Savage City (17 page)

‘Are you going to marry any of these women?’ Drusilla asked sharply.

Drusus sighed again. ‘I cannot tell whether you wish me to say yes or no to that.’

‘It’s not right for the Emperor to be unmarried. Your cousin was married, and he was younger than you.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Though it wasn’t what you could call a
proper
marriage, not with that foreign girl. And look what came of
that
. What are you going to do with her?’

‘I will do what’s right,’ said Drusus.

‘I hope so. She must have been mixed up in what happened; the people will expect her to pay for it.’

Drusus said nothing for a while. ‘Father will be moving in here soon,’ he remarked after a while with artificial casualness, and Drusilla tensed. She hated any direct reminder of her marriage, of Lucius’ existence. ‘He’s been quite well, lately, you’ll be glad to hear. And it’s not as if there’s any shortage of room for him. Of course, you’re
welcome here too. It is not really right for the Emperor’s mother to live outside her son’s guardianship, is it? And the people would appreciate an example of family unity at such a dark time.’

‘You know very well that’s impossible,’ said Drusilla, tight-lipped.

‘Ah, well. I try to be a good son,’ said Drusus, and went forward to take a senator’s daughter by the hand and whirl her into the next dance.

The Empress Jun Shen examined the new Roman Emperor on the jade-framed yuan-shi screen in her audience chamber. She saw how his new dark uniform suited him, how handsome and noble he looked, and at the same time she thought he looked like a little boy dressed up. In the latter aspect she found him more frightening.

She said, ‘But you were attacked by a group of anarchists from within your own Empire who have been trying to provoke a war for over a year. Do you not hesitate at all to give your enemies precisely what they want?’ She waited for Weigi to finish translating.

Drusus replied calmly, ‘No one believes a gang of slaves could have succeeded without both Nionian sponsorship and inside help.’

The Empress grunted. ‘If they are going by your speeches, I suppose they don’t.’

Drusus smiled tightly. ‘I have done my best to keep the Roman people informed. If you have been listening to my speeches, you can need no further explanation from me.’

‘And I see that you have grown no fonder of your cousin’s advisor or his concubine since I last saw you.’ She remembered them in their temporary prison in the Nionian quarters, the young girl tense and urgent, warning her what Drusus would do to Sina in a war . . .

‘They were traitors then and they’re traitors now. If my cousin had realised that he might still be alive.’

‘Even the girl’s brother?’ added Jun Shen.

‘It’s not a mere matter of association, your Majesty, I promise you that. They all had ties to my cousin’s killer.’

Jun Shen leaned forward, her scented armour of clothes stiff around her, fringes of petals and beads drooping against her forehead. ‘Perhaps you will not object if a much older sovereign suggests you reconsider your course? I saw how hard all sides worked to avoid this. You, I think, had other concerns at the time. But it is a pity if it is all to be thrown away. You have knocked over a lot of buildings in Yuuhigawa; I think there are Roman towns in Anasasia and Arcansa already paying for it. Must it go further than that?’

‘Yes, it must,’ said Drusus, quietly. ‘I am acting from necessity.’

And Jun Shen studied his face, radiant and terrified under the fading bruises, and thought,
Yes, that much is true, for him it really is necessary
. More truculently than mournfully, she considered and rejected the wish that history could have waited until after she was dead to produce him. She did not like to think of her ministers or her grandchildren attempting to handle this.

Drusus finished, ‘And Roman forces will need the freedom to cross Sinoan territory.’

Jun Shen sucked in her lips. ‘What am I to say when Nionia requests the same thing? I am not having my lands become a battleground.’

‘We will not be coming as your enemies, Madam.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Jun Shen, ‘any force entering my lands without my permission will have made itself my enemy.’

Drusus stiffened. ‘You would have to take responsibility for the consequences of resistance.’

‘Yes. But I prefer to have no part of this, your Majesty. I think you should be glad of that. You’ve already gone looking for one fight; it would not be wise to take on another.’

