“Sneaking off from your own party? Sheesh- you are a barbarian.”
Kiminax turned around. The last thing she wanted to see right now was Shiko’s arrogant grin, and she said as much, if not more. If the Dacian didn’t understand the string of Britannian obscenities, she damned well understood their intent. (1)
“Oooh, naughty, naughty, Kimmie!” the aforementioned Dacian said, waving a nagging finger, a goblet of wine in her other hand. “What would your mother say if she heard you?”
“Look Shiko, no offence,” Kiminax said, taking a deep breath. “But I’m not in the mood for a chat right now.”
“Like I’d care about that,” Shiko said calmly. “So- what happened?”
“Shiko, I told you-”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re not in the mood to talk. And I said that I don’t care. The way I see it, you can walk away, and apart from getting some real bad corns on your feet be guaranteed of offending half of Rome’s most powerful people, including Caesar. You can go back in and join a party you obviously don’t want to go to. Or, and here’s the good part, you get to spend a whole evening with me! Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
“…You’re not going to quit, are you?”
“Nope!” Shiko said with a wide, obscenely cheerful grin.
“Why?” Kiminax asked. Seeing the bewildered look on Shiko’s face, she clarified, “I mean, you seemed to be having fun back there.”
“Operative word here being ‘seemed’, Olive,” Shiko grumbled. “Trust me, I hate Romans as much as you do- I’m just better at not showing it.” (2)
The mischievous smile returned. “Besides, you kissed me. If that doesn’t give me exclusive rights, I don’t know what does- or maybe I do-”
“Okay, that’s it, hold it right there!” Kiminax said, waving her hands in front of her face.
“Oh, Kimmie, you’re so cute when you blush!”
“Shiko!”
“Okay, okay, fine! I’ll quit it,” Shiko laughed. “So, back to the question…”
Kiminax sighed. “Look, Nero made me an offer I had to refuse. Can we just leave it at that?”
“Nope. So, lemme guess: he wanted you to help him in the Power Play of the Week, right?”
“Something like that, or at least keep myself out of other peoples’,” Kiminax admitted.
“Welcome to Rome, kiddo,” Shiko replied. “Where every day is an exciting trip through the mountain paths of power- and where people like us end up stepping in nasty, stinky piles of brown stuff, if they’re not careful.”
“Ew.”
“What can I say? I have a working imagination,” Shiko said calmly, sipping her drink. “He won’t be the last, you know- there’ll be others.”
She laughed. “It’s all your fault, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh come on, didn’t you hear the applause? The people of Rome love you! Anyone who’s anyone knows you’re the person to go to if they want the people behind them! And don’t go thinking that blowing off Caesar’s gonna help, Princess. That’ll only encourage them, make ‘em think you’re their best ticket to take over-”
“Why are you telling me this, Shiko?”
“What?” Shiko asked, momentarily thrown off her stride.
Kiminax caught Shiko’s gaze. “Like I said- why the tip-off? You don’t have to help me, you know.”
“Hey, if you don’t want my help…” Shiko shrugged, turning back to the villa-
-when she felt someone’s hand grab her own.
“Sorry,” Kiminax said quietly. “It’s just that, well, there shouldn’t be any reason you should be helping me. At least, no reason I could see.”
Shiko looked a Kiminax for a moment, then sighed. “Look, I’ll admit I’m not exactly doing this out of the goodness of my heart, either. You been listening to the high-class gossip lately?”
“Can’t. Gladiator school, remember?”
“Well, anyway, the general view is that we’re just to good to be killed off just like that, you know,” Shiko said, snapping her fingers. “We’re just too popular, like I said.”
“I thought you said I was the popular one,” Kiminax said with a small smile.
“Smartass,” Shiko replied, and neither she nor Shiko noticed that the grin the Dacian gave in return was involuntary. “Anyway, the problem is that they’ll only keep us alive so long as we’re useful. As soon as you become useful to someone, you become less of a target, and the person you’re connected you becomes a bigger one. And if you play your cards right, even if your patron croaks, you’ll still get on the winner’s good side- what?”
