by Jeff Wheeler
Tiberius laughed. “Come now—you know that I can’t hold it, dear. Show me the cover, please.” She turned the unwieldy tome over in her arms and he leaned forward intently. “The Imperial Ghosts,” he read aloud. “A Walking Tour of the Famous Funeral Gardens of the Severans. The date escapes me . . . I never could fully grasp the new calendar.”
She stepped away from him again, folding the book back up in her arms. “There are three shades named Tiberius listed; I came here today to find out which one you are. But I suppose that if you predate the current calendar, you can only be Tiberius the Third . . .”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” He cocked his head, glancing at the spine of the book again. “The author of your guide—Diodorus, is it?—has apparently misled you.”
Her eyes narrowed with distrust. “How so?”
Tiberius turned and walked away through the trees, hands clasped behind his back. When the girl didn’t immediately follow, he looked back over his shoulder. “Coming?”
She hesitated. “All right.”
She picked her path over the broken pavement carefully, following him up out of the dark trees and into a wild hillside meadow. Tiberius waded through the sunlit grass ahead of her, the folds of his simple robe gathered in one hand, and made his way to the crest of the hill.
Someone had built a sundial at the summit, a great flat disk of silver under the open sky. The standing arm, which had once told the hours, was bent, a thick wedge of steel folded down and melted, but the hours of the day were still deeply incised into the base.
“We can talk here.” Tiberius sat down between the eleventh hour and the stroke of noon.
The girl sat down cross-legged between two and three o’clock. “Good. Tell me what’s wrong with my book, then.”
The old man laughed. “Straight to the point! Fair enough. In the first place, there are more than three Tiberiuses in the garden of your ancestors. There are actually eight of us, if memory serves.”
“Eight? How so?”
He smiled, looking away down the green slope. “Your great-grandfather was Tiberius the Twelfth, was he not? A good man and a middling emperor. One of the last Severans to be buried in the garden. He’s in one of those little tombs down there.”
He pointed to a line of strangely geometric mounds at the foot of the hill. Cleona sat up straighter, shielding her eyes; the white marble pyramids were wound so tightly with kudzu that they looked more like tiny tropical mountains than anything built by men.
“He rises very rarely. And nowhere near here, of course. I’ve seen him once or twice by the waterfall holding a reader in his hand.”
Cleona looked down at the cover of her text. “He must have died after this book was written. It is over two hundred years old.”
“We also have Tiberius the Seventh and his cousin Tiberius the Eighth. They played here as children—I still hear their laughter on the night of the winter festival.” He cleared his throat. “A tragic story, that. Turbulent times. . . . Neither of the boys ruled for more than a year.” The old man crossed his arms suddenly, as if he were cold, although the summer afternoon around him sang with heat. “I remember the night they brought the little one to the garden,” he muttered vaguely, as if to himself. “There’s nothing more terrible than a tiny coffin in a shallow grave.”
Silence followed for several moments, which the girl finally broke. “You said eight Tiberiuses.”
“That I did. Tiberius the Tenth was lost in one of the colonial rebellions, but someone built a monument for him at the western gate. It was cleverly done; the architect saw the place where his ghost appeared and built the shrine around the haunting. There was a reflecting pool lined with colored tiles; when you stood close and looked down into it, you could see the gas giant that swallowed his ship, just as if you were looking down from a low orbit.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
“It was. He used to appear there on summer evenings, reenacting his daily exercises. Crowds would gather at the gate to watch him. Tiberius Chilo was a great martial artist. When he danced his kata across the water, it was something to see.”
“Can you take me there?” her eyes sparkled eagerly. “I’ve read about his campaigns—he was a fine commander.”
“I could.” He shrugged sadly. “But the pool is long dry, and the tiles have all fallen now; his ghost is hardly more than a flicker these days.”
“Oh.” Her golden lashes dropped. “That’s a shame.”
“It is,” he agreed mildly. He crossed one bony leg over the other and sat back at his ease, fingers laced around one knee. “Now . . . how many would that be so far?”
“Four. And I know about Tiberius the Third. His burial chamber is supposed to be one of the biggest in the garden.”
The old man made a face. “Yes, it is. A horrid little man, Tiberius Orthrus. He had to make that vault of his extravagant. He wanted to take it all with him when he went.” He pointed his sharp chin at the book in her lap. “If there’s any truth at all in that thing, you’ll know that his reign was a bloody disaster—and never more so than when he lay dying. He couldn’t bear the thought that anyone might enjoy his possessions when he was gone. He had everything that wouldn’t fit into his tomb destroyed. It was an appalling waste.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every beast in his menagerie was butchered, even though he wanted only the rarest specimens to join him in the grave. Hundreds of his servants were poisoned, but only fifty were dressed and mounted to serve him after death.” He smiled to himself. “On the day they buried him, they tried to strangle all his concubines as well . . . but his wife put a stop to that, thank the gods.”
The girl leaned forward, pleased. “She was my namesake, Cleona the First! Where did you hear that story? There aren’t any concubines in my books.”
