by Vox Day
She walked out, throwing in an extra sashay in the correct assumption that he would be watching. Her hips were a little riper than he’d remembered, but that only made her more attractive as they accentuated the slimness of her waist. It was with some reluctance that he turned back to the table. He discovered that she was right: The little oranges were not only delicious but somehow complimented the flavor of the wine.
The thought of the wine reminded him that it had been a gift from Julia. It was clear, then, that Romilia didn’t know anything about their nephew. She must not even know that Fortex was dead. He wondered if he should tell her or not. Probably, he concluded after a moment’s thought, but he was loathe to break the lovely spell she was casting. Whether he told her now or in the morning, Fortex would still be dead and Magnus would still be caught up in his grief and fury. And Julia would still look like a shattered, elderly version of the woman she had once been.
That was what haunted him the most, more than the terrible images of his nephew’s headless body bathed in its own blood or the contemptuous barbs that his brother had flung his way. It was the hunched, painful way his sister-in-law held herself, as if her sorrow were a cancer eating her from the inside.
No, he was not going to tell Romilia anything tonight, he concluded. If she didn’t want to know more about Marcus tonight, then she certainly didn’t need to hear about Fortex right away either. When she appeared a few minutes later, bearing a silver tray upon which reposed a small roasted pig wreathed in aromatic steam, he was certain he had made the right decision.
The succulent young pig tasted even better than he imagined it would. It made the beef and pork upon which he’d been subsiding throughout the campaign taste like a half-cooked saddle in comparison. He discovered that he was famished, after all, and when he finally returned the carcass to the tray for the last time, it looked as if the crows had been at it for a week or more.
He dipped his fingers into the bowl of water his wife proffered, then lay back on the coach, very nearly satiated. They had spoken of trivialities only. In fact, she had done most of the talking, bringing him up to date on the various events in the lives of their eldest son, their two daughters, and the seven grandchildren that their three older children had presented them to date. True to her word, she did not ask further questions about their youngest son. Or, thank God, their nephew.
“Is there anything more my lord consul might wish?” Romilia said, suddenly playful.
“The pork was superlative. I think some sweets might not be amiss at this point. You truly don’t want to know what the goblin tribes consider dessert.”
“What sort of sweets would you prefer?” she asked him, slipping her robe from her shoulders. “I trust you didn’t find this sort of dessert while you were off among the goblins.”
He smiled and looked over the familiar curves of her body with shameless appreciation. Her stomach was still nearly flat, with the three soft white lines that rose up from beneath her belly that marked her as a mother. And if her breasts were not as buoyant as they had once been, they still filled him with longing.
“Oh, God, I’ve missed you, my love,” he whispered.
“Shhhh.” She pressed herself against him for a moment, then pulled away, but only so she could remove his toga, which she did with a wife’s practiced deftness. She ran her right hand lightly down his chest and beyond. He groaned as the delicious sensation caused him to lose all awareness of where he was, of who he was, of anything but the warmth of Romilia’s touch.
But that was as nothing compared to the pleasure that seemed to swallow him up as they moved together in the wild rhythm of the sweetest dance.
“Yes, oh, yes,” she murmured. “There, my love, my lord, my Corvus.”
As the spasms subsided, he lay back. She crouched silently on top of him.
Then a throbbing pain in his left shoulder stirred him from his lassitude, and he looked down at her quizzically.
“Did you just bite me?”
She opened one unrepentant eye as a satisfied smile played across her lips. “Isn’t that a wife’s prerogative?”
Corvus laughed. She had always been as incorrigible as she was uninhibited. It was one of the things he loved about her.
“I shall have to confer with my fascitors in the morning. I fear that, in attacking my body, you have committed a very serious crime, my love. A consul, even a consul suffectus, is the city, insofar as the law as concerned.”
“Mmmm, ravished by a whole city? No wonder it was so much better than the gladiators!”
Corvus burst out laughing. Romilia wrinkled her nose with delight, then tried to bite him again. This time, he managed to stop her.
