Anno Mortis Read online

  Petronius stared at the closed door for a few minutes. Then he knelt down and was violently sick on the doorstep.

  Once it became obvious that Narcissus was too ill to speak, Caligula summoned Boda and Vali for questioning. Boda had heard much about the Emperor's madness and lust for blood. They said he'd bedded his own sister, and made his horse a consul of Rome. She'd been prepared for his erratic mood and knife-edge temper - but not for the sharpness of his mind.

  He kept them with him for hours, going over their accounts again and again to wring every drop of information from them - and, she suspected, to test them for any inconsistencies. There were none in hers, she knew that. She had nothing to hide and told him the unvarnished truth.

  When it came to Vali, she wasn't so sure. His narrative remained unchanged with each retelling, but there was something too perfect about it. It had the neat structure of a story, not he messiness of real life. He claimed he was a bard of the Cimbri, that he'd heard tales of the Egyptian gods and come to Rome to learn more. He said he'd been searching for new stories to tell and instead found a conspiracy to uncover.

  Caligula believed it. Why wouldn't he? He knew nothing of her people or their ways. But she did, and no bard she knew would have acted as Vali did. And he'd also told them that Sopdet was his sister. Both couldn't be true, but each explanation was equally plausible. Or implausible.

  She saw Vali's sly, relieved smile as they left the Emperor and knew that she was right to suspect him. His smile widened when he caught her expression and she also knew that he would never tell her the truth.

  "A fine performance," she said dryly.

  He bowed mockingly, red-brown eyes glinting in the sunlight. "I live to entertain. And now the Emperor will act against the Cult."

  Boda frowned. "If he's to be trusted - or relied on."

  "You think we should continue our own investigations, then?"

  "I think we'd be fools not to."

  They searched for Narcissus, but a guard on his door told them he was too sick to receive visitors. Boda had seen the waxy pallor of his face when they brought him down from the cross and could well believe it. She wasn't sure he'd last the day. Vali looked like he thought so too. His mouth turned down but he didn't say anything, just led them in search of Petronius instead.

  He was absent too - still not back from visiting his family.

  "We won't see him again till the whole thing's over," Boda said dismissively. "Now he's passed the responsibility on to someone else he can get on with what he does best - drinking and whoring."

  Vali shook his head as they settled onto cushions in a small back room of the palace. "I wouldn't be so sure about that." Boda could see his eyes studying her from beneath lowered lids. His hair looked darker in the shaded room and the angles of his face sharper. There was something curious about it - she couldn't decide if he was very handsome or profoundly ugly.

  "The boy is in love with you, after all," he said.

  She snorted. "In lust with me, you mean."

  "No, I don't think so. He risked his life for you, or so you said."

  Yes, he had, and it made her uncomfortable. She didn't want to be indebted to any Roman, much less the one who owned her. And she definitely didn't want to like Petronius. But she found that she did, his irresponsible laughter and quick wit. He was nothing like any of the men of her own people. Except, she realised, for Vali. There was mischief in both their eyes.

  There was mischief in his eyes as he looked at her now. "A love requited, perhaps?"

  "Don't be ridiculous, he's a decade younger than me!"

  The shadows disguised Vali's expression, but she thought perhaps he looked pleased.

  "Besides," she said. "Love is a bad reason for heroism."

  "Is it?" Vali titled his head, puzzled. "And what would be a good one?"

  She shrugged. "Loyalty. Honour."

  Vali laughed. "Loyalty is reciprocal - it demands something in return. And honour is for the self alone. Love is the best motivation of all, the only one that's purely for another."

  There seemed to be some message in his words, but Boda couldn't decipher it. Vali's riddling talk infuriated her. He was the first man of her own people she'd met since being taken captive, and he ought to have been the first with whom she felt the bond of shared knowledge and beliefs. Instead, he baffled her. She understood Petronius better.

