Savage City (11 page)

But Sulien froze, seeing it, and Varius shouldered past him again.

‘Oh, come on, Varius, no,’ begged Sulien, grabbing at him. ‘You’re not trying to— Marcus is gone already, don’t you think that’s enough?’

Varius shook him off and reached for the door of his car, and Sulien tackled him against it, pinning him there, saying desperately, ‘Listen, listen! I understand; maybe it would be worth it— I would let you— I would let you, if I thought you could do it, all right? But you can’t. You won’t. Maybe you don’t mind being killed, but you don’t want it to be for nothing, do you?’

Varius had started to push him away, but at that he shook and went slack against the car. Eventually he said, ‘You should go back to Una.’

‘Yes, I should! But I won’t until I know you’re not doing this!’

But Varius’ gaze slipped away from him again and he shook his head, regretfully. He said softly, ‘It’s all I can think of to do,’ and struck out, punching Sulien’s stomach while making a messy attempt to kick his feet from under him. Sulien tried to hang on to him and managed not to lose his footing altogether, but Varius needed only a moment of separation between them to wrench himself free and slide into the car. Sulien limped a little way after it as it moved away, uselessly calling
Varius’ name, then after a second of irresolution, he swung round and stumbled back towards his trirota parked outside Varius’ building, deciding that he’d have to follow. At least he knew where Varius would be heading—

A Praetorian on a trirota swerved down into the street and alongside him loud and fast enough that Sulien glanced round but ran on, unconcerned, and did not imagine for a moment that the running footsteps were anything to do with him until suddenly he was on the ground with a man’s weight across his back and words like ‘treason’ were being shouted in his ear.

Sulien gasped, ‘What?’ and struggled reflexively, not so much to escape as to see the man’s face. Then he registered the gun pressed against the back of his neck, and the Praetorian kneeling on him broke from babbling excitedly into his radio to scream at Sulien not to move, to keep his hands flat on the ground . . .

He could hear – almost feel, through the paving – someone racing towards them: the backup the Praetorian had been calling for—? And then there was a further impact above him – someone else piling on – but the Praetorian was knocked sideways, uttering a choked cry, and Sulien felt the gun slither loose over his shoulder, and that was blood, splashing onto his back—

Sulien scrambled up from underneath the man. Varius’ knife was still in the Praetorian’s side and Varius himself was standing there, his face dulling as the ferocity faded and his hands had dropped numbly to his sides. There was a second or more of mutual shock, Sulien staring at Varius and at the man on the ground, all three of them immobile and gasping. But he heard the sirens approaching when Varius clearly did not.

At their feet, the soldier stopped breathing.

Sulien said, ‘Come on,’ and pulled at Varius’ arm to make him move, dragging him back up the road. Somehow he managed to get them both into Varius’ car, Varius silent and inert in the seat beside him as Sulien drove.

The man on the trirota had been the first arrival, speeding ahead of the Praetorian cars closing in on Varius’ building. And if they were here, and if they could recognise him so instantly, then they were or would be at his home too, breaking the door down, charging into the room where he’d left Una helplessly asleep.

‘What do you want me to do?’ said the commander of the Palace detail of the Praetorian Guard, ‘tell them to fire on Roman citizens mourning their Emperor? They’re not criminals. They’re not doing anything
wrong.’ His voice was taut with restrained panic and barely disguised contempt.

Salvius had not been spoken to in such a tone in decades. He struggled to ignore the sickness twisting in his gut, the dampness invading his scalp and armpits. He silenced the shamefaced, furtive thought of flight before he had to notice it. But even convincing himself his only feeling was fury, he still had no proper action into which to direct it. ‘I want you to remember to whom you’re speaking,’ he managed, his throat dry. ‘And contain the crowd. Just set up a perimeter; keep them where they are.’

The commander stared at Salvius, making a decision. He shrugged. ‘I can try, I suppose. But I’m not sure anyone else is going to listen to an order that comes from you. Sir.’

