Savage City
Page 20
And what were they doing to her? How much were they going to hurt her before they were finished with her?
‘Are you feeling all right?’ inquired the driver, beginning to tense a little, glancing between Sulien and the road.
Sulien nodded, jerkily. He could guess how his voice would come out if he tried to speak. The car slid down towards the beach, past the rows of fishing boats and out of the town into the dark desert beyond. Sulien tried to slow his accelerating breath and failed completely. Stalling, perhaps, he began thinking about what would have to happen in the man’s brain, where the blood flow would have to be interrupted. He felt himself plummet helplessly into the detail of it, everything outside of that scattering.
Now, come on, do it now. Sulien turned towards the man, saw his hand reach, slow and distant, as if controlled by a languid stranger with a remote control. Then for a moment he couldn’t see past the fizz of the world dissolving and bubbling away, like limestone in acid, taking him with it.
Then it cleared and the car was swerving; the man sagging sideways against him. Sulien clutched for the controls without understanding what had happened. He didn’t remember the blow, couldn’t feel the after-impact of it in his muscles, but of course he’d done it—
He fought through a frightening, undignified struggle with the car as the driver tumbled into his lap until at last he managed to bring it to a standstill. He got out and looked down at what he had done.
He felt strangely diminished; something had been taken out of him.
The man was breathing steadily, but he was deeply unconscious. Rather gingerly, Sulien checked his pulse and peered into his eyes. He decided that the man would wake in about an hour, though that was probably more wishful thinking than medical judgement.
There was no blood, anywhere, not a mark on either of them.
Well, now what was he going to do?
He had to get as much use out of the car as possible before anyone knew it had been stolen, and he’d have longer if he could delay the moment when the driver reached a longdictor.
East, he thought. The vigiles knew which way he and Una had been heading, so they’d surely expect him to try and continue, not to come racing back towards Rome now. At that Una’s voice spoke sharply in his mind again, saying, ‘Because it’s stupid,’ but Sulien didn’t even bother with an answer this time, just loaded the man carefully into the back and drove back to the field to collect his bag. He had a map, and now he searched it hastily for some rough idea of where he was, finding Saramanna on the northwest coast of the Hyrcanian Sea. He lifted the man’s cap from where it had fallen and jammed it onto his own head, then raced eastwards into the desert.
Rounding the tip of the sea, Sulien came briefly onto a minor motorway, only two lanes wide and nearly empty, but just beyond the junction he found himself joining a straggling tailback from a vigile van parked half across the road. A couple of vigiles were checking what traffic passed through. The car hitched and choked a little, as if echoing the spasm that went through Sulien. He picked up the man’s identity papers, waved them at the window as casually as he could.
The officers glanced at the car’s livery and the driver’s cap and didn’t stop him.
Once off the motorway the rough, narrow roads were almost empty and it wasn’t hard to find a long track, dwindling away through the bristly scrub. Sulien followed it away from the main road for ten miles or so before stopping.
It would take the man a while to find help from here. Sulien grimaced at the cruelty of it. He bundled the man into his sleeping bag and left him on the sand beside the road with a wad of notes tucked into his pocket.
Then he doubled back on himself, overtaking a couple of other fare-cars on the motorway, where the vigiles weren’t even checking the westbound traffic. Once he was out of their sight, Sulien hurtled westwards, driving faster than he ever had before. Perhaps he’d achieved nothing but waste an hour driving out of his way, but it was at least possible that he’d set them looking for him in the wrong direction.
Once he blinked awake to find himself skidding off the road. Fortunately he’d left the motorway behind by then, and the ground was flat and solid under the wheels. He braked and sat out there in the dark – he didn’t know for how long – blinking and empty, before wresting the car back onto the road.
