I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 130: The Empress of the Engine

The Office of the Curator Aerarii Industrialis was not a place of marble and mosaics. It was a place of work. Sabina had chosen a repurposed shipping warehouse near the Ostia gate, a vast, cavernous space where the lingering scents of foreign spices and salt-cured timber now mingled with the sharp tang of fresh ink and the damp, earthy smell of the nearby Tiber. Sunlight streamed in through high, grimy windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air and falling upon dozens of scribes bent over ledger tables. The only sounds were the scratching of quills, the rustle of papyrus, and the distant rumble of wagons on the cobblestones outside. This was not a hall of power; it was an engine room, and Sabina was its chief engineer.

At the center of the vast floor stood a single, immense table upon which was unrolled a map of such detail and scale that it had taken Celer's finest cartographers a month to create. It showed not the whole Empire, but only the vital northern quadrant: from Rome, up through the spine of the Apennines, to the sprawling plains of Pannonia and the jagged, resource-rich mountains of Noricum.

Celer, the Master of the Institute, stood beside her, his face flushed with the passionate fire of creation. His usual tunic, perpetually stained with grease and charcoal dust, seemed almost to vibrate with his energy. He was a man who saw the world not as it was, but as it could be, a landscape of raw materials waiting for the hammer and the forge.

"Here, Domina," he said, his thick finger tracing a path along a river valley east of Vulcania. "We have the space, we have the water power, and the new road is already half-complete. We can begin construction within three months." He looked up from the map, his eyes wide with a zealot's conviction. "Vulcania Secunda. A twin sister to our first great forge-city. We can double our steel production. Double! Imagine it—within five years, every legionary on every frontier could be armed with a repeating crossbow. Our enemies wouldn't just be outmatched; they would become obsolete. It will be a symphony of iron and fire, powered by the twin hearts of a new Rome."

Sabina listened, her expression unreadable. She let him finish his rhapsody, letting the grand vision fill the space between them. For a long moment, she simply studied the map, her gaze cool and analytical. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet but cut through Celer's enthusiasm like a shard of ice.

"How many men will it take to build this second city, Celer?"

The question seemed to catch him off guard. "Men? The usual cohorts. Ten thousand, perhaps, between the artisan legions and the laborers."

"And where does the food for ten thousand men come from?" she pressed. "The grain surplus from Egypt is already allocated to feed Rome and the legions on the Danube. Will you have your builders eat iron ore?"

Celer blinked. "The logistics officers... they handle such things."

"I am the logistics officer now," Sabina stated, her voice hardening slightly. "I have their reports. To feed a new city in that valley would require a dedicated grain fleet sailing to Aquileia and a constant train of two hundred wagons, a train which does not currently exist. So, I ask again: where does the food come from?"

She didn't wait for an answer, her finger moving to another part of the map, tapping the thin red line that represented the road from the primary coal mine to Vulcania. "Your wagons. I have a report from the Praefectus Fabrum of the Third Artisan Legion. They are losing three carts out of every twenty to broken axles and shattered wheels on that road. It is too rough, built too quickly. What is the attrition rate on our transport capacity? And how much does it slow the delivery of the very coal that fuels your current fires?"

"We are constantly making repairs," Celer said defensively, a bead of sweat tracing a line through the grime on his temple. "It is a necessary cost of rapid progress."

"A cost that is not on your ledger, but is now on mine," Sabina countered. "And what of the human cost?" Her gaze was now sharp, accusatory. "Before the Emperor had his 'vision' of using black rocks for fuel, the glassworks at Cumae were powered by charcoal. The forests there supported a population of thousands—woodcutters, carters, burners. I received a petition this morning from the Woodcutters' Guild of Cumae. Their livelihood has been completely destroyed. They have no work, no food. They are demanding a state grain dole, and their magistrate warns that rioting will begin within the month. Your glorious fires in Vulcania have a shadow, Celer. A shadow of starvation and unrest. Who pays for that?"

Celer was silent. The visionary engineer, the man who could bend stone and steel to his will, looked utterly lost. He saw levers and aqueducts, furnaces and forges. He did not see the broken axle, the hungry child, the desperate woodcutter.

Sabina straightened up, turning away from the map to face him directly. "Your dream of Vulcania Secunda is magnificent," she said, her tone softening slightly, not with pity, but with the cold patience of a teacher instructing a slow student. "But it is a dream built upon a foundation of sand. We do not have an industrial heartland. We have one city, fed by one mine, supplied by one fragile road. It is a splendid and magnificent single point of failure. A harsh winter that snows in the mountain passes, a coordinated bandit raid on that road, a fire in that one mine... and our entire industrial revolution grinds to a halt. The fires in Vulcania go out, the legions' new weapons cannot be repaired, and the treasury, which I am now responsible for, collapses. All because you wanted a second symphony before ensuring the first one could survive a strong wind."

She let the devastating assessment hang in the air. Celer looked down at his calloused hands, humbled.

Then, the Empress of the Engine gave her first decree.

"There will be a one-year moratorium on all new prestige projects," she announced, her voice ringing with an authority that left no room for debate. "Vulcania Secunda is denied. Your proposal for the new aqueduct is denied. Effective immediately, the primary mission of the Artisan Legions is no longer expansion, but consolidation."

She turned back to the map. "You will re-task your best engineers. Their first priority is to harden the supply chain. I want that road to Vulcania paved with flagstones and flanked by fortified watchtowers every five miles. Their second priority is to prospect. I want geological survey teams dispatched to every mountain range in this quadrant. I will not have this Empire dependent on a single hole in the ground. I want three new, independent coal sources identified and secured by year's end. Their third priority," she added, her voice dropping, "is to design a more robust transport wagon. Something with a stronger axle. A practical problem for a practical mind like yours."

She paused, then delivered her final command, the one that addressed the shadow. "And 5% of Vulcania's current iron output is to be immediately redirected. Your forges will begin mass-producing high-quality farming implements. Ploughs, sickles, hoes. These will be shipped to Cumae and sold at a subsidized rate to the displaced woodcutters. I will not have a riot of desperate men on my hands. I will have a new population of productive farmers."

Celer stared at her, his initial shock and disappointment slowly giving way to a grudging, dawning respect. She had not just crushed his dream; she had dissected it, identified every weakness with surgical precision, and then issued a series of brutally logical commands to rectify them. She had transformed his potential disaster into a stronger, more resilient system.

"As you command, Curator," he said, his voice a low murmur.

Sabina gave a curt nod, dismissing him. He turned and walked away, his shoulders slumped not in defeat, but in thought.

She remained standing before the great map, alone in the center of the vast warehouse. Her expression was not triumphant. She felt no thrill of victory in her new power. As her eyes traced the fragile lines of roads and rivers, she saw them not as paths to glory, but as a hundred threads that could snap, a hundred points of failure. Alex had handed her the keys to his engine, and she had just discovered how easily it could break. The burden felt heavier than any ledger.