Savage City Read Online Free PDF

officer, in a kind of blank, droned-out bark, not hearing anything.
    ‘No, I can
help
, my name’s Novianus Sulien. I’m a friend of Marcus Novius a—’
    Under the helmet, the man’s face flinched into alertness, becoming individual and, briefly, naked with feeling. ‘Novianus Sulien?’ He let out his breath in a tense sigh that made Sulien’s stomach clench in apprehension. ‘Come with me.’ He seized Sulien’s arm and pulled him past the line, hurrying him towards the Colosseum as if he’d proposed running away rather than entering.
    An aching quiver throbbed up through his bones, shaking the pain awake. Marcus couldn’t understand it for a while, then, distantly, heconnected the vibration to the sound of metal grinding and realised they had begun cutting through the beam pinning down his deadened legs. They’d fixed a tube in his arm and there was something cold pouring in. It was strange how intrusively close yet separate from him all this activity seemed, like hammering or laughter in an adjoining room.
    And they were moving through the rubble behind him, lifting someone on a stretcher, carrying him away—
    Horror raked into Marcus, almost indistinguishable from the physical pain. He stiffened and tried instinctively to brace a hand against the ground and lift himself, but everything was failing, his mouth was opening and failing to make a sound . . .
    ‘Give him something, he’s in pain,’ ordered Makaria wretchedly.
    That was true enough, but it was worse, terrifying, that he couldn’t make himself understood. He rolled his head, trying to swallow, to get his throat to work, and managed to choke out some mangled approximation of the syllables he wanted, then, clearer, ‘Drusus. Drusus – is he alive?’
    Makaria looked over her shoulder. Drusus had been lying under a crumpled panel of bullet-proof glass, but he had been irrelevant to her. She could not see him now, hidden between the men who were passing the stretcher down into the excavated passage, out of sight, but they were not moving as if they were handling a corpse.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘yes, I think maybe—’
    Marcus tried to twist again, fighting uselessly against his unresponsive body. ‘Not him— Don’t let— Not Drusus.’
    Makaria leant in between the medics, trying to hear. ‘What? What is it, Marcus?’
    ‘Succession.’
    ‘Oh, Marcus—’
    He struggled to find a clear place in the pain and murkiness to think clearly, just for a few seconds. Varius, he wanted to say, and the thought of how shocked Varius would be, hearing that, made his lips twitch with bleak amusement. He thought, but you’d make a good Emperor, Varius. Except that he wouldn’t have the chance. Anyone Marcus named outside the remnants of the dynasty would need an existing stock of power and prominence to have any chance of holding the throne. Drusus had his name, and the nominal status as joint regent Faustus had given him. Salvius had the army. Varius had neither of these things, and Marcus would guarantee his murder just by saying his name.
    He had scarcely any choice. It would be Drusus or Salvius.
    ‘Salvius,’ he croaked roughly. ‘Has to be.’
    He wasn’t sure if Makaria answered that. His breathing sounded startlingly loud now, and he had no control over it any more; the pain from his broken ribs pulled through him with every breath, still violent and yet dissolving, splintering apart. So recognisable, this
tug
, like a word whose meaning he’d only briefly forgotten.
    The dull juddering ground on. He wanted to curl up on his side, hiding from it, and he didn’t want Una to think he hadn’t resisted, that he wouldn’t have given anything or borne anything to see her again, if there had been any way, any strength left in him. He made another long effort to speak, and heard his voice stutter unexpectedly into motion, though he didn’t seem to have chosen the words: ‘I can’t— I’m sorry—’
    ‘You have nothing to be