Vorenus let the air out of his lungs and was suddenly struck by the memory of his breath rising into the winter-grayed skies of Gaul, above snowfields strewn with stains of red amid leafless trees. How often had he thought he’d left war behind, only to find it at his heels? And for Rome. Always it had been for Rome.
“I don’t like this fight,” Pullo said.
“Have you liked any?”
“Sure. I guess. I mean, I liked smashing heads in Gaul. And our fight here in Egypt.” Pullo’s voice grew wistful. “That was a piece of work, you must admit. One legion surrounded but holding back the tide. Nine months—”
“I was here,” Vorenus whispered.
“Well, you know. Some fights are good fights. But Romans against Romans…”
“Apparently we’re not Romans anymore, Pullo. Didn’t you hear?”
“Bah.” Pullo spat out into the night. “They said the same of Caesar once, didn’t they?”
True. But was this the same? The people loved Caesar, but he knew they didn’t feel the same for Antony. And fewer still loved Caesarion, the foreign prince for whose sake Antony claimed to be fighting. “I just don’t know anymore,” Vorenus muttered.
“Antony should go to Rome. It’s what Caesar would’ve done.”
Vorenus shook his head. “When Caesar crossed the Rubicon he did so as a liberator, not a conqueror. You know that as well as I. But Antony … as soon as he cast his lot with Egypt he became like a foreigner to the people. Attacking Octavian in Italy would only make him look worse.”
Pullo frowned. “I just don’t like this fight,” he repeated. “Antony or Octavian. Isn’t much of a choice, is it?”
“It’s not our choice to make, Pullo,” Vorenus said, struck by the honest truth of it. “We cast our lot when we came to Egypt, I think. Octavian would have our heads if he could. I think our fate is Caesarion’s.”
Pullo said nothing for a long time. “Well, I don’t understand why they can’t just live in peace,” he finally said. “Octavian can keep the west; Antony can keep the east. Just like it’s been.”
Vorenus smiled at his friend’s naive optimism and was starting to reply when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a shape move among the shadows inside the palace, along the base of the inner wall. Staring after it, he thought through the rotation of the guards, trying to recall whether any had business there at this time of the night. He felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach.
“I mean, I guess there’s the problem that Antony proclaimed Caesarion to be his father’s only true heir,” Pullo continued.
“Pullo,” Vorenus whispered, eyes still fixed below.
“I guess that means Octavian lied about Caesar’s will, about how Caesar had meant for him to be his heir. That can’t make Octavian too happy, being called a liar and all.”
“Pullo—”
“But I still don’t understand why Octavian needs to attack—”
“Pullo!” Vorenus said, his voice rising to a hushed shout.
“What?” the big man asked, seemingly annoyed with having lost his impressive chain of thought.
“The guard,” Vorenus said. “Call them out quietly. Don’t let anyone in or out of the council chambers. Lock the gates. Then take a strong contingent toward the northeast quarters, checking for intruders.”
Pullo just stood, looking confused. “Why?”
“Just move!”
Pullo blinked, actually snapped to attention, and then rumbled off, his hulking form blocking the interior light in the seconds before he vanished inside.
Vorenus turned back, trying to catch sight of the figure again among the various pockets of shadows within the confines of the palace’s thick walls. When he failed to find it, Vorenus looked down over the balcony. The stone wall was sloped below him, not unlike the sides of the massive pyramids up the Nile. Farther down, the smooth surface disappeared into the black shapes of a garden shaded by palm trees. He could make his way back through the commotion, he knew, back through the winding stairs and rooms, but the straightest line would be the fastest.
Taking one more look to memorize the place where he’d last seen the intruder, Vorenus stepped up onto the edge of the stonework. His knees ached, and his aging back seemed to groan from the anticipation of what was to come, but duty was duty. No matter how old he got. No matter who that damn Octavian thought he was.
With a final glance at the moon, Vorenus dropped down into the dark.
5
ONE MUST DIE
ROME, 32 BCE
Three weeks after he’d brought the Trident of Poseidon to Rome, two weeks after he’d used Octavian’s coffers to send Laenas to Alexandria, Juba left the Forum and began walking the paved streets west through the colorful stone labyrinth of Rome, down toward the Tiber and Caesar’s family villa beyond it. He wore civilian clothes, the sash and symbols of his estate left behind, and he tried, as he made his way through the winding streets between painted and columned estates, brick-walled inns, and the fluttering awnings of open shop windows, to imagine that he was an ordinary sixteen-year-old citizen of the Eternal City with few enough cares in the world.
But for all his appearance as a common, if foreign-born, man, Juba couldn’t feel common in his mind. He was most uncommon. He had a chance to grasp the very power of the gods—if gods there were.
He’d thought much on that particular question since he’d found the Trident in Numidia: If Neptune and Poseidon were one, if their weapon could, in turn, belong to Moses, if Thoth and Mercury and Hermes could be the same god … was it possible that all the deities of the world were reflections of the same, single, united god? And, even more difficult to consider, if the man Moses could be so much like Neptune, was it possible that Neptune had been a man, too? Might it be possible that there were no gods at all, just men made divine in the memories of other men? Juba’s adopted father, Julius Caesar, after all, had been declared an immortal god after his very mortal, very human murder.
That there might be no gods at all was a troubling thought, but it was also a thrilling one. It was an old adage that the clothes made the man. Wear the sash of office, as Juba had just an hour earlier in the Senate strategy sessions, and the people would treat you as an officer. Perhaps it was also true, then, that the weapons made the god.
Walking back to practice once more with the Trident of Poseidon, Juba considered this conclusion a point of much interest.
Coming around the fruit stalls of a shop on a blind corner, lost in his thoughts of gods and men, Juba barely had time to look up and see the legionnaire on horseback bearing down the street before he was upon him. Juba gasped and dove to the right to avoid getting hit. His body crashed into a stand of apples beneath a faded green awning, sending some clattering to the stone pavement, and the churning legs of the beast just barely missed him.
A messenger, Juba could see. Probably carrying dispatches from the port, updates on the enormous undertaking of sending the legions to Greece.
As Juba stared after the departing horse, the shopkeeper reached for a sawgrass switch and brought it down on his hand. “You ass!”
Juba recoiled in pain, startled. He saw the apples on the ground and instinctively began bending to pick them up. “Citizen, I—”
The switch came down again, with more force this time. “Keep your filthy hands off, slave!”
Juba staggered back into the flow of pedestrians that was moving in the soldier’s wake and let it carry him away from the cursing shopkeeper.
Slave. How often had he been called that in this, his supposed home? He, an adopted son of Caesar himself, weighed and judged at a glance.
A just god, Juba thought, would change things, make them better. That things only seemed to get worse, in fact, might be proof that no just gods existed, perhaps no gods at all.