Erato looked offended for a flash of a moment, then burst into loud, staccato laughter.
“Your strike. I’m down,” he said with pleasure. “Have your hearth fire then, you’re worth indulging. Anything else?”
Auriane remembered how Sunia complained of the monotony of their daily fare of beans and barley. “And…for my people, something different to eat, occasionally. Normally we thrive on venison and game birds, and we grow less hardy without them.”
“That is not in my hands. They feed you that way because every physician employed here holds that barley and beans build muscle. There is a school of thought that claims quantities of meat are better, but our physicians do not subscribe to it. Wait until you’ve proven yourself, then they’ll care less what you eat.” He raised his voice to an impersonal bellow—“Guard!”
The guard opened the door for her.
“Wait,” Erato said then. “I’ve a final bit of advice for you.” He rose, came close, and put a hand on her shoulder. His smile was conspiratorial, fatherly. “Never let on how much pleasure you take in this. The arena’s supposed to be punishment. There are those that might be irritated by it.”
She started at first, alarmed that he divined so much, then smiled with amusement. “You say that, yet you signed on again after your release.”
“Yes, well, that’s different, one would expect it of me. But you—don’t take this badly now, it’s not meant that way—but it’s well, it’s a freak of nature.”
The guard then conducted her to a chamber on the opposite side of the practice arena where the novices who had passed were being assigned new quarters—and new names. No one, she saw, fought under the name of their birth.
“I will keep my birth-name,” Auriane said quietly when Corax and the secretary called her forward.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, spawn of the snarling bitches of Hades,” Corax muttered, still smoldering from the aftermath of the battle with Erato. “We’ll call you Achillia. Put her down as Achillia the Amazon.” Corax grinned at her, pleased by the fleeting panic he saw in her eye.
They cannot. I have one name, and a name is a house that contains the spirit. I have lost too much already—to change it would alter my soul and keep me from rejoining my family at death.
“Aurinia, then,” she said boldly. Surely that would please them as well; did not these people seem to have a fondness for calling her that?
The secretary whispered to Corax, “We’ve already got an Achillia. Aurinia sounds all right. There was a celebrated barbarian prophetess called that when my grandfather was alive—Aurinia the Sorceress. It suits her. People will recognize it.”
“I dislike it,” Corax said with an irritated wave of the hand. “But she’s wasted enough of our time. Get that crafty vixen out of my sight.”
Auriane felt a small start of relief. At least she saved the part of her name that meant sacred earth—she would not lose completely the magical protection of her name.
CHAPTER XL
THE NOVICES’ DINING CHAMBER WAS A cavernous, soot-blackened room that opened directly onto the kitchens. One long table ran the length of this den of beasts; the smoking gloom was lit by two leering Gorgon’s-head lamps hung from the low ceiling. Half the smoke from the kitchens’ beehive ovens went up the chimneys and half, all agreed, found its way in here. The guards so hated this post the lowest in rank gambled for it and gave it to the loser. As those assigned to it regularly defected from it, going outside for air and reappearing only when a senior officer was in evidence, it happened that at the moment that night’s barley ration was brought, the room was left unguarded.
From the distant First Hall came the low din of a banquet of celebration. They heard raucous shrieks, women’s singing, and occasionally an outbreak of cheers punctuated with the cry—“Aristos Rex!” With it came the maddeningly seductive aroma of whole roast pig. The banquet was given by Aristos, who had that day defeated and killed Xerxes of the rival Claudian School, preserving the first place of the Great School in this year’s games and his title as King.
“May they stew in Hel’s cauldron,” Coniaric said to all those near. His face was tanned to red-brown; there was a new hardness and distance in those eyes that for too long had looked on nothing familiar. “If we’re not made into cutlets, we win a quarter of our value. That bloated bull just pulled down four million.”
