In Numina: Urban Fantasy in Ancient Rome (Stories of Togas, Daggers, and Magic Book 2)

by Assaph Mehr

  “But —”

  “And don’t worry, I’ll station a few guards around your house to prevent mayhem and damage, just in case.”

  “Really —”

  “Valerius is right,” added Aquilius. “Numicius is notorious for getting out of trials when witnesses suddenly choose to leave town. Or worse, are never seen again.”

  “I assure you —”

  “And we could nurse you to health,” said Aemilia, smiling sweetly at me.

  “That’s not —”

  “Don’t nurse him too well, deliciae meae,” said Aquilius. “Appearing haggard and with the cast on his leg will make his testimony all the better.”

  “I’m quite —”

  “It’s settled, then,” from a smiling Cornelia. “You will stay here with us. We shall take care of you until the trial. Cousin Lucius will provide extra guards, both here and for your own domus.” Valerius nodded at that. “Though, really, I don’t think you should venture out. We have all you need right here, and we’ll help you practice your testimony.”

  And thus, I was stuck in a situation promising to rival the best comedies of Plautus. My mind was reeling with all the possible scenarios of night-time romps and mistaken bed-partners. Although my objections failed, I swore to myself to at least lock my door. That, and a big sacrifice to Fortuna, Venus, Juno and any other female goddess.

  If I survived that long.

  ***

  After that, the conversation meandered, with people talking in twos and threes about Cicero’s glorious and inglorious past, the sorry state of law and order in our times, the decline of public mores, et cetera. Wine was flowing freely, and together with the sweet deserts it helped restore and fortify our spirits.

  It was then that Icilia jumped to fill a momentary silence.

  “Let us not forget Felix,” giggled Icilia. “Just imagine the looks on the faces of both Numicius and Cicero, when we spring you on them. They think you’re dead! That’s what Faucia told me. Your testimony will be spectacular, I just know it.” This garnered a murmur of assent. I drank deeply from my wine, not happy at being the centre of attention.

  “True,” said Cornelia. “And now —”

  “This trial has people excited,” Icilia, all flushed, continued oblivious to Cornelia’s glare. “Everybody knows it’s coming! Legal connoisseurs are expecting a grand show. The audacity of working nefas magia within city limits! Everyone is observing carefully to know what the new life will be, what they can get away with. I think there will be a lot more of that in the coming days. I predict the rhones of the Collegium Incantatorum would make a big show of arrests but will net none but the sellers of trinkets who’ve sprung up all over town.”

  “What trinkets?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you seen? They are everywhere. With the notoriety of the case, some quick-witted individuals have decided to capitalise on the public attention. Word leaked out about the details and they are now selling mock curse tablets out in the open, to amuse the rich and idle. Some admit they are replicas, though they swear they are just like ones used on the insulae; some pretend they have managed to procure the original ones — now inert — from the case; some even pretend to sell the real thing! Nonsense, of course, but amusing.”

  “This is a disgrace,” said Valerius. “Our rhones have been becoming more concerned with personal glory over the recent years than the good of the city they are elected to administer. We really must pass a law in the assemblies to correct this.”

  “Good luck with that!” retorted Aquilius. “Between the plebeian tribunes keen to veto anything that simple people might take offence with and the rhones and aediles currying public favour with lavish feasts, you would be hard-pressed to pass any restrictions on them.”

  Icilia, sensing the conversation was slipping away from her again, interrupted rather loudly. “I almost forgot! Speaking about all those trinkets reminded me. In her rush to flee her murderous husband, Faucia stole something from him. While Ambustus may be dead, Numicius had in his possession the last curse tablet he prepared, the one he boasted was the most powerful of them all. She overheard him planning to activate it somehow and then use it against Valerius. She gladly gave it to me so that we could dispose of it.”

  She withdrew a folded sheet of lead and I recoiled in horror. Even in my wine-addled state I could sense the magia imbued in that thing. Icilia held it out for all to see, and waves of nauseating malevolence emanated from it, washing over the room like the poet’s wine-dark sea.

