From Unseen Fire

by Cass Morris

  Sempronius showed a deft ability to navigate the ocean of people, waving off the vendors who approached, each insisting his goods were superior to his neighbor’s. When a beggar with crooked legs stretched out a hand, however, Sempronius withdrew two bronze coins from the pouch at his waist and pressed them into the man’s palm.

  He drew Latona back by the elbow, just in time to pull her out of the way of a cavorting pair of street urchins, barreling through the streets with no mind for their surroundings, then guided her around a pile of refuse. A heavily-loaded mule approached, prodded along by a bearded driver cursing in an eastern tongue. When they paused to let it pass, Latona noticed Sempronius appraising their surroundings with a strange, satisfied smile on his face. It was a scene of chaos: the ordinary, everyday chaos that dictated Aventan life, but Sempronius regarded it with evident joy—and he allowed himself to indulge in it, in a way that Latona envied. ‘I never let myself give in to that . . . I was always too afraid . . .’

  Latona felt like she could hear music—and of course it was all around them, from flautists and a dozen other players hired to draw the attention of passers-by to certain shops. But that was a pleasant cacophony. What Latona sensed ran deeper than that, the melody of the city itself, composed daily by thousands and thousands of souls. Here in the market, the city danced as nimbly as any girl hired out for a banquet, and it made Latona want to dance, too. ‘What people this city breeds,’ she thought, laughing as a shopkeeper’s monkey juggled apples while balancing on the edge of his stall. ‘And what people it attracts.’

  “Where will you start, then?” Latona asked, once they had pushed their way out to the relatively open air of the Via Sacra. “With so much to do, that is.”

  “Oh, something to do with a temple, I suppose.”

  Latona wondered if she would ever feel as casual as Sempronius sounded in that moment—but she also suspected that nothing with him was as offhand as it seemed.

  “Not as crucial as the grain dole,” he continued, “but far more impressive for an opening volley.”

  “And good for fostering a reputation of piety,” Latona said. “A few priestly endorsements will help balance out the Optimates’ accusations that you’re set on the destruction of the mos maiorum and the Aventan way of life.”

  “An astute observation, Lady Latona.” Sempronius regarded her with a sideways glance. “Wherever I decide to build, I’ll show you in person, if you like. And if your husband will allow me to pay you the call, that is.”

  He seemed to have added the last as an afterthought. Latona held in a sigh. “Ah,” she said, squeezing his arm lightly. “Well, there, Senator, you find me in similar spirits to yourself.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I find I am increasingly disinterested in what other people will allow me.”

  * * *

  By the time they reached the top of the hill, the sun was already beginning to ease itself down towards the horizon. The autumn days grew ever shorter, and Latona had spent longer in the temple than she had thought. They paused outside Aulus Vitellius’s red-painted door to take in the southern cityscape before them. The sky was a languid, lazy yellow, shading to purple only at the eastern edge, and the pale gold of the sun cast a queer yet captivating glow on the brick walls and vermilion rooftops of the sprawling city beyond. From this vantage, none of the buildings seemed to stand at proper angles to each other, but jutted and collided every which way, as though elbowing each other for space just as their inhabitants did in the streets.

  “She is magnificent,” Sempronius commented.

  Latona snorted softly. “She is an upstart. A sprawling mess, ill-planned and impudent, overflowing her proper boundaries, with no respect for her elders.”

  “You find fault with her, for that?” Sempronius asked, looking sideways at her.

  Latona answered him with a grin. “I never said that.” She gazed over the uneven skyline: the long stretch of the Circus Maximus, crowded all around with workshops and emporia; the thin ribbon of the Tiber River, curving its way through the urban knot; the triangular pediments of the Aventine temples, their bronze ornaments reaching up towards heaven. “I rather admire her for it. She doesn’t give a fig what anyone thinks.”

  “If we had wine in our hands, I should like to drink to that,” Sempronius said.

