All Chapters of ROME SPY OF THE EMPEROR'S : Chapter 1
- Chapter 6
6 chapters
Shadows Over Rome
The spy came ashore the evening before Emperor Nero's chariot races. Math had been given one simple order: find the man, follow him, and don't be seen.The old Roman had promised him a whole sestertius for it. More than Math made in a month working for Ajax.So he waited, huddled at the edge of the crowded harbour at Coriallum. He pretended to be nothing more than a skinny dock boy, hoping for coin. The sea wind tore at his clothes, and the smell of fish, seaweed, and sweat hung in the air. Dozens of people crowded the dock, waiting for their ships to unload. Overhead, gulls screamed as they fought over scraps.Math barely noticed. His eyes were fixed on the ship approaching the dock.The Blue Mackerel.She was a small merchant sloop, her sails already pulled down as three pairs of oars pushed her towards the harbour. At first, there was nothing unusual about her. Then Math saw the purple pennant.The Emperor's colours that meant Nero was in Coriallum. The Emperor had come north for th
Last Updated : 2026-10-30
The Emperor's command
Dusk fell fast, as always in Coriallum. Math follows his mark through winding streets, sensing danger and purpose. He hides his fear, takes Pantera's lesson about the cheese, and agrees to a dangerous errand. He'll track the watcher, learning whom he serves, knowing that capture means revealing everything. And as the moon rises, he sets off hunting with silent footsteps and wary resolve. Here's the continued, same clean, concise style. Math melted into the dark toward the horse barns, but he no longer felt like a boy trailing behind. He was hunting now, hunting a man who served the Emperor. He kept Pantera's warnings close, listening for every sound behind him, stepping soft but steady. The town thinned. The air opened. The hippodrome loomed ahead like a skeleton under the moon. He felt the cheese against his tunic and thought of Pantera's voice. Don't rush; the night may be long. Tonight, he'd be the one doing the watching. At the edge of the horse grounds, Math crouched behin
Last Updated : 2026-10-30
The court's whisper
The night was uncomfortably quiet Seneca the Younger, the Stoic philosopher, spymaster, and former mentor to Emperor Nero, sat silently at a table in the dining room of a borrowed villa. He watched Pantera move through the shadows beyond the candlelight.Seneca knew Pantera well he did not ask any of the questions that were pressing urgently for answers. After the disaster in the alley, he had no wish to make the evening worse. He had also learned long ago that with Pantera, patience was his best and most reliable weapon.So Seneca waited.In silence, he watched Pantera methodically examine the room, exactly as Seneca had taught him many years before. Pantera studied every entrance and exit, every weak point and every strong one. He noted the places where a man could hide and listen to a conversation without being seen.There were not many such places. The house belonged to a soldier. It was neat and plain, with very little luxury.Two dining couches stood beside a table covered wi
Last Updated : 2026-10-30
The Price of loyalty
"Math? Are you all right?" Hannah had found him.She was dark-eyed and quiet-souled, a healer from Alexandria and Ajax's new woman or perhaps not quite his woman yet. In the month she had been among them, Math had never seen Ajax so much as lay a finger on her, although his interest in her had been clear from the beginning she was the complete opposite of the other women who hovered around the edges of the team. Those women would have given themselves to Ajax in a moment if he had only asked. But Ajax had never asked any of them.For a long time, Math had thought that women simply did not interest Ajax. Then Hannah arrived, carrying a sense of stillness that seemed to bring peace to Ajax and the whole team that was why the team had loved her almost immediately. Soon, however, they discovered that Hannah was a healer of a very different kind from the people who usually served the citizens of Coriallum. Only ten days earlier, one of the younger colts had gone down with colic. Hanna
Last Updated : 2026-10-30
Betrayed in the shadows
Hannah the healer, known in Coriallum for the calm she brought others, lay alone on her straw pallet, staring up at the sky and seeking ways to find peace for herself.The night was warm, not yet sharpened by autumn frosts. The roof of the healer's booth was made of sewn goatskin, with gaps at the ends of the ridge poles that let her see through to a blinking triad of stars at the meadow's end, a wide river ran lazily to the sea, hushing a lullaby for the lost of the world: for herself, for Math, for half of Coriallum if Ajax was right too far from sleep, with her stomach still full from a celebration feast she did not want and the worry of Math crimping the borders of her mind, she let her eyes rest on the brief triangle of stars she could see.Presently, when her heart was less clamorous, she built the full sky around the three visible stars, setting the constellations in their places and naming them as she had been taught.Then, because she was still awake, lying in a tent in Coria
Last Updated : 2026-10-30
Echoes of the emperor's
Sebastos Abdes Pantera woke at the Striding Heron tavern just as dawn was beginning to break. He remained still with his eyes closed, waiting in that strange moment between sleep and waking. As he did every morning, he thought of Aerthen. She appeared in his memories as vividly as ever: bright-haired, green-eyed, laughing as she raced him on her mouse-dun gelding when they first met. Not long afterward, they fell in love. She had held him in her long warrior's arms and whispered his name, telling him that she loved him.In his memories, she first came to him naked, and later dressed for battle. She wore a stolen legionary shirt with pieces of armour wrapped around her forearms. The armour had belonged to a tall, bronze-bearded Rhinelander the first man she had ever killed in battle.Pantera remembered Aerthen standing before him, ready for war, as tall and proud as her spear before battle, her eyes and her weapon seemed to shine together beneath the rising sun. At the end of the day,
Last Updated : 2026-10-31