Galen bit his thumb, considering the Egyptian woman's striking profile. A Queen? Where did the Persians find a Queen of old Egypt? Hmm... is that the jeweled hilt of a Persian cavalry sword on a man's belt?
"Look inside," the Emperor decided. "Let us take a small risk."
"A risk of what?" A husky, tired voice intruded. Galen looked over his shoulder. Maxian stood in the doorway of the library, draped in gray and black, his hair unkempt and stringy.
"Max, come sit." Galen rose, shaking a cramp out of his leg. He took his brother's hand and led him to a couch against the wall. In the telecast, the mysterious woman continued her discussion, entirely ignorant of the distant, spying eye looking over her smooth white shoulder. Maxian sat with a sigh, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.
"Bring food," Galen said to one of the servants hovering outside the door. The Emperor turned to the thaumaturges and scribes. "Rest for a moment. Go down to the kitchens and get something to eat; cheese, kippers or oiled bread. There may be some minted goose or flamingo left."
Maxian seemed to have fallen asleep by the time everyone had shuffled out and Galen could turn to him again. The Emperor smiled faintly, feeling a great sense of compassion for his younger brother—who seemed so old, narrow face lined with fatigue, his hair a tumbled mass of oily strands, hands stained with rust and oil and countless tiny scratches. Galen sat thinking, forehead resting in his hands, trying to remember if he had ever been so exhausted in the Legion. There had been a time in Pannonia... I think not, he grumbled to himself. Marching and fighting was easy, compared to this slow death by tiny, pecking bites.
"What were you looking at?" Maxian spoke, eyes still closed.
"The palace of the governor of Egypt," Galen said, leaning back himself. The wall was blessedly cool against his back. "I believe the Persian commander has taken up residence there. We're peering in the windows to see if we can spy out what they intend to do next."
The prince laughed, an honest sound, filled with weary mirth. "Momma would whip your behind with a strap for such rude behavior, if she were alive to catch you."
"She would." Galen snorted. "How are you?"
Maxian grunted, raising a hand and making a dismissive motion. "I live. The work in Florentia is complete. Only interior fittings remain—chairs, windows, floors. There are three-dozen men eager to try their hand at flight." He opened his eyes, fixing Galen with a fierce stare. "We are almost ready."
"Good." The Emperor looked away, unable to meet the accusation in his brother's smudged brown eyes. "Good. The fleet is ready, Lord Alexandros is ready... there are other Legions coming, but I've not heard—yet—when they will reach Rome."
"Do we know which way the enemy will move?" Maxian rubbed a fine-boned hand across his face and the stubbled, patchy beard vanished. He smoothed back his hair and the grease and oil faded. Exhaustion dropped away, leaving him bright-eyed and alert. "What have you found?"
Galen watched his brother with open disgust as the younger man stepped lightly to the telecast. The prince did not bother to mutter or make an arcane sign—the disks and gears shuddered, blazing with hissing flame as the device sprang to life. "Show me the Bruchion," Maxian commanded, "and what we looked upon before."
The Emperor suppressed a start of surprise—the difference in clarity and acuity between Maxian's command of the device and the Legion thaumaturges was no less than night and day—staring into the distant room at a shallow angle. The Queen now sat in a swan-backed chair, legs curled under her, brilliant blue eyes sparkling as she watched a handful of men argue over a map.
"Sicilia!" Galen blurted, coming to his brother's side.
"Yes," Maxian agreed, shifting his hands. The telecast focused, showing a crumbling papyrus sheet marked with brown ink. The outline of the great island was plain to see, and a heavy, thick finger stabbed at icons of towns and villages sprinkled along the eastern coastline. "What are they looking at?"
"The bay of Catania," Galen growled, his grim face fluttering with broken sunlight streaming through from the Egyptian room. "They are arguing about landing their fleet at Syracuse—there to the south, where the island turns in a jagged horn—or at Catania, where the bay is broad and wide, and there are long, shallow beaches."
