by Lynne Gentry
Felicissimus, a slimeball with a dribble trail down the front of his dingy yellow dress, continued his conversation with the fishy dough-ball guy. Neither one of them seemed to understand English. Either that or neither was the least bit concerned about the accusations she yelled at the top of her lungs.
“I knew you’d like her, Aspasius. But if I can guarantee the quality of the treasure, does it really matter where I acquired it? Such a rare beauty was meant to grace the proconsul’s palace, would you not agree?”
The richly dressed guy in the sheet limped forward and grabbed Lisbeth’s chin. His fingers squeezed off her string of curses. While his globe-shaped eyes raked her body, he yanked her face from side to side. “Good teeth. Passable complexion.” His smile, more a pleased smirk, sent a jolt of alarm through Lisbeth’s tense body. “She is not to be exhibited in the common slave market.”
“Slave?” Lisbeth jerked her chin free and kicked him in the shins. “I’m not for sale, you sorry son of a—”
“Owww.” Aspasius grabbed his injury. “You little vixen.”
“Shall I have Metellus use the whip on her, proconsul?” Felicissimus nodded to the guy in the towel. In a flash, Metellus’s thick arm coiled around Lisbeth’s neck. “Or I have the iron hot if you want her ear pierced to break her spirit a bit.”
Lisbeth wrenched against the pressure closing off her air supply.
Aspasius held up his hand, his pointy-tooth grimace transforming his face into an angry weasel. “No additional marks. I want nothing to mar her beauty.” He leaned in close, his breath a nauseating combination of sardines and some sort of gastrological problem that made Lisbeth gag. “If you can give me some kind of assurance that she can learn the language of the empire well enough to at least follow commands, we have a deal.”
With any luck, the visual daggers she hurled in the dough ball’s direction would prick his pompous head and let the air out of those oversize jowls. Summoning her linguistic command, Lisbeth spat out, “I not only speak your foul tongue; I read it and write it.”
The room went silent.
“Beautiful and smart.” Aspasius stroked her hair with the back of his hand. He dragged his large signet ring across her face. “Intoxicating.”
The matronly brunette stepped forward. “Do we really need another slave?” Although the woman spoke to the proconsul, her kohl-rimmed eyes drilled holes into Lisbeth.
Aspasius turned and backhanded the woman, nearly knocking her out of her pearl-crusted sandals. “If you will not serve me, I’ll buy one who will.”
“Hey!” Lisbeth lunged. “What do you think you’re doing?” A strong arm reeled her in. “Leave her alone, you barbarian.”
The rigid woman righted herself without so much as a rub to the welt his ring had left upon her cheek. “May she bring down curses upon your house.”
“As did you.” Aspasius spit at her, then turned and clamped a hand on Lisbeth’s face. “Know this, my Thracian beauty. Displease me, and you too will be replaced.” He turned to Metellus. “Strip her, and take her to the sunlight. I have a right to know exactly what I am getting beneath these filthy rags.”
“And miss the thrill of surprise when you drag her to your bed?” The new voice entering the mix smoldered with disgust.
Aspasius glanced over his shoulder. “Cyprian!”
Lisbeth strained against her bindings.
“How little regard you have for your toys.” The owner of the commanding voice filled the doorway. Even in this poor light, she could tell that the latest arrival to her crazy dream was tall, blond, and exceptionally well built. Maybe he was also kind, or at the very least willing to help her get free of these bindings, because she was too banged up to walk far, let alone escape their pursuit. Daring to hope, she shouted for help using her best Latin.
Aspasius protectively stepped between her and the intruder at the door. “Old friend, what brings you to my private showing?”
Lisbeth rose on her tiptoes.
“Reports that my least-favorite client is once again dabbling in illegal slave trading.” This possible knight in shining armor looked past Aspasius and locked cool blue eyes on her. “Have you acquired this property from looters, Felicissimus?”
“Oh no, my patronus.” Felicissimus rushed forward. “Since you so eloquently secured my acquittal, I’ve put my unscrupulous trading days far behind me.” The greedy little slave trader scurried back to Lisbeth and raised the shredded cuff of her pants. “See, Cyprian, she has the whitened foot of one purchased abroad. All quite legal, I can assure you.”
