Savage City (53 page)

He squinted; the camera lenses shone in the light like the soldiers’ shields.

‘You all right?’ muttered Pas to Sulien later, when the centuria had returned to the barracks. His eyes were at once innocently wide and searching. Sulien made a renewed effort to look normal, though he was still shaken – but at the same time he still felt this flat, disgusted amusement, and it cost a real effort not to tell Pas exactly why. He wondered if Drusus was still at the camp, and smiled sourly as he replaced his rifle in the rack. He let his fingers trail over it. There
would be no forgetting who was sending him to fight. It was some relief to change out of the oppressive dress uniform, a little like cleansing himself of Drusus’ nearness.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s just . . . like you said, this is it.’

‘Wasn’t he
nice
?’ said Dorion bitterly. ‘Won’t it be such an amazing fucking honour to go and
sacrifice
ourselves for him? I heard he’s not even supposed to be Emperor.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Dorion, shut up,’ hissed Sulien, looking around in alarm.

‘You’re the Emperor’s loyal servant, are you, Shouter?’ asked Dorion rather sadly.

‘Will you keep your voice down? Just—Just wait till we get to Alodia before you get yourself shot, all right?’ said Sulien. But he grinned a little, and after another nervous glance around the other soldiers he asked in a low voice, ‘How long do you reckon he’d last if Rutilianus had him out on the assault course?’

The centurion began calling out names, dividing them into groups of twenty. ‘Archias’ was one of the first, and Sulien tried to will Pas and Dorion’s names to be called after his. To his relief, they were.

‘Infantry, ninth cohort, thirty-third Anasasian Legion,’ the centurion announced when he came to their group.

There was a staggered silence, then Dorion asked, ‘What, Terranova, sir?’

The others tensed: on a bad day any questioning of orders could have been disastrous, for Dorion at least. But the centurion only answered, ‘Good at geography, are you, Private Dorion?’

Sulien supposed it really made no difference where they were sent, though like the rest of them, he was vaguely indignant that the future they had expected could be so suddenly exchanged for something else. And when he thought how he was being pulled even further than he’d ever expected from everyone he loved, he felt another drag of homesickness.

‘The Great Ravine’s in Anasasia!’ said Dorion eagerly, when the centurion had gone.

‘We’re not going
there
,’ said Pas.

‘Don’t be a killjoy, Pas, or we’ll leave you behind,’ said Sulien. And though the sadness and fear was still there, he realised to his surprise that he was also a little excited.

Drusus sat opposite General Turnus inside the car, scratching freely at the bites on his face. The cooled air was a relief on his flushed
skin, and yet there was still that chill within him, a strange self-consciousness, almost as if someone on the edge of his vision were staring at him. The feeling grew stronger as they drove, until, to quell the faint panic brewing in his gut, he said cheerfully, ‘They looked good – they looked ready, didn’t they, Turnus? The thing is: even without the full length of training, they’re all products of Roman tradition. That counts for a lot.’

General Turnus pursed his lips. ‘I’m sure they will do their duty, your Majesty.’

‘Really, Africa is a distraction. That’s the purpose of the attacks, of course, to weaken our will. We should resist it; we should be
bold
. We should attack Nionia directly, and if it means going through Sina, then so be it.’

‘Sir—! Meroë is an important victory, of course, but we remain stretched. To open yet another front; to wage war against two enemies at once—’

‘We are already at war with Sina, General. They have intervened against us, in the Promethean – didn’t you hear about those Nionian sailors they picked up off the wreck of the
Isonade
?’

