Muses of Roma (Codex Antonius Book 1) (26 page)

“Thanks, friend,” Kaeso said and then turned and walked out the door with Nestor behind.

Outside, Nestor asked, “Was that, Umbra code?”

“The place is being watched,” Kaeso said, easily falling into his old habit of scanning the street for surveillance without acting paranoid or like a tourist. He decided to run his evasion exercises to ensure he wasn’t followed.

“Now what?”

Kaeso thought back to the conversation. He'd known the barkeep Tiro for years, and had worked with him many times to move the secrets Kaeso stole off-world. The man was more professional and steady then some Ancilia Kaeso had known.

Kaeso had put his hands on the bar counter and asked for
posca
, a clear code that he was in trouble and needed access to an emergency equipment and money cache Umbra stored throughout the city.

But Tiro greeted him as a stranger, telling Kaeso the tavern was watched. If Tiro had greeted Kaeso as an old friend, he would have defaulted to his usual cover as a Roman merchant coming in for a cup of red wine.

Tiro also told Kaeso he should go to The Triclinium for the second best
posca
in the city. That bothered Kaeso, though he expected it. It meant Tiro didn’t know which caches were safe anymore. Since all Ancilia in Roma were dead or missing, it stood to reason the Romans found the caches as well.

“So what now?” Nestor asked.

“I don't know,” Kaeso said, pretending to watch a visum wall while scanning the street. Tiro was the only Umbra contact he had in Roma who was not also an Ancile with an implant. If Galeo was correct, all the Ancilia Kaeso had known were gone. Which meant the odds of finding Ocella dropped to virtually nil.

“I know where we can get help,” Nestor said.

Kaeso looked at him, and Nestor smiled. “You're not the only one who has contacts in Roma.”

“I thought you'd never been to Roma.”

“I haven't. But I never said I didn't know anybody here.”

“Who’s the contact?”

“A sister.”

“You have a sister in Roma?”

Nestor gave Kaeso a steady look, and Kaeso assumed he meant a Saturnist “sister.”

“Can you trust her?” Kaeso asked.

“Of course. She’s my sister. How do we get to Via Decianae on the Aventine?”

“It’s two miles south along the river,” Kaeso said. “Rough neighborhood.”

Nestor grinned. “My sister is a rough woman.”

“That's the third time that lictor’s passed the hatch,” Lucia said, watching her tabulari screen from the pilot's couch on
Caduceus
. The camera feed showed the way station terminal outside the connector tube. The brass-capped lictor, with a pulse rifle slung over his shoulder, strolled up the way station corridor without glancing at
Caduceus’s
hatch. The fact he'd looked at every other nearby hatch made Lucia suspicious.

“He's just walking his beat,” Blaesus said, sitting in Kaeso's command couch. He had one leg draped over the edge of the couch as he used the command tabulari to watch Roman entertainment channels.

“He's trying too hard to ignore us,” Lucia said. “I know he’s watching us.”

Blaesus sighed. “My dear, you need to relax. Stop watching that feed and take in a good Roman comedy or maybe a drama. They've gotten much better since the last time we were home.”

Lucia frowned at the old man. “How can you watch comedies and dramas?”

“Because I'm bored?”

“You know what I mean,” Lucia said. “The Praetorians could storm this ship at any moment and arrest us both. Aren't you the least bit worried?”

“Of course I am. I don't want to be arrested any more than you, but what can we do? We won’t leave Kaeso and Nestor on Terra, so we’ll sit here and wait for them. In the meantime, I will distract myself from imminent crucifixion by watching a comedy. Laughter can heal the most sour mood. You should try it.”

Lucia turned back to the corridor feed. She hated sitting still. She joined
Caduceus
because they never stayed in one star system longer than a month. It satisfied Lucia's restlessness and her desire to stay ahead of any Roman bounty hunters wanting to haul in a Legion deserter. Doing nothing while her friends were in danger made her want to pull out her one inch of Legion-style hair. Though Blaesus's nonchalance annoyed her, she knew he was right. She should relax, escape her anxiety through comedies and dramas.

But she continued studying the corridor feed. An armed lictor talked to a maintenance worker across the corridor from
Caduceus’s
hatch. She wasn't sure if it was the same lictor who already passed the ship. They all looked the same with their brass helmets and dark blue uniforms.

She sighed. Maybe she was paranoid. Maybe Blaesus was right: The lictor was following his assigned patrols. With the siege of Libertus,
Caduceus's
Roman docking attendant told them security was the tightest it had been since the Kaldethian war.

Now if she could only make herself believe it.

She rose from the pilot's couch. “I'm going to check on Dariya.”

“Why? She’s not going anywhere.”

“Then I’m sick of listening to your shows. Satisfied?”

Blaesus shrugged, then turned back to his comedy.

