Fallen City by Adrienne Young - 34

I fastened the bronze chain across my chest, situating the cloak in place. The leather breastplate was freshly oiled, the ceremonial version of the legionnaire’s uniform missing the scale armor and helmet used for battle. Only last night, I was wearing it to take vows with Maris Casperia.

I’d woken in her arms, her skin softer than the delicate silks I had unwrapped her from the night before. The hours had been spent memorizing every curve and freckle, each shade of color in her hair that changed as the morning light lifted through the windows. I hadn’t realized it then, but every time I’d kissed her, I was tightening that knot between us. Now I was fairly certain there was no way to get it undone.

The spell was broken by the collective anticipation flooding the Citadel District. There was always a buzz in the air that preceded the first performance of one of Vitrasian’s new plays. For the first time in weeks, the district felt familiar. The aftermath of the tribunal and the truth about the harvests had tainted the Magistrates in the eyes of the Lower City. There was a glaring crack in the perfect, gleaming surface of the Citadel. A play on the night of a feast was something that felt normal, and I suspected that was exactly what the Consul and the Magistrates wanted. But no one knew yet that everything had changed.

I pulled the medallion from my pocket, glancing down at it one more time. The name Casperia was now mine. Forfeiting the name Matius was the first move of many that would one day unravel the Forum. Maybe even this whole city. There was no more family Matius, and the yoke it had put around my neck was suddenly gone. Somehow, by the grace of some god that hadn’t yet turned their back on me, I’d bound myself to a woman I loved. I wasn’t sure how it was possible.

“Sir?”

A soft voice outside my chamber made me turn, and I slipped the medallion back into my pocket. Kastor’s personal servant, a man named Yuretes, was standing in the doorway with a grave expression.

“It’s your uncle. I’m afraid it’s time.”

I followed him through the corridor to the closed wooden doors at its end. The smell of death was thick in the outer chamber, but for the first time in days, it was quiet. The coughing and wheezing that had echoed through the villa was gone. Now there was only silence.

Yuretes opened the door and the stale, still air grew heavier. The lamps burning at the corners of the room made it too warm, their glow making it hard to see the lump of a man on the bed. One pale hand had slipped from the quilts and I stared at it, revolted.

“I’ll leave you,” Yuretes said quietly, slipping away.

It took a few seconds for me to cross the floor to my uncle’s bedside. He was so still that, for a moment, I thought he was already gone. But his almost empty eyes moved as I drew closer, rolling in his head to follow me.

I stopped beside the bed, looking down at him. The man who’d lorded over me with cruelty and disdain, who’d shunned my mother and damned her, was now just a shriveled thing. A weak, pathetic creature clinging to the last threads of life that held him to this world.

His head tipped to one side, his eyes focusing on me. But his mouth didn’t move, his jaw slack.

“I’ve come to say goodbye, Uncle,” I said.

His chest rose and fell slowly.

“And to tell you”—I leaned closer—“that I plan to honor you by repaying every kindness, every opportunity, every bit of generosity you’ve given me, by letting you part this world knowing one thing.”

Kastor’s eyes seemed to focus a little more clearly, his breaths a little less shallow. Slowly, I reached up and unclasped the medallion from around my neck, holding it between us. The gold disc spun in the air, and I waited until it stopped, watching his face. I could see the exact moment he realized what I’d done. The moment he read the name Casperia. I could see the white-hot current of horror brimming, trapped beneath the surface of his dying body. A choking sound gurgled in his throat, the fingers of his open hand twitching.

“The moment you die, your bloodline will die with you. I’m not a Matius anymore.” I closed my fist around the medallion and came low, letting my hands rest on either side of him so that I could look into his face. “I’m a Casperia now.”

Kastor’s eyes widened with horror. He was struggling for even a sip of breath now, blood spattering the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t fight me as I took the Matius medallion from around his neck. He couldn’t even move.

I fixed it around my own throat, tucking the Casperia medallion into my pocket, a secret that wouldn’t be told until I’d taken Kastor’s seat. There was a deep sense of justice in it. A balancing of scales that made the world seem just a little more fair.

The choking sound returned to his throat, his eyes bulging with the torture of knowing. And then I turned and walked away.

