Rome Burning (20 page)

He knocked again into an obstacle, something inert and soft: a shoulder, an arm in a sleeve. Varius started a little as if he’d completely ceased to expect this, and despite himself his breath accelerated with shock. ‘Sulien. Sulien,’ he said.
He felt for the face: Sulien was breathing, but he didn’t move. Varius thought he must have been running down the aisle when the explosion had flung him back and slapped the bunk beds sideways above him. At least it had meant he’d been kept below the worst of the smoke. Varius shook him a little and at once thought derisively to himself, ‘he hasn’t
overslept, idiot
.’ He took hold of Sulien’s arm and dragged, the relief and surprise he had felt at finding him slipping into near-horror, for Sulien seemed to have become impossibly heavy, and as the space would not let Varius rise higher than onto his elbows, he only succeeded in pulling himself further along the floor. He hooked his feet around the leg of a bunk further back, wincing at the friction on his burnt hands, and managed to lug Sulien a short way – less than half his body’s length. But stretched across the ground like this it was difficult even to keep a good grip on Sulien’s arm, and it was far harder, far more draining, to move him than he would have expected. He thought he heard Sulien groan dully as he slid over the floor, but he remained motionless, heavy. Varius shuffled backwards, anchored himself by his feet again and tried once more. But already he found he was panting and the smoke had lowered. The coughing squeezed his chest and throat so that he felt close to retching, and knew he would never do it this way.

He managed to surface a little, got an arm up between two beds, felt about and tugged down a filthy sheet, gathering it messily into a bunch and trailing it behind him as he crawled back to Sulien. He pushed it under Sulien’s head and threw his arms awkwardly over it so that it was under his armpits, and dragged it tight again.

He was surprised that it worked so well. Pulling on the ends of the sheet he found he could haul Sulien further, with much less effort. He struggled past the blockage and out into the aisle, where at last he could rise onto his feet and lift Sulien properly. Standing up meant his head was again in the thick of the smoke, but he did it anyway, trying to hold his breath, and stumbled along backwards a little way before he fell down again, choking. He cast out on the ground for the shoe he’d left as a marker, felt it for a second
as his scrabbling hand flicked it away into the darkness by accident. He began trying to heave Sulien up into his arms, but this time effort made him gasp dizzily and fold up again, once more bowing his face towards the ground, trying to find air. And there was not enough, the coughing made him shiver and reel. Something crunched in the blackness, the heat rolled in and the dull reddish glow he’d seen in the far edges of the dark grew pointed and turned to clear, sharp-edged blades of light, squares and triangles of yellow and orange, as the fire worked inwards.

Varius tried to say, ‘Sulien, come on, wake up,’ but he couldn’t speak. He knelt awkwardly, Sulien propped beside him. To get this far, he’d had wilfully to ignore how difficult it was going to be to get Sulien up to the skylight. And he realised now that it was far worse than that – he couldn’t do it at all. Sulien was taller than he was, must be at least his own weight. To lift such a load over his head onto a platform, and then up through the skylight – it would have been impossible even at his normal strength; now, in pain and with nothing to breathe, he wasn’t sure he could even raise Sulien onto the lower bunk. In spite of this, he tried, but there was a muffled pressure growing in his head and his hands weakened so that he had to let Sulien down. He managed to wheeze thickly, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t lift you, Sulien. Just get up, I can help you then, I can’t do it unless you—’ And soft shutters were swinging slowly closed before him; he left Sulien lying on his side with his head turned away from the fire, and dragged himself heavily up the frame of the bunk bed, through the skylight again.

He crawled to the edge of the roof to get his face free of the smoke, and let his head hang into space. The heat in the air was brutal, and he could feel it growing underneath him too, the structure cracking and weakening. The small wooden island was shrinking around him as the flames lapped up and across the shattered roof towards it. Varius’ shut eyes were bathed in a gritty acidic rinse, and he found he wanted to sob, he was so exhausted and it seemed so insultingly cruel. If he and Sulien were both going to be killed in an accident or a bombing, whatever it was, if he had even given out and lain still under the bunks a few minutes ago
before he’d found Sulien, then bad, senseless as that would have been, it didn’t seem
unreasonable
to him. But to be allowed to get so pointlessly close, to be given just enough time and unexpected resilience and transient luck to let him see and
think
about how worthless his efforts were, it was enough to make him believe in vindictive gods.