  Latona glanced southward towards the Aventine. “It’s quite a thing to think of, really,” she said. “From a strand of huts on the river bank, built by fishers, hunters, and thieves, to all this. I’ve always wondered if Remus chose the land, or if the land chose Remus.”

  A grin from Sempronius. “A worthy question, my lady. Would Aven be Aven in any other place?”

  “Would our people be who we are, had we grown up on Crater Bay or in the Ligurian foothills?” A smile twitched her lips. “I think . . . not. Just as these hills careen into each other and jostle for space, we’re a city of those who cannot be content with what we are handed.” The thought prickled. “The eastern nations, they all sneer at our pretensions, think us nearly as barbaric as the Tennic tribes. Even Chrysos, with fewer than three centuries to her name, puts up her nose at unruly Aven.”

  “They won’t always,” Sempronius said, and it sounded more like a vow than like speculation. He turned to meet her eyes, and she saw a steadiness in them as sure as Mount Atlas, as enduring as the seas. Something in Latona thrilled to it, resonating with his certainty. “This city has a destiny, one I intend to see it reach. The Tyrians scoffed at us once, too. No civilization, no matter how great, will have the chance to do so again. Not the fallen Athaecans, clinging to their shattered pride, not ancient Abydos, not the so-called King of Kings sitting on his gilded throne over there in Parthia. No one will mock what I intend to build.”

  A warm breeze sought to wrap Latona in its pleasant comfort, and yet despite golden light all around and the impressive vista of their tumultuous city spread out before her, Latona found it impossible to perceive anything but Sempronius’s eyes, dark and absolute. She felt a nesting ache nudged by his frank admittance of his ambitions. It ought to have terrified her, or else it should have made her laugh, or question his sanity. No man—no normal Aventan man—would make such a claim, and Latona did have to wonder why he was making it to her. There was no boasting in his voice. This was not the over-puffed rhetoric of a delusional politician. He stated his goals as fact, as if affirming that the ocean was blue or that grapes grew on vines. Something about that plainness not only made the assertion seem impossible to deny, but also reached inside Latona and plucked something out that she had scarcely known was there. “I do believe you mean that,” she breathed, when she found the air for it.

  The shadow of a smile, partly of satisfaction but also of self-mockery, crossed his face. “I do know how it sounds,” he said, answering her unspoken thoughts. “It certainly isn’t something I go around saying to everyone. But you, Lady Latona . . . I suspect you understand. I think you know, if you would be honest with yourself, what it is to feel that you are someone who is capable of glory.”

  He had managed to hit upon precisely what had dogged her thoughts all day. Dark remembrances: a blazing tree, pressure in her chest, the cracking of control, and eyes watching her, waiting to take advantage of her successes or exploit her failures—but, too, the exhilarating satisfaction of using her powers in benevolence to save Aula and Lucia, to help those girls on the Esquiline, to lend a hand to Sempronius’s and Galerius’s speeches. Beneath it all, a growing sense of burning defiance.

  “You’ll admit it someday,” Sempronius said. “It must pull at you. How could it not?”

  Latona’s arms prickled, though not with any chill in the air. Her emotions were too close to the surface today, and his words bewitched. His rich, smooth voice drew her in; he spoke with such knowing, such insight into her, as though they were alike. She wanted to let these feelings consume her, and everything in h
is voice and eyes seemed to be inviting her to do so . . .

  “Vitellia Latona,” he said, hardly louder than the soft breeze buffeting around them, “who is, I think, destined for more.”

  His words cut through to a part of her that had gone unacknowledged for too long. ‘But am I prepared to face the repercussions?’ More, she had come to realize, did not necessarily mean better. Yet there was sureness in his eyes. This man, this incredible, ambitious man, evinced such faith in her. ‘What does he see when he looks at me?’ Latona felt a tingle rolling through her, part anticipation and part fear. Sempronius was dangling a golden dream in front of her, a dream of herself and what she might become if she dared to reach for it. A temptation—but a danger, too. Strengthening her power would also strengthen the damage she could do. ‘Do I have what it takes to grow with discipline, to reach for the sun without losing control?’ Latona wasn’t sure, but Sempronius stated her destiny as certainly as he did his own, almost impossibly formidable though each seemed. And he seemed to perceive their destinies as yoked together.

