Muses of Roma (Codex Antonius Book 1)

by Rob Steiner

  1,000 YEARS LATER

  1

  Marcia Licinius Ocella pulled the boy through the teeming Forum Romanum. She squeezed through the crowds and merchants as she scanned those same crowds for the men chasing them.

  She ducked beneath a red and gold banner hanging from a street lamp. It proclaimed the coming millennial celebrations for the Antonii Ascension. In a month, Roma would be filled with dignitaries and citizens from Terra and every other Republic world. Even kings, consuls, and princes from many Lost Worlds and the Zhonguo Sphere would attend.

  All to celebrate a lie.

  “You are hurting my arm,” the boy said.

  Ocella stopped and looked at him. She'd been squeezing him tight enough to leave red marks on his bare forearm. She eased her grip but did not let go.

  “Sorry. You have to keep up with me.” Ocella scanned the crowds behind them again.

  “I am trying,” he said, moving closer to her side.

  The boy wore a common sleeveless shirt. Though the day was hot and humid, he wore the shirt’s cowl over his head, a trend among plebian children. Ocella was glad Roman fashion allowed for a way to hide the boy's face.

  “How much further?” he asked.

  “It's on the Aventine. A ways yet.”

  “How far is the Aventine?”

  “We're in the Forum, it's just—”

  She glanced down at him. He had spent his life in a single house on a single hill, so he would not know the streets and landmarks most normal Romans knew from birth. She would have to be patient with him. The boy was not a normal Roman.

  “We'll be there soon,” she finished.

  Her Umbra training made her hyper-aware of how to spot a tail, but the Forum crowds strained even her skills. Plainclothes agents needed minimal competence to hide among this human crush. She gave up on mentally recording every face, and concentrated on just getting through the Forum without losing the boy. They would never make it out if she kept running into merchant stalls or tripping over garbage on the ground.

  Once they emerged from the Forum, they had to contend with crossing the Appian Highway. Ground carts zipped by at dangerous speeds on the city’s main north-south highway, and there were no crosswalks or pedestrian bridges nearby. Ocella glanced up the street, saw a bus idling a dozen paces away.

  When she turned to the boy, a glint caught her eye. Two lictors approached from behind, their silver helmets shining in the setting sun.

  “Come on.” She grabbed the boy’s arm and pulled him toward the bus. She tried to act as if she was late for the bus rather than fleeing the lictors. She didn't know if the lictors were walking their beat or looking for her. She didn’t want to take the chance.

  Ocella pushed the boy on to the bus, deposited her sesterces in the coin box, and moved the boy to the back. They sat in an empty seat, and she glanced outside at the lictors. They continued to walk past the bus, locked in conversation.

  They may not want to scare us, she thought. They've already commed in a report and a Praetorian squad is waiting at the next stop—

  She took a deep breath. Her heart had been racing for the last hour. She had to calm down. Remember your training, she thought. Panic kills.

  “Is it much farther, nanny?” the boy asked. “I'm hungry.” He had the expression of any twelve-year-old boy running errands with his caretaker. Bored and hungry.

  He raised an eyebrow, and she almost laughed. She was the experienced Umbra Ancile, yet he did a better job maintaining their cover than her nervous actions thus far. Nearby passengers read paper copies of the Daily Acts or stared out the windows. The bus was not as crowded as the Forum, but anyone could be a Praetorian. She had to play the part: an ethnically Indian nanny slave taking her Roman dominar’s child on an outing.

  “Not far, Lucius,” she said with an affectionate smile. “I'm sure your Uncle Titus will have a large dinner ready for us when we get there.”

  “You think he'll have that garum from Pompeii he always talks about? I want to try it.”

  “He said he would. Your Uncle Titus doesn’t make idle promises.”

  They bantered for the ten minutes it took to reach their stop on the Aventine. Partly to throw off eavesdroppers, but mostly to calm their own nerves. While the boy's speech tended to slip into a noble accent at times, he impressed Ocella with his knowledge of plebeian slang.