"Why there?" Maxian turned, frowning. "Won't they need a harbor to unload their ships?"
Galen shrugged. "Syracuse is strongly fortified, the harbors closed by a causeway and chain. Look!"
The finger jabbed at an inlet beneath the sketched sign of a great mountain, then moved inland and south, crossing into the mountains above the representation of Syracuse. A fist thumped on the table as a young, hawk-faced man in oddly-cut robes made a violent gesture. Galen watched their faces, lips pursed, frowning in concentration. Maxian, in turn, watched his brother in amusement.
"The young one thinks they should land close to the city," the Emperor said after a moment. "The others—the veterans—disagree. They think no one will resist the landing so far away, letting them unload in peace." Galen rubbed his chin. "Rash youth will be—ah!"
The man owning the thick fingers moved into the scene, a fierce beard curling from a jutting chin, deep-set eyes flashing as he spoke. The Emperor watched him greedily, drinking in details of his garments—a simple tunic over a mail shirt, with the hilts of a heavy sword and mace riding on his hip—and the movement of his lips.
"The King of Kings," Galen breathed, flashing his brother a wan smile. "Shahr-Baraz the Boar, greatest of the Persian generals. Not our most formidable enemy, but close, very close. Even without the sorcerer's help, he would test us fiercely." The Emperor pointed at the young, dark-complected man. "This must be the commander of the Arab mercenaries—he seems very reckless—the shahanshah will overrule his suggestion to land directly at Syracuse."
A moment later, the King of Kings shook his head, curls bouncing, and made a firm, final indication on the map.
"Catania, then," Maxian said slowly, thinking, his eyes comparing the ground shown on the map to a trove of memories from time spent at his sister-in-law's estate. "Under Aetna. Is their fleet ready to sail?" The prince's eyelid twitched and the scene dimmed, the view springing back over the rooftops of a city, which dwindled until only the blue-green orb of the earth swam in the fiery circle. A long wing of white cloud covered most of the Middle Sea.
"Soon enough," Galen said, biting his thumb. "We've been watching them work. It's odd, they've torn out all the rowing benches in their galleys to clear space. Every galley stepping a sail is being refitted and the civilian merchantmen are being stripped down. No comfortable journey for those men, by Poseidon! I'd say they can put ten thousand men ashore with the usual complement of supplies and gear." He flashed a grim smile. "Barring storms."
Maxian considered his brother, then said, "what if they brought nothing? No supplies, no horses, no tents, nothing but soldiers packed tight as cordwood?"
The Emperor made a disgusted face. "By the gods, Max, it's a full week's sail from Alexandria to Syracuse—half those men would be dead from heat and..." Galen's voice trailed off.
"Corpses packed below decks," Maxian said, a forbidding expression darkening his face, "do not feel the heat or cry out for water or even foul themselves in rough seas. Corpses can be efficiently stacked, laid one upon another in honeycombed rows and now they have so many fresh bodies to use..." A glint of something like hatred flared in the prince's eyes and the Emperor felt his flesh crawl, feeling the brunt of his brother's fury.
"Ah—that is foul." Galen grimaced. "But you're right again—and this means a good forty thousand dead men will swarm from those ships." He turned pale. "And every graveyard and tomb they pass...
"Will be filled with fresh recruits!" Maxian looked closely at his brother, as if for the first time. "You've been too long without sleep, Gales. You look terrible."
"Thanks—" The Emperor hissed in surprise as the prince caught his hand, pressing flat-tipped fingers against the inside of the Imperial wrist. A soft green light glowed, shining through flesh and blood and bone. "Yiiii!"
"Better?" Maxian's eyes crinkled up in amusement, though the dark core of each pupil seemed cold and remote. Galen shook himself, feeling a tingling rush from the bottoms of his feet to the crown of his head. The grainy, deep-set weariness he had been struggling through was gone. Even the room seemed brighter and the Emperor stared around in surprise. Details on the further walls were clear and sharp and he could pick out birds chirping in the trees outside the windows.