“It’s… it’s horrible,” Kiminax said, with an equally horrified grimace.
“It’s reality, especially if you’re going to be living in Rome,” Shiko insisted. “Emphasis on ‘living’, Kimmie. And that doesn’t just go for you, it’s the same for your parents and your brothers.”
“What?” Kiminax said, shocked. “Brothers? My-”
“See what having connections could do?” Shiko smirked. “Like I was saying- you keep yourself useful, backup the right guys, and you can be sure they’ll keep your family safe.”
“I don’t want us to be safe- I want us to be free.”
“Yeah, free- free to be hunted down by the Romans, that’s what,” Shiko scowled.
“I have to try,” Kiminax said with quiet determination. “I’d rather be dead than a slave.”
Shiko looked at Kiminax incredulously, and sighed, her head turned downwards. “Yeah, I used to think that,” she whispered, and Kiminax was both surprised and distressed to see that the Dacian was crying.
“Shiko-?” she began, when Shiko suddenly looked up.
“You want to hear a story?” she asked, and without waiting for Kiminax’s answer, she began.
(scene change)
It seemed far away enough in the desert of time to gain the quality of distant memory, yet close enough to cut as deeply as it did then.
Her name was Julia Agrippina, and she was the mother of the soon-to-be Emperor Nero. Shiko was young then- a few years younger than the future Nero Caesar in fact, and she loved Agrippina.
It wasn’t the love a woman might bear a man, she quickly explained to a blushing Kiminax, but as a daughter to a mother. Shiko had never really been as close to her natural mother as Kiminax was to her own, so slavery to one of Nero’s closest friends wasn’t as painful as she had initially thought it would be- far from it.
That wasn’t to say that Agrippina was a nice person- not by a long shot. Before Nero’s rise to power she had openly committed incest with Caligula Caesar, her brother, and prostituted herself to prominent members of her brother’s court to solidify her power.
Even after she was exiled by her own brother, she clawed her way back to the top: first, by marrying a wealthy landowner and ex-Consul named Gaius Sallustius Passienus Crispus (“Roman names- ain’t they a blast?” Shiko commented) and then poisoning him to gain control of his assets, and then marrying the man who put her into that marriage, her uncle Claudius Caesar, Caligula’s successor- whom she also poisoned to make way for her son, Nero. (3)
Shiko got to know Agrippina a few years before Nero came to the throne. She had heard all the stories about the much older woman, and when she faced the dour, imperious woman for the first time, she was terrified. It was only later that she found herself nestled firmly in Agrippina’s good side.
“I have spent so long being a mother of a future Caesar,” she had whispered to Shiko one day, as the young Dacian lay half-asleep in her arms, “that I had forgotten the simple joys of being a mere mother.”
“What, you mean hours of painful labour, changing his dirty loincloth, that sort of thing? Joy all day long, I can see.”
“Oh hush!” Agrippina laughed. “Such a sharp tongue for one so young!”
“I spend practically every day with you- I have to learn something,” Shiko said, eyes half closed.
“One wonders about that, Shiko- you are, after all, Dracus’s slave.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me. All he seems to do is hang on to your son’s cape all day,” Shiko said, referring to the way Dracus fawned over his friend.
“How is my son, by the way?”
“Hmm?” Shiko murmured, yawning as she awoke. “Oh, yeah, your son? Same as ever, I guess, Mistress. More dirty tricks than a Gallic fox.”
Agrippina laughed. “Of course; I had taught him well. Perhaps too well…”
“Mistress?”
“Oh, nothing,” Agrippina assured the young girl. “Just thinking aloud. Go back to sleep. I wish a few more moments of peace with you before I have to return you to Dracus.”
“As you wish, Mistress,” Shiko replied, closing her eyes.
The next day, Rome was awash with talk that Britannicus, son of Claudius Caesar, was dead. His father was very popular, and by extension, that made Britannicus popular. All of Rome was thusly awash with rumours that the fourteen year old had been assassinated by Nero, despite Nero’s dismissive statements that it was an epileptic fit.
