Those Left Behind, Chapter 3 of Fire
The Rest of the Story: Appears here on this blog, but you can read all 17 chapters (plus the prologue and the interlude) here.
Rather than coming up with a new story, I'm simply posting the next chapter of Fire here. Wait! Come back!
Chapter 3 is one of my unexpected chapters--it happened because events I set in motion in Chapter 2 had waylaid my initial plans. Nevertheless, I like how it turned out. Don't even think about reading this chapter before you read the first few chapters (linked to above), as it will not make sense otherwise. That said, enjoy!
Chapter 3
Those Left Behind
Lucia’s elbow slipped from the arm of her chair, jerking her awake. Worried that someone might have noticed her lapse, she sat up straight and tried to look alert. Her father was with the same client with whom he had been speaking when she lost track, so she must not have missed much. He had not noticed her dozing, and she sensed that the other clients either had not seen or were pretending that they had not. Glad that she had not harmed her dignity too much, Lucia tried to concentrate on her father’s words. Marcus Principius had honored her with access to his morning audience, and falling asleep in the middle of it would make her a child again in the eyes of her father and of his clients. She tried to drum up the enthusiasm she had felt last month. Lucia had begun attending the audience at the insistence of her mother and her Philosopher tutor. For years she had longed to join her father at his morning sessions, just like the succession of older brothers who had stood by his side. A Patrician’s sons were expected to take part in his counsels, and it was considered a sign of trust for his wife to sit in on them, but daughters never joined him. Lucia’s mother had little use for the audience, however, and she was more than happy to give Lucia her position. Though Novar tradition did not consider the wife’s rightful role transferable, Marcus Principius allowed his daughter to sit in her mother’s place.
The Heir Apparent himself stood, of course. Among the Novar, while men might recline for informal occasions, sitting in a chair bestowed a dignity necessary only for the official functions of magistrates or priests. Marcus Principius held neither office at this time, and he would have deemed it inappropriate to sit for this audience even if he did. The majority of patrons felt the same. Most Patricians and some of the more powerful Plebeians had clients who depended upon their financial support and political protection. These clients would visit their patron each morning, either to request his help, repay debts, or simply to remind him of their existence. Many were freedmen, former slaves from his household, with their poor woolen tunics and customary conical caps. Some were wealthy merchants, citizens who wore their togas and probably had more wealth than their patron, but who needed his political backing to do their business unobstructed. Most were somewhere in between. From poor country farmers to well-to-do craftsmen to struggling poets, the more important the patron, the larger and more diverse the crowd which called on him.
The number of people calling on Marcus Principius had increased over the last few years, as it became clearer that he and his family would become the Imperial heirs. The numbers had begun to overflow the atrium where he received them. At the center of this room was a pool kept filled by rainwater entering through a small hole in the roof. A large mosaic of a storm at sea, complete with an overhead view of ships caught far from shore, surrounded the pool. The storm continued up the wall in paintings of expansive sea and sky, pierced by lightning strokes which illuminated a distant shore. The ceiling’s mosaic completed the effect with a dark, cloud-covered sky, with just a hint of the sun right where the hole in the roof let real sunlight in. Little illumination came through this early in the morning, so oil lamps in the corners of the room provided light for the scribe recording the day’s session. These lamps did little to keep the late winter chill at bay in the large atrium, and the small braziers scattered around the room weren’t much better. Doors on the east and west side of the atrium led to small rooms inhabited by the slaves of the house. At the north of the room, large wings on either side, called alae, held busts of Principius ancestors and a small shrine to the household gods. Even if religious custom did not mark the alae as off-limits to the crowd, the additional room still would not be enough for all of Marcus’s clients, so a continuous stream of them entered and left the atrium through the large entranceway to the south.
One client, a young writer with dark hair and beautiful brown eyes, smiled at Lucia. Her return smile trembled a bit. The young poet may have acted shy, but the hunger she sensed in him frightened her. She used to enjoy flirting more than anyone. Even though she knew that she would never marry for anything as pure as love, Lucia had always been eager to meet new people. Now she was much more cautious of people’s motivations because she was much more aware of them. Unnaturally aware of them, she thought, since Victor’s disappearance. Despite their dissimilar personalities, she and her brother had been very close, and their personalities had always complemented one another rather than conflicted. She could always draw him out of his shell, and he could add some forethought to her enthusiasm. Now that he was gone, not only did she feel the loss of part of herself, she worried that something else was trying to fill that void.
Lucia and Victor could always tell what the other was feeling, sometimes even what the other was thinking. Now in that part of her where she should have sensed Victor, she could sometimes sense others. She watched her father’s current solicitor, and although they were speaking too low for her to hear, she could tell that he was lying. She could also measure her father’s skepticism--good for him--though he was giving his client the benefit of the doubt for now. She wished she could still believe that she imagined this awareness of hers.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out her sense of the others in the room, but that made them even clearer. She could count the number of people in the atrium without opening her eyes. Two more were coming in now, a wealthy merchant followed by his slave. Lucia kept her eyes closed. Someone else entered close behind them, but where she could identify the others, what followed was a blank. The Dominus! Her eyes snapped open, and sure enough, the Dominus had just entered. The merchant stepped out of his way even more quickly than his slave.
This same Dominus had been visiting almost every day since Lucia had begun to attend her father’s morning audience. She felt certain that he came to see her. When he had first appeared, she had wished with all her might that he would go away, certain that he was the Dominus responsible for her brother’s disappearance. Lucia had another trick, an ability more frightening than her sudden awareness of people: sometimes, when she really wanted someone to do something, he would. The trick worked about as reliably as a sundial on a cloudy day. In the case of the Dominus, she had only sensed a sudden alarm from him and then nothing at all. From then on, all she could sense of him was a moving hole in the crowd. She knew he was there, but she could not tell anything about what he was thinking. Lucia couldn’t read minds, just receive impressions about people, a sense of their state of mind, and she couldn’t get even that much from the black-robed monster.
The Dominus took position near her, watching carefully. Not watching her father, who was finally talking to another client and doing his best to ignore the Dominus, but her. She tried to ignore him as well as her father did, wondering whether the man could read her mind. He stood there in his long black robes, face hidden by his hood, and stared at her.
