The Subura stank of life.
It was a smell Crixus knew better than the perfumed air of the palace. It was the smell of cheap wine, unwashed bodies, charcoal fires, and desperation, all simmering together under the Roman sun. The noise was a physical thing, a constant roar of shouting merchants, crying children, and drunken arguments.
This was a world away from the Emperor's marble halls. These were his people. Killers, survivors, and forgotten men. And he was here to hunt them.
He strode through the teeming, filthy streets, a giant moving through a sea of lesser men. He wore no armor, only a simple leather tunic, but the way he moved, the cold purpose in his eyes, cleared a path before him. He was a legend here, the gladiator who had faced the Emperor's champion and lived.
His destination was a cellar beneath a crumbling tenement, a notorious underground fighting pit known only as 'The Grinder.' The air inside was even fouler, thick with sweat, blood, and the sour tang of spilled beer. In the center of a dirt-floored arena, two men were trying to kill each other with weighted nets and sharpened hooks.
Crixus ignored them. His eyes scanned the crowd of scarred, broken-nosed men who were betting and screaming at the combatants. He saw the faces he was looking for. Men who fought not for glory, but for their next meal. Men with nothing left to lose.
He vaulted into the pit. The fight stopped. The crowd fell silent.
"The Emperor has a message for you," Crixus boomed, his voice cutting through the oppressive heat. He laid out the offer. No flowery speeches. Just the brutal, beautiful truth.
"He needs killers. He offers a full pardon for all past crimes. He offers land in the south when the war is won. And he offers more gold than you have ever seen in your miserable lives." He let his gaze sweep over them. "In exchange, he asks you to go north, into the mountains. He asks you to become ghosts. To hunt a legion and make them bleed."
For a moment, there was silence. Then, a raw, guttural cheer erupted from a hundred throats. It was the sound of condemned men being offered a miracle.
He got his army.
He spent the next hour picking his captains, separating the merely vicious from the cunningly lethal. He found men who knew poisons, men who could climb sheer rock faces, men who could move through the forest without a sound.
And he found Narcissus.
The giant gladiator, the man Marcus had spared in the Colosseum, was at the front of the line, his massive face split by a grin of pure, uncomplicated joy. He looked like a child who had been offered the greatest toy in the world. "Crixus! The God-Emperor calls, and we will answer!"
"You're in, Narcissus," Crixus said, clapping him on his tree-trunk of a shoulder. "I need a man who can break things. You'll be my vanguard."
As Narcissus roared with delight, a hand plucked at Crixus's sleeve. He turned to see an old, one-eyed fighter named Scaeva, a man known more for his caution than his courage.
"A word, Crixus," the old man rasped, pulling him into a dark corner. "Be careful who you trust. Especially that one." He nodded towards the celebrating Narcissus.
Crixus frowned. "Narcissus is loyal to the Emperor. He owes him his very life."
"He may be," Scaeva whispered, his one good eye darting around nervously. "But loyalty is a tricky thing. His brother, Decimus… he is a quartermaster for the Third Legion. The one stationed closest to the Alps."
Crixus felt a cold knot form in his stomach. "So?"
"So," the old fighter said, his voice dropping even lower, "the Third has been reporting 'lost' shipments for the past six months. Grain, leather, even a cart of Spanish steel blades. Nothing big enough to trigger a full investigation. Just a steady trickle, vanishing into the northern forests."
The seed of doubt was planted. A poisonous, terrible seed. Was it a coincidence? Or had Narcissus been playing a long, brilliant game, using his life-debt to the Emperor as the perfect cover while he secretly supplied his brother, who in turn supplied Valerius Celsus?
Was Marcus's most fanatically loyal enforcer a traitor?
Crixus was in an impossible position. He needed Narcissus's strength. He couldn't leave him behind without arousing suspicion. But he couldn't trust him. He would have to take a viper with him into the mountains.
The Oracle's chambers had become a courtroom.
Lycomedes brought the palace steward, Cassian, before Marcia. The old man was trembling, his face the color of ash. He looked at Marcia with eyes full of terror and confusion. The zealot guards stood just outside the open door, their arms crossed, their expressions grim. They were not just guards. They were the jury.
This was not a private meeting. It was a holy inquest. And Marcia was the judge.
She took a deep breath and began the performance of her life. Her eyes unfocused, her voice taking on a high, ethereal tone. "The spirits cry out…" she began, looking at a point on the wall just past Cassian's shoulder. "They speak of a serpent in the garden… a shadow that wears a loyal face…"
She was trying to speak in code, to warn Cassian about Lucilla without alerting her fanatical jailers.
And then the serpent herself appeared.
Lucilla swept into the doorway, a vision of pious concern. "Holy Oracle," she said, her voice ringing with a sincerity that would have fooled the gods themselves. "I heard you were communing. I have come to receive your divine wisdom."
She entered the room and, to Marcia's absolute horror, knelt gracefully at her feet. She had hijacked the meeting. She had become the lead worshipper.
Marcia was trapped.
Lucilla, still kneeling, looked up at the trembling steward. Her eyes were full of a cold, predatory light. "Tell us, Oracle," she said, her voice dripping with false humility. "What has this man done? Has the serpent's poison touched him?"
She had turned Marcia's own gambit into a weapon against her. She had framed Cassian, Marcia's only potential ally, as the traitor.
Marcia looked from Lucilla's serene, smiling face to Cassian's terrified one. She had to make a choice, right now, in front of the zealots who held her life in their hands.
Condemn an innocent man to save herself? Or expose her vision as a fraud and be torn apart as a blasphemer?
Back in the war room, Marcus was a machine of command. He had his insane plan. Now he had to make it real. He stood over a table with Crixus, reviewing the final details.
"You have your targets," he said, his voice cold and detached, a general sending men to their deaths. "Cause chaos. Bleed them. But above all, Crixus, delay them. Every single day you buy us is another day this city lives."
Crixus nodded, his face grim. He hesitated. He looked at the Emperor, at the crushing weight on his shoulders. He thought of Scaeva's warning about Narcissus. He opened his mouth to speak, to warn Marcus of the potential treason in their midst.
But he looked at the Emperor's eyes, at the sheer, brutal focus required to hold an empire together, and he closed it again. He could not, would not, shatter that focus now. Not when everything hung in the balance. This was a battle he would have to fight himself.
"It will be done, Caesar," Crixus said, his voice a low promise.
Marcus clapped a hand on his shoulder, a rare gesture of absolute trust. He was so focused on the war in the north, he had almost forgotten the war in his own home.
"And the palace?" he asked, the question an afterthought, a box to be checked off a list. "Is all secure? How is the Lady Marcia?"
Crixus thought of her chambers, of the grim-faced fanatics standing guard. He thought of the word 'Oracle' being whispered in the corridors with a new, dangerous reverence.
"She is… well guarded, Caesar," he said carefully. "The fanatics do not leave her side."
Marcus nodded, satisfied. He heard the words "well guarded" and translated them to "safe." A flicker of relief crossed his face. One problem, at least, was solved.
He was so focused on the fire raging on the horizon that he was completely blind to the snake coiled at his feet. He thought he had solved the problem of Marcia's safety, while at that very moment, she was trapped in a gilded room with a serpent, fighting a battle for her very soul.
The scene cut back to Marcia's chamber. The silence was a physical weight. Lucilla was smiling sweetly up at her, a loyal subject waiting for her Oracle's judgment. Lycomedes was watching, his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to enact divine justice on the traitor in their midst. Cassian was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering.
Marcia looked at the innocent old man's face. She opened her mouth to speak, knowing that her next words would either be a death sentence, or her own.
What does a god say when she is trapped?