Muses of Roma (Codex Antonius Book 1)

by Rob Steiner

  Kaeso bit his lip to refocus, lest his panicked thoughts paralyze him.

  When he tore his gaze from Tiberius’s tortured face, he noticed the desolate white landscape beyond the horror in the foreground. Jagged gray rocks punched through the rolling hills of white snow that stretched to the horizon under a blue, cloudless sky.

  Kaeso leaned forward and looked to the right and left. Twenty feet from Tiberius’s cross on the right stood another cross. Brocchus, his body in the same condition as Tiberius’s.

  Kaeso sat on the cot and stared at the wall in front of him, relying on his Umbra training to assess the situation.

  He assumed the Praetorians brought him to their prison at the South Pole. He knew tales about it that made him struggle to stamp down his growing despair. It was not a large complex, but its seclusion gave the Praetorians privacy to interrogate prisoners they didn’t want the Senate or public to know they had. In an age where travel across the universe was an every day occurrence, the South Pole Praetorian facility was harder for native Terrans to visit than a trip to Libertus. The facility did not officially exist, so only the Consul or the Collegia Pontificis could approve a visit.

  He studied his room some more and dismissed any thoughts of escape. The door was metal with barely a hair's width between it and the wall. The palm pad was built into the wall, with no seams from which he might pry it loose with a knife, much less his fingers. He assumed a camera in the pad watched him right now.

  A small ventilation grate above the window interrupted the smooth tan ceiling. He didn’t know the strength of the window glass, but even if he could break the glass, escape would be pointless. The South Pole would kill him in minutes.

  He suspected the Praetorians placed the crosses of Tiberius and Brocchus for better viewing from the cell windows to Kaeso’s right. He assumed Ocella, Nestor, and Gaia occupied those cells. They had not been crucified—at least, he didn’t see their bodies outside—because they had information the Praetorians wanted. The Praetorians likely hoped the crucified corpses would “open” them to revealing that information.

  That left Cordus. Was he also in a cell? Would Cordus give the Praetorians all they wanted? No doubt a normal twelve-year-old boy would under these circumstances, but Cordus was obviously not normal. If he resisted questioning, would the Praetorians dare torture the Consular Heir?

  Or, was Cordus back in his Palace, having successfully completed a mission to root out traitors to Roma?

  He stared at the sky through the window, doing his best to ignore Tiberius. Had Caduceus been captured too? He and Lucia prepared a plan for an emergency run from Roman space, and he gave her strict orders to do so if she sensed imminent capture. He hoped her sense of duty to Blaesus, Daryush, and Dariya would convince her to do the right thing and flee. But if it were Lucia herself, she’d never leave Kaeso and Nestor behind.

  He checked his implant and found its concealment protocols were deactivated. The siege was still on. He wondered if the Romans had destroyed any more cities. He wondered if Claudia still lived.

  He found it hard to concentrate on anything. He had his share of “hopeless” situations during his time with Umbra, but he always had the confidence, the mental focus, and the knowledge his implant provided to get him through.

  But his implant was useless, and it was all he could do to keep from screaming obscenities and pounding on the door. Kaeso closed his eyes and tried to calm his racing heart.

  No need to advertise to the wall pad camera they were close to breaking him.

  43

  Ocella sat on the cot with her back against the wall near the door, staring at Brocchus’s crucified corpse through the window. He was the one who leered at her while she was strapped naked to Gaia's scanning chair. She found it hard to have any sympathy for him. If the Praetorians hoped the sight of his frozen body would soften her up for interrogation, they had failed laughably.

  But laughable failure described her present situation.

  Her own fate mattered little to her. She was going to die—had known it was likely when she agreed to help Cordus escape. It was only a question of how long she'd last under interrogation. She knew Praetorian methods well. They were patient. Everyone broke. And once they were done with her, once she told them everything, then they would kill her.

