Reaching for her gold case, she produced a cigarillo, then struck a match against one knee boot. As she lit the cigarillo, the first lungful of smoke calmed her. Even so, from the moment she had first seen the grisly impalements, the same question kept haunting her.
Why?
CHAPTER XII
“AS YOU CAN SEE, CONQUERING THE LANDS WHERE THEsix rivers join will be of prime importance,” Lucius Marius announced. He pointed to the large azure battle map floating in the air. “Butkeeping these lands while the gold is being extracted is even more vital. It is widely rumored that the Shashidan mines are inexhaustible.” Pausing for a moment, he smiled and turned to look at the Suffragat.
“If we are lucky,” he added slyly, “we will learn whether the legend is true.”
As Vespasian sat in his throne before the entire Suffragat, he cast a quick glance at Persephone. The empress was seated in her usual place, and she looked splendid in a beautiful blue gown. Blood-red ruby earrings adorned her earlobes, and a matching necklace lay around her neck.
Persephone gave her husband a welcome look of support. Vespasian’s recent night terror had shaken him, she knew. Even so, he had skillfully controlled every nuance of the session.
After Vespasian had finally awakened from his terrors, he and Persephone had talked for hours. He described his dream to her in great detail. As she listened, Persephone grew more worried about him. When she asked him who the unknown boy had been, he could not answer. In the twisting maze that had been his dream, Vespasian was certain of only one thing-this latest reverie had been far more real than any of those before it.
At Persephone’s suggestion, Vespasian had reluctantly trumped up some charges against the imperial guards who had rushed into their rooms that night. He accused them of being members of the League of Whispers, saying that they had broken down the door and tried to assassinate him and Persephone. He had considered killing them on the spot, Vespasian added, but he wanted the public to witness the traitors’ executions.
His orders were carried out the following dawn. The bewildered guards had gone to the gallows loudly protesting their innocence. It had been all that the guilt-ridden emperor could do to keep from commuting their sentences at the last moment. He knew these men, and they had served him well. But the stakes were too high, so the executions went forward. With the guards dead, his secret was safe.
During his youth, Vespasian’s dreams had always been florid and often frightening, sometimes so much so that he had once confided to Gracchus about them. But none of those earlier episodes had been as alarmingly violent as this most recent one. The lead cleric had told his young student that his dreams were caused by the highly unusual strength of his endowed blood. As Vespasian grew older, the dreams would slow, then stop altogether, Gracchus had said. And until last night, they had.
Even so, something about this latest terror told Vespasian that no one other than Persephone should know of it. Not even his best friend Lucius would be told. It was vitally important that he continue to display the leadership and strength that had always characterized his reign-especially when Rustannica would soon launch her greatest campaign.
The Suffragat had been in session for the last three hours. ThePon Q’tar, the Priory of Virtue, and the Imperial Order centurions had come to learn about and vote on the war plan to take the Shashidan gold mines. Because the session was highly secret, no skeens were present.
The war strategy was everything that Vespasian had hoped for. Taking the mines would produce greater stability at home and ensure the empire’s continued ability to wage war. Conversely, it would drastically curtail Shashida’s defensive capabilities and limit her power to supply the domestic needs of her people. The tables would be turned. And if the mines could be held indefinitely, an eventual Rustannican victory in the War of Attrition would be nearly assured.
The intricate plan that Gracchus, Julia, Persephone, Vespasian, and Lucius had finally agreed on had not come easily. Intense bickering had persisted for days while Vespasian steadfastly settled one dispute after another. It came as no surprise that most of the disagreements arose between Gracchus and Lucius. The military and thePon Q’tar had struggled for dominance since the empire’s earliest days, and little about that rivalry had changed.
The attack on the Shashidan mines would be Vespasian’s fourth campaign as emperor. His earlier crusades had been aggressive but far from decisive. During those struggles he had learned that the military and the mystical wings of the Rustannican war machine badly needed each other, whether they wanted to admit it or not. Without the legions, even the vauntedPon Q’tar was of limited usefulness, because they were relatively few in number. Conversely, the military desperately needed advanced forms of magic to help win its battles.
Vespasian knew that once the campaign started, the military and thePon Q’tar would likely snap at each other like the vicious dogs in his recent night terror. Once again, this would be especially true of Gracchus and Lucius. Because he was First Tribune, Lucius was also a trained mystic of notable power. Lucius mistrusted most mystics who were not military personnel, and he saw Gracchus as a particularly grasping and manipulative cleric. Gracchus thought Lucius to be a hedonistic upstart who owed his quick rise to a close friendship with the emperor. Vespasian knew that each of his headstrong servants was at least partly right. But during times of war there were no two allies that he would rather have by his side.
As he thought about the campaign, Vespasian felt the pressure to succeed crowding in on him again. It would be his responsibility to keep the peace among his forces while making war on the enemy. That was why he had demanded the right to unilaterally change any aspect of the battle plan once his forces were afield. In the end, the burden of victory would be his alone. As the days progressed it weighed ever more heavily across his shoulders.
He again regarded the azure battle map. Lucius was still speaking-overstating, as expected, the military’s importance to the plan. Never to be upstaged, Gracchus would surely ask for equal time to emphasize the critical role of thePon Q’tar. Beneath the map hovered hundreds of script-laden columns that detailed the attack and listed the vast hordes of legionnaires and the huge amounts of war materiel that would soon be needed. The requirements were staggering.
Save for a few legions left behind to keep order in Ellistium, all the empire’s land forces would attack Shashida in a huge thrusting movement and take the mines. While the legions advanced, great barges would cruise down the six majestic rivers that stabbed deep across the Borderlands and into Shashidan territory. The legions would ruthlessly take one Shashidan riverside town after another and secure the surrounding territories. According to Vespasian’s intelligence, the precious mines lay farther south, where all six waterways joined to form one torrential force of nature called the Alarik River. It would be there that Vespasian’s legions would stop, at least for a time.
Once all six rivers were secured, the gold would eventually be sailed to Ellistium on legion cargo vessels. But before he could allow that, Vespasian needed every Shashidan town along the twelve riverbanks to be firmly under Rustannican control. This would ensure that the mines stayed in Rustannican hands while the cargo vessels spirited the gold to Ellistium.
Special groups of legionnaires trained in mining and engineering would bear the responsibility of taking the purloined gold from the ground. Shashidan miners who survived the attack would become Rustannican slaves and be forced to help supply their enemies with their own gold. Those who refused would be killed. It was a brazen, complicated plan that would need precise timing. If it worked, Shashida would be weakened and Rustannica strengthened beyond all precedent. But if it failed, all of Rustannica might go crashing down to final defeat. With her treasury nearly empty, she would never again be able to mount such a massive campaign.
Vespasian returned his attention to Lucius’ presentation. The vote had already been taken and the battle plan overwhelmingly approved. Therefore, Gracchus’ previous suggestion to take another vote to quash the entire concept proved unneeded. Then Lucius had asked Vespasian for some extra floor time to make several additional points on the military’s behalf. As Lucius’ self-aggrandizing talk progressed, Vespasian smiled. He knew that he badly needed Gracchus. But Lucius was his closest friend and had always been a greater confidant than his mentor in the craft. They’re such an odd but effective pair of allies, he found himself thinking.
Vespasian then regarded thePon Q’tar as a whole. As they listened to Lucius’ specious talk, many of the imperious clerics were wriggling uncomfortably like a mess of trapped eels. Vespasian soon found himself
