Rogue Emperor (The Chronoplane Wars Book 3) Read online

  “It’s not,” Pierce said. “Martellus is murdering the Jews. He hates them more than Tiberius did.”

  ‘They’re all the same,” Juvenal insisted. “Sectaries, quibbling over fine points of nonsense and superstition. Foreigners.”

  Pierce said nothing at first. His Briefing had made him aware of Roman anti-Semitism in general and Juvenal’s in particular, and it was no more palatable in Latin verse than in English prose. The image of the Jewish girl, flung from her balcony to die in the gutter, flashed in his mind; he felt a sudden, pleasant impulse to break Juvenal’s nose.

  “What was it,” Pierce said calmly, “that Pliny the elder said? ‘Vicendo victi sumus; paremus externis.’”

  “‘By conquering we are conquered,’” Juvenal repeated. “‘We serve the foreigners.’ All too true. Who conquered the Greeks?” he demanded loudly. “We did! And who runs Rome? The Greeks!”

  “At the moment, it’s the Christians,” Pierce answered. “Superstition. No respect for the old ways. We’re corrupted by peace and wealth; we need a war to restore our virtues.”

  “Nunc patimur longae pads mala, saevior armis Luxuria incubuit victumque ulcisdtur orbem,” Pierce recited. “Now we suffer from long and evil peace: Luxury, worse than war, avenges a conquered world.”

  “You lack breath control, and your accent is vicious, but I am flattered nonetheless.”

  “Your prayers for war may be answered sooner than you think.”

  As they climbed up the streets of the Esquiline Hill, Pierce began to worry. It must have been close to four o’clock; he would have little time to talk to Plinius and then to return to the palace before he was missed.

  At last they came to Ironmongers’ Street, and to a private house on a corner. Holding the poet upright with one hand, Pierce pounded on the door with the other. Dogs began barking at once; then came the sleepy swearing of the porters, roused from their pallets just inside the door.

  “Is this the house of the consul Plinius Caecilius?” Pierce shouted.

  “Be off — he doesn’t receive visitors until the second hour after sunrise.”

  “This is an urgent message from the emperor Martellus. I must see the consul at once.”

  “Fifty sestertii.”

  “A typical rich man’s porter,” Juvenal snarled, “buying his freedom out of the purses of his master’s clients.”

  Pierce pulled his money pouch out of his tunic. “Eighteen sestertii, all I have in the world. Take it.”

  “You were going to buy me a flagon of wine,” Juvenal complained.

  “When you’re sober enough to enjoy it.”

  Pierce could hear bars being lifted from the door. It swung open a crack, and a flashlight half blinded him. The porter’s hand snatched the pouch. Pierce pointed to his button, and the door opened a little more.

  “The consul’s not going to be in a sweet mood, I can promise you that,” the porter growled.

  Pierce clapped his drunken guide on the shoulder. “My thanks.”

  Juvenal sagged against the wall of the house. “I’ll just recover my strength for a moment. A pleasure to be of service.”

  Pierce turned and slipped through the door, which groaned shut behind him. Someone had finally silenced the dogs, but the household was clearly awake and alert. The porter led him a few steps into the atrium, and showed him a stool.

  “Stay there. I’ll call the master.”

  The flashlight made a moving ellipse of light that suddenly vanished as the porter turned a corner. Pierce was left in the darkness, aware that other porters and two dogs were waiting not far away. He looked up at the stars through the gap in the roof above the impluvium. Still dark, but it must be close to four-thirty.

  The porter returned, his flashlight aimed to show the way to his master. Gaius Plinius Luci Filius Caecilius Secundus paused, a dark figure; the flash swung into Pierce’s face.

  “You bring a message from Martellus.” Plinius’s voice was strong and calm, the voice of a man born to power and privilege.

  “Not one that he wants sent, master. You should absent yourself from Rome. The Praetorians have orders to bring you to the palace immediately after you meet the senate in the morning. They’ve already sent men to Alsium for Cornutus.”

  “Why?”