Turnus took a careful breath. ‘Sir, it was a commercial vessel, and the crew appear to have been acting on their own and for compassionate reasons; I think that to consider it an act of war—’

‘Why should we not? Do you know what Junosena told me once? She said nothing happened in Sina that she didn’t know about. Not that I believe her, of course, but ultimately she is responsible. Anyway, the whole Sinoan system is dried out, it’s ossified; you’ve told me this yourself. We shouldn’t be frightened of it just on the grounds of size. Sina— It’s run by a senile old woman.’ He laughed. ‘It
is
a senile old woman. They have nothing like the Onager—’

‘But your Majesty, Nionia
does
. And they may be ready to use it before we are,’ said Turnus. ‘If we push two Empires into an alliance against us—’

‘All the more reason to make a final push and finish Nionia quickly, before it reaches that point – we will take revenge for everything Mariaba and Alexandria and Aila have suffered, and what use will an alliance be to Sina then? And then we will expand to the east. It’s what I said to those recruits, about the Roman peace: if we can’t extend it further, then this war really will have been a failure.’

Turnus pressed his lips closed again and stared at the floor, his shoulders tense. Then he swallowed and raised his eyes to Drusus’ face. ‘Sir, I must advise very strongly against this course.’

Drusus stared at the general’s face. Turnus’ eyes were grey-green,
and slightly protrusive, the skin above was pale and rucked in taut ridges. It struck Drusus that a face was just an object, no different from any other collection of angles and planes. At last he said, ‘Who asked for your advice?’

Amaryllis had told them she could arrange for Cleomenes to send any reply to a woman she trusted in the Palace laundry. But two weeks had passed and though Noriko and the other women continued to linger in the garden, they had not seen Amaryllis again. Noriko had, naturally, been afraid of failure from the first – Cleomenes was bound to be reluctant to entangle himself in their trouble, even assuming he was able to help. And perhaps he would never even know his help had been sought; though Amaryllis had been confident of finding his address, and an opportunity to post the letter, she might have been wrong. And as the days passed with no sign of her, Noriko began to fear that trusting her had been a mistake. She did not think Amaryllis would actually betray her to Drusus – but she had handed over the bracelet, as well as the letter, and Amaryllis had complained of having no money with which to make an escape.

One day, when rain and thunder kept them inside, the lights went out. Noriko gave up her listless attention to her book, and Trunnia, who had been sewing, sighed and walked out of the room.

She had been gone barely a moment when someone knocked at the door. Noriko tensed, even though it was too quiet a tap to be a bored Praetorian, until a low voice outside said, ‘Let me in – it’s Amaryllis.’

Amaryllis fled inside. ‘Ugh,’ she said, ‘I thought she’d never leave you alone. And the Praetorians are getting worse than ever.’ She had a folded sheet of paper in her hand, already opened.

Noriko hurried with it to the window, tilting it towards what little light there was. It was not a letter, but a tourist map of the centre of Rome. An X was marked on a certain street on the far side of the Esquiline Hill. The address meant little to Noriko – it had been almost a year since she had been able to leave the palace. At the edge of the map there was a list of dates and times. Nothing else.

‘He would meet us there?’ whispered Tomoe.

‘Only at these times.’

Cleomenes was giving them an hour, every evening for a week. Amaryllis pointed to one of the dates, only three days away. ‘The Emperor will be back that night – we should be gone before then.’

Noriko and her ladies looked at each other. The idea of being gone without ever having to see Drusus again made Noriko almost dizzy.

‘We have not enough time,’ said Sakura faintly.

Noriko remembered plunging out of a car into the street in Tusculum, how overwhelmed and lightheaded she had felt, just to be outside the usual barriers that had always stood between her and the world. None of them really knew how to live out there. She had never even been into a shop or a market to buy food.

‘No,’ she said to Amaryllis, ‘I think the night he returns is when we should do it.’

The first step was to evade Trunnia. Noriko rarely drank alcohol, but that evening she asked for wine as soon as she decently could, and they all sat sipping it in silence, trying not to glance at one another. Then Noriko rose casually, still carrying her glass, and as she wandered past Trunnia – as if to pick up a book on the table – she fumbled her grip on the glass and emptied it down Trunnia’s front.

Trunnia sprang up, dripping and outraged, and looked down at the large red splash on her dress.

‘Oh, no,’ said Noriko.

‘You did that on purpose!’ said Trunnia.

