She wished that her father would see the unsuitability of her match and suggest a divorce. It would look so much better if it was Aulus’s idea. That would pass it off as his pragmatism, rather than risking any aspersions being cast upon her character.
‘Then, if Sempronius comes home safe from Iberia, we might—’
But she stamped down hard on the thought. It did no good to yearn for that which was not yet within her grasp.
* * *
Ostia, Truscan Coast
The curse had to be carefully crafted.
Vibia Sempronia Mellanis wished no misfortune upon the soldiers of the Second Legion, nor upon the sailors ferrying them across the Middle Sea to Gades. At least, no more than ill luck had brought them already, placing them not under the command of Vibia’s brother, Sempronius Tarren, but instead that of Praetor Lucretius Rabirus. ‘Tribulations will find them soon enough under his leadership without any help from me,’ she thought, tucking wind-stripped wisps of dark hair back beneath her mantle. She stood in Ostia’s market, near the temple to Volturnus, waiting.
Getting to Ostia had been simple enough. Her husband, Taius Mella, had many mercantile interests in the city at the mouth of the Tiber, which served as Aven’s main port. As a senator, he had to stay one step removed from operations, working through a freedman client, but he liked to check in once a month to keep an eye on things. As luck would have it, this trip coincided with the day that two legions were set to board ships on their way to Iberia.
‘Luck.’ Vibia almost smiled. She did not have magical strength enough to affect the laws of chance, as some Fracture mages could, but she had prayed to Fortuna, and the goddess had answered. All Vibia had to do then was express a fancy to come along, and her husband had been more than happy to make the arrangements. When she told him she needed to slip away for a bit, Mella had kissed her forehead, told her to take care, and sent a trio of slaves along as her escort. “Some business for my brother,” was all the explanation Vibia had given, and it was all that Mella had required. He knew, of course, that he had married a Fracture mage, but Vibia had always felt it more dignified to keep him one step removed from her thaumaturgical endeavors—particularly those which some might characterize as unsavory.
Vibia suffered no crisis of conscience, however. Rabirus deserved everything she could throw at him. He had tried to have Sempronius assassinated at least once, had set fire to Aven to try to invalidate elections that were not going his way, but worst of all, he had engaged the services of the Discordian devotee Pinarius Scaeva. Remembering the foulness that Scaeva had let loose, Vibia almost shook with rage, even months later. ‘Perverted, corrupted souls, the pair of them.’
Scaeva had abused the gifts of the gods, had sworn his allegiance not to Janus or Fortuna, as a Fracture mage ought, nor even to one of the lesser cults, but to Discordia, the lady of strife and misrule, who had no place in civilized society. Had been banished from it, her worshipers driven out of Aven—out of all Truscum. Yet this aberration had remained. For the harm he perpetrated, Vibia had exacted justice, fierce and swift.
Lucretius Rabirus, though, had escaped the initial reprimand. All through the winter, while Sempronius trained his troops on Ligurian fields and while most of the city settled into doldrums, Vibia had contemplated the right way to reach him.
A curse tablet was the surest method. A sheet of hammered bronze, inscribed with a lead stylus, so that Vibia could be excruciatingly specific. Sitting in a doorway one cool spring evening, with lavender twilight streaking the sky above her garden, Vibia had channeled all her fury, her affront, her horror at what Rabirus had done and had driven it into the metal. The gods would see him punished for his perfidies, she was certain; they could have no cause to deny her petition, rendered with righteous fury and precise piety, and they would deliver to him mishaps, ill fortune, and the frustration of his most dearly-held goals.
The trouble then was delivering it. A curse tablet might work if buried at a crossroads or cast into the river, but best of all was to get it into the possession of the cursed individual.
As a slender youth with dark curly hair crossed the forum toward her, Vibia considered that for once she had cause to be grateful for her brother’s habits of associating with the less rarefied elements of Aventan society.
“Hail, Domina,” the lad said as he pulled his gawky limbs to a halt in front of her and gave what was clearly meant to be a respectful bow, though it came off as a bit of a spasm.
Vibia inclined her head in a nod of acknowledgment. “You are Eneas of the Pipinos?”
“Indeed, Domina.” Another awkward bow. Taking pity on the young man, Vibia tried to relax her posture a bit. “I am here to fulfill my obligation to your noble brother.”
Young Eneas was a freedman—one of Sempronius’s, and his client still. As a child, he had worked at the family’s country estate, but in his tenth year, he manifested magical gifts, earning him his freedom and setting him on the path to a new career. Eneas’s talents lay in Water and Fracture—weak, but enough to give him a keen sense of storms, when they would appear, how they would move, how to avoid them. Valuable skills on the seas, and he had made good use of them. Young Eneas would likely gain a captaincy of his own before his twenty-fifth year, if he could muster some gravitas to go along with his magical gifts, but for now, he served as sailing master upon the ship that would carry Rabirus to Gades.
More luck, or more of Fortuna’s favor, Vibia hardly cared which. Had it been Sempronius being ferried across the Middle Sea, he would have gleaned the names and personal histories of all the ship’s officers within two days. But Vibia knew her target; Lucretius Rabirus was unlikely to trouble himself with even the captain’s name, much less the lower officers, and so he would never know that one Eneas Sempronianus guided his path to Gades.
Vibia waved her attendant forward, took the basket she carried, then dismissed her along with Taius Mella’s escorting guards. “Wait by the temple steps.” Her attendant was a good girl, and Vibia had no cause to distrust her husband’s men, but the fewer ears that heard a thing, the fewer tongues that could ever speak of it. Only once they were out of earshot did Vibia draw the curse tablet from the bottom of the basket. Though it was no longer hot to the touch, as it had been while she worked on it, she kept it wrapped in a simple homespun cloth. She never liked to touch her own works once they were complete; it seemed impolite, as though it implied that she needed to keep tampering rather than trusting the gods to keep up their half of the bargain.
Eneas put out a hand to receive the tablet, but Vibia did not hand it to him immediately. “Look at me, Eneas,” she said, in a tone meant to impress upon him the gravity of the situation. “Your patron’s life may depend upon this.” The lad’s pale eyes went wide. “Praetor Rabirus means him harm. I do not intend to let that harm come about, and I don’t think you would wish to, either.”