  Chapter XXXI

  “Put… put that thing down,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Felix,” Icilia was still smiling, “She said it’s completely inert. She stole it before he could activate it and curse us. It will just be something to remember your famous case by. Here, take it,” she extended her arm towards me.

  “It’s real, you stupid woman!” I yelled even as I cringed away. “It’s Numicius’ revenge! It was all just a ruse to get you to bring it here!”

  Her extended hand, still holding the tablet, started to shake. “But… but… how can it be? His man is dead.”

  The room was spinning, the lamp-cast shadows on the murals dancing like satyrs around bonfires. I knew it was not the wine. I said, “I don’t know, Ambustus must have left some instructions behind and Numicius found someone to activate it. Now please, put it down.”

  But she didn’t.

  She dropped it.

  As the soft metal hit the tiled floor, it bent. Though it’s usually done by driving a nail through the sheet, Ambustus had embedded some device in the tabula so that the dent was enough to fully release the pent-up curse. A ripple spread from where it lay, sending waves and creases through the floor, walls, furniture. When it hit me, the sensation was like being immersed naked in a barrel of wet slugs; I could feel it crawling over me, leaving slimy trails on my skin as it sought its way into my spirit through every bodily orifice.

  I retched, rolled to the floor on my knees, and vomited. The others, less sensitive to magia, were becoming ill as well. Worst was Icilia. Her skin erupted in boils and bleeding pustules, oozing out and soaking her clothing. She tried to stand up but collapsed on the floor, convulsing like a fish out of water.

  On the walls, the murals became alive. The ripple that went through the room — through us — left them as windows to the scenes they were depicting. And just as perversely, those worlds were corrupted. What was an idyll a moment ago, turned garish — nightmarish. Wolves tore into the lambs, birds fell dead from the ceiling unto us, the ocean water became red when sharks ripped the mermaids apart. I tried to rise and take a step but slipped back down. The floor mosaic of wholesome foods had turned into plates of putrefied, rotten, oozing messes.

  Reactions varied from shock to screams. “Out!” I cried. “Everybody out!”

  That got them going. I managed to stand with the aid of my crutch and follow suit. I had to limp around the rapidly decomposing, still whimpering mass that once was Icilia.

  In the hallways pandemonium reigned. Slaves were running everywhere, terrified and screeching, trying to get away from horrors that had awakened all over the house. A maid wrapped in bed sheets tumbled out of a sleeping cubicle, the sheets slithering about her like snakes. They constricted her chest, muffling her screams, as they tightened until we could hear her ribs crack, forcing her last ragged breath out.

  Crossing the garden was sheer lunacy. The bronze statue of the boxer awakened and was beating everyone who came near it to a bloody pulp. We had no choice but to risk it and run under the colonnade on the other side while it was busy with one of Cornelia’s bodyguards. It had caught the man, an ex-gladiator, in a wrestler’s hold, then managed to slip under him and catch his legs. The statue lifted him by his ankles and swung, crushing his head against a column. Bone shards and brain matter spattered everywhere. The bronze statue
made a grab at Valerius’ wife, but Valerius picked up a potted plant and smashed it into the statue’s face. The pot shattered, covering the boxer’s face with dirt and giving Valerius and Claudia the chance to escape.

  We made it to the atrium, where a water spirit playing in the impluvium was laughing joyously while the door-slave thrashed at her feet in the shallow pool. The silver-bell tinkling of her laughter was a stark, incongruent contrast to the desperate gurgling of the drowning man.

  Aemilia supported me as we skirted the pool. She stepped into the vestibule ahead of me, and something flew at her head. She clawed at her face, staggering and falling to her knees, nearly dragging me with her. I stared in horror as the animated wax-mask of one ancestor wrapped itself around her face, choking her. I drew my knife to scrape it off — a feat easier said than done. Cornelia rushed to help me restrain her daughter, lest I scar Aemilia. I slid my knife along her jaw, working the tip toward the mouth rather than her eyes. The imago hissed at me in voice as dead as the ancestor it represented. It slithered onto my knife hand, and while Aemilia gasped for air I stared numbly the face of a nameless dead senator wrapped around my fist, looking back at me with hatred in its painted eyes.

