“Incorrigible nymph—do not pull away from me.” He dragged her by the woolen undertunica, pulling it from her shoulder, exposing a milky swell of breast above the confines of the breastband.
“You do please me, and more than any other, and I shall prove it to you.” He eased himself on top of her, though still clothed. Already he was moving rhythmically against her with the dumb, probing insistence of an animal. She responded with small, desperate kisses like timid offerings to a god.
Those kisses made him feel he held all existence at bay. This was the way he once thought he would feel always, after becoming Emperor—magnanimous, adored, and strong as Atlas.
Auriane feared she would suffocate in damp, solid flesh. A determined hand claimed her thigh, eagerly working its way upward, a predator languorously devouring prey, remorselessly approaching what it wanted most. They rolled over once, toppling a lamp stand. Hot oil streaked out over the travertine floor. She was pinned beneath his weight and could not move as the consuming hand moved higher. Blunt, bruising fingers suddenly found and rudely intruded upon her sex. He was not gentle now, but powerfully persistent, imagining he tormented his quarry with pleasure. Her moan of pain he heard as a cry of unbearable delight.
He felt his own excitement and readiness. The warm eagerness in his loins fogged his vision, made him certain her desire matched his own.
Yes, he thought, though it was more a blind groping in the dark than a thought. She has done for me what no other woman could. I am a man again. She is worth more than emeralds.
She shall be kept near me forever.
He brought out a small gilt dagger and began to sever the breastband. Blind fright tripled Auriane’s strength.
The surgeon’s tool. With one violent movement she whipped her body about and got free.
The anger in his face was quickly replaced with a look of fuzzy tenderness.
“Poor creature…still frightened,” he said softly, stroking her thigh. “You should not be—you are perfect. You put to shame every woman or boy I’ve ever lain with. I will raise you up to first place among my concubines. You are too ignorant to know what that means, but let me assure you… you will be the envy of all women in the world.”
Her hopeful, grateful look cautiously crept back.
“Wine, perhaps, will help Amor conquer this fainthearted Psyche.”
A silver wine service had been set out on a low cedarwood table. He turned about and took up a heavy wine cup studded with carbuncles and amethysts. First he poured in hundred-year-old Falernian, then hesitated before adding the water, deliberating over the ratio. He wanted her in lusty temperament, but he also wanted her to have her wits about her, so she would not for one moment forget who he was.
For some reason he turned to look at her as he poured. It might have just been to enjoy the sight of her looking like some injured nestling at his mercy, or it might have been the ancient fear that always rose in him at dusk when deep shadows reached out with hungry hands. Or perhaps he saw a movement reflected in the bronze serpent’s cold glass eye. He heard no sound but the steady rush of the fountain.
Auriane loomed over him, hands aloft, brandishing something viciously sharp that glinted in the last of the light. Her hands and the iron tool were one, a beast’s claw eager to rend flesh.
Domitian whirled round and staggered up to his feet. Too surprised to cry out to his Guards, he caught her wrists to stop the blow. In another instant he would have died.
He forced her hands apart, but still she held fast to her weapon; for long moments neither gave ground. He was amazed at her strength. Their breath came in desperate rasps.
“Viper!” he breathed between clenched teeth.
A thousand lamps blazed in her eyes. He saw there the concentration of a seasoned fighter who never allowed fear of death to interfere with sensing and measuring an opponent.
This is no woman, but a she-monster, a Scylla, a Gorgon.
In regular circumstances he would have called out for the Guards at once and ordered her executed before his eyes. Domitian was never possessed of great physical courage. But his joy at the return of his abilities in the bedchamber and the fog of passion blotted out much of his fear. He was in a fever to finish what he had begun. A part of him desired desperately to believe this had not happened.
He would subdue her himself—she was, after all, only a woman. Then he would couple with her violently and regain that bewitching, elusive sense of power he had felt moments before.
