|
| Una, Sulien and Cleomenes take Marcus to the Palace where Una identifies Tulliola as a member of the conspiracy.
|
|
| Marcus is named as Faustus’ heir.
|
|
| Gabinius is shot dead attempting to escape arrest. The inhabitants of Holzarta have been forced to flee after conspiracy agents raid the camp.
|
|
| Sulien and Una are granted freedom by Emperor Faustus. Their new citizens’ names are adapted from the Imperial nomen:
Noviana
and
Novianus
.
|
|
| Tancorix has been married to a much older man and is pregnant by him; however she comes to Rome in order to exonerate Sulien and then stays there.
|
|
| Drusus meets Tulliola in custody – the pair were lovers in secret for years. He kills her to prevent her revealing his involvement in the conspiracy.
|
2005
| 2758
| Varius establishes the slave clinic planned by Leo and Clodia in Transtiberina, and Sulien begins working there.
|
|
| Tancorix gives birth to a daughter, Xanthe.
|
|
| Marcus begins studies at the Academy in Athens.
|
|
| Delir, Lal and Ziye settle in Jiangning, Sina.
|
2006
| 2759
| Tensions increase between Rome and Nionia.
|
|
| Nionian Ambassadors are expelled from Rome.
|
2007
| 2760
| A series of unexplained fires cause damage across the Roman Empire. A skirmish between Nionian and Roman troops over the Great Wall of Terranova escalates into a massacre and the two Empires are pushed to the brink of war. Emperor Faustus suffers an incapacitating stroke.
|
|
| Marcus and Una, now lovers, return from Greece to Rome, so that Marcus can take over as Regent.
|
|
| Drusus visits the Sibyl at Delphi for a second time, receiving a repetition and elaboration of the original prophecy. Faustus asks him to assist Marcus as an advisor, but on his return to Rome, Una identifies him as a member of the conspiracy against Marcus
and Tulliola’s murderer. Drusus attempts to kill Una before she can reveal this, but fails.
|
|
| Varius, now working as Marcus’ advisor, and Una travel with Marcus to Sina for peace talks with Prince Tadahito and other Nionian nobles.
|
|
| General Salvius
, persuaded that Drusus has been unjustly accused, has him released from prison.
|
|
| Drusus convinces Faustus too that he is the victim of a plot by Una and Varius, who he claims are manipulating Marcus for their own ends.
|
|
| Faustus summons Marcus home and Drusus arrives in Sina to take his place as Regent. Fearing that Drusus will have Una and Varius tortured or killed, Marcus persuades Tadahito to take them into Nionian custody. At the same time,
Kato Masaru
, Lord of Tokogane, is assassinated.
|
|
| From Nionian custody, Una and Varius work to avoid an immediate outbreak of war, with assistance from Noriko and the Sinoan
Empress Jun Shen
.
|
|
| Empress Jun Shen orders a crackdown on Roman immigrants in Sina, forcing Delir, Ziye and Lal to flee. Delir and Ziye are nevertheless arrested, leaving Lal behind.
|
|
| Drusus learns of Lal’s presence in Sina through a letter to Una; he hopes to be able to extract testimony from a former resident of the inherently criminal slave refuge to discredit Una and, through her, Marcus. His agents search for Lal and eventually capture her; however, she is rescued by Dama, who conveys her to Una.
|
|
| Unable to decide which of his nephews to believe, Faustus orders them to share power between them. Marcus, however, returns to Bianjing, attacks Drusus, almost kills him, and then marginalises him by sending him to govern Canaria.
|
|
| Marcus is now under pressure to marry Noriko to rescue the peace negotiations. Una leaves him, taking Lal with her.
|
|
| On the day of Marcus and Noriko’s wedding, Dama appears on Una’s doorstep and invites her to join him in a campaign of rescues of slaves and rebellion against slave-holding Rome. She joins him at a farm near Rome, actually a revolutionary base.
|
|
| She contacts her brother from the farm. Sulien, however, has recognised that Dama is behind the fires, many of which were mass-rescues of slaves. He also had Lord Kato assassinated and stole explosives
from Veii Arms Factory – he is trying to foment a world war.
