Out of the Waters

by David Drake

  “My husband, I’m glad you’ve joined me,” Hedia said calmly. “I’ll ask you to put a guard over Lann here. Master Lenatus and his men will do.”

  She flexed her knees to pat the big body for a last time, then thought the better of it and simply gestured.

  She said, “Please have him cremated as soon as the rain permits. A formal funeral will not be necessary, but I request that you have his ashes interred in the family tomb.”

  “Him?” Saxa said in obvious puzzlement. “The monkey, you mean?”

  Hedia’s mind went buzzing white again. After a moment she said, “If you choose to name your savior a monkey, yes.”

  Then, like a whiplash, “See to it!”

  “Yes, my dear,” Saxa said quietly. “At once. Ah—I’ll go back to the Altar and, ah, leave you and your pet…”

  He turned.

  Hedia caught him by the shoulder and embraced him clumsily. “No, my dear master,” she said. “We will go to the Portico of Agrippa, you and I, where you will take charge of the crisis until someone else arrives—the urban prefect or one of the Praetorian commanders, I suppose. And I see our daughter coming toward us. She appears to need help also.”

  She pointed to Lenatus, then toward the ape-man’s body. The old soldier nodded in understanding. Soldiers got a lot of experience with hasty cremations; he would take care of it.

  Good-bye, my friend Lann.

  * * *

  VARUS SAT ON THE STEPS of the public facility north of the sundial, letting the rain beat on him and trying not to think. The Emperor Augustus had built a larger pyre with marble appointments a little farther out on the Flaminian Way, close to where he erected his huge family mausoleum, so this one got little business in recent years.

  Today the whole district stank of charred human flesh. Varus didn’t know whether there were interrupted funerals on the platforms of volcanic tuff behind him, the fires quenched by the downpour, or if corpses scattered when Atlantean ships burned and crashed were responsible for the odor.

  Eventually he would rise and join his father, who had set up a headquarters in the Portico of Agrippa across the road. Since the urban prefect hadn’t arrived, Saxa had taken charge of rescue and the firefighting—which, thanks to the rain, wasn’t the danger which a shower of burning timbers could have posed.

  Eventually he would get up; but not now.

  “Good afternoon, Lord Varus,” Pandareus said from close beside him. “A very good one, in as much as we are both alive and Carce is not a flaming ruin.”

  Varus jumped to his feet. “Master!” he said.

  Then, more calmly and with a smile for himself, “I’m sorry, I was completely lost in myself. ‘In thought’, I would say, but I think what I was really doing was trying not to think.”

  Before Pandareus could reply, Varus really looked at him. “Alive, yes,” he said, “but what happened to you, master? Are you really all right?”

  The left side of his teacher’s face was badly swollen. The greasy look was probably unguent smeared on the cut over the cheekbone, but it looked terrible. Both his wrists were splinted, though his fingers seemed to move normally.

  “Quite well, really,” Pandareus said. The swelling distorted his smile, but it was clearly meant to be cheerful. “Though our ship fell to the ground, I managed to hold on to the railing. Unfortunately—”

  He lifted his forearms to call attention to the splints.

  “—I appear to have injured myself that way as well, though not as badly as would have happened if I had been thrown out. Pulto assures me that in a month I will be able to swing a sword just as ably as I ever could.”

  Varus went blank, then giggled in what he realized was release. Only then did Pandareus let his battered face warm in a smile.

  “Corylus is all right, then?” Varus asked, raising his head. A pair of mounted couriers raced up the road from the barracks of the City Watch and headed south down the Flaminian Way. Only Hercules knew what they were doing.

  Varus grinned wryly, glad to realize that he was regaining an interest in life. The rain seemed to be slacking, though his toga was so sodden already that walking in it would be like wearing a waterfall. Wool could absorb enormous quantities of water.

  “Master Corylus is well,” Pandareus said, “which is quite remarkable—even granting that I knew from our first meeting that he was an athlete as well as a scholar. He took his companions into the enclosure around the Altar of Peace, and his man Pulto is standing in the entrance to see to it that they’re not disturbed. Pulto seemed pleased to see me and bandage my wrists, though.”

