Ave, Caesarion Page 4

  The men of the Senate backed up a step or two as Caesarion rested his bloody hands on his brother’s limp shoulders. He could see Malleolus hovering at the door of the chamber, unable to enter, but looking stricken. “All I have heard for the past nine days,” Caesarion continued steadily, “is that with my father’s death, civil war seems inevitable. And how I must be ruthless with all of you to ensure that no such thing transpires, or that if it does, that it at least will be of short duration. My lords, the gods themselves tire of your wars. I am here today to tell you that there will be no civil discord on my ascension to my father’s offices.” His hands tightened on his brother’s shoulders. “In fact, I am here to assure it.”

  Murmurs from the crowd.

  A life for a life, Isis whispered again. Choose wisely.

  Cicero stood nearby; he was an old man, who’d given his life to the service of a republic that no longer existed. But he remained the voice of liberty, of justice, of all the old values that Caesarion himself prized. And, equally near, Octavian stood as well, his brow wrinkled with what looked like concern as he stared at Alexander’s corpse. You didn’t want him dead. Fury still burned in Caesarion. You wanted him as your puppet. You didn’t order his death, but that doesn’t mean that your associates—if associates they were—couldn’t have killed him by accident. No proof. Never any damned proof.

  But Octavian was the other face of Rome, the flip side of the coin from Cicero. Ruthless pragmatism. Someone who would use whatever tool he had, to accomplish the goal at hand. The two, side by side? Principles balanced against pragmatism.

  And, while Caesarion hated to think this way, he had to do so, quickly. Octavian could be a valuable ally. He was a young man, where Cicero was old and worn. He had energy and a life still to give to the Empire, where Cicero had none. It would be the more pragmatic thing to do, to take the life of the old man, and use it as Isis whispered that he could. But in doing so, he’d be extinguishing the last light of the old Republic.

  And this, Caesarion could not do. Attack your strongest enemy, defeat him decisively, and conquer the rest through their fear. He looked up after his long pause, and continued, iron ringing in his voice, “I have no evidence of who directed the attack on me that injured Lepidus last night. I have no evidence of who ordered the attack on me that cost the life of my brother. I do not need evidence. Justice, today, will be truly blind, for I require only that an example be made. So that you all understand.”

  He raised one blood-stained hand from Alexander’s shoulder and clasped Octavian’s, almost companionably. Felt the sickening rush of energy as Octavian’s life rushed through him, and into Alexander. Octavian’s knees buckled, and he hit the marble floor, choking and gasping on his own blood, as Alexander coughed sharply and sat up, reaching for the wound in his chest that was no longer there. “What—what happened?” Alexander cried.

  Caesarion staggered, and he had to brace himself on his father’s chair to remain standing amid the cries of consternation around him. “Be silent!” he shouted over their voices, swaying where he stood, his vision skewing. “Listen, and hear me very well. If at any point in the future, some member of my family should be murdered again, the person who took that life will recompense me in exactly this way.” A muscle in his cheek twitched. “You can, if you so wish, make your houses into charnel yards. And I will accommodate each and every one of you. Or you can come to understand, gentlemen, that the era in which you all squabbled for power is over. You may advise. You may consent. You may control the budget. You can impose taxes and provide services. You can and you will keep order in the city.” That last, with a look at the stunned Marcus Antonius. “But you will . . . not . . . rule. That is my duty and my burden.”

  The senators didn’t take long to find their voices, but their arguments seemed halfhearted at best. They’d seen a genuine miracle performed before their eyes . . . and none of them wished to become the next object lesson of divine power. And so, after the first hour of tedious debate, Caesarion sent Alexander home in a litter to recover, feeling guilty as he did. He hoped his brother never came to remember today as the day on which Caesarion had let him die.

  After the Senate finally acclaimed Caesarion the God-Born as Emperor of Rome, Cicero was the last to leave. A little curl to his old, colorless lips as he moved to address Caesarion, who stepped down from his chair and offered his elder a respectful arm to help convey him to the door. “I did not realize that your father had planned for the final death of the Republic in the person of his son,” Cicero murmured.