Lisbeth glanced at her feet. The hiking boots were gone, and her entire left foot was covered in some sort of white chalky substance. What kind of crazy dream was she having? She remembered touching a painting in the cave, but after that, things got fuzzy. If she was lucky, she’d fallen and hit her head, and this was simply a concussed hallucination.
Since when was a head injury better than dealing with desert bandits? Feeling unhinged by either possibility, Lisbeth thrashed and kicked. The arm of the bare-chested man continued to crush her windpipe.
“If you came by this property legally, why would you not do as the law allows and give me first rights, Felicissimus?” Cyprian ducked to avoid the doorframe and strode into the room, an intimidating presence decked in swirls of cream silk that conformed to his muscular chest. “Surely you’ve not misplaced your patron loyalties?”
“No. Never.” The nasty little man tugged at the neck of his tunic. “It’s just that our esteemed proconsul put in his order quite some time ago. I simply fill the requests as the merchandise becomes available.” Sweat glistened on the old man’s brow. “Happy to do the same for you, Cyprian? What with the emperor’s campaign season coming to a close, all sorts of new conquests are sure to go on the block. Give me but a week, my good man. I’ll find you a tasty delight. You prefer your maidens dark or fair?”
Fire ringed Cyprian’s piercing blue eyes. “I prefer my pro bono clients to remain free of disreputable entanglements.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” The trader’s brows quirked. “Or the profit for either of us?”
Cyprian reached for the knife tucked in his belt. “Felicissimus.”
With a resigned sigh, the slave broker waved his hand. “Release her, Metellus.” He shoved Lisbeth, and she stumbled toward Cyprian. “Here, examine the slut for yourself.”
“Now see here, Felicissimus!” Aspasius’s cheeks flamed. “We had a deal.”
“Feel free to counter, consul.” The slave broker grinned. “A decent bidding war would go a long way toward feeding the many mouths that populate my household, especially since the unfortunate arrival of my motherin-law.”
“I’m not a slave.” Lisbeth searched Cyprian’s eyes. “Help me. Please.”
Not even a flicker of compassion warmed the icy blue pools that seemed to look past her. “How much, Felicissimus?”
“I don’t belong here.” Lisbeth bolted for the door on wobbly legs.
Cyprian reached out and snagged her arm. He pulled her tight against his rock-hard body. His hot breath burned her ear. “Say nothing more, fool.” He ignored her hammering fists and the blows her heels landed on his shins. “How much, Felicissimus?”
“Two thousand sesterces.”
“Three,” Aspasius sputtered.
“Five,” Cyprian countered coolly.
“Five?” Aspasius bellowed. “Have you lost your mind, man? I paid four for an entertaining Germanic dwarf, and I can rent him out for parties.” He wrinkled his nose. “Look at her. A mule would be easier bedded.”
“You have a point, but I love a challenge.” Cyprian squeezed Lisbeth’s arm. “Six thousand sesterces. And I take immediate delivery.”
“Sold!” Felicissimus thrust his greedy hand at Cyprian. “Your marker will do until I can send Metellus to collect the full sum.”
“You little cheat.” Aspasius seized the neck of the trader’s soiled tunic, his nostrils flaring. “I’ll
see you thrown to the lions.” He released him with a shove, grabbed the woman in green silk, and stormed to Cyprian. “Don’t think this is over, old friend.”
“Don’t think us friends,” Cyprian replied with a commanding air.
Muttering Latin curses, the proconsul dragged the woman dressed in silk from the cell, his gait beating an uneven rhythm on the cobblestones.
The matron craned her slender neck and shouted over her shoulder, “Run while you can!” Her perfect English stung Lisbeth’s ears.
5
I CANNOT GUARANTEE HER ABILITIES, patronus.” Felicissimus’s eyes darted in the direction of Metellus, then back to Cyprian. “She had no papers.” He dropped the silver marker into the small bag on his belt. “Her name and nationality are … sketchy.”
Cyprian acknowledged the warning with a slight nod. “This one does not need an identifying scroll about her neck.” He clamped a firm hand around the thin wrist of his newly acquired property. “Foreign-born flashes in her eyes.”