The entrance to the theater was full, with Magistrate families and Citadel officials dressed in their finest togas and stolae. Gems and precious metals glittered with godsblood in the torchlight, the sound of voices and music alive in the night. It was as if nothing had happened. No lies, no amendment to the dole, no faction leader left dying in his bed. The sight only made me more certain that what we’d done—Maris and I—had been right.

My uncle’s medallion was heavy around my throat as the man at the entrance checked it. Kastor’s seat in the theater was a prominent one with a good view of the stage, and I was surprised to see who was waiting there when I made it up the steps.

Rhea Vitrasian was dressed in a deep violet stola, her fair, curling hair tied up on top of her head. Ornate gold earrings dangled above her bare shoulders, and a parchment was clutched between her hands. There was a shadow of concern in her eyes that vanished when she saw me.

I pressed through the bodies that filled the aisles of the amphitheater. “Do you need me?” I asked, still searching her face for the source of that worry I’d seen a moment ago.

She shook her head. “No. Just wanted to be sure you were here.”

But I wasn’t convinced. Rhea was the most self-possessed woman I’d ever met, as steady as stone. There was something wrong, but I couldn’t tell what.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said, not meaning it as a question.

I didn’t deny it. There were questions I needed ask her that I didn’t want to. Things she needed to tell me that I wouldn’t want to hear.

“We’re about to start.” She took hold of my arm, squeezing, before she handed me the pamphlet for the play.

I watched her descend the steps toward the stage, and the view opened up as people took their seats. I looked down at the pamphlet, eyes running over the words slowly as I read the title along the top.

THE FIFTH FEAST

FIELDS OF FAVOR

I hadn’t seen the play she was working on, but Vitrasian had been instructed to present something that would bolster the hope of Isara. She’d probably been commissioned to write it before the empty carts from the fields were even paraded through the city. It wasn’t like Rhea to play along with the Citadel’s schemes, but maybe even she could see what was at stake here. Isara was a caged animal inches away from turning on its master.

My gaze moved over the audience, searching for Maris, and when I found her, her eyes were already on me. My pulse slowed. She sat several rows below, half turned in her seat.

I reached into my pocket, taking the medallion into my hand, and letting my thumb move over the name there. If my uncle wasn’t dead already, he would be in a matter of minutes. In a few days, I would take his seat in the Forum, and as soon as I did, everyone would learn what we’d done. There would be nothing they could do to stop it.

The fires in the lamps were put out, draping the theater in darkness. Maris disappeared from view and I took my seat just before the first actor clambered onto the stage. His white robes identified him as a Magistrate, and the mask he wore was painted in a distressed expression, the wide mouth turned down at the corners. His arms were full of scrolls that spilled out onto the ground, trailing behind him, and when the curtains pulled back and the lights came up on the enormous backdrop, I stiffened.

It was a rotting field. Hills of withering grain were painted to look like they went on for miles, the scene dotted with hundreds of circling black crows. It covered the entirety of the theater’s width, making the man look small. His mask looked even more ridiculous now as he stumbled around the stage, picking up the scrolls and dropping them as he laughed maniacally.

A creeping sense of dread pooled in my chest, an eerie silence filling the theater. The distinct feeling that something wasn’t right here was like a stench creeping over the crowd. What happened next, no one could have guessed. The tale that followed wasn’t a tactic to bolster the hope of a city. It was a brazen critique of the Citadel and, specifically, the Forum.

A score of actors trailed out onto a scaffold erected over the stage, suspended high above the Magistrate. Their blue robes and golden halos signified that these were the gods, their masks painted in smiles so wide they were disturbing to look at.

More Magistrates filled the stage below, all dumbly weaving in circles that went nowhere. When one appeared in a sapphire-blue robe, the discomfort in the room fell heavier. It was meant to be the Consul.

Light glinted on something up on the scaffolding, and every face lifted to watch as one of the gods drew a javelin from his robe. The others followed as the music swelled, and as the drums pounded, reverberating in my bones, each of the javelins was thrown. They soared down to the stage, the Magistrates falling one by one, toppling into a pile as red stained their white robes.

Rhea was drawing from the myths of the gods to illustrate that their favor was reflected in the harvests, and it wasn’t a far leap to decipher the meaning. There was a clear line that could be drawn from one point to another—that the problem with the fields lay in the favor of the gods. That their retribution was coming for Isara.

