XXXVII
A second after I’d stood Livius down, a fist-sized chunk of Brancadorum granite flew down from the curtain wall in a fast, strong trajectory. It landed square in Nicola’s chest. She grunted and stumbled backwards. She swung her arm up and loosed off a series of rounds. Stella, left unguarded for a few seconds, dragged herself away from her tormentor. She placed one foot flat on the ground to lever herself upright, but Nicola recovered quickly and kicked her in the ribs. Stella collapsed in a heap.
‘Five seconds to show yourself,’ Nicola shouted at the wall and took a step forward.
Allegra stepped out from the broken curtain wall. My heart shrivelled. No.
‘You can’t kill us all,’ she called. ‘Even if you take one, the others will get you.’
‘Oh, it’s the little princess, the apple of her mother’s eye. You’d be a good one to start with.’ She raised the bullpup, settled her fingers on the pistol grip and tensed her index finger. Conrad launched himself at her. I barrelled forward. But the distance was too great. Nicola rolled away, escaping the tackle, and as she scrambled up, she fired a single shot at Conrad.
He grunted, clasped his arm and staggered back at the force, and fell.
‘Back! Get back.’ She waved the weapon in my face.
Nicola had nearly a full clip. We had no option but to obey her. I pulled Conrad back to the curtain wall and propped him up against it. I checked his arm out. It looked like a flesh wound, thank Mars, but messy. I tied it up tight with a field bandage which I took out very slowly and very obviously from my sleeve pocket.
Nicola raised her chin up at Allegra. ‘You get down here. Now.’
Allegra stood where she was.
Move, Allegra, for pity’s sake, do what she says, I prayed silently.
‘Too scared, little girl?’ Nicola said. ‘Well, I’ll have to use you as a shooting gallery target.’ And raised her weapon, pointing straight at Allegra’s heart.
If I moved, Allegra might die or be permanently disabled. If I didn’t, Allegra would definitely die.
In the end, it wasn’t my call.
Hunkered down by Conrad, my eye was caught by a movement behind Nicola. Stella was scrambling toward her.
‘Make some noise,’ I hissed at Conrad, ‘to cover Stella.’ His eyes flickered over to her, he blinked and started groaning loudly.
Nicola looked over at Conrad. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut the fuck up.’
Stella was there and bringing her hands up from her sides. With an almost feral look on her face, she grasped Nicola’s ankle with both hands and tugged. The bullpup let off a volley into the air and dropped from Nicola’s hand as she crashed to the ground. Allegra disappeared.
I launched myself at Nicola, but she leaped up and grabbed Stella. She was dragging her to the cliff edge. Stella was hanging on to Nicola for grim death, making no effort to escape.
Nicola heaved Stella over the edge, but Stella pulled Nicola over with her. My hand touched Stella’s as I tried to grab her as they went over, but I lost her.
*
Paula kneeled over the edge, peering down and searched with her binoculars as I got into my harness.
‘There’s some kind of heat signature down there, but I can’t say what. It could be either or both of them.’
‘Okay, go for white light.’
Flav was by my side, letting out webbing and rope that he’d run and anchored to an oak tree. I checked the rope was well attached to the anchor straps, looped it through the belayer, twisted the lock on the carabiner. Checking through his scope, Flav threw the rope to the side of where the girls had fallen. My hand by my hip, I nodded to him, and walked backwards over the cliff edge.
Searchlights came from either side, but I didn’t need them to see Stella’s frightened eyes staring up at me. She was clinging to a spur of rock, but her hands were slipping. She was kicking her feet in her panic.
‘Keep still, Stella, I’m coming to get you.’ But I saw she was beyond it. I let the line out as fast as I could, pushing with my feet to bounce off the rock face. I reached Stella and grabbed her wrist just as her other hand lost its grip on the rock. She grasped at another rock but there was nothing to hold on to. The sweat on her hand and wrist was oozing between my fingers, loosening my hold every second that passed.
