aula’s favorite activities—in her opinion, performing menial tasks you’d rather avoid was what slaves were for, and she employed several far more talented in textile matters than she would ever be.

  Alhena, however, attacked the loom with manic energy, her focus absolute. She wasn’t really supposed to weave or spin; there was a chance such repetitive activity could bring on one of her Time-related episodes. And while, of course, it was a blessing and a gift from the gods, Aula rarely felt up to dealing with it. But Alhena had insisted, claiming the work would help her take her mind off things.

  It did not, to Aula’s observation, appear to be working. While Aula pushed her shuttles lazily, chatting with Helva about the news from the Curia, Alhena’s fingers flew. Her jaw was clenched tight, and her teeth worried her lower lip raw. Faster and faster, her shuttle rocked back and forth, until suddenly it slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

  Aula looked sideways to see Alhena white as a sheet, hands shaking, tears brimming in her eyes. “My honey!” Aula exclaimed, setting her own shuttle aside. “What’s the matter?”

  “Tarpeius,” Alhena breathed. “He should . . . He should have come by now.”

  Aufidius Strato had brought home with him only a cohort of retiring soldiers; most of the legion remained in Albina, and those military tribunes whose terms were up were straggling behind as ships became available to make the transit from Massilia to Aven.

  “Oh, sweetheart, you know they never release the tribunes from duty immediately,” Aula said, patting Alhena’s hair.

  But Alhena shook her head, then jammed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Ohh, I don’t know. I just have this feeling . . .”

  “A feeling?” Aula echoed, brow creasing in worry. “Or a . . . well, you know.”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t think so. Ahh!” Alhena stamped her foot and straightened, flinging back her hair. “It hasn’t been anything like that. It’s all cloudy. I just . . . I just see clouds, that’s all.”

  “Well, that might not be so bad,” ventured Aula. “Clouds might mean, oh, anything! The fortune of Jupiter, riding in on a lightning bolt. Nourishing rain for the next growing season.”

  Alhena bestowed her elder sister with a withering look. “Clouds, Aula. If it were Jupiter astride a lightning bolt or nourishing rains, I’d have seen those. Not clouds.” She started to rub at her eyes again, but Aula caught her hands.

  “That won’t make it stop, you know, and you might blind yourself if you keep it up,” she chided. Alhena crumpled slightly, letting her head fall against her sister’s shoulder, and for a moment, she was a little girl again. Eight years separated the eldest and youngest daughters of the house; they had never been as close as Aula and Latona, but they had a different bond. Vipsania Vitelliae had died at such an inconvenient time, and though she had loved her children desperately, the bulk of her attention while she was alive had gone to Gaius, her only son. Aula had been the one to take care of Alhena, to kiss away the early tears of childhood, bind up scrapes, teach her the ways of womanhood. It didn’t mean she always had patience for Alhena, but it meant she always tried. Aula stroked her sister’s fire-red hair, murmuring soothingly, to
o much the optimist herself to allow the possibility that Alhena’s fears might have foundation.

  * * *

  The man who eventually did arrive at the threshold of the Vitellian domus, on the day before the Kalends, was not Tarpeius, but rather one of the legion’s senior legates. “Aulus Vitellius Caranus, I salute you,” he said, snapping to attention.

  “Please, be at your ease,” Aulus said, gesturing for them to sit. “What brings you here, legate?”

  “Ill news, I regret to say.” He had the deep neutral tone so crucial to military command. “It is my sad duty to inform you that military tribune Tarpeius died three days ago, while we were at sea.”

  For a moment, Aulus could only stare in shock. “He— But how?”

  “There was a storm,” the legate said, pursing his lips slightly. “Part of the rigging tore loose and struck him.”

  Aulus clutched at his breast, filled with sorrow—for the young man, for the young man’s family, but most of all, for his daughter. “And that killed him?”

  “Not immediately.”

  Aulus winced; he would have liked to have been able to tell his daughter that it had at least been quick and painless.

  “It crushed his chest, you see. Our surgeon did what he could, but there was, apparently, a lot of internal damage, and being at sea . . . there was little he could repair. He died the next night. A hemorrhage, I believe.”

  With a heavy sigh, Aulus got to his feet. The legate stood also, recognizing the signs of his imminent dismissal. “I cannot thank you for bringing this news to my house, legate,” Aulus said, “but I can commend you for doing a difficult duty. You have, I assume, already seen to his family?”