  “I’m glad of that,” Varus said. He wondered who his friend’s “companions” were and why they needed privacy. He could ask Corylus about that later, if he felt he had to know and if the information hadn’t been volunteered. He shrugged in preparation to getting up, but the sloshing weight of his toga made him hesitate a little longer.

  “Lady Hedia is in quite her usual form also,” Pandareus said, “although she seems to have had received some rough handling in the recent past. She has taken your sister in hand and they’re repairing their wardrobe and toilette in the shops of the portico.”

  “I’m sure Mother is in better shape than whoever tried to get in her way,” Varus said, smiling faintly. Until Father got involved with magic, he hadn’t appreciated how terrifying an enemy Hedia would be.

  “I thought…,” Pandareus said with a hint of reserve. “That I saw you and your sister arrive here on the back of a gryphon?”

  “Yes,” said Varus. “That’s what it seemed to me also. It may have been a metaphor, though.”

  He lurched to his feet. The toga clung to his legs, threatening to bind him. Well, if that was the worst problem he had—and it was—then he was a very fortunate man, and Carce was fortunate also.

  “Master?” he said. “Typhon isn’t a danger anymore, because of my sister. Alphena saved us all.”

  Pandareus lifted his chin in acknowledgement. “I gathered from what Lady Alphena said to your mother that the danger was past. I’m glad to have that confirmed, though. Your sister, ah, seemed distraught.”

  I really don’t know what has been happening to my sister since she disappeared from our garden, Varus thought. And I think it will be better if I never try to learn.

  Aloud he said, “Come, my honored teacher. I will greet my father, the consul; and then we too should look into a change of garments.”

  * * *

  ALPHENA LAY ON THE TABLE under the hands of the masseur. He was a tall eunuch, a friend and perhaps relative of Abinnaeus, whose shop Hedia had taken over with her usual brusque authority. The clothier would be paid, of course, and probably greatly overpaid, but Alphena doubted he’d been thinking of money when he leaped to obey the cascade of orders.

  Alphena had stopped crying. The rough toweling had warmed and dried her, and she’d found herself drifting into a blurred reverie punctuated by flashes of vivid memory.

  She and Hedia lay with their heads in opposite directions on parallel tables—display tables, originally, but sturdy enough for this use—and each had turned her face to the right. When Alphena opened her eyes, her mother was looking at her.

  “Are you feeling better, dear?” Hedia asked, her voice pulsing with the quick rhythm of the assistant masseur who chopped at her back with the edges of his hands. He was a Libyan with dark skin and tightly wound hair as coarse as wire.

  Hedia had insisted that the master work on her daughter, so of course that was what happened. Alphena could watch the assistant, though, and she had been impressed by the economy, strength, and precision with which he moved. He’d make a good swordsman.…

  “I don’t feel anything,” Alphena said as the masseur worked the muscles of her right buttock with fingers as hard as wood. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel anything ever again!”

  Her voice sounded petulant, even to herself, and she knew as she spoke that the words were a lie. She wouldn’t have been able to judg
e the Libyan’s skill if she hadn’t resumed taking an interest in the world around her.

  “That isn’t true,” she said flatly before her mother could say anything. “I don’t want to feel anything, but I do.”

  To her furious amazement, she started crying again. “I feel awful! Awful! What they did was wrong!”

  Hedia sat up abruptly. “You may all leave,” she said, gesturing toward the outer door.

  “At once, your ladyship,” said Abinnaeus, who with his two assistants had been standing before the hanging which covered the storage room and stairs to the upper level. “Since your own attendants haven’t arrived yet, would you like me to leave one of my boys? He speaks only Aramaic, though I suspect he’s picked up some Common Greek. Not Latin, though, as he’s only been in Carce for the past week.”

  “I think my daughter and I can pour our own wine in a crisis, Abinnaeus,” Hedia said calmly. “Though if my maid Syra arrives, you may pass her through.”

