I sigh.I should have brought to the Senate before, but my argument with Marcus drove thoughts of it from my mind at first, and then I didn't think I would find support in the Senate without Marcus by my side.
"And obviously, she doesn't think this is a real threat," Domitian says.
“Selene Ravenscroft is averyreal threat,” I insist.“If she’s coming back to Aetheria-”
“We don’t know that she’s doing that, if it’s even her,” Marcus says.
"And you're obviously only mentioning it now to deflect attention from this heinous attack on the Colosseum," Domitian says."You're hoping that the Senate will spend all its time focusing on this supposed threat rather than the real threat of these rebels.Admit it, Lyra, you're working with Alaric."
"That's enough," Rowan says, cutting us off."This discussion has gone a long way from anything we were here to talk about.We clearly don't have enough information about any threat from Selene Ravenscroft, although I'm inclined to agree with Marcus that this is probably some trick by the Arborians.We don't know enough about what happened at the Colosseum.For now, at least, this meeting of the Senate is over."
I curse silently as the senators start to leave the chamber.They head for the ante-room beyond, but I don’t go with them.The last thing I want right now is to have to spend my time talking casually with a group of senators who clearly don’t believe or trust me.I head back to my rooms, instead, closing the door behind me, changing back into normal clothes and then sitting on one of the couches.
I'm shocked by everything that has just happened, not just the events outside the Colosseum, but the way the Senate has approached it.Too many of them seem to see Alaric and his followers as traitors, as rebels trying to overthrow the Republic, rather than people who want to stop it from being corrupted from within.I don't know where the ones who were arrested are being held or what, if anything, I can do to help them.
Should I help them?I'm all too aware that I'm meant to be a senator, that I'm supposed to be helping to uphold the Republic, rather than supporting a rebel group.The trouble is, I have far more sympathy for Alaric's supporters than I do for some of the people in the Senate.
I have questions, too.How did Domitian know that there was trouble at the Colosseum?How did he send guards there so quickly?How have there been guards trying to capture us every time I've gone to meet with Alaric?It's happened too often for it to be a coincidence.Clearly, Domitian knows that I'm going to see Alaric before I go there.
I think about my midnight meeting with him.The guards weren’t there at first, when both of us showed up early.It was only as it got closer to midnight that they started to arrive.Midnight, the time Alaric said in his message.
Which means that, as I suspected, someone read that message.Clearly, someone is spying on me.He’s bribed or threatened a servant to bring me the messages.Domitian is playing games, and I’m determined to find out exactly what they are.If he wants to spy on me… well, two can play at that game.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I sit in my rooms, shutting the doors and locking them so I won’t be disturbed.Domitian can’t spy on me if I’m alone.At least, I hope he can’t.In a city as awash with magic as Aetheria, it’s possible that he has someone watching me using scrying, looking at me through a mirror or a pool of water.
But I don’t think that’s the way he’s spying on me, not when the guards only showed up at the time Alaric mentioned in his message.That suggests someone intercepting my messages, maybe searching my room.It suggests a physical spy somewhere close to me, rather than a magical one watching from a distance.
Whereas I have the potential to watch anyone, anywhere, as long as there’s an animal close by.I lie back on my bed, closing my eyes and extending my consciousness beyond my body.
At first, I reach for animals around the city, seeing through hundreds of eyes at once.I watch through the eyes of a crow as people struggle to deal with the injured and dead outside the Colosseum.I watch healers from within the stadium coming out to help ordinary people on the street, and I'm grateful that they're doing that much, at least.
I see through the eyes of a giant snake in the beast pits of the arena.I can see the deadly creatures being gathered there: the wolves and the bears, a scorpion the size of a man, and a many armed creature with claws at the end of each arm.That worries me, because I don't see how these things can ever be a part of a safer kind of games.
I find the eyes of a small, scurrying creature in a dungeon within a prison tower, seeing people being thrown into the cell, their faces covered in bruises.I can't see Alaric anywhere within the prison tower.I don't know if that means that he hasn't been arrested or if he's just being kept elsewhere until he can be tried and punished.I'm caught between relief that he doesn't seem to be there and fear that he might have suffered a worse fate.All the while, the treatment of his supporters fills me with sorrow and dread about the way Aetheria is heading.
Does Alaric really believe he can change the city without violence?Does he think that just standing up and telling the truth will be enough to stop someone like Domitian?When it came to the emperor, the only thing that worked was violently overthrowing him.
I’m sure Domitian is all too aware of that as well.It’s probably why he’s reacting to Alaric and his people with such violence, seeing their actions as leading inevitably to a violent confrontation.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and heisafraid of the truth being shouted too loudly.Maybe the responses of those guards in Domitian’s employ are to stop the truth about him from flowing through the city.After all, Domitian isn’t the emperor, just one senator among many.He doesn’t sit at the top of a whole system designed to keep him in place, but instead is as subject to Aetheria’s laws and customs as anyone else.It’s clear he has influence with at least some of the city’s guards, but many of the nobles have their own bodyguards, and I’m sure that not all of the guards obey him.
With the right knowledge, the right evidence, he might be brought down, and that prospect excites me now.I’ve started to acknowledge that Domitian is an enemy who will destroy me if I give him the chance.The question is what I can do to bring him and those around him down first.
There are all kinds of answers to that question.I've killed people outside of the Colosseum before, in the uprising, but also simply when there hasn't been another choice.I've sent rats to gnaw someone to death.I stunned the emperor with a swooping bird.
If I wanted to, I could control the beasts of the palace gardens as Domitian walks through it.I could have them attack him, mauling him beyond the abilities of any healer to save.I could summon a flock of birds to peck him to death, or a swarm of biting insects to poison him.I could command animals to kill him in a hundred different ways.
And I can’t.
I can't do something like that.I can't bring myself to simply murder someone in cold blood.The one time I sent rats after someone, I'd just been beaten to within an inch of my life.When I killed the emperor, it was in the middle of an uprising, and he was planning to kill not just me but everyone close to me.I won't just assassinate Domitian, even if I suspect he's been behind at least one attempt to kill me.
If I want to bring him down, I'll have to do it another way.I'll need to find the truth, bring it before the Senate, and hope that it's enough to see him fall from his lofty position.I focus again, still trying to find animals close to him, not to hurt him, but to watch him.
I find rats.I look out through the eyes of one as Domitian makes his way through the palace.I send it scurrying along behind him, keeping carefully out of sight.If Domitian notices a rat behaving oddly, I’m sure he’s smart enough to connect it back to me.
Thankfully, his attention isn't on small creatures moving through the shadows or squeezing through cracks as Domitian moves from room to room.He's no longer wearing his senatorial toga but dark clothes, with a cloak over the top to disguise his face.He leaves the palace, and I switch to the eyes of a bird, following him from above.