  "It's no matter," he said, almost in answer to her unspoken thoughts. "The boy will return, and in the meantime, I have something we should look at."

  He pulled a scroll from beneath his tunic. An old, unpleasant smell fluttered out with it. "The Egyptian Book of the Dead," he told her. "We found it in the Library of Alexandria."

  "And you believe it has some clue to the Cult's purpose?"

  "I believe it's their holy book - the thing which guides them."

  She shuffled nearer to peer at the parchment over his shoulder and its musty odour was swamped by the sharp, almost spicy scent of Vali's body. He smelt like burnt cinnamon.

  She shook her head and glanced back down at the scroll as he unrolled it. Images flashed quickly by - a beetle, animal-headed men, the moon between the horns of a cow - but he didn't pause over them and she guessed he must have studied that section already and found nothing useful. He seemed able to decipher the strange script of the Egyptians, though her own people had no written language and she herself could barely make out the letters of the Roman alphabet. Yet another of his mysteries.

  Finally, he paused. She could see what had caught his eye, a drawing of twelve bandaged-wrapped figures circling a thirteenth corpse laid out on an altar. A screaming woman hung above them all. It was her own intended sacrifice in every detail, and she couldn't repress a shudder at the memory.

  "Last night's ceremony," Vali said. "'And the blood that is spilled shall waken the thirteenth, for the thirteen months of the greater year. And as the year is completed so shall the gate be opened, when the moon rises where it is not seen.'"

  "But does it say what the gate is?" Boda asked.

  Vali unrolled the scroll further, scanning it, until he read: "'The souls of the dead shall fly out, and the mortified flesh will rise, and the river that is life will flow backwards, taking from the sea and giving to the land a harvest of destruction, and the life before shall be as the life after.'"

  "Well, that's as clear as mud," she said.

  He laughed. "I think it's as I said, a permanent portal between the underworld and this world."

  "Even if it isn't," she conceded, "it certainly doesn't sound good. But if it has to be done when the moon's hidden, they have to wait another month. The difficult thing will be tracking down all the cultists. If we leave any out there, they can still perform the rite. It doesn't stipulate the number of worshippers who have to be present, does it?"

  He shook his head. "Just the number of corpses." He continued to shuffle forward through the scroll as he spoke, sometimes hesitating over a word or image before moving quickly on.

  When he stopped, frozen into immobility, Boda immediately understood why. She didn't need to read the Egyptian script to understand the drawing in front of them. A circle of circles, it was clearly a chart of the phases of the moon.

  Three of them were entirely black.

  "Allfather!" Boda hissed. "This says - does this really say that the dark of the moon lasts for three nights?"

  She could see Vali's eyes flick from side to side as he scanned the text beneath. When he'd finished he didn't need to say anything; she could read the answer in his face.

  "When does the moon rise tonight?" she asked, voice harsh with panic. It was already dark outside, the first stars struggling to shine through the lights of the city.

  "I'm not sure," he said. "Last night it was a few hours after sunset."

  "And will it be the same tonight?"

  He spread his hands hopelessly. "It might be. We have to hope it is."

  "If Caligula sends a regiment of his soldiers, there'
s time for them to stop it."

  "We'll have to hope so," he repeated.

  But Caligula was nowhere to be found. Eventually they tracked down a slave who knew his location: a large house on the far side of Rome. The slave didn't think Caesar would want to be disturbed. Boda didn't care what Caesar wanted, but the house was too far away. The moon might rise unseen while they searched for it.

  This time they didn't listen to the guard outside Narcissus's room, pushing past him to get inside.

  Claudius glanced up sharply as they entered. Boda could see the faint glimmer of tear tracks on his cheeks.

  "Is he...?" she said. The figure on the bed looked very still, arms and torso bare where he must have tossed the sheets aside in a fever sweat.

  Claudius lowered his eyes again. "Gone," he said.

  Boda bowed her head for a second. "I'm sorry. But we've made a terrible mistake."

