INCEPTIO (Roma Nova)

by Alison Morton

  A tiny scrape on the gravel. Renschman’s head jerked up. He braced himself, balancing his weight evenly on his feet. The semi-automatic was already there, with scope. He paused, listening. A black figure ran straight across in front of him, left to right, and vanished. Another diagonally. Another, opposite diagonal. He fired at that one. Another ran across behind.

  ‘Think you can get me like that?’ he shouted to the air. He moved over and grabbed hold of my hair, the Glock on my temple. ‘One more and she’s dead.’

  Total silence.

  He waited for a few minutes, glued to my side, his breath crawling over my face and neck. I struggled not to shiver. When he moved away from me, he bent down to retrieve something from his bag. A shot rang out, only missing him because he rose quickly. He rolled, fired and jumped back to the wall next to me. He stamped on my instep with the force of his body weight. I lost my breath. My foot went numb. Then rolls of pain pulsed through the crushed flesh. I fought it, but couldn’t help shrieking out at the agony.

  ‘One more and I’ll throw a body part out.’

  I forced myself to take even breaths. The tiny saw was nearly through the rope holding my wrists. Warm liquid, my blood, seeped down over my fingers. I prayed the saw wouldn’t slip.

  ‘This time, I’m going to make sure you’re really dead before I leave.’ His warm breath on my face repelled me. ‘Your toy knife will be perfect. They won’t recognise the corpse. Ever heard of the death by a thousand cuts? I have a modern version all worked out for you, starting with your face.’

  He was so intent on me that he didn’t sense them. By the time he heard them, they were on us. He swung and fired. One figure dropped; he advanced to meet the next. He fired, turned and ran back to me, murder in his eyes. His hand swung the Glock up to kill me.

  I tensed my arms and jerked my wrists free of the last threads of the rope, tearing more flesh. I brought my fists together in front and slammed them upward against the underside of his right arm. The Glock flew through the air. I kneed him in the groin. He doubled forward in pain. I chopped the back of his neck with vicious strength. He should have collapsed. He shook his head and charged at me, but his feet were slow. As he staggered, I jumped sideways and kicked his right kneecap with my steel-capped sneaker. Eye-watering pain raced up my leg as my damaged back foot took the recoil and my full weight.

  The crunch of bone was echoed by his scream as his shattered knee landed on the concrete. He pushed up on his left side, but I slammed him down on the ground. I straddled him and struck his face with my fist, the jagged saw round my left wrist ripping his and my skin. He caught it and punched me in the base of my ribcage. Pain seared through my chest and I bit through my lip. My eyes blurred for a few seconds as my breath was suspended. He bucked and pushed me off, and attempted to stand up. He was sweating hard. His balled fist swung around toward my face, but I was faster. I sprang up, and kicked him hard in the ribs. He fell, grunting, hitting his head with a heavy thud. I dropped on him. I hit him. And hit him. I would have pulped him but somebody seized my hands and held them.

  ‘Stop. Stop it. Now.’

  My lungs were heaving and sore, my head throbbing, I trembled with fury and adrenalin. My nose and eyes ran.

  ‘Stop, Carina. You’ve won. You’ve defeated him. He’s finished.’

  LXXX

  I limped to the bathroom. No way was I going through the humiliation of a bedpan. My whole middle ached, and my neck and wrists were engulfed in bandages. Above my stitched and swollen lip, a large purple bruise bloomed on my face, matching the one showing each side of the strapping on my left foot. Only the reinforced upper of my sneaker had stopped my foot being broken. I looked like a cross between an Egyptian mummy and a suicider.

  A medic found me truanting and put me back to bed, where I regained my breath and the throbbing receded. I couldn’t put myself under, I couldn’t focus enough, but I managed to nap for an hour. The medical director breezed in after lunch when my grandmother was visiting with me. Inevitably, they knew each other. The senior doctor with her gave me my report, none of which I didn’t know already.

  ‘But I’m very pleased to confirm the pregnancy is still intact.’