  I stuck my fist close to the nearest torch, heard and felt the shade scream as the wax of its face melted. I kept my hand in there as long as I could, singeing the hairs on the back of my hand.

  In the vestibule, the other masks were fluttering about like a flock of disembodied harpies. Aquilius had the right idea — he covered his head by pulling up his tunic and ran straight through to the main gate, which he managed to unlatch and force open. The rest of us followed him out into the moonlit street.

  ***

  We stood on the other side of the road, opposite Cornelia’s domus. I could see the building shaking and heaving. Ambustus’ previous curses had taken a while to build up their effects and dissipated when the tenants left. This one was different. I witnessed it reach full power almost immediately and I was certain it would remain around for a long time. There was a disparate quality to it, one I just couldn’t place.

  Some of the slaves remained faithfully by their mistress’ side while others ran, never to be seen again. Valerius and Aquilius tried to organise the survivors.

  “Are you sure it’s safe here?” Aemilia asked me, again. “I have half a mind to keep running, like the slaves.”

  “It seems to be limited to the building it’s affecting,” I replied. “Ambustus managed to localise the effect, which doesn’t appear to leak beyond the boundary of the estate. I can sense it, but it’s as if it’s walled in.”

  “Gods above and below, mother will be devastated,” Aemilia said.

  I looked at her young face. Her pale skin was marred with a thin red trail where I pried the living wax mask off her. “You should go to her,” I said. “She needs you. Just send Valerius and Aquilius over. I need to have a word with them.”

  She went, and I limped on my crutch back across the street to stand next to the domus. My broken ankle was throbbing. While we were making our escape, I had no option but to lean on it heavily, and now I was paying the price.

  I put my hand on the outside wall of the house and immediately recoiled, as though I touched hot iron. I could feel the power thrumming, potent, evil. But like hot smoke roiling inside a glass jar, it did not seep outside. Some view the magia as a manifestation of divine will, others claim it is mindless forces of nature. Whatever the source, the power held inside Cornelia’s house felt angry.

  And yet, it felt different from the residues I have witnessed in the other insulae. Distinct in a way I could not quite define. Same origin, same pattern — but deeper.

  Aquilius and Valerius came to stand with me. “This cannot be ignored,” I said. “Your insulae suffered far less powerful curses and are situated in a lowdown area where there aren’t any voters the aediles and rhones need concern themselves about. But here, we are right next door to the rich and influential. There will be talk.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Aquilius. “We can bring it against Numicius in the trial. We’ll place it right at the doorstep of the jury, too close for them to overlook.”

  “Except that you will need to explain how Numicius had done it without Ambustus. Our prosecution is based on proving the link between them.”

  “But we know it came from him,” said Aquilius. “Icilia —”

  “Is a woman,” I interrupted. “And a dead one at that. Cicero will tear us to pieces with her demise, claiming Valerius is dragging the wrath of the furies about him, causing the deaths of innocents.”

  “Then, what would you suggest?” asked Valerius.

  “Give me a day to see whether I can contain this. For Cornelia’s sake, if nothing else. If there’s a chance to clear her name in public and restore her domus to liveable conditions, it’s worth the delay. Take them all with you — Cornelia, Aemilia, and their household. Let me have a litter or a sedan chair and some guards so I can get around to collect what I need. Tomorrow night, I’ll have a better story for you to tell.”

  Valerius stood a moment in thought. The susurration and murmurs emanating from the house were interrupted by a loud crash.

  “Agreed,” he said. “You have one day. Make it good.”

