Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (30 page)

None of the Lucia golems acknowledged her. It was as if the door had never opened.

Ocella was about to walk further into the room, but Kaeso hissed a warning. She knew he wanted her to abort the play since the golems didn’t chase her like she thought they would. She knew he didn’t want her trapped in the engine room if the door should suddenly close behind her.
 

She knew he didn’t want to lose someone else he loved.

Ocella turned back to the Lucia golems, who went about their tasks like ants. “Excuse me,” Ocella shouted. “Can someone show me to the latrine?”

She tensed, ready to jump out of the way if the golems should draw any hidden weapons. But none turned.

She looked at Kaeso, and he shook his head.
 

She stepped forward into the room.

“Ocella!” Kaeso cried.

When she entered the room, nothing happened. The door remained open, and the golems didn’t so much as flinch from Kaeso’s shout. Kaeso charged into the room and stopped beside her. He grabbed her arm, eyed the golems, and then said, “You weren’t supposed to go in alone!”

“They don’t even know we’re here.”

“Or they’re pretending not to notice.”

Varo entered the room, along with Claudia and the octopods. The octopods fanned out behind Varo and Claudia. The octopod golem—Ocella could tell it was the golem because it was the only one that would stand next to Claudia—splayed its tentacles the same way as the four behind it. As soon as they were all in, the door slid shut behind them.
 

The Lucia golems stopped what they were doing and turned as one to Ocella and the others.
 

“Follow,” they said in the same tone. Then they all turned and filed off to the left, toward a large entry that irised open as soon as the first golem approached it. Beyond the entry was a dark, blue-veined tunnel with an opening fifty paces ahead. Bright green lights pulsated from the opening at the end, but Ocella could not see their source. The golems didn’t turn to see if the humans and octopods were following.

Kaeso just stared after the Lucia golems with a mixture of disgust and trepidation.
 

Varo said, “We may as well see where they’re going. Not like they couldn’t do what they wanted to us anyway.”

Ocella was about to ask Claudia what she thought, when she suddenly walked after the Lucia golems. Holding the golem octopod’s tentacle, she said, “Follow,” in the same emotionless tone as the other golems. At the same time, the octopod golem hooted to its family. The four octopods hooted and chirped rapidly amongst themselves, their tentacles still splayed. Within moments, however, they started following Claudia and the other octopod.

Ocella glanced at Kaeso. He stared down the corridor, his eyes fearful.

“Just like Menota,” he muttered. He squinted at the brightness, but refused to look away. “In the vaults where the Cariosa Muses stored their archives.”

There was a tremble in his voice, which made Ocella shudder. The Cariosa were infected by a Muse strain that was incompatible with human physiology. It drove their human hosts mad and eventually turned them into feral shadows of human beings. By the end, the average golem was more human than the Cariosa.

Ocella had never seen the Cariosa close-up. Based on Kaeso’s previous descriptions, she prayed she never would.
 

“The Cariosa archives were in a strangely lit room like that,” Kaeso continued, nodding toward the lights. “Maybe they hold this vessel’s archives.”

Varo sighed. “I really don’t care anymore,” he said in his nasally voice, then walked into the corridor.

Ocella scanned the control room. They were alone. The vessel did not seem to be forcing them into the corridor, so the choice appeared to be theirs.
 

She was suddenly very tired. Tired of making choices that never improved their situation, tired of worrying about Cordus, tired of grieving for Lucia, Nestor, and Claudia. What had felt like weeks of boredom mixed with terror mixed with despair had worn her down to the point where she didn’t care what the vessel did with them anymore. Had it defeated her? At that moment, she felt it had, for she was suddenly content to let it guide her wherever it willed.

Kaeso took Ocella’s hand, and she flinched. She looked at him, then squeezed his hand.
 

“Why not?” Kaeso said. He sounded as tired as she felt.

“Why not,” she responded.

They both walked after the golems into the tunnel.

Ocella could barely make out the shadows of Claudia and the octopods ahead of Varo, for the green lights seemed to grow brighter and pulse faster the closer they got to the end. With less than halfway to go, the light became so bright that it even hurt her eyes when she closed them. Ocella had to shield them with her hand. A cold wind grew stronger the closer they got to the light. It got to the point where it howled in her ears and she had to lean into it.
 

