Chapter 13. Now Maris
NOW: MARIS
The Citadel’s bell tower rang out each night when the sun dipped below the horizon, just as the evening painted the intricate maze of white stone a delicate pink.
That was the only thing that had remained from before—the way the daylight skewed the colors as the hours ticked by, like an ever-changing prism.
No matter how broken Isara became, that light still cast the city in the hues of seashells and pearls.
But the once busy shop fronts that lined the market below now mostly stood abandoned behind merchant carts that had been toppled over.
Even the colorful awnings that stretched over windows were shredded or missing altogether, and the tall marble statues that flanked the plaza were no more than a pile of rubble.
The river, too, was different. Before the fields began to fail, it was filled with boats loaded with dried meats from the pasturelands, fruit from the south, or decorative glass bottles of wine.
The atrium of Villa Casperia was an impossible contrast to what lay outside.
Lush green plants spilled from terra-cotta urns, vines climbing in their search for the light pooling at the center of the room.
There, mosaic floors depicted the gods on a hunt.
Musaeus himself was crouched low in the brush, spear in hand as he stalked a deer.
Even the birds seemed to be unaware of the blood that painted the streets of the city.
Their gilded spindle-tipped cages in varying shapes and sizes were strung from the beams overhead—an obsession of my mother’s.
The birds hopped and fluttered at my back as I unclasped the medallion from my neck, their songs like the tinkling of bells that stopped only with the periodic boom of an explosion somewhere in the city.
That was a sound that had once made my blood run cold, but now it was the silence that terrified me.
I closed a small sack of grain into my satchel and slung the strap over my head so it lay across my chest. The smell of paper and ink was in the air, and I looked up to see the door of my mother’s study cracked open.
I walked toward it, hand lifting before me.
It hovered there for a few moments before I pushed the door open.
Carved wooden shelves that reached almost to the ceiling covered the entire back wall of the small room, stacked carefully with my mother’s scrolls.
I didn’t let my gaze linger too long on the things she’d left behind.
Trinkets, spyglasses, and little pottery vessels filled with birdseed dotted every surface, bringing to life the sounds that had once filled this house.
The slide of the scrolls as she unrolled them across her desk.
The absent-minded tap of her stylus against the inkpot.
The soles of her sandals brushing over the floor.
I blinked the thoughts away, firmly replacing them with the last memory I had of my mother. Not of her lovely narrow face or her delphinium-blue chiton or her almost-whisper voice. The memory was of her hand. Her slender ringed fingers smeared in the blood that covered the floor.
I pulled a small bronze box from one of the shelves, setting it on the desk before I opened it. The brooch was cast in silver and set with an ornate bouquet of gem-studded blooms. Its weight in metal alone would fetch a very good price, and I hoped it would be enough for what I needed.
The bells finally chimed, and I tucked it inside my chiton, making my way back out into the gallery.
The finches chirped, hopping on their little perches as I dropped the cloak over my shoulders.
I’d unearthed an old chiton left in a forgotten trunk by one of the servants and a pair of sandals that were a bit too small.
But if I was going to do this, I needed to look the part.
The bells rang out again as I closed the thick mahogany door of the villa behind me. The winding stairs were covered in dust and crumbling stone with no servants left to sweep them. In fact, the villas that lined the entire street were nearly empty now, the dark windows like gaping holes.
In the old days, the district would have been filled with the sounds of the market, with men and women calling out the prices of their pottery and their silks ready to be cut into elegant stolae and distinguished togas.
Now it was littered with broken marble from the toppled arches hit by the ballistae.
Ophelius’ warning that something had changed was like a splinter under my skin, driving deeper the more I turned the Consul’s words over in my mind. We were only days from the Citadel District being taken, a fate that anyone who looked across the river could see coming. So, why didn’t the Consul?
My deep blue chiton was nearly invisible in the waning light, but there was no one to see me, because there was no one who dared to go out after dark.
Terrified of being accused of trying to flee the city, the remaining occupants had their villas shut up tight before the bells rang.
The Citadel District was silent, no drifting notes of a song coming from someone’s window or a conversation of a couple on an evening stroll.
The fires of the New Legion stretched along the other side of the river, their glow wavering on the surface of the black water. I watched from the shadow of the scaffolding, waiting to be sure that the street was empty before I started toward the eastern bridge.
I could see Zuri tucked into the darkness. Iola’s younger brother was almost two heads taller than her now, close to becoming a man. He leaned against the pillar of the stone wall, arms crossed over his chest in an almost bored manner. But I could tell, even from a distance, that he was nervous.
I stuck close to the embankment until I could cross the street unseen. The legionnaires patrolled both sides of the river, the rebels on one side, the loyals on the other. When I reached him, I concealed myself in the shadows at his side.
“Wasn’t sure you’d come.” He watched the street behind me, wary. “After those bodies on the bridge this morning.”
I pulled the satchel over my head, handing it to him as he took the empty one from his own shoulder and offered it to me.
Iola wouldn’t approve of our weekly meetings, but even she couldn’t deny the value of grain at a time like this.
Despite the rebellion’s best intentions, most people in the Lower City were starving.
“I need a favor,” I said, reaching into my chiton for the brooch. “And before you say no, it’s one I can pay for.”
