Rome Burning (59 page)

Someone entered the room, to his right. Marcus did not look up, but recognised the other man’s bearing and somehow, from that awareness and from some small movement on the edge of his vision, he knew Salvius’ eyes went straight to his right hand, before he spoke, or even looked Marcus in the face.

‘You still have the ring.’

Marcus stared blankly down at it, turning his hand a little. A tawny crescent of thick light burned along the edge of the boss. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

‘As simple as that?’ demanded Salvius, alarm and indignation pushing through the surface of his voice.

‘It’s all you need to know for the moment, Salvius. You
took my cousin out of prison on no authority but your own. The only reason I’m allowing you to stand there and speak to me is that I know the trouble you could cause me if I had you dismissed from your position, or if I ordered you arrested, or executed. And though you don’t know it, I’m in your debt. So you will come with me to Bianjing, and you will watch me, and I will watch you.’

There was a long, uncertain silence, in which they both were simply still, Salvius standing tense, Marcus sprawled and unresponsive in the chair. Then Salvius asked, ‘What does this mean for Drusus Novius?’

‘My cousin … will not pose a problem,’ answered Marcus, distantly. ‘You wanted to keep him from standing trial for his crimes. You’ve done it. You’ve got away with doing it. That’s enough. No more discussion of this. There’s only one other thing I wish to speak with you about. You ordered the Veii Arms Factory to increase production, just before it was destroyed.’

‘You had given no orders to the contrary,’ protested Salvius gruffly.

‘Do you think I am too close to the Nionians, Salvius?’

Again, Salvius hesitated, ‘Yes,’ he said at last.

Marcus nodded, unemotionally. ‘I believe the Nionians are developing a new kind of weapon, or they were doing so under Lord Kato. They may have tested it on an island in the Promethean Sea. Nothing further is known than that, so don’t ask me to tell you more. You should speak to Falx about reinforcing our intelligence on these matters. You will not attempt to go behind my back again, but, with my permission this time, you will see that if this device exists, Rome can match it. Or surpass it.’

Salvius nodded, speechless.

‘Don’t get too excited about it. I still don’t intend for you to get the chance to use it. Leave now and get ready.’ It didn’t occur to Marcus that Salvius might not do as he said. He shut his eyes for a moment and did not even watch the general leave.

After a few minutes, he pulled himself up and went to Makaria’s apartments. As he approached he found the landings and corridors that led to her rooms pointedly filled with
guards, and further in, with silent, dour, watchful servants, none of whom he recognised as having served Makaria in the past. He didn’t hesitate, or look at any of them, even when once or twice he ordered them aside, but he made sure the ring was visible on his hand.

He heard Makaria before he saw her, her voice hoarse as if flagging after days of outrage. ‘Will you stop following me around like a bloody dog that wants feeding? I don’t have to be watched every second! Don’t you dare stand there and say you’ve got no choice!’

Makaria looked exhausted with anxiety and fury, far more so than the servant on whom her rage was being spent. She visibly buckled with relief when she saw Marcus. She flung her arms around him, and, with his head on her shoulder, Marcus crumpled a little too, feeling fleetingly weak and lost and grateful for protection. He couldn’t allow it to last and it didn’t.

‘I tried to warn you,’ Makaria cried, swiping at her wet eyes. ‘Did the message get through? You never answered.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it didn’t. But thank you for trying.’

‘It got through to someone, I know it. It wasn’t this bad before, they at least pretended not to treat me like a bloody criminal. They haven’t let me go out, or use a longdictor, or even see Daddy. I’ve got no damn idea what’s been going on. I’m
so sorry.
’

‘You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry you had to go through all this. It will be better now.’

‘You’ve seen him then?’ She touched his hand. ‘And you have the ring. He just … believed you?’

Marcus glanced around. ‘Not here.’

They went downstairs and out into the courtyard where months before he had met with the senators, the day Una had tracked Drusus out across the gardens, the day he’d attacked her. The umbrella pines breathed and swayed in the turbulent dark air, Rome stirred below and around them, spraying noise and umber light against the blurred clouds. Makaria sighed, spreading her arms. ‘It’s so good just to get outside.’