For the first time in his life, Corvus found himself walking toward the Forum surrounded by a small phalanx of clients. He had been greatly startled earlier this morning when his first visitor had arrived, a young plebian senator with ambitions that belied his reputation for extreme conservatism. As more and more senators had arrived at his door, most of them men he’d recognized at once as clients of Magnus, he’d realized that, as Consul Aquilae, even Consul Suffectus, he was no longer seen as a mere adjunct to Magnus, but as a potential power in his own right.
As far as he could tell, the more radical portion of the Senate’s conservative faction was looking to him for leadership they had not found in Magnus. The fact that he had none of his brother’s vast wealth to bestow upon them did not appear to concern them at all, and after the first few conversations, it had quickly become apparent that it was direction, not favors, they sought from him.
His fascitors had arrived with the rising of the sun, bringing with them the news that the princeps senatus had issued an order for the Senate to meet at the Temple Fides. He had returned to the bedchamber to break the news to Romilia. She had been as proud as she’d been worried. Corvus had been neither, as he was much too busy trying to get a handle on the sudden changes in his station to be overly pleased with himself or concerned with his brother’s actions.
It felt strange to be kissing her goodbye already. It felt even stranger to be wearing a clean, sweet-smelling winter wrap made of wool instead of his stained, stinking, leather-and-steel armor. But even if he had to leave his armor behind, there was nothing preventing him from strapping his sword to his side. Others might trust in the axes of the fascitors, but he preferred to rely upon his own devices.
“What do they expect of me?” he said quietly to Carvilius Maximus, an ex-consul who seemed to have appointed himself Corvus’s Senatorial advisor, as they approached the sparsely populated forum. A few men, mostly ambitious knights, applauded as they saw the fascitors and realized that the new consul suffectus had come. “I could probably tell you more about the internal politics of the goblin tribes than whatever the Great Houses are sparring over now.”
“It’s the initial impression that matters. Everyone knows you’re fresh from Gorignia and you’ve barely had time to wash the goblin blood off your hands. They just want to see if you’re the man to stand up to Patronus, Ferratus, and the damned auctares.”
“What is Patronus up to now? Magnus wrote to me about a citizenship law, but I understood there was little enthusiasm for it.”
“That was before that wretch Caudinus got himself killed by the Cynothii. People are nervous. They’re frightened, and you know as well as anyone that once people are sufficiently scared, they stop thinking. They’ll stampede in any direction, so long as someone spurs them into action.
“Now some of the sheep are bleating about how we have to incorporate the allies into some sort of greater Amorr with the idea of using the increased manpower that will give us to keep a tighter rein on the provinces. Others are baahing about how we should simply let the provinces go, thinking it’s too much effort to hold onto them and a larger state will serve as adequate compensation. And Patronus is the shepherd. He quietly goes about his business, collecting one sheep at a time, waiting until he has a large enough flock to trample the few
sensible men that remain.”
“And we are the sensible men, I presume?”
Maximus laughed at Corvus’s skeptical tone.
“Some of us are, I hope. But even the most conservative among us are more sensible than the sheep. I honestly don’t know what game Patronus is playing. He keeps pushing for extending and expanding the citizenship, as if calling a Galabrian or a Quinqueterran an Amorran is somehow magically going to transform them into proper Amorrans. He’s a hard man to know and a harder one to anticipate. I was his colleague, you know.”
“As consul? I didn’t know that. Was he City or Provinces? I know you sat the Eagle chair. I was with Turrinus at the time.”
“I remember. Gaius Mamilius was my best legate. We could use him now. As to Patronus, he was consul provincae. Do you know, I suppose he must have already started conceiving the outlandish notions he’s been trying to push through the Senate around that time.”
“Gone native, in a way. What’s the law called again?”
