The girl walked in her mother's shadow, both hands steady on the basket as they moved into the market quarter. The Forum Solis was swollen with stalls: figs spilling over wicker trays, pyramids of oranges, wheels of cheese cut and salted to gleam in the heat. Fishmongers sang their prices, scales flashing like coins in shallow bowls. Bakers set out loaves in ordered stacks, still steaming, the air thick with yeast and ash.
"Keep close," her mother said, tucking her purse beneath her shawl. "And don't touch unless you mean to buy."
"I'm not a child," the girl muttered, though she craned her neck at every stall. Barrels of olives stood like squat sentries—green, black, marinated in herbs. Men in white tunics stirred vats of pressed oil, the smell sharp and clean, while scribes scratched weights and quotas onto wax tablets.
An inspector of measures moved down the row with his bronze scales. He weighed a merchant's grain against the city-standard stone and marked the bag with chalk. A farmer with sun-raw shoulders tried to slip a smaller measure past; the inspector shook his head, took a coin as fine, and kept moving. Not cruel, just orderly. The market thrived on rules.
The girl's mother bartered for salted fish, then for olives soaked in wine. "For the festival table," she said, holding the jars tight.
The girl's eyes were not on the jars but on the amphitheater cresting the hill. Even at this distance she could see the stands bristling with banners and the long line of wagons carrying animals and fighters through the service gates. "If we sold the spare amphora," she said suddenly, "we could afford seats—maybe high up—"
"No," her mother cut her off. "That jar keeps oil through winter. Bread and olives first. Dreams later."
They moved on. Aureati passed in a litter, shaded by a canopy strung with citrus blossoms. Peregrini merchants spread honeyed dates on cloth for tasting. In the shade of a colonnade, Umbrae workers hauled sacks of flour on bent backs, overseen by a grain-master with a wax tablet. One stumbled; the sack split, spilling white across the stone. The master marked it down without sympathy.
"Someday," the girl whispered, more to herself than to her mother, "I'll sit where I can see it all. The fights. The Lady when she speaks. Even the lions."
Her mother adjusted the fish jars and shook her head. "Someday you'll be glad for bread on the table, not beasts in the sand."
But the smell of roasted meat was already drifting down from the higher tiers, and the girl thought: bread she could have every day. Lions, never.
---
Tiberius Varro, captain of the day's detail, preferred the smell of hot stone and yeast to scrolls. He walked the line where the Amphitheatrum Solis met the city, and the city tried to pour itself inside.
"Shift the meat stalls to the outer ring," he told a sergeant, pointing with two fingers. "Smoke can curl up, not in. I don't want the tiers fogged when the Lady speaks."
"Yes, captain."
Wagons rattled in: wicker cages chittering, ox-carts piled with amphorae, flatbeds stacked with loaves cooling on reed mats. Curia Luminaria clerks chalked quotas on slate—grain to the east tiers, fruit to the high boxes, salted fish to the soldiers' benches. Bakers argued loudly and honestly; fishmongers swore they'd bled the catch at dawn; a cheese-master sliced a wheel and slid the pale wedge under Tiberius's nose, the brine stinging pleasantly.
"Inspection," Tiberius said. He weighed a sack of barley on a bronze scale, watched the needle find the city mark, then thumbed his approval into the wax tablet. A farmer tried to tuck walnuts beneath a heap of figs; Tiberius tipped the basket, let the truth roll free, and docked the count. Not cruel. Just orderly. People ate because the order held.
A herald found him: "Captain, the Aureati boxes are requesting citrus and wine."
"They always request," Tiberius said. "They can receive after the Cives tiers are served. Bread first, oranges second."
He moved inward, checking the service gates. The sand lay combed and pale, trap-gates tested until the hinges sang. A handler led a lion past with a butcher's calm; its breath had the iron smell of fresh meat. Gladiators oiled arms and checked straps, their talk low and practical. The Lictors of Daybreak drilled along the curve of the first tier, shields glinting like polished shells; the Legions of Dawn would hold the avenues once the crowd spilled back into the streets.
"Lady of Zenith is within," the herald went on, a little breathless. "The council asks your confirmation for the opening sequence."
Tiberius glanced up at the tiers, already thick with people eating—the first of the festival bread torn and passed hand to hand. He liked that part. A fed crowd was easier.
"Tell the council their words will travel farther if their mouths aren't full," he said dryly. "Food to the second and third tiers first. Then wine to the boxes. When the Lady steps out, I want silence wide enough to hear a grape fall."
"Yes, captain."
He made one last circuit before noon. A Peregrinus tried to sell counterfeit seating tokens; Tiberius snapped one, showed the muddy ink, and sent him to the outer ring with a warning. Two Umbrae boys stuck to the shade under the arch, noses lifted to catch the drifting roast-scent from the higher tiers. Tiberius pretended not to see them two breaths longer than he should have, then nodded to a baker with a stack of flatbreads. The man broke one and handed it down. The boys vanished into the crowd with the speed hunger teaches.
"Order," Tiberius told himself, watching the bread disappear in quick, neat bites. "Then spectacle."
The amphitheater answered with a low animal murmur that meant the city was ready.
---
They had roofed the private solar with open air and good taste. Veils for shade, water for cool, bowls of olives and sliced oranges set where a hand might find them without looking. Servants moved with the quiet of well-paid ghosts.
Aurelia Helios sat by a shallow pool that threw broken light onto the white walls. The bronze hand-mirror lay on the arm of her chair, dented and ordinary until you watched it too long; then the world in it seemed to hesitate before returning to the eye.