‘I know,’ replied Marcus.

Makaria looked at him anxiously. There was an
impersonal, level bitterness even in the simplest things he said. ‘So what has happened?’

Marcus looked out at the trees. ‘He can’t choose between us, so he hasn’t. I’m expected to share power with Drusus, and we are somehow to settle our differences.’

‘That’s absurd. That’s impossible.’

‘Of course.’

‘What are you going to do?’

Marcus smiled, or produced a grimace that involved the same muscles. ‘Not that.’ He turned back towards the Palace. ‘I have things to do.’

‘You have to tell me everything,’ pressed Makaria, following him. ‘What happened in Sina? I’ve been going mad.’

They glanced at each other with the half-humorous Novian flinch at phrases such as that. ‘I don’t have time,’ said Marcus. ‘If you come with me back to Bianjing I’ll tell you on the journey. You should have been with me all along.’ He headed towards the first room he could find with a longdictor, beckoning a servant as he did so. He scrawled a name on a sheet of paper. ‘I need to speak to this man immediately. Have someone in the Outer Office find the longdictor code and get the line ready, I’ll be here.’

‘What are you doing?’ Makaria asked.

‘Trying to find Sulien. They told me …’ his voice twisted unexpectedly in his throat. ‘They told me they’d arrested him.’

Makaria looked stricken. ‘No, they can’t have done. I got him out. He was here when it happened, when Salvius brought Drusus here. But I got him out.’

‘He was here?’ Marcus blinked at her wearily. ‘I don’t know. I was told he dodged them for a few days … I hope it’s not true. Salvius didn’t know about it.’

A few minutes passed. Then the bulb on the base of the longdictor lit up and he picked up the headset. ‘Cleomenes,’ he said. ‘It’s Marcus Novius Faustus.’

‘I know it’s you, Caesar.’

Marcus could hear a baby’s cry in the background, rhythmic as if someone were bouncing it in their arms to soothe it. Yes – he had known Cleomenes had a child now, he felt a tinge of nostalgic regret at having forgotten it.

‘I need to ask you to do something for me. There’s a possibility Sulien is being held somewhere – unofficially, on my cousin’s orders. It may be in Rome, I don’t know. If I instruct the vigiles or the Praetorians to search for him in the normal way, I might alert the people who have him. Once it’s known I’m in Rome, and on what terms, that will happen anyway, so we only have a few hours. I know this is nothing to go on—’

‘Sir—’ Cleomenes interrupted.

‘—and I doubt anything can be done, but you must know who can be trusted to try, and I have to do whatever is possible.’

‘Sir,’ repeated Cleomenes, more firmly. ‘I
know
where Sulien is.’

Marcus said mechanically, ‘What?’ in a hoarse voice he didn’t hear.

‘He’s in Ostia. There’s a house there we were using for some undercover work on contraband, underground slave-trading, that kind of thing. It finished a while back. Not many people know about it, even in the vigiles. He’s there with that kid Acchan. It was the best I could manage.’

‘You took him there?’

‘He came to me, yes. He’ll want to see you. There’re things he’s got to tell you, it appears. It was eating him up that he couldn’t think how to contact you.’

Marcus couldn’t answer. He had to call the serrated feeling that dug through him relief – joy. And yet it left an empty, broken swathe behind it: if he could only have known before. If he could only have made his decision knowing that.

‘I’ll bring him to you. There’s no longdictor it was safe for him to use.’

‘Thank you,’ Marcus managed. ‘Don’t tell him – what I’ve told you. It had better come from me.’ After he’d turned the longdictor off, Makaria, watching him, thought for a moment that he was about to break down into tears, but his face smoothed in an instant and he only said, ‘Well, I need to eat, and to rest for a while.’

They ordered and ate a short, almost silent meal in the nearest of the many dining rooms. Only as the servants
cleared the dishes away, Makaria ventured, ‘Una and Varius aren’t here, are they?’

‘I’ll have to tell Sulien that and I don’t think I can go over it twice tonight. I’ll explain tomorrow.’ And she felt remorseful at having asked, not exactly because he looked upset but because he seemed to be sliding so precipitously into sleep, his limbs falling still on the low couch as inevitably as if he’d been drugged. ‘The time difference,’ he said. ‘It feels like it’s midnight, to me.’