“Gods,” Varo grunted beside her, “maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Too late now,” Ocella said. “Hope they dim the light, though.”
 

Ocella didn’t know what she was saying, and realized she was just talking to keep her mind off the fact they were walking toward a light that seemed as bright as Elysium.
Is the afterlife at the end of this corridor? Will I find Petra? Claudia? Cordus? What about all the people I killed throughout my life, including the Umbra Ancilia I gave up in Roma six years ago?

And then she thought,
Why are we all so willing to walk into an unknown light and possibly die? Does this mean we’ve
all
given up?

She had slowed down unconsciously, and it was only when Kaeso pulled on her hand that she realized she had stopped.

“I don’t—I don’t think I can go in there.”

Kaeso put both hands on her cheeks. “Do you want to go back? Just say the word. No matter what we do, we’ll do it together.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him in a way she hadn’t in months. This was the Kaeso she had fallen in love with again, the man who stood at her side—and she at his—when the odds were against them. She didn’t care who was watching. Let the octopods stare at them in confusion; let the vessel see they weren’t in as much conflict as they let on; let Varo wonder at their sanity. She didn’t care about any of them. Right now Kaeso was all there was. And by the way he returned the kiss, she was the only thing he cared about as well.

She broke away from him and held his face in her hands, staring into his gray-blue eyes. She had to blink away tears, but seeing the same tears in Kaeso’s eyes only made more appear in hers. Ocella laughed.

“What?” he said with a grin.

“I just missed you.”

“And I missed you. Now what do you want to do? Everyone’s staring.”

She didn’t look beyond Kaeso to confirm this. She didn’t want to break eye contact with him. “Let them. If this is our last time holding each other, then I want to make the most of it.”

“If the vessel wanted us dead—”

“I know; we’d be dead. But whatever happens beyond that light…”

He held both of her hands. “We’ll be together.”

Varo stood several paces from them, waiting and shifting his feet. When they walked up to him, he said, “That was nice.”

“Don’t pretend you weren’t uncomfortable,” Ocella said.

Varo gave a relieved sigh. “Fine, that was awkward. You’re making me damned nervous with this ‘final good-bye’ act. Let’s keep some optimism here.”

The octopods had already disappeared into the pulsating green lights, but Claudia stood just outside the entry. Ocella could barely make out her shadow before the lights.

“All will be well,” Claudia shouted over the wind. She had the same flat golem voice she had earlier, as if the vessel had finally taken control of her like Kaeso suspected it would.

Ocella expected the same angry expression on Kaeso’s face he always had around the Claudia golem, but he regarded her with sadness.
 

“We’re coming,” he said, then squeezed Ocella’s hand. She squeezed back, and they began walking forward with Varo beside them.

Claudia turned and entered the green lights. As Ocella got closer, the lights seemed to dim, allowing her to look at them without shielding her eyes. The swirling lights looked like a thin film of oil on water, but she still couldn’t see beyond them. Somehow a cold wind buffeted them from the film, though the film did not have any obvious pores from which the wind could blow.
 

Just before the film, she, Kaeso, and Varo all stopped as one, as if gathering their courage before stepping through.
 

Ocella looked behind her. The corridor was still empty, and she could make out the blinking tabulari in the quiet engine room at the other end. Did that mean they could turn around if they wanted?
 

Does that mean we can believe Claudia, that all will be well?

Varo stared at the light, then murmured, “Fine.” He stepped through the film and out of sight.

Ocella looked at Kaeso, and he at her. She nodded to him and they both stepped forward together, keeping their eyes on each other.

The light blinded her, a fire consumed her, and she tried to scream through a ragged throat. But it took less than a second for darkness to end the pain.

34

Cordus paced the dark, narrow prison cell in the lower levels of the Consular Palace. It had been over twenty-four hours since he was captured, at least if his meal schedule was any indicator. When they had thrown him in here, they had given him dinner soon after, then breakfast, then lunch, and now he had just finished his second dinner. His normally voracious appetite was non-existent, and he had forced himself to eat the expertly prepared fried eel smothered with
garum
and vegetables.