Marcus Principius had offered his financial support to the struggling young poet, and he now turned to look at the Dominus. The Dominus returned his gaze. Lucia still could sense nothing from the Dominus, but she felt a wave of tangled emotions coming from her father. She expected the anger, fear, and grief considering Victor, but she could not understand the sense of familiarity and even affection. Her father spoke, “The audience is at an end for today; any further business will have to wait until tomorrow. If you have something urgent, please talk to Gerol.” The scribe, sitting on a stool behind a nearby table scattered with ink, styluses, parchment, and waxed wooden tablets, bowed his head in acknowledgment. He was a pale and wizened older freedman whose conical cap hid an unruly mass of white hair. Lucia did not need any special senses to read his mind. His face clearly showed his annoyance at having to sort those with truly urgent problems from everyone else, who only thought their problems were urgent.
There arose some muttered complaint that the session had ended half-an-hour early, and eyes darted to the Dominus as the likely cause of the interruption. He ignored them, which unnerved people more than if he had stared them down, and the muttering died quickly. Lucia’s father drew her from her chair and, placing an arm around her, led her from the atrium into the more private areas of the house. The Dominus watched but did not follow.
Her father’s comforting arm around her shoulders did not alleviate the distance between them. Marcus Principius knew something about what had happened to Victor and about the Dominus who had taken him, something that he kept from the rest of the family. They all suspected this, but with her awareness, Lucia knew that her father grieved Victor less than the rest of them did and that he was hiding some secret that she could not puzzle out. A division had opened up between him and his family. Only Lucia’s certainty of her father’s love for their family allowed her to tolerate his close-mouthedness. Her mother had no such certainty.
Marcus Principius walked her to his library, where her tutor was waiting. Marjori’s graying hair was pulled back and tied in a bun, which gave her a severe look and made her appear older than her few wrinkles warranted. She wore a gray robe with two bands of light blue at the hem, the mark of her School of Philosophy. Marjori looked up from the scroll she had been reading, sparing Lucia’s father little more than a glance as her pupil took her place at the table across from her instructor. Marcus Principius recognized a dismissal when he saw one, so he slipped out and left his daughter to face Marjori alone.
Marcus was proud of his library, which dwarfed most private reading rooms. One wall contained hundreds of pigeonholes, each holding a single scroll. Scrolls were fading in popularity, but the Principii had a number of old works. They also had many sealed wax tablets, used mostly for contracts, stacked on shelves along another wall. Bound books, each containing hundreds of sheets of paper, filled the remaining shelf space. Marjori insisted on the efficiency of this method of binding, and given another hundred years, she thought the backwards Novari would catch up with the Philosophers and discard the more traditional ways. Lucia sat on a stool behind the large oak table that dominated the center of the room. Her instructor stood.
“Did you complete the assignment that I gave you last night?” she wanted to know.
“Uh, almost,” Lucia said. She wished she could read Marjori as easily as she could read other people. The Philosopher kept most of her emotions well-buried, though she made no effort to hide her disappointment now.
“Very well, then, let’s see the work you did complete.”
“I... uh... meant that I almost did it,” Lucia admitted. She hated disappointing anyone, especially now that she could feel it so sharply, but lying would not help her with Marjori. “I didn’t actually get to it.”
“Indeed.” Lucia had thought Marjori’s disappointment could not get any worse. “Need I remind you that your father has gone to a great deal of trouble, not to mention the expense of my own considerable fees, to make sure that you and your brothers have had the best education in the Novar Empire? He would be most unhappy to discover that you have been squandering it.” She sighed. “Tell me, what did you do yesterday?”
“Well, I went to the baths yesterday afternoon--”
“And doubtless you went there to gossip rather than to take advantage of the libraries. I don’t think that would have consumed your whole evening.”
“Yeah, but I met Livia there--”
“Which Livia? You have three friends named Livia, and you know at least two others.”
“This was Livia Ameliana. She invited me to her home for dinner. You see, her brother was home from the army--”
“And she wanted to play matchmaker,” Marjori sighed. For once, Lucia sensed something other than disappointment from her. Was it pity? Neither her tone nor her expression reflected it. “I would have thought by now you’d have given up on that. You are of the Imperial Family, Lucia. You--”
“But--”
“Don’t interrupt me, young lady. As I was saying, your marriage will be decided based on political alliance. Chances are your husband won’t be Publius Amelianus.”
“But if it is--”
“Then you’ll recognize him at the wedding.” She gave Lucia a very direct stare. “I’d recommend that you not attempt to ‘fall in love’ with anyone.”
Anger won out over her desire to please her tutor; Lucia didn’t think she had much chance of doing that anyway. “Do you even believe in love?”
“It depends on what you mean by ‘believe in.’ Yes, there is certainly such a thing as physical attraction, emotional attachment, even passion. One day you’ll realize that these things are greatly overrated. They come and go with a whim, and have as much weight. In time, they fade altogether.” Lucia received a very quick, very strong impression of pain underlying those words. It made her feel dizzy for the moment before it passed. “Trust me, political alliance is a much stronger foundation on which to build a lifelong relationship.”
Lucia pushed aside the temptation to ask her about the pain. Aside from the awkwardness of asking about something she should know nothing about, she was not eager to experience it again. She had never dreamt that her ability could hurt her in any way. Instead, she headed for a safer subject, “Then what do you believe in?”
“I am a Philosopher, Lucia. You should know what that means. I do not believe in any such nonsense as gods, superstition, or magic. The only thing I put my faith in is Knowledge.”
Lucia knew she had chosen safe ground. Marjori could go on for hours about the faith of the Philosophers. She made no secret of the fact that she wanted to convert the entire Principius family to a faith which Lucia’s father called the strongest belief in nothing he had ever seen. “I myself am a Philosopher of Books. I collect, organize, categorize, and disseminate information. Many outsiders look at my profession as the least of the Philosophical Schools, but I assure you that it is among the most important. Discoveries and innovations do no good if no one learns of them. Seekers of knowledge are much better off with my help to direct their searching. I...”
