Savage City (75 page)

Authors: Sophia McDougall

Tags: #Fantasy

BOOK: Savage City

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‘Tell me something first,’ she said.

Sulien thought of how long it had been since he had carried Una’s unconscious body out of Tancorix’s sight, everything she didn’t know. ‘I’m thinking of going to London,’ he answered, instead of any of it.

There was a pause. ‘Sometimes I’ve thought of going back there,’ she admitted.

He couldn’t speak again at once, thinking of it all. He could hear her listening to the crack in the silence. She asked, at last, ‘Are you all right?’

Sulien opened his eyes, breathed out. He said, ‘Not yet.’

Una and Makaria met again in the Imperial Office.

‘Did you see my broadcast?’ asked Makaria.

Una nodded. ‘You were very good,’ she muttered. Makaria had explained she would be taking only some modest title such as Imperial Protectress. She claimed she shrank from the very idea of anything grander.

Makaria smiled. ‘It wasn’t true. I would like ceremonies and processions and to call myself Empress. I wouldn’t have expected it of myself. It seems it does run in the family.’

The crumpled scrap of notepaper that was Marcus’ will lay on the desk between them.

‘I had the first family to leave Siphnos take it with them,’ Makaria said quietly. ‘I asked them to send it to friends of theirs in Spalatum. Hypatia collected it on her way here.’

Una stared at it. ‘When will this be enacted?’ she asked. ‘When will all the slaves be free?’

And there was a silence, of exactly the length and weight she’d been dreading. ‘I think the time is coming,’ said Makaria cautiously, at last.

Una repeated more urgently, ‘When?’

Makaria looked down, turned her hand gently back and forth so that
the light ran around the boss of the ring. ‘Una. I haven’t forgotten who put this into my hand,’ she said, ‘but I have the end of a war to manage. There are cities to rebuild. The Empire’s as poor and tired and angry as it’s ever been, and a good number of Romans think I should be shot for daring to sit here. There are men in the Senate who could probably arrange it. What good am I to you or anyone if they convince the people I’m trying to ruin Rome and drag me out of here?’

‘There will always be an excuse,’ said Una stubbornly. ‘There won’t ever be a right time.’

Makaria sighed. ‘I will be introducing certain rights,’ she said, ‘and restrictions, on age, and standards of treatment, and length of service—’

‘Length of service!’ cried Una, ‘then you’re talking about years –
decades
– long enough for it to matter when people who are enslaved now get to old age.’

She fell back in the chair and looked at the sheet of paper on the desk to avoid Makaria’s face.

‘I can only do what’s possible,’ said Makaria, ‘in the world as it is.’

There was another silence. Una said, ‘It will happen much sooner than that.’ But her voice sounded humiliatingly small, and there was a warning pressure of tears behind her eyes. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking blackly,
then it has all been for nothing
. Marcus’ straining words and his collapsing handwriting were unbearable to look at.

Varius had said, months ago, on the anniversary of Marcus’ death, that there would be enough work for ten lifetimes.

Makaria was looking at her with sad compassion. Una straightened.

‘I raised two thousand people in nine months,’ she said. ‘What do you think I can do in five years, or ten?’

‘You’re still very young,’ said Makaria, gently. ‘You’re working in the Palatine Library?’

‘For now,’ Una replied distantly.

‘I thought perhaps you might be interested to know that the academies will be opening to female scholars soon: Athens and Byzantium and Alexandria.’

‘Good,’ said Una, her voice still listless at first, then with more strength, ‘good. I could visit perhaps, for a while. But not for too long. I’m not going away, your Highness. We’re not going away.’ She stood up and reached for the sheet of paper. She met Makaria’s eyes. ‘This is ours,’ she said. ‘And this will happen. There will be so many of us that you and Rome will have to listen to us. You’ll do it then.’ And as she turned towards the door she finished, under her breath, ‘Or I’ll do it myself.’

Una walked back through the city towards the Field of Mars. At first she felt bruised and angry, and shaken by the memory of her own words. The folded paper in her pocket scorched her. And perhaps she had gone too far, claimed too much.

But the cool ancient light enveloped Rome, and as she walked, it poured over her, until it seemed to flow into her bloodstream, smoothing her breath, slowing her footsteps, turning everything gold. She could almost hear the light, whispering and singing on the stones, feel the current of it moving through the streets, carrying her home.

Bombed and bruised, Rome seemed somehow even older than before. A few skeletal marble columns were still standing in what had been the Forum. The Colosseum’s roof and a slice of the wall were gone altogether.

And there was the statue of Marcus in Trajan’s Forum. Una had dreaded seeing it, but now she made herself stop and face it, and she saw that even if it had been made under Drusus, even if it had been meant as a piece of propaganda, the artist was a true artist and had worked sincerely. It was almost too lifelike: Marcus’ expression was grave, and faintly nervous, and hopeful. Una smiled at him, and let tears fill her eyes. The word
Emperor
had been added to his name on the pedestal.

The bombs had not touched the Pantheon. It crouched on the ground, dark and stolidly menacing, and it amazed her, suddenly, that anything built by human beings could last so long.

Una drifted through the doors, and inside, the dark mass of the dome seemed weightless around the pillar of sky that stood within it. The circle of open air in the oculus forced the eye towards it and through it, so Una looked up because she had to. Above her, swallows shot past.

[ CHARACTER LIST ]

(
All characters
named
in the text. All dates are in
AUC
– e.g, 2757 = 2004
AD
.
)

Acilius
– a Roman soldier.

Albus
– one of Salvius’ sons-in-law.

Alexander – Cleomenes
’ and
Cominia’s
young son.

‘Amaryllis
’ – a name for a slave-girl owned by
Drusus
.

Arite
– a woman living in a small town in east Venedia.

Arria – Sulien’s
upstairs neighbour in Transtiberina.

Arvina
– the Vigile Prefect.

Asper
– a Roman soldier.

Bahram – Delir’s
brother-in-law,
Lal’s
uncle.

Bassus – Tancorix’s
lover.

Batu
– a slave from a factory in east Venedia.

Bupe
– a former slave from Veii Imperial Arms factory, afterwards a follower of
Dama
.

Caerellius
– a Roman soldier.

Calliope
– a friend of
Tancorix’s
.

Castus
– a vigile officer.

Cilo
– the Praetorian Prefect.

Cleomenes
– a vigile commander, married to
Cominia
.

Clodia Aurelia
– mother of
Marcus
, wife of
Leo
, supporter of the abolition of slavery. Murdered in 2757 along with her husband.

Cominia
– a hairdresser, married to
Cleomenes
.

Dama
– a former slave, crucified for murder in 2753, but taken down from the cross alive by
Delir
. Instrumental in establishing the slave-refuge in the Pyrenees. Involved in the rescue of
Marcus
from the Galenian Sanctuary in 2757. Afterwards a revolutionary responsible for numerous arson attacks, assassinations, and the bombing of the Colosseum in 2761.

Daw, Lord
– Lord of Bamashu (Bamaria).

Decimus – Salvius
’ youngest child.

Delir
– a former merchant from Persia, subsequently a fugitive. Established a slave refuge camp in the Holzarta gorge in the Pyrenees, after rescuing the slave
Dama
from crucifixion. Later, having learned of his protégé’s involvement in the bombings and arson attacks of 2760, he tracked the fugitive Dama to Holzarta and accompanied him into exile and voluntary imprisonment on a remote island. Returned to Rome after Dama escaped.