‘It’s okay, Stella, I’m here. You’re going to be fine. Now, concentrate and stretch up with your other hand and grab hold of my sleeve.’ She couldn’t do it, but it gave her mind something to do. I reckoned I had only a few more seconds before she became too exhausted to hold on and fell into the dark below. If I tried to manoeuvre down, I could lose her instantly.
But then I heard the rasp and clinking of another set of ropes. Paula. She jumped to below Stella and put her shoulder under Stella’s rear. Within seconds, Paula had fastened a leather belt around Stella’s waist, then strapped two more around her thighs. Holding her between us, we got her back up to the top. Conrad pulled Stella into the safety of his good arm where she sobbed all over him.
Still roped, I stood on the cliff edge and looked down. The strong white beams highlighted a splayed four-limbed shape impaled on the barrier roof.
‘Stern, Bruna,’ I spoke into my mic, my voice as dead as my feelings. ‘Turn out the troops to check for what’s left of Nicola Sandbrook. They’ll need a body bag. And gloves.’
*
‘Bruna!’ Livius shouted.
I whirled around. At his side, back straight and arms relaxed like she was on a geography field trip and listening intently to what the teacher was saying, walked Allegra. She looked up, waved and grinned at me. I fumbled at the steel loops, fighting to detach myself from the anchor as fast as I could.
I grabbed her to me, but after a moment, she patted me on the back and pulled away.
‘Is it finished? How’s Stella? You did save her, didn’t you?’
Her voice was even, she scanned the area with calm eyes, assessing where everybody was and what they were doing. She waved in Stella’s direction but her sister was too far gone to notice. I stared at Allegra. She was showing no sign of reaction – no trembling, no darting eyes, no stumbling – just calm. Maybe it would come later. I glanced at Livius. He merely raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
Allegra went over to her sister, hunkered down and took her hand. She stayed there talking to her until the transport arrived.
Livius stood by me, but kept his eyes on Allegra.
‘If I didn’t know you’d be pissed at me, I’d say she’d inherited the right genes on both sides. I’d cry with pride if I had a daughter like her.’
‘I already do, Livius.’
XXXVIII
Nicola was buried in the foreigners’ cemetery outside the city two weeks later. I’d called her mother and met her at the airport. At the ceremony, Janice Hargreve looked tired, but in a strange way peaceful, content even. She hesitated as she held her hand out to Conrad and dragged her eyes up to his.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.
Still holding her hand, he drew her to him and held her for a few seconds.
‘It’s over now, Janice,’ he said and took her arm. Quintus and I stood in the shade of a cypress and watched them walk along the broad gravel pathway back towards the entrance.
‘How are you, Carina? Really?’ Quintus asked. He looked better, still wearing a neck brace, but not really leaning on his cane. He held my arm as we followed Conrad and Janice slowly back to the cars. His family recorder and his assistant followed at a discreet distance.
‘I don’t know. I know that sounds lame, but I don’t. I think the anger won’t go for a while. I’ve forgiven Conradus, I can’t do anything else, but I know Nicola’s changed us, maybe more than we think.’
*
Stella spent a few days in hospital before she was released by the court on compassionate grounds to convalesce in the country. She returned to the rehabilitation centre after a week to continue her sentence. I went to visit her after she
had settled back in.
As she came into the director’s room, I saw she still had traces of scratches and grazes over her face and arms. She didn’t smile, but her face was solemn rather than sullen like before.
‘Sit down, Stella,’ I said as she hovered there, one hand grasped in the other, fingertips worrying the skin on the back of the other.
‘I want to say something first.’ She pulled her shoulders back, looked over at the window, then dragged her eyes back to my face. ‘Aunt Carina, I want to thank you for saving my life. I know you don’t like me, you think I’m useless.’