Shiko, however, knew they weren’t rumours- she had acted as the go-between between Nero and the poisoner, a cruel woman by the name of Locusta. (4)
“It was a wise decision,” Agrippina told Shiko sternly, when the young Dacian had run back to her in tears. “My son was simply ensuring that there would be no threats to his future reign.”
“But he was just a boy!” Shiko wailed.
“Did you love him?”
“What? No! At least, not like what I think you’re saying!” Shiko replied. “We were friends, yeah, but that was all!”
“Then it should be of no consequence,” Agrippina said, when she suddenly turned around and grabbed Shiko by the arms. “Listen to me, Shiko! If I have taught you anything, anything of worth, let it be this: Survive!”
“What?”
“Survive, Shiko! In Rome, there can be no other goal. Not power, not wealth, for all those are simply means of survival. No matter what happens, the result must be the same- our own survival.”
Shiko looked to the older woman in quiet despair. “So… you would have me killed, if it meant your survival?”
Agrippina caught Shiko’s gaze, a sad smile playing across her features. “No, my dear Shiko,” she said quietly. “You are my child, even more so than any my own womb has borne- and what mother would harm her child?”
“I don’t believe you,” Shiko said quietly.
“You shouldn’t,” Agrippina said. Shiko couldn’t really tell, but she thought she heard a note of pride in the older woman’s voice.
The attempt came a short while later. Shiko wasn’t there in person, but she had sources, and it helped that slaves, even ones as distinctive as she was, were generally more invisible than furniture.
Agrippina was apparently onboard a ship when it sank, and was rescued by locals after she swam to shore. A normally frequent though tragic occurrence, everyone else thought, but Shiko knew better. She had her suspicions, which were confirmed one night as she was sneaking through Nero’s villa, and she overheard him yelling angrily at the assassins he had hired. (5)
“You must do something, Mistress!” Shiko had told Agrippina later, as the aged woman was recuperating in her bed in her estate outside Rome.
“I cannot,” Nero’s mother replied. “You saw what happened with the Armenian Ambassador- Nero has too many powerful friends. I cannot move against him, no matter how much I wanted to.” She let out a short laugh. “You might even say I deserve it.” (6)
“How?” Shiko demanded hotly. “I mean, sure, you’ve done some bad things, but-”
“I don’t mean it is retribution from the Gods, at least, not wholly,” Agrippina said, “but if anything, my own arrogance, and my own mistakes in allowing my feelings as a mother to cloud my political judgement.”
“Huh?”
Agrippina then told Shiko about the woman Nero had set his sights upon as a new wife- Poppea, the current wife of his fellow general and good friend Otho. When Agrippina learned of Nero’s intention to take Poppea as a wife, she lost her mind.
“I was afraid, Shiko- afraid that she would use my son as nothing more than a feast to whet her appetite for power,” Agrippina said, before letting out a bitter laugh. “She reminded me too much of myself, you see.”
“…so what are you going to do now?” Shiko asked quietly.
“What else could I do? Stay here, of course, and wait for the-”
“No!” Shiko exploded as she leapt up, angry tears coming down her face. “You can’t-”
“Know your place, slave!” Agrippina replied harshly.
Shiko looked at the other woman in incredulous shock, then grinned. “You’re not fooling anyone, old woman,” she grinned. “Least of all me.”
Agrippina looked like she was going to explode herself, then sighed. “I wish I was,” she said softly. “You know why, don’t you, Shiko?”
“I’m in danger as long as I stay with you, right?”
Agrippina nodded. “You know far too much than a slave should, you know. Britannicus’s assassination, the attempt on my own life- you hide too many secrets beneath your pale skin, Shiko. Far too many to be harmless. You are in a great deal more danger than even I could imagine.”
But unfortunately, Agrippina was wrong- it wasn’t just Shiko who was in danger.