A chilling silence descended in the theater as, slowly, the audience began to understand. Faces turned to look at each other, bodies awkwardly shifting. I looked down at the door that led to the side of the stage, where Rhea usually watched the performance. But I couldn’t see her shadow there.

I rose from my seat quietly, following the steps down until I was pushing through the curtain. The small viewing chamber was empty.

The passage into Vitrasian’s study from the theater couldn’t be accessed without crossing the stage, so I slipped out of the theater, taking the dark arched corridors to the entrance from the Citadel’s gardens. When I reached the courtyard, a single light shone from a window across the pond. Rhea’s study.

When I came through the doors, she was sitting at her desk, her earrings glittering as she worked her stylus over a parchment. She didn’t look up when I entered, as if she’d merely been waiting for me. As if this were any other day, her working over her studies, me serving as her novice.

“What have you done?” I said gravely.

She stopped writing, taking her time to lift her gaze. “They asked for a play, and I’ve given them one.”

I stared at her, heart sinking. The role of the Philosopher in Isara was to be a thinker, and every generation of Philosophers was different. Vitrasian’s tenure had been marked by wide-ranging accomplishments. While most Philosophers focused on one area of thought, Vitrasian’s mind was spread across many disciplines. And she excelled at them all.

In my years with her, we’d spent significant time on the school of intellectual thought about the gods, religion, and their roles in society. She’d been enlisted by the Consul and the Magistrates to help shape the public’s opinion. But this wasn’t what the Citadel had in mind.

“What were you thinking?” I rasped.

She arched an eyebrow at me. “Do I have to explain myself to a novice now?”

“Rhea.” I used her given name, something I rarely did. But I hoped it would help bring the seriousness of the situation into focus. “You need to find a way to explain this. To make it look like you didn’t intend for—”

“For what?” Her chin lifted in defiance. She’d always liked an argument. But there was something different about this. She looked almost … scared.

“Why are the fields dying, Luca?” she asked, impatient.

I crossed my arms, ready for the string of questions I could feel coming. “There are countless variables that impact the harvests. No two seasons are the same. You taught me that.”

“Alright.” She nodded. “Why has this harvest failed? And the one before that? And the one two years ago?”

I looked around the study, thinking. “Rain? Changes in the soil?”

“But our measurements are consistent, are they not?”

“They are. But like I said, there are many variables that—”

She interrupted me. “Variables aren’t the only thing that can be measured. We must also measure the outcomes. The harvests have been waning for the last seven years. Most likely before that, too. The Citadel’s granary has run out of reserves, and this will be the first year we do not have enough grain to feed our people.”

My hands tightened into fists.

“Next year, there will be less. And the year after that, there will be none. What comes after failed harvests? What happens after drought or infestation or overly wet seasons?” she pressed.

“Famine,” I answered, more to myself than her.

But she didn’t look pleased. “The grain will stay on this side of the river. It will feed the Citadel District. The Lower City will starve, and the Forum will have their justifications. They will say that it was the will of the gods. That the city has been culled in some divine way that is acceptable. And people will accept it because they don’t want to believe the truth. Then the Consul will take our legion to war. We will tear apart a people, like we did to Valshad, and the collective identity of Isara will be renewed. This is a cycle. A pattern as reliable as the seasons and the path of the moon.”

There was no hint of emotion in her voice. No echo of it visible in her eyes, either. She was thinking like the Philosopher she was. She was looking at the problem from the perspective of its inevitable consequences.

“And the play? What is the point of that?”

Vitrasian exhaled. “It’s time the Forum considered less scientific solutions to the problem.”

I waited.

“Harötha,” she said, testing me with the Valshadi word.

I had to think about it before the translation came to me. “Atonement,” I said. “You think the gods are angry.”

“The gods are always angry,” she scoffed. “But now they are hungry for blood.”

“Then how do we appease them?”

I went rigid when I heard the sound of boots in the corridor. The unmistakable sound of a cohort of legionnaires. They were coming. For Vitrasian.

Finally, she stood, fingertips grazing the top of her desk before finding a strip of parchment. She held it over the lamp, watching it catch flame.

Her eyes met mine with a tender look. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, my love.”

The burning parchment fell from her fingers, and the fire caught quickly, racing to the floor in a river that rushed to the shelves. She’d doused the room in oil.

She watched, blank-faced, as a tangle of angry orange light engulfed the study—every scroll, every specimen, every record—in flames.