The Gate of Fire (40 page)

Your mind and body are far apart
, the Chin woman had said.
Go find them.

Shirin stopped, feeling the edge of the surf curl up over her toes. The water was warm and it spilled around her ankles, sighing. She looked out over the waters. Somewhere to the north and west, her friend sped away from her, driven by wind and oar toward distant Rome. Rome and her children and her uncle. Her family was far away, and she was alone. "Is this what I want?" she spoke aloud, though there was no one to hear her. Shirin bent her head in thought, casting her mind ahead, over years and decades that might come. Some things made her smile, others frown. So she walked, under the moon, alone on a deserted beach by an empty sea.

The sun stood high in the sky, shedding its beneficent rays upon glorious Rome.

Galen Atreus, Caesar, and Augustus, wiped sweat from his brow as he came to the last and highest step of the great staircase that vaulted up from the floor of the Forum to the gatehouse of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Behind him, filling the plaza of the Forum to capacity and beyond, sixty thousand Roman citizens raised their voices in a chant of victory. Here, from the height of the Capitoline hill, looking back upon them, Galen saw a shimmering sea of color and upturned faces. The beat of their voices in the air washed over him like the surf of some fantastic sea. He raised his arm, saluting them, proclaiming victory. Their voices raised up again, and the sound was a storm on the height.

"Ave! Ave, Imperator!"

At his side, Galen felt his brother raise his arm as well, and then the ranks of legionaries both in the plaza below and arrayed along the sides of the steps. Each man saluted the city and the people, and there—across the plaza—on the steps of the Curia Julia—the senate of Rome. The senators, as one, raised their arms in reply and great horns sounded, winding a long, solemn note. At this, the lictors and attendants who had preceded Galen up the long staircase turned and entered the platform that housed the Temple of Jupiter.

"Has our brother returned?" Galen whispered out of the side of his mouth as his Imperial party entered the temple. Ranks of praetorians lined the portico, their armor gleaming and bright. The clang of their salute, mailed gloves on cuirasses, was sharp as he passed between them.

"No," Aurelian whispered back. "He came to see me a month or so after you left, saying he had struck upon some secret business he had to deal with. Then he vanished."

Galen bent, kneeling, and bowed his head before the statue of the King of the Gods. At his side, staunch Aurelian on his left and the white-haired Gregorius Auricus on his right, his companions knelt as well. Outside, in the bright sun, the voices of the crowd were raised in song.

It was the first time Galen had ever felt that Rome was a city filled with people. For seven years it had seemed a half-empty tomb, inhabited only by the shades of its residents and the echoes of memory. Today, riding in the white chariot through the avenues, seeing the endless lines of people thronging the streets and alleyways, their voices cheering him as he passed, at last he saw the city that had raised an Empire. At last, after years of struggle, it was alive.

"Has there been sign of him of late?" Galen worried at the question of his missing brother like a dog with an old bone.

"Sign—no, but rumor? Yes. The Duchess sent word to me no more than a week ago that one of her agents had reported that our little piglet had returned to Italy and was hiding out in the hills above the city. I sent men to investigate, but I have not heard what transpired. The Duchess and I are meeting in a few days."

The praises of the priests ceased and the Pontifex Maximus came forth, holding aloft the signs and symbols of his office. Incense drifted around him, making white trails that tracked into the dim recesses of the vault that towered above the great statue of the god. Around the fringe of the temple, a thousand acolytes and priests bowed their heads. Galen, seeing the movement, composed his face and did the same.

"The omens are good!" the voice of the Pontifex rang throughout the temple. "The gods are pleased. Let the Imperator enter his city."

Galen stood, his knees sore from so much kneeling and the long, slow ascent of the steps of the temple. He turned, clasping his brother's wrist with his right hand.

"Well met, brother." Aurelian smiled back, his broad grin shining in his face. "This is a doubly joyous day!"

"Come," Galen said to the assembled host of priests and his Legion commanders, "let us proclaim the celebrations."