  “I love the ideals of the Republic,” Caesarion replied honestly. “But no one in this chamber has lived those ideals in decades. I will uphold them.” He grimaced. “As best as they will allow me.”

  Cicero stopped and looked at him. “Make them see,” he rasped. “Make them see the waste of lives, wealth, and potential in every civil war. Turn them against outsiders if you must, but Rome herself must be reborn, and her promise extended to all within her borders.”

  Caesarion nodded. “That was my father’s dream, too,” he replied. “And I will honor it.”

  “Ave, then, Caesarion,” Cicero returned. “May the Fates be kinder to you than they usually are to conquerors.”

  Rome, the Civil Wars of 15-16 AC.

  Chapter II: Visions

  Martius 18, 16 AC

  Civil unrest had still followed Caesarion’s ascension to his father’s offices; there were still many who had opposed Caesar’s assumption of the powers of dictator and Imperator, after all. Relatives of his would-be assassins—the powerful Servilius family, who’d had two brothers both assault the new Emperor, fifteen years before; the less-renown Tillius family, whose son Cimber had planned to distract Caesar and allow all the other conspirators to attack; and the once-ascendant Cassius family, whose son Longinus had been Brutus’ brother-in-law, and the prime mover behind the assassination attempt—had seen their sons, fathers, husbands, and brothers proscribed. Hunted across the Italian peninsula, in spite of the armies that they’d raised. And all these men, who’d believed in the ideals of the Republic, or who had at least believed in the necessity of their own power and the glory of their own ambitions, had either committed suicide, been executed, or had fallen in honorable battle. Even Sextus Pompey, son of Pompey the Great, who had once been Caesar’s ally, but who had become one of his greatest foes, had been defeated resoundingly by Lepidus in 9 AC. Captured, he’d taken his own life, rather than be either pardoned or exiled by the man who’d defeated his father.

  All these men had died. Their families, however, remained. And no matter the demonstrations of Caesarion’s own god-born nature—the six-foot height, when most men stood half a foot or more shorter, the blood-red eyes, the armored skin, the ability to heal even mortal wounds in others—those who hadn’t been in the Forum when he demonstrated his abilities discounted the tales as fabrications. A mummer’s show, put on to sway the gullible. And nevermind that Cicero had been one of those swayed—he was an old man, clearly no longer in command of his faculties.

  As such, in spite of every precaution Caesarion had taken, in spite of the sacrifice of Octavian’s life in the Forum, the Servilius and Tillius and Cassius families had scattered to the fringes of the Italian peninsula and had marshalled their own forces. “This is precisely why your father felt that there needed to be a strong central authority,” Lepidus told Caesarion early on, as they headed south of Rome at the head of a column of over twenty thousand legionnaires. “Only one man who could levy the legions.”

  Caesarion tossed a glance back over his shoulder at the men following him. He’d been forced to wait half a year, until the campaigning season, to follow the rebels south; one simply couldn’t pick up and fight in winter. The supply chain simply didn’t allow for it. “The trick is replacing their loyalty to their local patricians, who’ve held power in places like Sicily and Campania for hundreds of years, with loyalty to me. Or to Rome itself.” Of course, the rebels would say that
they are loyal to Rome. To the Republic. Which is little but a syllogism for their own power.

  More or less at the center of the column a carruca toiled, drawn by two horses. The white-crested helmets of the Tenth Legion surrounded this enclosed carriage, and for good reason—Caesarion had brought his family with him on campaign. There were reasons for not leaving them in Rome. First and foremost, his mother was an extremely helpful guide to the hundreds of dispatches he received from the outer provinces each week. Cleopatra was the primary reason he understood the nuances of reports received from places like Egypt, Carthage, Judea, and Syria—and keeping those provinces running smoothly ensured that he wouldn’t wind up having to fight rebels there the instant he got done putting down this rebellion here at home. Second, she was betrothed to Marcus Antonius, who’d proven himself just as worthy a general in late middle-age as he’d been as a young man. Without Antony and Lepidus, Caesarion wasn’t sure he’d be able to prosecute this war properly. Third? With his mother shortly to leave his house for Antony’s, she would be leaving her daughters, Eurydice and Selene without a mother to educate them.