Slowly he forced her hand down; the weapon’s point raked her flesh. He knew she waited for an instant of inattention. He forced down a start of fear.
She is only a woman, yes, but look at the darkness in those eyes. She will kill you not with strength but with barbarous magic.
He backed her through the temple’s door and out onto the grass, but still somehow she held her own. Then with swift assuredness she dove under his arm, wrenched her weapon-hand free and tripped him as she came up behind him. He fell clumsily onto his side. Before he recovered from surprise, she sprang on top of him.
She raised the surgeon’s tool, while rapidly uttering soft, savage words unintelligible to him.
“In the name of Wodan I dedicate my enemy to death…and claim holy vengeance for my mother, for my people, for Avenahar—”
“Guards!” It was more a shriek than a spoken word.
From every direction came shouts, the jerking light of torches, the rush of boughs roughly pushed aside.
Domitian had waited too late to cry out. The surgeon’s tool flashed down.
But at that instant Auriane caught sight of a blur of white. She turned to look.
An impossible creature bore swiftly down on her. It had tufted eyes, a neck like a snake, a body much too large for it; and long thin bird’s legs. It came at her in a rapid glide, a preposterous ghost that seemed determined and confused at once.
What beasts from Lower Earth are loosed in this place at night?
The surgeon’s tool bit deep into the earth, narrowly missing the Emperor’s neck. The grotesque bird-monster collided with her heavily. Strong leathery legs knocked her aside—and she rolled into the arms of four officers of the Guard.
Confusion and darkness engulfed her as a dozen and more Guards crowded round, torchlight flashing on gold breastplates as they knocked each other aside in their eagerness to seize her. She felt a hot pain in her arm as she was wrenched to her feet and secured in powerful hands. The ostrich turned and fled into darkness, stupidly oblivious to what it had done.
Domitian, on his knees, pulled the surgeon’s tool from the earth and dazedly turned it over in his hand. Whoever had been detailed to search her would die for this.
Two Praetorians carefully, respectfully, helped him rise. “My lord,” one began excitedly, “your life was saved by—”
“Silence!” Domitian bellowed. All were jerked into awkward stillness. The Guards watched, perplexed, as the Emperor looked steadily at the barbarian woman, the wrath in his eyes entangled with hurt.
Auriane looked harmless and pathetic in the hands of the four massively built Guards. But she glared haughtily at Domitian as though she were some ruined Eastern queen rather than a creature that ranked scarcely above the ostriches. Her hair had fallen into her face; one wild eye was visible. The torn undertunic fluttered free from her shoulder, baring one breast.
For Auriane the moment was a bitter one. She had allowed herself to believe she would be granted this one victory before she perished and now even this was wrest from her. Wearily she wondered what would be the manner of her death.
The Guards’ bafflement began to shift to disbelief as Domitian approached Auriane, his gaze locked beseechingly to hers. He should order her dragged off to punishment. It was dangerous not to execute an attempted assassin at once—it would only encourage other malcontents to try. Propriety and his position demanded it. He was letting a worthless woman make a fool of him.
And ordinarily Domitian would have b
een more sensitive to the mood of his Guards. But he needed so much to believe the real Auriane was that hauntingly sweet, half-human, half-nymph—he held out a small, strong hope. He would bring the true Auriane back. How she rouses me like no other!
With leisurely slowness he cradled her bared breast in his hand, reestablishing ownership. In spite of his near escape from death, once again he felt a powerful stirring in his loins.
His face close to hers, he whispered, his voice full of pleading, “Why? How could you spoil such beauty? How could one so tenderly nursed by Venus be so violently possessed by Mars? I forgave your transgressions. I showered you with grace.”
His tone shifted, becoming threatening and low. “I suppose you learned treachery on your mother’s knee. Well, you will unlearn it. This is but your first lesson, my anemone. You will be broken, like a donkey, like a mule, no matter if it takes months. You will learn to beg for my embrace.”
The Guards’ amazement turned to shame. They exchanged discreet looks of contempt. This moment would not be forgotten.