"They will drink and carouse and dance and sing until the day comes again," Aurelian said, still smiling, as they stood on the balcony of the Severan Palace at the south end of the Palatine hill. A hundred feet below, in the long rectangle of the Circus Maximus, great bonfires were burning. The sky above was clear and dark, scattered with stars and Venus, bright on the horizon. But below, amid the smoke and fume of hundreds of roasting cattle and swine, the populace of the city celebrated the return of their Emperor and of the Legions, victorious against an ancient enemy.

Galen answered with a nod, leaning against the marble balustrade of the balcony. Here, safe at the heart of his domain, he had released his men from the long discipline that had held them in check from the sack of Ctesiphon. Finally they could celebrate their great victory, spend some of their loot, drink and tell tales of their valor and bravery to wives, barmaids, and maidens. Across the whole city, in every public place, the Emperor's purse was open, filling the bellies of the citizen and the slave and the visitor with wine and bread and hot pies and roasted flesh from every kind of creature. Below, in the circus, with its great doors flung open, the men of the Legions held forth—seeing their families again, meeting old friends and new. For this whole day and night, the city reveled in triumph.

"Maxian came to me in Albania," Galen said, turning to his brother with a pensive face. "All unbidden, he appeared—a ghost in black and gray—as I sat in my tent late at night, working. He was so thin and worn looking! Have you ever seen him in such a state?"

Aurelian shook his head in negation. He was disturbed more, now, by the pain in his brother's voice.

"He told me a tale," Galen said, "an impossible fancy. But
he
believed and asked me for my help. I could not believe it... it seemed so fantastical!" The Emperor's voice faded to a whisper.

"What happened?" Aurelian was staring at his brother with unaccustomed concern. Though the brothers had bickered and quarreled over the years—even fought on occasion, when they were in their cups—none had ever refused another's plea for help. The bonds of family ran that close. What would
pater et mater
think if they fell out among themselves? "What did you say to him?"

"There were harsh words," Galen said in a small voice, refusing to meet his brother's eyes. "My guardsmen took him away to sleep—he was so tired! I was sure it was fatigue that made us quarrel. But then morning came and he was gone. Not even one trace of him remained. Aurelian, he was a ghost..."

Aurelian shook his head and took his brother by the shoulders, shaking him lightly. "The Piglet will come back," he said softly. "He always does, beard half grown in, stinking of wine. Put those thoughts aside for now; today is the day of your victory, of your triumph. Listen to the night, to the cheerful songs of men who you led to victory on a foreign field. Hear the city rejoicing."

Galen looked up and sighed, then ran a thin hand over his face. "It was very fine to ride in that chariot and hear the adulation of the crowds. It was a good show today."

"But, brother—no races? No gladiatorial games or elaborate staged battles in the Coliseum? No
munera
to please the gods?" Aurelian was grinning, but puzzlement marked his bluff, open face.

Galen shook his head, pursing his lips in a quiet smile.

"My gift to the city is the safe return of these men. Besides, any eager senator can put on a giant octopus and shipwrecked Numidian fishermen show in the Flavian. This does not obscure the joy a mother feels to see her son come home again, alive and whole."

The Emperor turned, putting his back to the railing. Above him, he could see the courses of the Capitoline ablaze with light. Every window held a lamp, and the lines of the rooftops were shining with torches and lanterns. The whole of the city, sprawling away behind him, was glowing. Rome could be seen, he was sure, from a hundred miles away. A breeze off the mountains ruffled his lank dark hair, and the Emperor signaled to one of the slave girls loitering just out of earshot. "Vidia, bring us hot wine, please."

The girl bobbed her long blond hair and hurried off, her short skirt showing fine pale legs.

"I am not an emperor given to excesses, my brother, you know that!"

"True," Aurelian said, shaking his shaggy head, "but it strikes everyone as odd that you do not lavish such gifts and exhibitions upon the city as others have done in the past." Aurelian avoided mentioning the other words he had heard:
miserly
or
cheap
or
penurious
.