  On the Aventine Hill, they exited the bus and walked through a rundown neighborhood. All apartment tenements and homes on the Aventine were no more than four stories. The Collegia Pontificis forbade any Roman building to rise above the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline. Trash heaped in alleys and alcoves. Obscene graffiti on the walls depicted the local aediles and quaestors having sex with various farm animals. No graffiti showed Senators, the Collegia Pontificis, or the Consular family. No one would dare.

  Ocella found the house on a quiet street in the Aventine’s southeast corner. She tapped on the door politely with her foot, waited a few seconds, then tapped again.

  “Maybe he is not home,” the boy said.

  “He's here. He better be...”

  She raised her knuckles to rap on the door, but then it opened. The grizzled face of Numerius Aurelius Scaurus peered at her from the entry’s shadows.

  “You weren't followed?”

  “Doubtful.”

  He sighed, then noticed the boy standing behind her. His eyes widened.

  “Blessed Juno, you got him out. Get in before someone sees you. Hurry!”

  Ocella and the boy entered the house. Scaurus slammed the door and barred it. He punched in a code on the pad beside the door, and it emitted a chirp as more locks slid into place.

  Like most Roman patricians, Scaurus displayed wax busts on the shelves next to the door. Ocella was surprised to see only two: Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Tullius Cicero. As far as Ocella knew, Scaurus was related to neither man.

  “I have no notable ancestors,” Scaurus said, standing next to Ocella. “So I choose to display dead Romans I admire. The Julii, though social outcasts these days, have long been friends of my family.” Scaurus stared at her meaningfully. “Caesar reminds me of Roma's excess. Cicero reminds me to laugh.”

  Ocella wondered at such a strange statement. Before she could comment, Scaurus asked, “How did you do it?”

  Ocella opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “Wait, we need to get rid of your Umbra implant.”

  “How?”

  “Gifts from more friends of the family. Come with me.”

  Light from the setting sun shone through the skylight above the atrium garden in the house’s center. Small trees and plants cast shadows on the frescoes and paintings on the walls. The shadows seemed to grasp at Ocella with clawed fingers.

  Scaurus took them through the kitchen, where a single house slave prepared dinner. The dark-haired young man ignored them. Ocella was somewhat startled that the slave was a real human and not a golem. Most Romans used golems these days since they were cheap to maintain. She didn’t think Scaurus was wealthy enough to own a human slave.

  One more thing you never knew about Scaurus, she thought. Are you surprised?

  The boy stared at the olives and breads sitting on the counter, and the lamprey strips sizzling on the grill-stove. Ocella's own stomach rumbled as she realized she had not eaten in almost twelve hours.

  Scaurus opened the pantry and waved his hand before the light pad. A warm glow from the ceiling lit the shelves filled with dry foods. He reached behind some pickled herring jars, his whole arm extended.

  “This house has been in my family for almost two hundred years,” he said while reaching to the back wall. “My Saturnist ancestors recognized the need to accommodate guests such as yourselves.”

  Ocella heard a click, then stone moving against stone as the shelved wall pushed back four feet. There was little room to squeeze through the opening, but Scaurus managed it and motioned them to follow.

  “Cleon,” Scaurus called, �
�shut the pantry behind us?”

  “Yes, master,” the slave said from the kitchen.

  Ocella and the boy entered the space behind the pantry. They stood at the top of a staircase descending into darkness. Scaurus waved his hand before a light pad, and small globe lights on the ceiling revealed the stairs and the landing at the bottom. Scaurus hurried down.

  The boy looked up at Ocella, and she said, “It's all right. He's going to help us.”

  The boy was still uncertain, but turned and followed the retired Praetorian Guardsman down to the cellar. The pantry door scraped shut behind them. Ocella flinched.

  At the bottom, Scaurus turned on more lights. Ocella blinked at the suddenly illuminated room. It matched the dimensions of the house above. Four rows of bookshelves stood to her right, each filled with old-fashioned scrolls and bound books. To her left, sat a desk with a tabulari projecting a holographic spinning Terra above the keyboard. At the room’s far end, four single-sized beds, a dining area with couches, and a visum globe in the center.

