These were the constants of the universe. Anything that was built would be broken. Anything born would suffer and die.
These were a Fracture mage’s strength, her succor.
‘Through this,’ Corinna thought, as the pigeon’s fear and fury crackled through her own bones, ‘I can reshape the world.’ In a swift twist, she snapped the bird’s neck. ‘Through this, I can find grace.’
I
Nedhena, Province of Maritima
With slender green stalks of unbloomed lavender on one side and the murky blue of a flat river on the other, the General of Aven’s Legio X Equestris rode toward his camp.
As praetor of Cantabria, the northern of Aven’s two provinces in the vast expanse of Iberia, Sempronius Tarren had not technically arrived in his appointed domain yet. He wanted to gather his full forces before proceeding south into Iberia. Opportunities would not be lost in waiting, however. The centurions were drilling the troops, preparing for whatever they might face in the Iberian wilds. The quartermasters, under the supervision of Sempronius’s tribunes, were restocking and setting up the supply chains that would support the legions going forward. Sempronius took it upon himself to speak to the locals, to find out what challenges they faced that Aven might help them rise to meet. Maritima was, technically, no business of his, but it was against his nature not to take an interest.
This day, he had gone upriver to inspect the local dye factory. They were doing remarkable work with the materials available to them. ‘A more secure trade network would enable them to apply their processes to finer products. Saffron and indigo, kermes instead of red madder—they could have the beginnings of a flourishing industry here, if Aven would support the necessary infrastructure.’
Sempronius had wanted to learn from the dyers themselves what about the trade routes needed improvement. The conservative Optimates in the Senate sneered at tradesmen’s matters, but they were the lifeblood of any nation. ‘I would see these veins pumping vigor into every extremity of the Middle Sea, and Aven the beating heart.’
The river Atax flowed flat and slow through this part of Maritima, impressing itself between low hills. It was not a clean-flowing channel, and that troubled Sempronius. Practically, it cut down on the channel’s navigability, making it a less reliable trade route—one of the complaints of the upriver dyers. That alone would be reason to see it cleared, but Sempronius had another, though one he wouldn’t admit to even if he could. How ridiculous would it be, to try and explain that the river was unhappy?
Yet that was his sense of it. With the strain of Water magic flowing through him, he could feel the Atax’s choked flow, too clogged with duckweed and silt to move with any speed. ‘Stagnant water is not healthy.’ The slower it moved, the more prone it was to fostering disease and decay.
Sempronius’s other element was Shadow, and that side of his nature argued that even disease and decay had their place. Rot was an essential component of the world’s life cycle. For the Atax, though, Water won out. It yearned for a freer flow, a course that could roll through Maritima, strong and true and clear. Sempronius could feel the goddess Lympha, lady of springs and rivers, calling to him, directing his attention.
‘If it is in my power to help, Lady, I shall,’ he vowed. ‘If I can find the way to set this river free, I will.’ He could rely on the trade-related reasons for doing so, since he could not reveal his magical insights. His whole life, Sempronius had kept his blessings a secret. Mages were prohibited by the lex cantatia Augiae from holding any political office higher than that of a senator, and the Augian Commission, responsible for keeping Aven’s mages in adherence to all magic-governing laws, would ruthlessly punish any offender, if he were caught.
Such restraint had never been in Sempronius’s plans, and he believed the gods were behind him. They wanted him to build Aven into the city of his dreams, that heart of a vibrant and thriving world. He could not do so if stymied by prohibitions of men who feared the misuse of such power.
In any case, he would not have the time to free the Atax now. That would have to wait until after the Iberian venture was finished. ‘So much needs fixing. One problem at a time.’
As he approached the rows upon rows of tents, pitched outside Nedhena’s low earthenwork walls, he thought over the months of his praetorship thus far, and what would need doing in the future. It had taken months to bring the legion this far. The road from Aven to Iberia went through four provinces. First, the high plains of Liguria, where Sempronius had drilled the Tenth Legion until the spring thaw allowed them to get through the mountain passes of Albina. Sempronius had started in March, as early as he could deem reasonable, grateful for the predecessors who had seen to it that an unbroken road crossed the continent from Aven to Nedhena. The passage through the Albine Mountains had been one of the grandest achievements of the previous century. Now, instead of having to wait for the snows and ice to thaw the upper elevations, the army could march at lower altitudes, closer to the coast. The campaign season could start earlier in the year, with a shorter route and fewer accidents and casualties on the road.
On the other side of the white mountains, they had found respite in an easy march to Nedhena. Decades of serving as a reliable western outpost had grown Nedhena from a soldiers’ camp to a thriving city in its own right, though it was yet nothing to rival the ancient majesty of Massilia, Maritima’s largest city, founded a thousand years earlier by refugees fleeing the sack of Ilion.
‘It could be, though,’ Sempronius thought, riding along the riverbank towards the settlement. ‘It could be every bit as grand.’ He felt again that familiar twinge that was not quite ambition so much as an innate desire to see the most made of everything. Wherever Sempronius looked, he tended to see potential, and where he saw it, he could not avoid wishing it achieved. ‘Proper walls, real streets laid out along the camp’s grid system. Better sanitation, to be sure. Build some Aventan-style baths, a promenade like they have in Massilia, and this could be a resort to rival any on Crater Bay.’
“Praetor Sempronius!” Sempronius lifted his eyes to see Autronius Felix hailing him from the eastward-facing praetorian gate. Sempronius waved him down, not yet ready to abandon the relative quiet of the grassy bank for the tightly controlled chaos of the camp itself.
As the highest-ranking of the military tribunes under Sempronius’s command, Felix had been put through his paces over the past four months. Sempronius had made a promise to Felix’s older brother Marcus that he would keep the high-spirited young man out of trouble. It was, in some ways, much like training a horse. Felix would snort and shake his head and chuff, but he didn’t grumble too much and generally settled to his work quickly and capably.
While they were on the road, if there was nothing more complex to be getting on with, Sempronius had Felix run orders up and down the long column of cohorts, and the effort generally left him too tired to find much mischief at the end of the day. ‘All he really needs is discipline, and the weight of a little responsibility on his shoulders.’ Autronius Felix was headstrong and passionate, but a stallion in need of curbing, not breaking.