His eyes opened slowly and he stared at the indistinct ground; the air, however raggedly, moved in and out of his lungs. Inexplicably he felt himself relax, quietness running through him like a medicine – but not the drowsy acquiescence to death that had kept drawing close and then receding, since the first explosion. All this, he thought, was still too soon. Sulien was at least not yet certainly dead. And he had only climbed out to get enough breath to try again, and he could do that now. He took another draught of the hot air, as deep as he could, and slid back again across the creaking roof, into the dark shed.

And yet it was not so dark as it had been; even in the little time he’d been outside, the fitful, dangerous light had grown stronger, although it was little use for seeing by in the smoke-drenched air. Varius dropped into the shadows beneath the bunks, steadily, although the airlessness at once resumed its pummelling assault on his failing body. He felt for Sulien on the ground, and could not find him, though surely he had come down in the same place. He almost thought, for an illogical and unsteadying second, that Sulien might not merely have died but somehow disintegrated completely. And then, faintly, he saw something move, only inches away from him and not a current of the smoke or a falling rafter. Putting out his hands doubtfully, Varius again felt Sulien’s arm, this time in mid-air, reaching blindly and laboriously for the edge of the capsized bed. Sulien had raised himself a little way, leaning clumsily on the bunk, his head hanging.

Varius pushed back amazement. Sulien was not fully awake. Varius gripped his arm as if arresting a criminal who might escape, and began trying to force him onto his feet. Sulien swayed so that Varius staggered too and both nearly fell; he mumbled and repeated some baffled-sounding question that, in the liquid roar of the fire and the ringing in
his own ears, Varius could not make out. Varius found that he was swearing viciously at Sulien and wondered faintly at the unfairness of it, but did not stop. Sulien made a clearer sound, a cry of pain as Varius drove him forward, so that Varius realised that he must be injured on his left arm, or side. For the moment he refused to feel any sympathy whatever: ‘Get up there, for fuck’s sake,’ he rasped furiously, though probably Sulien, coughing heavily now, didn’t know what was being said to him. Varius allowed him to sag against the bed and climbed onto its upper level himself, then grabbed at Sulien’s arm and collar, as he felt the foundering in his chest and skull grow again, almost forgetting what it was he was trying to do.

Although Sulien was still only laggingly conscious, he could feel the advancing fire, and he tried to obey Varius’ bullying and raise his body up the frame, tripping and jarring the pains in his arm, side and head. He fell beside Varius, who at once hoisted him up again and felt desperately in the smoke to find the skylight, which, for a few appalling suffocating seconds, he seemed to have lost.

At last, Varius’ hand touched space, and he steered Sulien towards it and pushed and bundled him upwards, until, with a dim surprise, he felt the weight on his arms and shoulders suddenly disappear. He reached forward to climb out onto the roof, scraping at its surface with a drowner’s effort. But his legs crumpled under him. It was not much of a height from here – his head and shoulders were already out – but the smoke pouring up through the window, enveloping him, was now so dense that he could scarcely tell the difference, and the shuttered feeling closed inwards again while his arms pleaded to be excused any more weight, any more struggle.

But as he buckled, he felt Sulien pull weakly, one-handed, at his arm, and hang onto his sleeve. He had no real strength to try and drag Varius up, the grasp only kept him from slipping back into the smoke. Varius lunged and surfaced onto the fragment of the roof, and the unsupported raft shuddered and dipped under their combined weight. Brokenly, Varius pushed Sulien towards the edge. He had forgotten the existence of the rain-water butt, and probably neither of
them had enough dexterity left to climb down it even if he had remembered it. All Varius could do was try to clutch at Sulien long enough to slow his fall, then he rolled over the edge himself and dropped to the ground.