‘Marcus …’ said Makaria. ‘I am sorry.’ It felt as though someone had to apologise.

‘Why?’ he asked, a little impatient.

She hardly knew how to answer. ‘You’re so different,’ she explained at last, gently.

His eyelids lifted once, revealing a detached curiosity in the cold-coloured eyes beneath. ‘Am I?’ he murmured, before he fell asleep.

A tap on the door woke him. He looked up to find Makaria gone and the room empty. He hadn’t slept more than an hour and a half. ‘Come in,’ he said, getting to his feet. And as a servant showed Sulien into the room he took nothing in except that it was him, he was there.

Sulien had just enough time to be taken aback by the elated, anguished smile on Marcus’ face, although not time to speak, before he found himself tackled into a crushing hug that almost knocked him back against the doorframe. Still, despite being startled, because this wasn’t like Marcus, he was in the first second simply very glad and thankful to see him. But then he heard Marcus let out a breath that sounded like a sob, and his grip on Sulien seemed somehow despairing, bereft.

‘Are you all right?’

Marcus gave a cracked laugh. It seemed bizarre and unbearable to have Sulien patting his back in concern and asking him that, after everything. He let him go. ‘Yes.’

‘Are you drunk?’

Marcus laughed again. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

‘I didn’t think you’d know there was anything to worry about.’ He saw that Marcus’ eyes were indeed raw with tears. ‘You’re not all right. What’s happened?’

Marcus knew the best, most honest thing would be to tell Sulien everything unprompted, not to make Sulien question it out of him. But he could not think how to start – his voice still caught in his throat when he tried to speak, both with emotion and, he knew, with simple cowardice.

Sulien continued, innocently, ‘Where’s Una?’ And then saw Marcus’ odd, grieving smile cave in, and how he couldn’t meet his eyes any more. A horrible possible reason for his distress occurred to Sulien. ‘Marcus,
where is she?
’

‘No, no,’ promised Marcus hastily. ‘It’s not that. She’s … she’s still in Bianjing.’ And he realised that he did not know if this was true.

‘What?’ Sulien’s apprehensive look flared into panic. ‘But Drusus is there – he’s been there all this time. If he’s anywhere near her, she’s dead.’

‘
No
. He’s not near her, he can’t hurt her. She’s with the Nionians.’ Sulien shook his head, his brows gathering into a slow, bewildered frown. Marcus made himself go on. ‘I asked them to take her. As a kind of … guest.’

‘A guest?’ repeated Sulien.

‘Yes – yes, look, we only had a few minutes. She was in worse danger if she stayed with me – much worse. I had to.’ But he’d tried too hard, and too quickly, to ward off what he’d dreaded seeing from the beginning: incredulous distrust building on his friend’s face.

Sulien said slowly, ‘So you left her alone, on the enemy side, and in the same place as Drusus?’

‘She’s not alone. Varius is there.’

‘Varius too?’ said Sulien, dragged unwillingly along by another acceleration of suspicion and shock. ‘Did he agree to this? Did Una?’

‘No,’ said Marcus, steadier now, more resigned. ‘Not exactly.’

He took an instinctive step back as Sulien advanced on him, not quite in deliberate aggression, hands not quite raised, but his greater height and reach suddenly menacing as they had never been before, as if the disbelief and betrayal were struggling to earth itself through him somehow.

Sulien was briefly, sickly aware of holding himself back, of reminding himself that this was Marcus. He cried, ‘And
what happens to them now? How sure are you that Drusus can’t get to them? What if the war starts?’

‘I don’t know. I only knew what would happen if I didn’t do it.’

‘And the Nionians,’ went on Sulien sharply. ‘Why did they want them? What do they get out of it?’

Marcus cast a hunted glance up at him, realising he had not expected this kind of acuity from Sulien, not now. Was it possible he had underestimated Sulien, just a little, all this time? He hesitated a second, provoking Sulien to shout his question at him again, and then admitted quietly, ‘A guarantee I wasn’t involved in Lord Kato’s murder.’