Return Once More (The Historians #1)
Trisha Leigh
For all of the humans who, in ways big and small, have had the desire, drive, imagination, foresight, and intelligence to change the world for the better. And for all of the humans whose suffering, deaths, humiliations, and failure have managed to do the same.
May we all humbly try to make sure none are forgotten, and that no sacrifice has been made in vain.
“Like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.”
—Sun Tzu
Chapter One
Rome, Italy, Earth Before—44 BCE (Before Common Era)
The portico at the Theatre of Pompey looked exactly as it did in the holo-files back on Genesis. As comforting as that fact was for a girl over twenty-five hundred years out of her element, even the real-time, life-size recordings in the Archives couldn’t prepare us for everything.
They couldn’t steep me in the scent of Rome. We’d been in the streets earlier today, trailing the subject of today’s assignment as he trekked from his home to the theatre in the city’s center for the last time. The ancient city stunk like humanity. Standing water. Penned animals awaiting sacrifice and the tantalizing, sweet scent of fruit on carts, spicy meats cooking over open flames. The occasional whiff of perfumed body and supple leather underscored the entire melody.
Inside the theatre, lush portico gardens toppled the sweet scents of myriad flowers into the afternoon. They tripped over one another, tangled and heady, as they washed the outer edge of the curia in the scent of spring. The invisible lenses of my standard issue, black-framed glasses separated and identified them—narcissi and crocus, roses and oleander—before I dismissed the information with a practiced flick of the eye. Most of the time it was nice to have the details so available, but others … the influx of information made it hard to simply soak in the experience.
We were here to observe and record the death of Julius Caesar, an event that shifted Rome from a republic into an empire—a moment that had significant impact on the history of the Western world. The chip in my glasses recorded everything in my field of vision—every moment, every glance, every word—even the ones that had gone unnoticed before the ability to travel through time had been discovered. The ones that had been forgotten, even by the people strolling along the promenade here tonight.
Even by the men plotting murder inside the curia.
Like all influential historical events, the death of Gaius Julius Caesar had been well documented by previous Historians, thus the holo-files. We apprentices cut our teeth on events that had been observed and recorded by at least ten different fully certified Historians, after which we’d spend an unbelievable number of hours reflecting on each of our recordings—how the event affected human history, whether it had been one of the moments we wanted to repeat or one that had put us on the path to the irreversible destruction that launched us into space in 2510 CE. Or, 1 NE.
The New Era. My era.
Once the Elders trusted us not to miss anything, and to be able to properly extrapolate historical impact, they’d turn us more or less loose. That day couldn’t come soon enough.
A few people wandered the gardens, some alone, others with arms linked through elbows. Their flowing garments in solid, bright colors made a pleasant addition to the paths and foliage, to the draped, golden cloths above that lent the space a tented feeling. None of them had a thought in their head about time travel. About the cascade of consequences that stemmed from today’s events, ones that brought us back here from the year 2560.
A tap on my shoulder refocused my attention. Every muscle in my body went rigid, and I was half-scared an actual Roman senator was about to ask who in the name of Jupiter I was, and half-sure I was about to get busted by our trip overseer for wandering off the path of our assignment. Again.
But it’s just Analeigh. Glasses invisible on her face, long blond waves pinned up and covered by a short, brown wig, wearing a light tunica and draped in a wool toga, but Analeigh all the same.
“Kaia. You’re not supposed to be in here.” My best friend spoke softly in my mind without her lips so much as twitching.
“Isn’t it beautiful, though?” I replied aloud in Latin, the language of the plebeians—the commoners—here in Rome.
She made a face at my easy use of the unfamiliar language. Even with the help of the bio tattoos threaded into our brain stems with intricate filament circuitry, she struggled with language. It’s the reason she used a similar tattoo at her throat, woven through her vocal cords, to communicate with me silently even though we rarely used them back home.
Too easy to eavesdrop when every Historian Apprentice has the same enhancements.
“They’re about to start the final sacrifice. It’s on our checklist,” she bumbled quietly in Greek, the easier of the two local languages, for her.
I didn’t argue, following as she turned from the portico’s doorway and stepped across the walkway to the mostly enclosed curia. The stone structure was constructed in a semicircle, with a half-dozen steps leading up to a smattering of wide, stone seats meant for the senators and their meetings.