A woman in ceremonial white—High Priestess Marcia—bowed. "Lady. Today marks the hundredth Sol Invictus since your appearance. The Chronicle would like the phrase 'a century of brightness.'"
Aurelia made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. "A century," she said, as if counting olives in a bowl. "And yet they still slice the cheese too thick in the boxes. Tell the steward thinner cuts; we are not feeding lions up there."
Marcia inclined her head to a scribe. Notes scratched onto wax.
An old counselor—Senator Varro the Elder, no kin to the captain—placed a hand over his heart. "Lady, the people remember the first festival, when you—"
"Yes, yes," Aurelia said without malice, waving two fingers. "When I stood on a cracked step and said bread first, law second. They have better steps now."
She angled the mirror. For an instant, the copper face darkened, like a thought she didn't want to have. It had done that sometimes lately. As if light itself blinked.
Her mind drifted—not to prophecy, but to the kind of memory that hurt because it was almost gone. A desk. A cheap pen that leaked blue on her fingers. A woman who had been her mother, telling her to finish an assignment about trade routes and to eat the damned soup before it skinned over. She remembered thinking: If I have to draw one more triangle of grain, oil, and wine, I'll scream. She remembered a classmate's laugh. A name called during roll—hers?—which now only sounded wrong. She might once have been Elena. Or Lina. Or not. The mirror had eaten it; the city had replaced it with Aurelia and she had not argued.
A platter arrived. She plucked an olive, bit, and spoke around the pit with perfect diction. "We will send bread to the Cives tiers before the first bout begins. Let the smell of warm loaves make them love me and the law equally. The Aureati may wait for their oranges until after my address. Write that last part down; I want it quoted."
Marcia smiled like a curtain stirred by a breeze. "Mercy that organizes appetite, Lady. The Chronicle will adore it."
A Lictor of Daybreak stood at the threshold, helmet under his arm. "Lady. The sand is ready. Animals watered. Fighters placed. The Consilium Lux awaits your order of events."
"Order is bread, spectacle is wine," Aurelia said. "We begin with bread." She flicked olive brine from her fingers into the pool. "Then we open the lion."
Marcia murmured, "And the Umbrae?"
"First bout," Aurelia said. "Pair the Umbrae champion with the lion and a lictor. Issue him a spear that looks fine and wobbles if he trusts it. If he lives, announce manumission tomorrow—at noon—in the basilica. Let the promise carry through the night. The poor sleep better on hope."
"Lady."
"Also—" Aurelia reached for a slice of orange, the citrus cutting clean through the olive's oil. "Have the Grain Office draft a notice: the winter allotment will increase by a handful per household, provided the census is complete by month's end. We will count them with kindness."
Senator Varro ventured, "Shall I mention in my preface that this is the first century festival—"
"Mention it," Aurelia said, kind through habit. "They like to feel the number in their mouths. A hundred tastes like honey when you have enough bread." She rose. The veil slid across her hair like a second thought settling. "And stop calling it my century. It belongs to the city. I simply taught it how to eat."
She took the mirror up. The dented edge fit against her palm like a habit formed by years and forgotten before that.
At the arch overlooking the arena, the city surged into view: tiers ringing pale sand, banners crisp, the air lively with the mixed perfume of roasted lamb, crushed herbs, orange peel, hot stone. Children held wedges of cheese in both hands and bit like kings; men drank watered wine and argued seating; women pressed figs into small mouths to buy a moment's peace. In the shadow of the low arches, Umbrae tilted their faces toward the brightness as if toward heat.
Aurelia stepped to the podium.
The amphitheater's stone caught her voice and threw it outward—not magic, not entirely; a thousand learned surfaces trained to listen. But when she lifted the mirror just so, the light gathered on her veil and face, and the crowd saw her more clearly than they saw their own hands.
"My children," Aurelia Helios said, and the amphitheater stilled as if a cloth had been laid over it. "A century ago, this city had more hunger than hope. Today, look—" She tipped her chin toward the tiers where bread broke and fruit glowed. "—what we have made together."
The sound that answered was not a roar but something lower, warmer. The sound people make when they've already eaten and can afford to cheer.
"Bread first, law second," she said, the old line polished to a principle. "Order makes room for joy. Today we consecrate Sol Invictus with courage and with grace. Let there be loaves in every hand before the first horn."
A gesture passed through her guard like a thread pulled: stewards moved along the aisles with baskets of flatbread; small hands reached; big hands yielded. The amphitheater breathed.
"And now," Aurelia said softly, her smile the one the Chronicle would print, "we open the games."
A portcullis grated upward. Sand shifted. A lion stepped into the sun, mane bright as straw. Across from it, a man in the plain gear of an Umbrae took his spear, felt the shaft's lie, and adjusted his grip with the caution of someone who wanted to live more than he wanted to be seen.
Aurelia turned the mirror a fraction. The copper face darkened, just for her, like an eye closing.
A hundred years, she thought. And I don't even remember what they called me when I hated homework more than hunger.
Out loud, to the city: "Regnum Lucis—eat, and watch."
The first horn sounded. The week of the festival began.
The drums of the amphitheater still thundered as the sun lowered, and Regnum Lucis shone as if nothing had ever broken in the world.
But elsewhere, deep beneath stone and silence, time had not moved the same.
A hundred years can build an empire.
A hundred years can erase a name.
And a hundred years can pass in a single breath—
if you were never there to live it.
Prelude to Act II