Pompeii: City on Fire by T. L. Higley Read Free Book Online Page A

the theater. "To bask in the balmy weather and grow luscious grapes and get fat with contentment."
    Taurus inclined his head and watched Cato, as though he were a specimen to be studied. "You are young to be so disillusioned with higher purpose." His voice quieted. "Only two years as aedile, then two as quaestor. You had a long career ahead of you in Rome."
    And you know too much about me. He searched for a clever response, but had nothing. "I served the Empire as best I could. And now I wish for other things."
    But Taurus would not be put off. "There is no one else in Pompeii qualified to run for duovir who has not already sold himself to Maius. There is only you."
    A twinge of the old ambition, the old passion to right wrongs and destroy corruption, burrowed through his heart and threatened to surface. He beat it back with the hammer of the past. "I am honored by your request, citizens. Truly, I am. And I support your efforts to remove Maius from office so that he can face the prosecution he deserves for his many crimes. But you will have to find someone else."
    Taurus would speak again, but Cato bowed and took Portia's arm. "My sister is no doubt grieved to be missing the third act." He pulled Portia along. "Please excuse us."
    "Do not think you can avoid him, Cato," Taurus called after him. "Maius will destroy you as surely as he did Saturninus."
    Cato strode from the quadriporticus, dragging Portia with him. But it was not his pace which caused her objections.
    "Cato, how can you dismiss their request? You could do so much good here—"
    Cato released her arm and escaped through the entrance to the grassy area outside the wall, with Portia on his heels. "Almost I could believe this was your doing, Portia." He headed for the steps to the theater.
    Her silence condemned her.
    How could you do it, Portia?
    He reached the top of the stairs, emerged onto the highest tier of the theater, and stopped to take in the thousands of people who laughed at the farce before them.
    They are only a quarter of the city. So many more, with Maius's greed oppressing them all in some fashion. He stared at the man in his special cubicle, elevated above the people. In that moment Maius turned his eyes upward toward Cato as well, and though Maius could not identify him from this distance, nor did he know of the request just made, there still seemed to be a coldness emanating from the man, directed toward Cato. He thought again of the two gladiators, the way the younger fought with everything in him, even though outmatched.
    You will not oppress me, Gnaeus Nigidius Maius. But I will find some other way to avoid your malice.
    Not an election. Definitely not an election.

    Vesuvius watched.
    She watched as they insisted, these stupid people, upon living their lives as though calamity could never befall them. Like spoiled children, they needed to be taught a lesson, and she would gladly offer it to them.
    The fire in her belly was known only to her, even now. She would keep her secret yet a little while. Let them run about down there, caught up in their own trifling pursuits, heedless, senseless.
    Yes, she would play her story out as she saw fit and not be rushed by the flames that licked at her insides, nor the folly that attacked her sense of justice.
    For she had been wronged, that much was certain.
    And she would make it right.

CHAPTER 6
    Pompeii did not have the expansive sprawl of Rome, nor was it weighted with the abundant amounts of marble, but Ariella would not have traded the one day spent here for a hundred in Rome. The town felt safe, as though she were tucked away, beneath the beneficent gaze of the mountain Vesuvius, from Valerius and his searching eyes.
    The troupe had spent their second day in the town much as their first, training in the barracks that also had become their new home. The rectangular building housed dozens of cells off the roofed passage that ran around the open courtyard, with a kitchen, armory, even a prison. This