Sulien took one winding detour round a section of the Aventine in the hope of throwing off any pursuit, but then, panicked, sped straight towards Transtiberina. He didn’t think the Praetorians had seen him drive away, but it really made no difference whether they were right behind him or already there, waiting for him; all he could do was try and get home as fast as he could. He was far too agitated to think of any other choice. He didn’t know why the streets were filling up with vehicles and people, all streaming purposefully towards the centre, but though the sudden weight of traffic provided some kind of cover, and would make it almost as hard for the Praetorians to move through as it was for him, Sulien only really cared that it was slowing him down. At Transtiberina, so many people came flooding down the Janiculum Hill that he could barely move at all. They were on foot, some of them were carrying little flags and standards, the kind of thing they’d have taken to the Games earlier that day, and Sulien felt a faint chill as they strode past. He shook it off, and decided he’d get to Una faster running.

‘Varius, you have to drive the rest of the way.’ He shook Varius’ shoulder. ‘Varius!’

Varius turned, barely seeing him, and Sulien climbed out of the car without being entirely sure Varius was going to move into his place.

He knocked some of the fervent, marching people out of his way as he ran, feeling a brief, irrelevant residue of embarrassment. He couldn’t see any Praetorian cars. He’d left Tancorix there too – and she’d come with one of her lovers, and her little daughter. He slammed into his building, glanced at the lift and then, panting, took the stairs two at a time.

And he stopped, a few steps down from his landing, fixed in place, unable to fill his lungs, or blink.

His door had been knocked flat and was lying over the threshold like a gangplank into his home. After a while Sulien stepped across it, feeling it tilt under his weight, and crept soundlessly through the living room past the overturned furniture, as if Una might still be sleeping quietly in the bed, even with all the doors in the place flung open around her.

He got as far as the doorway of the empty room and then found himself on his knees, looking stupidly at the bed. Well, all right, here he was on the floor, breathing hard, but it was not so much now that he could not move, as that as long as he did not, it would be possible to prolong this incapacity to think or feel anything, or to reproach himself for what he’d done.

‘Sulien? Sulien—’

He started, as if the hand that touched his shoulder were made of ice. Tancorix stood there bafflingly, like a hallucination.

‘It’s all right,’ said Tancorix. ‘She’s here. She’s upstairs.’

She led him up to the floor above. The front door was open a crack and Arria, the old lady who lived there alone, was peering warily through it. She beckoned Sulien and Tancorix in with a little gasp of some feeling that contained anger, sympathy and bewildered excitement all at once. Sulien knew nearly everyone in his building, at least slightly; he had helped Arria with the arthritis in her hands, and half-remembered some lengthy complaint about her daughters’ marriages.

‘Sulien!’ she exclaimed, ‘all these people charging in – can you tell me what this is all about?’

Sulien opened his mouth to try, and said, ‘No.’

Tancorix’s lover cast a tense, put-upon glance at Sulien as he laid Una down on Arria’s bed. ‘Blind gods,’ he muttered, sitting down on the end of it.

From within the large built-in wardrobe, Xanthe looked out at Sulien and said, ‘We were hiding.’

Sulien went and stared down at Una’s calm face. The wall by the bed felt like a tempting place to go to sleep as he leant against it.

‘Bassus saw Drusus Novius on the longvision saying he’s Emperor,’ said Tancorix quietly. ‘And then I heard sirens, and I looked out of the window and I could see the vans coming. And I thought . . . I was sure . . .’

Sulien forgot the splash of blood on his shoulder and hugged her tight; he might even have kissed her if Bassus hadn’t been there.

‘Did they come in?’ he asked at last, hoarsely.

‘Just came banging on the door,’ Arria said, ‘asking if I’d seen either of you. It’s not hard to make young people think you’re too stupid to bother with.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Well, it was too late to have second thoughts, wasn’t it? With them all in here,’ Arria complained. ‘Your sister’s really all right? She looks terrible.’

‘Yes,’ he said, although he was again reluctant to look at Una. ‘Can I use your longdictor?’

Lal answered. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to speak to her, although the prospect of talking to Delir wasn’t much easier to face. ‘Sulien,’ she whispered, and for a second or two they listened to each other’s unsteady breathing, both trying to work out how to negotiate the incompatibility between the way they had parted and this.

