Savage City (41 page)

They turned off the Via Labicana down a broad shopping street, turned again into a quieter road almost choked with parked cars. It wasn’t empty; someone was backing out of a parking space, and further down stood a little group of nervous people who might have run here from the Colosseum for shelter. But their van was there, and nothing had happened to it. Ziye opened the doors and let down the ramp and the people from the Colosseum watched, vaguely interested in this manifestation of vigile business.

Ziye began to drive as, in the back of the van, Varius was throwing the stuffed sacks aside, tearing open the plastic to see the damage.

Perception came in bits and pieces: a sparse litter of unnecessary things, drifting in on the tide. Something tangled around his body; someone making a noise and demanding something; cold air on damp bare skin. Sulien did not even form the thought that none of this mattered; there was nothing of him left to think at all. But after a time, as the trickle of sensations crept on, he noticed himself turning his head away from the jostling, shouting person beside him, and it occurred to him that he was waking.

He whispered, ‘No,’ and felt his lips move and air, swelling his lungs.

‘Sulien,’ said Varius’ voice, sounding strained and exasperated, ‘come on: you have to help. I don’t know what I’m doing with this.’

The cry of the hounds throbbed in the air, and he wanted to bring up his arms to cover his head, but he could not move – he was afraid of being able to move, of consciousness taking hold in his body. He did not know, or want to know, why Varius was there.

He was not exactly in pain yet, except for the immense weight of his eyelids and the aching haze in his head, but he could feel the lines of his injuries marking out the parameters of his body, like preliminary strokes of a pen.

Varius shook him again, and began urgently rattling off the names of drugs so that Sulien had the impression, at once frightening and comforting, of having slid back five years, or ten years, from the moment of dying into Catavignus’ beautiful study in London, preparing for some exam . . .

. . . but his eyes tipped open, just for an instant, though he took in nothing of what he saw – and even if he’d wanted to, he could not have stopped his eyelids from dropping again at once. But the act of opening them was enough; at a stroke he lost any doubt that he was alive. Even
as he collapsed back into sleep he knew, this time, that he’d wake again, and within minutes or seconds.

It was a little quieter, and he could smell antiseptic. Half-heartedly, Sulien opened his eyes. Varius was still beside him, but he was no longer shouting at him, he had turned away and was muttering feverishly, under his breath. He sounded barely sane. Sulien understood more or less where he was, that somehow Varius had got them out of the Colosseum. He didn’t know how it had been done, and couldn’t even begin to wonder. However it had happened, it was a mistake. He still could not think except in bewildered, aching spurts, but he was sure they would not get away; this was an extension, a repetition, of capture and death, not a true escape. The smallest touch of any other possibility stung like disinfectant on newly torn skin.

Now he was awake, of course he had to know what had happened to Una. He resented the uselessness of it, resented even the effort of lifting his head, but he looked around, and saw her lying in a mess of torn plastic sacks, patched with untidy clumps of bandages. The motion of the van shook her slightly, unresisted tremors which somehow displayed how still she was, so still that from here he couldn’t see the movement of her breath.

Sulien rolled sluggishly onto his side, and realised the worst of his own wounds had been cleaned and crudely dressed. There was a clutter of medical supplies scattered around them both: bloody bundles of gauze, bottles of saline, a pair of empty syringes.

Varius was kneeling between them, bending over Una, eyes wild, teeth clenched, looking back and forth between her face and what looked like a handwritten list of instructions, as if there might be some overlooked answer somewhere.

He turned, and Sulien dropped his eyes at once, because he could not look Varius in the face. He was heavy with bleak fury with him, and shame at it.

Varius raced through the list of drugs again: narcotics, antagonists. He was bristling with nervous energy; it was exhausting even to hear him. ‘You both had the same dose of the tranquilliser; there wasn’t anything we could do about that. Look, here.’ He pressed an empty dart into Sulien’s limp, indifferent hand. ‘And we were guessing with the antidote too – but you started waking up at once. You didn’t look like that, even before I gave you anything. But she—Nothing’s happening. Do we give her more, or would that—? Can you do something?’

