Rome Burning by Sophia McDougall Page A

difficult. It’s hard to explain. And he
can
recover. But it’s hard for me to know how much, or how fast, and it’s always possible it could happen again.’ He recited this off pat; he’d been saying it all day.
    Una frowned at the lack of a clearer answer, even though she hadn’t really expected one, but she nodded silently. She knew Sulien wasn’t keeping anything back. And even that wary suggestion of an indefinite amount of time meant something, she told herself. It meant no less than a year. But the upper limit …?
    Marcus’ face vanished.
    A grating little cry of anger and grief scraped through her teeth. She stood up, abruptly, and muttered, ‘Oh, damn him.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The Emperor. Why can’t he die properly?’
    ‘Don’t talk like that,’ said Sulien, dismayed.
    ‘All right, why can’t he die or get better and leave us in peace? Either way would be better than this. For everyone.’
    ‘Poor man,’ demurred Sulien, uncomfortably, looking away from her. He was pretty sure Faustus would be dead if not for him.
    ‘“
Poor man
,”’ echoed Una, half with scoffing irony, half with a kind of experimental openness to contrition at what she’d said. She drooped a little, wearily. She conceded, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
    Sulien also got to his feet. They weren’t children in a hiding place. The soft carpet under them glowed darkly with silks. Across the walls spread the coppery fresco of an orchard, the falling russet leaves touched here and there with real gold. Tending golden apples on a fragile bronze tree, the Hesperides crouched: gilded, secretive nymphs guarded bythe low muscular length of a coiling dragon, rippling and cramped in its gold and auburn scales. Quite inconspicuous on a peak far in the background, Atlas could just be seen, bowed beneath the weight of the sunset sky. Two London slaves should have no right to be here. And even if Sulien had little capacity to feel out of place anywhere, he knew his sister did.
    He asked, ‘Will you stay here, with Marcus?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Una, her voice suddenly flat. ‘At least as long as I can.’
    ‘As long as you can? What do you mean?’
    For a second her face seemed to flicker open, painfully and involuntarily, as she met his eyes, but then she looked away, at the room, and ran her finger over the arched back of a chair, trying to pinch a sardonic smile onto her lips. ‘Well, I’ll manage. At least they keep it clean. They obviously know where to buy decent slaves.’ She held out the dustless finger, dropped it, then scrubbed at her face. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of them.’
    Sulien approached her, quietly. ‘I just talk to them. Tell them where you come from. It’s better that way.’
    ‘But you have something to say because you’re
doing
something. You can tell them about the clinic. What can I say to them? “Hold out, it’s all going to change”?’
    ‘Why not? When you were in London, when you were working in those places – if someone who’d been a slave had said that to you—’
    ‘I’d have thought she could stick it. I’d have thought, you’re out of it and I’m not, fine, but shut up and leave me to it.’
    Sulien sighed. ‘Is that what people think when I talk to them?’
    Una looked at him quickly, suddenly remorseful. ‘No. You’re different.’ Then Marcus came and had to knock on the locked door; they let him in, apologising, and saw that he looked exactly as he had on the longvision screen, which startled them, although of course they should have expected it.
    Just before the broadcast Marcus had gone at last to see his uncle. He came in thinking that he had to tell Una andSulien what Faustus had said, quickly, because Una would know in a minute, anyway. He’d forgotten what he looked like until he saw the flicker of surprise on their faces. He pulled the gown off and threw it messily onto a chair, hugged Sulien – but he kept on the ring because despite its weight he’d already forgotten it was