Auriane realized that she had one weapon left. Words, if well chosen, could tear open a man’s heart.
“You are no fit king!” Her voice carried clearly on the night. “Your lowest servant, the men who shovel dung in your garden, would make finer kings. How came an earthworm like you to be raised up over a proud people? Go and couple with pigs, you—”
Her words were cut short as Domitian’s hands leapt to her throat. It was as though a quick-acting poison were released in his blood. All the demons lurking in the depths of him rushed up into his hands.
Crush the throat that spoke those words. Drive the viper back into the earth.
That she was an unspoiled barbarian who knew nothing of him—a woman he had imagined a moment ago might be a prophetess—made her words the more unbearable.
Auriane writhed violently. The Guards dared do nothing; they watched in tense silence, praying he would kill her quickly so this humiliating farce would end.
Domitian then heard a calm, authoritative voice behind him.
“Stop at once, in the name of all you hold dear. She is not worth this.”
Who dared interfere? Domitian dropped Auriane, who slumped, semiconscious, in the arms of the Guards. Behind him was Marcus Julianus, watching him urgently, quietly.
“Julianus! What in the name of Nemesis do you think you’re doing?”
“My apologies,” Julianus replied. “I’m inexcusably late for dinner.” The barest smile of amusement crossed his face. “When our good Montanus told me you were taking dessert out in the gardens, I rushed to warn you…this dessert is poisoned.”
“Clever. You mean to outthink me even in matters of love. Now what—”
“Love? You are jesting. You walked straight into ambush.”
Domitian’s eyes were bright and dangerous. Julianus’ presence always made him sharply aware of how he appeared to others; suddenly he felt his loss of dignity like a freshly opened wound.
“You have tried me to my limits this time! You mock me, you best me, you make me look the country ruffian—I want you banished from my presence forever. Plautius!” he addressed the Centurion of the Guard, one of four who had a grip on Auriane. “Arrest him.”
Plautius hesitated, looking acutely uncomfortable.
Domitian was pitched into one of his familiar nightmares, in which he gave orders but no one obeyed. He was once again a small, frightened child, ignored by everyone.
“Arrest him!” That hoarse shout dragged hearts to a stop. His face flushed purplish-scarlet.
Plautius ventured cautiously, “I will arrest him if you wish, my lord. But you must know that this man, Marcus Arrius Julianus, just saved your life.”
“Saved my life, did he?” The Emperor regarded Plautius as though he were simpleminded. “And how did he do that?”
“That ostrich that came at you—” Plautius nodded almost reverentially at Julianus, “he thrust it at her to frighten the woman and deflect her blow. We could not have stopped her in time. We, the city, and indeed the whole of the world are most indebted to the quick thinking of this man.”
Domitian stared dumbly at Julianus. Slowly Plautius’ words began to take effect in his mind.
Julianus had saved his life? Never would I have laid a heavy wager Marcus would have done such a thing, particularly in a circumstance such as this, when he could easily have let me die. Perhaps I am too easily suspicious of him? Perhaps he loves me still? Maybe he truly is my greatest friend, and I have been unjust?
Domitian turned to Julianus. “Then how dare you interrupt my chastising of this woman.”
Julianus gave the faintest of humble bows. “If I would say more on the matter, we must speak in private.”
At that moment Auriane opened her eyes. Darkness was complete; at first she saw only the flame of a torch as it wrestled with the wind. It illumined the face of a man behind the Emperor. From his voice, she realized this was the same man who, moments before, bade Domitian stop. She came to full consciousness with a jolt.
But for him, I would have died.
She watched this man with her whole mind, as earlier she had watched Domitian, sensing his full nature. And was pulled into memories that came from nowhere she could name, other than the unseen worlds that lurked behind dreams. She felt she had no more flesh and bone than the torch’s whipping flame.
My blood and my heart know you, as one knows the kinsman never met.