“She’ll run the first chance she gets.” Felicissimus patted his belly. “But that could be just as well, since I cannot guarantee she’s free of the usual diseases brought in from the barbaric regions.”
“Diseases?” the woman he’d just purchased shrieked. “I’ll be lucky if I didn’t catch something fatal in this little rat’s nest.”
“She screeches like one of those foul parrots Aspasius keeps caged in his palace.” Cyprian tightened his grip. “I’ll take her as is.”
“Take me?” She tugged hard trying to get free.
Felicissimus raised his hands in deference and spoke to Metellus. “Let the record show Cyprian declined a moment of private inspection and that I upheld my patron obligations.” He leaned in close to Cyprian and whispered, “At great risk of irritating the most powerful man in the province, I might add.”
“She’ll not be returned.” Cyprian scooped up his prize, tossed her over his shoulder, then cast a glower at Felicissimus. “In a way, Carthage would be better off if Aspasius followed through with his threats and shut you down.”
Felicissimus smiled and patted his money belt with a wink.
“Hey, buddy!” The female pounded Cyprian’s back, cursing him by the sound of it. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Where exactly did you say you found this one, Felicissimus?” He added pressure to his hold on her strangely clothed legs. “I do not recognize the native tongue as wicked as her fists.”
The squatty little slave dealer shrugged. “Who needs words when it’s so obviously love at first sight between you two?”
“If the opportunity to release you from my patronage ever presents itself, little man, I will not hesitate.” Cyprian hauled the kicking woman from the slave cell and into the street.
“Enough.” He set her abruptly upon her feet, keeping a firm hold on her wrist. Despite the cuts and bruises, he found this dark-haired beauty with eyes the color of a stormy sea even more fascinating in the late afternoon sun. He had done the right thing to risk another run-in with Aspasius.
She lifted her chin as if she intended to spit in his face. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but—”
He removed his cloak. “Cover yourself.”
She glanced down, then her head snapped up. “What happened to my sweatshirt?” She snatched the cloak and wrapped it around her shredded garments. “This is crazy. I’ve got to get home.”
Her Latin was elementary, but an educated fire leapt from beneath the heavy fringe of black lashes, a heat capable of igniting fear in a lesser man. “You can run, but Aspasius has men everywhere. You’ll be recaptured. The proconsul of Carthage will see you stoned before he returns you to me.” He offered his hand. “What will it be?”
She stiffened. “I’m going home.” Pulling tight the cloak he’d given her, she gathered the dragging hem and exposed the bare foot that marked her as a slave. “My father will be sick with worry.” She stormed three paces toward the market, then stopped. “What is this place?” She made a slow circle that brought her face-to-face with him once again. “Where is the bus station … which way is … I’m not quite sure … ?” She touched the cut on her forehead, confusion clouding her eyes. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“If you are so determined to go”—Cyprian waved her on—“then go.” He spun on his heels.
“Wait!”
He turned to see his cloak swaying in the middle of the street. “I don’t know how to go home.” Her eyes rolled back in her head.
He caught her right before she dropped onto the cobblestones. In one swift movement, Cyprian draped her limp body over his saddle, then swung up behind her. The sooner he had her safely out of sight, the sooner Aspasius would forget that he had been bested yet again.
6
SIX POWERFULLY BUILT LITTER bearers came to an abrupt halt, jolting Magdalena from her cushion.
Aspasius threw back the transport’s fringed curtains. “Someone will pay.”
Magdalena’s left eye had swollen completely shut on the ride home. “I believe someone already has.” She did her best to glare at him with her right eye.
Aspasius clasped her face and yanked her so close that his salty sardine breath mingled with hers. “Next time, you might not be so lucky.”
He shoved her away and leapt from the cushions. He stormed toward the fortified doors of his palace with the uneven stride of a small man in built-up shoes. Royal cobblers did their best to compensate for the damage caused by the poorly set bone of a childhood injury. Magdalena remembered that Aspasius’s first act as the newly appointed proconsul of Carthage had been to hunt down the physician to whom his mother had paid their last copper and to cast him adrift upon the sea. Aspasius consulted a bevy of seers and healers, yet no matter what magic potion he smeared across his shriveled flesh, his body continued to list to one side. The paucity of Aspasius’s physical prowess was never more apparent than when he stood toe-to-toe with the levelheaded Cyprian. An inadequacy Aspasius hated almost as much as Magdalena despised him.
