Fallen City by Adrienne Young - 2

If I could cut the name from me, I would.

The paintbrush moved over the canvas in an arc, bristles twisting as the portraitist rolled it between his fingertips. The pale yellow pigment was a shock against the background he’d chosen to depict, a dense forest of trees you wouldn’t find anywhere within the walls of Isara.

He waved the brush in my direction and I lifted my chin a little higher.

“This is a waste of time.” My hands clenched beneath the fabric of my robes, back aching as I sat erect on the stool.

“Almost finished now,” he murmured.

My own face stared back at me from the enormous portrait, the details of my eyes, mouth, and hair so perfect that it almost made me sick to look at it. The pure white Magistrate’s robes draped around my figure, coming to a neat point where my medallion sat just below the center of my throat. The round, flat pendant forged in the temple wasn’t just my identification. It was the token of my citizenship. The engraved name of Casperia was legible, even from where I sat, but the portrait was like everything else in this city—a lie.

The portraitist dipped his brush into the smear of green on his palette, and my eyes fixed on the glimmer of the pigment. The paint was mixed with godsblood, giving the canvas an eerily lifelike effect when the light hit it.

“We’re going to be late,” I said through gritted teeth, trying to hold my face still.

“We won’t be late.” Nej’s crackling voice echoed in the chamber before he appeared in the doorway.

His robes were only half tied, the folds of the fabric loose. My uncle had never been distinguished in appearance, but somehow he always managed to clean himself up enough to look the part of a scribe. He smoothed down the side of his hair that almost never lay flat, stopping beside the portrait to study it with a serious expression.

He winced. “She needs to look older.”

“I’ve painted her as she is,” the portraitist snapped, retaining a sense of defensive pride for his work even now, as the city was days from falling.

“That’s the problem,” Nej pressed. “They’re already suspicious of her. The least you could do is make her look dignified.”

That made me drop my pose. I turned my head to fix him with an icy stare.

He shot me a dismissive look. “You know how this works. The only reason you have that seat is because your mother chose a cup of poisoned wine over her duty to the Citadel. The first question people will ask about you is if you’re a coward, like she was.”

My throat constricted at the harsh, unbridled words. Not because I had any semblance of feeling for my mother. That was a title she gained merely by birthing me. What made me stiffen was the reminder that what she’d done was a shadow over my place in the Forum. I’d always known I’d take the seat of a Magistrate, but not like this. Not in the middle of a war that had destroyed the city.

For my whole life, I’d dreamed of wearing the robes so that I could do the exact opposite of my mother and the Magistrates who’d driven our city to rebellion. I’d had a plan. A carefully wrought one that had cost me everything. But the day my mother cast her vote to execute the Philosopher Vitrasian was the day that plan fell apart.

Nej tsk ed, impatiently crossing his long, lanky arms. He glanced from me to the portrait and back again. “I suppose there’s nothing we can do about the fact that you look like a child.”

“I’m not a child. I’m twenty-four years old,” I corrected him.

He ignored me. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing they’ll be thinking about when you take your seat in the tribunal today is Ophelius.”

That, he was right about.

I’d taken a place as a novice to the Priestess Ophelius almost four years ago to avoid the attention and scrutiny of the Citadel. While other sons and daughters of the Magistrates took noviceships in the legion or as a scribe, I had bided my time quietly in a prestigious but low-profile position so that once I took my robes, I would have as few enemies as possible. My uncle thought that devoting myself to the myths and customs of the gods was beneath our family name, as did my mother. But no one could have predicted that the Priestess would wind up being the tip of the first spear thrown in the rebellion. In that, my noviceship had been almost ill-fated.

“It certainly doesn’t help that you spent so much time in that blasted temple that no one knows a thing about you,” he continued. “Now you don’t have a single ally in the Forum.”

“I have you, don’t I?” I said, letting my eyes meet his. It was an actual question. I was almost sure that my uncle cared for me, which was more than I could ever have said about my mother, but he was as mercurial as the rest of them.

The hint of a smile softened the pinched look on his face. “I’m not a Magistrate. I’m a scribe.”

“The Consul’s scribe,” I corrected him. Some would argue it was a place more prominent than any other in the Forum. He had the ear of the most powerful man in Isara. That wasn’t nothing.