“Lex Ferrata Aucta. Ferratus is the public sponsor, but Patronus is its true author. Do you have a speech prepared? It would be best if you make one against the law, you know. Now that you’ve arrived and all three consuls are present, they’ll probably press for a vote today. Especially once they see that Magnus isn’t here.”
“Don’t you have a tribune lined up to veto it?”
“Two of them. They’re reliable enough when they feel confident of our support, but they’re not going to do it if there isn’t any serious senatorial opposition. We need you to provide a flag around which that opposition can rally. A solid showing will be enough—we don’t need to win.”
Corvus sighed. “You’d better go over the details with me then. Will I have the chance to hear what Patronus has to say first?”
“More or less,” Maximus laughed. “Patronus won’t speak. He doesn’t need to. Every word that comes out of Ferratus’s mouth will be coming straight from Patronus’s tongue. He may as well jam his hand up Lucius Pompilius’s backside while for all that the puppet act convinces anyone.”
Two hours later, Corvus was seated in the aquiline splendor of the Chair of Eagles, with the golden heads of the legionary eagles on the back of his throne rising above his left and right shoulders as if the birds were whispering in his ears. He felt a little self-conscious, sitting before the temple auditorium and the four hundred senators who filled it. He sat to the right of his two consular colleagues, Titus Manlius Torquatus and Marcus Fulvius Paetinas. The latter was seated imperiously on the Chair of Oxes, while the former was so relaxed that he was practically reclining between the two roaring bears heads that stood for the City.
Corvus recalled that earlier conversation with Maximus and reflected that, if the puppet act itself wasn’t convincing, Ferratus certainly was. Patronus had not waited long to strike—no sooner had a celestine given the invocation and Corvus had been welcomed by the men who would be his colleagues for the next seven weeks, than one of his clients asked Marcus Fulvius for permission to request a vote on the Lex Ferrata Aucta.
It was a clever move, Corvus realized. As a Valerian and the presumed voice of Magnus, everyone assumed he would be opposed to the new law, as was in fact the case. Of his two fellow consuls, Torquatus was known to harbor some sympathies toward the more traditional factions, even if he wasn’t directly involved with any of them, and he would have almost surely suppressed an immediate vote in deference to his new colleague.
But Paetinas possessed little in the way of either principles or brains, and since the proposed law concerned neither the city nor the legions directly, it was one of the few that fell under the jurisdiction of the consul provincae. Unsurprisingly, and as Patronus no doubt anticipated, the pompous little man didn’t hesitate to leap at the chance to assert himself. His chest swelled nearly to bursting as he rose from the Ox Throne and looked around the temple chamber before addressing the assembled Senate.
“City fathers,” Paetinas said, “the allies of Amorr are among the weightiest responsibilities borne by the members of this august body. Like a father to his children, it is our duty to guide them, to guard them, and if necessary, to chastise them. For four hundred years we have done so, often at great cost in both gold and blood to the Senate and People. But it is a price we have paid willingly, for never has this body or the republic shirked its solemn duty.”
The little man raised his chin, waiting for applause that Patronus and his faction were all too willing to provide. Nodding happily, Paetinas continued.
“Now Lucius Pompilius Ferratus suggests that the children of the republic have grown into manhood and are prepared to take their place at our side, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. He has proposed a law that would expand the borders of this noble republic and grant full Amorran citizenship to the people of the allied cities.
“As consul provincae, I hereby recognize the proposed Lex Ferrata Aucta and ask you, city fathers, to debate the merits and demerits of the proposed law prior to a vote that will take place after the tenth bell sounds. And because it might be deemed improper by some were I to speak on behalf of a proposal that would add so greatly to the influence of my position, or against a proposal that would vastly increase its responsibilities, I shall recuse myself from the discussion and ask Lucius Pompilius, as the law’s sponsor, to speak on its behalf.”
It was rather a pity that Paetinas hadn’t spoken on behalf of the enlargement of the republic, Corvus mused while listening to Ferratus gracefully weave his way through the compliments paid to the Senate that were obligatory for those members seeking to win its favor. Hearing him bumble his way through that argument might well have aided the conservative cause.