The old man gave her a lopsided grin. “No, I don’t imagine so. Royal historians don’t usually chronicle royal scandals, unless they want to part company with their heads.” His bright eyes flashed with amusement. “And it was something of a scandal, you know, when the sixteen-year-old new empress refused to obey her husband’s wishes, even while his ghost stood by wringing his hands and blustering about postmortem retribution. It was even more scandalous when she married off all those women to landed nobles over the next few years.” Cleona’s eyes widened at this, and he winked at her merrily. “Cleona always said that she was repaying a favor—that the concubines had done her a great kindness when her husband was alive. I expect that they kept Orthrus out of her bed.”
“But . . . how did she persuade her nobles to marry commoners?”
Tiberius laughed. “Oh, they didn’t take much persuading, my dear! Orthrus had fine taste, and half of his intended victims had been culled from the noble families. They made stunning, accomplished wives . . . and even if a man was inclined to disobey the royal edict, how could he turn down a bride deemed fit for the emperor? It would be a dangerous insult to the throne!”
“I never knew any of this.” She shook her head. “Amazing.”
“Yes, she was. I admired her a great deal.” He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the sun. “Cleona always had an eye for situations that could be turned to her advantage.”
“She was only empress for fifteen years, though.” The girl was clearly disappointed.
The old man chuckled again. “Oh, her reign was considerably longer than that, my dear! Don’t be fooled by the superficial details of succession. Cleona held power in her own name for fifteen years, in her son’s name for close to fifty, and in her grandson’s for another twenty after that. The poor man cried like a child at her funeral—he was terrified to rule the empire without her.”
Cleona giggled. “Really?”
“Really.” He yawned. “Now, where was I?”
“Tiberius the Tenth,” she said promptly.
“Ah yes. Well, Tiberius the Sixth and Ninth are also here in the garden; they were laid to rest in the family catacombs.
The entrance to those passages collapsed four hundred years ago, however, and the area is badly overgrown. No one could find it today . . . unless I were to show them where to look.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s seven . . . but you still haven’t said which Tiberius you are, old ghost.”
He met her eyes, no longer smiling. “I thought you would have guessed by now. Being a student of history. But we will make formal introductions, if you insist.”
The old man stood up and faced her, planting his bare feet in the grass. When he drew himself up to his full height, the girl paled. It was a frightening transformation; in one breath he went from an old man in his dressing gown to a white-haired wolf, captured for eternity in the winter of his life. He was a legend, a man to be feared . . . and when he put on the grim mask of authority again, she knew him right away. She’d seen the same stern face many times in marble, and even stamped in gold.
“Oh no.” Her voice was hushed with horror. “You must be—”
He cut her off with the tiny formal bow of imperial courtesy. “Tiberius Marcus Severan. Also known as Tiberius Atroxus and—”
“Tiberius the Great,” she finished. She stood up, knees shaking, and backed slowly away from him. “You’re the Tiberius who—”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted testily. He sat back down on the sundial, turning away from her—a weary old man once more. “No need for a catalog of my crimes. I’m sure the bloody tales have lost nothing in the telling, even in your generation.”
“No. They certainly haven’t.” She hesitated. “I’ve known about you since I was six years old. My father told me the story when he executed my uncle Kaeso.”
Tiberius shook his head. “Charming. Still the family ogre . . .”
“No, no—it wasn’t like that. My father admires you. He told me that I shouldn’t be afraid to follow your example, if I have to. He says you don’t live long as emperor unless you’re willing to cut a few throats . . .”
“Oh my. Better and better—I’ve become the patron saint of imperial fratricide.” The old man put his face in his hands, and his shoulders trembled with some suppressed emotion. “If your father follows my example, my dear, I’d step lightly in years to come. You never know when he’ll decide it’s your throat that needs cutting.”
She waited a few moments before speaking again. “So. Is it all true? What they say about you?”
He sighed heavily. “Probably. I don’t know exactly what you’ve heard, but you’re young yet; most of my nephew’s riper fabrications are unfit for such tender ears. For the record, however—in case you hear differently—I was never a rapist or a cannibal.”
She stood quietly for a time, and the song of cicadas grew loud in the silence. “You’re very lucky.”
The old man turned to look at her, incredulous. “How so?”
“You’re here to defend yourself.” She came and sat down beside him. “You’re not at the mercy of history.”
He sat for a long time, back bowed. “I’m not at the mercy of historians. History is another matter.”
He was talking to himself, however. By the time he looked up again, she had gone, and the meadow grass was brown and pinched by cold, poking up in tufts from a blanket of dingy snow.
* * *
On a pleasant autumn evening the child returned, emerging from the trees just as the first star appeared. Fifteen years old, she was rising like bamboo. Her corona of rust-colored hair had been cut close to the scalp, and her severe uniform could not hide the march of time. The gangly child she had been was steadily retreating before the tall, vigorous woman she would become—a bittersweet sight for an old man who had first loved her as a toddler chasing butterflies.
“Hello, Uncle.” Nervously she tugged the hem of her jacket down, then reached up to touch the two bronze tabs of rank on her collar, as if to be sure they were in place—an unconsciously military gesture. He had seen it many times in junior officers waiting for a review. “I need your help.”