  Smiling at Alphena, she said, “I sent a messenger to the house to bring my servants when I arrived, but I don’t expect them to reach us for some while yet. I’ll get some wine, dear.”

  Alphena sat up slowly. The masseur, his assistant, and the four attendants accompanying them went out first. They had started to pack up their paraphernalia, but after a quick discussion with Abinnaeus they had simply left it behind. The clothier’s assistants chivied them to move faster.

  Abinnaeus himself followed at the end of the procession. Before he banged the outer door behind him, he dropped a neatly folded packet on the table beside Alphena.

  She picked it up: it was a napkin. She wiped her face and eyes, then blew her nose on it and set it down again.

  Alphena had known that people obeyed her stepmother’s orders, but nobody had given the shopkeeper an order about the napkin. Hedia surrounded herself with people who thought for themselves, which was a very different thing.

  Alphena was suddenly glad to have become one of the people around Lady Hedia.

  Hedia handed Alphena the two cups she had filled at the sideboard and sat down beside her. They sipped together.

  The wine was straight from the jar. Alphena had already learned that what she drank with her mother was likely to be the pure vintage.

  That was all right this time. Alphena took a deep draft. It was probably better this time, though she didn’t expect to get drunk.

  Hedia took another sip and looked at Alphena over the rim of her cup. “Who treated you unfairly, daughter?” she said. Her tone was mild but her face was not. “I may not be able to put it right, but there’s a chance that I can demonstrate to those who wronged you that they have made a serious mistake.”

  “It’s not me,” Alphena said. She snatched up the napkin but she managed not to resume blubbering. “It was Uktena. I know what you think but he’s not a monster, not really, he’s a man, a brave man, and he, and he—”

  She broke off because she found herself crying after all. She felt Hedia take the cup from her hand though she’d probably sloshed out half its contents already. A moment later, Hedia’s arm went around her shoulders.

  After a time, Alphena snuffled. She blew her nose hard into the napkin, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Uktena is your name for Typhon, dear heart?” Hedia asked. Her voice was calm, hinting of no emotion except kindly concern.

  “No!” Alphena said. Then, very quietly, she said, “Yes, I guess so. But it isn’t fair. He only got that way because he had to fight Procron. His own people sent him away, put him in prison because they were afraid of him. He saved them!”

  “Drink some more of this, dear,” Hedia said, offering the cup again.

  Either she had somehow refilled it or it was the one she had poured for herself. Alphena took a gulp, then second and third gulps.

  “Did they have reason to be afraid of Uktena?” Hedia said. She lowered her arm but she continued to sit very close.

  “Yes,” Alphena whispered. “But it doesn’t matter. He got that way by saving them! They can’t cast him away like that, it isn’t right!”

  Hedia turned her face toward a wall where bolts of silk were stacked, but her eyes were far away. In a voice which throbbed with an emotion which Alphena couldn’t identify, she said, “I suppose it must be right, dear, because that’s what happens to soldiers all the time. We give them land to settle on the frontiers, because that way they don’t come back to Carce. They’re far too dangerous, you see.”

  Alphena looked at her. “He’s a warrior,” she said. “He fought for them.”

  “Yes, dear,” Hedia said, meeting her eyes again. She smiled; a sort of smile. “The tribunes don’t spend long out there, a year to be qualified for office and then come back to find jobs in the government. But sometimes a year is too long. They go away boys like your brother, and when they come back they’re not really human.”

  She hugged Alphena again, harder; taking comfort this time, not trying to give it. “And there’s nothing anyone can do, dear one, not after it’s happened,” Hedia said. “Except that sometimes we women can bring a little solace. Remember that, when you’re older. Remember your friend Uktena.”

  Alphena swallowed. She put her cup down to free herself to embrace her mother.

  * * *

  CORYLUS FUMBLED WITH HIS BODY armor as he climbed the steps to the west entrance of the Altar of Peace. The orichalc cuirass was heavy, awkward, and it shone even during the rainstorm, calling unwanted attention to him. He would have taken it off before now, except that he couldn’t get the catches to work.