  Nonna looked at me, eyebrow raised. I flushed, which made my face hurt like Hades. I’d only missed by ten days. It could have been stress.

  I woke later to find Conrad holding my hand and smiling at me. He tucked an errant curl falling across my face back into the paper hat.

  ‘Rested?’

  I nodded. ‘Helena?’

  ‘She’s fine. Shocked, some scrapes and bruises, face just like yours.’

  Renschman had been hospitalised in the secure wing. The knee injury alone would immobilise him for some time, but the blow on his head when he fell had put him into a coma. If he recovered, he would live out the rest of his life in a high-security wing of a mental hospital, not at Truscium. Lurio said the minister was humbly grateful for our help. I would really have liked to hear her say that. Flavius had a flesh wound from his run-past.

  After a few minor details, Conrad clammed up. The first two fingers of his right hand rubbed at the hairline at his temple.

  ‘Tell me.’

  He looked down. ‘Sentius. He—’

  But I knew.

  ‘He insisted on being in the runners-by. It’s a risky tactic. Perhaps I should have barred him. But whoever it was would have been a casualty.’ He gently rubbed the back of my hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I wept for Sentius: my supporter during the Goldlights debrief, my colleague in the DJ, my friend. Dressed in my formal PGSF uniform, leaning on a cane, I stood ten days later by his funeral pyre and threw on my libation through the smoke. It didn’t really help.

  Renschman’s revelations were true. Stephen Smith called me from New York after he’d investigated further. Renschman’s original birth records had been buried when he’d started black operations. But the DNA tests proved we were half-brother and sister. Further digging showed my father had made good provision for Jeffrey and his mother, including a house and a monthly allowance, but she’d drunk it. Still, I wish I’d known.

  I wondered whether I should feel something. Anything. But I didn’t. Not now. Maybe in time, when I’d processed it.

  The day I left hospital and told Conrad about the baby, he gave me his mother’s gold ring. I knew I would always love him. I asked him to join my family formally, and we married the day after I left work on maternity leave. We followed the traditional form: clasping hands, exchanging vows, and he signed away his own family name and took mine. But when Helena handed me the open torch and crystal cup of water to exchange with Conrad, the flickering, intense heat of the flame and the iciness of the water reminded me of everything we had endured together.

  I returned to work four months after our daughter, Allegra, was born. A week after I settled back in, Conrad strolled into the bullring, officially called the PGSF duty room, a report sheet in his hand, and made his way over to my shabby desk. I glimpsed flickers of interest in the faces of the other juniors. Nobody had really figured out how to handle the dynamic of our new formal relationship.

  ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, his face neutral. He handed me the sheet. ‘Customs report some suspicious activity in the mountains north of Aquae Caesaris. They think somebody’s using the old smuggler routes. Take your team up there for a few days and discourage them, please.’

  ‘Sir.’ I stood up, bending down to pick my jacket off the back of the chair. Faces swivelled back to their screens.

  ‘Good hunting.’

  I nodded, gave him a brief smile and left.

  PERFIDITAS

  READ THE FIRST PAGES OF BOOK II OF THE ROMA NOVA SERIES:

  ‘Captain Carina Mitela?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Custodes XI Station. An emergency token with your code has been handed in. We’re holding the presenter.’

  Juno.

  I dropped everything and headed fo
r the tunnel connecting our headquarters to the police station. The duty sergeant, with a typical cop’s bland expression but trying to conceal a speculative gleam in her eyes, handed me the token without a word. As we walked to the interview rooms, I stared at the thirty-nine millimetre diameter disc, made to imitate a casino chip, indigo blue polycarbonate shielding the tiny microprocessor. The last one I’d had in was from an informant handling incoming diplomatic baggage at the airport; her sharp eyes had spotted a very undiplomatic cargo of compact assault rifles. Sure, Roma Nova was a small country, hidden away between New Austria and Italy, but we weren’t stupid or sloppy. Working with the Intelligence section, I’d traced the weapons back to their Balkan Republic origins and led a covert service unit to destroy their warehouse.