His anger rose and fell with each hour, burning bright for a while before extinguishing in hopeless assurance that he had been a fool to accept Aquilina’s bargain.
 

Even Marcus Antonius seemed frustrated as he ‘sat’ on the hard cot that took up one whole side of the cell. “This so-called Dictator’s head will be the first one on a pike as soon as you get out of here. Once you declare yourself, the sycophants at her side will trample each other to gain your favor. That’s how it happened when we took Roma from that whelp Octavian, and it will happen the same way here. Of course, you need to escape first…”

Cordus had barely spoken a word to Marcus. Or
thought
a word, rather. He knew the Romans were monitoring this cell, so he would not make them doubt his sanity by talking to thin air. Though he could communicate silently with Marcus, Cordus did not have the will to constantly refute his cries for brutal vengeance on their captors.

“…And why in all the hells do Romans today use golems instead of real humans as gladiators? Things were much simpler in Primus’s day—you commit a crime, you get thrown into the arena. Not only did it keep crime to a minimum, but it also provided cheap entertainment for the plebeian mobs. A win-win scenario. Now prisons are overflowing with criminals because they know there’s no…”

Though Cordus didn’t speak to Marcus, the Muse-avatar’s constant prattling was soothing. It made him feel less lonely.

He heard footsteps outside the door the same instant Marcus said, “Ah, our captors approach.”

Several people paused by the door. Someone activated the panel on the other side, the door opened, and Aquilina stepped inside. Three Praetorians in black uniforms stood outside, each holding what looked like the fulgurators the golems on Reantium had used.

Aquilina half-turned to them. “Close it.”

A Praetorian did as commanded. Once the door shut, Aquilina and Cordus simply stared at each other.

Aquilina broke the silence. “I’m sorry for this. This was not my call, nor even my mother’s.”

“Yet here I am.”

“Things are complicated.”

“Obviously. Where is my crew?”

“Blaesus is in the Consular Medical Center. He’s recovering from surgery, but it will take some time before he’s back on his feet. He may never be the same. The infection took much from him, physically and mentally.”

Cordus nodded slowly. “Dariya and Daryush?”

The corner of her mouth twitched with a small grin. “They refuse to leave
Vacuna
. We’ve offered them fresh food, but Dariya says they’re fine with the ship’s packaged rations. I think they’re afraid we might poison them.”

Cordus couldn’t blame them. After the treatment they endured as slaves to a sadistic Roman master, he considered it a miracle they even trusted
him
.

“Why am I here, Aquilina?”

She sighed. “There are some—well, most—in my mother’s council that say they don’t believe you’re the real Marcus Antonius Cordus.”

“You already took a blood sample from me. What more do they want?”

“They
say
they don’t believe it’s you. In other words, it’s political not factual.”

Cordus shook his head. “And you wonder why I don’t want to be Consul.”

“The only reason nobody has killed you outright is because too many people know you exist. They’re rivals who are just as afraid of each other as they are of you. The only compromise they could come up with was hold you until your lineage could be confirmed.”

Cordus threw up his hands. “Well if they can’t read a godsdamned blood test, then I don’t know what else to tell them. Keep me locked in here for the rest of my life, because I’d prefer this to dealing with these fools!”

Aquilina swallowed, then took a quick breath. “There is something you can do to make them believe—”

“No,” Cordus said firmly. “They can all rot before I do that again.”

“Cordus, it was the only way your ancestors kept Roma from tearing itself apart for such a long time.”

Cordus locked gazes with her. “No. Find another way.”

Aquilina shook her head, and then anger exploded from her in a torrent of words. “You are the most stubborn, ungrateful, selfish person I’ve ever known! All you care about is yourself, and everyone else be damned. Yes, you were born to this position, it’s not fair, you had no choice in the matter. But if you won’t do it, this Republic will fall further than it already has, and billions of people will die in the wreckage. But no, you go off in your little freighter ship and have a merry time with your crew skipping across the universe. Because who cares what happens to the rest of humanity, when you can have a pint of
bosca
with your mates in some backwater dive.” She gave him a disgusted look. “You sicken me.”