"Ay, my sight's been failing!" Galen rubbed his eyes, then looked again in wonder. "Well, bless me." He smiled at his brother, making a little bow. "Thank you."
"Huh." Maxian seemed embarrassed by the gratitude. "I wondered why your mind's become so slow of late." The prince shrugged. "I should have realized sooner."
"Better late..." Galen started to say, but stopped, thinking of Aurelian. "What do we do about Sicilia? Our fleet is at Dyrrachium, loading the comes Alexandros' Goths—but there are only thirty thousand of them and not prepared to fight the dead. Will the flying machines make enough of a difference?"
"Perhaps." Maxian's instant of good humor vanished and Galen could tell thoughts of Aurelian tormented him as well. Grief shadowed the prince's face, making him seem much older. "If we can catch their fleet at sea we will have a good chance. But I cannot guarantee anything—not against this foe."
"We must stack the odds, then," Galen said. "Our only advantage is knowing where they will come ashore. I will put every man in arms on the road to Sicilia. The fleet can ferry them across the strait at Messina. If the gods smile and old soldiers answer their Emperor's call, we can meet them with forty thousand legionaries."
Maxian started, then gave his brother a queer, measuring look. "I am going south tomorrow," he said abruptly. "A thought occurs to me and will take time to play out." He put his hand on Galen's shoulder, then wrapped his brother in a tight hug. "I hope to see you again."
"You too, piglet," Galen said, fighting to keep his eyes dry. "What do you intend?"
The prince ducked his head, avoiding the Emperor's searching gaze. "Nothing you would approve of," Maxian mumbled, walking quickly to the door. "But these things must be done, for victory."
"What did you say?" Galen reached the door only a step behind, but Maxian was already gone. The Emperor frowned, looking back at the disk. The green earth turned slowly in the shimmering orb of light. The sight made Galen raise an eyebrow in surprise. He had never seen the device operate by itself before. "Well, well... show me the bay of Catania."
—|—
Gaius Julius leaned against the wall of a small caupona at the foot of the Caelian hill, seamed old face plastered with a pleasant expression, a cup of wine in his hand. Like most of the other men crowded into the dim, smelly room he was clad in a tunic and long stonemason's apron. Everyone was glad to be out of the sun and done with another day's work on the restoration of the temple of the Divine Claudians. The old Roman was watching the door and narrow steps leading down from the street out of the corner of his eye.
While he waited, Gaius paged through a set of crumbling parchment sheets. He had not pillaged the Senatorial records in a long time—not since he'd been writing Praises of Hercules as a boy seeking to link the god's lineage to his own. The smell of decaying paper brought back fond memories and the sight of so many books had filled him with familiar avarice. These old rags, though, they held only part of what he had been seeking.
When he had walked the earth as a breathing man, the Clodians gens had been only one of a dozen rivals. The braggart Clodius Pulcher had employed gangs of thugs to terrorize the Senate, had cast aside his noble birth to be elected as a plebian, had used his delectable sister Clodia as a bribe to sway the senators and been a political opponent in every sense of the word. From this stock sprang our gray-eyed Diana? A wonder, if true. They seemed near collapse even in my day.
Gaius shook his head, running a well-trimmed nail down page after page of lineages, births, deaths, all matter of scandal, despair, joy and tumult disguised by dryly worded fact. At length, he found the family dwindled almost to nothing, only possessing a single estate in southern Latium, and then—twenty years past—nothing. No children, no legal records. A dying clan guttering out at last.
"Hmm." Gaius rubbed his nose. "Is she the last of a disgraced, bankrupt house?" He wondered who would know her antecedents—the Duchess, of course, but I cannot ask her!—and began to trace the linages backwards, through the contorted branches and leaves of a sprawling, often-intermarried family. He sighed, wondering how long he would have to wait in this hot, close place.