  No, what mattered to her was Cordus. She tried to rescue the boy and give him a life where he could explore his abilities, and perhaps give humanity a fighting chance against the Muses. But she'd only succeeded in revealing his true nature to the Romans. He was probably locked away in the bowels of this prison, strapped to a cot and prodded with the needles of a Praetorian and Collegia medicus team. His own father would likely have given the order.

  All those deaths you caused, she told herself, all for nothing.

  The door next to her cot clicked and opened outward. A Praetorian security guard with a shaved head and black commando uniform entered the room holding a stun baton. A second guard stood outside the door with another baton.

  “On your feet,” the man in the room said.

  Ocella stood up, eying the batons. She shivered when her bare feet met the cold stone floor.

  “Hold out your hands,” he said. When she did so, he tied plastic wristbands around her hands and cinched them tight.

  He then took a black hood from his belt and draped it over her head. Faint light filtered through the hood's threads, but she saw nothing else.

  “Let's go,” he said and then guided her outside the cell.

  She knew any resistance would be met with a debilitating jolt of electricity from the batons. She considered resisting anyway. If she was struck, the jolt would paralyze her for several minutes. Then the bastards can carry me, she thought. Though she relished resisting any way she could, she still had no desire to feel electricity ignite every nerve in her body.

  Better to save her strength for what awaited.

  Once outside her cell, the men led her to the left. With her sight gone, she concentrated on her other senses to remember where she went. She heard nothing besides the soft whisper of the commandos' uniforms and her bare feet slapping the smooth stone floor. She began counting her steps.

  At step twenty-two, they stopped. There was a click and the sound of a door receding into the wall. The guard behind her grabbed her left arm tightly, and the other guard prodded her back. They guided her forward into the room beyond the door.

  “Steps,” the guard warned her, his voice echoing in a stairwell.

  Ocella felt around with her feet until she found the steps, then proceeded down with the help of the guards. The stone here was rougher, but just as frigid as the floor in the cell corridor.

  She counted eighteen steps to the bottom. They stopped at another locked door, and after opening it, the guards led her down another hall to her right. They stopped after she counted seventeen steps, and then they opened a door to her left.

  The room into which they pushed her was much warmer than the corridor. The guards walked her six steps forward and sat her down in a hard wooden chair. They cut the plastic cinch around her wrists, then forced her arms onto the armrests and her legs against the chair's supports. Her arms and legs were fastened down with coarse rope that dug into her skin. She wondered at the wooden chair, since it felt similar to the one Gaia Julius used to locate the tracker on her neck.

  None of it mattered, though.

  Make them work for your screams, she told herself.

  The guards yanked the hood off.

  The first thing she noticed were the candles. Dozens of them sat on tiered tables along all four walls in the small square room. All were lit, bathing the room in an orange glow and giving off more heat than Ocella had felt in hours. The candles illuminated what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs decorating the walls. Not for the first time, she wished she still had the memories Cordus gave her. Maybe she could have translated the glyphs.

  The two Praetorian commandos moved to stand behind her chair. When the
y stepped away, she saw two female flamens in the back of the room. Each wore a dark red woolen cloak with gold fringe, and an apex leather skullcap strapped beneath her chin. One flamen held her hands upturned at her sides and chanted in Egyptian. The other flamen held a bronze bowl, her head bowed and her eyes closed. She also chanted, though her voice barely rose above a whisper.

  This would not be a standard Praetorian interrogation.

  The door behind her opened, and a tall man in a black commando uniform strode in. He glanced at the flamens, gave them a respectful nod, and then turned to Ocella. He was in his lower fifties, his graying blond hair cut to within an inch of his scalp.

  Then she recognized him. He was the man she saw in the camera feed outside Scaurus’s door. He killed Scaurus.

  “I am Lepidus,” he said. “I've chased you and the boy for the last two weeks. Now I have you.”

  “Congratulations,” Ocella said.

  She expected a smirk or even a laugh at her attempted sarcasm, but instead he frowned. Can he be this easy to anger? she wondered.