  The figure I saw today through the smartplex observation window of the public interview room was slumped over, elbows on the table, hands braced her under her chin, her long black hair looking like it hadn’t seen a brush for days. Mossia Antonina. She owned and ran one of the toughest, and most exclusive, training gyms in the country. Right now she looked like a street vagrant.

  I shucked off my uniform of beige shirt and pants and black tee, and pulled on the casuals the custodes duty sergeant had found in lost property for me, ignoring the smell of stale food and cooking fat clinging to them.

  Mossia jerked her head up as I entered the room.

  ‘Salve, Mossia. What’s the problem?’ I plunked myself down on the other chair, crossed my arms and waited.

  ‘Bruna?’ She blinked and shook her head like she didn’t believe what she saw.

  I opened my hand in a gesture inviting her to talk.

  ‘Aidan has disappeared,’ she said, looking down and rubbing the table with her index finger. Inlaid with coffee rings from careless mugs, the plastic surface reflected the impacts of hard-tipped pens and handcuff scrapes.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How do you know? Aidan has other clients apart from yours. Maybe he’s gone on vacation, or been called away.’

  Her head came up at that. ‘His first duty is to me – I pay him a good retainer to look after my clients.’

  ‘So what makes you think he’s not coming back?’

  ‘This.’

  She pulled out a folded piece of paper with black, elegant writing. I read it, laid it down on the table, and leaned back in my chair. Then I picked it up and read it again. I couldn’t believe it. He wrote he couldn’t bear it any longer; he’d had enough of her unfair working practices. He resigned with immediate effect and would make sure her clients knew exactly why he’d done it. I pinched the bridge of my nose to make sure I was awake.

  ‘He took nearly a thousand solidi from the cash drawer and my gold pen.’ Mossia jabbed the air with her hand. ‘Whatever. What really bugs me are those lies.’ Her face was rigid and her eyes blazing. ‘I could kill him for that.’ Her chair crashed backwards to the ground with the force of her jumping up. She started pacing around the room like a lion in the arena.

  I wasn’t surprised at her anger. She worked her people hard, but looked after them. I knew her employment packages were first-class; as an anonymous shareholder I’d seen her accounts.

  ‘You’ve reported him to the custodes as a missing person?’

  ‘I’m reporting it to you.’

  ‘Why? I’m not the custodes.’

  ‘Well, you’re something like that.’ Ninety-eight percent of my colleagues in the Praetorian Guard Special Forces would take offence at that, but I let it pass.

  She came to rest by the table and looked down at me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘It’s personal.’

  ‘Were you sleeping with him?’

  Her shoulders slumped and she crossed her arms across her chest.

  ‘Silly sod.’

  She pulled a small moue.

  I stretched over and touched her forearm in sympathy. I shot a side glance at the watch on my outstretched wrist. Hades!

  ‘I’ll have the custodes log it,’ I said and stood up. ‘You go home now or better, back to the gym. They’ll let you know of any developments.’

  She took a full stride toward me, so near that she was all but touching me. ‘What do you mean? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

  ‘Okay, it’s bloody annoying, it’s hurtful, whatever, but it’s hardly a case for an emergency token. Leave it with the custodes.’

  I stepped away and pushed my chair under the edge of the table.

  ‘Come on, Mossia, time to go. Think of the money you’re not making while you’re wasting time here.’

  She shot me a vicious look. The anger was rolling off her. She took a deep breath, gazed unseeing at the dirty beige walls for a minute or so.

  Had I been too harsh? A stab of guilt prodded me. I’d known Mossia for years, but my schedule was crushing and I was behind it already.

  I knocked on the door which opened inwards revealing a blue uniformed custos.

  ‘We’re finished here,’ I told him.

  I looked at Mossia’s taut, silent figure. ‘The custos will see you out. I’ll stop by the gym if I hear anything.’

  ‘Well, screw you!’

  She turned her back to me and stalked out without another word.