As they staggered away, convulsed with coughing, a missile ripped out of the tower of fire at the centre of the factory and a blurred and melting round of explosions rumbled outwards. Flame and metal and smashed bricks swung through the air. The force knocked them both to the dust, the roof of the barracks caved in and sparks leapt up, but neither of them noticed.

Varius did not even try to get to his feet. The only sheltered place they had a chance of reaching was back in the little alley between the impassable brick wall and the smoking back of the barracks, although that would not stand for very long. He crawled towards it. Even if they could go no further, somehow it didn’t seem like failure. He saw that Sulien was still alive, and heading the same way, faster than he was. He dragged himself behind the vestiges of the barracks, pitched down onto his side, and turned his face to the wall.

*

For a week Una had been clinging to her small foothold in the Imperial Office and meeting rooms of the Palace, veiled in deliberate mousey blandness, her eyes usually inoffensively lowered. Sometimes she did minutely useful and tedious things for Glycon, forcing patience on herself, so that she was scarcely noticeable and caused only occasional sparks of unease in the senators and generals that came there, when watching, listening, she forgot to keep herself hidden and hunger bared itself on her suddenly conspicuous face. To her secret frustration, she had not seen Drusus all this time: he seemed to have retreated to his father’s house, from where he had sent Marcus a single, slapdash report on his work on the fire reports. And for seven days there had been nothing from Nionia, but an icily polite acknowledgement of Marcus’ offer, and with each day of silence the strain on Marcus rose like a tide, like hands joining the pull on a rope. He had done as Varius had said and set no limit
by which they must respond, and now it seemed that Una was the only one left who did not tell him that he must do that, at least, if he would not resolve that it was already too late.

Probus was in Arcansa, telling Marcus from the long-vision on the wall about the state of the ravaged town, about the news from Roman spies, when Marcus heard an arms factory had been bombed at Veii, and was still burning. Una felt a strange ripple travel down her body, a cold system of collapsings and reinforcements, tendons stiffening as others went weak, her knees bracing against the sudden tug down towards the dense carpet. And she saw that Marcus had not realised yet. Abruptly, and with a curt absence of explanation, he turned off Probus’ screen. Then he went to the wall, slammed the panel violently shut against the longvision and said to her, ‘Then there will be a war.’

‘Sulien is there,’ announced Una, her voice grating and thick.

Marcus turned to her, eyes widening slightly as at something that simply defied sense.

‘Sulien is there, with Varius.’

Marcus glanced away instead of holding the look. It was too unreasonable; there was no room or time. He said, quite confidently, ‘They will be all right,’

‘What?’

‘They probably weren’t there. I’m sure they can’t have been. Was it definitely today they were going?’

‘
Yes
,’ said Una, through her teeth, frightened by a gale of rage at him. It was not the first time that she had felt afraid that she was not entirely to be trusted with Marcus, that one day she might recklessly damage or smash him and not notice what she had done until it was too late, but it had never been so immediate or piercing. In another moment she would hate him for caring at least as much about Varius as about Sulien.

Marcus, still convinced that they would have to be all right, wanted to comfort her, but she jolted away, saying with dangerous patience, ‘I’ll try to find him.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he promised rashly, half guilty now that he somehow couldn’t feel the torment she did.

‘Don’t be stupid. Of course you can’t,’ said Una, unable to keep the sneer out of her voice, moving for the door. But Glycon came through before she reached it, pale excitement on his face, and told Marcus, ‘Caesar. We’ve got contact from the Nionians. It’s Prince Tadasius.’

Despite herself, Una froze, staring at Marcus, wanting to see what would happen. ‘Fine, tell Salvius to come,’ said Marcus mechanically, and stopped breathing for a moment as he walked to the longdictor. This news brought on a little of what so far he had not felt: it was suddenly more possible that Sulien and Varius could have been at the factory. He settled the longdictor circlet on his head. He tried to think what to say, and found it felt right scarcely to speak at all. He didn’t know why. With as little expression as possible, then, he said, ‘Yes?’