She slid her trembling fingers along the folds of her cloak. The souvenir she’d managed to snatch from the pocket of the feisty slave chained to the block was still safely tucked away. Why had she taken such a foolish risk? No matter. It was too late for regrets. What was done was done. She didn’t dare examine her booty here. Cyprian’s little show of defiance had already aroused Aspasius’s temper beyond what she considered safe.
Magdalena gathered her skirts and dragged her bruised body from the litter. She must act, and act quickly, to close the distance between them before Aspasius had her permanently removed.
Hurrying along the cobblestone walk of the vine-covered porticoes, she returned to the palace that had become her prison.
The atrium, a large, airy room lit by an opening in the roof, was furnished with several golden cages containing an impressive collection of exotic birds. Nightingales, Ringneck parrots, and swans for the massive fountain. How she longed to return them all to their native woods.
Aspasius opened a cage door and reached for his favorite bird. Magdalena felt her own heart flutter, aching to be free. Three slaves he’d collected since his appointment to the Senate flitted around him.
Kardide, a hook-nosed Turkish wench shipped to Carthage on a Roman freighter, removed the master’s heavy toga.
Iltani, a slender Christian woman, silently lifted the scandalous golden wreath Aspasius wore in public to cover his receding hairline. Fiery disapproval of her master’s determination to set himself up as a god leapt from her eyes. Iltani’s mouth would never utter the curses the proconsul deserved, since her failed attempt to return to lower Mesopotamia had cost her three fourths of her tongue. When the proconsul’s bounty hunters caught her near the city gates, they had performed the bloody procedure then and there. No analgesics. No antiseptics. No mercy. A vivid and unforgettable message to the masses.
Saddest of all was Tabari. The small, dark-skinned waif crouched before
the knots of the proconsul’s red sandals. The child had lost the pinkie on her right hand fighting off Roman soldiers as they plundered the indigenous tribes bordering the African desert. For two years, Magdalena did her best to keep Tabari from the clutches of Aspasius. In the end, he snuffed the light of innocence from the girl’s large black eyes in the same cruel manner he’d stolen her virtue. Failing to save this child from such irreparable harm felt like failing to save a child of her own … one of the many regrets stoking the revenge that burned in her belly.
A scowl drew the brows of Aspasius into a bushy awning that framed his seething eyes. “Hurry, fools.” He set the bird upon his shoulder, offering it a scrap of something he withdrew from his pocket.
Today, the master of the house was not content to accept his servants’ sham of welcome or the adoration of a bird. Today, he wanted respect. To be treated as if he deserved the appointment he’d weaseled from the emperor despite the Senate’s refusal to confer on him his desires. To exact a little revenge of his own. If she did not act with speed, she would not be the only one sporting a black eye. All of Carthage would pay.
Magdalena drew a fortifying breath and stepped inside the room adorned with wall paintings of bare-chested cupids playing hide-and-seek.
All servants’ eyes darted to her. They immediately took in her disheveled appearance. Except for Kardide, the others dared not stop their tasks or show concern that their friend had once again suffered at the hands of their master.
“The same will be your fate,” Aspasius snarled at Kardide. Throwing control around in his own house seemed to fade the bruise on his ego. A surge of power pumped an evil snarl to his lips. “I’ll scatter every one of you like the worthless chattel you are if you continue to dawdle.”
Except for the concern flitting from eye to eye and the anxious cock of the bird’s green head, no one moved, especially not Kardide.
Magdalena had long since passed the point of desiring pity. All she needed to complete her mission was a few more months of her fellow servants’ continued silence. Aspasius’s term as proconsul would be up sooner than he expected if her anonymous letters detailing the unrest brewing in the empire’s southern quadrant had reached the emperor. She’d bribed a personal postal carrier she’d met in the market to avoid trusting her secret to Aspasius’s faster government couriers.