  “If you have to hide,” Scaurus said, “there's no use hiding like barbarians.”

  Ocella glanced back up the stairs. “Is that the only way out?”

  “Of course not. Wouldn’t do to have a safe house without an escape hatch.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I'll tell you after the procedure.”

  Ocella nodded. “How did you get a Liberti tabulari?”

  “It wasn't easy,” Scaurus said. He went to the tabulari desk and searched through the drawers. “Even the former Praefectus of the Praetorian Guard has trouble getting the, er, finer things from our friends on Libertus. The embargo on Liberti items hasn't removed them from Roman homes. Just made them more expensive.”

  “Are these from the Ascension?” the boy asked, studying the scrolls on the shelves.

  “Yes, sire,” Scaurus said. “Birth records for everyone in the Antonii family after the Ascension. Your lineage.”

  The boy looked at him. “They would kill you if they found these.”

  Scaurus grunted. “Better than crucifixion. Now you know why my ancestors built that pantry door.”

  Scaurus found what he wanted in the drawers. He unraveled a hairnet with small clear beads, similar to what fashionable Roman women wore over their long braided hair.

  “The Praetorians will dissect your former associates down to the atom,” Scaurus said, walking to Ocella. “Once they figure out how the implants work, they will detect the signals. When that happens...”

  “They will find me,” Ocella said. “And him.” She watched the boy search the scrolls and books. Now and then his mouth formed a wondrous 'O' when he found something interesting. “I can't hide him forever.”

  “Bah! I thought you Umbra Ancilia were invincible, immortal, or whatever the superstitions say you are. You haven't left Terra yet and you're already despairing. If you were still a Praetorian I'd clap you in the ears right now for such talk. Now let me put this on you.”

  Ocella asked, “You sure it’s safe? The Umbra implant works with my higher brain functions. I can't protect Cordus if I'm brain dead.”

  Scaurus put the net over Ocella's head, adjusting it so it fit over her scalp and ears. “Well, granted, it’s never been used this way. We’ve only used it on retired Umbra Ancilia whose implants were already deactivated. But it should work on your live implant…in theory.”

  “What?”

  “How could we test it? One, a live Ancile would never submit to it. Two, there’s never been anyone like Cordus in human history who could use it this way.” Scaurus gazed at the boy. “A new age for humanity begins with him, a new hope for—”

  “I know, Scaurus, but like I said, I can't protect him if I'm brain dead.”

  “If you don't neutralize this implant, you'll be dead anyway.”

  Once again, no choices. Only the single, dark path filled with anguished screams.

  “Let's get this over with.”

  Scaurus nodded. “Sire, a moment please.”

  Cordus put down the book he’d been studying and walked over.

  “Ocella, sit in this chair. Sire, if you would stand in front of Ocella.”

  Once Scaurus positioned them correctly, he said, “Do you know what you need to do, sire?”

  Cordus shook his head. “I have never done this before.”

  “I know. But have the “gods” done it?”

  Cordus's eyes went blank. He stared past Ocella as if looking through the walls and at the horizon. He blinked, then nodded.

  “They have ideas on how to disable it.” He frowned. “They need to test some things first. It may hurt a bit.”

  Ocella swallowed. “Go ahead, Cordus. I trust you.”

  He smiled weakly, then his gaze turned blank again.

  Ocella’s scalp tickled as the device activated whatever energy Cordus's “gods” used. Someone whispered in her right ear. She half turned, but Scaurus stood on her left. The whispers grew louder, though not in a language she understood.

  Cordus's brow furrowed, and he blinked again.

  “That was not the right path,” he said. “They need to try another.”

  Ocella inhaled and nodded. Cordus stared at her head with that blank gaze.

  White light exploded before her eyes. She gasped and heaved backward in the chair.

  “It's all right, it's all right,” Scaurus said as he grabbed her arms.

  “I can't see anything,” Ocella yelled.

  “I think I have it,” Cordus said.

  The light exploded into millions of flashing images—her past sins and sins she had yet to commit.

  Ocella screamed.