Lucia was considering trying for another nap when she really heard something Marjori had said earlier. “Wait a minute. Did you say that you don’t believe in magic?”
It took Marjori a moment to notice the interruption. Lucia could feel the sudden shift in attention. “What? Oh, yes, of course I don’t believe in magic.”
“But... what about the Domini? Everyone knows that they have power.” Lucia knew for a fact that this was more than rumor.
“The Domini? I will confess that they have power, too much for their own good. The way everyone lives in fear of them gives them a great deal of influence over people. That is what allows them to simply take anyone--” She cut off suddenly, and Lucia detected a mixture of regret, anger, and grief. And pain, nearly as strong as before. Lucia knew that Marjori missed Victor, who had always been her favorite pupil, but she detected more to this than Victor’s disappearance. “Let me just say that I have never seen them do anything supernatural.”
“Wow, you really don’t believe they have any magic, do you?”
“Maybe they possess some abilities I’d consider unusual. That doesn’t mean that I’d call them magical. Personally, though, I suspect that their power comes more from fear and superstition than from anything truly unnatural.” Lucia could tell that however much Marjori wanted to believe those words, she had not fully convinced herself.
“Do the Domini take boys from the Philosophers as well?” Lucia asked, surprised that the question had even left her lips.
The pain returned, sharper than ever. Lucia had to fight off tears whose cause she didn’t know. She wasn’t certain how Marjori could retain her composure. Indeed, Marjori’s eyes tightened to reflect the pain now, and though nothing else in her expression followed suit, her response had an unusual edge to it. “Yes.” Lucia could hear the cry of grief and frustration that word should have been. Marjori took a deep breath, and spoke with a calmness she could not possibly have felt. “Not all the Philosophers feel as I do.”
Her voice took on a lecturing tone, “As you should know, while the Philosophers are recognized as a nation by most of the other states, we do not consider ourselves as one. We are a community of people who share a distinct set of beliefs and a common purpose: to learn. Thus the center of our island ‘nation’ is the University. All who participate in the University, either as students, teachers, or researchers, are Philosophers. Unlike other nations, no one can be born a Philosopher. Many at the University have come from other nations to dedicate themselves to the Philosophy. The University educates children of Philosophers until they reach the age where they can decide for themselves whether they wish to follow the path of their parents. If so, they become Philosophers, otherwise they lose the support of our community. At this point, most leave, although they may join the community of non-Philosophers which provides needed services to the University.” Marjori had used this lecture as a chance to bury her feelings, and to prepare herself to say something without dredging up the emotions so tightly bound to it. “When boys reach the age where they must decide whether or not to follow the Philosophy, the Domini take the ones they want.” They had taken someone close to her. Lucia was certain of it, though she could not say whether she had reached that conclusion by simple reasoning or with some unnatural help. “We do not oppose them.” The last came with difficulty, and Lucia could feel her fighting back emotions she was unwilling to face.
“As interesting as this discussion has been, we have work to do. If I am to teach you even the rudiments of true mathematics, we should get started.” With her emotions under control, Marjori’s voice picked up strength as she warmed to a new, safe topic. Except for her usual intensity when teaching a subject she considered essential, Lucia could detect nothing else. Perhaps, this time, getting to work was a good idea.
Aside from the short break she’d had to eat some bread and fruit for lunch, Lucia had been working all day at deciphering the strange symbols the Philosophers used as numbers. Her fingers ached from their grip on her stylus, painfully writing out the odd numerals. When Marjori had first begun to teach her Philosopher mathematics, Lucia had protested at the uselessness of learning a system of numbers completely different from the Novar one. She had later found the Philosopher system easier to work with for anything more complex than addition. That had not made her more amenable to the strange numerals, since she wasn’t convinced that she’d ever want to do anything more complex than addition. In any case, she had been staring at the foreign symbols for so long that her vision was beginning to swim. A glance out the window looking onto the peristylium showed that it must be the third hour past noon by now.
“Getting a little impatient, Lucia?” Marjori asked, noticing her longing looks towards the lifeless garden. “I had hoped to explain the basics of algebra today, but, as usual, I was overambitious.” Despite her harsh words, Lucia did not detect any real disappointment. “I’d give you something to get done by tomorrow, but I don’t expect you’d do it, would you?”
“Tomorrow’s a festival day. There will be chariot races all day.”
Marjori gave an exasperated sigh. “Never mind, then. Go, I’m sure you’ll meet one of your friends at the baths today. Maybe another Livia.”
“Bye, Marjori.”
“Farewell, Lucia.”
At that, Lucia put down her stylus and abandoned the wax tablets filled with her clumsy version of Philosopher numerals. She hurried out of the room before Marjori could change her mind. A quick walk through the sunlit peristylium brought her to her own room, where her attendant Jaelin was waiting for her. Jaelin helped her out of her red dress with its black trim and into a simple white tunic. Aside from the color and length, the tunic differed little from the dress. Neither bore any resemblance to the complicated clothing worn by women in Manuel. That style had never caught on in Novaro, despite its popularity in other parts of the Empire. While her mother found Manuelite style ludicrous, Lucia wondered how she herself might look in some of those dresses.
Jaelin, Lucia’s slave girl, was several years older than she. She had the height and coloring of what had once been the independent northern tribes, with freckles scattered across her fair skin, and fiery red hair for which Lucia occasionally felt some envy. Though she hid it quite well, Jaelin hated the life of a slave. If the girl had not genuinely liked her mistress, Lucia would have found her constant but concealed bitterness difficult to endure. Jaelin wore a rough grey tunic similar in shape but not quality to Lucia’s own.
Escorted by two large, well-armed slaves, Lucia and her companion made their way to the baths. The narrow streets they travelled were as crowded as anyplace else in Novaro. Palaces abutted shops which pressed against tenements which more often than not leaned on warehouses. This made for crowded, noisy streets where rich and poor alike fought to make headway among hawkers and open-air merchants. The tall buildings with their overhanging balconies kept the streets in shadow, lowering both the temperature and the safety of the people below. Their guards assured that they themselves were not troubled in their short walk to the Imperial baths.