  "Have you?" Claudius's voice was flat and dull, as if he wasn't really listening to his own words.

  She turned to Vali, hoping he could rouse the old man, but he was staring at Narcissus, an unreadable expression on his face. She dropped to her knees beside Claudius and grasped his arm. "The moon is dark again tonight," she told him. "The Cult can hold their ceremony. They might be holding it right now!"

  Claudius laughed, a horrible, joyless sound. "So the w-w-world will d-d-die on the night my Narcissus has."

  She tightened her fingers on his arm. "But there might still be time! If you order the Praetorian Guard to the catacombs, we could stop them."

  "If I did..." He pried her fingers away without looking at her. "And why sh-sh-should I? Why sh-sh-should I save my n-n-nephew's city when my boy is no longer in it?"

  His eyes finally met hers, bleak and hard.

  "Please," she said. "Everyone will die - everyone - if we don't stop this."

  "Let them," he said. "Let tonight be the end of it all."

  Petronius returned to consciousness with a cry of pain as someone trod on his hand. They'd moved on by the time he was able to pry his gummy eyes open and he remained lying on his back for a moment, trying to piece together the shattered fragments of his mind.

  He'd had another argument with his father, he remembered that. No - he'd had a terminal argument with his father. Which meant - yes. He rolled over on his side and looked around him. He was lying in the gutter, somewhere in one of Rome's less salubrious neighbourhoods. He thought he must have continued drinking after his father disinherited him, but the memory was as blurred as rain on glass.

  He wanted to carry on lying there. It wasn't comfortable, but it was flat, and it wasn't as if he had anywhere else to lay his head. He had no home, and no apprenticeship. His head felt like an elephant had urinated in it, but his thinking was a little clearer. He knew he had no choice left but to throw himself on Caligula's mercy.

  He didn't anticipate that going any better than the encounter with his father. In fact, he suspected it might go considerably worse. At least his father wouldn't actually kill him.

  Two more people walked past him, stepping over rather than on his body this time. They were too well dressed to be out at this time of night in this neighbourhood, he thought, as their trailing togas swept over his face.

  With a groan of effort and pain, he rolled onto his stomach, then heaved himself up to his knees. He knew those men. They were cultists. And so were those three women scurrying past on the other side of the road. Now he thought about it, he suspected the man who'd trodden on his hand had been a cultist too.

  His heart started pounding and he felt a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the wine he'd been drinking. He didn't think they'd seen his face. He was just a drunk in the street and they hadn't paid him any attention. He had to make sure it stayed that way.

  Head lowered, he staggered across the road, into the shadow of a statue of Tiberius Caesar. A few eyes flicked over him but none of them paused. He still looked like a hopeless drunk. He was a hopeless drunk, he thought angrily. If he'd had his wits about him he might have noticed this far sooner.

  The cultists were being clever about it, he could see that now. They came in twos and threes, leaving a gap between each group. No one who didn't know who they were could possibly suspect anything.

  But Petronius did know. He just didn't know what he could do about it.

  Boda wasn't sure why she was doing this. She and Vali couldn't defeat the cultists alone, and they hadn't been able to persuade a single soldier to accompany them from the palace. She would have welcomed even Petronius's presence. He, at least, might have some idea of where the Cult's chamber lay inside the catacombs. In his absence, she and Vali were trusting to blind luck.

  Vali was leading, the torch in his hand casting long shadows behind them on the grey, uneven rock. His footsteps were nearly silent, hers a little louder. She was glad of even that low noise. It made this place seem real, not the half-dream it had been when she'd last been here, still shaking off the effects of the drug they'd made her drink.

  The dead lay all around. Some of the bones had crumbled to dust, but many skeletons were intact, curled inside their niches in the wall. The Cimbri burnt their dead. She thought that better - a quicker route to the other side than this slow rotting away.

  They hadn't seen anyone else approaching the catacombs when they came. Even deep inside as they were she could hear no breathing except their own.

