Brody shuddered. He sought for and grasped Taylor’s hand. “You’ll be there tomorrow, won’t you?” he whispered.
Taylor heard the fear in his voice and struggled to control her own, to hide it. “Yes, both of us,” she assured him. “Isaac, Ariadne’s father, was invited to join the emperor and he insisted we go with him. We’ll be able to see everything.”
Brody looked at Veris. “You know what to do…when the time comes?”
Veris rested his hand over Brody’s heart. “I’m ready, Brody.”
Brody took a deep breath. And another one. He turned back to Taylor. “I think...no, I know. Taylor, I would rather…die in your arms, than out there alone.”
Taylor couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think. High-pitch sound static filled her mind. Panic. Station closed for the night.
Just the one image of Brody’s broken body in her arms, before her mind shut down. Then nothing.
Brody clutched at her hand, bringing it to his chest, where Veris’ hand rested. “I went through sixteen hundred years to find you waiting for me and perhaps this is why…for you to be at the end. Promise me you’ll see to it, Maggie.”
Taylor nodded. “I will. You know I will. I would move mountains for you if I knew how. But Brody, you have to fight, too.”
He drew in another shuddering breath. “Fight?”
“You can’t just go through the motions. You have to live your life like it’s the first time. You have to….” She couldn’t even say the words. She looked to Veris for help. They had spent all day talking about this and now Veris, the philosopher and the man who usually never shut up when it was time for an opinion to be aired, was silent.
“You have to embrace your death,” Veris finished, his voice soft, almost ghostly.
Brody lay silently.
Veris caught Brody’s hand in his, Taylor’s fingers entangled in the knot. “If you walk through it like a zombie, Brody, you could fuck up the timeline. You have to be you, like you would have been. You have to drive like the champion you are, and you have to take risks you would normally take to win the race.”
“We’ll be there for you,” Taylor assured him when Brody didn’t answer. “But it’s not just us you should do it for.”
He sighed. “Marit.”
“Not just Marit,” Veris told him. His grip tightened around Brody’s hand. “There’s a very real chance you might have fathered your own child these last four nights.”
Brody grew absolutely still. Even his breathing stopped. Then he drew in a hard, shuddering breath. “But…Ariadne….”
“Her body was pulled from the Golden Horn. Taylor isn’t using Ariadne’s body and she certainly didn’t live in this time, so she isn’t borrowing a younger version of herself. Taylor jumped back here in person. This is her contemporary body, Brody. And you’re human, as we’re all so mortally aware right now.”
Brody closed his eyes and turned his head, pressing his face against Taylor’s shoulder. Hiding it. Then he sighed and rubbed the thumb of his spare hand into his eye sockets. Hard.
“Then there’s Veris, too,” Taylor added. “Do it for him.”
Veris drew in a sharp breath.
So did Brody.
Taylor pushed on, giving neither of them time to react more than that. “If you don’t do this, Brody, you put a thousand years with Veris at risk. You doom Veris to walk through time alone, without you. He would never be the same, if he even survives that spear in Jerusalem in the first place.”
A little silence fell. Both of them were looking at her and in the dark, with only the moonlight spilling over them, even Veris’ eyes looked dark and blank.
“There’s your reason, if you need an ultimate one,” Veris said softly. Firmly. “Criost, you fuck up our lives so that Taylor disappears and I will kill you, Celt.”
Brody drew Taylor’s head down to his and kissed her. “There are no words to describe how much I love you. I won’t let you down.”
She felt him squeeze Veris’ hand through their joined fingers. “And you. You must watch her. It will be chaotic.”
“I know,” Veris growled.
“You can’t let your temper get out of hand.”
“Brody—”
“No,” Brody said, cutting him off. “Listen to me. You can’t let the beast rise, Veris. You have to stay in control. I need you to fight for me. I need....”
Veris rested his other hand on Brody’s shoulder and squeezed. “It won’t be like before.”
“It’ll be worse. I know what’s coming, now,” Brody said bleakly.
Taylor gritted her teeth against any sound she might make. Her heart was hurting. Her mind and body was sick with the tension and knowledge of what was about to happen. There were no words, no thoughts she could offer in comfort except for what she had already given and now Brody had countered them with this.
“It’ll be easier,” Veris replied flatly.
Brody turned his head to look at Veris, plainly startled.
So did Taylor.
Veris sat up. “Yes, there’ll be pain,” he said, his voice low but clear. “I won’t lie about that. But you know pain. You’ve had long experience dealing with it. You can ride it out now.” He spread his hands. “We’re here this time and that makes all the difference in the world, because we would halt time in its tracks for you.”
“How does that make any difference?” he asked.
“You’ll see. It just does. Trust me.”
Brody sat up slowly. Warily.
“Do you love me?” Veris asked.
“That’s a stupid fucking question,” Brody replied furiously.
“Do you?”
“I’d die for you.” He paused. “I am dying for you,” he said flatly. “And Taylor. And Marit.” He rested his hand against Taylor’s flat abdomen. “And perhaps my child.”
