I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 171: The Empress’s Dagger

While generals and proconsuls played their dangerous games of statecraft on the frontier, Sabina waged her own war in the quiet, lamp-lit offices of Rome. Her war was fought not with legions, but with ledgers; her weapons were not swords, but numbers. And she was proving to be just as ruthless and effective as any general.

It was late at night. The city was silent save for the distant barking of a dog and the lonely footsteps of the Vigiles on their patrols. Sabina was hunched over a mountain of scrolls in her private office at the Industrial Treasury. She was conducting a deep, painstaking audit of the imperial family's finances, a task she had undertaken on her own initiative. The war with the horde would be ruinously expensive, and she was determined to find every last hidden sestertius, every forgotten asset, that could be repurposed for the survival of the state.

She was currently sifting through the personal expense ledgers of Lucilla's late husband, the former co-emperor Lucius Verus. It was tedious, soul-crushing work. The scrolls were a testament to a life of profligate, thoughtless luxury: vast sums spent on exotic animals for the arena, on lavish villas that were used once and then abandoned, on banquets whose costs could have fed a cohort for a year. It was a story of waste and decay, written in ink and papyrus. Sabina's lip curled in contempt as she scanned the endless entries.

And then, she saw it.

It was a small thing, an anomaly that a less meticulous auditor would have easily overlooked. A recurring payment, made on the first of every month, for years. The sum was large—fifty thousand sesterces, a small fortune—and it was paid to a man described simply as "Medicus, Ostia." A doctor in the port city of Ostia. The payments were discreetly marked as "medical consultations." But the amount was far too large, far too regular. Not even the most skilled physician in Rome charged such a sum for consultations. This was not a payment for services. This was hush money.

Sabina's sharp, inquisitive mind seized upon the discrepancy. A thread had appeared, and she felt an overwhelming urge to pull it. Using her absolute authority as Curator of the Imperial Treasury, she sent a directive to the tax office in Ostia, demanding the full financial records of every registered physician in the city.

Two days later, the records arrived. Cross-referencing the names against the payments was simple. The recipient was a man named Heraclides, a minor practitioner with a small office near the docks. His own declared income was modest. The payments from Lucius Verus's estate were nowhere to be found on his official tax scrolls. More tellingly, his medical specialty, as registered with the city, was not in surgery or fevers, but in "women's ailments."

Intrigued, Sabina brought the loose thread to Alex. She laid out the discrepancy: the massive, regular, off-the-books payments from the imperial family to an obscure gynecologist in a port town. "This is not a medical bill, Alex," she said, her eyes gleaming with the thrill of the hunt. "This is a secret."

Alex, trusting her instincts, agreed. This was a human puzzle, a thing of whispers and hidden motives that Lyra's logic alone could not solve. But the AI could still be a powerful tool. At Sabina's request, Alex had Lyra cross-reference the dates of the payments to the physician over a ten-year period. The AI sifted through mountains of data: the official movements of the imperial court, shipping manifests from the port of Ostia, any public records of Lucilla's health, and even Perennis's archives of court gossip.

The pattern that emerged was subtle, but undeniable. The large payments to the Ostian doctor always, without fail, coincided with periods when the official court records noted that the Augusta Lucilla was "indisposed with a recurring fever" or had "retired from public life for a period of rest and recuperation" at one of her seaside villas. Furthermore, Lyra flagged a series of large, anonymous land purchases made in a remote, fertile valley in southern Gaul. The purchases were made through a complex series of proxies, but Lyra's analytical power was able to trace the funding for these purchases back to a network of accounts that originated in Ostia, funded by the very same off-the-books payments.

The data was powerfully suggestive, but it was not proof. It was a skeleton without flesh. This final step required a human touch.

Sabina did not entrust this task to Perennis or his network of thugs and spies. This was too delicate. She chose one of her own agents, a quiet, clever woman in her forties named Helena, who worked as a senior auditor in the treasury. Helena was a master of numbers, but her true gift was an innate understanding of human weakness.

Helena traveled to Ostia, not as an agent of the state, but as a wealthy, grieving widow from Ephesus, her face veiled, her clothes expensive but somber. She sought out the physician Heraclides, claiming to have heard of his great discretion and skill. She spun a sad tale of her own barrenness, of her late husband's disappointment, of her desperate desire for a child to be her heir. The old doctor, flattered by her praise and the weight of the purse she placed on his table as a "consultation fee," was sympathetic.

Over the course of two days, Helena played her part to perfection. She was a confidante, a fellow sufferer. She shared her (fabricated) secrets, and in doing so, she unlocked his. Warmed by wine, emboldened by the promise of more gold, and weakened by the loneliness of a man who had held a great secret for too long, the old doctor finally confessed.

He had been Lucilla's secret for over a decade. The Empress, her political power and her very identity tied to her role as the wife of an Emperor and the daughter of another, had been desperate to produce an heir. But her husband, the dissolute Lucius Verus, had been barren, a secret shame the imperial house could never admit. The children Lucilla had conceived were not his.

Fearing a catastrophic scandal that would see her ruined and her children killed, a plan had been hatched. Whenever Lucilla gave birth, she would do so in secret at a secluded seaside villa. Heraclides, the discreet physician, would attend to her. Once the child was born, he would take it, declaring it stillborn to the few servants who knew of the pregnancy. He would then arrange for a wet nurse and a secret passage on a merchant ship to Gaul. The child would be given a new identity and raised on one of the anonymous, lavishly funded estates, cared for by trusted servants, never knowing the truth of their parentage.

The old doctor, his tongue loosened by wine and Helena's feigned sympathy, admitted to facilitating the transport of three such children. Three living, breathing, secret children of the Augusta Lucilla.

Helena returned to Rome, her report a quiet bombshell. Sabina brought the news to Alex in the dead of night. They sat in the silent office, the only light from a single flickering lamp, and the secret hung between them like a guillotine.

They both understood the earth-shattering implication of what they now knew. This was not mere personal gossip. In Rome, where lineage was the ultimate currency, this secret was a weapon of absolute power. The existence of these children, if revealed, would utterly destroy Lucilla. Her carefully cultivated public image as the virtuous, grieving Roman matron, the mother to the city, would be shattered. Her political power, her influence with the Senate, her very claim to any legitimacy, would evaporate overnight. She would be exposed as a fraud, an adulteress who had passed off bastards as potential heirs to the throne.

Alex now possessed a personal dagger that he could place at his sister's throat at any time he chose. Their rivalry was no longer just a political chess match. It had become deeply, dangerously personal. He had the power to ruin her completely, to cast her out into the darkness. The question was no longer if he could control her, but when, and how, he would choose to use this terrible, new weapon.