The baths themselves were a marvel, constructed by one of the lesser-known and lesser-liked emperors in an attempt to find immortality. That attempt had not succeeded, as none of the customers remembered the official name of the facility, instead calling it the Imperial baths. Admission was a mere pittance, and that would have been a bargain even if it had been ten times as much. Constructed mostly of marble, the structure was part library, part performance hall, and part gymnasium. Once inside the outer wall, men and women both mingled in the outer courtyard, still clothed of course, where each enjoyed watching the exercise of the other. The libraries were located here as well, built into the surrounding wall, and struggling poets read their work to any audience who would listen in the recitation rooms. In the center stood the baths themselves, with separate facilities for men and women. Whether for the exercise, the bathing, the poetry, or the gossip, everyone went to the baths.
Lucia joined a group of girls her own age, including not one but two friends named Livia, in trying to keep a metal hoop upright and rolling using hooked poles. This game had no real point aside from not letting the hoop fall. This was in sharp contrast to the highly competitive sports the boys played, usually with balls that stung if they hit you. The game left her sweaty and dusty, but she enjoyed the playing as much as she enjoyed being watched. The latter had become less fun recently. She much preferred imagining what the men were feeling to actually knowing it. Sometimes she found their emotions disturbing, especially those of the older men. A few of them made her feel like prey, and it was not just her. Those regarded just about any youth, male or female, the same way. Lucia avoided them as well as she could, sometimes passing this advice along to others.
She had just decided that it was time to take advantage of the baths themselves when she noticed her brother lurking in the shade of one of the walls. Aulus considered the public baths with all their attractions a waste of time. He kept himself fastidiously clean, but he preferred any bathing he did to be at home, and he did not enjoy athletics of any sort. His mere presence should have been enough to stun her, but it seemed unimportant next to the man with whom he was speaking. Lucia had never seen the man before, and the cold-blooded ruthlessness which imbued him made her fervently wish that she would never see him again. It surprised Lucia to receive such a strong impression at her first contact with him.
He was regarding Aulus now, and Lucia knew he was contemplating something terrible. Then Aulus noticed her. He and the strange man exchanged a few more words before the stranger moved away. Aulus leaned against the wall, waiting for her to approach. She looked for the stranger again, but he had vanished. Only then did she realize that she could not remember a single physical detail. He had seemed so ordinary that Lucia thought that she could meet him again and not even recognize his face. She would recognize his presence, though, and she could never mistake that. She decided she should talk to Aulus, calling “Hey!”
He smiled wryly at her call, annoyed and trying not to let it show. “Hello, Lucia. Imagine meeting you here.”
“I’m here everyday. I think you’re the one out-of-place.”
“So? I think I have as much right to be here as anyone else.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just that you don’t usually come to the baths.”
“I’d thought I’d see if anything had changed since the last time I was here.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Besides, it’s a great place to get to know important people. You know, make a few contacts.” That was true enough, and Lucia did not sense any lie in it. She might have left it at that, if she had not seen, and felt, the strange man.
“Is that whom you were talking to, someone important?”
Aulus was instantly on his guard, but doing a good job of not showing it. “Who, him? I have no idea who that was. He was new to the city and just wanted directions to the Temple of Minerva.” It surprised Lucia how easily Aulus could lie to her. Even with what she had seen, she might have believed him except for her ability: she knew he was lying. Before she could say anything more, Aulus pushed himself from the wall. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go look for some of those important people.”
She stood watching his back as he headed towards the men’s baths. She had begun to shiver in the late winter sunlight, the warmth from her exercise fading and leaving her chilled and damp with sweat. Aulus knew how to make her angry enough to leave him alone, but it would not work this time. “Aulus!” she called out. Annoyed, he turned to look at her. “Be careful, he’s dangerous.”
Lucia felt suspicion, shock, and anger chase through Aulus’s mind in a moment. He looked around to see if someone had overheard. Those emotions vanished quickly, and after looking at her with something which was unnervingly considering, he answered her, “I know. And don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”
She watched him go, then headed towards the women’s baths. Jaelin, who had been playing dice with their escorts, joined her at the door, carrying her toiletries and clean clothes. Lucia wished she had someone to talk to about Aulus’s strange behavior, and the Dominus, and... well, the other thing. She wanted Victor back more than anything else. He was the one person she’d been able to trust with everything. She barely noticed as tears mingled with sweat on her cheeks.
Lucia woke to the sound of Victor’s voice, a cry for help filled with desperate fear. She rolled out of her bed immediately and headed out the door. She had not bothered to pull on anything warmer than the tunic she had worn to bed, and it was cold in the night air of the peristylium. The first frost, if it came tonight, would kill the flowers Avla had worked hard to keep thriving despite the autumn, but Lucia did not concern herself with the flowers as her bare feet tore up their share of them.
She reached the door to Victor’s room and tried to pull it open. Their bedrooms didn’t even have locks, but the door wouldn’t so much as rattle on its hinges. She pounded on it, but that felt like hitting brick and made less sound. Her mouth opened to call out when the door suddenly shivered and swung outward, forcing her to step back. She saw Victor, lying on his back in midair, arms and legs dangling toward the ground as his body floated headfirst through the doorway. A Dominus trailed behind him. Lucia stared, open-mouthed, her impulse to scream forgotten at this fantastic sight. Her shock gave the Dominus the time he needed. He made no motion that she could see, spoke no word aloud. If he so much as mouthed an incantation, she couldn’t make it out. Some sort of spell was cast, though. Her head filled with a strange ringing sound, and in a moment darkness followed.
Lucia’s breath was coming in sharp, ragged gasps as she came to full wakefulness. She sat up in her bed, hugging her knees to her chest. Again! How many times had she had that dream? She couldn’t remember, but it used to happen every night, sometimes more than once. Several months had passed, but she was still calling it an improvement when the dream came only one night in three. The first time she had awoken like this, the night of Victor’s disappearance, real mud had stained her feet. She had hurried to his room to discover her brother truly gone. That was still true now, even if this recurrence had only been a dream. Putting her head on her knees, Lucia cried herself to sleep.
This chapter is 5,260 words long, out of a 90,111 word novel. So far, I've posted 17,227 on this blog. This is also, I believe, the first chapter I ever wrote with a female POV. I'm not sure whether the fact that Lucia's a young, naive teenager made it easier or harder.
