Rome Burning Read Online Free

financially, apart from anything else. And in – destruction.’
    This was an unusually strong word for Glycon: having said it he blinked and made a mute gesture, as if to rub it out of the air.
    ‘Of course, he may very well be right,’ he added quickly, which almost made Faustus want to laugh, but Glycon went on again gravely, his eyes distant. ‘But if Nionia is stronger than he thinks, then this would be something we’ve never seen before. A world conflict. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
    ‘
I
haven’t decided anything yet,’ Faustus said quietly.
    As the afternoon wore on, however, he became increasingly angry with Nionia, for still all they heard through Sina were imprecise promises that the Nionian Emperor would be ready to speak with them soon. Faustus found himself roaring at Glycon, as if it were his fault: ‘Make sure they know they’re taking a damn stupid risk playing this game! Blind gods! He should be glad I’m willing to talk to him at all!’
    Glycon only nodded, unflinching. At last he came into the private office again to tell Faustus, ‘The Nionian Prince will speak with you, if you want.’
    ‘Which one?’ asked Faustus. He found the workings of the Nionian court confusing; he knew the Emperor had a lot of children. Faustus felt envious. It was curious andregrettable that he and his two brothers had only managed to produce one child each. He thought again of his daughter Makaria, and of Marcus. If Makaria had been a son – if she had married and had children like a normal woman … how much easier everything would have been. Of course, it was still not impossible, though she was thirty-six now. But he no longer seriously expected it to happen.
    If he had had a son with Tulliola – a child of six, at the oldest, now …? Briefly, he imagined such a boy, with black hair and a crooked Novian mouth. But the idea of Tulliola jabbed at his head again, and in honesty, did he remember what you were supposed to do with a child that young? A grandchild would have been different. Very occasionally he heard rumours that Makaria had a lover out on Siphnos; if so, he wished she would produce him, Faustus would really not care who it was.
    ‘Tadasius, the Crown Prince,’ answered Glycon. But of course the Prince did not call himself Tadasius, that was only the Latin rendering of it. His name was Tadahito.
    Faustus exhaled at length again, trying to puff the anger out of himself so that he could think clearly. ‘Suppose that’ll do,’ he muttered.
    The aides adjusted the longdictor and Faustus took it. ‘Your Majesty,’ said a voice.
    For a moment Faustus thought this must be some Roman intermediary, for the Prince’s Latin was disconcertingly flawless. Faustus was thrown, not only by this, but by the Prince’s age, older than Marcus, true, but what – twenty-two, twenty-four? ‘Your Highness,’ Faustus said, ‘can I not speak to your father?’ and realised too late that this sounded, absurdly and offensively, like something one might say to a child – ‘Is your daddy there?’
    In response he heard a quiet, sharp intake of breath. ‘My father trusts me to represent him accurately; I hope and believe he is right to do so. May I pass on to him your condolences for the murders of our people today? Shall I say Rome feels at last some degree of remorse for her actions?’
    ‘Flawless’ was almost an inadequate word for the Prince’s fluency. And yet Faustus no longer thought he would have mistaken him for a native speaker: though the accent wasexhaustively correct, it was somehow clearly not intended as a pretence or disguise of being Roman. The structure of each sentence, the resonance of the voice were all deliberately, even insultingly perfect. Faustus felt uncomfortably aware of the very few, very faltering words of Nionian that had survived in his memory through the fifty or fifty-five years since his schooldays.
    ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, irked. ‘Your troops attacked the