|
|
| Realising what Una now knows, Dama imprisons her at the farm and abducts Sulien and Lal. Sulien and Lal eventually escape, revealing Dama’s role in events – but not before Dama has perpetrated another attack in Tokogane, this time killing seventeen hundred people. Again, war seems inevitable, but Marcus and Noriko just succeed in preventing it. Dama allows Una to leave, and disappears.
|
|
| Distraught at what Dama has become, but unable to bear the possibility that, on arrest, he will be handed over to the Nionians and crucified, Delir finds him at Holzarta and convinces him to accompany him into voluntary imprisonment on a remote island off the coast of Caledonia. His plans in ruins, Dama tolerates captivity and penance for some months, but eventually wades away into the sea. He barely survives, but is picked up by fishermen and once again vanishes.
|
2008
| 2761
| Now largely recovered, Faustus resumes his duties as Emperor. Games are held to celebrate. All the Imperial Family are in attendance.
|
|
| Una sees Dama in the street nearby but is unable to stop him; Dama attacks the Colosseum setting off an explosion right over the Imperial Box, before falling to his death.
|
For what do we see that is so wretched, so lonely, that one would not think it worse to live always trembling in fear of fires and falling houses, and all the thousand perils of the savage city . . .?
Juvenal,
Satire 3
‘Wait,’ she repeated, and then, on one breath, dying away to a garbled mutter, ‘
What you want it will be you the last one Novius it will come Emperor of Rome you
.’
Then he thought she was beginning to say his name again: ‘Novius.’ And she did say it, many times, but she no longer seemed to mean it as a name,
novii, novissimi – newer, newest
.
‘
The new
,’ she said, a loud voice droning from deep within her chest. ‘
The newer newest. The newly come, no Novian but one. The newer branch of Novian stem. No Novian but another comes to ruin you. Save yourself from that, if you think you can
.’
The Sibyl at Delphi, to Drusus Novius, Summer 2760 AUC
[ I ]
CORONATION
It might have been falling rather than running. Una didn’t feel the ground under her feet, her body was loose and tumbling, as if some force other than her own will hurled it forward through the rain, past oncoming cars she didn’t see. The gash on the back of her head seeped blood, warm under her cold hair.
Then the sound came: the grey sky rattled like a metal door slammed shut. The glass roof of the Colosseum cracked open like a shell, hatching fire and smoke into the wet air. For a second the belt of screens above the arches showed what was inside – flame, and debris falling – then they went dark. Una lurched forward on the wet paving, putting down one hand to keep from falling, and ran on, as if there were still time to stop it.
The noise collapsed into voices screaming, and the mass of people jostling around the Colosseum began to hurtle apart, skidding across the ground like drops of water on heated metal. At first Una, running the wrong way, towards the scattering glass and the flag of smoke overhead, scarcely noticed them. Then the shouts of horror began to hit her like flung stones and she realised she was charging against an oncoming riot, the front line of a panicked army sixty thousand strong.
Head down, she threaded and dodged, then collided hard and fought to keep her balance as she was carried backwards a few paces. She heard her own cry of shock loud and strange, as if it came from somewhere else, beside or behind her.
Closer to the arena, the crowd was thicker still; the narrow, wavering ways forward closing up ahead of her as more people spilled from the eighty gates.
So many
, each one of them too solid and real, stamping themselves on her in jarring, colourful focus: plump lips stretched wide in horror; two brown moles on a flushed wet cheek; a long-haired little boy, wailing, astride a man’s shoulders. Gritting her teeth, Una
tried to tack sideways across the flow, battering herself against straining ribs and elbows, until she was able to stretch out and grasp the counter of a deserted souvenir stall. No way of getting any further yet.
Other people’s fright and shock roared through her brain like a landslide, until something gave way beneath it and left her in throbbing silence as if her eardrums had ruptured.
She clutched the stand, anchoring herself against the current, feeling the frame of the stall buffeted by the weight of people behind. She looked down at the fallen plaster figurines around her feet, promising Dama in her head: I’ll kill you.
No. Dama had not survived this, or would not by long. She’d known that as soon as she’d seen him in the street. And what did she care what happened to him now? What did anything matter, as long as she could force her way inside to find that Marcus was not dead in there, under that dark wing of smoke.
