Byzantium's Crown

by Susan Shwartz

  He brushed aside a low-hanging branch and came out in front of the pool. There, on the stone curb, a silver pitcher at her side, sat Stephana. At least she had not been packed off to Thutmosis' bed! Marric felt sudden gratitude for this and counted it another weakness.

  He paused, unwilling to intrude on her visions. She might have been a moon-silvered statue, so quietly she sat. The wind cast a cloud over the moon and rippled the pool.

  Stephana dashed her hand across the surface of the water and began to rise. Sadness showed in the very slump of her delicate shoulders. She turned and saw him. One hand went to her mouth in alarm.

  "Don't tell me I should not be here," he said, holding up one hand. "I know it well. But you too: you do not rest."

  "I am too tired to think clearly or rest," said Stephana. "I had to spend hours with Lady Heptephras, soothing her. Each time I thought perhaps to get away, she fancied some new terror and I could not leave her."

  "You are wearing yourself out and"—Marric decided to be frank—"today has been a horror for you."

  He came out to join her.

  "Did you have another vision just now?" he asked, low-voiced.

  "I can see nothing beyond what I told you this morning!" Stephana whispered, looking into the pool. "Berbers riding in, and blood stains polluting the water. We will be defenseless when the regiments leave."

  "Not so," Marric said.

  "You are but one man, Mor. You can refuse to kill one slave or to rescue another. You can protect me, as you did this morning. But what good is one man against an army?"

  "You were the one who called me a coward," Marric reminded her. Though Stephana had had the courage to go on living with a quiet dignity that commanded his admiration, she was closer tonight to breaking than he had ever seen her. Her voice trembled and her hands shook. The least he could do was help her renew her courage, if only to go on living as a slave.

  "So I did." She chuckled a little. "I wish . . . I do wish you could leave here with Thutmosis. You don't belong here, and Sutekh hates you. You know that if he gets a chance, he will kill you."

  "What if I killed him?"

  "Why did you have to come here?" The words burst from her, and her eyes flamed the blue of a burning candle's heart.

  "Slaves don't choose who buys them. I would have sworn this morning that you were glad I was here."

  The fight went out of her. "I was. But then . . . this evening, you heard how I was tossed like a guest-gift to the captain. I think—Isis, I hated for that to happen before you. I was ashamed. No, not that, I try not to hate, but I wanted to scream at Heptephras and ask her how she could treat another woman so."

  As he had longed to do, Marric reached out and gathered Stephana into his arms. "You, ashamed? Because you have been forced to submit to what you would never consent to? I wanted to kill them both for belittling you."

  Stephana turned her head so that it rested on Marric's shoulder. He could not see her face. "Heptephras is not harsh, and not unkindly," she said drearily. "Not usually. And so long as I hide within the house, I am safe, if slave women are ever safe. But Thutmosis is her heir." She gulped, then laughed a little wildly. "He is young at least, and clean: I have survived worse."

  As she attempted to pull away, Marric loosed his hold but did not totally release her. "Is that all you can hope for? To be used and then ignored until, finally, you achieve whatever quest you are fated for?"

  "I have trained myself, Mor, not to weep over what cannot be helped. You were right to call me a coward. My life punishes me for it."

  "You've more courage than any general. Let yourself rest, Stephana; don't pull away from me. You know I won't hurt you. You can be at peace."

  She tore free and stood up. "Don't you see? I am not at peace! Until you came here I had courage to endure till my life's end. Then I saw you, and I knew that if I had lived my life for some purpose, that purpose faced me. Nico—" She sobbed once, then stopped herself. "Nico was kind to me. He didn't want you to die. So perhaps that was it, I thought: saving your life was my purpose."

  She walked to stand across the pool from him. "I hoped that I could heal you and you would run away. You didn't. And then, when you treated me gently . . . "

  One night she had run to him, her shoulder and breast scored by Sutekh's nails. He had comforted her until his touch had become a caress.

  "You touched me, yes. I was afraid. I knew then that you didn't want just my help: you wanted me. Me—to be for you what I have been compelled to be for so many men."