‘I don’t want,’ began Sulien, dully. But even in his mind the words slithered away; he could not actually tell Varius how lumpishly
ungrateful he felt, that he only wanted to let Una sleep, to lie down again himself.

He shifted closer to her. ‘Wake up, Una,’ he said, unhappily.

‘How are we doing? Where are we?’ shouted Varius to the front of the van, and Sulien realised he had not yet even wondered who was driving. He assumed, without thinking about it, that there were vigile cars already hounding the van along the unseen road, closing in ahead.

‘We’re on the Via Valeria, coming up to Carsioli,’ called Ziye. Her presence, along with almost everything else, was unfathomable to Sulien. He wondered where Lal was, and was glad she wasn’t here. But he was startled that they were so far out of Rome. How could the vigiles have allowed that?

Una was heavily unconscious still, and a slow, thick feeler of blood was creeping from under the bandaging at her shoulder. But her breath was already a little stronger than it had been. A second dose of the antidote would have woken her, even if Sulien hadn’t been there.

‘Will she be all right?’ demanded Varius.

‘Yes,’ said Sulien, without tone, still without looking at him.

Varius nodded, but didn’t display any obvious relief, just moved to the next matter with jarring swiftness. He tossed a bag of clothes at Sulien. ‘Get yourselves cleaned up enough to put these on,’ he said, scrambling towards the seats in the front.

Sulien pulled vaguely at the contents of the bag; but for now that would have to be enough, he couldn’t do anything but slump back against the side of the van, watching Una, but seeing the dogs’ red mouths gaping whenever his eyelids slipped shut. He thought of asking where Varius hoped to take them, but decided it would take too much effort, even if he had truly wanted to know.

Una’s eyes opened a little way and for a while remained fixed, without apparent surprise or pain, on the low ceiling. Then they turned slowly towards Sulien. Her face creased and she said, ‘It hurts.’

A knot of pain that had nothing to do with what the hounds had done to him tightened and locked in Sulien’s chest. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he thought, finding it oddly funny to be panicking over that now. But the same moment he had to brace himself as the van veered sharply, and his pulse went clashing in the bites and scrapes all over him and it was too much; he couldn’t stand any more of it. And it would have been over by now—It had been over . . .

Una reached out blindly, groaning, and dragged a torn sheet of the plastic sacking over her body, trying to hide or clothe herself. She looked around. ‘Varius?’ she croaked.

Varius turned at once, but only to give her a tense, curt look, a nod. He said, ‘Get yourselves ready.’

Una was trying to sit up, her hands batting weakly at the floor of the van, clutching at Sulien, and crying out as she tried to prop herself on her left arm.

He made equally clumsy efforts to lift her. She leant against him, baffled, gasping, and said at last in a whisper, ‘I don’t think anyone’s following us.’

Sulien didn’t answer, tried to forget he’d heard. He started to prise Varius’ rough dressing away from the ragged punctures in her shoulder. He could keep his attention there, and later, on the slashes on his own legs and back; he could coax the worst of the bleeding to stop, smooth down some of the pain, and he got so lost in the difficulty of it that he forgot to think of time passing, only realised when they were at last struggling, exhausted, into the clothes, how long all this had taken. More than an hour must have passed since Varius first woke him.

The clothes made no sense on their bodies; he thought, as Una, grimacing, wrenched on a dark wool coat. Baggy prison wear, bloody rags and scraps of plastic had been right for what was happening, for raw, pulpy skin and bruised bones, not costumes meant for human beings, with neat seams and soft linings. How strange he must look, as Una looked to him, with her blood-sticky hair, and her scored hands emerging from these stupidly well-made and well-chosen things. Lal, he thought – oh, he was sure it was her; she had been in charge of the clothes. Even the colours suited them; she’d have done that without even thinking about it. In spite of her efforts blood was oozing through his sleeve.