“Then trust me as much as you love me. Us being here this time will make dying this time easier.”
Brody drew in a slow breath and let it out. “I’m still…”
“Afraid?” Veris finished.
“Yeah.”
* * * * *
The moon was low in the sky when the guards returned to the chamber to retrieve Brody. No one spoke as he was locked back into the chains, not even the guards, who seemed to absorb the atmosphere in the room and stayed silent as they worked.
So Taylor was able to hear a sound that she might not have heard otherwise. It took her a moment to identify it. The chain links were clinking softly and unmusically.
Brody trembled badly enough to make them rattle.
Taylor was forced to go through the motions of paying the guards for tomorrow night’s stay-over. The guards had acquired a taste for the good food and softer accommodations to be found in Matthew’s kitchen and guard quarters, and liked the nightly routine. Payment was just a bonus.
She lingered in the processional, watching for the very last glimpse of the huddled group before it disappeared.
Then she hurried back to Veris’ arms. He hugged her with ferocious strength but still Taylor could not cry.
“You lied to Brody about it being easier this time,” she accused him.
Veris sighed and let her go. “You wanted me to tell him it would be harder, now he knew what it would be like? Now he could recall the blood, the pain and every instance of his own death?”
Taylor massaged her temples. Her head ached. “No, of course not,” she whispered.
“He knew I was lying, anyway,” Veris said.
Fresh horror spilt through her. “No!”
“He just needed something to cling to. An idea.”
“Hope,” Taylor whispered.
Veris shook his head. “He has you for that.”
Promise me you’ll be there. At the end.
She closed her eyes. She wanted to protest that she couldn’t do this—that she couldn’t sit through the races and watch the man she love die, but the simple fact was; she had to.
She opened her eye
s. “I have a ton of arrangements to make with Kale if we are to look like we belong in the Emperor’s box today.”
“I have my own arrangements to make,” Veris said. He glanced out the window at the lightening sky. “It’s going to be a stormy day,” he warned. “Dress well.”
* * * * *
Veris looked over the assembled people. There were a dozen guards and as many slaves. The slaves were all dressed in high-ranking clothes—some of them probably Ariadne’s from the way the slaves giggled and pulled self-consciously at the folds and accessories and their hair.
“All of them?” Veris questioned.
“If we are to look like wealthy patricians, this is barely sufficient,” Taylor assured him. “Trust me, I’ve learned a lot in the last few days.” She glanced at Rafael, who was standing next to Veris, openly gawking at the people, the house and the mound of gear and food gathered in neat mounds in preparation for the races.
Veris drew Rafael forward. “This is Rafael. Rafael, my wife, Taylor.”
Rafael nodded his head. “Taylor.” He wore the clothes of a moderately well-to-do merchant and he wore them surprisingly well. Veris had given him a purse of bezants and told him to acquire clothing and accessories to blend in with businessmen. Rafael had proved to be a quick study. He’d had his hair trimmed neatly and he had been shaving every day to match current Byzantine standards.
Taylor assessed him in one glance. She was dressed in patrician clothing, with the elaborate make-up of a Byzantine woman. Veris could see that Rafael was confused and trying to assess if she was a blood-drinker, like him. Veris had not elaborated on his need for blood since the storm at sea. That conversation was overdue.
“Rafael is a friend I met on the road from Pergamum. He will help me to return there,” Veris explained to Taylor.
Rafael frowned, puzzled.
One more point to add to the conversation, Veris mentally tallied.
“This is one of the two people I spoke about meeting here in the city,” Veris told Rafael.
Rafael’s frown smoothed away and his toffee brown eyes came alive with interest. “And the other?”
“We’re going to see the other now,” Veris told him. “On the way I’ll explain everything.”
* * * * *
Their entourage was so large and cumbersome it halted traffic completely while it swept along the Mese on its way to the Hippodrome. For the first little while Veris worried about the attention it was drawing to Taylor and him, but then he realized that the chaos they were creating was more than adequately holding the attention of shop keepers and commuters.
They were not the only big party heading for the Hippodrome that day, either, so traffic in and around the Palace and Hippodrome was congested and syrupy. They were just one more household on their way to the races.
It let Veris relax. He beckoned Rafael to his side.
Rafael drew away from the edges of the group, where he had been twisting his head in every direction, observing people and shops and every sight that tweaked his curiosity.
“You’re supposed to be a jaded merchant. You’ve seen all this before. Many times.”
Rafael laughed. “I cannot help it. It is all so…” He shrugged. “I have no words for it.”
“Even after two days?”
“It would be so after two years,” Rafael replied. “This place is unlike any I have ever been to.”
“It is that,” Veris agreed. “Constantinople is unique in the western world.” For this time period, he mentally added. He glanced casually over his shoulder. Taylor and Kale walked behind him, which was the correct place for a wife and her head slave. Only the guards strode ahead and they were three paces away and out of earshot if he spoke quietly.
“There are things I need to tell you, Rafe, before these races end today.”
Rafael was silent for several paces. “You did not free me just because you pitied my state, did you?”