  "You want me to escape. But if I did, how could I leave you here? Taran says our lives are bound up together."

  Stephana turned her face away again. "Tonight, I looked in the water to read your future. I tried to see mine too, but there were only fragments."

  Holding her with his gaze, Marric sat beside her on the basin's edge and reached out a hand. "Look again. Please."

  "How can I tell now if what I see is true . . . or what I want to see?"

  Marric tightened his arms around her. Now her head rested against his heart. He rocked her, hoping that her body would relax against him.

  "Then I will tell you what I see at this very moment. Look in the water, Stephana. Do you see what I do? My vision takes no special magic. Do you see the man and woman sitting beside the pool? Look how well she fits in his arms.

  "Look again. In a moment the man will raise her face—as I am doing now—and look into her eyes. Then he will kiss her." Marric brushed her lips gently with his.

  When his mouth freed hers, Stephana's hands fluttered. He took them up, cradling them against his chest.

  "You disturb my peace," she whispered.

  "I don't call what you had peace." He stroked her face. "You were resigned to joylessness. Stephana, do you really wish I had left you?"

  He had not wanted this bond with her, but now it overwhelmed him. He saw his face reflected in her eyes, saw pain in it, and hid from the sight by kissing her deeply. His hands stroked her back until all resistance went out of her.

  "Oh gods," she whispered. Then her arms went around him, and she embraced him with the urgency he had hoped to kindle. But her hand kneading along his shoulder rubbed an open slash, and he winced.

  "Mor, Mor, I hurt you!"

  Marric laughed. Now he knew how to proceed with her. "We have been harshly treated, Stephana. So now we must be gentle with one another. There's no pain now." He rested his head between her neck and shoulder, delighted to feel her hand stroke up the back of his neck and tangle in his hair.

  "Don't think it's simply gratitude, or that now I've my health back, I simply want a woman, any woman. Do you think you don't trouble my thoughts as I do yours?"

  "No. Oh no." She was stricken by that, yet still her hands stroked his back and, very carefully, his shoulders.

  "But yes. We escape together, if we escape at all." He pressed his lips against the pulse that beat in her throat, smelling the rose scent he loved. "Stay with me, be with me, Stephana, my rose. I need you. Isis, witness how I need and cherish you . . . "

  How much he meant it shook him. One-handed he plucked the pins from her hair and let it fall about them both, enclosing them in sweet-scented waves. He buried his head between her breasts, cupped them in his hands, and felt her tremble. Then he raised his head to look at their bodies reflected in the water.

  "You see, Stephana? The woman in the water, how she responds?" Again he kissed her before he stood up and raised her to stand beside him.

  "You can still draw back. But won't you come with me now?"

  Stephana's eyes were enormous. They never left his. Her lips, reddened from his kisses, said "yes" without sound.

  Marric propped himself on one elbow, watching the setting moon's light tangle in Stephana's hair. He put out a gentle hand and brushed it away from her face and breast. Even as she slept, she smiled at his touch. Her face held such joy that Marric wanted to weep.

  When she stood before him in his tiny room, she had
not been afraid, though she knew only the painful invasion of her flesh slavery had made her submit to. After loosening her belt, then her long chiton, Marric had run his hand along the sweet curve of her side until she had pressed against him for warmth. Only then had he lowered her onto his bed, and knelt beside it to pull off his clothing. He would need all the tenderness, all his memories of joy to heal her.

  "'I wish we had a better bed," he had murmured against her lips. He remembered a room he had shared with a lover once, sleek taffetas on the bed, cool against bare, heated skin. It had rose-scented oils that he could rub into his lover's soft skin, wine in an exquisite goblet they would share, and veils to drift over her. How would that pale body, marred only by a thin scar on her side, look wrapped in blue gauze?

  "I would like to drape you in pearls," Marric whispered. He kissed her ear and heard her laugh, a carefree, joyous sound.

