CHAPTER NINETEEN
I sit in my rooms, shutting the doors and locking them so I won’t be disturbed.
Domitian can’t spy on me if I’m alone. At least, I hope he can’t.
In a city as awash with magic as Aetheria, it’s possible that he has someone watching me using scrying, looking at me through a mirror or a pool of water.
But I don’t think that’s the way he’s spying on me, not when the guards only showed up at the time Alaric mentioned in his message.
That suggests someone intercepting my messages, maybe searching my room.
It suggests a physical spy somewhere close to me, rather than a magical one watching from a distance.
Whereas I have the potential to watch anyone, anywhere, as long as there’s an animal close by. I lie back on my bed, closing my eyes and extending my consciousness beyond my body.
At first, I reach for animals around the city, seeing through hundreds of eyes at once.
I watch through the eyes of a crow as people struggle to deal with the injured and dead outside the Colosseum.
I watch healers from within the stadium coming out to help ordinary people on the street, and I'm grateful that they're doing that much, at least.
I see through the eyes of a giant snake in the beast pits of the arena.
I can see the deadly creatures being gathered there: the wolves and the bears, a scorpion the size of a man, and a many armed creature with claws at the end of each arm.
That worries me, because I don't see how these things can ever be a part of a safer kind of games.
I find the eyes of a small, scurrying creature in a dungeon within a prison tower, seeing people being thrown into the cell, their faces covered in bruises.
I can't see Alaric anywhere within the prison tower.
I don't know if that means that he hasn't been arrested or if he's just being kept elsewhere until he can be tried and punished.
I'm caught between relief that he doesn't seem to be there and fear that he might have suffered a worse fate.
All the while, the treatment of his supporters fills me with sorrow and dread about the way Aetheria is heading.
Does Alaric really believe he can change the city without violence? Does he think that just standing up and telling the truth will be enough to stop someone like Domitian? When it came to the emperor, the only thing that worked was violently overthrowing him.
I’m sure Domitian is all too aware of that as well. It’s probably why he’s reacting to Alaric and his people with such violence, seeing their actions as leading inevitably to a violent confrontation.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and he is afraid of the truth being shouted too loudly. Maybe the responses of those guards in Domitian’s employ are to stop the truth about him from flowing through the city.
After all, Domitian isn’t the emperor, just one senator among many.
He doesn’t sit at the top of a whole system designed to keep him in place, but instead is as subject to Aetheria’s laws and customs as anyone else.
It’s clear he has influence with at least some of the city’s guards, but many of the nobles have their own bodyguards, and I’m sure that not all of the guards obey him.
With the right knowledge, the right evidence, he might be brought down, and that prospect excites me now. I’ve started to acknowledge that Domitian is an enemy who will destroy me if I give him the chance. The question is what I can do to bring him and those around him down first.
There are all kinds of answers to that question. I've killed people outside of the Colosseum before, in the uprising, but also simply when there hasn't been another choice. I've sent rats to gnaw someone to death. I stunned the emperor with a swooping bird.
If I wanted to, I could control the beasts of the palace gardens as Domitian walks through it.
I could have them attack him, mauling him beyond the abilities of any healer to save.
I could summon a flock of birds to peck him to death, or a swarm of biting insects to poison him.
I could command animals to kill him in a hundred different ways.
And I can’t.
I can't do something like that. I can't bring myself to simply murder someone in cold blood.
The one time I sent rats after someone, I'd just been beaten to within an inch of my life.
When I killed the emperor, it was in the middle of an uprising, and he was planning to kill not just me but everyone close to me.
I won't just assassinate Domitian, even if I suspect he's been behind at least one attempt to kill me.
If I want to bring him down, I'll have to do it another way. I'll need to find the truth, bring it before the Senate, and hope that it's enough to see him fall from his lofty position. I focus again, still trying to find animals close to him, not to hurt him, but to watch him.
