Chapter Text
I took a step back onto the sidewalk as the god-emperor who’d just made Octavian’s scheming look like child’s play…strode out of the Senate building smoothly.
What’s his plan? What’s his goal? Friend, or enemy?
I was tempted to say enemy immediately, but things were rarely so simple. Octavian had taught me that. Saturn had taught me that.
Not understanding someone’s intentions isn’t the same thing as them being malicious.
The emperor Nero eyed me.
“Jason Grace, Legionnaire of the Fifth Cohort, son of Jupiter. You are just the man I’ve been looking to speak to.”
His eyes looked kind to most, but I recognized the look in them. I’d learned to recognize that look. From Octavian.
The relentless burning resolve, the determination, and the magnetic charisma.
I nodded.
Nero smiled at me, all teeth and no tongue.
“Walk with me. I have an offer I’d like to discuss.” He set off, purple toga flowing in the wind, not looking back. The thought that I wouldn’t follow him hadn’t even crossed his mind.
My feet dragged with reluctance, but they dragged on all the same. I could feel the bronze gladius humming in my sheathe. That power.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. I reminded myself, thinking back to Lupa from my Wolf House days. If you cannot tell them apart, assume enemy until proven otherwise.
Debate was Octavian’s home turf. Recon, though, I could do.
“You think I’m going to attempt to sell you the same deal I sold the Senate.” Nero said. Statement, not question. He was not the kind of man who tolerated margins of error.
We walked past the building of New Rome. A coffee shop to the left, cocoa beans wafting into the air, a bakery to the right, fresh bread mixing with the cocoa in a delicious sensation that—
—I was getting distracted, and hungry, and neither was helping.
“That was a suspicion of mine,” I said, focusing on his curled brown locks. His eyes were too intense to focus on.
He shrugged.
“Fair enough. What I sold the pencil-pushers in the Senate was hardly original. That being said…it doesn’t need to be original to be true.”
Which part? You offering a joint operation between Triumvirate Defense and the Legion? Or how the gods have failed to fulfill their end of the bargain, so we owe them nothing?
I didn't know which, so I waited for him to fill in the blanks.
“You aren’t a Senator, nor a pencil-pushing bureaucrat, or an orator of fine First Cohort caliber. No, Jason, you’re just a child soldier fighting your gods’ wars, and that's fine by me.”
I froze mid-step.
A child soldier?
The mental image of teenagers with AKs in the desert, called Taliban, came to mind. My gladius suddenly felt heavy in my pocket.
He doesn’t seriously think—
“I…I believe I misheard you, sir.”
Nero looked at me with an eyebrow raised.
Confusion. I remembered.
“Did you? I said you’re a child soldier. Fighting your gods’ wars.”
I was lucky I was a demigod. I didn’t show much emotion naturally.
If I had, he would’ve been able to sense the defensive anger coiling in my chest.
“You are mistaken, sir.” I said, thanking my father that my birthright was a stone-face designed for war zones. “I am a demigod. Son of Jupiter. Legionnaire of the Fifth—”
He interrupted me mid-sentence, making my brain—
“—Cohort. Servant of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. It wasn’t interesting to me the first time, not to mention it's irrelevant.”
I’d been trained for as long as I could remember to follow orders from my superiors. I’d had…setbacks…yes, with Centurion Dakota and with my Praetor, but generally I followed the rules. Took orders.
What are you doing, Jason? This is recon.
Another voice, sparking in my gut, answered it.
Making a point.
“I can control the winds, electricity, and put holes in steel scuta with training gladii. I would argue I am the exception to the rule.”
Another shrug, he flicked his tongue in a mindless habit before stroking his chin. Something seemed different about it, but I couldn't name what. His tongue was...different somehow.
“I could argue this point until Rome falls…again…but I’ve got multiple things in motion too sensitive to jeopardize with pedantry. I’ll say this.”
He slowed to a stop, and I could feel people staring at him in a mix of awe and terror.
“You’re a good soldier, Jason. I never doubted that. You care about your men and women deeply, you would take a bullet for any of them. You are honorable, selfless, and kind. If I were a mere bureaucrat, I would tell you that we aren’t so different. That we are two good men trying to do what we think ought to be done. I’d be lying.”
Honorable, selfless, kind.
I paused.