The land heaved itself into ridges bristling with ghostly low-growing trees. The road had unravelled into irregular stripes over the humps, leading between stacks of rock. It had been hours since he’d seen another car, and probably no patch of this intractable landscape was safer or more exposed than another, but when he found a taller thicket of saxaul he edged off the road into it for what camouflage it gave him. He ate a little, then slept for what he hoped was no more than an hour. It was still dark when he woke, and he was still soaked with exhaustion, but he was clear-headed enough now to go on.
He’d driven more than five hundred miles when he reached the Caspian Sea. It was almost dawn. He skirted the suburbs of some shipbuilding city on its shore, Dahae or Vitium, he thought, not wanting to stop long enough to squint at the map again, and by the time he was five miles or so away from it along the coast, there was enough light in the sky for him to find a rocky shelf above the dark water and drive slowly up to the very edge. He gathered everything he wanted, climbed out and pushed the car down.
The splash sounded loud enough to wake the city. Sulien started away from it without looking down to see if the water had closed over the car – there was nothing he could do if it hadn’t. He limped back towards the town to find a longdictor and set about contacting Varius.
‘Please let me go,’ said Noriko. Drusus, who had flung his arms around her mischievously as soon as she entered the dining room, pressed her closer, and danced her round in a circle, laughing. A small troupe of musicians was playing in the gallery at the other end of the hall.
Stiff in his arms, Noriko waited passively for him to stop for a second or two. She was mortifyingly conscious of being observed. Then, as he clasped her even tighter, pulling her off-balance so her breasts were crushed against his chest and his hips butted against hers, she grabbed his hands and shoved them away from her, dragging free with a little cry of outrage.
Drusus laughed again, apparently too exhilarated to be angry. His cheeks were a little flushed with wine, but he was not really drunk, just relaxed and animated. ‘You can’t blame me for being in a good mood.’
‘Because you have arrested Noviana Una?’
‘That’s not her name any more,’ said Drusus, with a flash of irritation. But it passed quickly. ‘That,’ he acknowledged cheerfully, ‘and I am the first man to expand the boundaries of the Roman Empire in a hundred and forty years.’ He came closer again, smiling, and stroked a finger over her cheek. ‘And you are so beautiful.’
Noriko twitched her face away. ‘I am your cousin’s widow.’
‘Come on, now,’ said Drusus, ‘it was a political marriage. It’s been months. What difference can it really make to you now?’ But he flung himself down on the couch to begin eating. ‘In any case, you mustn’t worry. I’m your guardian now, you’re quite safe with me.’
He seemed to be acting as if Noriko were the only other person present, but as well as the musicians and the servants, there were a couple of silent young women lying beside him at the table. Noriko found their presence strangely distressing, and confusing – were they slaves, or prostitutes, or high-born concubines, or were they perhaps married women whom Drusus had somehow appropriated? In a way, she supposed, it made no difference – whatever their origins, it was obvious enough why they were there. But it was as if there was an illegible footnote in the corner of a page she had to read – distracting, and a reminder of how foreign and isolated she was here. Not that she had needed it.
She was permitted a little more freedom now, and she prowled restlessly around the Palace and its grounds, trying to explore the limits of her internment, though there were usually a few of Drusus’
servants and guards spying on her. But she had not been allowed to resume residence at Marcus’ house in Tusculum, or even to venture beyond the Palace gates at all. And this extended leniency had not come without conditions. Drusus often wandered into her rooms now, and every few nights he summoned her to his table. He required little of her once she was there, though he liked to talk of Rome’s victories and Nionia’s defeats in front of her. Noriko could pretend to be indifferent or deaf, but Drusus knew she was neither; she supposed that was at least part of what he wanted from her. He could see his power reflected in her, both in her patience and in its failures.
She tried to avoid him when she could, though excuses were hard to come by as she had nothing to do except to work on her Latin. She was deeply afraid of what it would mean if she ever goaded him so much that he had her brought to him by force. Tonight, though, she had come without protest; she had to see him.
‘At this rate,’ said Drusus, ‘the war will be won by the summer. And then we will have to discuss your position.’