‘Sulien,’ began Una again, in a too-soft, too-hopeful voice.

He shut his eyes and said, ‘Don’t.’

But the van was slowing as it turned downhill, the road seemed rougher, quieter. And then they stopped. Varius leapt out, pulled open the doors.

The light— Again the light was too strong, white and cold and stinging above the sea. They stumbled out onto the road, heavy and off-balance, almost blind, the wind sharp through their clothes and bandages. They were on a narrow road leading down to a jetty, where a few small yachts and fishing boats were moored. A pale, pretty village rose on the hillside over the little bay.

Ziye was still inside the van. She leaned out of the window, looked at Una and Sulien, staggering and mute in the light. ‘I’ll see you,’ she
said tersely, no more, and drove away. Neither of them even thought to thank her.

But there was no one around on the road, only a woman walking a dog down on the beach, too far off to see the blood they hadn’t been able to rub away or cover up. But Sulien could still hear the noise the hounds had made, booming somewhere in his skull along with the beat of his heart. When he blinked, he could almost believe he was still sprawled there on the hot sand and this—

But of course this wasn’t like a dream; they were really here, limping down the jetty, and they’d be lucky not to topple together into the sea, for they could hardly stand upright, let alone walk. And still he was waiting for something to happen, for volucers to descend, vigile boats to pile out of nowhere into the little bay. Varius marched them along, almost angrily, as if he expected it too, and now he was actually herding them onto the deck of the boat moored furthest from the shore. Everything around was so quiet and blue as Sulien crumpled down on the little strip of deck behind the cockpit and Varius wrenched fiercely and inexpertly at the controls. The boat went jolting out from the harbour, over the slow waves.

Una was crouched on the bench seats by the windows, looking back at the shore. Varius forced the little yacht along as if the whole of the Roman fleet was behind them, but there was nothing, only the sound of the engine burring through the water and the air. Sulien dragged himself up to see the land already reduced to a pale line behind them, and then gone, leaving only the dark suppleness of the sea.

Abruptly, Varius turned off the engine, let go of the controls. He said, quietly, almost a question, ‘It worked,’ and he dropped back in the seat and lay there, breathing hard, trembling. Then he began to laugh – low, hitching spasms at first, then louder angry, delighted. He shouted, ‘We did it. It worked, I got you.’ He rose from the seat as if looking for something to punch, and turned to them, scarcely recognisable with triumph. ‘That’ll show the bastard.’

Sulien looked around at the impossible sea and tried to answer, but that seemed to dislodge something in him, and all that came were tears.

Varius stopped laughing long enough to produce a bottle of methousia from beside the helm, take a deep swig from it before pushing it firmly into Sulien’s hands. He collapsed onto the bench opposite and covered his face, laughter coming more quietly now, but still unstoppable.

Una sat staring from Varius to Sulien and back, open-mouthed, mechanically rubbing Sulien’s arm, still incapable of making a sound.

Drusus rose and paced about the Imperial Office, trying to allow a little time for the sense of dissatisfaction and suspicion to dissipate, but it continued to build, rising like acid to the back of his throat. ‘I want to see the bodies,’ he announced.

Almost as soon as the Praetorians had swept him back into the Palace, word had come through that the executions had been completed despite the interruption. It had been repeated and confirmed more than once already, and at the first hearing he had felt reassured. But that had soured quickly; he felt held in a kind of sick suspense. He had not felt easy even before the dogs had been loosed from the gates.

The four men before him looked at one another – just fleeting, expressionless glances, but Drusus suddenly wondered if he had made a mistake summoning them here together. It had seemed the most natural and efficient thing to do, and of course the duties of the vigiles and the Praetorians often intersected, but you did not want them to get too close, to start thinking of themselves as a single force.