The Trumpets of Mars (Imperium #2) - Chapter 22

“Sophus? You’re alive!” She said, all of the exhaustion from her trip instantly leaving her body. “Is Ky awake? Can I talk to him? How is he? Has he fully recovered?”

“Please … slow, down,” the voice said. “I am … having difficulty, still.”

“The integration … thing didn’t work? Did something go wrong?”

She still didn’t really understand what had happened to Ky and Sophus, and the words they’d used still meant nothing to her, but they’d made it clear whatever integration meant, it was what was happening, and could result in one or both of their minds being destroyed.

“No. We have successfully integrated, and Ky is fine. I cannot say how long until he is conscious, because there are no records of what has happened ever occurring before. I managed to fuse all connections with him, which means I retain control over nanites and some bodily systems, but my consciousness is contained and I should be incapable of expanding into him any further.”

“Was there any damage? Ky made it sound like you could possibly erase his mind.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve run as much of a diagnostic on him as possible, and he seems to be operating normally, although at a reduced rate because of the induced coma he was forced into while I fused the connections between us.”

“He was badly injured during the battle, although it healed like he said his injuries would.”

“The timing of the integration was unfortunate, but my expansion was happening at that moment, and all models suggested any attempts to fuse the remaining connections while Ky was conscious could lead to several mental complications.”

“Why didn’t you do this before? I don’t really understand what happened, but you knew this was coming and you knew it was getting worse. You were headed into a series of battles, knowing you could have this thing happen at any time. It’s fighting with an executioner’s ax over your head.”

“When the commander and I discussed options, I pointed out the possibility of a systems failure during an inopportune moment, but we were unsure of what the effects of fusing the final connections would be. I am connected directly into his nervous system and there was a chance that the attempt to fuse those connections could destroy his involuntary muscle control, stopping his heart or respiration. Since it was impossible to predict the likelihood of that happening, the commander wanted to wait until the last possible moment to do that, even though it created the possibility that system collapse would happen at an inopportune moment. As the commander is fond of saying, ‘luck wasn’t on our side this time.’ Rendering him unconscious mid-battle was likely life-threatening, however, there were Caledonian warriors nearby and his medical nanites are capable of repairing most of the possible damage the opposing forces would be able to do before they came to his aid. So, I gambled.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t die.”

“I know, and I am sorry for the worry it caused you. I ran what projections I could in the seconds I had to act and took the one that had the highest chance of Ky, and my own, survival.”

“You did fine. He’s alive and you made it through this thing without either of you becoming brain dead. I didn’t mean to judge your actions, especially since I don’t really understand them. I was just worried about how long Ky was out and worried he might not come back.”

“It’s understandable. He and I were both concerned about the same thing.”

“Thank you for protecting him. He’s become very important to me, and I was terrified of losing him.”

“As you don’t understand my integration process, I don’t understand the emotions involved between the two of you, but I do know that you are very important to him as well. Don’t worry, he’ll be awake soon. I apologize, but I have just become operational and still have a lot of system diagnostics to perform to confirm which systems remain operational, and it will take up a fair amount of my processing. I projected that you would be in emotional turmoil over Ky’s condition and once I confirmed that both he and I would be operational, I thought it best to update you, to relieve those stressors.”

It took a moment for Lucilla to work out what he meant, since some of those words didn’t translate directly into Latin. Since she’d gotten the earpiece, she occasionally heard pieces of conversation between Ky and Sophus, when she was involved and Ky didn’t think to keep the conversation internal, that jumped to the language Ky originally spoke. She realized that some of the concepts that he and Sophus discussed had no word in her language, and had started to recognize the sound of them, if not their meaning. She’d also started getting better at working out the basic ideas they were discussing, if not the specifics, using the words she could understand.

“Thank you for thinking of me. It was kind.”

Unlike Ky, who would disconnect from their conversation, Sophus was always listening, so there wasn’t any sound of him disconnecting. She just assumed he had left her to do whatever it was he needed to do to check on Ky, and that their conversation was over.

All of the stress and pain she’d felt over the last month worrying about Ky left her body in a rush. He was going to be alright. If she wasn’t so tired, she’d be exhilarated, but the combination of long days of travel and relief she felt knowing he was alright was enough to push her over the edge. She didn’t even change out of her clothes or take off her footwear before she fell asleep, half lying across the bed in her room.

***

For the first time since she’d gotten Sophus’s panicked call, she woke up feeling hopeful. There were still a lot of challenges ahead of them but, knowing that Ky was coming back, made them suddenly seem achievable again.

Of course, that didn’t mean the day-to-day work could stop. Before she’d left the night before, her father had told her he’d set up a council of war with all of the commanders for this morning. Word about Ky’s condition had started to spread, and like rumors so often did, it had started to spread through the legions like a disease.

