New to this story? Start here.
I didn’t collapse. Or cry, or do any of the things I’d thought I might. Because of course I had feared this. Men died in wars, even Emperors. And it wasn’t real, not yet. “How?” I asked.
Quintus licked his lips. “Shall I send the messenger to you, Empress?”
“Yes. But tell me first.”
“In the battle, Empress. He was guarded, of course, but the field was muddy and his close guard’s horse slipped. It was a javelin that took him.”
So the horse slipping was likely of no matter, I thought with cold clarity. “But we won?”
“Yes. The Boranoi prince was also killed. They have requested a truce, Empress.”
Anger rose, then. A truce, when Philitos was dead? I would not have it. They should all die, every man. I trembled with rage. My father touched my shoulder. “Sit down, Eudekia.”
I tried to say no, but words had gone. What came from my throat was a moan, deep and guttural. Like those I had uttered in childbirth, but now its cause was death, not new life. Emptiness and loss and a darkness I could see no light beyond. I wept into my father’s shoulder, sobs that racked my body, like those of a child who thinks her world has ended.
~
I allowed myself that hour. When I could cry no longer, my father gave me wine, not watered. I drank a little, then excused myself, going to the bedroom to wash my face. Tears rose again when I looked at the bed, at the wardrobe where Philitos’s clothes hung, at the bronze cat on its table. I brushed them away, breathing raggedly. I could not give in. Whatever my grief, the grinding hollowness inside me, the darkness that wanted to descend in my mind, Alekos had to be my first concern. My baby son, probably sleeping peacefully in a room not very far away, was now Emperor of Casil.
I washed, then applied with a not-quite-steady hand a touch of cosmetics and smoothed my hair back into its clasp. Then I returned to the sitting room, where my father and Quintus awaited me. On the table was the official letter. I would read it later.
“Empress,” Quintus said. “I am sorry to insist, but there are decisions that must be made.”
“I know,” I said.
“There is little precedent to go on. It has been centuries since there was a child Emperor. But a regency council must be appointed by the Assembly. Your father and I, and the general, when he returns to Casil, would be appropriate.”
“No,” I said. “Not the general, or the general and someone else.”
“The council must be an odd number, Empress, so a vote cannot be split evenly.”
‘I know,” I said again. “I will be the third, or the fifth.”
“You?” The fiscarius looked aghast. “But you are grieving, Empress. In no fit state to concern yourself with the governance of the Empire. And besides—”
“No Empress-Consort has ever been on a regency council, that I remember from the records,” my father said.
“So?” Was even my father going to baulk?
“A regency council is not the same as the triumvirate that governs in the Emperor’s absence,” Quintus said. “Then major decisions can be put off, awaiting his return. Your son is more than twenty years from his majority. Laws must be passed, wars declared, peace made. Things that cannot wait. The council must be men of learning and experience.”
“But Philitos did not need to be, when his father died and he became Emperor so suddenly?” I retorted. The argument was weak. Philitos had been educated for the role all his life, regardless of how unprepared he’d felt. Neither man bothered to refute it. Suddenly I had no defiance left, no argument. All I wanted was my son to be safe. Perhaps I couldn’t ensure that if I was away from him for most of the hours of the day. Perhaps that was why mothers had never been regents.
“Too many dignitasi are out of the city,” my father said slowly. “To recall them will take days. Casil cannot be ungoverned until the Assembly decides on the regents. We risk violence in the streets again.”
Quintus rubbed his chin. “Then we announce the triumvirate continues until the Assembly has met and chosen. Through the nine days of mourning, and a little beyond.”
It sounded reasonable. “That’s fine,” I said.
~
The fiscarius excused himself to supervise the dozens of letters that must be written and sent by fast messenger, not just to the dignitasi, but to the officials of towns, the governors of provinces and the rulers of allied states. Official announcements, too, had to go to the noticeboards of the city. I sat, drained and silent, waiting for my father to leave too, to let me crawl under my bedcovers and stare at the darkness. Matea, informed, waited in the bedroom to help me undress. I didn’t want her, but I didn’t have the energy to object.
“Eudekia,” my father said softly. I turned my head. Only a couple of lamps burned.
“I am to blame.” His voice was even, rational, calm. “I should not have voted for the Emperor to go to war. I see that now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It can’t be changed.”
“It does matter. My judgement was obscured by my feelings.”
“You said he should go. He did, and now he’s dead. You can’t change that. He’ll be dead tomorrow, too. Tomorrow and forever. Feel guilty if you must.” My voice rose. “Or don’t. I don’t care. It doesn’t change what’s happened.” Tears pricked. “Leave me,” I said, as if he were not my father. “I want to go to bed.”
He stood, to look down at me. “I am sorry, Eudekia.”
I didn’t care about that, either. I just nodded, and he left me.
###
I GOT THROUGH THE NINE official days of mourning, somehow. I wore dark tunics and veils, and I was seen at the funerary games, as tradition and protocol required. Philitos’s body had not yet reached Casil; when it did, another short mourning period would be declared, his remains given to the fire and the ashes to the tomb.
I made decisions in council, instructed Kyran how to answer the hundreds of notes of condolence that arrived, accepted no visitors but Clelia and Ennaia, who had travelled on her own to be at my side. We played with Alekos, and we wept together, but I had little time to spend with her. The truce the Boranoi had asked for had been granted by Genucius, as was his right as the commander in the field, but it had to be ratified and its limits defined. I didn’t mind. The work kept me from thinking, and tired me enough I slept for a few hours most nights. But when I was not focused on the details of the truce or the weight of loaves, my mind felt as if a fog pervaded it. I couldn’t remember decisions I’d made three weeks ago, or whether I’d eaten today.
The night before the Assembly was to meet to begin the regency debates, I refused the sleeping draught Matea had been giving me. Only valerian, she had said, but I thought it was adding to the fog. I fell asleep on a pillow wet with the tears I shed only in private now, but I woke in the night, a memory clear and precise. The day before Philitos was to leave for war. He’d come back from an afternoon’s planning, complaining of his hand aching from so many signatures on decrees. And something else. His lips had been on my neck, his hands exploring, so I hadn’t been paying much attention by that point. “I made a will, too,” he’d murmured. “A waste of time, because I’m coming back, but an Emperor can’t go to war without one.”
Had that really happened? I lay in the dark, thinking, becoming convinced it had. Then where was the document?
He’d been with Roscius and Quintus, I thought. And maybe the clerks of the court; hadn’t he mentioned judgements, too? Someone knew where it was; someone—or two—had had to witness it. But surely one of these men would have brought it to me.
I got up, lit the lamp beside my bed, pulled a robe over my sleeping shift. I padded into the small room where Philitos had sometimes worked late. The desk was locked. I looked around. Three vases sat on a shelf above the desk. I lifted each in turn to shake it. The third rattled. I tipped it, and a key fell out.
The will was at the top of his papers, probably the last thing he’d locked away. I unrolled the vellum, my husband’s handwriting making my throat catch. I read it through, and my breath caught again, but not in grief this time.
In words that left no room for interpretation or argument, my husband had appointed me sole regent for our son. I was, at the late Emperor’s decree, the Empress-Regent of Casil.
Like what you read? There’s lots more in my Substack Story Archive
Donations for my local foodbank gratefully received
Find (almost) all my books at https://scarletferret.com/authors/marian-l-thorpe
Free Books! (to October 6, 2025)
I can see trouble coming...