  The enticement of it all had Latona’s heart thumping. Or was that the result of Sempronius’s close warmth and the intensity of his gaze, of how her heart leapt to stand so near and share their dreams? She ached to reach out for him—no, she wanted to fling herself at him, to step into his embrace and be damned with the havoc it would cause. She wanted to find out if this fire continually igniting inside her could find liberation in his arms. ‘Losing control,’ she chided herself. ‘Your blood is too hot, you have to have better control . . .’

  Sempronius blinked and turned away, releasing her from the captivation. “We appear to have arrived. Do give my regards to your father and your sisters.” Latona simply nodded, letting him walk her up the stairs as Merula opened the door for her. He did not come in, but bade her a quick farewell from the doorstep. “I will remember my promise, to show you my plans for the temples,” Sempronius said, before Merula, scowling at him with her typical insolence, shut the door quite decisively behind her mistress.

  Aula emerged from around the corner only seconds later, mouth already open to start asking questions, but Latona started first. “Where’s Alhena? She didn’t look well when the ceremony was over, but I was called to the Temple. Is she well?”

  “Quinta Terentia brought her home all puffed up with piety, so at least she’s left off moping for the afternoon,” Aula replied. “What I want to know is, why did Sempronius Tarren walk you home?”

  “I ran into him while we were passing over the Esquiline,” Latona said, letting Merula unwind her mantle, “and he offered to accompany me.”

  “Mm-hmm. And what were you two conversing about for so long out there?”

  Latona narrowed her eyes. “Were you spying?”

  “I was just looking. Helva said she’d seen you were coming up the hill. I didn’t know I shouldn’t look for you.” Aula pinched her arm and dragged her to a sitting-room, then practically shoved her onto a couch. “Come on. Spill. A man like that doesn’t just take a fancy to walking young matrons home from their religious obligations.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Aula,” Latona said with an attempt at a casual shrug—an attempt severely hindered by the heat still pounding in her blood. “We crossed paths. It’s nothing to be in a tizzy over. Our families are on friendly terms, particularly with the elections coming up. There’s nothing unusual about his offering to escort me home when we met by chance.”

  Aula was quiet for a moment, scrutinizing her sister’s face: a carefully innocent expression spoiled by rubescence. “I just thought you might’ve been taking my advice,” she said, “about cultivating him.”

  Latona rolled her eyes. “Not all of us set out each morning with those machinations in mind.”

  “You should,” Aula said, admonishing. “Everyone else in this city does.” Then she settled back, beaming contentedly. “That’s why it’s such a good thing you have me for a sister, to think of these things for you.” The smugness of her poise lasted only a moment, until the pillow Latona threw hit her in the face.

  * * *

  Sempronius was not so maudlin as to stare at the door after Latona disappeared behind it, but she remained on his mind as he descended the Palatine Hill and continued towards the Aventine. ‘An extraordinary woman.’ His Water magic sensed the power in her, banked embers just waiting for a spark to set them off—and the same, he thought, was true of her essence. ‘A keen mind, an active imagination, and, I think, ambition she has never been allowed to acknowledge. But all wrapped up so tightly, so under-utilized.’

  Sadly, the tale was all too common among female patrician mages. Earning money from their talent, as Davina and Tura Petronia did, was admired as resourceful in the lower classes but considered vulgar among the upper. Unless they dedicated themselves as priestesses, patrician women with magical blessings had few meaningful outlets. And with no purpose to put their blessings to, their families often scanted their education, giving them enough to make sure they were not a danger to themselves or others—but nothing deeper in either theory or practice. ‘For someone like Latona, with both the power and the intellect to train and focus it . . . Oh, what a waste.’