“But the purse was five hundred thousand,” Sunia protested dully into her vinegar water. Her eyes were hazed with sleeplessness. The new cell she shared with Auriane was cleaner, but it was located over the entranceway used by the delivery carts, and they delivered at night. Auriane had that day begged Erato to be moved again. “How did he—”
Thorgild elbowed Sunia roughly. “Keep those ears sharpened, Know-Nothing. Some noblewoman gifted him with a villa by the sea worth over two million. On top of it the Emperor sent round a gift of a million, brought by a pretty, golden-haired slave-wench. Aristos got to keep the wench, too.” Thorgild shifted his attention across the table to Auriane. “Do you think it’s odd we’ve never set eyes on him? Celadon says he crosses Aristos’ path from time to time…Auriane, what is wrong?”
A young kitchen slave had begun ladling the cooked barley from an iron pot; it made a rhythmic slapping sound as it plopped into the wooden bowls. Auriane was holding hers close to the smoldering oil lamp, tilting it as she carefully examined the barley.
At last she pronounced in a low voice: “Wait for the beans.”
“Rat dung again?” said Thorgild, reaching for the bowl. “Cannot they invent some fresh torment?”
Looks of resignation were exchanged along the length of the table, followed by a pitiful, despairing silence. Sunia broke it with a piercing plaint.
“I cannot bear it any more. I want to die!”
Sunia rose to her feet, took her own bowl and threw it at the wall with such force that it cracked the wood. Barley oozed slowly down the oily wall. Dozens of bewildered faces turned to Sunia as she pounded the table and began sobbing.
“I want a chicken. A common, ordinary chicken!”
Auriane rose up slowly, her expression grim. All the daily indignities of slavery for long had fed her wrath, and the demon confined had grown stronger in the dark, biding its time; now it broke its chains. When Coniaric saw the fury in Auriane’s face, he felt a start of panic. By Hel, he thought, that’s her fight-to-the-death look, I know it only too well.
“Auriane, if you love life, sit back down,” Coniaric implored with quiet passion.
She met his gaze. “During the war I took food from our mouths to feed the Roman captives at our mercy. In return, these people—the wealthiest in the Nine Worlds—throw filth at us and call it food. Someone must tell them we will not have it.”
“Auriane, we are not at home. They will kill you.”
Auriane ignored him and said to Sunia, “I’m going to fetch you something you can eat.”
The company of novices stared at her, most with mildly stupefied looks, a few with fanatic eagerness, as though she might actually succeed.
From long habit, Auriane first looked swiftly about for anything that might be used as a weapon; finding nothing, she turned toward the low, arched doorway. She knew she struck out wildly and this effort was foolish and doomed, and she remembered Marcus Julianus’ warning, but in that moment she felt like an animal suffocating, scrambling for air. She had no thought of outcomes.
Coniaric leapt up and caught at the cloth of her tunic. “This is madness. Do you know where you are?”
Auriane tore her tunic free. Tears blurred her eyes, but she strode off confidently.
Coniaric slumped forward, head in his hands. “When will she learn that here, she is not Baldemar’s daughter?”
Sunia looked at him coldly. “You’re the fool, Coniaric. She will always be Baldemar’s daughter.”
Auriane passed beneath the door and was quickly immersed in the brown-and-gray gloom of the adjacent chamber’s forbidden rece
sses. In this vaster room, veterans of the second grade were given their meals. The three halls were set in a row, from humblest to highest, and the revelry issuing from the banquet of Aristos was much louder here.
Auriane strode determinedly down one of the long rows, between crowded tables that glistened with spilled oil and wine. She was not dressed much differently from the commoner sort of prostitute who moved among the men, so at first her presence raised no alarm. All about her, drunken voices were raised in challenge or quavered in crude song; coins gleamed as bets were paid, huge fists drummed on tables and wooden ladles clattered loudly against great bowls steaming with a mysterious, sinister-looking stew. A girl of no more than seven, naked but for a bejeweled girdle and crown of vine leaves, did a sluggish dance on one of the tables, as though given some draught, while the men nearest clapped a slow rhythm. Dead souls underground, Auriane thought as malignant laughter followed her and heavily muscled arms reached for her from evil shadows. If I tarry they will pull me into their twilight land forever.