Noriko shook her head, wide-eyed, as Tomoe tried to wipe at Trunnia with a handkerchief.

‘Get off me!’ Trunnia growled, jerking away from her. She stared at Noriko, her face rigid with indignation and suspicion, and Noriko gazed humbly back, wondering if Trunnia was actually going to hit her.

Trunnia finally looked away and grabbed the handkerchief from Tomoe. She swept out, irritably dabbing at herself.

Tomoe sighed with the temporary release of tension, and the three women all clasped hands for a moment. Noriko looked at herself in the mirror before hurrying out of the room. She no longer neglected her appearance, and she was dressed carefully, in sombre Roman clothes – it was a way to keep as much of her jewellery on her as was discreetly possible. Sakura and Tomoe were wearing much of the rest. She was prepared.

Now she needed either of the guards who had attacked Sakura, for preference the one who had escorted her to Drusus’ table a few weeks before. She found him with three others in an anteroom on the first floor, between the private and administrative quarters of the palace.

Noriko cleared her throat. Even before she spoke, a look – sharp and greedy, and entertained – flashed between the men as if there was something at once intrinsically ridiculous and titillating about her. Though she had expected it, she flushed and tensed, and the man she
was looking for grinned at his colleague. He was young, round-headed, with a rather childlike, fleshy face and stubby features.

‘Can you tell me if it is true the Emperor is coming back tonight?’ she asked.

One of them, a little older than the others, shrugged. ‘Sorry, darling.’

‘But if he is, will he want me to dine with him? I prefer to have some warning so I can prepare . . .’

‘Wait and see. Patience is character-building,’ said the same guard.

Noriko walked over to the Praetorian she recognised. ‘I want you to come with me to look at something,’ she said.

There was a pause, and a laughing catcall from one of them.

‘Just for a minute,’ Noriko said patiently. ‘I can see something strange from a window upstairs.’

‘You’d better go,’ said the other guard, ‘there’s something
strange
out there!’

‘She might get lost on her own,’ said another.

The round-faced Praetorian smirked. ‘As a special favour,’ he said, and went with her.

Noriko led him up towards her rooms but turned away before she reached them, into a quiet gallery. She had hoped, when it came to it, she would be able to think of something natural to say, but she was speechless with embarrassment and nervousness.

‘So,’ he said, at last, ‘what did you want to show me?’

‘Really, there is nothing,’ said Noriko. ‘It was . . . It was a joke.’

‘A joke?’

‘Yes. I get so bored.’ She cleared her throat again. ‘And lonely,’ she added. She took a breath and, rather feebly, lifted her hand to his face and let it trail down to his chest.

The gesture – the entire stratagem – seemed immensely stilted and unconvincing to her now; she had barely even managed to smile. She was trying to work herself up to something more plausible, but there was no need, for the man chuckled a little and muttered, ‘I bet you do,’ and pulled her against him, pressed his mouth squashily against hers.

Noriko managed to stroke his hair, but the hot, amused gasp he gave into her mouth, and his hands, immediately dragging at her clothes for any opening, made her think of the sounds he’d made as he and the other man had pulled up Sakura’s skirts; she remembered Drusus’ weight on her. She clenched her teeth shut against his large intruding tongue and writhed, but he either did not notice or took it for excitement, and swung her round to push her up against the wall. Noriko
managed to pull her mouth free, and tried to keep it clear of his lips by pressing wincing kisses along his jaw.

She had not expected it would be quite so easy, nor that it would go so swiftly beyond her control. His hand had worked its way inside her tunic, felt for and squeezed hard on her breast—

Sakura stepped around the corner and took a picture with the camera Amaryllis had bought in Rome.

Noriko broke free. ‘Now you are going to help us,’ she said.

The Praetorian staggered a little and gaped at them. He grinned uncertainly.

‘The Emperor will come home this evening. We would like to go down to the Praetorian garage now and have you to drive us out of the Palace,’ continued Noriko, ‘otherwise we will tell him what you have done and show him this.’