Zuri hesitated before he took it, eyes widening as his vision focused on the glint of the gemstones. It wasn’t the purse of drachmas I usually pressed into his palm. “What kind of favor are we talking about?” His gaze turned wary.
“I need you to take me across,” I whispered.
“You can’t be serious,” he scoffed.
“I need to see Iola.”
“I’m not taking you over there. You won’t last an hour before someone catches you.”
“I’m not asking.”
He stiffened, the line of his mouth flattening. “We’re not servants anymore, Casperia.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I sighed.
“You get yourself killed over there and it won’t just be the New Legion trying to cut my throat. My sister will—”
“Please,” I pressed.
He studied me, mouth twisting to one side as he thought. “You’re not trying to get out of the city, are you? Because that cohort at the gates has caught every poor bastard with the same idea.”
“I don’t have a death wish.”
“That’s debatable.” He exhaled, holding the brooch to the light and testing its weight in the center of his palm. After a moment, his hand dropped to his side and he shoved it into his pocket. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
I nodded.
He looked out over the moonlit water. It was several seconds before he glanced back at me, gesturing for me to follow.
He turned into the darkness and stepped onto the ledge.
The narrow stone shelf below the bridge followed its length to the other side, hidden from the glow of the oil lamps that lit the path above.
I’d seen Zuri walk it countless times, but the emptiness of the air below us made my stomach drop.
When I didn’t immediately follow, Zuri waved me forward.
I kept my eyes on the flickering flame of the streetlamp on the other side, willing myself not to look down as the ground dropped out from beneath us. The warm wind swept around me, pulling at the length of my chiton as I moved onto the ridge of stone.
I fit my hands into the grooves of the bridge’s base and inched myself along the narrow ledge. It was just wide enough for my small feet, and I kept my body close to the wall as sweat trailed down the center of my back. We inched along in a silence that woke gooseflesh on my skin.
When voices on the other side of the bridge rang out, I stopped, pressing myself to the stone wall and trying to slow my breaths.
It was the sound of drunken laughter from a pair of legionnaires crouched around a fire for the night’s watch.
Their shadows played on the walls ahead, the unmistakable shape of their armor giving them away. They were throwing dice.
“Quickly,” Zuri called back in a hoarse whisper.
My sandals silently found their way along the ledge behind him.
His feet stepped from stone to stone, and when he reached the end, he sank low, holding one hand in the air.
The only way to the street from here was crossing the mouth of the bridge or scaling the wall that was lit with firelight.
If we were caught doing either, we’d have an arrow in our backs before we could slip into the darkness on the other side.
I studied the distance between the legionnaires and the archway, counting the number of steps that would take us around the wall. Thirty, I guessed. Maybe a few more or less.
Two high-pitched pings rang out, followed by a brief silence, and the two legionnaires erupted into cheers, sending their shadows dancing ahead.
One of the men grabbed the other by the shoulders, shoving him aside as he crouched down to scoop up the dice.
The other one stood, murmuring something I couldn’t hear before his silhouette moved into the street.
Zuri shifted, getting ready to stand, and I took hold of the stones overhead, following his lead. A few seconds later, I could hear the legionnaires relieving themselves in the distance. Zuri moved aside, making room for me to pass, hands at my back as I climbed.
The darkness beyond the archway swallowed me up and I tucked myself behind the wall, waiting for Zuri. He appeared a second later, pulling me along the alley and away from the river. He didn’t stop until we’d made it to the next street.
His eyes scanned the empty windows overhead before his voice broke the eerie silence. “Iola’s going to kill me for this.”
The path through the congested streets was etched in my mind like the faint trace of a dream. Iola’s lavender palla fluttering in the breeze as I followed her through the Lower City was an image that was still vibrant and alive inside me.
We kept to the wall, staying close enough that I could drag my fingertips along in the dark. The streets grew narrower as we made our way deeper into the labyrinth of buildings, every corner empty, every passageway silent. The emptiness of it all made a shiver jolt up my spine.
We had to go only a few blocks before I saw it.
The white domus that sat at the corner of the cross streets was aglow in the moonlight, the smooth white walls like snow.
Unlike the villas I’d grown up in, the domus had flats on every level, reaching four to six stories high.
Iola’s was on the second, with trailing vines of wisteria draped across the windows.
Zuri watched the street, listening for the sound of boots before he crossed into the dim torchlight of the lamps. The soft sound of someone scrubbing floated down in the silence, punctuated by a faint voice somewhere in the distance.
He waved me forward once it was clear and I took the narrow steps. The stucco cracked in a maze of veins that reached up to the sliver of night sky between the rooftops.
Zuri stopped before the door and I stared at the talisman that hung from the handle.
A blessing of cornstalks bound together, folded in the shape of the god Toranus to protect the home from evil spirits.
Zuri hesitated for a moment before he knocked and I swallowed hard when the sound of the wash bin instantly ceased.
The quiet was replaced by timid steps over tile floor until the light beneath the door flickered.
“Who’s there?” a voice called on the other side. It was Iola.
“It’s me,” Zuri said lowly.
When the door swung open, I exhaled, my throat tightening. Iola’s face was aglow in the little flame dancing on the wick of the oil lamp in her hand. Her eyes widened as they fell on me. “Maris? What are you doing here?”
“Iola,” I breathed. “I need your help.”