“You’ll always have an ally in me, Maris.”

Hearing him use my given name made me want to believe him. A name was a thing of intimacy and closeness when spoken, and the permission to use it was a rare gift. It was customarily reserved for those with whom you shared blood or soul, and Nej was family.

That was why, six days ago, when I’d found my mother’s lifeless body on the floor of her study, the first thing I’d done was walk the dark, empty streets of the district to my uncle’s villa. He hadn’t shed a single tear for his sister, nor had he shown even a shred of surprise at the news she’d poisoned herself. Instead, he’d sent a message to the Citadel and a strict protocol as old as the city was enacted. With the death of my mother, a seat in the Forum was open, and as the only child of Magistrate Casperia, I would be the one to fill it.

Two days later, my robes arrived and the portraitist was commissioned to paint my official portrait. It would be hung in the Tribunal Hall, replacing my mother’s. Just in time for the Citadel to burn.

I let my gaze trail to the window, where I could see more of the city than I wanted to. The streets and alleys that snaked between the rooftops of the Lower City were a tangled maze where the flash of sunlight on swords and scale armor flickered in the shadows. In every direction, the encampment of the New Legion was spreading. They were everywhere, growing by the day as more lowborn Isarians continued to join their ranks.

After months of battle, the New Legion had made it to the banks of the Sophanes River. Now, they were waiting to cross it—a reality that, only months ago, the Magistrates had sworn was impossible. No one had actually said it yet, but we were trapped. The Citadel District had slowly become a prison guarded by a dwindling band of soldiers who were losing resolve by the day. The only reason the New Legion hadn’t stormed our streets and cut our throats was the grain. What remained of Isara’s food stores was sitting beneath the Citadel, and taking the last of the city meant nothing if everyone was doomed to starve to death. And that wasn’t the only priceless thing down in the catacombs.

There were still some left in the district who believed the Consul would win the war. That once the legionnaires crossed the Sophanes, the gods would intervene and they would meet their end. But I’d seen the number of their fires growing each night from the roof of our villa. I’d seen the Magistrates’ bodies strung up along the bridge.

After a moment’s hesitation, I finally let my eyes wander to the white walls of the Illyrium in the distance, where the insignia of the New Legion had been rendered only days before. It was clearly visible from the windows of the Citadel, which, I assumed, was the intent.

The insignia was the sharp silhouette of a kneeling legionnaire, face gazing up toward the heavens, as if waiting for a blessing from the gods. The gold ringlet that encircled the figure’s head only confirmed that he’d received it.

Luca.

The moment his name wormed through my mind, heat flooded my chest, making it difficult for my lungs to draw a breath. I found the soft skin at the crook of my arm beneath the sleeves of my robes and pinched, trying to ward away the lump that came up into my throat. It was the same feeling I had every time I cast my eyes across the river. Like the hot oil from a lamp spilling from my heart into the rest of my body. That insignia was the closest I’d come to seeing Luca since all this began.

Nej gave me an almost sympathetic look, following my gaze to the window. “I know this isn’t how you imagined taking your robes.”

That was true in a way he could never know, but I said nothing, letting him believe that my grief for Isara and its people was the source of that excruciating burn behind my ribs. But it wasn’t. Every time I looked across the Sophanes and saw the torchlight of the New Legion, I wasn’t thinking about the Citadel or the Consul or even the district that was my home. I was thinking about the last time I’d seen the face I was supposed to grow old with. I was remembering the gleam of lamplight in eyes the color of the sea and the sound of my given name spoken by a voice that was only a ghost in my mind now.

“As for the tribunal,” Nej continued, clasping his hands behind his back, “do you remember what we talked about?”

I let out an irritated breath. “I am not to speak unless addressed by the Consul.”

“And what else?”

“I am not to look at anyone as if I want them to be hurled from the windows of the Forum.”

Nej gave me a firm nod. “Exactly. Now, the Consul will call the tribunal to order and then—”

“Nej, it’s not my first tribunal. It’s not even my fiftieth.”

