Vibia smiled, glad the boy was cleverer than she had initially assumed. “Praetor Sempronius will be most grateful,” she said, “and I will be sure he knows to whom he owes that gratitude.”
The lad slipped the tablet into the pouch hanging at his waist. “I know he does not forget his friends, Domina. I was so happy I became a man last year, so that I could vote for him. The whole crew—we journeyed to Aven just for the election.”
‘Baffling,’ Vibia thought, ‘but useful.’ Aloud, she said, “Your trust is well placed, Eneas, and we thank you for your bravery. Go with the gods, and Fortuna bless you.”
Eneas nodded his farewells and darted away, and Vibia returned to Ostia’s forum, where Taius Mella greeted her warmly. “All is well, I trust?”
“Quite so.”
“Excellent! Glad to hear it.”
And that would be the end of it. Taius Mella was, in Vibia’s opinion, an excellent husband: devoted without doting, supportive without interfering.
Vibia liked it when her life arranged itself tidily.
* * *
City of Aven
For an old man, Arrius Buteo had a powerfully resonant voice, carrying across the Forum, high and sharp over the conversations of lawyers and tradesmen.
“—These foreign luxuries, these decadent indulgences, they degrade our moral character! You may think, good citizens, that there is no harm in a silken tunic, no danger in a gold chain, no threat in saffron and snails—but these are the weapons with which cowards fight their wars! Nations which cannot defeat us in battle seek to corrupt us from within! Such excess, such extravagance, it makes us weak. How long can Aven stand as the moral example of the Middle Sea, when we invite such unseemly opulence into our homes?”
Aula, eldest of the Vitelliae daughters, clucked her tongue. ‘What a pompous fool. Aven was founded by thieves, brigands, and harlots. And if I were a man, I’d tell him so right now.’
She stood as near the Rostra as she could manage without getting glared at. She had dressed with care to look virtuous, her gown modestly draped and her mantle drawn up over her bright copper hair, though she knew it would not be enough to deflect criticism. There were still those in Aven, particularly among the Optimates, who thought the Forum ought to remain a thoroughly masculine space, tolerating only the strictly necessary priestesses and slaves. When matrons like herself took an interest in public affairs, they considered it an inappropriate intrusion at best, a sign of imminent social collapse at worst. Her mere presence was a disruption, so far as Buteo and his ilk were concerned; her voice, upraised to challenge Buteo, would be utterly intolerable. An impish twitch inside almost prompted Aula to present just such a provocation—but no, that would be a step too far. However richly Buteo deserved a dressing-down, Aula would not risk a brazenness that would shame her family and jeopardize her father’s and brother’s careers. Aulus’s position as censor was secure for the next few years, but it was an office that attracted a great deal of scrutiny, and while Gaius’s campaign in Iberia had already made him something of a legend, he would need a solid grounding when he came home to stand for office himself. So Aula held her tongue.
Aula considered it her duty to her family to listen to the talk in the Forum, even when it was Buteo’s moralizing drivel. “I thought perhaps he’d have changed topics by now,” she commented to Helva, the Athaecan freedwoman who served as her attendant and managed much of the Vitellian household.
“No,” Helva commented dryly. “He’s even using the same phrases, word for word.” Helva would know. She had the magical gift of a perfect memory, bestowed upon her by Saturn, one of the patrons of Time. “He might at least switch up the adjectives.”
“I suppose there are only so many words for ‘indulgent’ in our language,” Aula said, rolling her eyes.
Buteo had been on this theme for long days now, an effort to muster support for the sumptuary laws he was gamely trying to promote in the Senate. Having failed in his effort to stop Aven from going to war in Iberia, thus expanding their influence and trading networks around the Middle Sea, he had determined to convince the Aventan people that they did not want the resources—and, yes, frivolous luxuries—that such expansion would provide. The Lemuria had put a temporary halt to his public haranguing, and to all civic business. The festival was a time to honor one’s ancestors, but the days were also nefasti, considered unlucky. No legal or civic matters could occur on days that were nefasti, and so, for a few days, the Forum was free of Buteo’s stentorian lectures.
Not that anyone was around to enjoy the quiet. Many citizens in Aven kept within doors during the Lemuria, as they often did on those days in the summer and autumn when the mundus was opened at the Temple of Janus. On such days, the lemures, the spirits of the unquiet dead, could return to earth. Aula herself had stayed at home during the Lemuria, not even venturing out to visit friends. She had never met a wrathful spirit walking abroad, and she had no intention of opening herself to the possibility. She had hoped, upon walking out again, to discover that Buteo would have transferred his vitriol to a new topic, but he appeared to have gone right back into the same stride.
“Well,” Aula said with a little sigh, “I suppose if he’s not going to say anything new, we can go along. I want to see if anyone has any new dangerously indulgent foreign fabrics for me to make some summer gowns out of.” Even though Buteo could not hear her, Aula crinkled her nose in his direction, before pointing herself and Helva toward the markets on the northern side of the Forum.
She was picking through summer-weight linens in a sky blue she quite fancied and a butter yellow that she thought would suit her daughter, Lucia, when she first noticed the man. At the time, she thought nothing of it. He was dark-skinned, Numidian or Mauretanian, but that was hardly unusual, especially in the mercantile parts of the city. He stood out more because he was uncommonly tall. Aula caught him staring at her, but he turned swiftly away when he noticed her looking back. Aula beamed, always happy for her beauty to be the subject of regard.
But then she saw him again, after she and Helva had walked over to the spice markets. Aula had wanted to look over the selection, in case there was anything new or unusual to pass along to her cook. And there he was again, about the same distance away, still watching her.
And then again, another block over, while she was sampling olive oil blends from a Ligurian merchant.
Three times was too many. She had Haelix and Pacco with her as bodyguards, of course; Aula rarely ventured forth without a cordon to announce that she was a protected patrician lady, unlike Latona, who had developed the habit of slipping around the city with only Merula at her side. She wasn’t afraid for her physical safety in this moment. ‘But why on Tellus’s green earth would someone be following me?’
Stomach fluttering, she caught Helva’s elbow. “Helva, turn slowly and look at the tall, dark man over by the garum stall.”