  On other days, the naked sprite beside him would have attracted even more attention, but the scattered fires and confusion had left many people running about the Field of Mars in states of undress. Coryla was more attractive than most, but the crowd was too excited about the flaming battle in the sky to pay attention to women, even pretty women.

  As for the golden-furred Ancient on the sprite’s other side—Carce was used to exotic animals. Mostly they died on the sand, shot by archers who stayed on the other side of the fence from their victims, but not a few came as pets for the great and good.

  Pulto halted at the top. “Here, master,” he said, reaching for the catches.

  Corylus heard the click, click, click and felt the breastplate sag from his right side. “I got it on with no trouble,” he muttered. “I’ve had it on and off lots of times since, since…”

  His voice trailed off. He couldn’t remember when all this had started. Days ago, but was a day in that dreamworld the same as one here in Carce?

  “You take care of your business,” Pulto said, lifting away the breastplate. “Then we’ll get you to the baths and a long soak in the steam room. I ought to know what you need, as often as I’ve been standing where you are.”

  Blood still streaked the orichalc despite the storm which was only now slackening. The Minos had bled like a whale spouting when Corylus jerked his sword free; gore had covered his right arm as well.

  “Right, take care of my duties,” Corylus said. He looked into the altar enclosure, feeling his mind sharpen a little; tactical awareness became reflexive on the frontier, especially if you regularly visited the far side of the river.

  “Don’t worry about the east entrance,” Pulto said. “I had some of Saxa’s boys block the doorway with the deck of one of them crashed ships. They’ll make sure nobody tries to move it while you’re inside. Ah—I told ’em you’d see them right for the work, you know?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Corylus. He had to finish this quickly; otherwise he’d fall asleep. “I don’t think we’ll be long.”

  The problem wasn’t so much the stress of battle: he would normally still be keyed up by the humors which fighting had released into his system.

  His present exhaustion came from the blur of time Corylus had spent in the dreamworld. The release of that tension, that existence in a place not meant for living men, had wrung him out more than he could have guesse
d before the strain released.

  “Take as long as you need, master,” Pulto said. “Nobody’s going to bother you this way neither.”

  Pulto stepped to the center of the entrance and turned his back to the altar; his legs were spread slightly, and his hand was on a barely hidden sword hilt. No, nobody’s going to bother us.

  Pulto had stayed with Lenatus in Saxa’s house after the attempt to catch the western magicians. That was the proper response for a noncommissioned officer in a crisis: if there wasn’t an obvious solution, report to headquarters where people are paid to think beyond straight ranks and a sharp sword.

  At the alarm, he had joined the consul’s entourage—figuring that reports of ships throwing lightning bolts in the clouds were likely to be cut from the same cloth as Corylus disappearing into thin air. He’d been right.

  It had stopped raining, but water stood in shallow pools in the marble pavement and on the charred top of the central altar. The Ancient scraped a finger across the ash, then sniffed what he had caught under his nail. He grinned at Corylus.

  The sprite touched the glass amulet, visible now that Corylus had taken off the breastplate. “What now, cousin?” she asked.

  Corylus licked his lips. “You both have helped me,” he said. “You’ve saved me, many times. What is it that you want from me?”

  The sprite laughed. “Freedom, of course,” she said. “Freedom to die.”

  She looked at the Ancient. He gave a terse growl. He didn’t move from where he stood by the altar, but the fur along his spine had rippled.

  “Both of us want freedom,” the sprite said. “But you would be a fool to free us, cousin. You need us.”

  Corylus took off the amulet and weighed the glass in his hand. He looked from the sprite to the Ancient. Neither of them moved.

  “If I didn’t treat my friends honorably,” Corylus said, “I would soon have no friends.”

  He put the leather thong over his left index finger and held it out to Coryla.

  She looked at the bead; her tongue touched her lips. Very softly she said, “The times are in crisis, cousin. The Spirits of the Earth are rising, against you and all who live on the surface.”