  ***

  This was over my head. I never completed my training in the Collegium Incantatorum. I hadn’t built up the skills to deal with such phenomena — though I doubted many living incantatores did, either. The years after I left the Collegium I spent learning other trades, performing many tasks. Whenever I had the chance, I practised and furthered my understanding of magia. But that was in snatches from various sources, mostly folklore, which I worked to distil to its true essence. Hardly what one might call comprehensive philosophical learning and wisdom.

  So why did I beg Valerius for this assignment? Partly due to some sense of duty to my hostess and to my employer. Partly due to some inner indignity, at the callous disregard to our traditions, our gods, our people.

  And rage. Seething rage. As my breathing calmed after the rush of events, reflection caused my anger to rise like bile. Aemilia’s face would heal with nary a scar, but the memory of her choking gasps as the mask of her own ancestor tried to kill her would remain with me for the rest of my days. The spirits of ancestors are there to protect a family, not turn against them. Had Aemelia succumbed to the mask, it would have been a horrible end, one that would carry its implications into the next world. It also echoed too much of the death of Helena. That old crime might be beyond redemption, but I wanted to make sure whoever tried to cause this one would not only pay, but never produce anything like it again.

  There was only one man I could call for help. It was the middle of the night, the streets deserted of honest people. I had no time to waste. As the slaves carried me in a sedan chair from the heights of Vergu to the docks next to the commercial fora, I prayed to all the gods I would find him in time.

  And find him sane.

  Chapter XXXII

  It was pitch black when I found Araxus, some hours past the middle of the night when the moon had already sunk behind the mountain. Travelling by sedan chair was easier than limping on a broken ankle, but not much faster. I had the slaves carry me around to all sorts of unsavoury places, the bodyguards helping avoid unnecessary trouble. I poked far too many sleeping beggars awake trying to locate the rubbish heap on which Araxus slept.

  But find him I did. It wasn’t too far from the tavern where I encountered him only this afternoon. I could smell the cheap wine as the guards turned him over and shook him. He grunted, burped, coughed, rolled back over. They shook him again, and he flailed his arms in the air.

  “Lea’me alone,” he mumbled.

  “Stand him up,” I said, and two of my bodyguards picked him by his arms and held him upright. His shoulders slumped, his feet dragged on the ground. They gave him a gentle shake and he rew
arded them by vomiting at their feet.

  I wished I had some water to throw at his face. Instead, I slapped him lightly. “You said you wanted to repay your debt, that you would help me when I was in need. Now is your chance.”

  His black left eye focused on me and gave me a keen look, but the rest of him still appeared drunk. “Jusht lemme gather my wits, will ya?” he mumbled. “Lead on, brave legate, lead on.”

  “Carry him,” I said to the bodyguards. Though tall, his frame was slender. Years of living on the streets left him thin, almost emaciated. I doubted the beefy guards would have trouble dragging him with us. A third guard carried Araxus’ meagre possessions — his walking stick and a bundle of rags. I climbed into my sedan chair, and we started the way back up the mountain to Cornelia’s domus.

  We stopped at several public fountains on the way where I had the slaves splash water at Araxus. Little by little, he came to his senses.

  The sky was beginning to pink when we reached Cornelia’s. The street outside the house was deserted, bar the few guards Valerius had left behind. They were huddled under a tree on the opposite side of the road, not keen to be any closer to the cursed house. By this time, Araxus was walking under his own power, leaning on his staff. I hoped his mind came back to him, as a deranged incantator was the last thing I needed to add to the scene.

  “This is the latest of the curses,” I said. “Do you remember the ones you helped me dispose of about a month ago?”

  He nodded.

  “This one is different. The same verpa of a veneficitor crafted them, but he did something strange. The power burst out of it all at once, instead of gradually.” I gave him as accurate an account as I could about events over dinner and what sense I could make of them.

  Araxus stood in quiet contemplation for a moment, letting his black eye roam over the cursed building. Susurration and murmurs could still be heard from inside, as well as scratches, screeches, and heavy huffing. It was as though the building had become the holding cell for some exotic menagerie.