  For a long time she had lain still, as if gauging her own response to his touch. Finally she met his ardor with her own. Her astonished joy—how could I have forgotten this?—leapt through him at the moment of her ecstasy. As her breathing slowed, she slid a hand between their bodies to try to touch where they were still united. The gentle, questing touch reawakened his desire. And this time she moved eagerly beneath him.

  "My rose, my heart's dearest," he had called her and meant it.

  Now, her legs still entwined with his, Stephana lay sleeping against his side. Marric caressed her. The moonlight had silvered her body; that he touched soft flesh and not precious metal came as an intoxicating surprise. He traced a flower on her breast, centering it around her nipple, and then kissed it. Her flesh hardened under his lips and tongue, and she gasped, waking into passion once more. She raised her hands to stroke his face, reading his eyes as she had read the visions in the pool. What did she see?

  When she spoke, Marric knew that he had betrayed himself to her entirely in the act of love.

  "Marric," Stephana whispered. "Marric. My prince."

  Marric took her hands and pinned them above her head. His body held hers beneath him.

  "Where did you learn that name?" he asked.

  Stephana arched her back and brushed his mouth in a fleeting kiss. She tested his grip and apparently decided not to struggle. "Knowledge came to me with our union; I suspected before. You called me your heart. How could I fail to know? Even as a slave you act the prince. So I know you now, Marric. Does it change anything?"

  She lay completely vulnerable to him, trusting him completely. Even if he had to, how could Marric bear to kill that newborn trust?

  "You hold my life in your hands," Marric said. Delicately he kissed the hollow of her throat, right below the fine wire of her collar. "And I am well content to have it so."

  Her glance slid to the tiny window, then back to him. The sky was lighter.

  "Then love me," Stephana asked. "We have so little time left."

  Chapter Twelve

  Thutmosis departed in a cloud of dust, leaving behind him advice to Heptephras that Marric would never have considered in his own house: arm the slaves. If raiders came, Thutmosis wanted them to protect his aunt and his inheritance with their lives. But arming slaves was profoundly dangerous; periodically the empire quaked at tales of slaves rebelling and massacring their owners, or roving as bandits. Granted, house and field slaves with swords in their hands were not as fearsome as trained fighters. Many would probably prove too broken in spirit to learn to hold a sword.

  Why was Marric objecting, anyhow? Why Heptephras did arm the slaves it meant that he could find a chance to strike out for his freedom and that of his friends. For the villa slaves, Thutmosis' advice meant additional hours of work to master hacked-up shields and blunted blades. It left them aching and exhausted. For Marric too, arms practice was sheer misery. He might have dreamed of having a sword in hand once again, but the one he was issued was poorly balanced. He had wanted to fight against equals, not hold back his hand practicing with someone less skilled than a twelve-year-old boy, especially with Sutekh looking on suspiciously. The familiar habits of hand and eye meant that Marric had to force himself to lunge clumsily, to use his shield like a tyro and expose his midsection. Otherwise the overseer might fear him and contrive his removal. He knew Marric had been a soldier: best let him think he had been an incompetent one.

  So, with the submissive manner he had learned all too swiftly, Marric shared the slaves' tongue-lashings. At the end of each practice he turned in his weapon under Sutekh's baleful scrutiny. For the rest, he avoided the man as if his life depended on it, as, in fact, it did.

  Even life as a slave was precious to him now because of his deepening love for Stephana. Many times she would slip from the inner courts to lie by his side. For those short hours he could hear himself called by his true name and feel himself to be a man and a lover, not portable property. But gradually even Stephana's love contributed to Marric's growing depression.

  One night he sat in his cubicle stropping a worn-out blade that he had managed to steal. Cast-off blades were melted down but never tossed away for fear some slave would do precisely as Marric had done. The whetstone scraped harshly on his ears. Though it set his nerves on edge (though failed to put an edge on the blade), he kept scraping stubbornly away.

  He heard footsteps and tensed. As Stephana came in, he relaxed. He had no time to hide his booty, but in any case he trusted her completely. Concern widened her eyes as she saw what he had been doing.

  "If they catch you with that . . . she warned.

  "At least now I have a weapon to protect you with."

  "I don't need that kind of protection."