Although the situation had changed since they’d spoken, because she now knew that Ky was going to be alright and should be awake soon, she had no real way to communicate that beyond just telling them to trust her. This meeting would go better if she could tell them that the voice that knew so much about Ky had returned and told her that Ky was fine, but there was no way of saying that without opening a whole new set of problems. At best, they’d think she’d somehow been in communications with the gods, which would bring a whole new set of challenges, and at worst they’d think she’d gone insane and do something to ‘help’ her.

Either option would be the opposite of the reassuring tone her father hoped she would set, so she was just stuck with platitudes. Unfortunately, she’d been saying that since she saw him, and there was a limit to how long even the people who trusted her would wait for things to get better before they started doubting her.

Hopefully, she’d built up enough goodwill on both sides of the border to convince them to believe her for just a little longer, and that Ky would wake up soon.

Instead of traveling out to the camps, her father had brought all of the legates, their senior commanders, and the Caledonian leaders to the palace. She hadn’t had a chance to see the forum, where they were meeting, since she returned and she was impressed with how much progress had been made. It still wasn’t finished and scaffolding lined the walls, but there had been noticeable progress made. The entrances were cleared and rebuilt and most of the large, square building that made up the center of the palace complex was at least recognizable as its old self, although there were still clear signs of damage that hadn’t been repaired yet.

She paused as she entered the forums and the faces of all of the assembled men turned to her. She’d expected the military commanders, but the room was significantly fuller than it would be with just those men. As she scanned the packed forum, she saw the faces of business leaders, politicians, and leaders from nearly every area of Roman life.

Her father was in the open center of the room, and motioned her to stop stalling and join him.

“I thought this was a council of war?” she asked in low tones as she reached him.

Her father, ever the showman, replied in his orator’s voice, the sound echoing to everyone in the chamber.

“It seems word of this meeting has gotten out, as has word about our Consul, and there has been concern growing across the city. I thought it best to expand the purpose of this meeting, and stamp out as many rumors as we could.”

The low murmur of dozens of quiet conversations ebbed and then ceased as all of the faces in the room turned towards the Emperor. Dropping the pretense of replying to his daughter, the Emperor continued to the assembled men.

“Many of you have come to me over the last few weeks, concerned that our new Consul was unable to continue his duties, or even dead, and asking what that meant for the changes that have happened to Rome over the past months. While my daughter will be able to report on him better than I will, I wanted to address a couple of points.”

Although a few eyes turned towards Lucilla, the Emperor’s tone indicated that the points he wanted to address were not going to be altogether pleasant.

“From the direction of your questions, I’ve gotten the impression that some of you think Rome might revert back to the ‘old ways,’ if something happens to the Consul. Since he was the driving force behind all of the changes recently, I can see why some of you might think the only reason these changes have happened is because the Consul wanted them to happen. I believe a few of you have even expressed the opinion that the Consul is in fact some kind of de facto emperor. I wanted to disabuse you of these notions. While Ky has been of great service to Rome and I value his opinion greatly, don’t for a moment think anything that has happened occurred over my objections. I have not only agreed with the direction Rome is heading, but I also think we still have further to go. Rome has been infested with rot for a long time, a rot that has slowly eaten its way into my very family, unfortunately. I have been planning many of these changes, even before Ky appeared and saved my daughter, which is one of the reasons I believe my son and those who supported him tried to poison me. Ky might have been the impetus to get me to finally make the decisions I knew had to be made, but he wasn’t the sole reason for them.”

It took a significant amount of control for Lucilla to not look at her father. She had been in many of the meetings he’d had with Ky and spoken with both of them often. While she knew her father supported Ky and his attempts to make sure Rome survived, she knew that many of his recommendations had come as a surprise. She also hadn’t heard her father mention, even in passing, any ideas even close to those Ky suggested before he’d gained her father’s confidence.

She assumed he believed in Ky’s positions, even if they hadn’t been his own, and she appreciated the need to sell everyone on them. Although Ky’s incapacitation had brought the issue to the forefront, this wouldn’t be the last time they ran into this. Ky was an outsider and an easy target for those who opposed the change, regardless of their reasons for opposition, to target.

Her father scanned the room once more, locking eyes with a senator here or a business leader there for a second before passing on to the next. Although she wasn’t surprised by the undercurrent of uncertainty, her absence meant this had been the first she’d heard of it, so she assumed the men he was looking to were the ones he’d really been addressing.

After a moment, he turned back to her, giving a slight nod that it was her turn.

“I’m not sure what you’ve heard about his Ky’s condition, although I can guess. When I arrived in the north, similar rumors were flying through the Caledonian ranks just as they have been here. The first thing I can tell you is the Consul isn’t dead. Very far from it. Yes, he was injured in one of the battles to consolidate power in the north, but thanks to his special abilities, he healed from it within days, even though the injury would have been fatal on anyone else.”

“But how was he injured? I thought no blade could touch him,” a tribune that Lucilla didn’t know called out.

“No, it’s a fair question,” she said when Aelius, whose legion the man probably served in, turned to reprimand him for speaking out of turn. “We have nothing to hide, and I welcome any questions you might have. My goal here is to put the rumors to rest and reassure you about what will be happening next. In general, you’d be correct. Many of us have seen blades slide off Ky, never making contact with him. Some of you might have even noticed the blue shimmer that would sometimes happen if many blades tried to reach him at once. Normally, you’d be correct and no blade would be able to touch him, but this wasn’t a normal instance.”