Lucia slid down the ladder to the crew deck and then slid down to the cargo and engine deck. She glanced into the engine room and saw Daryush napping in his delta couch. She shook her head. One man watched comedies while the other napped. Was she the only one who knew what Roman arrest entailed? Obviously so, or Blaesus and Daryush would pace the ship, too. She had seen Roman “justice” firsthand on Kaldeth.

She arrived at the cargo bays and placed her palm on the pad for Cargo One. The hatch slid open with a grinding of metal. The hatch had been grinding for months, and no amount of oil or grease seemed to quiet the noise for long. It was on Kaeso's repair list, but “minor” things like food and fuel took precedence.

She went to the sleeper crib and looked through the window on top. Dariya seemed dead. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, which enhanced the death pallor considering her normal skin tone was a west Persian bronze. Her chest did not rise, at least not that Lucia could discern. The cribs did not freeze sleepers,
per se
, but slowed their metabolisms to just a few percentage points above clinical death. Dariya could stay like this for a hundred years before the sleep took its toll on her body.

“I'm sorry for this, Dariya,” Lucia said to the pale woman inside. “I'm sorry I wasn't quick enough on Menota. You're a pain in the ass, have been since I met you. But you didn't deserve this.”

Lucia placed her hand on the window above Dariya's face. The window was cool, more from the chill of the cargo hold than the well-insulated sleeper crib.

“Kaeso and Nestor are on Terra looking for the Consular Heir who supposedly has a cure for you. Can you believe that? It’s insane. I guess I'm not optimistic, to be honest with you. I know you appreciate honesty. I know you'd be the same way with me.”

Lucia smiled. Dariya was nothing but honest with Lucia since the day Kaeso hired her and Daryush. In most cases, it was her honesty that made them fight more often than they got along. Lucia understood why; Dariya was just like her.

“But if anyone can do it, the Centuriae can,” Lucia continued. “You wouldn't believe the things he's told us over the last few days, or the things that’ve happened.”

Lucia shook her head. “All we wanted to do was stay out of everyone’s way. Now we're in this international crisis and going up against both sides. I don't know what we're thinking. Of course, I don't know what else we could do.”

Lucia surveyed the empty cargo bay. It had been far too empty the last few months. That was why Kaeso took the Menota job. She could not fault him. All he wanted to do did was keep his crew fed, his ship flying. He was being a centuriae. Lucia longed for those days again, where their biggest worry was finding a job. Looking back, she realized that despite the fights with Dariya, or the breakdowns, or even hunger, those were the happiest days of her life.

She looked back at Dariya. “Whatever happens, I just wanted you to know that I always respected you. Even when we fought. I...well, I just wanted you to know that.” She grinned. “Because I'd never tell you this while you're awake.”

Lucia was about to leave when she noticed something on Dariya's left ear. A fine webbing of hair-thin red veins covered the entire lobe. Lucia moved to the other side of the sleeper crib and saw the same thing on Dariya's right ear.

She tapped her collar com. “Blaesus.”

“My dear.”

“Did Nestor mention the first signs of Cariosus infection?”

“I believe he said blood-shot eyes and pale, almost translucent skin.”

There was no way Lucia could check Dariya's eyes. Her skin was more pale than usual, but it still might be a symptom of the sleeper crib.

“What about the ears?”

“Let me check Nestor’s files,” Blaesus said. “Here we are. One file says if red veins appear on the ears, the Cariosa has 48 hours before full symptoms manifest.” Blaesus paused. “Please don't tell me you see that on Dariya.”

“Both ears.”

“Not good,” Blaesus said. “It's progressing while she's in the crib. No known disease does that. We should tell Kaeso.”

“No,” Lucia said. “They know time is short. They’re going as fast as they can.”

“But maybe Nestor knows—”

“Nestor can't cure the Cariosus,” Lucia said. “The sleeper crib was our only chance to delay it. All we can do is wait for them to get back with this cure. I’ll tell Daryush, though.”

Lucia gave Dariya one last look and then left Cargo One.

She disturbed herself when she realized she was wondering how to dispose of Dariya once the Cariosus took her.

Kaeso and Nestor walked the two miles to the Via Decianae at the base of the Aventine along the stinking banks of the Tiber River. Sewage odors wafted from the river just beyond the dilapidated townhouses on his left. Few people walked the cramped streets, as almost all the buildings were either boarded up or abandoned, a rare sight in a city as overcrowded as Roma. Kaeso had never been to this neighborhood, but he knew it to be one of the city’s poorer.

The closer they got to the river, the more it smelled. Many of the steel mills that once lined the Tiber and supplied Roma with its meteoric growth had closed and moved to other locations in Italia and Europa. But waste from the last one made this neighborhood a cesspool. He even heard the humming mill machinery a mile upriver.

“So which house is it?” Kaeso asked.