Rather than coming up with a new story, I'm simply posting the next chapter of Fire here. Wait! Come back!
Chapter 3 is one of my unexpected chapters--it happened because events I set in motion in Chapter 2 had waylaid my initial plans. Nevertheless, I like how it turned out. Don't even think about reading this chapter before you read the first few chapters (linked to above), as it will not make sense otherwise. That said, enjoy!
Those Left Behind
Lucia’s elbow slipped from the arm of her chair, jerking her awake. Worried that someone might have noticed her lapse, she sat up straight and tried to look alert. Her father was with the same client with whom he had been speaking when she lost track, so she must not have missed much. He had not noticed her dozing, and she sensed that the other clients either had not seen or were pretending that they had not. Glad that she had not harmed her dignity too much, Lucia tried to concentrate on her father’s words. Marcus Principius had honored her with access to his morning audience, and falling asleep in the middle of it would make her a child again in the eyes of her father and of his clients. She tried to drum up the enthusiasm she had felt last month. Lucia had begun attending the audience at the insistence of her mother and her Philosopher tutor. For years she had longed to join her father at his morning sessions, just like the succession of older brothers who had stood by his side. A Patrician’s sons were expected to take part in his counsels, and it was considered a sign of trust for his wife to sit in on them, but daughters never joined him. Lucia’s mother had little use for the audience, however, and she was more than happy to give Lucia her position. Though Novar tradition did not consider the wife’s rightful role transferable, Marcus Principius allowed his daughter to sit in her mother’s place.
The Heir Apparent himself stood, of course. Among the Novar, while men might recline for informal occasions, sitting in a chair bestowed a dignity necessary only for the official functions of magistrates or priests. Marcus Principius held neither office at this time, and he would have deemed it inappropriate to sit for this audience even if he did. The majority of patrons felt the same. Most Patricians and some of the more powerful Plebeians had clients who depended upon their financial support and political protection. These clients would visit their patron each morning, either to request his help, repay debts, or simply to remind him of their existence. Many were freedmen, former slaves from his household, with their poor woolen tunics and customary conical caps. Some were wealthy merchants, citizens who wore their togas and probably had more wealth than their patron, but who needed his political backing to do their business unobstructed. Most were somewhere in between. From poor country farmers to well-to-do craftsmen to struggling poets, the more important the patron, the larger and more diverse the crowd which called on him.
The number of people calling on Marcus Principius had increased over the last few years, as it became clearer that he and his family would become the Imperial heirs. The numbers had begun to overflow the atrium where he received them. At the center of this room was a pool kept filled by rainwater entering through a small hole in the roof. A large mosaic of a storm at sea, complete with an overhead view of ships caught far from shore, surrounded the pool. The storm continued up the wall in paintings of expansive sea and sky, pierced by lightning strokes which illuminated a distant shore. The ceiling’s mosaic completed the effect with a dark, cloud-covered sky, with just a hint of the sun right where the hole in the roof let real sunlight in. Little illumination came through this early in the morning, so oil lamps in the corners of the room provided light for the scribe recording the day’s session. These lamps did little to keep the late winter chill at bay in the large atrium, and the small braziers scattered around the room weren’t much better. Doors on the east and west side of the atrium led to small rooms inhabited by the slaves of the house. At the north of the room, large wings on either side, called alae, held busts of Principius ancestors and a small shrine to the household gods. Even if religious custom did not mark the alae as off-limits to the crowd, the additional room still would not be enough for all of Marcus’s clients, so a continuous stream of them entered and left the atrium through the large entranceway to the south.
One client, a young writer with dark hair and beautiful brown eyes, smiled at Lucia. Her return smile trembled a bit. The young poet may have acted shy, but the hunger she sensed in him frightened her. She used to enjoy flirting more than anyone. Even though she knew that she would never marry for anything as pure as love, Lucia had always been eager to meet new people. Now she was much more cautious of people’s motivations because she was much more aware of them. Unnaturally aware of them, she thought, since Victor’s disappearance. Despite their dissimilar personalities, she and her brother had been very close, and their personalities had always complemented one another rather than conflicted. She could always draw him out of his shell, and he could add some forethought to her enthusiasm. Now that he was gone, not only did she feel the loss of part of herself, she worried that something else was trying to fill that void.
Lucia and Victor could always tell what the other was feeling, sometimes even what the other was thinking. Now in that part of her where she should have sensed Victor, she could sometimes sense others. She watched her father’s current solicitor, and although they were speaking too low for her to hear, she could tell that he was lying. She could also measure her father’s skepticism--good for him--though he was giving his client the benefit of the doubt for now. She wished she could still believe that she imagined this awareness of hers.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out her sense of the others in the room, but that made them even clearer. She could count the number of people in the atrium without opening her eyes. Two more were coming in now, a wealthy merchant followed by his slave. Lucia kept her eyes closed. Someone else entered close behind them, but where she could identify the others, what followed was a blank. The Dominus! Her eyes snapped open, and sure enough, the Dominus had just entered. The merchant stepped out of his way even more quickly than his slave.
This same Dominus had been visiting almost every day since Lucia had begun to attend her father’s morning audience. She felt certain that he came to see her. When he had first appeared, she had wished with all her might that he would go away, certain that he was the Dominus responsible for her brother’s disappearance. Lucia had another trick, an ability more frightening than her sudden awareness of people: sometimes, when she really wanted someone to do something, he would. The trick worked about as reliably as a sundial on a cloudy day. In the case of the Dominus, she had only sensed a sudden alarm from him and then nothing at all. From then on, all she could sense of him was a moving hole in the crowd. She knew he was there, but she could not tell anything about what he was thinking. Lucia couldn’t read minds, just receive impressions about people, a sense of their state of mind, and she couldn’t get even that much from the black-robed monster.
The Dominus took position near her, watching carefully. Not watching her father, who was finally talking to another client and doing his best to ignore the Dominus, but her. She tried to ignore him as well as her father did, wondering whether the man could read her mind. He stood there in his long black robes, face hidden by his hood, and stared at her.