  ‘Everything all right, Captain?’ the duty sergeant asked me as I changed back into my uniform.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ I said and pinned my name badge and insignia back on. The Department of Justice custodes were both wary and polite with us. Back in Eastern America I’d grown up in, city cops had never liked feds either. Many of my PGSF colleagues sneered at the custodes and used the public’s name for them – scarab, or dung beetle. I’d been a DJ custos once.

  ‘Thanks for sending the alert through – I hope it hasn’t been too disruptive.’ I smiled at her as she escorted me back to the tunnel door. ‘I’m not so sure myself what that was about.’

  ‘No problem, ma’am.’

  As the tunnel doors swished open, I felt my irritation at Mossia unwrap itself and flood back. What in Hades was she playing at? By the time I arrived at our end, I was annoyed for not being able to figure out whether or not she’d told me something significant.

  The PGSF general office was plain, cramped and a mess. With the new regime, the whole floor was due for a re-fit. None of us could wait for it – I’d been tempted to get a paint brush out myself. Back at my desk, I checked my presentation, but couldn’t concentrate as I went back through the interview with Mossia. What had I missed?

  ‘What’s the frown for?’

  ‘Um?’

  ‘Deaf again?’ came the mocking voice. Daniel.

  ‘Funny,’ I said in a sour tone. His ready attractive smile reflected in his brown eyes. He could usually lift me out of the dumps, even though he irritated the hell out of me the other half of the time.

  ‘I think I stepped into an alternate universe earlier on. Or maybe I’m losing it in this one. I just can’t see the problem, but I know there is one.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he encouraged. Daniel Stern was a tough operational type, but he wasn’t dumb. And when he tried, he could listen.

  ‘Why don’t you think it’s boy meets girl, after a while he wants out, he grabs the cash and scarpers, leaving girl behind, hurting badly?’

  ‘Scarpers? What’s that?’

  When we spoke English together, Daniel sometimes used weird words from his early days. Something to do with his uncle being brought up in England.

  ‘Leaves, decamps, does a flit, vamooses.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t fit Mossia. She doesn’t make emotional bonds. Ever. She’s not cold-hearted – just desperate to protect herself. Her parents dumped her in the gladiator training camp when she was fourteen. Can you imagine how hard that was?’ I shot a glance up at him. He shrugged.

  ‘No,’ I continued, ‘it’s not the personal so much as the lies he wrote.’

  ‘Okay, so what about the boyfriend?’

/>   ‘She gets a lot of clients via his counselling practice. It brings him into direct access to the great and the good.’ I looked away for a moment. ‘I’ve used him on several occasions for contacting all sorts of people. He’s a very discreet intermediary. That’s why I gave him a token. He’s the most cynical and egotistical person I’ve ever met. Shell harder than Aquae Caesaris granite and about as much emotion.’

  ‘I thought everybody liked him, you included.’

  ‘Sure. He’s beautiful, sexy, charming, fun to be with. But I’ve never seen or heard of him partying with anybody but clients. He gives them the physical and emotional attention they need.’

  Daniel smirked.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘But it’s always on a commercial basis. And they pay. I’ve seen him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s watching and while he doesn’t sneer, I’d say he was pretty cynical about the whole thing. That letter was completely off. It conflicted with everything I know about Aidan.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Daniel chuckled, ‘the ransom note will be along soon.’

  ‘Maybe, but you know what? It was his token she brought in, not hers.’

  Dramatis Personae

  New York

  Karen Brown – An advertising agency employee about to have her unsatisfactory life turned upside down

  Hayden Black – CEO of Bornes, Black advertising agency where Karen works

  Amanda – Karen’s work colleague

  Conradus Tellus ‘Conrad’ – A messenger who is not all he seems

  Sextilius Gavro – An inventor who came to New York with Conrad

  Legation in Washington

  Claudia Cornelia – Nuncia (Ambassador)

  Ted Johansson – Claudia’s husband, ex-US academic

  Favonius – Chief of staff, a power-broker

  Aelia Pasella – His daughter, a typical adolescent

  Gaia Memmia – Protocol officer, nervous but nice