What's Rome

Summary: It was said ash fell in the southern provinces when the Emperor died. Ahuda-centric origin fic, treats Ahuda's story of her family being slaves in Carthak as kennel rumour, nothing more. Written for the Goldenlake Olympics 2012.

What's Rome? It crumbled.
What is the world? We are destroying it
before your towers can taper into spires,
before we can assemble your face
from the piles of mosaic.

—Book of Hours, Rainer Maria Rilke

It was said ash fell in the southern provinces when the Emperor died.

Kebibi knew the truth of those rumours. She was sixteen when the Lord of Kisoua left for the heart of the Empire. Word was that he was a third nephew of the Emperor and fourth in line for the throne. Mother's sons counted for much, here in Carthak.

Here in the south, the land was hard and the people harder still. Men from Kisoua fought harder and longer in the Red Legion, they said. Men from Kisoua were soldiers and ran as swift as the gazelle and were as strong and fierce as the mountain lions. She watched year after year as boys she knew from her province left with the Legion recruiters.

They brought back coin, thick and gold and their families lived in well-built houses and bought large herds of cattle and goats. They bought land.

They did not know when the Emperor died, only that he had. The Empire was too large for word to travel south in a matter of days.

A few days before the word arrived by courier, Kebibi was watching the goats when the rumbles came. The south was hard land, difficult to farm. Everyone knew the soft grasslands where the crops grew was farther north, nearer the Zekoi delta where the soft silt made harvests rich. Here in Kisoua, they lived in the shadow of the towering mountains, titanic ridges of rock jutting into thin blue sky. All her life, the large sullen Nyrimagongo had been silent.

The goats were skittish. The land shook.

Kebibi shaded her eyes with her free hand and stared up at the sky. A column of thick ash and smoke crowned Nyrimagongo.

A few hours later, the ash fell.

Sergeant Ehren Ahuda had fought in the Red Legion for fifteen years, and what he had to show for it was a missing right eye, a leg that could not quite support its own weight, and a generous hoard of coin which had paid for a house, a larger herd, and land enough to dig a well and plant some crops.

Unlike their neighbours, he never spoke of his time with the Legion. Kebibi was eldest and she could remember when Baba smiled and still had his right eye. Baba smiled less often these days; but he was always gentle with Mzazi and all of them. But he kept to himself and his face always grew hard and troubled when Nashun next door told them of his exploits with the Legion as a Captain.

"You should join the Legion," he told young Ashraf, and as he spoke of the glory and the wealth and the prestige one gained from the Legion, Kebibi always made the calculations, in a little corner of her head. She subtracted an eye, and then a leg, added the cost of hired help for Baba couldn't work so often in the fields and Ashraf and Kassem and Siyera never really helped Mzazi and she heard Mzazi and Baba talk often at night about the ever-rising taxes from the Lord and the Empire.

She was the eldest and the strongest; she'd fought and wrestled with the province boys and some of the province girls. They were all Kisoua-children, raised with the necessity of defending their flocks against the predators of the wild, skilled with sling and staff and fist. She could dig for water with the best of them, and tended the fields with Mzazi in the years when Baba was serving tours with the Legion.

She never cried, when Baba came back tired and with an eye lost; and then left again because he was being called back up to quash rebellion in the softer northern lands.

She never said a word as the faces she knew left the province and returned older beyond their years and with stories of the things they'd seen, the deeds they'd done. They brought back wealth, and fame, and the scarlet cape of the Legion which they were allowed to keep for the years of service they had given.

She was sixteen; some had been thirteen when they left to answer Legion's insatiable demand for the best of Carthak's young. Another year spent in the fields, with the goats, banking fires and gathering wood and speaking to Mnyega who had lovely eyes and always showed interest but Kebibi didn't look twice. You are the eldest, Kebibi, Mzazi said, you must be strong and so she was.

A few days before the couriers returned from the city with word of the Emperor's death, ash fell over Kisoua as the Great One, Nyrimagongo shook with sullen fury and the sky turned blood-red.

Omens, Nyanya said. She shook the bag and the bones fell out and she knew because she was Nyanya and knew everything from what plants were edible to what plants healed to what plants killed. She healed and set bones and sometimes saw things in the fire and Kebibi knew better than to gainsay her if Nyanya saw omens in the stirring of the Great One.

Nyanya put a hand as tough and sinewy as old roots over hers, callused from days of hard labour. "You'll be leaving, won't you?"

It was a decision Kebibi hadn't even known she was making until Nyanya had said it in a voice soft as the grey smoke from the banked fire while the rest of their family slumbered. She nodded.

"Good," Nyanya said. And there was all there was to it.

In the morning, the Emperor's couriers came with word of war in the north, of fire and blood and smoke and steel. They came with recruiters, soft northerners but their dark eyes were as hard as anyone from Kisoua.

They examined boys, felt muscles, even checked teeth. Why, Kebibi didn't know but she knew it was her best chance. She stepped forward.

The recruiter looked at her. She stared back, chin thrust out proudly. She knew he was examining her, muscles hard and sinewy from labour. He felt the calluses on her hands, the strength of her grip and stared at her, sizing her up. He didn't say a word. He didn't ask her for her age. They were taking boys far younger than her. Half of them lied anyway.

They were given only an hour to say their farewells. She half-expected Baba to say something. But he merely looked resigned, and placed a hand on Mzazi's shoulder when she opened her mouth to protest. "Come back safely," he said, and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. She felt a trickle of wet against her cheek and blinked.

It wasn't her.

Baba turned so she would not see his face. Mzazi said, "I never wanted this for you."

Kebibi said, "I know."

The taste of ash and salt was thick on her tongue as Mzazi drew her into a tight hug. "Tell your brothers and your sisters," was all she said. "I'll speak to Nyanya for you."

"She knows," Kebibi said. Everything that they had meant to say had been said.

"I'll offer prayers everyday," Mzazi whispered. "For your safe return."

The ash was still falling when Kebibi walked along the cobbled Imperial roads, headed out of Kisoua.

She thought of Nyanya, casting the bones. She thought of the smoke that drifted, for a moment, like a bird, the next like a hare, the way she used to lie on her back and see pictures in the clouds as a child.

"It will be difficult," Nyanya had said, "But you must be strong."

Ash fell. Already, some of the younger boys were beginning to protest at the brutal pace the recruiters were setting. They would head to the Zekoi before they took a boat downriver, towards the city proper.

Kebibi was strong. She did not look back.