Marcus Principius had offered his financial support to the struggling young poet, and he now turned to look at the Dominus. The Dominus returned his gaze. Lucia still could sense nothing from the Dominus, but she felt a wave of tangled emotions coming from her father. She expected the anger, fear, and grief considering Victor, but she could not understand the sense of familiarity and even affection. Her father spoke, “The audience is at an end for today; any further business will have to wait until tomorrow. If you have something urgent, please talk to Gerol.” The scribe, sitting on a stool behind a nearby table scattered with ink, styluses, parchment, and waxed wooden tablets, bowed his head in acknowledgment. He was a pale and wizened older freedman whose conical cap hid an unruly mass of white hair. Lucia did not need any special senses to read his mind. His face clearly showed his annoyance at having to sort those with truly urgent problems from everyone else, who only thought their problems were urgent.
There arose some muttered complaint that the session had ended half-an-hour early, and eyes darted to the Dominus as the likely cause of the interruption. He ignored them, which unnerved people more than if he had stared them down, and the muttering died quickly. Lucia’s father drew her from her chair and, placing an arm around her, led her from the atrium into the more private areas of the house. The Dominus watched but did not follow.
Her father’s comforting arm around her shoulders did not alleviate the distance between them. Marcus Principius knew something about what had happened to Victor and about the Dominus who had taken him, something that he kept from the rest of the family. They all suspected this, but with her awareness, Lucia knew that her father grieved Victor less than the rest of them did and that he was hiding some secret that she could not puzzle out. A division had opened up between him and his family. Only Lucia’s certainty of her father’s love for their family allowed her to tolerate his close-mouthedness. Her mother had no such certainty.
Marcus Principius walked her to his library, where her tutor was waiting. Marjori’s graying hair was pulled back and tied in a bun, which gave her a severe look and made her appear older than her few wrinkles warranted. She wore a gray robe with two bands of light blue at the hem, the mark of her School of Philosophy. Marjori looked up from the scroll she had been reading, sparing Lucia’s father little more than a glance as her pupil took her place at the table across from her instructor. Marcus Principius recognized a dismissal when he saw one, so he slipped out and left his daughter to face Marjori alone.
Marcus was proud of his library, which dwarfed most private reading rooms. One wall contained hundreds of pigeonholes, each holding a single scroll. Scrolls were fading in popularity, but the Principii had a number of old works. They also had many sealed wax tablets, used mostly for contracts, stacked on shelves along another wall. Bound books, each containing hundreds of sheets of paper, filled the remaining shelf space. Marjori insisted on the efficiency of this method of binding, and given another hundred years, she thought the backwards Novari would catch up with the Philosophers and discard the more traditional ways. Lucia sat on a stool behind the large oak table that dominated the center of the room. Her instructor stood.
“Did you complete the assignment that I gave you last night?” she wanted to know.
“Uh, almost,” Lucia said. She wished she could read Marjori as easily as she could read other people. The Philosopher kept most of her emotions well-buried, though she made no effort to hide her disappointment now.
“Very well, then, let’s see the work you did complete.”
“I... uh... meant that I almost did it,” Lucia admitted. She hated disappointing anyone, especially now that she could feel it so sharply, but lying would not help her with Marjori. “I didn’t actually get to it.”
“Indeed.” Lucia had thought Marjori’s disappointment could not get any worse. “Need I remind you that your father has gone to a great deal of trouble, not to mention the expense of my own considerable fees, to make sure that you and your brothers have had the best education in the Novar Empire? He would be most unhappy to discover that you have been squandering it.” She sighed. “Tell me, what did you do yesterday?”
“Well, I went to the baths yesterday afternoon--”
“And doubtless you went there to gossip rather than to take advantage of the libraries. I don’t think that would have consumed your whole evening.”
“Yeah, but I met Livia there--”
“Which Livia? You have three friends named Livia, and you know at least two others.”
“This was Livia Ameliana. She invited me to her home for dinner. You see, her brother was home from the army--”
“And she wanted to play matchmaker,” Marjori sighed. For once, Lucia sensed something other than disappointment from her. Was it pity? Neither her tone nor her expression reflected it. “I would have thought by now you’d have given up on that. You are of the Imperial Family, Lucia. You--”
“But--”
“Don’t interrupt me, young lady. As I was saying, your marriage will be decided based on political alliance. Chances are your husband won’t be Publius Amelianus.”
“But if it is--”
“Then you’ll recognize him at the wedding.” She gave Lucia a very direct stare. “I’d recommend that you not attempt to ‘fall in love’ with anyone.”
Anger won out over her desire to please her tutor; Lucia didn’t think she had much chance of doing that anyway. “Do you even believe in love?”
“It depends on what you mean by ‘believe in.’ Yes, there is certainly such a thing as physical attraction, emotional attachment, even passion. One day you’ll realize that these things are greatly overrated. They come and go with a whim, and have as much weight. In time, they fade altogether.” Lucia received a very quick, very strong impression of pain underlying those words. It made her feel dizzy for the moment before it passed. “Trust me, political alliance is a much stronger foundation on which to build a lifelong relationship.”
Lucia pushed aside the temptation to ask her about the pain. Aside from the awkwardness of asking about something she should know nothing about, she was not eager to experience it again. She had never dreamt that her ability could hurt her in any way. Instead, she headed for a safer subject, “Then what do you believe in?”
“I am a Philosopher, Lucia. You should know what that means. I do not believe in any such nonsense as gods, superstition, or magic. The only thing I put my faith in is Knowledge.”
Lucia knew she had chosen safe ground. Marjori could go on for hours about the faith of the Philosophers. She made no secret of the fact that she wanted to convert the entire Principius family to a faith which Lucia’s father called the strongest belief in nothing he had ever seen. “I myself am a Philosopher of Books. I collect, organize, categorize, and disseminate information. Many outsiders look at my profession as the least of the Philosophical Schools, but I assure you that it is among the most important. Discoveries and innovations do no good if no one learns of them. Seekers of knowledge are much better off with my help to direct their searching. I...”
Lucia was considering trying for another nap when she really heard something Marjori had said earlier. “Wait a minute. Did you say that you don’t believe in magic?”
