Savage City

by Sophia McDougall

  Una gave a raw laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it’s fair.’

  ‘And do you accept it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Una.

  Drusus gave no sign of satisfaction. He crossed the room, gripped the wrist that wore the cast and dragged her to her feet. He held her in front of him for a moment, as if uncertain what to do, then with a shudder he dropped her to the floor and left.

  There, that’s all right, that’s done, Una thought, crawling back onto the bed and pulling the blanket over herself. It was a shame to have to concede anything to him, to let him score that final point over her, and certainly that was what she had done. But she was almost there; nothing more would be asked or taken from her.

  And yet it was true: he had been afraid of her. Her chest hitched again with painful laughter. You were right not to give up, Varius! she thought.

  Down at the port, Sulien watched the slaves piling his cases onto the loading racks beside the ship. Everything was slow and chaotic; the disgruntled crowd on the quay pulsed and drifted in unpredictable spasms, and no one even seemed to know what time the ferry would leave. The sky was bright, the water smooth and still. Sulien closed his eyes and breathed the cold air off the sea, trying to take some relief in being out of the guest house. He knew he should stay out of sight, yet he’d spent most of the night in the bar downstairs because he couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t stand the silence in his room. In the morning he’d ordered and been unable to eat an expensive breakfast. He had spent more than three thousand sesterces in one day and had only a couple of hundred left.

  A man had come from the hiring stand across the dock to take the slaves back. Sulien was exasperated at the silly twinge he felt at letting them go without explaining why he’d made use of them; it was just as well the almost overwhelming temptation to talk to them was gone.

  At last they were letting passengers aboard. He squared his shoulders, walked up to one of the armed border guards standing at the ramp, produced the ticket the guest house manager had handed him, and waited for disaster to crash in on him—

  The man looked at the signature scrawled on the back of it and said, ‘Oh, yes, sir, that’s fine.’

  Sulien slid a couple of notes into his hand, trying not to show how empty his wallet was now, and walked incredulously up the ramp, half believing they were just giving everyone on the quayside a laugh at how stupid he’d been before shooting him.

  He locked himself into his first class cabin. It was small, and not very luxurious by Mediterranean standards, but there were a lot of faded cushions everywhere, and some lustreless fruit in a bowl beside the bed. He had twenty hours till landfall, if he got that far, if they didn’t come now and break the door down. He wanted to get out of the softly sterile room almost at once, and yet he lay down on the bed, not expecting to sleep with his body simmering with panic, but not knowing what else to do with himself, where else to be.

  When he opened his eyes the light had changed, and the ship was hours out to sea, the movement so smooth that he hadn’t felt it begin, and couldn’t feel it, even now.

  Sulien wandered up to the third deck and found a lounge where a large elderly woman with dyed-black hair was trying to entertain a listless assembly of other passengers, singing terrible love songs in a strong, sombre voice. Sulien sank into a seat and stared at her until she was finished, grateful for anything to fill even part of his mind, push out what was there.

  When that was over, and after trying to eat again, he went out onto the promenade deck and stood there sightlessly facing the sea. It was a long time before he realised how cold he’d grown.

  At Rhages, Delir’s brother-in-law drove past him twice because it didn’t occur to him that the supercilious-looking young man in expensive clothes standing by a stack of leather cases could be the one he was looking for.

  Varius had bought Lal as much privacy aboard the train as possible; even her meals were brought to her little single-berth compartment. Lal thought he had intended her to stay out of sight for the whole journey, except when she changed trains at Byzantium. But everyone else wandered up and down the sleeper car, groaning and chatting, dodging occasional charges of restless children; it would have made her more conspicuous, she decided, to be the one person holed up in her room. And when she was left alone for too long she felt her thoughts begin to darken and sink; there was a cold well at their centre which she dared not investigate.