  ‘To force you to recommend Martellus to the senate. The Christians are afraid of an uprising if he is not confirmed as emperor.”

  “You wear the sign of the Christians on your tunic. Why do you bring this message?”

  Pierce smiled in the darkness. “Do you know much about the Christians, master?”

  “Until this happened, I knew them only as another burial society. An eastern superstition.”

  “Christians are quite as contentious as other men, master. Not all of us support Martellus in this matter. Better to support a true Roman as emperor, than a usurper who will lead us from the old ways.”

  “Your cult refuses to honor the gods and the emperor — ”

  “Even when the emperor is a supposed Christian. I will not tire you with an account of our inner quarrels. I only ask that you find business out of the city, as soon as possible. The senate will understand.”

  “And if this is a provocation, a trap?”

  “Ask your man to put his Hesperian light on my face.” It dazzled him again. “I am Alaricus the Goth, bodyguard of the lady Maria of the Christians. I put my life in your hands. If you distrust me, or if the Christians try to punish you for evading them, tell them who it was who warned you. They will kill me out of hand.”

  “And if you deny you warned me?”

  “I am an unknown man; you are the consul. Who will be believed?”

  “Or I could simply put you to death right now.”

  “You could, master, though I would defend myself as best I can and some of your slaves would die with me. I would rather be allowed to leave; I must be back in the palace before I am missed.”

  The dark outline of Plinius moved slightly. “You may go.”

  “Thank you, master.”

  Pierce stood, bowed, and turned toward the door. Someone opened it for him. As he stepped through, he heard Plinius’s clear voice behind him:

  “Tell my clientela I will not be receiving their salutatio today.”

  *

  Juvenal was still there, slumped against the stucco wall. Pierce shook him.

  “What was your message for Plinius?” Juvenal mumbled.

  “An appeal to support poets more generously. Where’s your house?”

  “My house is a humble cenaculum, a one-room flat under the tiles of an insula owned by Plinius himself. So you might say he supports me already.”

  “I’m bound back to the palace. If it’s on the way I’ll take you home.”

  “You have my eternal gratitude, O literate German. Like that? Mm? Two oxymorons in one sentence. Eternal gratitude and literate Germans, contradictions in terms.”

  Juvenal guided him several blocks west to an insula not far from the Amphitheater. The poet swayed in the doorway.

  “Perhaps we’ll meet again, if you do not find me at home on the fourth floor, seek me in the local wine shops. Or waiting for my daily little gift from one of my patrons.”

  “Farewell, Juvenal. You’ve served your people better than you know this night.”

  “It occurs to me that you’ve yet to tell me your name, my friend.”

  Pierce was already gone, running through streets beneath a paling sky.

  Fourteen

  The cooks were the only ones up when Pierce returned to the palace. He went into the servants’ dining hall and demanded breakfast; the cooks gave him a big bowl of hot cereal laced with honey. He wolfed it down and asked for dried apples. A junior cook gave him a double handful out of a wicker basket. Pierce ate some and stored the rest in a fold of his tunic.

  Back outside Maria Donovan’s door, Pierce settled himself on his straw mattress and picked cereal grains out of his teeth with his dagger. He was relat
ively safe, thanks to the Militants’ own efficiency. They had destroyed the Hesperian embassy and slaughtered all the uptimers in Rome; anyone who turned up claiming to be a Christian Goth must therefore be what he claimed, especially if his theology was so close to the Church Militants’.

  But he could make a misstep, as he had by mentioning viruses to Dennis Brewster. At the first hint of suspicion from the Militants, he would have to vanish. Better yet, he should vanish while they still trusted him, preferably with some kind of beeper.

  Pierce considered branching choices. The Militants had brought considerable stores of uptime goods, including drugs; that was a major reason for his embarking on the masquerade. In the convoluted theology of the Militants, viral diseases were divine punishment for minor or major sins. Bacterial infections, however, were natural; antibiotics and painkillers were acceptable treatment for them. Pentasyn had originally been a painkiller, and a good one, before the Agency had discovered its usefulness in reducing the symptoms of extended Conditioning. Somewhere in the palace, therefore, was a pharmacy that would include Pentasyn or some of its analogs; even aspirin would help a little.