It took Marjori a moment to notice the interruption. Lucia could feel the sudden shift in attention. “What? Oh, yes, of course I don’t believe in magic.”
“But... what about the Domini? Everyone knows that they have power.” Lucia knew for a fact that this was more than rumor.
“The Domini? I will confess that they have power, too much for their own good. The way everyone lives in fear of them gives them a great deal of influence over people. That is what allows them to simply take anyone--” She cut off suddenly, and Lucia detected a mixture of regret, anger, and grief. And pain, nearly as strong as before. Lucia knew that Marjori missed Victor, who had always been her favorite pupil, but she detected more to this than Victor’s disappearance. “Let me just say that I have never seen them do anything supernatural.”
“Wow, you really don’t believe they have any magic, do you?”
“Maybe they possess some abilities I’d consider unusual. That doesn’t mean that I’d call them magical. Personally, though, I suspect that their power comes more from fear and superstition than from anything truly unnatural.” Lucia could tell that however much Marjori wanted to believe those words, she had not fully convinced herself.
“Do the Domini take boys from the Philosophers as well?” Lucia asked, surprised that the question had even left her lips.
The pain returned, sharper than ever. Lucia had to fight off tears whose cause she didn’t know. She wasn’t certain how Marjori could retain her composure. Indeed, Marjori’s eyes tightened to reflect the pain now, and though nothing else in her expression followed suit, her response had an unusual edge to it. “Yes.” Lucia could hear the cry of grief and frustration that word should have been. Marjori took a deep breath, and spoke with a calmness she could not possibly have felt. “Not all the Philosophers feel as I do.”
Her voice took on a lecturing tone, “As you should know, while the Philosophers are recognized as a nation by most of the other states, we do not consider ourselves as one. We are a community of people who share a distinct set of beliefs and a common purpose: to learn. Thus the center of our island ‘nation’ is the University. All who participate in the University, either as students, teachers, or researchers, are Philosophers. Unlike other nations, no one can be born a Philosopher. Many at the University have come from other nations to dedicate themselves to the Philosophy. The University educates children of Philosophers until they reach the age where they can decide for themselves whether they wish to follow the path of their parents. If so, they become Philosophers, otherwise they lose the support of our community. At this point, most leave, although they may join the community of non-Philosophers which provides needed services to the University.” Marjori had used this lecture as a chance to bury her feelings, and to prepare herself to say something without dredging up the emotions so tightly bound to it. “When boys reach the age where they must decide whether or not to follow the Philosophy, the Domini take the ones they want.” They had taken someone close to her. Lucia was certain of it, though she could not say whether she had reached that conclusion by simple reasoning or with some unnatural help. “We do not oppose them.” The last came with difficulty, and Lucia could feel her fighting back emotions she was unwilling to face.
“As interesting as this discussion has been, we have work to do. If I am to teach you even the rudiments of true mathematics, we should get started.” With her emotions under control, Marjori’s voice picked up strength as she warmed to a new, safe topic. Except for her usual intensity when teaching a subject she considered essential, Lucia could detect nothing else. Perhaps, this time, getting to work was a good idea.
Aside from the short break she’d had to eat some bread and fruit for lunch, Lucia had been working all day at deciphering the strange symbols the Philosophers used as numbers. Her fingers ached from their grip on her stylus, painfully writing out the odd numerals. When Marjori had first begun to teach her Philosopher mathematics, Lucia had protested at the uselessness of learning a system of numbers completely different from the Novar one. She had later found the Philosopher system easier to work with for anything more complex than addition. That had not made her more amenable to the strange numerals, since she wasn’t convinced that she’d ever want to do anything more complex than addition. In any case, she had been staring at the foreign symbols for so long that her vision was beginning to swim. A glance out the window looking onto the peristylium showed that it must be the third hour past noon by now.
“Getting a little impatient, Lucia?” Marjori asked, noticing her longing looks towards the lifeless garden. “I had hoped to explain the basics of algebra today, but, as usual, I was overambitious.” Despite her harsh words, Lucia did not detect any real disappointment. “I’d give you something to get done by tomorrow, but I don’t expect you’d do it, would you?”
“Tomorrow’s a festival day. There will be chariot races all day.”
Marjori gave an exasperated sigh. “Never mind, then. Go, I’m sure you’ll meet one of your friends at the baths today. Maybe another Livia.”
“Bye, Marjori.”
“Farewell, Lucia.”
At that, Lucia put down her stylus and abandoned the wax tablets filled with her clumsy version of Philosopher numerals. She hurried out of the room before Marjori could change her mind. A quick walk through the sunlit peristylium brought her to her own room, where her attendant Jaelin was waiting for her. Jaelin helped her out of her red dress with its black trim and into a simple white tunic. Aside from the color and length, the tunic differed little from the dress. Neither bore any resemblance to the complicated clothing worn by women in Manuel. That style had never caught on in Novaro, despite its popularity in other parts of the Empire. While her mother found Manuelite style ludicrous, Lucia wondered how she herself might look in some of those dresses.
Jaelin, Lucia’s slave girl, was several years older than she. She had the height and coloring of what had once been the independent northern tribes, with freckles scattered across her fair skin, and fiery red hair for which Lucia occasionally felt some envy. Though she hid it quite well, Jaelin hated the life of a slave. If the girl had not genuinely liked her mistress, Lucia would have found her constant but concealed bitterness difficult to endure. Jaelin wore a rough grey tunic similar in shape but not quality to Lucia’s own.
Escorted by two large, well-armed slaves, Lucia and her companion made their way to the baths. The narrow streets they travelled were as crowded as anyplace else in Novaro. Palaces abutted shops which pressed against tenements which more often than not leaned on warehouses. This made for crowded, noisy streets where rich and poor alike fought to make headway among hawkers and open-air merchants. The tall buildings with their overhanging balconies kept the streets in shadow, lowering both the temperature and the safety of the people below. Their guards assured that they themselves were not troubled in their short walk to the Imperial baths.