  "This is a good sign," she whispered to Vali.

  "Is it?" His head was bowed as he walked in front of her, the tunnel too low to accommodate his full height.

  She nodded, even though he couldn't see it. "I don't think any cultists are here yet. We might be able to sabotage the ceremony before they arrive. If we burn the body they won't be able to reanimate it, will they?"

  His narrow shoulders shrugged. "Maybe not. Or maybe it's over, and we're already too late."

  They stumbled on. From time to time the torchlight revealed their own footprints in the dust ahead of them, and they knew that they'd doubled back on themselves. And all the time Boda felt a prickle of fear between her shoulders, as if some primordial instinct sensed the hidden moon nearing the horizon - or already over it.

  Then, finally, they stumbled on a chamber that Boda recognised. She'd stared at that rock formation - the one that looked like a rider on a bucking horse - for long minutes while they chained her arms and legs to the grating.

  She grabbed Vali's arm, pulling him to a stop. "This is the place they prepared me for the ceremony. The chamber's very near here."

  He looked around, frowning, and she knew what was worrying him. It worried her too. There was no sign of any cultists, no glimmer of light from the surrounding tunnels. And the grating itself and the chains with which they'd bound her were gone.

  Five minutes later, when they found the central chamber, that was empty too. There were bloodstains on the slab of rock that served as an altar, but no body. Boda could see marks through the dust on the cavern floor where Josephus's corpse had been dragged away.

  Vali and Boda looked at each other with the same horrified understanding. The cultists were gone from here, and they weren't coming back. Tonight's ceremony would take place somewhere else.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Petronius hovered on his toes, wracked with indecision. Two more cultists were passing him now, the first he'd seen for several minutes, and possibly the last. If he let them go, he might lose them altogether. But if he followed them, they'd be bound to spot him. They still needed a sacrifice, and they'd lost Boda. He didn't want to volunteer himself as a replacement.

  The second of the pair paused to adjust the shoulder of her white peplos, then disappeared round the corner. Petronius hesitated only a second more, then hurried in her wake. He'd been introduced to the Cult as just another member. There was no reason for them to suspect him - only Seneca and Sopdet knew his part in Boda's escape. As long as he didn't run into them, he should be safe.

  Still, he hung back, keeping to
the shadows as he slunk after them. He didn't have far to follow. In fact, he guessed their destination several streets before they reached it. The Temple of Isis. Its ornate marble façade loomed ahead, crowned with a silver dome.

  He hovered at the edge of the wide square which held the Temple. A tradesman's horse, forced to a halt by the crowds of wagons which crowded the roads at this time of night, pushed its nose into his palm. He stroked its long, silky face absentmindedly.

  He didn't know what the cultists were doing, but he could guess. They intended to complete tonight what they'd started the night before. Why else risk a meeting when they must know that the authorities had been warned against them?

  Last night the ceremony had seemed to drag on for ever, but he thought that it had actually lasted less than an hour. It might be shorter tonight. There might be no ceremony at all, just a quick knife across the throat of some poor unfortunate and it would all be over. Petronius had almost no time to find help.

  The palace was on the other side of Rome. It would take him half an hour to reach it - out of the question. He'd have to persuade someone nearer at hand to intervene. There were a few soldiers outside a building on the far side of the square. He could see their blood-red cloaks and the glimmer of their armour and weapons in the torchlight. They'd be members of the Praetorian Guard, of course. No other legion was allowed to bear arms within the walls of Rome.

  He was already crossing the square towards them, shouldering the crowd of pedestrians aside, when he realised what that meant. The Praetorian Guard protected Caesar. If they were outside that building, Caligula was almost certainly inside.

  The soldiers didn't want to let him through the door. When he tried to push past, he felt the point of a sword piercing his tunic to prick a drop of blood from his stomach.

  "Please," he said. "Caesar knows me and he'll want to hear what I have to say. Just send to ask him."