  Here was a place where Egyptian and Roman customs came into conflict; Cleopatra was a reigning queen, co-equal with Caesarion in Egypt . . . theoretically. She could have insisted on bringing her daughters with her to Antony’s house, or could have insisted that he, as her consort, come to her son’s house, which would have been seen as emasculating to Antony. However, neither she nor Caesarion trusted the man with the two young girls. And Lepidus had been named their guardian in Caesar’s will, in any event. Which in turn meant that Caesarion could have left them in the care of Lepidus’ wife, Junia Secunda—the sister of the late hero, Brutus—but then they’d be in Rome, with perhaps part of the Tenth Legion positioned to guard them, but more or less at the mercy of any who thought it might be a good idea to take the girls hostage.

  And so, Caesarion’s entire family had been packed into the uncomfortable, jolting carruca with its iron wheels. Alexander at least was free to ride with the rest of the men, for the younger man, now past his fourteenth birthday, had joined Caesarion’s staff once more as a scribe. But Cleopatra and the two girls remained in the carriage, mostly out of sight of the soldiers who guarded them, but certainly not out of Caesarion’s mind, for he knew that his worry for them was his most vulnerable point.

  Their current goal was the port of Brundisium on the Adriatic—a city which Caesar had crushed two years before Caesarion had even been born, and which had required reminders of Roman rule when Caesarion had been between the ages of five and seven. He had vague recollections of going with his father on the first campaign, held in his father’s arms in front of him in the saddle. It had seemed like a game then, but for the deadly seriousness in the faces of the men.

  It didn’t seem much like a game now. They’d taken over a month to march this far from Rome, gambling that taking out this stronghold was the best first move. Servilius forces had taken refuge in Illyria, across the sea in the city of Dyrrachium, where Lepidus had finally bested Pompey’s forces long ago, and Tillius forces had decamped for Hispania. And with those two forces decamped to the provinces, that left the Cassius family here, holding a port that had been strategic since the time of Hannibal.

  This has to be a clean, hard strike, Caesarion thought, trying to keep all his worries from showing on his face. Something that shows I’m worthy of my father’s name. And something that lets us return to Rome quickly, before messengers arrive in either Hispania or Illyria, telling the two other rebellious factions that Rome itself is only lightly guarded at the moment.

  Lepidus, seasoned campaigner that he was, eyed the position of the sun above the western horizon, and called for a halt, giving the men adequate time to set up defensive perimeters around the entire encampment. Organized chaos, and the sound of hammers thudding stakes deep into the black earth. Caesarion shook his head, feeling almost entirely useless at the center of this human swarm. No hammer for his hand—he was the damned Imperator these days—so he took the opportunity to ride through the neat rows of tents. Not making a pain of himself, but just watching the bustle of activity. Learning what he could through simple observation. Nodding to this centurion or that when the various officers registered who he actually was, usually by snapping to attention with a nearly audible crack of their spines. I’d find that more amusing if I didn’t find it so damned annoying. Six months ago, I was leading these same men through forests in Germania, fighting tribes who had a damned dragon. Risking my life alongside theirs. And today, I’m risking their lives fighting our own people, because a handful of patricians are too stubborn to realize that the world has moved on.

  Tired of making himself a visible presence, Caesarion urged his horse back to the center of the camp, where his tent had already been erected for him. He could see its red fabric clearly from afar, and slid down from the saddle—worn leather stretched over a wooden frame—and tossed the reins to one of the servants with him on campaign. Like almost all of his servants, this man was Egyptian, shaven of pate and distant of demeanor. “Take care of him, please. He’s had a long ride today,” Caesarion murmured, the words coming out in fluent Egyptian. The language of the Ptolemaic court in Alexandria was Hellene, of course, but his mother had been the first queen in generations to learn the common language of those whom she ruled—and she’d insisted that he learn it, as well.