After a moment, Sulien said, ‘You’ve seen the longvision.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, in a halting, makeshift voice. ‘It’s not— There’s no way it could be wrong? He couldn’t be . . . lying, somehow? About Marcus?’

‘No. Not about that.’

‘Oh God,’ she said, muffled. ‘Oh God. Marcus.’ She was probably crying, he thought, although very softly, trying not to let him hear. There was a desolate exclamation of horror in the background, then Lal whispered, ‘And it was Dama?’

‘Yes. I’m . . . I’m sorry. Look, I haven’t got a lot of time; let me talk to Delir.’ He could hear the longdictor change hands, but Delir didn’t speak. ‘Delir?’ said Sulien, and waited a moment before beginning to explain, trying to be clear and practical: ‘Delir, we’ve got to get out. Varius and I were just nearly arrested, and they’ve raided my flat. You’ll have to decide what to do. I don’t know if he’s going after all Marcus’ friends or if it’s just us. But . . . you should know.’

The quiet persisted so long that Sulien repeated Delir’s name, impatiently, and at last Delir answered in a winded breath, ‘Sulien, I’m so sorry.’ And it was obvious at once that this was not simple condolence.

Sulien felt a slow-moving, insidious shock. He had not connected Delir with what had happened, other than as a possible casualty, and a possible source of help. There had been too much else to think of; it had not occurred to him to remember how Dama had come to be free to kill anyone. He shrank from Delir’s guilt, but as he tried to find some way, however flimsy, of telling him not to blame himself, the memory of Marcus’ face, the touch of his cold lips interceded – as clear
and immediate as if Sulien were still there, leaning over him in the broken box. And that faint taste: not only blood, but also the emptiness into which his own breath had vanished.

Sulien shook his head, and spent a long time trying to speak. In the end he could only manage, stiffly, ‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat to break the pause that followed, mumbled, ‘Well. I thought you might know somewhere we could go, for tonight at least. I don’t know where . . . and I’ve got Una and Varius with me.’

The paralysed silence on the line continued for a while, but eventually Delir spoke and Sulien decided he didn’t have to notice anything in his voice but the information: ‘There’s a place at Lavinium.’

Sulien wrote down the directions, then pulled the small weight of the longdictor circlet off his head as quickly as he could.

‘You should get over the river,’ he said to Tancorix and Bassus. ‘Go along with the rest of them, cheer for him, if that’s what they’re all doing, and make sure they see you there.’

Xanthe launched into a string of questions that all began, ‘Why—?’

Sulien couldn’t count how many times he’d thanked them all before he was finished. Arria and Bassus remained understandably nervous, even a little suspicious, but Tancorix, sitting with Xanthe in her lap, was calm, her tired face strangely relaxed. She said, ‘It makes up for what I let happen when we were younger, doesn’t it?’

Sulien turned to her, rubbed his face in weary surprise. ‘I didn’t— That didn’t need . . .’

Tancorix looked at him steadily, eyebrows a little raised. She smiled.

Sulien went back into the bedroom and lifted Una off the bed. He had only picked her up once before, a year or two ago – for a joke, and to show how easily he could do it. But she hadn’t liked that, and he didn’t like doing it now. Her limp body felt horridly insubstantial in his arms: too light, too easily broken or removed.

The building was quiet. Most of his neighbours who’d been inside must have gone out in answer to Drusus’ call. Still he felt raw and exposed, creeping down the stairs with Una clutched against him – though surely his neighbours wouldn’t just turn him in if they saw him, whatever the Praetorians had told them? But he should have covered up the blood with something.

He hesitated when he reached his own floor, crouching on the steps as he settled Una more firmly in his arms and eyeing the doorway of his flat, thinking of what he could salvage, but afraid of taking Una in and being trapped there.

Varius came up the stairs looking for him, moving slowly, as if he
were drugged. In that first second of seeing them, he plainly thought that Sulien was holding Una’s corpse and he stumbled back, horrified out of the stupor that had held him since he’d stabbed the Praetorian. He gasped, ‘Gods—! Una—’