Iron Rebirth: The Eagle Eternal

Sebastianus summoned Abster to Marcianopolis in the fourth week after the complaint hearing, which meant the field army command had reached a decision and Sebastianus wanted him present when it was delivered rather than in a camp on the Danube reading about it in a letter.

He traveled without Sura this time, because the summons had been specific: Abster alone. Corvus said nothing when he told him, which meant he had already known and was prepared for whatever came from it.

The city was different in spring than it had been in winter. More alive, more crowded, the particular energy of a frontier administrative center that had been compressed by cold and was now releasing — merchants back on the road, military couriers moving faster, the bathhouse full of people who had been waiting for warm weather to be fully clean. The smell of the place was better. That was the first thing he noticed.

Sebastianus met him at headquarters. He looked tired in a different way from his usual tiredness — not the accumulated fatigue of long hours, something more specifically worn, the look of a man who had spent weeks fighting a battle at a level where the weapons were documents and relationships and the damage was invisible but real.

"The complaint outcome," he said, before Abster had sat. "Betto's second complaint. The field army commander reviewed both the complaint and the sector record. He has found no grounds for disciplinary action. The boundary crossing incidents are noted as irregular but not actionable given the documented outcomes." He looked at Abster. "You keep your posting. Your rank."

"Sura's record," Abster said.

"Sura's record, Corvus's testimony, your documentation, and the sector outcome over eleven months." He sat. "Betto is not satisfied. He will file again if he has grounds. He may manufacture grounds." He paused. "But that's not why I asked you here."

"Bassus."

"Bassus is here. He asked to meet you." Sebastianus met his eyes. "I considered refusing. I decided he was entitled to the meeting and you were entitled to know what you're dealing with." He stood. "He'll be here in one hour. I want to tell you something about him before he arrives."

— ✦ —

What Sebastianus told him was this.

Lucius Bassus had been in the imperial secretariat for fourteen years. He was fifty-one, a lawyer by training, an administrator by vocation, a man who had spent his career understanding how Roman institutions worked and why they worked and what happened when they stopped working. He had been Lupicinus's contact in the secretariat not because he was corrupt — Sebastianus was specific about this, direct about it — but because Lupicinus had been the eastern frontier's official commander and official commanders had legitimate relationships with the secretariat and Bassus had managed that relationship without knowing, initially, the degree to which Lupicinus was using it as cover for the grain corruption.

When Lupicinus was recalled, Bassus had been investigated. The investigation found nothing actionable because there was nothing actionable. He had communicated with Lupicinus in his official capacity. He had not taken grain money. He had not falsified documents. He had done his job.

What he had also done, in the years since, was build a coherent and detailed opposition to Sebastianus's reform program — not because he was Lupicinus's man, but because he genuinely believed the reforms were dangerous. His argument, as Sebastianus characterized it, was essentially Gailswintha's argument made from the Roman side: if Gothic communities settled inside Roman territory as semi-autonomous entities with their own law and their own military structure, in one generation they would be Gothic armies inside Roman borders with legitimate claims to the land they occupied. The foederati system had always eventually produced this tension. Sebastianus's version of the foederati system would produce it faster and more durably because it explicitly preserved Gothic social structure rather than assimilating it.

"He thinks I'm naïve," Sebastianus said.

"Are you."

Sebastianus looked at him. "I think the alternative produces Noviodunum and the pass and Adrianople. I think his alternative also produces Adrianople, just from a different direction." He paused. "Neither of us gets to know which of us is right before it's too late."

— ✦ —

Bassus arrived exactly at the hour. He was medium height, thin in the way of people who worked primarily with their minds and forgot to eat, with eyes that moved efficiently — not darting, efficient, covering the room in the first five seconds and filing what they found. He looked at Abster with the same efficiency. Not hostile. Interested in the specific way of someone who had been building a case around a person and was now seeing the person and checking the case.

"Optio," he said.

"Tribune." The rank Abster had been given temporarily for the Marcianopolis visit, which was the field army command's way of making the meetings less awkward.

Bassus sat. He did not waste time on preamble. "I've read your sector record. All of it." He looked at Abster directly. "It's a good record. Accurate, thorough, honestly maintained including the failures." He paused. "I'm not here to challenge it."