“Come here, little dove,” a man called to her. “See what I’ve got for you. By Priapus’ crown you’ve never seen the like!” Nimbly she dodged him.
At that moment Corax saw her. He was eating at the last table with a collection of trainers of the lowest grade. He shot up from his place and made frenzied gestures to the guards stationed at intervals along the walls. They ignored him.
As she passed him, he seized her arm. “Crazed spawn of a she-ass, get back to your place. Guards!”
“Give us food we can eat and I will,” she replied quietly.
A croaking voice from the charnel gloom next to Corax said, “What are you willing to do for it, pretty little bitch?” A half-dozen hands moved in gestures of copulation.
Corax looked like a colicky infant preparing to erupt into a lusty tantrum. “You’ll not get out of this one, Aurinia,” he said, breathing heavily as he caught one of her wrists, pinning it behind her while twisting it painfully. “I’ll see you flogged naked, with chains, before all the men of your grade. And don’t think that meddling slumlord-and-pirate Erato will save you.”
With her free hand Auriane caught the handle of a bronze bowl brimming with a black, fishy-smelling soup and dragged it toward Corax with all her strength, sloshing its scalding contents all over the front of him. He let out a shriek and released her. There came a brutish chorus of laughter. Auriane got free, then streaked off through the connecting door.
“Guards! Murderess! Stop her!” Corax yelped, hopping, holding his dripping tunic away from him. He darted for the small fountain at the room’s center, clutching his burned arms and chest. Several of the guards smiled at him blandly, as if not comprehending, while others gaily waved at him as though he summoned them for an assignation. They despised Corax for his repeated attempts to ingratiate himself with Torquatus by reporting their selling of favors. The unruly wench they counted no more than an amusing distraction.
But one of the guards recognized Auriane and realized she was not one of the prostitutes. Swiftly he started after her.
Auriane, however, was well ahead of him. She had no precise plan other than to seek out and shame some man of rank. She was not fully aware of how much this action would outrage custom. Although she did know of the ruthlessly rigid hierarchy of social grades among these people, it was too unlike what she knew at home for her to understand how deeply it governed their every sentiment and thought. She was like any foreigner who, under duress, reverts to the native tongue—in her country no one was so humble that he could not appeal to the most celebrated chief for redress of wrongs.
She darted through a short, barrel-vaulted passage, keeping to the shadows; then she ascended a flight of marble steps flanked by winged Victories decked in laurel. Beyond, the cramped passage opened into a mammoth cave, its vastness pulsing with ruddy light. She saw it all through a bluish haze of incense and lamp smoke. Competing spicy odors made the air seem too rich to breathe. Everywhere were clusters of small flames seeming to float on air; she realized she was among a virtual forest of delicate “trees” of bronze with tiny tongues of flame in place of leaves. Her senses froze at the sight of this nether cauldron teeming with all manner of odd and glittering life. They do lie down when they eat was one of her first confused thoughts as she looked on a field of beds, which must be what Decius called couches. On them reclined bantering, gracefully gesturing noblemen, flushed with drink, and courtesans with arrogantly arched black brows, jaded eyes, blood-colored lips with a cruel beauty, their hair heaped high on their heads like a complexity of scrolls.
This is the banquet of Aristos, she realized, awestruck as the child who witnesses her first sacrifice. She moved forward, meaning to lose herself in the exotic confusion, conscious that she was most likely being pursued. Maids in fawnskin flitted in front of her, sprinkling perfumed water into the air. Tall, graceful slaves glided among the tables, bearing great oval platters of food complex as a cityscape. She saw nothing she recognized, but the sight of such abundance rekindled her rage—there was enough on one platter to keep poor Sunia content for a month. From somewhere came the silky, shimmering sound of a cithara—music much too gentle for a people who were such lovers of cruel sports and dark punishments. The soaring walls were alive with battle scenes; the outsize forms of horses, goddesses and heroes were rendered with such hypnotizing reality she imagined that when she turned her gaze from them, they secretly moved. At the hall’s center was a monumental fountain. Here a towering Diana the Huntress loomed up, contemplating her bow; she gleamed like new snow in moonlight. About her naked nymphs played; Auriane looked, amazed, at the twin streams of water jetting from their nipples. Every odd thing that could be, she thought, these people have brought forth.