"Let them think it odd," Galen growled, finally rising to his brother's bait. "In another time the Emperor would have unleashed each and every man in the army—their shoulders bent with the weight of their looted coin and jewels—all willy-nilly upon the city in a storm of debauchery. Half the army would be drunk and useless for a month from it. And all that silver and gold would be gone from each soldier's purse in half the time. Prices would rise, driven by such an influx of coin, and the poor man in the street would be pinched worse than ever."

Aurelian frowned and scratched his nose. "That has been the tradition," he allowed, and took a goblet from the tray that Vidia had brought. "Why meddle with tradition? It pleases the men, and the innkeepers, too!"

"That is so," Galen said, taking the other goblet. The surface of the wine, a deep red Falernian, was steaming in the cool air, and he drank thirstily. It had been hot work, riding in the chariot through all the winding ways of the city, passing through each square and market, so that all could look upon him and his men and see that Victoria had graced Rome with her favor again. "But it would not please me, nor you if you thought beyond the next horse race or bottle of wine. I have held back each legionnaire's share of the booty from Ctesiphon to place in the Treasury. A third of that sum due each man will be paid out to them when they leave Legion service as an addition to their
honesta misso
. For many, that will double the coin they would receive on their discharge day. Another third will be paid out over time as a supplement to their pay. The last third, they have today, to spend in the fleshpots and
tavernae
and baths."

Aurelian shook his head. He did not see the point.

"You have ruled the Empire in my name for nine months now," Galen said, an acerbic edge coming into his voice. "Surely you have noted the volume of coin that passes through the Treasury just to sustain day-to-day operations? Yes? Good. I tell you this: The loot our army has brought home is enough to pay for a hundred and sixteen days of Imperial operations, a staggering sum. And that is the Imperial share! The share due the men in the Legions accounts for another hundred days' worth. Now, think of the price of bread or wine today in the marketplace. If I allow all that gold to flood into the Forum Boarium and the brothels and the shops on the Porticus Aemilla in one huge wave, prices will rise like the chariot of Apollo. That, my brother, will make the cost of daily operations for the fisc rise as well. A hundred and sixteen days will become eighty, or sixty."

"Oh," Aurelian said, at last comprehending something of what his brother was saying.

"So," Galen continued downing the last of the wine, "we do not spend all this bounty at once. Instead, we stockpile it in the Treasury and we spend it a bit at a time. The third share that each legionnaire will receive in his pay will take two years to pay out. A sufficient span of time, I think, to dilute the effect on the price of bread. I have other plans for the Imperial share, but it will not be used frivolously or extravagantly."

"Of course not." Aurelian sighed. "Never extravagant... you'll not raise a triumphal arch for this, but repair a mile of road or a bridge instead."

"My very thought." Galen snickered, putting the wine goblet aside. "Though I had my heart set on dredging the big harbor at Portus, and perhaps—if your heart can stand the excitement—restoring the old military highway through the Alpes from Mediolanum to the Lacus Brigantinus."

Aurelian made a sour face at this, and looked away in a feigned pout.

Galen clapped Aurelian on the shoulder in great good humor and turned again to look out upon the city, bright with celebration.

Dawn was near when Galen made his way, at last, to his rooms in the Severan wing of the palace. He was bone tired and feeling the effects of too many goblets of wine and too many garlic prawns in pepper aspic. Guardsmen in red cloaks and burnished steel breastplates opened the doors to his chambers and saluted as he passed in. The rooms were dark, barely lit by a single oil lamp that burned on the mantelpiece of a fire grate. One window was open a little, letting in a cool breath of night air. The breeze stirred the gauzy curtains that hung around his bed. It was a huge old thing, with heavy carved wooden pillars at each corner holding up thick beams of aromatic Mauretanian cedar. Once it had stood in his father's bedroom in their family home in Narbo. The door to these chambers, first built by Emperor Alexander Severus, had been specially widened to get it in.

Galen, feeling much like an overworked shopkeeper at the end of a particularly grueling day during the holiday season, kicked off his boots and pulled his tunic over his head. His entire body ached, and the beginnings of a blinding headache were lurking behind his eyes. He slumped, his head in his hands, and considered calling for one of his servants to rub him down before he went to bed.