Chapter 6. Now Maris
NOW: MARIS
The thick wooden doors of my mother’s chambers—now my chambers—swung open, and we spilled into a sea of white as the Magistrates streamed down the Tribunal Hall toward the Forum.
The sound of sandals sliding over marble and the rustle of scrolls floated up into the tall ceilings, where the limestone was cast in a warm glow.
That dim light reminded me of my days in the temple.
Nej had never approved of my noviceship with the Priestess Ophelius, even before she was considered a traitor to Isara.
But my experience as a novice was the only reason I was even somewhat qualified to wear the Magistrate’s robes.
The Priestess had never been kind, but she’d taught me more about politics and people than my mother ever did.
You couldn’t understand the city or its problems without understanding the Old War.
And you couldn’t understand the Old War unless you understood the magic we stole from Valshad.
The very godsblood that ran through the Priestess’s veins.
The Magistrates’ portraits looked down on us as we walked, lining both sides of the hall with one stoic face after another.
My steps slowed when I saw two men balancing on a ladder ahead, carefully lowering one of the enormous paintings with a pulley.
It was of Magistrate Heraldes, an old member of my mother’s faction, which meant his was one of the bodies on the bridge.
The rest of the Magistrates who filled the hall were making an effort not to look.
For my entire life, there had been sixty-five portraits to represent the sixty-five Magistrate seats of the tribunal.
Now, every few paces, there was a missing one.
Some of the Magistrates’ families had left the city when the first battle against the New Legion was lost. They’d streamed to their summer villas to wait for what Consul Saturian said would be a swift victory over the revolt.
Once we lost the city gates, our only way in and out of Isara, there were those who tried their hands at escape or being smuggled out.
Every one of them had ended up strung from the bridge—a warning of what would happen to anyone else who attempted to flee.
But still, nearly every week, there was someone willing to try.
When we passed beneath the place my mother’s portrait had once hung, I kept my eyes on the white robes in front of me. Like Magistrate Heraldes’, it had been taken down only hours after she died, and soon my own portrait would replace it.
The moving crowd began to slow and the bellowing sound of the Magistrates’ names echoed out ahead.
“Osturan! Philosta! Trestis!”
The names of prominent, powerful political families rang out in the Forum as the Magistrates entered.
They were names I knew, some of them belonging to my mother’s rivals or even those who had sons she had thought of marrying me to.
She’d had no idea, even at the end, that I’d taken control of my own fate in more ways than one.
I took a step forward as the line formed, clasping my hand around the medallion resting against my chest. I tilted it in the light so that the gold flashed along the rim, the weight of it heavy.
The godsblood forged into the metal gave it a luminescence, and the branch of a cypress tree and the feather of a dove encircled my family name.
Casperia.
The medallion had been cast in the temple three days after I was born.
The name it bore signified wealth and reputation.
It had endowed my mother with a seat in the Forum and our family a villa in the Citadel District.
But now it was no more than a myth, like the ever-changing will of the gods. Now it was just a noose around my neck.
Nej pressed his elbow into mine and I blinked, realizing the scribe seated at the entrance of the Forum was waiting for me. I dropped the medallion and took up the length of my robes so I could climb the rest of the steps.
The man was seated beside a small table with an unrolled scroll nearly falling over its edge.
He dipped the tip of his quill into the pot of ink, eyes finding my medallion before they snapped up to my face.
There was a long pause before his quill touched down, dragging the letters across the parchment in the glistening ink.
“Casperia!”
His voice filled the chamber before me, and every set of eyes within it turned in my direction.
The Forum was carved from pure white stone with twelve rows of tiered levels encircling the floor below.
It was here that Isara had been born, consecrated to the goddess Aster.
Beneath this golden dome, wars had been declared, laws written, and lives taken by the voices that still echoed here.
I could almost hear those voices now, my mother’s among them.
I was nudged by the Magistrate behind me before I took an awkward step into the Forum. Every man and woman in the room was watching me, gazes dragging from my head to my feet. I had the sudden feeling that I was naked, parading before them without even a stitch of silk to hide me.
I walked toward my seat, not slowing when a man called Lechronis blocked my path. The length of his robes brushed the ground when he was forced to shuffle aside and a few other Magistrates coiled around him as he clutched his scrolls to his chest.
No one wanted to catch the ill favor of the gods, and as Ophelius’ novice, I was drenched in it.
Ophelius and the two other Priestesses took the fate of Isara into their own hands and did the unthinkable.
The unforgivable. Now Ophelius was the last living keeper of Valshad’s magic and imprisoned beneath our very feet, in the catacombs of the Citadel.
I didn’t breathe until I made it to my seat, a high-backed chair upholstered in a rich floral tapestry.
It was secured to the floor and enclosed on all four sides by stained wooden walls that reached as high as my waist. Within it, a small folding surface served as a desk, and a golden plaque that bore my family name was secured to the outside.
At the corner of the desk stood my family’s judgment stone.
The smooth, perfectly round face was polished and gleaming.
On one side, the marble was a bright, spotless white and on the other it was an onyx as black as ink.
I pushed through the little door of the enclosure with my hip and sat, busying my hands with the scrolls Nej had given me.
The Magistrates were divided into two factions: those who clamored for the fickle favor of Consul Saturian and those who sought to replace him once they had enough votes.
My mother had led the latter faction, determined to take the place of Consul herself.
News of her suicide had flooded the district as soon as it was reported, and it had caused a shift in the precarious balance of the Forum.
With nearly half the Magistrates gone, the factions barely existed, but that didn’t mean that the remaining Magistrates weren’t wondering which side I would fall on.
I forced my gaze ahead, ignoring the penetrating eyes of the room.
The interior of the Citadel was the only thing in Isara that had remained untouched by war.