Then she saw, beneath a great shrine to Mars set into a niche in the wall, a table set apart on a low platform. Surely this was the place of honored guests. As she moved resolutely toward it, the banqueters paid her scant attention; she might have been anyone’s slave bearing a message for her master.
It was indeed the table of honor, for as she moved closer she recognized the soft, pendulous outline of Torquatus’ profile, and his corrupt mouth; those rapacious eyes were gentled somewhat by strong drink. Was there lingering within the man the smallest capacity to feel shame?
Reclining to Torquatus’ left was a woman whose countenance was bold and queenly as that of the painted face of the eternal woman adorning the wall. And to his right, turned so that his back was to her, was a massive man whose shoulder-length, red-blond locks were curled at the ends with an iron; he was crowned with a garland of roses.
Auriane stopped at a respectful distance before Torquatus, who was clapping with delight as a serving girl cut into an impossible pastry fashioned to look like a goose and grapes and other unknown fruits tumbled out.
Torquatus then saw Auriane. From his look, she could have been a rat’s carcass floating in his bath water.
Auriane inclined her head slightly and said gravely, “I am sorry to intrude upon you, my lord, but I do so with a just complaint. I come on my own—my companions tried to prevent me. We beg you to find us edible food and…to punish the men who are fouling it.”
Torquatus’ guests stared, bewildered by this humbly clad woman with regal bearing. Torquatus knew her at once for what she was—a novice criminally out of place.
His cold, closed expression gave way to the hesitant look of one who makes rapid calculations. Slowly, evenly, he said, “Of course. You’ll get everything you want. Just stay put…don’t move now…. What was it, again, you said you wanted?” All the while one hand reached for a jeweled dagger, and the other signaled unobtrusively to the guards stationed by the great arched door that opened onto the practice arena. Six started forward at once, approaching Auriane from behind so they would not alarm the madwoman and frighten her into attacking him. To delay her further, Torquatus gave her a barren smile. “For now,” he said, “why not take one of those capons?”
Auriane knew at once all was wrong and she was doomed.
Across the table a serving maid was setting down a platter of what surely were small chickens browned and glazed with an unknown sauce, nestled among alien southern fruits. Auriane looked closely. Yes—real chickens, not pastries fashioned to look like them. How they would delight Sunia.
I am a dead woman whether I take one or not. Why not present Sunia with a last gift?
Quickly, warily, Auriane took a capon, dropping it into her tunic; the rope that secured it about her waist held the bird fast. As she did this, she was aware of how the powerfully built man with the rose garland remained unnaturally still, carefully keeping his face turned from her. Why did he not stare at her as the others did?
The alabaster-faced beauty said teasingly to the shy man, “Does she frighten you, Aristos?”
Aristos. Of course.
Then Auriane sensed the approach of the guards. She whirled round and saw them, coming at a trot, twenty paces off. Their swords were drawn.
She could not let them slaughter her like an animal, not with the sign of the god of war carved into her flesh. She would bring shame on the holy groves. Beyond Aristos a kitchen slave patiently sliced a haunch of mutton. She lunged for his carving knife.
Aristos chose that moment to heave himself up and extend his wine cup to a maid who held out a jug. Auriane struck Aristos in the shoulder and sprawled beside him on the couch.
And she saw his face.
No, it cannot be. It is not.
You are dead—Sigwulf was certain of it. All whom I trusted reported you slain.
Monster, crawl back down to Hel. How can you be in this place? Bane of us all. Fiend of fiends, murderer of Baldemar, great betrayer who led an army against our back.
Aristos was Odberht.
She scrambled up, carving knife forgotten, and started to run, threading her way around tables, struggling against a powerful sickness of heart that threatened to drag her down.
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