“That was not the only reason, no,” Veris agreed easily, “Although slavery offends me in principal, in practice and subjectively…in all its forms.”
Rafael frowned his way through Veris’ answer, then shook his head, dismissing it. “What is it you want of me? Or is it simply my blood that you need, like on the boat?”
“Ship,” Veris corrected automatically, without thought. “That was…unintended. I would have left this city with you still thinking of me as human.”
Again, Rafael strode several paces before he responded. He was beginning to learn to think before he spoke. “You are not…human?” he asked cautiously. “I did not know one could be something else.” He licked his lips. “Are you a demon?”
“Demons are a story made up by the church to scare sinners into behaving themselves. They don’t exist, Rafael. Well, not the way the church wants you to think they do. But we do.”
“We?” His voice rose slightly. “There are more of you? What are you?”
Veris squeezed Rafael’s shoulder, calming him. “You must listen to everything I have to tell you, Rafael. Some of it is going to sound even more fantastic than the sights you’ve seen in this wondrous great city, but I need you to take it all in and absorb it as quickly as you can, because time is growing short for my friend and you have a part to play in his fate.”
Rafael again took his time to answer. His strides, Veris realized, were not that much shorter than his own. Rafael was slender, but he had height and the legs that promised that somewhere in his future he would fill out into a much bigger man.
Rafael drew in a slow breath. “What must you tell me?” he said at last.
* * * * *
The Emperor’s box was a huge, multi-level affair at the end of the arena. While Isaac was permitted to sit on the Emperor’s personal tier, Ariadne and her companions were relegated to the secondary wings, off to one side.
Taylor had foreseen this banishment and set about organizing the stifling hot, unadorned stone corner they had been assigned, with Kale’s help. They set up shade cloths and temporary tables, and set out cushions and covers for the stone benches provided. Cool drinks were handed to everyone as soon as they settled and finger food set out on all the tables. Taylor cast an eye over the arrangements. It was a luxurious, padded, perfect example of Byzantine indulgence.
Veris shook his head as he sat in the biggest chair, a cup in his hand purely for show. “You most certainly did learn swiftly,” he told her. He picked up her hand and pulled her toward the chair next to him.
“I can’t sit there,” Taylor protested. “I should sit back behind you.”
Veris caught her eye. “You really want to sit back there, for what comes next?”
Taylor’s heart dropped. For a few short moments she had managed to mask the fact of why they were here. Now it was back in the front of her mind, glowing in neon.
She bit her lip and sat on the edge of the chair next to him.
“Besides,” Veris added, “I want you to hear what I tell Rafael next. Rafe—”
The tall young man came forward. He nodded his head at her, his sharp, intelligent eyes flicking over her. His gaze fell on Veris’ cup of wine. “You drink?” he asked.
“I pretend,” Veris replied. “To avoid unnecessary attention.”
Taylor smothered her sharp inhalation. “He knows?” she asked softly.
“It is necessary,” Veris told her, “In order to tell him everything.”
“He must know everything?”
Rafael was watching their exchange, his expression curious, non-judgmental.
Veris sighed. “He must know everything,” he said.
“Why? Why not just write a letter to yourself and leave instructions that way?” Taylor demanded.
Veris grimaced. “Because I can’t read, here and now. I didn’t learn until ten years from now.”
Taylor sat back, stunned into silence. There was simply no answer to that.
Rafael, though, leaned closer toward both of them. “How do you know what happens in years
from now?” he demanded, his voice low.
Veris gave a small shrug with his massive shoulders. “Because that’s where we came from.”
Rafael snapped up straight, his eyes widening.
“And that’s where we’re going back to, later today,” Veris added.
Rafael sank down onto the cushions of Taylor’s chair and she hastily moved over to make room for him. He was oblivious to her movements or her presence. He was lost in thought.
He reached out for the arm of Veris’ chair. “You said your kind live a very long time. Always, you said, unless something happens to end your time. That is how you have lived to be a philosopher and a warrior and a sailor and a merchant and all the things you have forgotten to tell me you have been. You have been all of them, in these years from now.”
“It’s called the future,” Veris told him, keeping his voice low. “And now we have come back to this time, where I lived once before.”
“In Pergamum,” Rafael concluded. “You said you were from there when you freed me.”
“Yes. I was learning to be a doctor.”
“Learning…” Rafael thought about that. “But you said you are going back to the future and I must help you.”
Veris nodded. “This is where you may get confused, Rafael.”
“It is all confusing, Northman,” Rafael shot back. “But you said to absorb it, so I am absorbing it.”
Veris laughed. “I have high hopes for you, Rafael. Your spirit hasn’t been totally crushed by slavery. I would have liked to have seen what happens to you once you have thrown off the habits of servitude and inferiority. I suspect you will rise like the Phoenix.”
Rafael’s eyes narrowed. “Feenix. That would be future speech,” he guessed.
“Yes.”
Rafael shrugged. “So. Confuse me.”
Taylor pushed her untouched cup of wine into Rafael’s hand and he took it absently.
Kiss Across Chains (Kiss Across Time Series) Page 22