"Then what."

"I want you to understand why I oppose what Sebastianus is building." He set his hands flat on the table — not a threatening gesture, the gesture of a man who had decided to be completely clear. "Not so you'll agree with me. So you know what the opposition actually is, rather than the version of it that gets characterized as corruption or jealousy or political maneuvering."

Abster waited.

"The foederati system," Bassus said, "has been tried eleven times in the past century in various forms. I have read the records of all eleven. In every case where the settlement preserved the community's internal military structure — kept their warriors together, under their own commanders, with their own chain of loyalty — within twenty years the settlement became a military problem. Not because the people were treacherous. Because communities with armies inside empires eventually use those armies." He looked at Abster. "Sebastianus's settlement preserves Gothic warrior structure deliberately. He believes it's necessary for the foederati to function. He's right that it's necessary. He's also right that it creates a twenty-year problem." He paused. "We disagree about whether the twenty-year problem is preferable to the immediate one. I think it is not. He thinks it is."

"You think the settlement produces the next war," Abster said.

"I think it delays the next war and makes it more dangerous." He held Abster's gaze. "You've been building trust relationships with Gothic leadership for eleven months. The trust is real. I've read the accounts — the sector held, the channel has produced movement, the documents are better than what came before." He paused. "None of that is what I oppose. What I oppose is the institutional structure being built around it. The legal framework that gives Gothic communities permanent claim to Roman territory with their own governance." He paused again. "Gailswintha asked what happens to Gothic identity in one generation. I have the same question. And I believe the answer, if the settlement is structured as Sebastianus intends, is: it doesn't disappear. It consolidates. And a consolidated Gothic military community inside Thrace, in twenty years, is a problem that will make what's happening now look small."

Abster sat with this. It was not a villain's argument. It was the argument of a man who had read eleven records and arrived at a coherent conclusion and was willing to state it plainly without performing hostility. It was also an argument that was impossible to definitively refute because its evidence existed in the future and the future was not yet readable.

"You're not wrong about the twenty-year risk," Abster said.

Bassus looked at him. He had not expected that.

"You're working from different evidence than I am," Abster continued. "You've read eleven records of settlements that didn't hold. I've spent eleven months watching what happens on the frontier when the alternative to settlement is applied. Seven dead in three households at Noviodunum. Forty-three dead in a pass. Seven thousand more who will die if this deteriorates into full engagement before anyone is ready." He met Bassus's eyes. "Your twenty-year problem is real. My immediate problem is also real. We are both right about the problem we're looking at and both unable to prove we're right about the problem we're not looking at yet."

A silence. Bassus looked at him with an expression that was hard to read.

"How old are you," he said.

"Twenty-four."

"You reason like a lawyer."

"I've been told I read too much." He held Bassus's gaze. "Are you going to keep filing against Sebastianus."

"Yes." Simply. "I believe what I believe and I act on what I believe. The same as you." He stood. "The difference is that my beliefs are recorded in the imperial secretariat and yours are recorded on a frontier in a sector no one above tribune level visited until six months ago." He looked at Abster. "That asymmetry is not unfair. It's institutional. You should understand it clearly."

He left. Abster sat alone in the room for a moment.

The most unsettling thing about the conversation was not that Bassus was wrong. It was that Bassus was probably going to be right about the twenty-year problem and right to be worried about it and still be working against the only thing that prevented the immediate disaster, and that being right about one thing and wrong about the priority did not make him a villain. It made him a man who had read eleven records and drawn a conclusion and was acting on it with the same conviction Abster acted on his.

He went to find Sebastianus.

The Vellum474 days.

Complaint dismissed. Keep the posting. Keep the rank. Sura's record held.

Bassus. He's read eleven foederati records. He's not wrong about the twenty-year problem. He's wrong about which problem is more urgent. Neither of us can prove it yet because the evidence is in the future.

He said: your beliefs are recorded on a frontier. Mine are in the imperial secretariat. The asymmetry is institutional, not unfair.

He's going to keep filing. He believes what he believes. So do I. We are both acting accordingly.