The fool saw nothing but the prospect of his own enlargement now that the end of his consular year was approaching, without realizing that provinces that were no longer provinces had no need of an ex-consul to oversee their interests. It seemed that, in politics as well as in battle, men tended to think primarily about the consequences they intended, never stopping to consider the unintended ones.
Ferratus, on the other hand, was so convincing that even a war-hardened cynic found it hard to not be swept up in his grand vision of a Greater Amorr. He made use of Paetinas’s analogy about parents and children so deftly that Corvus assumed Ferratus must have fed it to the consul beforehand, pointing out that the increased Amorran reliance upon food, taxes, and even men for the legions from the provinces could be seen as evidence that the erstwhile children were not only capable of standing on their own and supporting themselves, but supporting their revered parent too.
He appealed to their civic pride, to their self-perceptions, and, without being too obvious about it, to their desire for power. More citizens would mean more clients for even the least important senators, and the laws they passed would now reach much farther to the north, the east, and the west. Ever so delicately, Ferratus played upon fears that the senators did not even realize they possessed. He never articulated any concrete threat, but it was there all the same, implicit in his honeyed words. Amorr was outnumbered by its allies and its provinces alike. If the Senate and People did not bind one or the other to them by ties that could not be broken, they would one day find themselves facing the combined might of both, and on that day Amorr would fall.
Amorr had waxed by defeating its rivals and its enemies one after the other, and it would wane rapidly if it was ever forced to fight them in combination. So it must not make the mistake, he said, of allowing them to be unified by their mutual self-indentification as outsiders and the rejects of the Republic.
And then he painted a vision of the glorious future for them, a new Golden Age that would never cease to hail the wisdom of the Senate in this, the year of the four consuls, in the year of Torquatus, Paetinas, and Caudinus-Corvus, when Amorr ceased to be a solitary city and was transformed into the most powerful, most numerous nation of Man in all of history. Ferratus spoke of increased trade, of new ports to the
east and west, and of legions that would be numbered in the dozens. He all but promised them that they would become as gods, regarded with envy, fear, and awe by the diverse peoples and races of the world.
It was transparent, but the Senate ate it up like pigs at a trough. Corvus could see that radicals and traditionalists alike were enthralled by the spell that had been cast upon them by this tall, eagle-eyed orator who could not only see into the shining future, but help them to see it too.
Were he not seated at the fore of the grand assembly, Corvus would have curled his lip. For, judging by the reaction of the senators, it seemed as if he alone could see through Lucius Pompilius’s feeble web of words. They were fine words, to be sure, but that was all they were. And yet, at every lengthy pause, there was applause or shouts of approbation. He looked over at Patronus, where the man was sitting in the middle of his coterie of radicals, looking for all the world like an ascetic monk.
The most powerful man in Amorr’s eyes met his, and they were like black diamonds, dispassionate and harder than stone. Patronus showed no sign of satisfaction or even interest in his puppet’s preposterous rhetoric. He merely sat and stared at Corvus without blinking.
After decades in the legions, Corvus recognized a killer when he saw one. This was the sort of man who killed quietly in the dark of night, without malice, without hesitation, and most of all, without remorse. He had known of Patronus for many years, had even seen him on several occasions, but never before had he ever felt even the slightest need to pay the man any serious attention. Now he felt a sudden surge of respect for his brother, who had confronted that dark, intimidating stare time after time, never backing down and never giving in no matter how many times he was defeated on this strangest of battlefields.
And yet, seeing his enemy face to face gave Corvus that strange sense of calm that always filled him once he was able to lay eyes upon the actual dispositions of the forces opposing him, when it was too late for more plans or stratagems and all that was left to do was watch and wait for the decisive moment to appear. He had been nervous before, but now he felt almost unnaturally relaxed. Laws and debates and politics might be new to him, but if there was one thing he knew and understood, it was a battlefield.