The Kingdom of the Wicked Read Online Free

ripe plum. The Germans are in Gaul. In Armenia the Parthians —’
           'Shut up, Curtius. I forbid you to mention these things. Talk to me of the duties of rule when you've experienced the burden of rule and the nightmare of treachery. My only concern now is self-preservation. That's why I'm here. A natural fortress of rock with one well-guarded landing beach. I'm safe. I've made sure of that.'
           He was indeed safe, but the rocky island was not so impregnable as he thought. Down below, rocking on blue calm, on the other side from the Villa Jovis, a small fishing boat rode a chain's length from the wall of rock. A hardworking fisherman, gnarled and lean and black with sun, was dragging his netted catch inboard. It was a huge sea perch or morone labrax being nipped by angry crabs. 'Row in,' the man said to his boy.
           'Why?'
           'Why?' He slammed with his fist at the mad despairing eye of the bass, which leapt in its confines like a man on a cross. 'Have you ever seen anything like this afore?'
           'It's a big bastard right enough.'
           'Well, it's going up to him. His worship the Emperor. I'm off up that rockface with it. Plenty of tufts to cling on to. That'll give him a bit of a surprise that will. What I'll say is this: From the god of the sea to the god of the world. That'll show him I'm book read too. There's many a small man been made big by doing the unexpected. It's the spirit that made the Empire what it is.'
           'It's like intruding,' the boy said. 'There's soldiers all over.’
           ‘Row in, boy.'
           Not knowing he had a gift coming, Tiberius was saying: 'You've not seen your own son, heard him howling in his blood while the knives struck and struck and she there, grinning —’
           'With respect, Caesar, you did not see it either.'
           'I see it every night. I wake sweating.' Drusus, his own son, sitting at the cleared supper table, his wife Livilla playing the game of holding up fingers quickly for the guessing of how many. And then Sejanus, the one man in Rome the Emperor could trust, prefect of the Guard, came in with his killers, and Drusus crawling under the table while Livilla laughed. They dragged him out by the hair and then stabbed and stabbed. Livilla laughed because now she was going to marry Sejanus, and Sejanus was going to be Emperor. Sejanus, trusted master of Rome while his ageing master tasted an earned repose on Capri.
           'And what satisfaction did you find in revenge?'
           'It was retribution, it was —’
           'The whole family?'
           The daughter was a mere child, crying: 'I didn't mean to be bad. I won't do it again. Please don't hurt me.'
           And the captain of the detail said to the executioner: 'This girl's a virgin presumably. We don't execute virgins. That's the law.'
           And the executioner: 'I'll rape her. Then we can follow the law.'
           Tiberius now shakily drained his cup of white wine. Curtius said: 'Calm, Caesar. Refuse to be moved. Take a calm mind back to Rome. Rome has become a filthy shambles. Macro is worse than Sejanus was. Rome needs its Emperor.'
           'I will not go back to Rome. I will die here. In my bed.'
           'And the succession?'
           'The succession is assured. Gaius has the army behind him. Nobody is going to kill Gaius.'
           'A fish?' Curtius said. They both looked towards a grinning man, approaching with a monstrous sea perch in his arms. It was kicking still. He was between two guardsmen. They too grinned. The fisherman said:
           'From the divine Neptune a gift for the divine Tiberius.' He had been practising the new and improved form all the difficult way up the rockface. Tiberius approached, saying:
           'Not so divine if mortal men can climb his Olympus. You guards, you forget your instructions. Throw this man where he came