The Peace of Rome.
Selene shook her head. Even beyond her love for him, she felt she needed Juba at times like this. A few years older, a few years more experienced in knowing the ways of the world, he often saw to the heart of a problem. It had been Juba who had persuaded her that killing Octavian alone would solve nothing. It was what Octavian stood for that needed to be destroyed. It was Rome itself.
But at what price? Was the Peace of Rome a truly horrible dream? Or was it perhaps something real, something tangible that was worth setting aside their need to avenge the fallen members of their families?
Selene stared out into the darkness, out at the hillfort that was so close and yet a world away.
Carisius and the other members of the general staff had been locked away with Tiberius in the days since Octavian and Juba had been taken. They were working hard to keep up the facade that Caesar was with them, too; from the moment Selene awoke after the attack, she had been aware of the Roman leaders’ efforts to hide what had happened that morning.
Part of this secrecy, she knew, was a matter of simple political expedience. The generals understood that it was best for morale—especially in the face of the army’s defeat in the battle, after the attack on the general staff resulted in a loss of strategic control upon the field—if the men thought Caesar remained in authority within the camp. The other reason for the secrecy, however, was that the leaders simply didn’t understand what had happened. She had heard as much as she lay still upon the field, for the leaders had huddled there, arguing about what had been done and what needed now to be done. There had been a storm, they agreed. There had been fire and lightning. But nothing of it made sense. She’d heard them whispering what they had seen to one another, each man disbelieving the other’s account, each man unwilling to believe even his own eyes. Tricks of nature, some said. Cantabrian magic, others argued. And still others thought it was the vengeance of the gods for some Roman offense. Whatever the reason chosen, though, all were agreed that the fewer who knew what was happening, the better.
None of them had asked Selene what she thought of it all. And none had seemed to give the slightest heed to her as she tucked away the little statue upon which she had fallen and hurried back to her tent to hide it once more.
Selene had later tried to meet with them, to learn what she could of what was happening, but the praetorian guards had turned her away from the tent. Whatever plans they had for getting back Caesar and her husband, they clearly did not require the presence of a fifteen-year-old girl, no matter how much she had experienced and how mature she was.
Selene sighed into the night, and she tightened the shawl that she had pulled around her neck. She didn’t want to return to her tent, didn’t want to face the emptiness there, but Juba was beyond her reach now.
Perhaps, Selene thought to herself as she turned and began the walk back toward her tent, the morning might bring news. For all she knew, the morning might even bring Juba back into her arms. She could kiss and hold him, and she could tell him how maybe, just maybe, they could learn to live in the Peace of Rome, the peace of Augustus Caesar. She didn’t know what it would be to live in a world without vengeance, and she didn’t know whether her mother would be disappointed or proud that she would even think of it.
She had just decided that the answer was a little of both, when she came around a corner, saw her tent, and then froze.
Someone was inside it. Pale light spilled from the thin crack of the flap, flashing to the shadow of movement within.
For a second, her heart leapt in her chest, but then she noticed how quiet the camp had grown around this place, how no one walked the paths nearby. And she saw the shapes of the praetorians in the darkness to either side of the tent. She did not need to turn in order to know that Caesar’s guards had melted out of the gloom behind her, too.
Not that she intended to run. There was no sense in doing so, for she had nowhere to go.
Instead, Cleopatra Selene once more pulled tight the shawl about her neck, letting its closeness be a comfort. And then, holding her head high as a queen of Egypt should, she walked to the tent and Tiberius.
* * *
Augustus Caesar’s adopted son was alone in the lamp-lit tent, sitting at the small table that had been set at the foot of the bed Selene shared with her husband. That bed was exactly as she had left it: the feather-stuffed mattress atop its raised metal frame covered over with a fine white linen sheet, crowned with pillows set against the iron lattice of the headboard.
Little else about the space was so pristine. The wooden drawers of her traveling dresser had been pulled and overturned, scattering clothing upon the slatted floor. The desk had been torn through. And in the corner, someone had opened Juba’s locked chest by taking an ax to the wood. It was splintered like an open wound, broken nearly in half in the intensity of the search. Whether or not the lower compartment had been breached—where the Aegis and the Palladium were hidden—Selene could not tell.
Tiberius did not look up when she entered. Before him on the small table were a clay pitcher of wine and two gilded cups—hers and Juba’s—a strangely peaceful scene amid the chaos surrounding him. The cup facing him was empty, but his hand was wrapped around the other, and he stared into the thick red of the wine within.
“How dare you enter this space,” Selene said. “My husband—”
“Is not here,” Tiberius interrupted. His eyes were dark and unreadable when they slowly rose to meet hers. “And we don’t know if he ever will be again.”
Selene swallowed. Was that a threat? A portent of some news that they had received? “Until we know one way or another, I—”
“Knowing,” he said, looking back into his drink as he interrupted her once more. “That’s so much of it, isn’t it? What we know and what we don’t know.” His fingers turned the cup before him.
Selene instinctively wanted to run for the chest, to see what he knew, but of course that was foolish. The worst thing she could do would be to draw attention to it. So what would her mother do?
She was just starting to open her mouth when Tiberius abruptly looked up. He had an apologetic smile on his face. “But where are my manners? Please, Lady Selene, sit down. Let me pour you a drink.”
Selene didn’t move. “I’m not thirsty, Tiberius.”
“Oh, I insist.” Tiberius stood, and in a step he was beside her, his arm clamped to her shoulder, steering and settling her into the opposite chair. Still staring at her, he picked up the pitcher and poured a stream into her cup before refilling his own and sitting down.
Selene lifted the cup with two hands to ensure that it would not shake. While he took a long draft, she took only the smallest of sips before she closed her mouth and let the wine simply wet her lips. When he started to lift his own drink away from his mouth, she did the same, setting the cup down and smiling across the table at him, trying to project the air of serenity that her mother had always possessed. “It’s good wine,” she said.
Tiberius nodded as he held his cup—Juba’s cup—in the air and examined it. “The vineyard is not far from here. They tell me it is one of the best in this region. Not a wine of Rome, but a wine of Romans.”
“The vintner should be commended.”
Tiberius half-frowned. “Difficult,” he said, sloshing the thick red liquid in the cup into circles. “When these Cantabrians rebelled, the vineyards and villas were targets in the first strike. From what I heard, the winemaker and his family were hung from the rafters of their villa. They were still alive when it burned.”
“Oh.” Selene blinked down at the wine, then removed her hands from her cup and folded them in her lap where their shaking could not be seen.