  In any case, a Persian woman who was travelling with her daughters in a compartment along the carriage had discovered her and, disapproving of an unmarried girl travelling by herself, she absorbed Lal into her family for the length of the journey. Lal did not much mind this, though it was a strain having to disguise how anxious she was, and when she failed, to think of explanations. She stayed as close to the truth as she could, and not only because it was easier: ‘A friend of mine’s ill,’ she said. ‘They say she’s going to die. She’s only young, it’s not fair. And I don’t know what will happen to her family.’ Of course, then she had to supply a suitable illness – heart trouble, she said, vaguely – and she disguised Una and Sulien further with Persian names, a widowed mother and a home in Aspadana.

  She knew the women would be kind about it: ‘Your friend is in God’s hands, whatever happens,’ the mother assured her, clasping Lal’s hands between hers, and Lal hoarded the sympathy and the promises of prayers, hoping they might add up to something that could be transferred to Una and Sulien, like investments or property.

  Only ten days till Una’s trial now. The journey was slower than it would have been a year ago, now that the train stopped at every provincial border for security guards to pace along its length, inside and out, checking everyone’s tickets and papers again. Lal tried to be with the Persian family at these times, so her papers were handed over with theirs. Her stomach twisted every time, even though she knew it was unlikely her careful forgeries would be subjected to anything more stringent than a quick glance now.

  And she was constantly afraid that someone would knock on the door while she was trying to work on Sulien’s travel papers, though the movement of the train wouldn’t allow her to do anything very precise.

  Rain dragged at the windows as the train skimmed through Greece and Thrace. Straying a little way from the station at Byzantium while she waited for the connection, Lal glimpsed towers and domes glowing across the Bosphorus and found them dimly familiar: she’d been a little girl, coming west with her father after her mother’s death. Lal thought of her mother with a pang, and with it came the thought that it was incredible that anyone lived to be old, that there were not scars and missing pieces on everyone. Lal herself had had no business surviving her illness the year before. The war was lapping around the edges of the Empire, consuming both inwards and out. And Sulien, rushing across Persia towards her – what was she bringing him to?

  No, this was why she needed to keep herself occupied and around people, to keep these useless thoughts from taking hold.

  She met the girls and their mother back at the station, and was soon ensconced in their compartment again, though her own was further away this time. The train slid through the tunnel beneath the strait.

  Bahram left the van a short distance from the terminus at Urmia and went to the station by himself. Sulien sat with a volume of the encyclopaedias he’d bought in Issedoneum, on a mattress in the back. He’d hidden here for the past three days, shivering through the nights under piles of blankets while the van was parked outside whichever guest house Bahram was sleeping in. He had scarcely seen daylight, except when he stumbled out of the van at charging stations, or onto bare stretches of road, to empty his bladder or to walk the cramps out of his legs.

  Bahram had been irritable and resentful at first, barely speaking to Sulien except to grumble about Delir calling out of the blue to insist that he take this risk. Even so, Sulien was glad he was there, even as a silent, moody presence sealed off in the cab. At least he was someone with whom there needed to be no more p
retence. And at the end of the first day, when they were almost two hundred miles clear of the Caspian Sea and hadn’t yet crossed a checkpoint, Bahram had, grudgingly, grown friendly enough to pat Sulien’s shoulder and mutter, ‘I’m sorry about all this with your sister. It might come out all right at the trial, somehow.’

  Sulien had been trying to read an entry on the valves of the heart for what felt like hours; the facts were familiar, even comforting, but the words were a tortuous conveyer belt that kept returning him mysteriously back to the beginning. A week until the trial – a week. And it would take him at least three more days to reach Rome.

  Bahram must be on his way back now, with whoever it was. Sulien climbed out of the van – it was dark, should be safe enough – and saw Bahram turning the corner of the street, and beside him was Lal.

  He almost shouted her name, and the effort of swallowing it brought tears to his eyes. She saw him and charged at him, dropping her bag as she reached him, and embraced him, pulling him down into a stoop so she could wrap more of herself around him. They kissed, without thinking.