  Marric dropped the blade and took her roughly into his arms.

  "They'll punish you if they find you with it," she whispered against his mouth.

  "I am being punished by just living already. How do you stand it, my heart? Today Heptephras found me in the garden. I was looking for you. Yes, I know I should not have gone there. 'What are you doing here?' she asked me. Do you know, Stephana, I actually felt guilt? So I lied. I said I thought one of the tiles that bordered the lotus pool had seemed loose. She praised me for that, then told me to fix it later. I was ready to kiss her feet or caper before her because I'd been let off."

  Marric's voice rose and he pounded one hand against his pallet.

  "It's not bad enough to be sold as a slave. Now I feel myself becoming one. What will be left of me, Stephana? I don't know how much longer I can keep going."

  Stephana held him close and would have spoken.

  "The worst of it is that I cannot ease your way, cannot safeguard you as I would wish. Oh, I would give you joy—"

  "You do, you do."

  "But I cannot help you, cannot get you free!" He buried his face against her hair, kissing it, and then her eyes and lips.

  "For whatever reason, Marric, that's not our fate now."

  "Isis!" The goddess' name came out almost as a sob. "Once I was a man, not a slave."

  "You still are, beloved," Stephana assured him.

  "What will be left of me? A slave master and a slave empire. You heard: Irene cannot hold it safely."

  Somehow—and Marric loved her the more for it—in the hours they stole together, Stephana found a way to let him feel like a man, a lover, and even a prince again. She would lie in his arms, head pillowed on his chest, whispering reassurance until they both slept. Sometimes she carded warnings to him.

  "I have heard that Sutekh watches you at practice more carefully than he does all the other slaves combined. Can you be more awkward?"

  "More awkward than I am already?" Marric laughed without joy. "One day, one of us will kill the other."

  "There is already too much death in the world!" Stephana cried softly. "And much of it by your own hand. Have you forgotten already, my love?"

  "What makes you think I would be the one to die?"

  "If you kill him, you will be executed. Then what will become of—"

  "What will become
of us in any case? Say I submit. Say that gradually I become used to the collar. Then one day, perhaps, when your belly swells with my child—"

  "Isis grant!" Stephana laid her hand over his as he stroked her, lingering over where a child might lie some day.

  "Do you think I want our child to live as a slave?" Marric held her so tightly that she cried out. "Since Heptephras favors you, she might let us be paired together, mated like prize animals. Perhaps we would grow smug in our privileges, like some slaves I have seen. And that is the most we can hope for."

  Stephana stroked his brow with her hands. He remembered that she had done that when he was weak with fever. "You were not meant to die a slave, Marric."

  "How can I be sure? Stephana, I cannot trust myself. I told you about Alexa. Even if I got free, what sort of . . . "

  She raised herself on one elbow and looked into his eyes. "Trust my visions, Marric. Trust me."

  "Forgive me," he muttered.

  "Forgive you? For helping me come alive? Marric, I need you so."

  He fell into sleep holding her and knowing that his love for her bound him here more strongly then the collar that marked him as a slave.

  For the fifth time Marric beat down the stable man's awkward guard. The man's entire left side lay open to a lethal blow. Marric thwacked him hard with the flat of his blade.

  "Keep your arm up, damn you!" he shouted and stepped closer to tug it into position himself. Then he repositioned the man's oval shield. The Egyptian would never make a fighter.

  "Hold it steady," he ordered, then bore down on his arm to see if he would be obeyed. Of course the man let the shield droop. So did his sword, an antique spatha that was far above the man's weight. Already demoralized, the stable hand lost his balance as Marric pushed him and sprawled onto the practice ground.

  Marric gave him a hand up. "Try again, and thank the gods that you face me, not a Berber."

  "A Berber?"

  Why would anyone have told the man whom he might be fighting? Arms practice was simply one more incomprehensibility to the slaves. Perhaps Mor the slave wouldn't have been able to piece the story together either; Marric, schooled in the niceties of power straggles, found intrigue the breath of life. Stephana had prophesied only that a raid would come from the east. The emir there was pushing the Berbers out.