  Lepidus opened his mouth again, then paused. His eyes moved around the room. “This is not the sort of room the Guard uses to interrogate criminals like you. We prefer a more...austere setting. Too many petitions to the gods.” He leaned forward. “The gods should not witness the things we do.”

  “Depends on which gods you mean,” she said. “Some might enjoy Praetorian interrogations.”

  Lepidus leaned closer so he was inches from Ocella. She smelled soap on his skin; saw zealous danger in his eyes. “Don't presume to know the will of the gods, Liberti,” he whispered. He glared at her a few moments, then straightened.

  “I’m ordered to prepare you for a ritual that will make you more compliant to the will of the gods and the Consul.” Lepidus glanced around the room. “The decor is too barbaric for my taste, but my orders were explicit.”

  “When did Romans start worshiping Egyptian gods?” Ocella asked.

  Lepidus shrugged. “The room is decorated with Egyptian writing. Doesn't mean the Egyptian gods are here. After all, you’re in the company of two Roman flamens.”

  The two robed women swayed in time to their chants.

  “They don’t look Roman to me. Where are their blue robes?”

  Lepidus continued staring at her with a blank expression.

  “What’s going to happen?”

  Lepidus raised an eyebrow. “I don't know.”

  Either Lepidus really didn’t know, or he played the mind games all interrogators played with their subjects. Ocella had steeled herself for torture. She knew the Praetorian procedures for interrogation—had participated in them—and was ready to resist at least their beginning tortures. Her knowledge gave her strength.

  But now fear of the unknown crept into her mind and body. Were the room and the flamens and Lepidus's apparent confusion supposed to throw off her concentration? If it was, it worked. Just what were they going to do to her? Her mind began to imagine other horrors the Romans could inflict on her, and she struggled to keep her focus. If she lost focus, she would panic and then give them everything they wanted without making them work for it.

  “I did not come here to gloat,” Lepidus said, his hands clasped behind his back. “I wanted to ask you a question.”

  Finally, Ocella thought. Something I can resist.

  “Did you kidnap the boy, or does he really wish to defect to Libertus?”

  The soft desperation in his voice made Ocella pause. It was as if he asked her this question for personal reasons, not as part of the interrogation. She almost wanted to tell him the truth just to shatter his faith in the gods and the Consul, to strike back at her captor in any way she could.

  An act. He knows he’s more likely to get quick answers from me with gentle questions than torture. Give him nothing.

  But what did it matter at this point? They knew she could never take the Consular Heir—and keep him hidden—against his will. So why not give them something they already knew?

  Because they want you to.

  Ocella closed her mouth and turned away.

  The com on Lepidus's sleeve chimed. Lepidus sighed and then tapped the bud in his ear.

  “Yes,” he said. He listened and then said, “Very good, we're ready here.”

  Lepidus looked at Ocella, his confusion returning. “I suppose you’re about to learn the purpose of all this, Liberti.”

  He studied her a moment longer and then walked out the door. The two Praetorian commandos exited the room and shut the door.

  She turned to the flamens. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  They didn't acknowledge her or skip a beat in their chanting.

  “Which god do you serve?”

  No response, just more chanting.

  Ocella pulled against the ropes fastening her to the chair. They were tied in such a way to cause the rough fibers to dig into her flesh whenever she moved. If she struggled too hard, the ropes would leave the skin around her wrists and ankles in bleeding rags.

  So she sat and waited. Making a subject wait was also Praetorian strategy, though Ocella supposed it was universal to all interrogators. It gave subjects time to think about the nightmares that would befall them if they didn't give the interrogators what they wanted.

  Ocella knew the game, so she cleared her mind by focusing on an old prayer to Juno her grandmother taught her when she was young. She said the prayer over and over again, tapping her fingers to keep count. She had made it through forty-two recitations when the door behind her swung open.

