ROME SPY OF THE EMPEROR'S

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, both her face and body were covered with the blood of her enemies.

Yet she smiled it was the fierce smile of a warrior who still believed victory was possible in the middle of the battle, Aerthen had fought desperately to remain beside Pantera. She trusted him to keep her safe, and they fought together until the second evening of the battle, when everything was lost and almost everyone was dead or dying.

Then Aerthen came to him still smiling.

She was holding their daughter, Gunovar. The little girl had golden hair and ocean-blue eyes. She had been named after a hero of the Dumnonii who had fought against Rome during Boudica's rebellion. Aerthen hated Rome, and Pantera knew that their daughter would probably grow up sharing that hatred. Gunovar slept peacefully in her mother's arms, seemingly untouched by the noise and violence around them.But she was not really asleep.

Blood was running down Aerthen's stolen legionary shirt and pooling around her feet. Her throat had been cut by her own mother, so quickly and cleanly that Gunovar had never awakened. As Aerthen's spirit began to leave her body, the man known as Hywell the Hunter felt his wife reach for his hand. She placed the blade in his palm.

Aerthen was braver than he was.

She looked at him with love and courage. She smiled and asked him to give her this final gift the death she wanted from the man who loved her. Pantera had killed before: in anger, in pity, in hatred, and in cold detachment. But he had never killed someone he loved. Now he had to holding Aerthen's head with one hand, he searched for the correct place beneath her ribs, just to the left of the breastbone.

He tried not to think about how many times he had kissed that same place, or how precious and fragile her skin was. He found the spot.

He steadied his hand aerthen said his name. "Hywell," she whispered, almost like a prayer. Then, with a smile full of love, she told him: "I will know all of you in a moment all the places I could never find."

It had always been a joke between them. She knew everything about him, even though he knew very little about her past. Pantera smiled back. "You will," he told her. "And gladly so. I give you all of myself, in love, now and forever. Wait for me." Before he could lose his courage, he pushed the knife into her body. He felt it pass through her skin and muscle, then into her chest and toward her heart.

The blade moved with the beating of her heart for a moment, he almost stopped. Her eyes held him there. She could no longer speak, but she did not cry out. So he continued. He turned the blade upward and cut through the great muscle of her heart. Aerthen bled internally, just as their daughter Gunovar had bled. But Aerthen would live a little longer. She would remain alive until her eyes could no longer hold his face and her mouth could no longer speak his name.

In his mind, Pantera lowered her gently to the floor, just as he had done every morning since that day.

Every morning, he heard her voice in his memory: I will know all of you in a moment, all those places I could not find and he heard his own voice answering her: You will, and gladly so. Wait for me.

Wait for me he had meant it. He would have joined her then, but he had wanted both Aerthen and their child to remain untouched by Rome. He had taken time to build a funeral pyre for them, laying down his weapons for the first time in many days.

He had fought desperately against the men who came for him. Four of them died, but Pantera survived. Later, he understood something terrible. A part of him had wanted the kind of death they had offered him: to be taken alive and left to suffer. They had given him that wish.

With great skill and cruelty, they had slowed the process of his death until every hour became an eternity of pain.

The suffering was worse than anything he had ever experienced. His life had never been particularly comfortable, but even so, he had not died. He had not gone to join Aerthen, no matter how close they had pushed him to the edge. In the end, that was also his fault.

During one moment of weakness, he had stopped thinking about Aerthen's presence and instead called upon the Roman god he had been given.

The god answered. He was granted the blessing or perhaps the curse of life. Wait for me. Every moment that Pantera was awake, he could still feel Aerthen nearby, waiting on the other side of the thin boundary between life and death.

All he had to do was reach for her, and she would come.

That was how, on the morning he was due to meet his emperor, Pantera began another day in the attic room of the Striding Heron.

He gave his usual morning greeting to the woman who had once been his wife.

Then he forced himself to look beyond her ocean-green eyes.

He opened his own eyes and began preparing for the day.

He first examined his body carefully. He started with his ankles and worked upward through his spine, chest, arms, and finally his face.

After the long journey by sea, his shoulders were burning where the muscles had been torn and never completely healed.

His left ankle also ached where the legionaries had burned through the tendon. The pain had become sharper. None of this was new.

He simply needed to know how his injuries might affect him during the day. Pantera rolled onto his side and examined his surroundings.

He noticed the straw inside the mattress beneath him and the smell of rat urine near the foot of the bed.