  ‘Come on, stop that,’ said Bahram, embarrassed.

  Sulien broke the kiss, remembering that Bahram was Lal’s uncle. Lal didn’t move away from him but fastened herself to his arm, her fingers warm around his.

  He couldn’t speak at first. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ he managed at last.

  ‘I am too,’ she said.

  She took a picture of him against the side of the van, then frowned and raised the camera again, saying gently, ‘Try not to think about any of it; just for this one second.’

  Looking at the first picture, Sulien understood: pinned by the flash against the white panel of the van his face looked hunted and famished: a fugitive’s face.

  Lal climbed inside the van and began trying to clear a space in which to work. She sighed at the dim light, but Bahram produced a torch from the cab and handed it to Sulien to hold steady for her. She began to set out her disguised materials – the fluids had been decanted into perfume and lotion bottles in a make-up case and the sheets of plastic were closed inside a photograph album. Sulien remembered watching her work in her painted cabin in Holzarta and felt a small, pleasant stir of nostalgia.

  ‘This is what your father has you doing?’ asked Bahram sadly.

  ‘Not much any more,’ said Lal, in a brisk, cheerful voice, ignoring the implied disapproval. ‘Someone has to.’

  It was four hours before they could get a berth on a train heading back towards Byzantium. Sulien tried to give Bahram some of the expensive items from Issedoneum that he no longer needed – the rings and the neckcloth, the wallet. Bahram refused with dignity and they began a kind of reverse haggling over what he would accept (the books and one of the cases, in the end, and then only because there was no point in Sulien carrying them to Rome).

  Lal, feeling sorry that she had no time to spend with her uncle, began, ‘I’ll try and come back when—’ but in Sulien’s presence she couldn’t think how to finish the sentence: ‘When it’s all over’ – what a dreadful thing to say! And how could it be over, even at the best?

  ‘You should,’ said Bahram, understanding. ‘You have little cousins who’d like to see you.’

  They sat leaning against each other after Bahram was gone, waiting for the train.

  ‘Varius has money,’ whispered Lal, ‘a lot of money. Did he tell you?’

  ‘He said something about it.’

  ‘He’ll help, you know that. We’ll try everything. We haven’t given up. We won’t.’ She meant this as she said it, but as soon as she finished speaking a chill went through her and made her grip Sulien’s hand again.

  There were two beds in the compartment, both narrow and, for Sulien, uncomfortably short, but they slept only in one, folded around each other. The next day they were never apart for more than a minute or two, and rarely not touching: their feet loosely tangled on the small strip of floor, their fingers entwined as they sat side by side, speaking little. But it was not until they were flying past the Thracian coast that Lal kissed him again.

  Sulien drew her into his arms with a sigh and they sank back onto one of the little beds. Slowly, Sulien undid the fastenings of her dress, pulled it down over her shoulders. Lal felt as if her own body were a sheet of photographic film or drawing paper, on which she felt a terrible need to record him while there was still time. His skin seemed too cool, too pale. Anxiously she tried to leave tracings of warmth and colour on him with fingers and lips, until he went still—

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Lal.

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s wrong,’ murmured Sulien bleakly.

  ‘No, it’s not wrong,’ said Lal, feeling her own breath hot against his throat, her body charged with determination and panic.

  Sulien let his head fall back and closed his eyes. ‘I have to get to her,’ he said quietly. ‘When we’re in Rome I won’t be able to think about anything else, Lal; I can hardly think of anything beyond that now. And if I can’t do it . . . if I can’t—’

  And she couldn’t bear how he looked, then, lying so still, with that expression on his face.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be any good to you – or anyone,’ he murmured. ‘And you mustn’t do this because you want to help me, Lal, that’s not right.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Lal, ‘I want – I want—’ Shyness and urgency silenced her and she dropped her mouth to his again, and despite what he had said his lips opened against hers and he clutched her, shifted and turned so that she was on her back.

  ‘Well,’ he said, his voice uneven, but with a flicker of a smile in it now, ‘we’re both still here.’