“You wished to see me, Master?” Shiko asked the next day at Nero’s villa, as she knelt before the young, but already somewhat pudgy Caesar. (7)
“Why yes, my dear Shiko. I understand you are close to my mother?” he asked, smiling gently.
Shiko looked up, her emerald eyes staring directly into Nero’s own. “Yes, I am, and I know what you’re going to ask.”
“You do, do you?” Nero said easily. “You, all of you: out!” he commanded, gesturing to his retinue. “Don’t even think about questioning my orders,” he said in a threatening whisper to one guard who had opened his mouth to protest. “Now that we are all alone,” he said with a predatory smile, “we can-”
“I can tell you to shut the Hades up and leave your mother alone!” Shiko demanded hotly.
“My, my, how Mother spoiled you,” Nero laughed. “Didn’t she teach you anything? What with you being so close and all.”
“Is that what this is about?” Shiko sneered. “You jealous of all the time I spend with Mommy?”
“Hardly,” Nero sniffed. “In fact, my problem is that ‘Mommy’ has any time to spend with you at all.”
As the full import of what Nero was saying sank in, Shiko’s eyes narrowed. “Listen here, you-” she began, but what Nero said next stopped her cold.
“You have four brothers, I see,” he said, taking a small slip of parchment from his drawer. “Hiko, Miko, and twins so closely connected they call themselves by the single name Wiko,” he said, reading from the parchment. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he said, seeing the look of shock on her face. “I am Caesar, you know. Caesar in all but official name- which means I have more information passing through my hands than I have uses for.”
His smile turned into a vicious smirk. “This isn’t one of those pieces of information, to be sure.”
“They’re- they’re still alive?” Shiko gasped, feeling faint.
“Oh yes, they’re still alive,” Nero told her, the implications unmistakeable.
“You let them go or I’ll-”
“My guards will be in here faster than you think,” Nero said easily. “Your skills, as I understand them, extend to stealth and subterfuge- not combat. You’ll be cut down.”
“Yeah, but at least I’ll take you with me.”
“Oh, but my dear Shiko, have you forgotten so easily about your brothers? Trust me, if I do not leave this room the same way I entered, your brothers will be the first casualties of the civil war to follow.”
That stopped Shiko in her tracks. “What… what do you want?” Shiko asked, although she already knew and dreaded the answer.
And Nero could see it. “Why, my dear,” he said, obviously enjoying himself, “I think we both know what I want.”
“Please…” Shiko said as she dropped to her knees, the only time in her life she had ever begged, “please, great Caesar, please don’t do this! I beg of you, spare your mother’s life! She is of no threat to you-”
“Shows you how little you know of politics,” Nero scoffed. “She knew enough of placing me on the throne, she knows enough of taking me off. Now, will you do it or not?”
Shiko looked up at Nero, his entire self radiating cruel enjoyment. “Please… don’t…”
“Here, let me make it easier for you,” Nero replied. “First of all, she’s going to die anyway, whether or not I make it to the throne- she is my mother after all. Secondly, if you do not agree to do this for me, then your brothers die- and in the end, what’s more important? Four lives as compared to one? Real family, as opposed to fake family?”
“…why me? Why me, you Roman bastard?” Shiko wept.
Nero didn’t answer at first. Instead, he picked up a small hand mirror, and held it up in front of Shiko.
“A lot of reasons,” he said, “but I think I like this one best. Now, my men will be waiting for you outside, with your sword…”
Shiko’s memories of the travel to Agrippina’s estate were blurred, hazy, inconsequential. In contrast, her memory of what happened later were crystal clear. Shiko told Kiminax that, had she had her way, it would have been the other way around.
“She’s inside this room,” Shiko said to the men who had accompanied her into the estate. “Stay here.”
“Like we’re going to do that,” one of the men scoffed. “We know all about you and the old lady, and we have orders-”
“I know damned well what your orders are,” Shiko snarled. “If you want to make a move, go ahead. I guarantee at least one of you will die.”