The rundown townhouses stood on the right side of the street, while a sidewalk and the river were on the left. On the Trastevere across the river, lights twinkled from elegant apartment buildings. But on Kaeso’s side of the river, the homes were dark and vacant. There were just as many overgrown lots as there were buildings. Crude graffiti covered whatever structures still stood.

At least the area has one thing going for it,
Kaeso thought.
It'll be easy to spot surveillance.

Nestor strode down the street, peering at the numbers on each townhouse. Sometimes he had to walk up to the doors and clear away some ash or dirt to read the numbers.

Midway down the street, Nestor stopped on the sidewalk in front of a dark townhouse. “This is it.”

“You're joking.”

“I wish I was.”

Kaeso grunted.

The townhouse was mostly intact, but a fire had blown out all the windows and doors years ago. Weeds and saplings grew all over the yard. A dim glow seeped into the front room from a hole in the roof—

The glow vanished.

“There's someone in there,” Kaeso said.

A man's voice yelled from the house. “Get on the ground now, or you die.”

Kaeso and Nestor froze, glancing at each other.

A pulse bullet tore the ground to Kaeso’s right.

“Now!” yelled the voice from the house.

Kaeso and Nestor slowly lay on the broken concrete sidewalk.

“Put your hands your heads.”

Kaeso and Nestor complied. The fact they were alive, and the absence of Praetorians swooping down from flyers, suggested the people in the house were either criminals or Nestor’s Saturnists. The man spoke with a Roman patrician accent, so Kaeso bet on the latter.

Once Kaeso and Nestor were on the ground, two men emerged from the house with pistols aimed at them. They wore workmen's clothes, and while they seemed to know how to hold their guns, they did not move with the predatory grace of a Praetorian.

“Easy, friends,” Nestor said. “I think we have a misunderstanding. Tell me, how many children did Cronus have?”

The men paused. While Kaeso couldn’t see their faces in the shadows, their silence said they thought about Nestor’s question.

One of the men took out a com pad, tapped a few keys, and then held it to his ear.

“They asked how many children Cronus had.” The leader listened and then said, “Understood.”

“Get up,” the leader said, putting his com pad away. “Keep your hands on your heads.”

Kaeso and Nestor obeyed his commands. While the leader kept his gun aimed at Kaeso and Nestor, he motioned for them to follow the second man into the house.

The house looked just as bad on the inside as the outside. Blackened debris crunched beneath their footsteps. In the gathering room, a cracked video screen covered the south wall. Burned couches lay on their sides, and soot covered the once colorful frescoes on the walls. A thick smoky odor blanketed the room’s dampness and rot.

The man in front of Kaeso led them further into the house to what was once the kitchen. A door sat open door in the back, with stairs dropping into blackness. The man pulled out a small light and shined it down the steps, then descended. Kaeso followed.

The basement was in much better shape than the house above. Although garbage from its years as a haven for the drug addicted littered the corners, at least the walls and floor were not cinders.

The man’s light illuminated a woman standing in the far corner with folded arms. Kaeso started. She was well-dressed and every bit the Roman matron, adding to Kaeso's surprise. The man turned off his light just as the woman turned on an electric lantern. It emitted a harsh white light that cast sharp shadows on the walls. She walked to Kaeso, held the lantern up to his face. Kaeso returned her stare, trying not to squint in the light. She then studied Nestor the same way.

“Who asked about the children of Cronus?”

“I did,” Nestor said. “So, my lady. How many children
did
Cronus have?”

She paused. “Who is Cronus?”

“Forgive me,” Nestor said quietly, “I meant Saturn.”

The woman nodded. “Put your hands down.”

Kaeso dropped his hands and asked Nestor, “Saturnist code?”

Nestor grinned. “Umbra isn’t the only outfit with secret codes.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Where do you think Umbra got the ideas for its codes?” She turned back to Nestor. “So, brother, what brings you to this lovely sanctuary?”

“We're searching for a woman and a boy,” Nestor said, then gave her a hard look. “The boy resembles the Consular Heir.”

The woman gave him a tired smile. She turned and went to a power conduit on the wall behind her. She pulled the unit back on hidden hinges to reveal a door pad. She put her left hand on the pad. It glowed, and then a click sounded from the wall to Kaeso's left. The woman ran her hands over a stone block and then pushed open a door built into the wall.

In the room beyond, light globes on the ceiling bathed the room in a soft orange glow. The room was twenty feet wide and long. A tabulari sat on a desk to Kaeso's left, several chairs and a couch on the right. In the back of the room was a larger couch where two forms lay wrapped in a blanket. A brown-haired woman slept on her side facing the door, her arm draped over a sleeping boy in front of her.

Kaeso would not have recognized Spurria if not for her eyes. They were set wide apart, with thin brows. The same as Petra's.