Savage City (73 page)

He wouldn’t think it. But if he left, he knew he would lose something.

He scratched the insect bites on his face, and bloodied his
fingernails. His body was thrumming with tiredness, but it was still too early to go to bed, and in any case, every time he shut his eyes the lids sprang open as if in shock and his heartbeat kicked out in his chest, proving he would not be able to sleep, not yet. He needed to relax first, he thought. He was not going to try and work any more tonight. He tried to watch an old longvision play, but he felt unable to follow most of it, and such small tensions in the story that he did take in – lies and misunderstandings – made his chest grow painfully tight. But it was a long time before he could bring himself to turn it off, because in the quiet he could hear strange echoes sounding from within the Palace, or rumblings from within the earth beyond the walls. And his own breathing sounded so startlingly loud down here, and sometimes seemed to be coming from somewhere outside him, as if someone were standing close beside him all the time, panting for breath.

He rang for a servant, and no one answered. Drusus did not notice at first, because he couldn’t think of anything he actually wanted, and rapidly forgot having sounded the bell. He wasn’t hungry; he didn’t want a woman. He even had to force the wine in his cup down his throat. The night before he’d tried filling the place with officers and popular gladiators and girls, and they’d laughed and chattered to each other while the music bounced thinly off the walls and he sat in silence among them wishing they would leave.

But he wanted someone to come. He rang again.

Tulliola, too, must have spent a night down here, before— Where, on these cracked tiles still there under his silk Bactrian rugs, had she dropped to the floor? Had she cried and battered the door, the way he had?

He had been thinking more and more about Tulliola lately. It had got worse since Amaryllis and Noriko had disappeared, and the physical vividness of some of the memories astonished him – the smoothness of her hair in its coil; the warmth of her lips as he’d pushed the pin into her heart . . .

He scratched at his face again, and he realised suddenly how many times his calls had gone unanswered. He took some relief in the itch of indignation. He rose from the chair in which he’d been slumped and went into the corridor to look for a servant.

Then he heard footsteps, coursing towards the stairs, and part of him knew immediately who they were and what was going to happen. He’d been waiting for it for years. But he didn’t try to run until he saw them.

He saw Varius first and, too late, he tried to think where the nearest
gun was – back beside the chair he had left, probably out of reach, but perhaps—

And before he could even turn, he saw Sulien, his face rigid with sadness and disgust. And beside him was Una. The names Drusus had tried to strip from them breathed in his ears: Noviana, Novianus.

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
.

‘I knew they lied to me,’ he said, on his breath, ‘I knew— I knew you weren’t dead.’

And yet, if wraiths composed of crematoria smoke from beneath the Colosseum had crept in under the door, it could not have been more terrible to face them.

He knew at once that the mass of people accompanying them were slaves. He was not even surprised to see faces he recognised among them, faces he’d seen hovering about his table or disappearing into passageways. For a fraction of a second the worst, most incomprehensible thing of all was the bald accusation of the Roman Army uniform Sulien was wearing.

Then he did run, and they surged after him like a pack of hounds across the Colosseum’s floor, and he just made it inside the room he had left and closed the door. And in the moment he managed to hold it shut he thought he felt Una’s poisonous presence inside his head, watching his thoughts, and if he could have let go of the door he would have beaten and clawed at his skull to get it out, as it built and pushed, like this deadly human weight against the door.

He couldn’t lock the door in time and he screamed as they smashed inside, lifted him like a wave, slammed him into the chair. Their hands loaded onto him, held him there.

A woman with dark hair shorn close to the skull and Tulliola’s face hurled herself at him, howling, her voice splintering into sobs as her fist slammed into his throat, her nails ripped at his face. Then he recognised her, remembered her calm blank face on the pillow beneath him, and he began to gasp, ‘Please, please—’

He couldn’t bear to die like this, torn to pieces in this cell, that face distorted in rage before him— No, he couldn’t die, the Sibyl had promised—

‘Maralah,’ said a low, clear voice – Varius? ‘We need him to live.’

Even though he couldn’t guess what they meant to do to him instead, for a second relief thrilled through the anguish; yes, anything but dying, at any cost he wanted to live.

Tulliola-Amaryllis turned sobbing into the arms of an older, fawn-skinned woman, who pulled her away from him.

And then he could see all the way to the back of the room, and his cousin, Makaria, standing in the doorway. Her body was turned away, almost hidden by the door jamb, and she looked at him sidelong over her shoulder, as if she hated to watch at all, but had to.

Your cousin against you, afterwards
. . . Why had he thought the Sibyl, or the voice of the spirit speaking through her, meant the danger was Marcus? Even when she’d as good as promised him Marcus would die?

He shouted Makaria’s name in rage and despair, and Makaria’s face buckled, but she didn’t move. And hands gripped his head and held it still as he looked from Una to Sulien and shrieked, ‘What are you going to do, then – what are you doing to me?’

Were they already doing it?

Sulien looked as if he could barely stand to come any closer, but step by slow step he advanced through the cramped mass of people towards the chair. And when he stopped in front of Drusus, he shut his eyes, both as if concentrating and as if to shield himself from something unbearable, and to Drusus’ terrified amazement a tear even pushed its way from beneath the lid. But Una’s eyes remained fixed on him as she crept up to Sulien’s side. Somewhere he heard dogs barking in a low chanted rhythm, pounding along with his heartbeat.

Una leant closer to him and Sulien placed his hands reluctantly on Drusus’ shoulder, stroked his face.

‘Please,’ begged Drusus – and suddenly he remembered a story about his family that he’d never wanted to hear, of revenge for a crucified child, and a witch, stalking into the room of one of his ancestors, the Novian curse.

