“Shit, girl, you look terrible.” Livvie slides into bed beside Claudia. She doesn’t look so hot herself – dressings cover her skin where she was scratched by the spines.
“Want me to finish you off?” Cali slides her knife from her belt. “I’ll make it painless. An honorable death.”
Claudia smiles at them. “You’re both awfully excited to sign my death certificate. I’m not done yet. And neither are you.”
Cali flicks her gaze to the window as she sips her drink. Something hardens in her gaze. “I don’t have enough knives to put down the chaos out there. My days are numbered as Imperator. I just hope I take as many bastards down with me as possible. Would that Constantine’s soldiers had but one neck.”
“I’ve spent too long trying to wrestle more power from Nero and Constantine,” Claudia glances at each woman in turn. “I thought the only way to be safe was to own this city. But I learned the opposite is true. You’re never truly safe, and if you can’t trust anyone, then all the power in the world means jack shit. One person shouldn’t have absolute power in Emerald Beach. I’m no better at wielding it than Nero. I think what our world needs is to cleanse this city of the old ways and build something fresh – a new Triumvirate. One made up of the three of us.”
Cali spits Scotch all over her leather skirt.
“But Nero’d already announced his successor—” Livvie starts. Claws cuts her off with a raised hand.
“Eli,” she calls. He looks up from his seat in the window, between Noah and Gabe. “Do you want to run Nero’s empire?”
“Fuck no.”
Claudia turns back to Cali. “There’s your answer. I mean, look at that Golden Boy. Do you think he’s got the cajones to stop what’s happening on the streets? No, he doesn’t. None of them do. Ithasto be us. We link arms, we show solidarity, and we march out there and end this war with as little bloodshed as possible.”
“What makes this Triumvirate any better than the last one?” Livvie asks. “We might shake hands now, but Cali will be trying to slit your throat in a month’s time.”
Cali twirls her knife in her hand and catches it. She doesn’t argue.
“What’s different is that we get to decide the rules. No more of this pureblood nonsense. We can nominate the best successors for our jobs. And maybe instead of trying to get the best of each other, we work together. Maybe we strike deals that benefit all of our families, instead of trying to plunder from each other.” Claudia reaches across the bed and picks up one of the cylinders. “And maybe we start by sharing this.”
She tosses the cylinder to Livvie, who uncaps it and slides out a scroll. “What are we supposed to do with this?”
“Whatever the fuck we want,” Claudia grins.
Cali flicks a knife from her sleeve. She slices across her hand. The blood drips onto the sheets as she hands the knife to Livvie, who winces as she makes a tiny cut in her palm. Claudia takes the knife and cuts herself. She holds out her hand. “Nam si violandum est jus, regnandi gratia violandum est: aliis rebus pictatem colas. In the words of Julius Caesar, If you must break the law, do it only to seize power. In all other cases, observe it.”
“Can I break necks to seize power?” Cali grins.
“Why not? We make the laws now,” Livvie says.
The three women shake.
My chest swells. I feel like I’ve just witnessed history remake itself. Emerald Beach has its new rulers.
They will not be kind.
They will not be gentle.
They will grant no mercy.
But they will bebrilliant.
* * *
I’m downstairsin Howard Malloy’s office, using his big desk to put the finishing touches on the inventory of the document cache, when Gabriel and Claudia walk in. I jerk from Claudia’s seat, but she waves me back down and has Gabriel ease her into the sofa under the window. She leans against his shoulder, breathing hard.
“I thought I might come down and do some work,” she offers a weak smile. “Now that I’m here, all I want to do is go to sleep.”
“There’s not much work left to do.” I point to the chair in the corner, where Eli is slumped, sound asleep. “He spent all night working on the shipping timetables. And I’ve made a complete inventory of every scroll, including the title if I know it, the language, length, and the state of preservation. Some of them I can’t name without a Latin or Greek scholar, and there are some Egyptian texts that are a complete mystery. But now we at least know what we have.”
Claudia’s eyes are ringed with red. Her eyelashes flutter as I read down the list. It’s a treasure trove of forgotten texts, so much lost wisdom just waiting to be uncovered.
“Thank you for doing this. You’re amazing, George. You’ll be an incredible asset to the Triumvirate—”