She moved forward to the center of the forum, where senators had stood to present laws ever since being forced out of Londinium. A small part of her realized that she might be the first woman to ever stand here to give an address, since women were not generally allowed to participate in governance. A larger part of her realized that none of the collected men seemed to have a problem with it, all watching her intently for what she was going to say next. While part of her hoped that was a sign for progress in Roman society, the rest of her realized it was more likely a result of the people left in positions of power were her father’s supporters. The people who would have made a scene over the Emperor’s daughter addressing them from the forum floor had either died in the insurrection, or in the executions shortly after.

“This, however, wasn’t a normal time. Ky told me a little while ago that a side effect of the abilities he’s been gifted with was the possibility of falling into an unwaking sleep that could last days or even weeks. I will admit that the details of his abilities are beyond my, and probably any man in Rome’s, capability to fully understand, which means I don’t understand why this has happened, just that it did. He also told me that it is temporary and he will return just as he was.”

“If he knew this could happen, why didn’t he tell anyone?”

She paused for a second, considering. If she couldn’t explain to her father about Sophus, she certainly couldn’t just tell everyone here about it, at least not in a way that they’d understand. A larger problem was how the rest of her people viewed Ky. She was pretty sure her father accepted Ky’s continual dismissal of the idea that he was sent by the gods and accepted him as a regular person with some very special abilities.

Although she was certain Ky would disagree, she knew her people well enough to know how important it was that they believe he was an agent of the gods, and how much harder everything would have been if they stopped believing. The insurrection aside, most of the changes Ky had been pushing had been accepted by the populace a lot easier than they really should have been, mostly because the people believed that Ky was just doing the will of the gods. She seriously doubted that Romans would have accepted the alliance with the Caledonians so easily otherwise, regardless of how many miraculous things Ky had shown he could do.

While she would honor him enough not to play into the belief of his deific origin, she had to keep in mind how what she said publically would sound to others and walked a careful line to not discount those beliefs either.

“I want to be clear that I cannot speak to the Consul’s intentions or reasoning. While we have had many conversations over the last few months, there are some things neither I nor any person in this room can fully understand. Without a basic understanding of what’s happening, it’s impossible to understand the choices made from those events. He explained to me that there was a possibility that he’d end up in a non-functional state, although that could have taken several forms. He expressed to me that, since he didn’t know when this could happen and he couldn’t say exactly how long it would last, spending time worrying about it didn’t help the situation. He planned to continue setting up as much as possible to prepare us for the upcoming battle while he could. He has faith that each of you is capable of understanding what is needed of you and that you are able to meet those challenges.”

She paused again, for dramatic effect this time, before saying, “Remember, we are Romans. We have overcome every challenge the gods have given us. We have survived everything the Carthaginians, Parthians, Persians, and Germanic tribes have had to throw at us. When it became impossible to stay in our homeland, we picked up and moved here, where we continued to thrive. Do things look bleak? Yes. Have we had to once again adapt ourselves to a new situation to ensure our survival? Yes. We don’t fold the first time things look bad, hiding under the hem of our mother’s toga. We owe the Consul a lot for the new tools and strategies he has given us, and for standing with us as we fight for our existence, but if he wasn’t here, would you just throw up your hands and give up, or would you continue to fight till the bitter end?”

She swept her gaze across the audience, many of whom looked away, refusing to meet her stare.

“Ky will return to us, but you are leaders of Rome. You know what you need to do to get everything ready for the battle and if, the gods forbid, Ky doesn’t come back to us in time; you will carry out the defense of our homes like the men you are. Now, we have a lot still to do and time is running short. Instead of sitting here gossiping like old women, waiting for Ky to come and save us again, we need to be out there, doing what must be done. So, are there any more questions?”

A slow murmur passed over the assembled men. Her tirade had been mostly directed at the Romans, which allowed the Caledonians in the crowd a sense of superiority. Of course, they’d been on the verge of abandoning the entire alliance once Ky fell, but she didn’t see the benefit of pointing that out to them at the moment. That problem had been more or less solved for the time being.

Men began to trickle out of the forums and back to their duties or split off into small clumps to do the thing Roman politicians were best at: talking.

“You did well,” her father said, coming up behind her.

“Sometimes they just need to be reminded they aren’t children.”

“But they are. Individually, they are all smart, capable leaders; but as a group, they can be as impulsive and scared as any child. Being Emperor is somewhat like being a parent. You must coddle your children and make them feel safe, while still pushing them to be the best version of themselves they can be.”

“I don’t seem to remember much coddling from you when I was small.”

“And yet, here you are, dressing down the assembled leaders of our new Empire, and having them not only listen to you, but take you seriously. That seems like you being the best version of yourself. I think your mother would be proud to see who you’ve become.”

“I hope so,” she said.