He looked toward the first grey light of dawn coming through the shutters. The door was only a few feet away. It had remained closed all night. He listened carefully. He wanted to be certain that no one had entered the room while he slept. Once he was satisfied that he was alone, he listened to the sounds coming from the tavern: the coughing and cursing of guests waking in the rooms around him and below. He listened to people talking about the horses and their drivers.

Eventually, Pantera got up. He dragged a hand through his hair and crossed the room stiffly to the window. There, he performed a series of morning exercises movements so demanding that they would have impressed even Leonidas and his Spartan warriors at Thermopylae. Afterward, his body felt looser. He washed his face with water from the ewer in the corner and fixed his hair.

From his travelling chest, he took out the fine linen tunic that had been given to him by the legate before he left he also took the leather belt with the silver buckle, which was decorated with the image of a running deer belonging to the Dumnonii. It had somehow survived the terrible battle.

His sandals had been made specially for him by a cobbler in Lugdunum their greatest advantage was that he could remove them quickly and go barefoot whenever silence was necessary.

His four knives were stored separately in walnut-dyed deerskin sheaths.

Two could be strapped to the inside of his forearm, one to his leg, and the final one around his waist if he wanted it to be visible. They were simple but perfectly balanced. Each had only the symbol of Mithras burned into its pale beechwood handle. Unfortunately, they were not appropriate for what Pantera had to do that morning.

Reluctantly, he put them back into the chest, closed the lid, and locked it before leaving, he took a small amount of fine white flour from a pouch at his belt he blew some of it across the floor just inside the door with this small precaution in place, Pantera was ready to meet his emperor.

Pantera arrived at the magistrate's residence the garden was beautifully decorated, and an eunuch singer was performing the Lament of Daedalus as dawn broke. Pantera stood beneath a marble archway warmed by the morning sun.

He listened to the singer's voice as four Germanic guards searched him for weapons they found nothing. Pantera had deliberately left his weapons locked in his chest when he explained this, speaking German as best he could, the guards laughed and began talking rapidly among themselves in a dialect he could not understand.

The guards were Ubii large, red-haired, heavily armed warriors from the tribes along the swampy banks of the Rhine. They had a reputation for extreme violence and loyalty. During the time of Caligula, they had fought one another in single combat for the honour of becoming the emperor's bodyguards.

Under Nero, they outranked the Praetorians. Their reputation for blind loyalty was known throughout the Roman Empire. Surprisingly, however, these four guards were sober. Ahead of Pantera, the singer was reaching the highest notes of his song. The guards formed a small group around Pantera and escorted him through the gates.

They entered a wide marble passageway.

The floor was covered in a black-and-white checkerboard mosaic. The walls displayed a colourful image of Apollo Kitharoedus, the god playing his lyre for four beautiful nymphs. Above them, the high roof was covered with gold leaf, arranged to catch the first rays of sunlight and throw them into the garden. For the first time in many years, Pantera found himself surrounded by wealth so effortless that it almost seemed unreal.

The guards suddenly stopped. Pantera was led across the atrium toward the edge of the magistrate's beautiful garden the emperor's guests were already eating breakfast or perhaps they had simply continued their dinner through the night. A huge table stood at the far end of the garden, covered with enormous quantities of food.

It was clearly prepared for the imperial party.

Somewhere among the trees, the singer continued his performance.

Small birds fluttered inside cages hanging from the pillars.

A tame jay flew across the garden carrying a grape. Grey carp moved beneath the surface of an oval pool. A stone statue of Narcissus leaned over the water, staring at its own reflection. The largest carp even had a gold ring set into its dorsal fin.

The garden was so beautiful that its people seemed almost equally beautiful. A naked Nubian slave girl walked past, looking as though she could have been one of the nymphs painted on Apollo's wall.

Two more girls and a boy followed her. They were all naked, tall, graceful, and long-limbed. Their bare feet made almost no sound against the marble. The members of the emperor's retinue were at least partly dressed, which was the easiest way to distinguish them from the slaves.

Most of them were exceptionally attractive. The magistrate was one of the exceptions. He was older than the others, with silver hair and a face marked by years of political life. Even so, he carried himself with dignity and grace. One man, however, stood apart.He did not mingle with the other guests. Instead, he remained in the citrus grove to the magistrate's right, staring directly at Pantera with open hatred.

The man was tall and bitter-looking. He had a high forehead, straight black hair pushed back from a receding hairline, and a hard expression.

