The Tyrant's Tomb

He could not do otherwise. I recalled that Harpocrates required all his
willpower to lower his finger from his mouth. As soon as he stopped
concentrating, his hand would pop right back into position. In the old days, I
had found that hilarious. Now, not so much.
The centuries had not been kind to him. His skin was wrinkled and
saggy. His once-bronze complexion was an unhealthy porcelain color. His
sunken eyes smoldered with anger and self-pity.
Imperial gold fetters were clamped around Harpocrates’s wrists and
ankles, connecting him to a web of chains, cords, and cables—some hooked
up to elaborate control panels, others channeled through holes in the walls of
the container, leading out to the tower’s superstructure. The setup seemed
designed to siphon Harpocrates’s power and then amplify it—to broadcast
his magical silence across the world. This was the source of all our
communications troubles—one sad, angry, forgotten little god.
It took me a moment to understand why he remained imprisoned. Even
drained of his power, a minor deity should have been able to break a few
chains. Harpocrates seemed to be alone and unguarded.
Then I noticed them. Floating on either side of the god, so entangled in
chains that they were hard to distinguish from the general chaos of
machinery and wires, were two objects I hadn’t seen in centuries: identical
ceremonial axes, each about four feet tall, with a crescent blade and a thick
bundle of wooden rods fastened around the shaft.
Fasces. The ultimate symbol of Roman might.
Looking at them made my ribs twist into bows. In the old days, powerful
Roman officials never left home without a procession of lictor bodyguards,
each carrying one of those bundled axes to let the commoners know
somebody important was coming through. The more fasces, the more
important the official.
In the twentieth century, Benito Mussolini revived the symbol when he
became Italy’s dictator. His ruling philosophy was named after those bundled
axes: Fascism.
But the fasces in front of me were no ordinary standards. These blades
were Imperial gold. Wrapped around the bundles of rods were silken banners
embroidered with the names of their owners. Enough of the letters were
visible that I could guess what they said. On the left: CAESAR MARCUS
AURELIUS COMMODUS ANTONINUS AUGUSTUS. On the right: GAIUS JULIUS
CAESAR AUGUSTUS GERMANICUS, otherwise known as Caligula.