The men looked at her angrily, but backed off. “If you don’t pull through-”
“Shut up,” Shiko said, and opened the door. “Mistress?” she asked, closing the door behind her. “Mistress?” she called again. The curtains drawn, the room seemed far darker than before.
“Shiko? Shiko, is that you?” a voice called out from back of the room, where the bed could be faintly seen.
“Yes, Mistress, it’s me,” Shiko said, her voice breaking. “I… I…”
“I know why you’re here; it’s not so hard to figure out. The men with you are not as, shall we say, discreet as you are,” Agrippina said. “Come here, Shiko,” she continued, her beckoning hand barely visible in the dark.
As Shiko knelt down beside Agrippina’s bed, she felt the tears return. “I’m sorry, Mistress, I’m so sorry,” she said in a croaking whisper.
“My son, he has put you up to this,” Agrippina said. It wasn’t a question.
“Please, Mistress, forgive me, but-”
“Hush, my dear, hush,” Agrippina said, gently stroking Shiko’s hair. “You need not justify anything to me. I know you, Shiko. I know how strong you can be, and how defiant you are. Whatever my son must have threatened you with, it is more than worth the life of a tired old woman.”
“Please, Mistress, don’t say that,” Shiko said quietly.
“I’m dying, Shiko. I have the right to say anything I want.”
“Mistress please- what? What did you say?”
“I’m dying, Shiko,” Agrippina said, taking out a small vial from under her pillow. “It is a slow acting poison, a weaker version of what I used to kill Claudius. I had thought to personally curse my son with my dying breath.” She gave a small grin. “To think, that he would stoop so low as to send you… hah, I guess I have underestimated my son for the last time…”
“…would you like me to fetch you some water, Mistress?” Shiko whispered. It was all she could think of. “Or some wine… make you feel better…”
“No, Shiko, none of that. I doubt you’d have enough time anyway,” Agrippina said. “Just… just promise me one thing, Shiko…”
“What, Mistress?” Shiko asked quietly.
“After I have died, Shiko, I want you to take that sword of yours, and plunge it into my womb.”
“Mistress-” Shiko began in shock.
“Plunge it into my womb. Destroy it, that thing where my most loathsome desires were formed. Where was born both my son, and the acts which have brought us all here. The acts which have brought you, my daughter, all this pain.”
“Daughter?” Shiko whispered.
“Of course, Shiko,” Agrippina said. “You are the child I always wanted, but knew I could never have, my most beloved… daughter…” Agrippina said, her breath coming in shorts gasps now.
“Mistress? Mistress!” Shiko said, grasping Agrippina desperately.
“I love you, my dear, dear, Shiko…” Agrippina said, as she breathed her last.
“…I love you, mother…” Shiko whispered. “Forgive me…”
And that was when the tears really came.
Shiko didn’t know how long she spent crying over Agrippina’s body. All she remembered next was the impatient pounding on the door, accompanied by threats of what would happen if the door didn’t open right now. Shiko stood up, and with one steady motion, plunged her blade into Agrippina. Once. Twice. Again and again.
Outside, the men were getting impatient. “For all we know, she’s escaped with the old woman. I say we break it down now.”
“You know, that sounds like a- huh, took you long enough,” the one in front of the door said as it swung open to reveal Shiko, her arms soaked in blood.
“It’s done,” she said in a flat tone. “She’s dead.”
“Yeah? I’ll just go check then, okay? Who knows what tricks you two cooked up.”
“Fine.”
She stood there, still and unblinking for a few moments, when the man came out. “Heh,” he said with a wide grin. “She’s right! The slave actually did it! Who’d a thunk it? She gutted the old bitch like a-”
For one shocked moment, the echo of the man’s head hitting the floor was the only sound in the narrow passageway. “She wasn’t a bitch,” Shiko whispered quietly, her arms trembling.
The other men took in the sight; then, as a man, they rushed Shiko.
“Ah, there you are, my dear,” Nero said cheerfully from his horse outside the estate, seemingly ignoring the defensive circle his bodyguards had formed up around him when they saw the blood-drenched Dacian emerge from the house. “I trust everything went along well?”