  Ocella recognized the man who glided into the room, for she always thought him to be rather short considering his lineage and his position as leader of the Roman Republic. He wore a plain, cream-colored coat without any adornment. His trousers of the same color were crisply pressed and his shiny dark brown shoes reflected the twinkling candlelight.

  He stopped in front of her, hands clasped behind his back, and stared at her with ethereal blue eyes. His hair was as black as Cordus's, with the same firm set to his jaw, but Marcus Antonius Publius had a serene air that Ocella assumed was aided by the Muses. His angular face was freshly shaved, without a hint of shadow. The faint scent of an expensive cologne entered the room with him.

  “What did you do to my son?” the Consul of the Roman Republic asked with a gentle, yet commanding voice.

  Ocella's first impulse was to bow her head before this great man. He was a god on earth, someone who could answer her every prayer. He deserved adoration, sacrifice, and worship on par with Jupiter himself. He was Jupiter incarnate.

  Because of my father's gas, Cordus's voice repeated in her mind.

  Then she laughed. She laughed for a long time; tears of mirth and terror streaming down her cheeks. Ocella's desire to bow before the Consul proved Cordus's story was true: she never would have been tempted to grovel had the Consul not been emitting his Vessel aura. Ocella's Umbra implant had protected her when she'd met the Consul before, but she had not encountered another Vessel since Scaurus deactivated her implant. The desire to grovel was subtle, but there. Now that Ocella knew what it was, she found it easy to resist.

  Most importantly, she realized that Cordus told her the truth earlier: he never used the aura on her, for she never felt this way around him. The boy’s honesty suddenly gave her strength.

  The Consul cocked his head, his expression curious. Ocella had spoken to the man three times before, and his face was always placid. She’d been in the same room with him many more times, and he’d worn the same non-expression. That's why the curiosity on his face was tantamount to a screaming fit.

  “What did you do to my son?” he asked again.

  “Nothing,” she said, forcing herself not to add “sire” to the end of her statement.

  “Why did he run away from his family?”

  “You should ask him, sire—” Ocella frowned and clenched her teeth. The effort it took to resist him proved harder than she thought.

  �
�I did,” the Consul said. “His answers did not make sense. He is Antonii; he should want to stay with his family. He should want to serve the Roman people as their heavenly representative, as I have done my whole life, and his ancestors before him.”

  Ocella wanted to please the Consul, to tell him whatever he wanted. She had to force her tongue to do the opposite.

  “Perhaps that’s not what he wants.”

  The Consul cocked his head. “Why would he want something different?”

  Ocella paused. The Consul seemed genuinely confused, as if Cordus wanting to leave Roma opposed the laws of nature. As with Lepidus, Ocella wondered if a well-rehearsed drama was happening here. Each time Ocella met the Consul, he seemed aloof, and she assumed that was how he acted around those he considered beneath him. Now she wondered if it was simply who he was: The Muses had addled his brain to the point where he had no personality left. He was a mouthpiece of the Muses.

  “What he wants is irrelevant,” the Consul said. “He was born for a purpose. To serve Roma. Any other desire conflicts with that purpose.”

  “He is serving Roma. In his own way.”

  “There is one way to serve Roma, and it is the way of the gods and the way his ancestors served. What did you do to make him forsake his purpose?”

  “I did nothing to him.”

  “Why did you take him?”

  “I did not take him,” Ocella said. “He came to me. He wanted to get away from Roma because he knew it was not the gods who controlled Roma. We both know that, Consul.”

  The Consul blinked. “Of course the gods guide Roma. I hear their voices myself, as have all my ancestors, as do the Collegia Pontificum. You are a mundane, so it is not your fault. You cannot know the bliss that comes from feeling the love of the gods, from hearing their wisdom. The gods love humanity. I know this because they tell me.”

  Ocella gaped at him. Did he believe it was the gods who talked to him and not the Muses? The man had a steadiness in his eyes that said he was serious. How could he not know? Umbra Vessels knew what the Muses were because the Muses told them. Perhaps the Roman Muses told their Vessels they were gods, and the Vessels believed it.