He left a pause; he wanted her to ask what he meant. Noriko considered and decided she was free to say nothing. She nodded demurely.
‘Of course it wouldn’t be at all appropriate now; the people wouldn’t stand for it,’ said Drusus, giving up on the response he wanted and carrying on with the conversation regardless. ‘But when we have peace, I think I could teach them to love you as their Emperor’s wife. I think it would be very fitting.’
Noriko was not wholly surprised, although she had to contain a lurch of panic. When Drusus had taken over as regent during the peace talks in Sina, she had wondered if she might be expected to marry him rather than Marcus. She remembered what Una, left in Nionian custody for fear of what Drusus would do to her if he could, had said to her then: ‘Do anything rather than let that happen . . . I’d rather be a slave again, or dead, than married to him.’
Well, if there was any way out of it, it was not to shriek now that she would never consent. Her consent had not been asked. He did not expect to need it.
‘Well, what do you think?’ demanded Drusus.
Noriko gazed at the edge of the table. There was no answer, and no display of feeling, that would not disadvantage her. Let her be as opaque and untranslatable to him as the women lounging beside him were to her. She said, very modestly, without raising her eyes, ‘Nothing, your Majesty.’
Drusus shrugged, perhaps a little disappointed, but undismayed, and resumed eating. Noriko remained perched, decorous and strained on the couch opposite him, her hands clenched in her lap, waiting to be invited to speak again.
‘Eat something,’ urged Drusus after a while.
‘I cannot,’ Noriko said softly. Drusus looked at her. Hoping that was permission enough, she ventured, ‘What is going to happen to Una, your Majesty?’
Drusus smiled, casual and fierce at once. ‘About what you would expect.’
‘I hope that may not be true,’ replied Noriko, ‘for I find I cannot help imagining the most terrible things.’
‘Well, then,’ said Drusus blithely, ‘I wouldn’t think about it.’
‘I do not have that discipline; I cannot stop thinking about it,’ said Noriko. ‘You have made her an object of such hatred, and she has no rights to protect her from it.’
‘Rights? She’s getting a trial,’ said Drusus, ‘and that’s more than she’s due.’ His expression had tightened a little, defensive at being challenged, or uneasy at having already conceded so much.
‘I think the trial will not take long, and that there is no doubt how it will end.’
‘Indeed not,’ Drusus agreed, with the same unembarrassed smile.
Noriko felt dangerous indignation sticking in her throat and tried to swallow it back. She had decided before she came that it was useless to dispute the charges against Una. There was no defence she could make that was not also an accusation of him, and she must not reproach him, she must give him no reason to be angry. She was perhaps too close to it already.
She said with as much care as she could, ‘But still she may have to live for some weeks yet. I cannot bear to think how that time may be filled if her keepers believe there are no restrictions on what they may do to her, even, perhaps, that they are pleasing you by abusing her.’
‘She does have to be questioned, you realise,’ said Drusus. ‘We still need to find Varius – and her brother.’
‘I know, your Majesty,’ Noriko assured him, meekly, ‘but surely she cannot know more of where her brother is now than the men who arrested her. If she has some poor little piece of information, and if without knowing what it may be, you – your vigiles – try to make her tell it by torture, will it not probably be useless or unrecognisable by the time they succeed, if they ever do?’
She had looked up several words that day to be sure her Latin would not fail her. Torture was one of them. It was a difficult word to smooth into the soft, light tone she was trying to maintain, but one she was careful not to avoid.
Drusus smiled again – clenched teeth briefly bared – before softening into a look of half-amused tolerance. ‘What an unpleasant subject,’ he said lightly. ‘I’m sure her interrogators will do whatever works. I don’t believe traitors should be coddled.’
