Chapter 42: The Emperor’s Garden

The two weeks it took for the package to arrive from Hispania were the longest of Alex's life. The city was a powder keg. The last of the subsidized grain from his emergency release was gone, and the full force of the famine had taken hold. The cries of "Panem! Panem!"—"Bread! Bread!"—were a constant, low murmur outside the palace walls, a grim soundtrack to his waking hours. Riots were now a daily occurrence. Maximus and his men were perpetually exhausted, their duties shifting from keeping the peace to outright suppressing rebellions in the city's poorer quarters. Alex's political capital was evaporating with every hungry stomach. The Senate was stirring again, with Metellus whispering that the Emperor's "divine guidance" had led them only to starvation. Alex ignored them all. His entire focus, his entire hope, was pinned on the contents of a single, sealed amphora making its slow, careful journey across the sea. When it finally arrived, it was brought to his study under armed guard, carried with the reverence of a holy relic. With Perennis as his only witness, Alex carefully broke the ancient clay seal. The air that escaped smelled of dust, of age, of centuries of dry, silent darkness. He tilted the vessel, and into a linen cloth on his desk, he poured out its contents. They were a pathetic sight. A handful of small, dark, gnarled objects, no larger than a child's fist. They were tubers, unmistakably, but they were as hard and light as volcanic rock, their skin wrinkled and shrunken. They looked utterly, irrevocably dead. Perennis stared at them, his face a mask of disappointment. "This... this is it, Caesar? This is the miracle that will save Rome?" "This is the seed of that miracle, Prefect," Alex said, his voice holding a conviction he did not feel. "See to it that I am not disturbed." He took the small, mummified tubers and carried them himself, not to a grand imperial field, but to a place no one would ever think to look, a place of quiet secrecy. On the highest level of the palace, there was a private, walled garden, a hortus that had belonged to the Empresses of Rome for generations. It was a secluded, sun-drenched sanctuary, forgotten by most of the palace staff, a place of flowering vines and quiet fountains. This would be his laboratory. He summoned his young acolyte, Timo. The boy's loyalty since the night in the study had been absolute, a silent, watchful devotion that Alex found both useful and humbling. Together, they began the painstaking work. Alex couldn't risk involving the imperial gardeners, whose traditional knowledge would be useless and whose gossip would be dangerous. Following Lyra's memorized instructions, he directed Timo. "We need a special soil, Timo. A bed for the 'sacred roots.' We need sand from the riverbank, rich soil from the forest floor beyond the city walls, and ash from a cold fire. We will mix them together, to create a perfect balance." For two days, they worked, smuggling the components into the private garden. They prepared a small, raised plot in the sunniest corner, hidden behind a trellis of climbing roses. It was a bed of black, rich, perfectly balanced soil, awaiting its last, desperate hope. Alex took one of the hard, shriveled tubers. It felt like a stone in his hand. Lyra's instructions had been specific. He couldn't just plant it whole. He had to slice it, to find any viable node—an "eye," she had called it—that might still contain the spark of life. With a small, sharp knife, he carefully cut into the tuber. The inside was dry, chalky, and lifeless. His heart sank. He was in the garden late one afternoon, carefully examining another one of the petrified roots under the setting sun, when a shadow fell over him. He looked up, startled, his hand instinctively moving towards the dagger at his belt. It was Sabina. She stood there, a wry, curious smile on her face, having bypassed the palace guards with the authority of her new commission. She looked from the strange, dark object in his hand to the carefully prepared plot of earth. "More 'lost knowledge,' Caesar?" she asked, her voice laced with amusement. "What strange magic are you practicing in your mother's garden now?" For a moment, he considered lying, creating some new story about a philosophical experiment. But as he looked at her—at her intelligent, knowing eyes, at the woman who had seen through his political machinations—he made a different choice. He decided on a partial, but profound, truth. He needed an ally in this, a witness. "It is not magic, Domina," he said, his voice quiet. "It is a gamble. The last one I have left." He told her the story he had constructed, the one he had dispatched his agents to make real. He told her of the ancient Carthaginian voyages, of the fragmented texts in the library, of the rediscovery of a "lost miracle crop" in a forgotten tomb. He showed her the shriveled tuber in his hand. "The legends say this plant could feed a city from a single field. That it is immune to the red blight. That it is a gift from a land beyond the sunset." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "But as you can see, it is little more than dust and memory." Sabina listened, her cynical facade slowly melting away as she heard the sheer, desperate hope in his voice. She looked at the pathetic, rock-hard root, then back at his face, at the exhaustion and the crushing weight of an entire empire he carried on his shoulders. She knelt beside him in the dirt, her fine silk stola brushing against the soil. In that moment, she was no longer the shrewd businesswoman, the celebrated actress, or the cool political operator. She saw the man, not the Emperor. "You truly believe this will work, don't you?" she whispered, her voice soft. "I have to," Alex replied, his voice almost breaking. "There are no other options left." Without a word, she reached out and took a piece of the tuber he had just cut. She looked at him, her eyes asking for instruction. He showed her how to find the small, dark dimples—the eyes—and how to place the pieces in the soil. They worked together in the fading light of sunset, the Emperor of Rome and the city's most infamous actress, their hands in the dirt, planting dead roots in a secret garden. In that quiet, shared task, a new and unspoken bond was forged between them. It was not the alliance of a ruler and his subject. It was something closer to partnership, a shared conspiracy of hope against a world of despair. She was no longer just a political ally he had coerced. She was the first person to share the burden and the secret of one of his "miracles." They finished their work as the last rays of sunlight vanished. The small, dark plot of earth held the future of the Roman Empire. It might do nothing. The tubers might be completely, truly dead. Alex's entire plan, his hope for saving Rome, now rested on this single, desperate agricultural gamble. The weeks that followed were the worst yet. The last of the grain reserves were distributed. The bakeries closed. The riots were no longer sporadic; they were a constant, simmering rage that often boiled over into bloody street battles. Alex's political enemies, smelling blood in the water, began to stir again, whispering that the Emperor's 'reforms' and 'magic' had failed. His authority was hanging by a single, frayed thread. Every morning at dawn, before the palace was fully awake, Alex would go to the garden. And every morning, the plot remained barren. Black, silent, and empty. He began to despair, a cold, heavy feeling of failure settling deep in his bones. He had gambled everything on a ghost story and a dead root. One morning, he went to the garden as usual. The city below was shrouded in a grim, smoky haze. He felt the weight of a million hungry people on his shoulders. He knelt down beside the barren plot, his heart heavy with the taste of defeat. He was ready to admit he had failed. He brushed a hand over the soil. And then he stopped. His fingers had touched something. Not a rock. Something soft, yet firm. He leaned closer, his eyes widening. Pushing up through the dark, rich earth, was a single, tiny, fragile green sprout. Its leaves were curled, delicate, and impossibly vibrant. He stared, unable to breathe. He looked closer. And then he saw another. And another. A small, scattered handful of them, defiantly, miraculously, alive. It had worked. Life from death. Hope from dust. A miracle from the future, blooming in a secret Roman garden.