I find rats. I look out through the eyes of one as Domitian makes his way through the palace. I send it scurrying along behind him, keeping carefully out of sight. If Domitian notices a rat behaving oddly, I’m sure he’s smart enough to connect it back to me.
Thankfully, his attention isn't on small creatures moving through the shadows or squeezing through cracks as Domitian moves from room to room.
He's no longer wearing his senatorial toga but dark clothes, with a cloak over the top to disguise his face.
He leaves the palace, and I switch to the eyes of a bird, following him from above.
He heads down into the entertainment district of the city, to a building that appears to be a theater, decorated with bright illusions proclaiming the performances within.
As he heads inside, I switch my control to another rat, following him in the shadows once again.
Domitian doesn’t sit in the stands for the performance, but instead heads to a private box.
There are several people there. I recognize some of them.
Lord Arin, the fat noble from the Gilded Swan, is there. So is Lucius.
So is Marcus.
He must have left the palace at almost the same moment as Domitian but taken a different route.
Coming here, making sure he wasn't seen arriving with Domitian…
it's suspicious in the extreme. The two of them, even all four of them, could have met in the palace.
If they're doing it here, they really don't want to be overheard.
I don’t know all the figures in the room, but all of them are being careful not to reveal their faces. Marcus speaks.
"We're all here. Shall we begin, Domitian? I assume this is because of what happened outside the Colosseum?"
Domitian nods. “I believe it offers an opportunity.”
“What kind of opportunity?” Marcus asks.
“The rebels are a convenient set of foes,” Domitian says. “Traitors to the city. Does anyone here doubt that they need to be punished harshly?”
“They can’t be permitted to go on causing disruption to the games, certainly,” Marcus says.
"And we can have them punished publicly. If they die in a death match, no one can really complain," Domitian says. "And once that's happened, the precedent has been set. We send more criminals to die in the Colosseum. After a few months of that, everything will be back to the way they should be."
Several of the figures in the room look thoughtful. Even Marcus.
“I’m not sure that would work,” Marcus says. “Rowan will hate the idea.”
“And your precious lover, Lyra,” Lucius says.
Domitian looks at Marcus. “Yes, is this about Lyra, Marcus?”
“We aren’t together anymore,” Marcus says. He sighs. “You all know I was keeping her close so she wouldn’t be a problem. Does any of you want to deny that things have been easy for you in the last few months?”
Those words hurt like a dagger thrust through my heart. How can Marcus say something like that? Was he really only ever with me so he could control me? Was this all about manipulating me so Marcus and his allies could get what they wanted?
“It would be hard to push through the execution of criminals in the games like that,” Marcus says. “And even if we managed it, it wouldn’t get us back to the full games.”
“There’s another option,” Lucius says.
“What other option?” Domitian asks, sounding disappointed that his idea was being shot down.
“We can offer gladiators a chance to earn greater rewards by taking on greater risks,” Lucius says. “We make it clear that it’s entirely voluntary, that they could have safer matches if they want.”
“And what’s the good of that?” Domitian demands.
Marcus is the one who explains it, and I hate him for explaining it.
“Because the deadlier matches will be more exciting. No one will want to watch the safe ones. The fighters will want the rewards, and the crowd will want to see death.”
“So we get what we want: the games, the city, back to all it should be,” Domitian says.
“We’ll need to do it a little at a time,” Marcus says.
"Of course," Domitian replies. "You'll be the one to raise the proposal in the Senate?"
Marcus nods, tersely.
I pull back from the mind of the rat, returning to my own body. I feel pain and betrayal flooding through me, the need to hurt someone mixed in with the knowledge that it won’t do any good. I need to find a way to prove everything I just heard, a way to make them all pay for this.
They were talking about speaking to gladiators, offering them more dangerous matches. If I can get one of them to speak to me, maybe that will be enough proof. I think of Sorrel, the gladiator who pointed me at the Gilded Swan. Maybe he can tell me more, something I can use to take them all down.