Here was a man beside whom the other who had hurt her seemed half formed. There was about that face a fineness of line arresting in itself, but it was the spirit that animated it that brought her to startled attention. She sensed a soul that in some way uncannily matched her own, a benevolent intelligence not bounded by clan, a mind that saw keenly right through city walls. She saw the carefully banked fire in his eyes and knew that, despite his composed expression, this man loathed Domitian.
For a moment she was wrapped in a sacral stillness, aware only of the drag of the night wind, which she knew as the approving sigh of Fria, Mother of all Living. She saw the dying face of the warrior she had felled in the Ash Grove at the last time-of-turning. Was it because, once more, life was altering forever?
There was a man who was a fit king.
Julianus felt Auriane looking at him like a sleeper who has flashed awake, and thanked every god for lending him the strength to resist turning to look at her. Betray nothing, he commanded himself. How much does she understand? Will she despise me when she realizes I was the one who spoiled her act of vengeance? Will she understand I saved his life only because it was necessary to save hers and the lives of others? Who would have guessed, Auriane, you would try a thing no man in this city had the mettle to try? But had you succeeded they would have slaughtered you at once, and you would have unleashed on the world a firestorm of civil war. You want what I want, but this is not the way to get it.
Domitian’s anger was a boiling liquid that must spill one way or another. Finally it brimmed over onto the men of the Guard.
“Secure her,” he barked. Two Praetorians fitted Auriane with heavy chains. “Now, get out, all of you!” Domitian strode among them, making cutting gestures with his hands. “None of this is to be talked about, not to your wives, your boys or your whores, not to anyone, and if I hear it whispered of, every man present will be held to account. Go! You look foolish standing about staring.”
It seemed to the men of the Guard the Emperor meant to punish his loyal protectors more severely than the murderous barbarian woman. Julianus noticed with satisfaction this firmly planted seed of disaffection among them.
When they were alone, Domitian turned round to Julianus. “Now. Tell me why you made me look the fool.”
Auriane listened intently, momentarily forgotten by Domitian but not by Julianus.
“I stopped you from looking more the fool. Had you disposed of her that way—in front your guards and in a heat of rage—it would have trumpeted to the world that you
feared her words and believed them the truth.”
From the faint shift of uncertainty in the Emperor’s eyes, Julianus knew Domitian thought him possibly right. But his wrath was not spent.
“Nonsense. That treacherous harpie boils my blood. Any man would have done the same.”
“I tried for long to warn you she was far more dangerous than you knew. And treachery is, in truth, not quite the right term for it.”
“And what would you term it?”
“The natives’ code of honor. She is its prisoner—and it demands the blood of the best man of the enemy tribe. She could hardly help herself.”
Julianus thought he felt a warmth, as if Auriane smiled at him.
Again Domitian foundered. Julianus spoke the words he ardently wished to believe. Now he was trapped between a lust to punish and a fervent desire to find some way to leave her alive. He wanted her to taste terror and helplessness at leisure, but he wanted more to change her mind, to rub her face in mud and blood until he forced her to adore him. Perhaps, he thought, this was in truth not an assassination attempt at all. Does not a beast follow its nature? Possibly this beast could still be tamed.
He turned round to Auriane, seized the torn strip of her undertunic and ripped it off the rest of the way, baring her back. “Animal predator you may be,” he said, “all the more fitting then you should taste the whip. If you are fortunate, I’ll stop before you die.”
Auriane closed her eyes and bowed her head but uttered no sound.
“I would advise against that,” Julianus said quickly, struggling with the murderous heat accumulating in his hands.
Domitian turned to look at him. “You wretched pedant. I’m in no mood for some sleep-inducing lecture on Stoic principles.”
“You are short of captives for the procession. Harm her and you’ll be much shorter of them, for those captives you hold now in the Praetorian camp will rise in revolt and have to be killed. She is their holy woman—they love her and they’re ready to die for her. If you want to silence those who mock this war, I would leave her be.”
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