“Your mother is dead, as you had ordered, great Caesar,” Shiko replied woodenly.
“Oh, no need to be so formal, my dear- after all, you’ve done me a great service,” Nero laughed. “And would I be correct in assuming that one or more of my men were, shall we say, indelicate in their handling of the situation?”
Shiko didn’t answer.
“Oh, very well then, have it your way.” He took a pack off his horse. “They were an embarrassment to me anyway- their behaviour was not the sort of thing I’d like to have associated with me. You there!” he called to one of his men. “Give this to her.”
As the man fearfully approached Shiko, she fixed her gaze on Nero. “What’s this?” she asked, a tinge of anger starting to enter her voice.
“Well, I had anticipated that things would get rather messy, and so I took the precaution of preparing some extra clothes,” he said, as Shiko took the pack. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be off. I’ll leave my ex-employees’ horses here; you may take all of them as your master’s own.”
And with that, his remaining men mounted their horses, and they rode off. Shiko opened her pack.
In it was a suit of green and black leather armour. (8)
(scene change)
They sat in silence for a few moments, while the sounds and smells of the party drifted over to them. Kiminax wanted to say something, anything, but what? What could she possibly say that-
“You know how long it takes to make a suit of good leather armour?” Shiko asked suddenly. “Weeks. It takes even the best smiths weeks to make an average suit of leather armour.”
“Shiko, are you saying-”
“What I’m saying,” Shiko continued, “is that you should get yourself some political support. That’s all.” She moved to stand up.
“Shiko-” Kiminax began.
“Save me the pity, Kiminax,” Shiko said, and her usage of Kiminax’s full name felt like a slap to the Britannian. “I did what I had to do, she did what she had to do, and the same goes for Nero. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sneak into Dracus’s wine cellar and get myself very, very drunk.”
And Kiminax could only stand and watch as Shiko walked away.
Historical Notes:
(1) Well, she is Britannian, after all. I realize now that I didn’t really provide any explanation as to why she is able to speak Latin. Umm… she’s a bit of a Mary Sue in the regular show, after all. Yes, let’s go with that excuse.
(2) Pumpkins weren’t introduced to Europe until the New World was found, and brought back from the Americas, with seeds from related plants being found in Mexico and dating back to 7000 BC.
(3) As far as I know, this highly abridged history of Julia Agrippina (better known as Agrippina the Younger, as opposed to her mother Julia Vispania Agrippina, or Agrippina the Elder) is accurate. Her personality as is depicted here, however, is HIGHLY fictional, as my own research has told me she was a tyrant on the level of Messalina and Livia- other fatal females (joke intended and not apologized for) of Ancient Rome.
(4) Locusta was a professional poisoner, and is infamous for perhaps being the first serial killer ever documented in Western Civilization (the first documented case being Liu Pengli, cousin of the Chinese Han Emperor Jing), let alone the first female.
(5) There were actually four attempts on Agrippina’s life, of which the ship sinking was one of them.
(6) One of the signs that perhaps Agrippina’s power was fading was when she tried to sit next to her son as he was receiving an envoy from Armenia, and his tutor, the fabled writer Seneca (whom she herself had brought out of exile) stopped her.
(7) Nero was only seventeen when he became Caesar, and twenty-two when he assassinated his mother. A game of Happy Families, Roman royalty wasn’t.
(8) This is a highly dramatized account of Agrippina’s assassination, but the account of her asking her killers to plunge their blades into her womb, the womb that had born her true murderer, is an existing legend.
Author’s notes:
First of all, I had never ever anticipated that in the course of writing this fic, I’d be researching the history of pumpkins.
Second, I want to apologize to my readers about presenting the vomitorium as fact. A corrected version of the chapter has been uploaded with this one.
Thirdly, the political incidents on which I have drawn are all accurate as far as my research tells me, so the next time someone tells you about how dirty modern politics are, just remember good ol’ Rome.