  Martel would have a treasury as well — all of Domitian’s wealth, plus that of the rich families slain in the proscription. A pouch full of aureii and denarii could keep Pierce fed and sheltered for a few weeks anyway, until the Agency finally came to the rescue.

  It seemed likely, however, that the Militants were still using knotholers, bringing in supplies from uptime. If he stayed in the palace he could find out where the knotholes were and might be able to use them to get uptime on his own. It would not be easy, but it might enable him to be deBriefed weeks earlier, and to prod the Agency into moving against the Militants. What he had already learned about them would make the Agency’s counterattack far more effective.

  Remaining in the palace would also enable him to sabotage the Militants whenever the opportunity arose, and if Aquilius were to fall into the Militants’ hands, Pierce would be in a position to help.

  So staying would be a calculated risk, but one worth taking. As he dozed off, Pierce admitted to himself that it was also fun, in an ugly kind of way.

  *

  The snap of the bolt being thrown roused him instantly. When Maria emerged, he was standing in the doorway, his mattress rolled up to one side.

  “My lady.”

  She was dressed in khaki and olive drab again, her blond curls just touching her collar. “Good morning, Alaricus. Did you sleep well?”

  “I did, my lady. How may I serve you this morning?”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Well, come along with me to the superiors’ dining hall. We generally have breakfast together and talk about what has to be done. Then we’ll see what happens next.” She smiled dazzlingly at him.

  The superiors’ dining hall must have been used for the emperor’s inner circle. But the couches on which they had dined had gone, replaced by folding wooden chairs. Slaves were whitewashing a pornographic mural from one of the walls. The room, which opened onto a large garden, smelled of coffee and frying bacon. In the next room Pierce saw a small squad of cooks, obviously Militants, working over a series of propane stoves. Attendants brought in platters piled with bacon, scrambled eggs, uptime oatmeal, and jugs of coffee. The aromas were overpowering to Pierce’s sense of smell.

  Maria greeted the dozen or so men and women in the room before joining Willard Powell and a couple of other men. Pierce did not recognize them; they must have been rank and file before the church’s deportation to Albion.

  Maria said a brief prayer as an attendant brought her a mug of black coffee. Then she sipped it, brightened, and joined the conversation. Pierce stationed himself behind her chair, arms folded, his eyes moving restlessly around the room. The table talk was casual at first, but Willard soon grew serious. “We’ve had something kind of strange happen. Seems that a couple of days ago a Praetorian came into the city from the north; told the guards some soldiers had been massacred and he was on his way to tell us. But he never turned up. The guards passed the word to their officers, and it got to Sextus this morning. I asked him if any of the proscription teams were still in the field, and he said plenty, but he’d check ’em off as they come back in. If anyone’s missing, we’ll know before sundown.”

  “No idea what happened to the Praetorian?” Maria asked.

  “Nope. He was with a barbarian of some kind — the guy who’d told him about the massacre, supposedly. No sign of either one.”

  “Smells fishy to me,” said one of the other men. “I bet the guards just got somebody’s story all turned around. No way anybody’s going to massacre a squad of Praetorians carrying Uzis.”

  “That’s probably true, Brother Lyle. Or the Praetorian was a deserter trying to cover his tracks. We’ll learn the truth if the Lord wills it.”

  “Amen,” said Maria. “Have they brought in that consul yet — that Plinius?”

  Willard looked at his wristwatch. “It’s only seven-twenty. These folks get up early but they don’t have much sense of time. Sextus sent off his men to the senate, but I don’t know when Plinius will be finished there. Might be before eight, might be ten.”

  “We’ll make him see the light,” said the man called Lyle.