‘Stella, I—’
‘No, don’t deny it. Please.’ She gulped. ‘I don’t think I’ve been a very likeable person, to be honest.’ She put her hand out to grab the back of a nearby chair. ‘I didn’t know what I was supposed to do half the time. Everything seemed to be happening in a different world and I couldn’t grasp any of it. I felt so pathetic – exposed – when Nicola had me.’ She gave a smile that was not a smile, one corner of her mouth drooping. ‘I should have taken more notice of what people wanted to teach me those few weeks I spent in the PGSF.’
She sat down on the chair and folded her hands in her lap and looked thoroughly miserable.
‘What do you want to do, Stella?’
‘I want to stay here, but they won’t let me after my two years are up. I mean, Mama and the Council and all the rest of them.’
I reached out and touched her hand.
She brought her face up. Her eyes were shining as if somebody had injected some life force in an inanimate object.
‘I love it here. This is my real world.’
And she burst into tears.
I gave her a few minutes to get herself together. I walked over to the director’s desk and logged on to check something.
‘There is a way,’ I said after a few minutes. I laid my hand on her shoulder and looked down into her eyes, still full of tears. ‘It’s happened in other countries but I don’t know if any Roma Novan has ever done it.’
*
Two months later, I accompanied her into the Senate house where a special meeting had been convened. I’d been more than surprised and a little touched that she selected me as her formal supporter for today.
I watched Silvia across the floor sitting upright in her carved chair. She was pale and her eyes moist, but she listened gravely as if she hadn’t heard Stella practise it fifty times before.
In a low, but dignified voice, Stella Apulia stood in front of members of the Senate and the House of Representatives and made a formal renunciation of her inheritance in favour of Hallie. Some of the more conservative politicians looked shocked and one muttered her disapproval, including the word ‘coward’. She was rewarded by a look from the imperatrix like the falling iron fist of Vulcan.
Poor Stella had geared herself up to this ordeal and didn’t need a load of hassle. But she ignored it, the only sign of having heard it a double blink. She thanked the dual assembly, bowed to her mother and somehow managed to exit without running. I gave her a straight A+ for courage.
*
Conrad continued with the counselling and was eventually discharged from the court. The following week, he took himself off on a walking tour up in the mountains north of Aquae Caesaris and spent two months afterward at the boot camp I’d trained at years ago.
When he returned, I was sitting in the atrium reading through a company report when I heard his footfall. I looked up and watched the cat-like walk as he approached. He practically bounced. He was tanned, the lines around his eyes had faded and except for the white hair, he looked younger. But it was the smile that showed me he’d healed inside.
We settled down to living at a slower pace and Conrad took on some of my business affairs. But he surprised me, and himself, when he rammed decisions through sometimes with a ruthlessness acquired from his military life and made me laugh when he told me how he’d made some of the bean counters jump.
*
The biggest shock was Allegra. I’d settled her down on our favourite couch in the atrium to talk with her about the scene at the old castle. I figured that now a few weeks had passed, she would have gained some perspective. But I worried that it had been another toxic experience for her.
‘It’s fine, Mama. Really. I don’t need “time to talk” or any of that.’ She glanced over at me. ‘In fact, I enjoyed it. It was exciting. When I threw that rock at Nicola, it wasn’t just revenge or anything babyish. I was doing something powerful to help.’ She looked out of the atrium glass door over at Nonna’s roses, now on their second run of blooms. ‘In fact, I wanted to talk to you about something. I know I’m not sixteen until November so you’ll have to give your consent, but I want to join the auxiliaries and go through the legionary cursus.’
My face must have stayed fixed for several seconds. I ran through my head what she’d said. My daughter wanted to join the military reserve and then follow the tough training preceding a full-blown armed services career.
‘Allegra, this is a big, big decision. What about your plans to travel, to go to university? You could join the auxiliary cadets there and see if you like it enough to make such a choice.’
‘You and Dad travelled enough when you were in the PGSF, not just postings, but exercises abroad and holidays. It’s really not a problem.’
She took my hand. ‘I looked at death straight in the face up on that wall. I knew in a second that if I survived I wasn’t going to waste time trying other things out when I knew what I wanted. You knew that the instant you met Dad all those years ago in New York. Now it’s my turn.’