“Hello, Niece.” Sitting on the edge of a dry fountain, Tiberius looked up into her eyes. “How did you find me here?”
She stopped, brow creased by a slight frown, and looked over her shoulder at the dark forest behind her. “I’m not sure. I wanted to see you, and—”
“It doesn’t matter.” He rose from his seat. “What help can I give you today?”
“I’d like you to show me a way out of here.” She stepped forward eagerly. “A secret way that only ghosts know.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And what use would you make of such an egress?”
She put her gloved hands in her jacket pockets, but not before he saw the glint of fire and gold. “Does it matter?”
“Probably not. But I am curious. And I’m afraid it’s against my nature to give away information for free.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re a Severan, all right.”
“Of course.” He paused for a moment. “This is not the place to escape your family, Cleona. Quite the opposite.”
She kicked at the fallen leaves viciously, sending up a shower of purple and brown. “I’m choking to death in that palace, Uncle. I have to get out. The new security measures are driving me mad. Everywhere I go, a dozen eyes are watching me.” She flung out her open hand, encompassing the whole garden with a contemptuous gesture. “This is the only place I’m allowed to be alone—and there are still guards posted outside all the gates.”
He nodded. “You’ve tried bribes, of course?”
“Of every kind.”
“Threats?”
“Only the ones I could carry out quickly.” She shook her head. “Believe me, old man—you were not my first choice!”
He smiled blandly. “And what pressing business do we have in the city, may I ask?”
“That’s none of your affair.”
“Ah. A lover, then.” She was wise enough to avoid his eyes, but he saw the flicker of light beneath her lashes. “Come now, Cleona. If you hope to hide this sort of thing in the future, you’ll have to do better than that. You’re as easy to read as a child’s primer . . . even for an old ghost like me.”
“You’re not just any old ghost, Tiberius Marcus.” Her look was sour. “No one else has guessed—I’m sure of that.”
“Oh really? How long has this little romance been going on?”
A wind stirred in the trees, and the rattle of dry leaves nearly drowned her soft reply. “Since the spring.”
“Mm-hmm. And the new security measures at the palace—when did these begin?”
“Two months ago, when I went back to the academy.” She turned and looked him in the eye. “I know what you’re going to say, but you’re wrong. My father is not the emperor you were.”
“Perhaps not. But he is your father, which gives him a distinct advantage.” He shook his head. “If Glycon has chosen to pretend ignorance, he’s a subtler man than you believe. But rest assured, child—he knows about this little affair of yours.”
“Impossible.”
Tiberius did not dignify that with a response. Instead he turned and strolled down a narrow corridor of thorns, leaving the fountain behind him. Although darkness was falling, his body was still very bright, as if he were standing in the full light of day. Ash-winged moths circled his wooly head, a fluttering crown; his glow was so strong that it drew insects like a flame.
Cleona followed close on his heels. “We were very careful,” she insisted. “We never met in public. We were never seen together. The room was—”
He rounded on her abruptly, cutting her off. “Enough, girl. You’ll be empress someday; it’s time you learn to lie to others, not yourself.”
Her jaw worked, biting down on her first reply, but her gaze never wavered. “Very well.” Her voice was clipped short by anger. “We’ll assume you’re right, even if you aren’t: my father knows. And making me a prisoner in his house—that would be his subtle way of telling me he doesn’t approve?”
“Yes. I believe you have the gist o
f it. He doesn’t approve, or he thinks it’s gone on long enough—it all comes to the same thing.” Tiberius turned and walked away again.
She came after him doggedly, hissing curses as the brambles whipped her face. “It’s no use running from me, Uncle! I’m going to keep up—ow, bloody hell!—regardless of where you go.”
Tiberius pressed his lips into a harsh line and kept moving. The path took several sharp corners as he went, through tunnels of knitted thorns. After a bewildering series of turns, a ruby-red glow began to leak through the black leaves of the hedge; there was an open space ahead. Tiberius stepped out into the clearing and nearly vanished, swallowed by a rolling fog the color of blood.
Cleona stumbled out after him and grinned, as if she’d just beaten him at some child’s game. “Topiary maze! But it needs trimming.” Looking around her, she seemed to take in the crimson mist for the first time. “Where are we?”
He pointed upward, where the fog swirled thick against a strangely curving ceiling, like smoke in a glass. “The Red Temple. The heart of the garden.”
She reached out and tried to touch the canopy with her hand; the tips of her fingers disappeared, and then reappeared as she quickly pulled them back. “Strange. What is it?”
“A sheet of energy. They called it a baldachin, in my day. Very few people had them, even then; they are relics of the First Empire.”
“Interesting. What does it do, exactly?”
“This one is fairly harmless—it only keeps out prying eyes,” Tiberius replied. “Light and heat pass through from above, but cannot pass through from below. It has no effect on physical objects or living things—but I always feel a tingle as I duck under it.”
“A useful device.” She passed her hand through it again. “Why would someone waste it here, in the middle of a cemetery?”
“To protect a very special place. One which would otherwise be visible from the air, when strangers flew over the city at night.”
Cleona looked around her. “Most definitely. Where’s all the light coming from?”
“Go see for yourself.”