There were plenty of buildings in the district that had been hit by catapults or damaged by firebombs cast across the river, but the white marble floors of the Forum were polished and shining.
They reflected the domed ceiling overhead, where colorful paintings of the gods looked down on us and the light from the flaming oil lamps made the scenes look like they were moving.
There were even a few of the gifted—Isarians who had been chosen to help deliver the will of the gods.
Below, the circular stone at the foot of the Magistrates’ seats was marked with an enormous twelve-pointed star, and every time I looked at it, I was there again—that single horrifying moment that had changed everything.
The Philosopher Vitrasian had stood at the center of the Forum, the fine silk of her chiton fluttering along her shoulders only seconds before she was executed.
I could still see the pool of dark blood that had smeared across the spokes of the star.
I could see the heavy drop of Vitrasian’s body, her head hitting the stone.
And I could hear him. Luca’s ghost of a voice. I could still hear him screaming.
My fingers curled around the fabric of my robes so tightly that they creased the silk, and I forced myself to unclench my hand, stretching it out before me.
My own mother had sat in this very chair that day and cast her judgment stone against Vitrasian.
Her hands had been painted with the blood that started the rebellion, but now the seat was mine.
Slowly, my eyes trailed to the empty seat of Magistrate Matius, where Luca should be sitting now. If he’d taken his uncle’s place, like we’d planned, the balance of the Forum would have already been tipped. But everything changed the day Vitrasian died.
The doors that opened across the Forum swung so quietly that I hadn’t noticed Consul Saturian entering until I saw the brilliant blue of his robes flash like liquid sapphire in the corner of my vision.
He took purposeful but patient steps in the direction of his seat, which rose higher than the rest in the room.
White hair crowned a young-looking face, with skin that hadn’t yet given way to wrinkles.
He looked almost as if he existed between two times.
My uncle followed on his heels, a stack of scrolls clutched in his arms. He didn’t look at me, but I could tell he was making a great effort not to. That was more than I could say for the other Magistrates, who were still glancing in my direction between whispers.
The last of the Magistrates took their seats as the Consul stopped at the podium, waiting for silence. The low hum of the fires burning in the bronze bowls overhead resonated in the room before he began.
“On this thirteenth day in the month of Aster, I call this tribunal to order.” The monotone syllables of the words bled into the ambient noise of the room as he executed the formal duties of opening and recording the events of the tribunal.
Seated beside him, Nej was already scribbling.
Legionnaires and rebels aside, the Consul was the man whose unyielding resolve had been the downfall of our city. His was the fist that held tightly to the Old War and the stolen magic that had once filled our dwindling storehouses with grain. Now there was almost nothing left to hold on to.
I’d seen the Consul many times at tribunals, but I hadn’t met him until the first Magistrate dinner my mother took me to when I was old enough to be put up for the silent auction of marriage.
It was expected, encouraged even, to be sure all forms of your wealth were visible to the tribunal.
As a Magistrate, having a child was like having treasure to trade.
Marriages between highborn families were alliances that couldn’t be dissolved.
They had the power to change the entire course of the future. In fact, they had many times.
My mother presented me to the Consul, and I remembered how he’d seemed to almost look through me. Like his silver eyes didn’t actually possess the ability to see. Even now, as I watched him look out over the Forum, they had an emptiness to them that was unsettling.
“Before we begin.” Consul Saturian paused. “It is my unfortunate duty as Consul to report to you the deaths of two Magistrates who served this body.”
There was no sudden stillness in the room. No intake of breath. The whole of the district had seen the bodies that morning.
“Magistrates Furia and Heraldes. As well as the daughter of Heraldes. May the gods keep their souls.”
The chill of the silence seeped into my bones, that stillness finally falling. There wasn’t a single Magistrate in the room who wasn’t thinking what I was—that each of us would find ourselves hanging from those ropes eventually. The only one who seemed not to know it was the Consul.
“Rest assured the gods will have their retribution. The fate of the warlord who calls himself Commander of the New Legion has been written. Just as ours has.”
The Consul didn’t even flinch as he spoke of his son. I hadn’t heard him refer to Vale using their family name even once since the fighting began.
His hands clenched on the edge of the podium, the tenor of his voice changing. “The subject of this tribunal is to witness the oath of Magistrate Casperia,” he continued.
Below, Nej shifted in his seat and my pulse quickened. There was a long pause, giving way to the murmurs of the Magistrates, and again, their eyes found me.
I instinctively stood, trying my best to keep my stoic expression in place. The silk of my robes fell past my hands and I clenched my fingers into tight fists to keep them from shaking. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. That was all I could think. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
The Consul’s gaze met mine. “Do you, Casperia, pledge your body and soul to the sons and daughters of this city?”
“I do.” My voice just barely shook.
“Do you swear by your family name to lay your hands only to that which honors Isara and her future?”
“I do,” I answered, louder this time.
“And do you pledge your life in service to this Forum?”
I swallowed, a pain igniting in my throat. “I do.”
“I hereby grant the Magistrate seat to you, Casperia, daughter of Casperia. May the gods bless you, protect you, and guide your hand on the judgment stone.”
A chorus of voices lifted, filling the Forum in a string of rites administered to cement my place among the Magistrates. But the sound was warped, twisting in my mind, because one voice was missing among them.
My eyes landed on the twelve-pointed star at the center of the Forum, the gathering storm of thoughts in my head circling only one thing—Luca Matius.
The feel of him slipping through my fingers before he ran down those steps.
The sight of him taking Vitrasian’s limp body into his arms. The shine of crimson covering his hands as he pulled the sword from the legionnaire’s belt.
That blade severed more than his own life, his own future. The blood on that sword cut him from me. Cut me from my vows. And when he crossed that river, he hadn’t just left the Citadel. Luca had left me.