Also by Alison Morton
INCEPTIO
Book I in the Roma Nova series
New York, present day. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after surviving a kidnap attempt, has a harsh choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or fleeing to the mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother’s homeland in Europe.
Founded sixteen centuries ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety and a ready-made family. But a shocking discovery about her new lover, the fascinating but arrogant special forces officer Conrad Tellus, who rescued her in America, isolates her.
Renschman reaches into her new home and nearly kills her. Recovering, she is desperate to find out why he is hunting her so viciously. Unable to rely on anybody else, she undergoes intensive training, develops fighting skills and becomes an undercover cop. But crazy with bitterness at his past failures, Renschman sets a trap for her, knowing she has no choice but to spring it…
PERFIDITAS
Book II in the Roma Nova series
Captain Carina Mitela of the Praetorian Guard Special Forcesis in trouble – one colleague has tried to kill her and another has set a trap to incriminate her in a conspiracy to topple the government of Roma Nova. Founded sixteen hundred years ago by Roman dissidents and ruled by women, Roma Nova barely survived a devastating coup d’etat thirty years ago. Carina swears to prevent a repeat and not merely for love of country.
Seeking help from a not quite legal old friend could wreck her marriage to the enigmatic Conrad. Once proscribed and operating illegally, she risks being terminated by both security services and conspirators. As she struggles to overcome the desperate odds and save her beloved Roma Nova, and her own life, she faces the ultimate betrayal…
Coming Soon...
AURELIA
Book IV in the Roma Nova series
1960s Roma Nova, the last Roman colony which has survived into the 21st century. Aurelia Mitela is alone – her partner gone, her child sickly and her mother dead. Forced in her mid-twenties to give up her beloved career as a special forces Praetorian officer and struggling to manage an extended family tribe, businesses and senatorial political life, she slides into depression.
But her country needs her unique skills. Somebody is smuggling silver – Roma Nova’s lifeblood – on an industrial scale. Sent to Berlin to investigate, she encounters th
e mysterious and attractive Miklós, a known smuggler, and Caius Tellus, a Roma Novan she has despised, and feared, since childhood.
Aurelia discovers that the silver smuggling hides a deeper conspiracy and follows a lead into the Berlin criminal underworld. Barely escaping a trap set by a gang boss intent on terminating her, she realises that her old enemy is at the heart of all her troubles and pursues him back home to Roma Nova...
Praise for ROMA NOVA
INCEPTIO
Book I in the Roma Nova series
“Terrific. Brilliantly plotted original story, grippingly told and cleverly combining the historical with the futuristic. It’s a real edge-of-the seat read, genuinely hard to put down.”
– Sue Cook, writer and broadcaster
“I loved it! Intriguing, unusual and thought-provoking. Karen develops from a girl anyone of us could know into one of the toughest heroines I’ve read for a while. Roma Nova was a world I really wanted to visit – and not just to meet Conrad – vivid and compelling. A pacey, suspenseful thriller with a truly dreadful villain, I can’t recommend INCEPTIO enough.”
– Kate Johnson, author of The UnTied Kingdom
“Tense, fast-paced and deliciously inventive, Alison Morton’s INCEPTIO soon had me turning the pages. Very Dashiell Hammett.”
– Victoria Lamb, author of The Queen’s Secret
“Gripping. Alison Morton creates a fully realised world of what could have been. Breathtaking action, suspense, political intrigue… INCEPTIO is a tour de force!”
– Russell Whitfield, author of Gladiatrix and Roma Victrix
PERFIDITAS
Book II in the Roma Nova series
“Alison Morton has built a fascinating, exotic world! Carina’s a bright, sassy detective with a winning dry sense of humour. I warmed to her quickly and wanted to find out how she dealt with the problems thrown in her path. The plot is pretty snappy too and gets off to a quick start which made it easy to keep turning the pages. There are a fair number of alternative historical fictions where Rome never disappeared, but for my money this is one of the better ones.”
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