Then he forgot it. The arena hounds swept in, louder, closer, until they must be in the room already. And then he saw that they were – the noise was coming from under the skin, from behind the faces of the furious slaves, and in another second those claws and booming red mouths would be upon him.

In the end, it was simpler than they had expected it to be. Sulien mumbled, ‘Let him go,’ and stepped away.

‘Wait,’ said Una. There was one more thing to do. She reached out, wincing, and slid the ring of office from Drusus’ finger.

Whimpering, Drusus scrambled back from them into the corner behind the chair and curled there, shaking and struggling and shouting.

They left him there and went out into the corridor, where Evadne stood smoothing Maralah’s hair. There was no need even to lock the door.

‘That was what it was always for—?’ said Sulien, his voice roughened and thick, ‘That’s what we were for, to do that to him?’

Una had dropped with a shudder into Varius’ arms, resting there with her eyes shut, as if she’d just crawled out of freezing water. She reached for Sulien’s shoulder, and whispered, ‘It’s over now.’

‘I could have killed him and not even hesitated,’ Sulien said. ‘This is worse.’

‘No,’ cried Maralah bitterly, ‘no, it’s far better than he deserves.’

‘It was already there,’ said Una, slowly. ‘You could see that, couldn’t you? He was doing it to himself. All we did was . . . finish it.’

‘Rome will be safe,’ said Makaria, though her face looked pinched and pale. ‘The war will end. Remember that, if it’s difficult to bear.’

Sulien nodded and muttered unevenly, ‘Let’s get away from him.’

They climbed up into the Palace, and up the marble stairs where Salvius’ body had fallen. They met only a very few officials on the way to the Imperial Office, not simply because it was late, but because most of the Palace’s administrative staff had moved out after the bombs had struck the tower and Septizonium. They looked startled to see Makaria, but she smiled reassuringly, and they subsided.

Inside the painted garden, Makaria stood for a moment, looking around at the walls, the heavy desk. She trailed a hand across its surface as she walked to the chair behind it and sat down.

She’d never had this view of the room before. She looked at Una, Sulien and Varius across it. Varius was smiling – a slight, sad sideways tug of the mouth – to see her there. ‘Of course, you and everyone who has been part of this will have freedom, and full citizenship, and every charge against you will be stricken,’ she said. ‘What else can I do to reward you now?’

‘I think you know what we want you to do,’ said Una, her expression as hard as it had been outside the Palace gates. But then it softened into a half-smile with sheer fatigue. ‘But you can’t do it tonight. We will have to talk later.’

Makaria shifted a little in her seat, uneasily. ‘I was thinking about your futures – in terms of money, for example.’

‘There are more than two thousand of us,’ said Sulien. ‘A lot of them need money, I’m sure. But I just want my pay from the army. And my men – the thirty-third Anasasian, ninth cohort, fourth centuria, all that’s left of it – they’re in Nionian custody, I want them home. And I
want my real name to be in the records.’ He smiled bleakly, remembering. ‘I’m not even sure why I want that, but I do. And I’d like to use a longdictor, if you don’t mind. But I don’t want anything more from the Palace, not this time.’

‘It’s late,’ said Varius. ‘Turnus will be arriving soon. We’ll be going.’

‘Already?’ Makaria felt rather panicked.

Una nodded. ‘It’s up to you now.’ She was still carrying the Imperial ring. She leant across the desk and dropped it into Makaria’s palm.

But in the doorway Varius turned back, hesitating.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he asked, quietly. ‘You were with Marcus when—?’

The ache of it washed through Makaria, hurting, but somehow flooding out the anxiety of being here, in this seat, in this room. She settled more deeply into the chair and nodded.

Varius’ voice dropped still further. ‘Did he suffer?’

Makaria inhaled a long breath, bracing against the memory, and against the fear of the answer she saw on Varius’ face. She wished she need not tell the truth, but she answered slowly, ‘At first, yes. Yes, he did. But I think he looked . . . peaceful when it was ending.’

Pain dragged across Varius’ face, pulling his eyelids closed for a second, but he nodded. ‘I’m glad you were with him,’ he said.

Alone, Makaria twisted the ring on her finger, feeling the gold warm on her skin, and tried to make the room soften and accept her in the same way. She breathed deeply, and remembered Sina, and an old woman seated on a throne.

In the outer office, Sulien requisitioned a longdictor.

‘It’s done,’ he told Lal. She was still in the flat on the Via Nomentana. Maralah and Evadne were on their way there now.

Her voice still sounded thin and frail, but she said, ‘Then we’re safe. All of us. And you’re home.’

Sulien considered the words with surprise, tried to sound them in his mind as something more than the name of a wish. And he could not quite succeed; it had been too long. But he did smile, naturally and without bitterness, for the first time since he’d entered the Palace.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave Una and Varius and go back to her. He needed to stay with the people who had been there with him under the Palace.

They knew, of course, that Makaria could have arranged a car to take them across the city, but all the others dispersing from the Palace gates into the dark were on foot, and none of them wanted to step into a Praetorian car anyway. So they walked, tired as they were, across the
Aventine, each of them feeling the Palace and the frantic man in its cells recede, like the heat of a fire behind them.

Una placed her arm across Sulien’s back.

There was no reaction at first when Varius knocked on the door of the small house. It was after midnight, and if the sleeping couple above woke it was probably to hope the drunks banging at the door would go away. At last, and with slight awkwardness, Varius called up at the windows, ‘Mother, it’s me.’

Lights erupted from the house. Even from outside they could hear the stairs rumble with sprinting footsteps. Two shattered, delighted people hurtled through the door and engulfed Varius in their arms.

General Turnus stared at the gold ring on Makaria’s finger. It looked as if it fit there – and he did not know it was only because her right hand lay in a fist on the desk, the thumb curled close against the band, propping it in place.