  ‘We’re both here.’

  [ VIII ]

  FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT CAELUM

  ‘You were there,’ Sulien interrupted as Cleomenes began to explain what Noriko had told him in the prison, ‘you can get to Una—’

  ‘No, Sulien,’ said Cleomenes.

  ‘You can, or you can get me in—’

  ‘Sulien, I can’t. They know I know you. And her. Going in there at all was pushing it – so’s coming here, come to that. And what do you think we could do? Say we need to borrow her for a minute? I can’t wander around wherever I like in the prison; I had authorisation to go as far as I did and no further. I can’t get near her and that’s that.’ He paused, and then added warily and reluctantly, ‘We could . . . I don’t know, but I could maybe get something from her. The Princess said she was asking for some way of . . . well, killing herself.’

  Sulien sat down, as speechless as if he’d been winded. He put his head into his hands. Beside him Lal laid a cold hand on his arm, Delir whispered something, a fragment of a prayer. But Ziye looked at the ground in a motion like a nod, her mouth grim, and Varius was watching him with grave, unsurprised sympathy, clearly having heard this already.

  He’d been in Rome for only a few hours; there were four days left until Una’s trial, and he was grateful that no one had yet tried to tell him to stop and rest. Ziye and Delir had been waiting at the cellar in the Subura. Varius had arrived shortly afterwards, Cleomenes unexpectedly with him.

  Outside the cellar the dark city felt comfortably familiar, and that was jarring and awful – almost as if Rome had been waiting for them all these months, knowing they could never have got away, they would always have been forced back.

  Cleomenes continued almost sheepishly: ‘Seems she was worried about there being people around, watching it happen. She said she could face it better alone.’

  ‘Alone,’ Sulien heard himself repeating in a low, unfamiliar voice, somehow muffled, as if he had water in his ears. ‘What do we do?’ he moaned, into the black airlessness which had knotted itself around him.

  He saw Varius and Cleomenes exchange a glance, and then Varius said softly, ‘What she wants.’

  Sulien started up, and then Lal was dragging on his arm, pulling him back, and Ziye was on her feet in a te
nse, ready stance. He was surprised; he hadn’t exactly had the idea of hitting Varius; he didn’t know what he’d been going to do. He gasped, ‘No. No. Shut up.’

  ‘Sulien,’ began Varius again quietly, his expression more sincere and kind than Sulien could stand.

  ‘No. I’m not killing her. She doesn’t know what she wants; she’s not in her right mind. She wasn’t even before this, you know that, you know why. Just because you tried . . .’

  A small acknowledging flinch pulled, very briefly, across Varius’ face.

  Ziye said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve seen what happens when they use arenas for executions—’

  ‘Don’t,’ Sulien begged her, ‘don’t tell me about that.’

  ‘In that situation, wouldn’t anyone want the same thing?’ asked Varius.

  ‘Not if they could get out.’ His voice was coming to pieces. ‘Varius, please, you said you’d help.’

  Varius sighed, and looked a little less certain. ‘Look— Of course, if there’s any possible way. But if there’s not—’

  ‘There is! There has to be.’

  ‘What if we lose the chance to do even this for her? What if you both end up in the Colosseum? I can’t let that happen.’

  Sulien swallowed, rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘All right, maybe we can’t get into the prison, but they’ve got to move her when the trial starts.’ He looked at Cleomenes. ‘You could find out how they’re transporting her, couldn’t you? And the route they’ll take? If we could get the van to stop somehow, I mean, if there was an accident or a crowd of people in the street—’

  ‘There won’t just be a van; there’ll be outriders on trirotas at the least, and they’ll all be armed,’ Cleomenes said, ‘and they won’t just lead the van into traffic and stand around scratching their heads.’

  Lal said tentatively, ‘Sulien and I were thinking on the train . . . maybe we could get vigile uniforms? I’ve got some vigile passes almost finished for Varius already.’