What does that make him?
“You aren’t special, though. You aren’t exceptional, to the rule or in general. At least, not in the way you think. You’re another soldier in another war on another continent defending your homeland against threats foreign and domestic. Summoning typhoons at will is...”
He seemed to be searching for the right word.
"...merely your weapon of choice."
Those words hurt when I remembered what I’d seen on the news during my first quest. A 12 year old picking up a sword and fighting a Fury one-on-one, and winning. Taking a thirty-meter drop into the Mississippi River and coming out revitalized.
...weapon of choice.
Am I even the only child of the Big Three around?
I looked at him, eyebrow raised a fraction.
“You…that’s an awfully cynical view.” I replied, thanking my father yet again for my expressionless face.
He sighed like it was an occupational hazard.
“PMCs are where idealists go to die. Literally.”
He laughed. I didn’t. Then something about that sentence clicked.
He gave up on humor, and looked almost tired. Weary.
The silence beat down on both of us.
“All of that to say—”
Before he could finish, an argument stole his attention.
“You know the rules, Legionnaire…I’m onto you. No weapons permitted beyond the Pomerian Line. And that little bit of metal definitely qualifies as a weapon.”
A few meters down the street, a very small, very angry statue was having a hissy fit at an entrepreneurial teenage girl operating a successful bakery, the sweet smell of bread wafting through the air.
The girl groaned.
“Ugh…Terminus, we’ve been over this. My application for a business license is in the final stages of the approval process. It will be in my hands by the end of the week.”
“Yes, but—” Terminus tried to interject, but she cut him off mid-sentence.
“A time-frame, mind you, that the Senate would struggle to keep up with, given its decisions seem to follow the Election Calendar more than anything else...”
Nero smiled gently again, the now-clear mask of sanity back in its proper place. I found myself wondering if the man I’d just seen was even real…or just a tool for appealing to a different kind of crowd.
“Ah, Terminus, the only god this side of the Rockies that makes Caligula look lenient.” Nero whistled under his breath.
I’d never seen Terminus look nervous, but the statue vanished in a flash of silver and re-appear facing Nero.
“Nero.” The statue said, in a tone that suggested that word alone said everything that needed to be said.
“As much as I would enjoy tearing your career apart at the seams in front of all these wonderful people, I’m on a tight schedule. So I’ll just say that I’m very grateful for your actions defending Rome in the late sixties.” Nero answered, smiling.
Late sixties? He wouldn’t be talking about—
In three seconds, white-hot anger from the god of borders nearly melted the sword in my sheath, but he kept his temper and calmed himself down.
Oh. He was talking about that. Then that registered. Three sentences. And he chooses that wound to rub salt into.
Terminus’ next words before he vanished were laced with enough venom to kill ten thousand elephants.
“I’ll be sure to send flowers to your personal residence as a gesture of thanks. Assuming it hasn’t burned to the ground since then.”
Burned to the ground.
Hate isn't strong enough a word.
For the first time in the entire conversation, I saw rage stagger across Nero’s face before he composed himself again.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. My tower has survived worse than a few fires.”
Two sentences, and he reminds the god of borders of the day his home nearly burned to the ground.
I got the feeling that if I asked, the god would kill me where I stood. As Nero might say, it didn’t really matter which one.
Nero started heading down the middle of the road, passing shopkeepers and carts and tents and a few Fauna begging for change. He looked down at the faun.
“The city prided for its wealth. With homeless in its streets going ignored. This was the Rome I thought I’d fixed, but evidently…” His voice dropped an octave to a growl. “…the old law of bureaucrats and statesmen needing to be held at sword-point to do anything about their own country still holds firm.”
He closed his fist, then opened it again, handing the faun a brown woolen sack. The faun took it gingerly.
“Th-thank you, s-sir…”
The god coughed, throwing the side eye to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. My father’s temple.
“Say what you will about my policy, my tactics, my ethics…at least my men aren’t living on the f—”
A toddler skipped through a puddle past us, oblivious.
The man who had told me I was a child soldier fighting my gods' wars...
“—riggin’ street. Right.” He corrected himself.
...softened his language for the boy.
My eyes met his. He gestured to a small tent with armored personnel passing in and out.
“You want recon?” Nero offered. “Let’s see how you like my headquarters.”