The baths themselves were a marvel, constructed by one of the lesser-known and lesser-liked emperors in an attempt to find immortality. That attempt had not succeeded, as none of the customers remembered the official name of the facility, instead calling it the Imperial baths. Admission was a mere pittance, and that would have been a bargain even if it had been ten times as much. Constructed mostly of marble, the structure was part library, part performance hall, and part gymnasium. Once inside the outer wall, men and women both mingled in the outer courtyard, still clothed of course, where each enjoyed watching the exercise of the other. The libraries were located here as well, built into the surrounding wall, and struggling poets read their work to any audience who would listen in the recitation rooms. In the center stood the baths themselves, with separate facilities for men and women. Whether for the exercise, the bathing, the poetry, or the gossip, everyone went to the baths.
Lucia joined a group of girls her own age, including not one but two friends named Livia, in trying to keep a metal hoop upright and rolling using hooked poles. This game had no real point aside from not letting the hoop fall. This was in sharp contrast to the highly competitive sports the boys played, usually with balls that stung if they hit you. The game left her sweaty and dusty, but she enjoyed the playing as much as she enjoyed being watched. The latter had become less fun recently. She much preferred imagining what the men were feeling to actually knowing it. Sometimes she found their emotions disturbing, especially those of the older men. A few of them made her feel like prey, and it was not just her. Those regarded just about any youth, male or female, the same way. Lucia avoided them as well as she could, sometimes passing this advice along to others.
She had just decided that it was time to take advantage of the baths themselves when she noticed her brother lurking in the shade of one of the walls. Aulus considered the public baths with all their attractions a waste of time. He kept himself fastidiously clean, but he preferred any bathing he did to be at home, and he did not enjoy athletics of any sort. His mere presence should have been enough to stun her, but it seemed unimportant next to the man with whom he was speaking. Lucia had never seen the man before, and the cold-blooded ruthlessness which imbued him made her fervently wish that she would never see him again. It surprised Lucia to receive such a strong impression at her first contact with him.
He was regarding Aulus now, and Lucia knew he was contemplating something terrible. Then Aulus noticed her. He and the strange man exchanged a few more words before the stranger moved away. Aulus leaned against the wall, waiting for her to approach. She looked for the stranger again, but he had vanished. Only then did she realize that she could not remember a single physical detail. He had seemed so ordinary that Lucia thought that she could meet him again and not even recognize his face. She would recognize his presence, though, and she could never mistake that. She decided she should talk to Aulus, calling “Hey!”
He smiled wryly at her call, annoyed and trying not to let it show. “Hello, Lucia. Imagine meeting you here.”
“I’m here everyday. I think you’re the one out-of-place.”
“So? I think I have as much right to be here as anyone else.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just that you don’t usually come to the baths.”
“I’d thought I’d see if anything had changed since the last time I was here.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Besides, it’s a great place to get to know important people. You know, make a few contacts.” That was true enough, and Lucia did not sense any lie in it. She might have left it at that, if she had not seen, and felt, the strange man.
“Is that whom you were talking to, someone important?”
Aulus was instantly on his guard, but doing a good job of not showing it. “Who, him? I have no idea who that was. He was new to the city and just wanted directions to the Temple of Minerva.” It surprised Lucia how easily Aulus could lie to her. Even with what she had seen, she might have believed him except for her ability: she knew he was lying. Before she could say anything more, Aulus pushed himself from the wall. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go look for some of those important people.”
She stood watching his back as he headed towards the men’s baths. She had begun to shiver in the late winter sunlight, the warmth from her exercise fading and leaving her chilled and damp with sweat. Aulus knew how to make her angry enough to leave him alone, but it would not work this time. “Aulus!” she called out. Annoyed, he turned to look at her. “Be careful, he’s dangerous.”
Lucia felt suspicion, shock, and anger chase through Aulus’s mind in a moment. He looked around to see if someone had overheard. Those emotions vanished quickly, and after looking at her with something which was unnervingly considering, he answered her, “I know. And don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”
She watched him go, then headed towards the women’s baths. Jaelin, who had been playing dice with their escorts, joined her at the door, carrying her toiletries and clean clothes. Lucia wished she had someone to talk to about Aulus’s strange behavior, and the Dominus, and... well, the other thing. She wanted Victor back more than anything else. He was the one person she’d been able to trust with everything. She barely noticed as tears mingled with sweat on her cheeks.
Lucia woke to the sound of Victor’s voice, a cry for help filled with desperate fear. She rolled out of her bed immediately and headed out the door. She had not bothered to pull on anything warmer than the tunic she had worn to bed, and it was cold in the night air of the peristylium. The first frost, if it came tonight, would kill the flowers Avla had worked hard to keep thriving despite the autumn, but Lucia did not concern herself with the flowers as her bare feet tore up their share of them.
She reached the door to Victor’s room and tried to pull it open. Their bedrooms didn’t even have locks, but the door wouldn’t so much as rattle on its hinges. She pounded on it, but that felt like hitting brick and made less sound. Her mouth opened to call out when the door suddenly shivered and swung outward, forcing her to step back. She saw Victor, lying on his back in midair, arms and legs dangling toward the ground as his body floated headfirst through the doorway. A Dominus trailed behind him. Lucia stared, open-mouthed, her impulse to scream forgotten at this fantastic sight. Her shock gave the Dominus the time he needed. He made no motion that she could see, spoke no word aloud. If he so much as mouthed an incantation, she couldn’t make it out. Some sort of spell was cast, though. Her head filled with a strange ringing sound, and in a moment darkness followed.
Lucia’s breath was coming in sharp, ragged gasps as she came to full wakefulness. She sat up in her bed, hugging her knees to her chest. Again! How many times had she had that dream? She couldn’t remember, but it used to happen every night, sometimes more than once. Several months had passed, but she was still calling it an improvement when the dream came only one night in three. The first time she had awoken like this, the night of Victor’s disappearance, real mud had stained her feet. She had hurried to his room to discover her brother truly gone. That was still true now, even if this recurrence had only been a dream. Putting her head on her knees, Lucia cried herself to sleep.
This chapter is 5,260 words long, out of a 90,111 word novel. So far, I've posted 17,227 on this blog. This is also, I believe, the first chapter I ever wrote with a female POV. I'm not sure whether the fact that Lucia's a young, naive teenager made it easier or harder.
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