  2

  “Dariya,” Kaeso Aemilius said into his collar com, “why’s there no gravity on the command deck?”

  “We are in space, sir,” Dariya’s voice squawked from the com.

  “Dariya—”

  “We are fixing it, sir.”

  “Vallutus will be here in a half hour.”

  “I could be fixing it now if you stopped hounding me, sir.”

  “Just get it done.”

  Kaeso floated to the command couch in the ship’s cockpit and strapped himself in. He had been standing behind the couch checking the navigation systems when the gravity cut out. He was glad he finished his hot Arabian kaffa a few minutes before. He would've had to replace the systems in the entire command deck instead of his First Engineer.

  He glanced out the command deck window. His old freighter Caduceus was docked to a hollowed-out asteroid way station above the Lost World Reantium. Like most way stations, this one sat in geosynchronous orbit above a world the gods had blessed with an interstellar way line. Reantium was an impoverished world in an impoverished star system, populated with less than a hundred thousand Roman and Zhonguo political dissidents who were simply happy to be out of prison.

  The one valuable commodity Reantium did have was its single way line jump to Roman territory and the world that might hold Kaeso’s next job.

  “What happened to the gravity?”

  Lucia Marius Calida floated up through the ladder well in the command deck’s rear. Kaeso's pilot was dressed in the white uniform of a Liberti merchant officer. While Kaeso did not force his crew to wear the merchant uniforms, he did ask they put on their best jumpsuits when a client came aboard. He appreciated Lucia's attempts to bring some semblance of military discipline to the crew. She would never stop being a Legionnaire, despite the unpleasant circumstances of her departure.

  “Dariya's working on it,” Kaeso said. “And by that I mean Daryush is working on it.”

  Lucia scowled. “Bet Dariya kicked a switch, or something.”

  “Let’s hope it’s that simple. Gravity's gone on the command deck only, right?”

  “And Bay One. And the forward quarters.”

  Kaeso closed his eyes again. The Caduceus is an old ship, he reminded himself. Old ships have old problems.

  “Centuriae, it’s the thir
d time this month Dariya has screwed up,” Lucia said, pulling herself into the pilot's couch next to Kaeso. “If she’s the reason we lose this contract—”

  “We don't know what happened,” Kaeso said. “Reserve judgment until you know the facts.”

  “I know. All I'm saying—”

  “I'm not having this discussion again.”

  “Centuriae, they're escaped slaves. We can never enter Roman space, much less get a Roman contract, with them on board. Daryush doesn’t have a tongue, and Dariya may as well not have one either; her Persian accent, at best, marks her as suspicious. Why should we eliminate half of humanity from our client scrolls just to keep two Persian twins from—?”

  “Enough,” Kaeso said, his headache worsening. “Everybody on this damned ship is fleeing from something. Right, Legionarie?”

  Lucia set her jaw and turned to her pilot’s console. Kaeso knew he wounded Lucia every time he brought up her past, but he knew it was the surest way to stop her screeds against Dariya.

  “Dariya may be a pain in the ass sometimes, but she—and especially her brother—are valuable members of this crew. Just like you.”

  Lucia said, “Gravity’s out in Bay Two. And it just went out in the crew quarters.”

  Kaeso groaned. Right on cue, the panicked voice of Gaius Octavious Blaesus thundered from the com.

  “Centuriae? Centuriae! The gravity's out in my quarters. My maps and books are all over my cabin. I think I'm going to be sick. You know I can't take zero gravity!”

  “Calm down, Blaesus,” Kaeso said into his collar com. “Go to the corridor, it’s still on there.”

  “For now,” Lucia muttered. Kaeso pretended to ignore her.

  “All right...all right...yes, good,” Blaesus said. “But all of my research has turned into a cloud of papers. I just organized the landing site maps. Vallutus will be here in a half hour and it will take me at least that long to—”

  “Dariya and Daryush are working on the grav now,” Kaeso said. “In the meantime just grab as much as you can.”

  “I can't go back in there, Centuriae! Not unless you want to show Vallutus maps and proposals flecked with vomit.”