The Civilization System: Save Rome Chapter 7: What Gaius Knew

Livia did not trust Arthur.

That beca clear within the first few minutes.

She stood on the other side of Gaius’s desk with her arms folded, watching him as if he were a bad entry in a ledger. Not dangerous exactly. Not yet. Just wrong enough to require attention.

Arthur could not bla her. If a dead coworker walked into his university office and started pretending not to understand English, he would also have questions.

Unfortunately, explaining the truth was impossible. He could barely order water in this world. Explaining ti travel, body possession, and possible murder was not currently within his skill set.

Marcus seed to understand the problem. He spoke to Livia in a low voice, slower than usual, as if trying to make the impossible sound reasonable. Arthur caught only pieces. Gaius. Three days. Found. Alive. Strange.

Livia listened without interrupting. That impressed Arthur more than he expected. Most people would have either shouted or run for help. She did neither. She simply listened, frowned, and then looked back at him.

Arthur raised one hand in a small, awkward greeting.

Livia was not amused.

"Right," he muttered. "Fair enough."

She turned away and walked to one of the shelves. Her movents were quick and sharp. This was clearly her workplace, and she knew exactly where everything was kept. After a mont, she pulled out a bundle of wax tablets tied together with cord and placed them on the desk in front of him.

Marcus leaned closer.

Arthur did the sa.

The first tablet was covered in numbers and short notes. At first it ant almost nothing to him. The handwriting was rough, the abbreviations unfamiliar, and the Latin was not the clean, carefully edited kind found in academic texts. This was working Latin. Fast, practical, and written by people who had no idea a confused British doctoral student would be trying to read it two thousand years later.

Still, numbers helped.

Numbers did not care what century it was.

Arthur pointed at one column, then at another. The amounts did not match. At first he thought he had misunderstood the labels, so he checked again. Then again.

No. Sothing was missing.

He tapped the first column.

Then the second.

Then he looked at Livia.

She nodded once.

Not with surprise.

With relief.

She had wanted him to see it.

Arthur felt a small spark of satisfaction. It was ridiculous, considering the situation, but for the first ti since waking up in Ro, he understood sothing without needing Marcus to mi it.

A shipnt had arrived.

A smaller amount had been recorded.

Sowhere between delivery and record, part of it had vanished.

Livia opened another tablet. Then another. Each one showed a similar pattern. The amounts were never large enough to scream theft. A little grain here. A little oil there. A difference in weight. A delayed entry. An inventory correction.

Tiny losses.

Easy to ignore.

Very easy to excuse.

Arthur had seen enough modern bureaucracy to recognize the trick. If soone stole too much at once, people noticed. If they stole a little from many places, most people got tired before they reached the end of the paperwork.

He looked at the growing pile of tablets and slowly exhaled.

Gaius had not been investigating one missing shipnt.

He had been following a pattern.

Livia said sothing and pointed toward the records. Arthur caught the word fruntum. Grain.

Then horrea. Warehouses.

Then another word he did not fully understand, though the aning seed clear from her tone.

Problem.

Marcus listened carefully. His expression grew darker with each sentence. He was not a clerk, but even he seed to understand enough. Missing supplies were not just numbers. In Ro, grain was order. Grain was peace. Grain was the difference between a full market and an angry crowd.

Arthur looked toward the window.

Outside, the city continued as normal. People shouted in the square. A cart rolled past. Sowhere, a man laughed loudly enough to be heard through the walls.

None of them knew.

That was the strange part.

A few lines on a wax tablet could an nothing to most people, yet they could also an hunger, riots, or murder. Ro was not held together only by legions and emperors. It was held together by grain, records, roads, and thousands of tired people writing things down in rooms like this.

He hated how much sense that made.

Livia placed one more tablet on the desk.

This one had a section scraped clean.

Arthur leaned closer.

Soone had removed part of the text.

Not badly. Not in a rush. Carefully enough that a casual reader might not care, but not carefully enough to hide the damage from soone looking for it.

He touched the scraped wax with one finger.

Gaius had seen this.

Arthur was sure of it.

He did not know how he knew. There was no mory this ti. No flash of another room. No fear, no voice, no pain behind his eyes. Just a strange certainty that settled in his mind as soon as he touched the tablet.

Gaius had noticed the sa thing.

Maybe that was why he had died.

Livia watched his face closely.