‘Of course I know very little of politics,’ said Noriko, ‘but I understand that excitement is very high just now. Perhaps while it lasts the people will not be sorry to think of her suffering. But later, if they should hear that it was worse than was . . . than was necessary, when they remember that this was a very young girl, perhaps they will feel that it was badly done. But I do not think anyone will ever blame you for restraint, or feel shamed by it, or ask why no one did more to hurt her.’
Drusus was quiet, the fingers of one hand pattering distractedly on the tabletop, the large, sleepy eyelids lowered in thought. For a moment the likeness to Marcus was sharp enough to catch and sting.
‘Do you think that may be so?’ Noriko asked tentatively, after a moment.
‘I think it’s very magnanimous of you to speak up for her like this,’ answered Drusus, a mocking note in his voice. ‘She was your rival, after all.’
‘No.’ She suppressed a sigh. She was suddenly very tired. ‘No, no, it was not like that.’
‘So what is it like?’ Drusus leaned forward, no longer smiling. ‘Why are you so concerned for a criminal?’
‘I do not know if I can explain it to you,’ said Noriko, helplessly. There were reasons enough that she could not mention to him – Una’s warning to her, and the unselfishness of it; how they had both worked to keep Rome and Nionia from war; the fact that they were both in his power and caged now.
She searched for an acceptable reply and then murmured, ‘I think it is a natural weakness in me. You would understand if I were unwilling to watch another woman being hurt at length, in front of me? If I could not stand the sight of even an animal’s blood? I have met her. I know her face. Unfortunately I can still imagine it very clearly. So for me it would be as if I had to watch all the time.’
‘And do you think an Emperor should be just as squeamish?’
Noriko raised her eyes from the table at last to look at him. ‘I hope you may show compassion to me. I am asking you to think of me, not of her. You have been so kind to me; please be kind one more time.’
Drusus’ eyebrows lifted, and he said, ‘You didn’t seem to be so impressed with me a minute ago.’
Noriko rose, briefly closing her fists as she walked around the table and knelt beside his couch. ‘I regret any moment in which I have not shown you proper gratitude. I am the daughter of your enemy; you might have placed me where she is, I know that. And instead you have protected me. So I know how capable you are of kindness. I would not ask for any more from you if I could help myself. I know I cannot persuade you to spare her life. But please, let her be treated well while she is in prison. Let her at least be treated decently. Otherwise I cannot bear it— I will have no peace, I will be ill, I know it—’
‘Oh, Jove,’ said Drusus, exasperated, though he bent his face closer to hers. ‘Very well, I’ll tell them to keep their hands off her, will that do?’
Noriko sniffed and snivelled and whispered, ‘May I see her?’
‘What? No. I think you should be satisfied with my word,’ said Drusus.
‘But I shall be so afraid they have not obeyed you. Perhaps they might think you did not mean it. Please. Unless I can see for myself that she is unhurt, it will always be on my mind, I will be always afraid . . .’
Drusus reached out gently and wiped the tears from her cheek. His face was strangely soft and wistful. Noriko froze, not even breathing. His fingertips traced their way to her mouth, slid over and between her lips.
Later, she flung herself down on her bed, letting out a stifled scream of disgust and fury into the bedclothes.
Tomoe curled up on the bed beside her, offering comfort; stealing some for herself.
‘We can’t stay in this place,’ Noriko said to her.
Sulien lurched into one of the longdictor chambers down at the port and toppled onto the bench there, trying to steady himself enough to dial the code. What little rest he’d had over the last twenty-four hours had been on trams or out in the open, screened against the daylight by saxaul trees. He’d taken a room for the night in Dahae, but it had hardly been worth the risk, for he couldn’t really sleep. He’d had three days to wait until the magazine came out, and the couple of hundred miles he’d covered, moving south along the coast, seemed like less, creeping along on the spot in a salt-crusted landscape that didn’t change.
He was unreasonably shaken that there actually were a couple of real replies to his advertisement, but then there was Varius, grim and guarded: ‘I saw your notice. You can reach me on this code.’