Emperor Aurelius received his son in the private garden, which was either an encouraging sign or a warning — in the imperial family, the private garden meant no witnesses, which could mean honesty or disaster depending on the afternoon.
Lucian came with documents. This was deliberate. A son approaching his father with an argument rather than a request was a different conversation, and he needed the advantage of being right.
His father was seventy-three now, and the weight of empire sat on him with the comfortable permanence of a garment worn for decades. He read men well — had always read men well — and Lucian could see the moment he arrived that his father was already reading him, noting something, filing it away.
"You look," his father said without preamble, "like a man with a speech prepared."
"I have questions about the eastern alliance treaty."
"Do you."
"The provincial stability clauses in section four were written during a period of active military threat that no longer exists. The financial provisions in section seven assume trade conditions that have since shifted significantly." Lucian set the documents on the garden table. "There are aspects that should be renegotiated. Not canceled — renegotiated. The relationship with the eastern provinces is valuable. The specific terms of the original treaty are in some places outdated."
His father looked at the documents without touching them.
"And the marriage clause," Aurelius said.
"Is in section twelve," Lucian said steadily. "Which I have also read."
His father was quiet for a moment. The garden moved gently around them in the afternoon warmth.
"When you were twenty-two," Aurelius said, "you accepted the engagement to Daria without argument. I remember being impressed by that."
"I was twenty-two and I understood the necessity."
"And now you are thirty-one, and you are bringing me a treaty renegotiation argument with an extraordinarily thorough set of appendices." His father's eyes were precise and without particular warmth. "This is not only about trade clauses, Lucian."
"The trade clauses are legitimate."
"I don't doubt it. You have always been thorough. It is one of your more inconvenient qualities." Aurelius looked at him steadily. "There is a girl."
Lucian did not bother denying it. Denial would have been an insult to his father's intelligence and his own.
"There is a woman," he said carefully. "Of good family. The grain scandal was — the evidence was mishandled. The case against Marcus Varro was not as clear as it was presented."
"I know that."
Lucian went still.
"Marcus Varro was a complicated situation," Aurelius said, in the tone of a man reviewing old history. "There were interests involved that made a clean resolution — difficult. The closure was political rather than judicial." He looked at his son. "You've been reading the case."
"Yes."
A pause.
"She is a Varro girl," his father said.
"Livia Varro. Yes."
Aurelius was quiet for a long moment. He picked up one of the treaty appendices and read through it with genuine attention.
"Section four," he said finally. "You're right about section four. The military threat provisions are anachronistic. A renegotiation could be argued on legitimate grounds." He set the document down. "I will not promise you anything, Lucian. The eastern alliance is real and its value is real, and Princess Daria is due in six weeks and has made sacrifices of her own in good faith."
"I know."
"But." His father met his eyes. "The treaty is a document. Documents can be discussed. The existing terms are not the only possible terms." He stood, with the careful deliberateness of age. "Give your appendices to the secretary. He will schedule a formal review." A pause. "And tell me nothing more about this woman until there is something to tell."
It was not a yes.
It was not a no.
It was, in the language of emperors and of fathers, a door held slightly ajar by a man who had decided that his son's impossible thing was worth, perhaps, a careful second look.
Lucian gathered his documents. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet." His father turned back toward the palace. "Section seven is wrong also, by the way. The trade provisions were outdated before the ink was dry. I always knew it."
He walked away, which was as close to warmth as he generally allowed himself.
Lucian stood in the garden for a moment, holding his appendices and the fragile, careful weight of something that had not yet become hope but was perhaps becoming the precondition for it.
He wrote to Livia that night.
He talked to him. He said: the door is open. Only slightly. But open.
She wrote back a single line:
Then we are not done