  “I sure hope so,” Willard answered. “These pagans can be the most pigheaded, stiff-necked, crazy folks I ever saw. I was along on a proscription the night of the twenty-second, right after the action against Domitian. Don’t remember the people’s name, somebody on the list Drusus gave us. Some old fat paterfamilias, all alone in his house. He’d sent everybody away, even the slaves. He’s sitting there in his garden, just waiting for us, and we tell him to stand up. ‘You can kill me where I am,’ he says, and he lifts his chin up like this, so we can cut his throat. So we did.”

  Just the way Cicero had greeted the assassins sent by Augustus, Pierce reflected. The old Roman ways weren’t as obsolete as Juvenal thought. Though they soon would be if their upholders went on allowing their own throats to be slit.

  The conversation swung off into shop talk: how well the telephones worked inside the palace, and how poorly on the radio link to the Praetorian camp; how rapidly the endos were accepting the new state of affairs; whether motorcycles would be available within the next week.

  “Anyone heard how they’re taking this uptime?” Willard asked.

  “All pretty quiet,” said Lyle. “They’re just saying terrorists bombed the Rome Transferpoint. Nothing about what’s happening down here. Course they’re doubtless working like demons to hit back at us.”

  “They’re not expecting three cohorts with machine guns and mortars and Mallorys,” Willard grunted, wiping a slice of toast around his plate. “Plus the population on our side. I expect we might see a couple hours of fighting when they come through, but we’ll let ’em see how bad it’s going to be, how many endos they’re gonna have to kill, and then they’ll see the light.”

  Pierce knew better. AID would kill as many endos as necessary to prevent the establishment of an independent state downtime. Let the Militants get away with secession, and scores of other groups would try it. The International Federation would drown in a flood of revived nationalism. Then recruitment of endo Trainables would become impossible, and the drive to understand and prevent Doomsday would stop.

  But Willard had said three cohorts; the Praetorian in the wine shop yesterday had said only one cohort had firearms. That suggested plenty of weapons but not enough trainers. The longer AID hesitated, the harder the struggle would be to regain power.

  “I’d be happier if we could link up with the primitive Christian communities,” Lyle sighed. “Sure can’t understand why they haven’t come forward yet.”

  “Well, I’m going to have to hurry,” Maria said, finishing her coffee; she had eaten nothing. “Got to take my primitive Christian here to his first shooting lesson.”

  They all glanced up at Pierce, who nodde
d and smiled blankly before resuming his endless survey of the room.

  “Come, Alaricus,” Maria said. “We’re going to study the tormentum this morning.”

  “As my lady bids.”

  *

  A team of eight slaves carried Maria in a litter, while Pierce walked alongside through the streets. “I would rather walk,” she told him, “but the Elders say the Romans would be shocked by the sight of a woman in trousers.”

  “It is unusual,” Pierce said.

  “Not to me. I am as much a warrior as you are; I can’t fight in a skirt. So I’m confined to this absurd lectica.”

  The morning was well advanced by now, and four Praetorians ahead of the litter had to force a path through the crowds. People in the streets watched curiously, evidently wondering who was concealed behind the drapes of the litter. Pierce kept his sword out, watching for any hostile expression or gesture. He overheard scraps of conversation, a few having to do with Christiani, and twice he heard Plinius’s name.

  They ended up at the Praetorian camp; just over twenty-four hours had passed since he and Aquilius had walked past the gate they now entered. From not far away came the sporadic rattle of small-arms fire.

  Like any camp of the legionaries, this one was laid out in rigid geometry. The porta principalis sinistra, the gate facing the city, led the party to the via principalis — thirty meters wide, and dividing the elite first cohort from the rest of the Guards’ quarters. The atmosphere was as familiar as the layout; the camp reminded Pierce strongly of the U.S. military bases he had served in as a T-Colonel during the bad old days of the Emergency. He saw little overtly military activity around the barracks, only the familiar fatigue details: cooking, cleaning, hanging out laundry.

  Pierce noted the quarters of the tribunes and prefects, and the tabernaculum where the Praetorian general, Drusus, lived. They passed row on row of two-story brick barracks, coming finally to a wide road that ran just inside the eastern wall of the camp.