  A quick bow, and the servant disappeared with the lathered horse. His steed and the soldiers around him might be tired, but Caesarion wasn’t. God-born as he was, he felt a light strain from having been in the saddle for eight hours, but little more. He thus strode into the tent, fully expecting to meet with advisers and read dispatches that had just caught up with the rear of the column—a process that might well take him until three or four hours past sundown, and meant that every meal he took was a working one.

  Inside, the tent, oil lamps had been set out, but not yet lit, since there was still enough light by which to see. The living area was divided from the public meeting area by folds of cloth, and he could hear his mother and siblings at the rear of the tent, while servants bustled around, depositing flat rounds of panis bread on the camp table and pouring wine. Fresh grapes—probably procured from a vineyard they’d passed earlier in the day. Whether the fruit had been paid for, Caesarion made a mental note to check. Cheese. No meat tonight; he’d made a point of telling the supply officers that he and his family would eat no better than the rest of the forces with them. Of course, this meal was for himself and his senior officers—Lepidus, Antony, and a few others. His mother and sisters would be eating their own meals in private, at the rear of the tent.

  He’d just flipped over a map of the Apulian region to stare at Brundisium and its perfect natural harbor, the fortifications built by Roman hands—and struck down by Roman hands, and rebuilt once more—when a low cry of pain caught his ear. Caesarion dropped the map, spun, and shoved the tent folds out of the way, ducking to enter the rear of the tent. “What’s wrong?” he asked, blinking as at least three people all started talking at once.

  “It’s nothing to worry about—” his mother began.

  “Eurydice might be sick—” Alexander cut in.

  Selene, his youngest sister, and no more than ten, yelped when she saw him and backed away, putting their mother between herself and her brother. Caesarion had noticed this behavior since he’d allowed the illusions concealing his full height and strength to dissipate, but the flinching and hiding had never been so obvious before. Cleopatra gave her youngest daughter an annoyed glance and an actual cuff to the back of her neck, making Selene yelp once more. “It’s your brother,” their mother told the girl acidly. “I trust that you have met him at least once or twice in your life, you silly child.”

  Selene shrank away from her now, too, sidling towards Alexander instead. Caesarion put it aside as a mystery for another day, and crossed to where Eurydice lay curled up on one of the camp beds, her hands pressed to he
r forehead. He’d never been sick a day in his life, but he understood pain. He touched her face lightly, but felt no fever. “Is it riding in the carruca?” he asked gently. “Lepidus says that his wife gets seasick on dry land in those contraptions. She throws up out the window, which is why she never comes with him on campaign.”

  Eurydice turned towards him. He’d barely spent any time with his younger siblings before this. Alexander was five years younger than he, Eurydice a year younger than that. While they were still in the nursery, he’d been at their father’s side on this military campaign or that. First as a sort of mascot for the troops, and then, from the age of twelve on, as an assistant. A scribe, then a young officer himself, and most recently, as a tribune of the Tenth Legion. Alexander had followed suit in the last year, allowing the two brothers to grow to know each other, but the girls had been raised apart. His chief memory of Eurydice before this year, was therefore of her running through a garden after him when she was six, leaping on his shoulders, and begging him to be a horse for her just one more time.

  It therefore jarred him a little as she opened her eyes, and he realized that while their mother had been somewhat dubiously praised as a beauty for decades, in his sister’s face, he could see the first intimations of a face that would far exceed Cleopatra’s. The dark eyes were precisely the same as their mother’s, but her skin was paler, more of a blend between Cleopatra’s tawny Egyptian gold and their father’s Roman pallor. Her nose was aquiline, but somehow missed resembling the prow of a ship, the curse of so many patrician women. High cheekbones and a firm chin gave her face a hint more strength than conventional beauty, balancing her. “Just a headache,” Eurydice told him, managing a smile. “Colored lights.”