I’d grown up attending them with my mother, a practice that most children of Magistrates were expected to partake in. If we were to inherit their seats one day, we had to be instructed from a young age. And it wasn’t just procedures and formalities we were learning. We were meant to be ingrained with the politics that no one gave speeches on or plastered onto the sides of buildings. There was a bigger game afoot—one that influenced the turning of the judgment stones in every single tribunal. The highborn families and the ever-shifting balance of power between them was the tide that controlled the tides of our city.

“It’s your first one as a Magistrate.” His voice deepened just a little, and I could tell that he was worried. I could see it in the way his mouth twitched. “There’s also the dinner with the Consul.”

I let my eyes trail to him, managing to hold my pose still for the portraitist.

“I hope I don’t have to tell you how important it is that you make a good impression.”

“I know.”

“If there’s anyone who can win you the favor of the Magistrates, it’s him. There isn’t a single one among them who isn’t trying to ensure their place after this war.”

My fingers tangled tightly in my lap. Every time Nej mentioned after, it made my heartbeat slow just a little. There would be no after if the Consul didn’t try to negotiate the peaceful transfer of power when the New Legion took the Citadel. That was exactly what I intended to use the opportunity of the dinner for—a plan Nej would never approve of.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

Nej turned to face me. “Of course.”

“You really believe it? That all of this is going to end with the Forum intact?”

His eyes cut to the portraitist, whose paintbrush slowed on the canvas.

“I know as well as you do that there is only one way for this to end,” he said, voice tight. “With this rebellion crushed and the Citadel reinstated with its power over all of Isara.” The words were a warning that such conversations were not meant for the ears of those we did not trust. “The more you show that faith in the Forum, the more leverage you will have with your judgment stone. Don’t forget that.”

I didn’t answer, but I held his gaze long enough for him to be satisfied that I wouldn’t argue. I knew he was right. We were far past the point of entertaining those thoughts. More than half the Loyal Legion was gone and the Citadel District was trapped between the river and the walls. They’d once existed only to protect us—the gates far across the city so that we’d be shielded from any breach. Now they had become a cage we were trapped in.

He walked to the south window, his eyes cast out over the city. But then his sauntering steps faltered, the expression on his face falling.

“What is it?” I asked, studying him.

Nej didn’t answer.

I got to my feet in the next breath, crossing the room as the portraitist groaned behind me and his brush hit the palette with a clatter. Nej leaned into the window ledge with both hands and I followed his gaze to the river, where a swarm of red tunics was gathered at the south bridge. From this distance, I could just barely make out the three bodies suspended over the water. I didn’t need to see their faces to know they were Magistrates.

Nej was silent, the vein at his throat pulsing.

I dropped my eyes, trying to quell the sick feeling blooming inside me. “How many?” I whispered. “How many are left?”

“If all three are Magistrates?” Nej exhaled. “Thirty-three. The gods do not reward cowardice.”

The wretched souls hanging from the bridge weren’t the first to try to escape through the Lower City. They wouldn’t be the last, either.

The low-pitched peals of the bell tower rang out, calling the Magistrates to the Forum.

“Come,” he said, squeezing my wrist. “We don’t want to be late.”

When I turned back to the study, the portraitist already had his paint box closed up.

“I’ll be back in the morning.” He rose slowly from his chair to stretch his legs, shooting a glance at the south window before he left.

Nej tied the strands of his robe clumsily as he looked me over. He straightened the medallion around my neck, brushing off my shoulders before he gave me an approving nod. Instead of turning for the door, he went to the desk, gathering up an armful of scrolls.

“What are you doing?”

He set a few of them into my hands. I inspected them, turning the parchments to try to read what was inside. “What are these?”

“Just something to make you look like you know what you’re doing.”

I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t, making me think that there was more riding on this than I probably knew. When I tried to imagine myself in the grandeur of the Forum, sitting in my mother’s seat, the truth settled in the pit of my stomach. I had no idea what I was doing. And now, more than ever, I wondered if I’d made the right decision that night. For so long, I’d been telling myself I’d had no choice. I didn’t know anymore if that was true.

“Ready?” Nej asked, setting his gaze on mine.

I drew from the confidence in his eyes, that steeled look of surety he’d always had, and I pushed the memory away. “Ready.”