  The laws that prohibited magically talented men from the upper echelons of politics, and barred freedmen and freedwomen from religious rights and certain occupations, were a different matter. But to Sempronius’s mind, they all stemmed from the same flaw: an adherence to tradition so steadfast that it overshadowed possibilities for growth. Such a thought was abhorrent to Sempronius Tarren. Offensive, even anathema to the mandate of his soul. He hated waste, and that loathing drove many of his political goals. Making Aven the city of his dreams would require making the most of all of its citizens.

  It was a frustration to him, to want to see Latona spread her wings and not know how to prompt her. That desire thrummed in her; he was sure of it. He had felt it, towards the end of their conversation. ‘Did she even realize she was casting her emotions so strongly?’ Most Spirit mages, like some Fire and Water, had a degree of empathic talent, but very few had power enough to set that empathy in reverse and cast emotions out to influence others. He knew Latona had the ability, though, had watched her use it the night of the Esquiline riots. Then, it had been a controlled release; today, a wild tumult, the rage of yearnings kept close for too long. For a moment, the force of her emotions had been so strong that he had been able to think of little besides how intensely he wanted to draw her into her arms and kiss her until that passion broke free.

  ‘But perhaps there is a more appropriate way to reach and inspire her . . .’

  * * *

  Two days later, a slave arrived at the doorstep of the Vitellian domus bearing a tightly-wrapped scroll and a message to deliver it to the Lady Alhena. “With regards from Sempronius Tarren,” the slave said, handing it over to Mus, since Alhena did not see fit to stir herself to the door for a messenger’s presence. “With his hopes for her edification and improvement.”

  Mus delivered both the package and the message, Aula had hovered over Alhena’s shoulder as she unwrapped the unlooked-for gift. It was cased in a sturdy leather cylinder, copied in a fair hand onto high-quality vellum. Alhena unrolled it far enough to reveal the heading, which proclaimed “A Commentary on the Truscan Auguries,” a text examining the divinatory practices of the pre-Aventan peoples of Truscum and their eventual integration into the current magical and religious systems. Aula wrinkled her nose, thinking that it was the sort of thing she could not be persuaded to read under either the most lucrative of bribes nor the most refined of tortures. But Alhena’s reaction was different, grateful, and almost misty-eyed. She did not quite smile, but there was a lightness in her expression that Aula had not seen in quite some time, a lessening of the woe-graven misery that had dominated her countenance since Tarpeius’s death. “How thoughtful of him,” she murmured, holding the tome to her chest. She b
linked over at her sister. “What do you suppose compelled him to extend such a kindness to me?”

  Aula, owning a greater awareness than the absorption of Alhena’s mourning had afforded her for months, twisted her lips in a wry smile. “I’m sure I’ve no idea,” she said, “but perhaps we ought to ask Latona.”

  XVI

  NEDHENA, PROVINCE OF MARITIMA

  ‘If only there were a damn road between here and Tarraco,’ Gaius Vitellius thought, not for the first time, as he tramped through muddy streets to Nedhena’s temple to Neptune, dragging a pig behind him. The unfortunate porcine had no notion that his destiny was to serve as a placeholder in Vitellius’s plea to the god of the sea to grant him favorable conditions for travel. ‘Who knew white bulls were so difficult to come by in Maritima?’

  They had finally found enough vessels to carry the cohorts to Tarraco, quinqueremes hired out from Tyrian merchants, but no sooner had Vitellius settled on payment with the captains than the heavens had opened. After three days of solid downpour and high winds, Vitellius was desperate.

  The priests held the pig while Vitellius sliced its throat open with a sickle-shaped blade. Reeking of blood, he raised his slickened hands towards the statue of the god standing across the atrium, and tried not to think of how its rough-hewn wooden features hardly compared to the impressive representation back in Aven. ‘Lord Neptune, please accept this creature as a symbol of my dedication, and if you can clear the seas and see me and my men safely to Tarraco, I will find a fine white bull to sacrifice to you there.’ Surely, he reasoned, there were bulls going spare in Iberia.