Year of the Griffin (Derkholm 2) - Page 52

That seems to be all right! Titus thought. He put the pigeon carefully into the fork of a tree, where it started to preen vigorously, and strode to meet the general of his Imperial legions.

“My Emperor!” General Agricola said, almost before they were within hearing distance of one another. “I was going to try to see you if you hadn’t sent for me.” Agricola was one of the very few Empire veterans left over from the days of the tours. Titus had personally promoted him from the ranks when King Luther had declared war on the Empire at the end of the last tour. Agricola was wide and thick-legged, with a scar across his big nose, and not tall, in the way ordinary soldiers tended to look, but he was a very good general. Titus hoped he was loyal to the Empire. The trouble was that “the Empire” could as easily mean the Senate as well as the Emperor. The next few seconds would show just which Agricola was loyal to. “So what did you need me for?” Agricola asked.

“A number of things,” said Titus, “none of them to do with the southern legions, actually. First, the noble senators Antoninus and Empedocles are on their way back to the Empire from the University. I would like you to have trusted men patrolling the northern border to arrest them as soon as they appear.”

A slight smile began to spread on Agricola’s tense face. Titus saw it and began to hope. “On what charge should the noble senators be detained, my Emperor?” Agricola asked.

“High treason, of course,” said Titus. “If they happen to resist arrest and happen to get killed, it won’t bother me. But if the bast—er, noble lords come quietly, I want Antoninus put in the dungeons at Tivolo and Empedocles at the top of the tower in Averno, and anyone who tries to bring them messages or help them in any way to be executed out of hand. The noble lords will be there awaiting trial, you see.”

Agricola’s smile spread a little. Titus began to believe that the man might really be loyal to the Emperor. “How long are they to wait until they come to trial, my Emperor?”

“Let’s see.” Titus was surprised, in a remote way, at how vicious he was feeling. “Antoninus is seventy, and Empedocles is sixty-eight. Let’s have them wait twenty years. That should do it. The second thing I want is a troop of cavalry loyal to me personally. Have I got anyone who is?”

The smile was all over Agricola’s face now. It was going to be all right. “All the legions are loyal to you personally, my Emperor, except the senatorial legion, of course. Where and when do you want your cavalry?”

“Waiting for me in half an hour at the north gate of the city. Tell them to bring supplies for a week’s fast travel,” Titus said, “and a spare mount each. I’ll join them with mine. And they’re to tell the gate guards they haven’t seen us.”

Agricola’s smile faded a little. “May I ask where—”

“The University,” said Titus. “I’ve got to make sure Claudia’s safe. I’ll go by bac

k roads so as not to run into the senators. The third thing is, Can you tell me what the Senate’s doing at the moment?”

Agricola’s smile was gone, replaced by the tense look with which he had arrived. “They’re in full session as I speak. They called all the senators in, even sick old Silvanus.”

“Oh, good!” said Titus. “I was sure they must have had a pigeon, too.”

The tense and worried look Agricola gave him was also a little puzzled. “I can’t say that I’d call it good, my Emperor, with respect. Rumor is that they’re debating impeaching you. They called in the lawyers and the judges, too, to make the things legal, I hear. That’s why I wanted to see you, Majesty.”

So that’s it! Titus thought. This wasn’t just aimed at Claudia. They’ve been after me as well, all along. What a fool I’ve been! “Impeachment of me on the ground that I’m secretly training a wizard with the aim of becoming a tyrant?”

Agricola nodded. “Something like that. Whatever sticks, I think.”

“Then come with me,” said Titus. He strode out of the garden and crosswise through the Imperial Palace, taking a route through unfrequented courts and little-visited parade grounds, where he and Agricola were least likely to be seen or overheard. “The fourth thing I was going to ask you for,” he said as they strode, “is that I want the Senate House surrounded while they’re all in there and everyone inside it put under arrest. I want them all in solitary confinement—no calls for lawyers or family visits permitted—until I get back from the University.”

Agricola was grinning again. “One slight problem there,” he said, marching beside the Emperor. “Senate’s been arresting hundreds of tax dodgers lately. Prison’s nearly full.”

“I know,” said Titus. “Set them free. Put all the senators in their place. I want martial law declared until I get back, with you in command, so you have full authority to do it. We’re on our way to get the proper documents for it now.”

“This,” said Agricola, marching like clockwork, “is beginning to be the best day of my life. I’ve been praying—everyone’s been praying—that you’d get around to doing this before the Senate got around to deposing you. But it would help to have some crime to charge the senators with, something to stop them from screaming too loudly.”

“We’re on our way to get that now, too,” said Titus.

They crossed the final, smallest courtyard and went toward the dilapidated building in its corner. It was built of marble, like the rest of the palace, but the marble was yellow and rusty in streaks where the stone had cracked and the roof had leaked. Titus pushed open the plain wooden door and ushered Agricola into a plain wooden room where a hundred depressed-looking clerks sat at long tables, each with an abacus and a pile of papers. Titus sniffed the air. He loved the warm smell of wood and dry rot in here. He had come here most days as a boy. Claudia had learned to calculate here and made her first attempt at magic in this room, which had somehow managed to twist half the abacuses into knots.

The rattle of beads and the scratch of pens stopped as they came in. Heads turned respectfully, not to the Emperor—to Titus’s amusement—but toward Agricola, the Imperial General in Chief. The head of this place, Titus’s old friend Cornelius, approached doubtfully, scratching his bald patch with a quill pen, which was a well-known habit of his. “The General in Chief needs something from the office of the Imperial Auditor?” he asked Titus. “My Emperor, I should add.”

“Yes, something for me,” Titus told him. “I want an exact audit of the accounts of every single member of the Senate. If the accounts look clean, dig. They’ve all been cheating the Empire for years, and I want proof of it.”

Cornelius’s pen paused above his head. “What? Even your uncles?” he said.

“Particularly my uncles,” said Titus. “The general here is going to send a squad of legionaries with each team of accountants. He has my orders to arrest all senators’ bodyguards and any member of a senator’s family who tries to interfere with the audit.”

“Or I have now,” Agricola murmured.

“And I want you to get to work in the next half hour,” Titus finished.

Cornelius tossed his pen aside. He clasped his hands and looked up at the worm-eaten rafters for a moment. “I think,” he said, “that I could cry with joy. But I’ll need documents of authorization.”

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Derkholm Fantasy
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