Constantine had been running for hours. He did it every morning after the wedding. Beshter had been furious that the two brothers had slighted him, and he had let them.
The young boy didn’t feel slighted. They were entitled to dislike whoever they wished. And Beshter had spurned their brother. Gnaeus Pompeius had invited him a couple of times for rides outside the gates, but Constantine had been made to refuse time and again.
Beshter had explained to him that it was Gaius Julius Caesar that they needed to court, not Pompeius and that Caesar could be his potential King, one day. Constantine’s ambition went beyond kings, though. He wanted an Emperor.
After his morning runs, he spent time studying city building and agriculture from books written by Kyla Bolgar, of all people. Apparently, he had written to Beshter and had told him that if they kept training Constantine like an adult, they will damage his growth.
Constantine didn’t miss the whip over his head one bit, and he was grateful to the eastern nation. After his lessons, he was escorted either in the Caesar household, the Cloudii household or the Ledo household. His time with Scribonia was filled with gossip and having to pose for paintings. It appears that she had found another hobby, and a new muse.
Livia Drusilla was a much better companion. Constantine even entertained the thought that they could be married, one day. They spoke of rhetoric during their time together. Of the latest poets, with her reciting her favorite verses at him when they were arguing.
It must be a talent, he realized as he ran, for her to be able to wild another’s words so skillfully. Octavian and Octavia turned out to have a half-sister, Octavia the Elder. But Atia Balba didn’t like speaking about her stepdaughter, and must have forbidden her children from doing the same, for they only mentioned their sister’s name once.
Today he would go to Livia and spend some time with her father going over military maps. They would plan a better sacking of Carthage today, for all that Constantine didn’t see the point in it.
There used to be a nation on the head of Carthage and most of Africa. Named Carthage as well, with its people being the Phoenicians. His mother’s grandmother had been Phoenician, but Helena rarely spoke about her but to say that there had been rumors of cannibalism with children around her time.
Constantine thought that to be just war propaganda. He knew of the Punic wars, of how Hannibal crossed the Alps. Beshter told him that Hannibal was turned into one of his kind by a Brujah looking to continue the fight for Carthage, but the man had gone in torpor upon his turning. His body hidden in the Sahara.
That was the kind of man Constantine wanted to learn war tactics from, not Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus. That man knew his stuff, true, but he also spoke about peace and the republican values too much. And Constantine was not blind. His father was changing.
His people were growing more prideful by the day. Soon, a new dictator would appear, to be backed by Ventrue, Toreador or Malkavian overlords. And Constantine was almost certain that it would be Julius Caesar.
And what of the republic that Marcus Livius Drusus held in such a high esteem? It will be shed by Rome like an old, tattered toga. His father was the strongest because he changed with the times. The day he stopped doing so would be the day he died.
A civil war was looming over the horizon. Constantine could feel it with every plea of Pompeius for a ride outside the eternal city. With every invite to speak about the republic in the Cloudii household. Even in the almost forced friendship Octavian had with him.
Besides, people spoke highly of Caesar. He was sowing a victory after a victory. Sending slaves and treasures and terrorizing Constantine’s baby brother, Franconia.
Yet, Rome encouraged him. Romulus was a harsh father, at times. Had Constantine been born with land to his name, he would have felt his bad side long ago. But Constantine was both fortunate and not to have his father’s love without any effort. Because he was not a competitor for his father’s domain.
But that would change. Constantine felt himself the true heir to Romulus Vargas. The only one allowed to hold the name Romulus as a last name, despite being denied the Vargas name.
When his father gave him land, Constantine was going to build grand walls to protect it. As strong as the ones Kyla Bolgar described in his many manuals. And he was not going to have federates. Rather, he was going to have assimilated vassals.
Antonius liked to point at his failed predecessor and point out both the good points and the bad he made. And so, Constantine learned more from the eastern nation than he did his teachers.
It would have been nice if Kyla just came here, to Rome, and taught him directly. He and his Tzimisce companion, the fourth generation and equal to both Beshter and Antonius, the Dracon.
But what he got were manuals and letters. Cautioning him not to put too much faith in Beshter. To be wary of Antonius and, above all, to make human contacts.
He had even told him that, as long as he drank from Beshter, he would not age. Constantine had been horrified that he was going to be stuck in the body of a ten-year-old forever, and he had faced Beshter with the letter in hand.
Since then, he hadn’t had any blood to drink, which made him sweat at night and gave him nightmares, but he noticed that his hair was finally growing again and so were his nails.
He also noticed that he was neither as strong nor as fast now, but, Kyla had assured him that he could build up his strength with a lot of moderate exercise. To the question about whatever Kyla drank from the Dracon, he received a haunting response.
I have been on the blood of Beshter for 100 years, and I fear it will nearly kill me to stop drinking blood. But you have not been trapped in the same situation for long, so, I plead with you, don’t be as foolish as I.