Arthur realized she was waiting for him to react like Gaius would. That made the whole situation worse. He was not Gaius. He did not know what Gaius had known, what jokes he had made, what habits he had, or what promises he had failed to keep.

He was wearing a dead man’s face, sitting at a dead man’s desk, surrounded by people who expected the dead man to explain himself.

For a mont, guilt hit him hard.

Not because he had done anything wrong.

Because Gaius had been a person.

Not a mystery.

Not a body.

A person.

He had worked here. He had noticed sothing was wrong. He had kept digging when others stopped. Then soone had killed him for it.

Arthur looked down at the records again.

This ti, the numbers felt less like evidence and more like a ssage left behind.

Marcus said sothing quietly.

Livia answered.

Their conversation lasted several minutes. Arthur followed bits and pieces, but not enough. He hated that. He hated sitting there while other people discussed a murder connected to the body he now occupied.

Eventually, he grew tired of being useless.

Arthur picked up a clean wax tablet and took the stylus from the desk.

Both Romans stopped talking.

Good.

He drew three simple marks.

First, a warehouse.

It was terrible. It looked more like a box with a roof, but the idea was clear enough.

Second, he drew a pile of grain.

Also terrible.

Third, he drew a hand taking part of it away.

Marcus stared.

Livia stared.

Arthur pointed at the hand, then spread his hands in a question.

Who?

Livia understood first.

Her eyes sharpened. She took the stylus from him and added another mark beside the warehouse. A small symbol, quick and practiced.

Then she wrote a na beneath it.

Arthur could not read the whole thing, but Marcus could.

The soldier’s jaw tightened.

That was enough.

"Bad?" Arthur asked.

Marcus looked at him.

Arthur pointed at the na and repeated, "Bad?"

Marcus clearly did not understand the word, but the tone carried well enough. After a mont, he gave a short nod.

Yes.

Bad.

Livia tapped the na twice, then pointed toward the warehouse district. After that, she pointed at the damaged tablet.

Arthur leaned back.

So there was a na.

Not the answer, probably.

But a na connected to the altered records.

That was progress.

Real progress.

For the first ti, the investigation felt less like a fog and more like a road. A dangerous road, yes, but at least it went sowhere.

A clerk passed the open doorway and glanced inside. Livia imdiately covered the tablets with her hand.

Arthur noticed.

So did Marcus.

The clerk continued walking, but the mood in the room had changed.

They were not safe here.

Livia began gathering the records. Her movents were fast now, almost too fast. She separated several tablets from the others and wrapped them in cloth. Then she pushed the bundle toward Arthur.

He blinked.

She pointed at the bundle.

Then at him.

Marcus said sothing sharply.

Livia snapped back at him.

Arthur did not understand the words, but he understood the argunt. Marcus did not want him carrying evidence. Livia apparently did not care.

She pushed the bundle toward Arthur again.

This ti he took it.

The tablets felt heavier than they should have.

Livia looked him directly in the eye and spoke slowly. He understood only one word.

Gaius.

Arthur swallowed.

She thought she was trusting Gaius.

That was the problem.

She was trusting the wrong man.

Or maybe, he thought, she was trusting the only man available.

A bell sounded sowhere outside, deep and distant. The workday was ending. Voices filled the corridor as clerks prepared to leave. The office suddenly felt too open, too exposed.

Marcus moved toward the door first. He checked the corridor before motioning for them to follow.

Livia gathered her own tablets and lifted her chin as if daring either of them to tell her to stay behind.

Arthur almost smiled.

For soone who had just discovered that a dead colleague had returned from the grave with a broken mory and a foreign accent, she was handling the day rather well.

Better than him, probably.

They stepped into the corridor together.

Arthur held the hidden records beneath his arm and tried not to look suspicious.

It did not work.

He felt suspicious.

He felt like a man smuggling evidence out of a Roman governnt office while wearing another man’s body.

Which, unfortunately, was exactly what he was doing.

As they reached the entrance, Arthur glanced back at the office one last ti.

Gaius had worked there.

Gaius had found sothing there.

And soone had tried very hard to erase it.

Arthur did not know whether he wanted justice for Gaius, answers for himself, or simply a way to survive the next few days.

Maybe all three.

Outside, the evening light spread across the square. Ro moved around them as if nothing had changed. rchants shouted. Citizens argued. Officials walked ho with tired faces.

The empire looked solid.

Eternal.

Arthur looked down at the bundle of records in his arms.

For the first ti, he wondered how much of that strength was real.

And how much was just good accounting.