Drusus stared palely out of the screen at her, which then, without warning, flashed and went dark. Jun Shen raised her eyebrows and settled back on her throne with a quiet groan. She lowered her chin to the mail of necklaces on her chest and remained silent for several minutes, thinking.

She looked up at last, to see the alarm on the faces of her interpreter and attendants. ‘He won’t do it,’ she said to them, ‘not yet, anyway.’ But she felt her heart still bobbing rapidly against her thinning bones, under the solid weight of pearl and amethyst.

Drusus looked around at his generals in the Strategy Room and said, ‘Well, let’s rest a little. We’ll talk more of this later.’

The fury and panic faded almost too quickly, soaking away into the maps of the world that covered the walls. Had he really just had a conversation in which the future of a billion lives had been shaped? He was left fretfully stranded between excitement and a feeling of puzzled doubt that anything was really happening, that he was truly Emperor, that the little dots on the maps meant something true.

He looked at the outline of the coast of Greece, where Siphnos was an invisible speck, Makaria already fixed there, definite. But the world’s slippery surface stretched away, without even a ripple to show where Sulien and Una and Varius had hidden themselves.

It would have been foolish to completely ignore the risk that existed as long as Varius was alive, but Drusus felt only a patient, businesslike
level of concern on his account. But that Una and Sulien had escaped with him, despite how swiftly Drusus had moved, that felt like something worse than bad luck: another uncanny sign of what they were, what they were
meant
for. Ruin, the Sibyl had warned him, and he repeated to himself the borrowed names that had allowed him to understand, names that wound tight around his own: Noviana, Novianus.

Walking meditatively through the Palace, he found he was heading towards Noriko’s quarters. Why not, he thought, turned up the shallow flight of stairs towards her door and had the guards unlock it.

He had let her keep the apartments Marcus had used when he stayed in the Palace, which were extensive and beautiful. She had everything she could reasonably want. She was not trapped indoors, for there was a wide balcony looking over the gardens. So he did not think she could have suffered much from having to stay there.

Much of the furniture had been cleared away. He found Noriko by the open doors to the balcony with her waiting women, all of them in that strange kneeling posture again, though this time their clothes were largely Roman in style. But quiet Nionian music was playing, and Noriko’s ladies were combing out her hair, trimming away tiny frayed sections of individual strands with slow, practised hands. All three women’s faces were still, as if in a shared trance of boredom and unhappiness. As they saw him their eyes widened and they all rose as hastily as their sheets of hair would allow. Drusus almost wished he could press a button to replay this response, it was so pretty, like the fanning tails of frightened pigeons.

‘I came to see how you are,’ he said.

Noriko didn’t lift her eyes from the floor. Eventually she murmured, rather indistinctly, ‘I am well.’

‘Good,’ said Drusus. He gestured to the women, who looked from him to Noriko in startled dismay and then, reluctantly, left the room.

Noriko cast a nervous glance after them but straightened her back and raised her head. ‘I’m glad you are here,’ she said resolutely. ‘I wished to speak to you.’

Drusus nodded permission, while allowing himself a mild, sensuous pleasure in her proximity, only half attending to what she had to say.

‘I have not been allowed to leave these rooms,’ said Noriko, in a low voice, ‘because I was not there when . . . You have been making everyone think that my country . . .’ She took a small step back from him; the balcony was behind her and there was not much space into which she could move. ‘You have accused me, because I left the
Colosseum . . .’ She glanced at the longvision, then said, ‘Are you going to put me on trial?’

‘Was there a signal of some kind?’ asked Drusus, kindly, almost as if he would be prepared to sympathise if she said there was. ‘Had you been warned beforehand?’

‘No!’ cried Noriko, ‘of course not! Why would I ever have come here, if—? He was my
husband
. Our marriage was supposed to bring peace. If I had known what would happen, I would have protected him; I would have prevented this.’