He carried no obvious weapon, but the shape of his right sleeve suggested that he had a knife strapped to his arm.

Pantera silently thanked Math for the work he had done during the night. Pretending to be interested in the carp, Pantera moved around the pool while secretly measuring the distances between himself, the people in the garden, and the surrounding exits.

He was also searching for the emperor. He could not find him.

Yet the meal was obviously prepared for Nero. At the centre of the table stood an ice sculpture shaped like a lyre the emperor's favourite symbol that year. Then Empress Poppaea appeared from behind the mulberry trees. She was Nero's second wife. She had previously been married to one of Pantera's friends. People in Rome, Gaul, and Britain had many stories about Poppaea. They said that she had used her earlier marriages to climb her way toward becoming empress.

They also claimed that she had persuaded Nero to kill his own mother because the older woman had opposed their marriage.

Sensible people considered the story unlikely, but if Poppaea had heard the rumours, she never showed it. Instead, she had built her reputation around her beauty and elegance. Now she looked toward Pantera. At first, she behaved as though she did not know he was there. Her eyes moved slowly across his face, just as Aerthen's eyes had once done.

Pantera had not been frightened by her. More recently, however, he had grown used to the way people reacted when they saw him. Some stared. Others quickly looked away. Poppaea did neither. She simply looked at him calmly, as though she wanted him to see her as clearly as she could see him. Poppaea was taller than most Roman women.

Her long hair was arranged in coils around her shoulders.

Her clothing was made from pale yellow linen and decorated with silver thread. It reached her ankles, although the fine silk was somewhat transparent. Gold, silver, and diamonds decorated her ankles, wrists, neck, and hair. Pantera bowed but did not meet her eyes. He counted thirteen people among the emperor's retinue.

Still, there was no sign of Nero. Suddenly, one of the guards rang a small bell. Its silver sound travelled through the garden and seemed to rest among the spring blossoms.

Beyond the mulberry trees, the singer Icarus collapsed dramatically to the ground. There was a brief silence. Then the garden erupted into enthusiastic applause the applause was so strong that Pantera might have thought it was meant for Rhemáxos, the famous Thracian singer who was currently enchanting Rome with his songs. But it was not Rhemáxos who had been singing.

The applause itself was a warning. Then a high, thin voice called out to Pantera. "You are early. Good. We like that in a man. You may present yourself to us. It is long past due." Pantera's face showed mild surprise. He stepped through the flowers and saluted as though he were still a soldier in the legions and the man before him were still his supreme commander.

Then the man asked: "You enjoyed my singing?" It was Nero, emperor of Rome and ruler of all her provinces. Pantera looked at Nero carefully. The emperor was not quite as the coins portrayed him.

Nero might have sung like a eunuch, but he was older than the images suggested. He was also less soft and more physically graceful than Pantera had expected. His face was round, but strong bones gave it a firmness that made it impossible to imagine him as a simple imitation of Augustus.

Like his bodyguards, Nero was fully dressed, although not quite as formally as he would later be that day at the races. His toga was made from brilliant white linen, with a deep purple border. A diamond-studded diadem rested on his thick, unbrushed curls. In Rome, such precious stones were normally worn by women. His body was freshly oiled and smelled of mint, citrus, and another scent Pantera could not identify. The fragrance blended pleasantly with the chamomile and lavender growing in the garden.

Nero's eyes were a deep, almost dark blue. Half-lowered eyelids and blue powder made his expression difficult to read. He pursed his lips.

"Sebastos Abdes Pantera," he said. The name had meaning.

Sebastos was connected to Augustus, while Pantera meant leopard.

Nero had clearly studied him. "I am told you are broken," Nero continued, "and that you will never recover. I am also told that you suffer from sudden fits of uncontrolled anger, during which you might kill a man without thinking. Is that true?" Pantera knew immediately that Nero was testing him.

That was simply Nero's nature. He was also an actor, and he could sense the same quality in other people. He watched them as carefully as a snake watches for blood. Pantera bowed. "I would like to believe that it is not true, my lord," he answered. "Although I may yet be proved wrong. Did Fabius Africanus tell you that?" The courtiers reacted with surprise. One woman gave a short gasp. Nero laughed softly. He seemed amused by Pantera's courage. "How refreshing," Nero said. "Very few people have the courage to ask questions of their emperor." He paused. Then he added: "It was Akakios who said it, actually. He had heard it from Suetonius Paullinus…".