‘Very well, then,’ said Drusus, easily. ‘I’ll believe you had nothing to do with it.’

Noriko blinked, baffled. ‘Thank you,’ she managed at last, her voice strained. ‘Then I would ask you to let me go home. I would like to . . . I would like to mourn for my husband there.’

‘You are at home,’ said Drusus. ‘You married into this family. You are part of it. Of course I cannot let you defect to our enemies in a time of war.’

Noriko, who had retreated until her back was pressed right against the balustrade over the gardens, lifted her hands in a kind of cramped despair. ‘But I have no purpose here any more. You have made your people think I am a murderess; you are trying to destroy my country. How can I stay here?’

‘It’s true that it isn’t safe for you to be seen in public now. And it’s a shame you couldn’t come to the funeral, I know. I think the best thing is to let people forget you. It won’t take so long, believe me.’

Noriko lowered her head again. ‘What are you going to do with me?’

‘I will protect you,’ said Drusus. He was leaning against the jamb of the balcony doors, not touching her at all.

Cleomenes was walking back along the Tiber towards headquarters when a drunk stumbled into him and nearly fell at his feet. He dragged at Cleomenes’ jacket before lurching away towards a gang of other tramps on the bridge. Scowling, half-inclined to go after the man and arrest him for something or other, Cleomenes tugged his jacket straight – and found the folded sheet of paper that had been thrust beneath it. He opened it immediately with unthinking professional interest, and felt the blood light up in his cheeks like a neon hoarding.

He screwed the paper up tight, buried it in his pocket. He spent the rest of the day feeling that his colleagues could read its contents on his face, that he would be forced to produce it and be arrested. He burnt it when he got home, disguising even that as part of an impromptu
offering to the household gods, in case his wife should be endangered by knowing; in case, somehow, he was being watched here.

After that, he meant to forget it, but fear that it would happen again, and gathering indignation at how he’d been compromised, sent him to an underpass outside a sprawling tram station in the Ciconiae just before midnight. It was a natural stop on his route home, although he’d had to manufacture a lot of unnecessary paperwork to explain why he was travelling so late, in case anyone was paying attention.

‘Damn you, don’t ever try anything like that again,’ he began at once. ‘You stay away from me, for both our sakes. Don’t you think they’re watching me? They know I was mixed up with you and those kids. They’re just waiting for something like this. The longdictor’s tapped, I’m sure of that. And they’re keeping me away from anything big at work – I know they’re checking I’m not poking into anything. Half the time I think they’re following me. Gods,’ he finished, deflated, as the sour yellowish light caught Varius’ face, ‘you look terrible.’

‘I’m supposed to,’ said Varius.

‘Got yourself beaten up?’ said Cleomenes, still with an air of harassed disapproval.

‘I’ve been in a fight,’ Varius corrected him, with mild, irrelevant pride. He’d found that a degree of violence was inescapable, living the way he was, and he felt he’d done reasonably well, considering.

‘Why don’t you just get out of the country while you still can, Varius?’ pleaded Cleomenes, ‘because it’s going to get harder, I’ll tell you that much. They’re bringing in these new identity papers; they’re tightening up all the borders – and it’s mostly because of you.’

‘I have things to do,’ said Varius.

Cleomenes studied him curiously, and something, perhaps the way Varius held himself, prompted him to grasp Varius angrily, push him against the wall and pat down his clothes until he found the gun, strapped against his side.

‘Jove!’ He backed away until the width of the underpass was between them and looked nervously at the steps leading up to the dark street. ‘Don’t tell me what that’s for,’ he said adamantly.

‘You know, Cleomenes.’

‘Well, I’m going to forget I know. And that’s the only way I can help you. Gods, what are you expecting from me? Because I can’t— I can’t. I’ve got a kid now. Do you know what happened to Salvius’ family?’

Varius nodded grimly. ‘Yes, I do. I went to his house. New people in there already. Everyone’s behaving as if Salvius was never there.’