by Mia Marlowe
She smiled at his fair speech. “At any rate, it seemed to work. Even though his father wanted Ragnvald to settle on the daughter of the jarl of Kaupang, Ragnvald's heart wanted me.” Her smile faltered. “Until he saw the price demanded for my witchery. When the fit came upon me before our wedding, he suddenly recalled his duty to Birka and declared he must wed the pasty-faced girl from Kaupang.”
“He was a fool,” Erik said.
Her shoulders drooped. “But you see why I can't pretend to have the Sight. If the gods visited me with this affliction just for a love spell, what might they do if I try my hand at real power?”
“What makes you think love isn't real power?” Erik kneed his mount closer to hers. “Think what love drives a man to do. The Greeks tell a tale of Helen, a woman who was so desirable she caused a war between the kings who were determined to have her.”
Valdis pulled a face. “Why on earth didn't they just ask her which of them she preferred?”
“Sometimes love takes such a hold on a man, what a woman wants is the least of his concerns.”
“Then what the Greeks celebrate is not love—it's dragonlust, the craven desire to possess at all costs.” She sighed and lifted her heavy hair with one hand so the breeze could tease the baby hairs on the back of her slender neck. The sight of that tender skin made Erik's soft palate ache with longing to taste her nape with a kiss.
“You may be right,” he agreed. “But I don't think your malady was caused by the gods. If you had the power to hex someone with it, would you?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn't wish the Raven that stalks me on anyone.”
“I hope the gods are at least as gracious as you. Sometimes, things just happen for no particular reason. I think your falling sickness is one of those things.” Erik pondered the matter as he tugged the stallion's reins, making sure the spirited beast knew who was master. “Now, as to whether or not you should feign an ability you don't possess, if that were a crime, most of the nobility and all the bureaucrats in Miklagard should be imprisoned. But even the gods are not above guile when it suits their purposes. Odin outwits his enemies. Loki changes shape to confound his foes.”
At the sound of his name, the little black dog poked his head out of Valdis's saddle bag. She'd named him Loki, after the trickster godling, because he was such a clown, dancing on his hind legs for treats. The dog hadn't warmed to anyone else. In fact, he nipped Erik when he tried to pet him once, but Loki was clearly devoted to Valdis.
“The Greek has promised your freedom if you pretend to have the Sight,” Erik continued. “Don't you think it’s worth the risk?”
“I suppose it is,” she finally said. “Though truth to tell, I'm not sure what I'll do with my freedom. At first, all I could think of was running away to the North. But I can't go home. My family doesn't need another mouth to feed. That path is closed to me. Mayhap I'll go to the Danes or Iceland.” She cast a questioning glance at him. “Why ever did you come here to this blazing heat when you could go anywhere in the wide world?”
“The Northlands are closed to me as well.”
“Because of your oath to the emperor?”
“No,” he admitted. He hadn't wanted to tell her, but perhaps it was best she know. If he was going to be damned, better to be damned for the truth. “I can't go home because I've done murder.”
The law is inviolate for the masses. For the few, it is a malleable list of suggestions."
—from the secret journal of Damian Aristarchus
Chapter 6
* * *
Murder. The word careened around her mind, leaving a shiver of revulsion in its wake.
When Valdis was growing up, the lawspeaker made a long circuit among the villages nestled in the fjords and on the outlying islands of the North Sea, visiting once every three years to remind folk of the "oughts" in Norse society. The law united the people and gave them boundaries so they could live, if not in harmony, at least in respect of each other's rights. Of all the crimes the lawspeaker recited against, only oath-breaking was considered more heinous than murder. It was one thing to issue a defiance and kill a man in fair combat; it was quite another to take a life by stealth without giving the victim a chance to defend himself.
Erik, a murderer? Valdis swallowed her surprise. He didn't seem the type to stoop to so cowardly an act. Her natural impulse was to put as much distance between them as possible.
Then she remembered how he'd held her through the madness of her latest fit. Everyone else in her life had turned away from her in fear or disgust. She couldn't withdraw from Erik despite his astonishing confession.
“You can't be a murderer,” Valdis said. “The law demands the life of the killer for the life of the slain. If you were truly guilty, you'd have met your end on the wings of a blood-eagle or the garrote.”
He shrugged, his mouth stretched in a tight line.
“Did you flee south to escape justice?” Valdis finally asked when his silence wore her to the breaking point.
“No,” he said. “I went before the lawspeaker willingly and admitted my crime, but he banished me instead of giving me the death I deserved.”
There must have been unusual circumstances. The lawspeaker rarely strayed from the prescribed punishments meted out in the oral code he was entrusted with keeping. “Who did you kill?”
Erik glanced at her, then looked away, frowning at the memory. “My brother.”
Valdis stared at the road rising before her. Of all the betrayals in the Middle Realm, the ones that hurt most came from those closest to a body. Murder of his own blood. At least her family had only sold her into slavery. Still, bitterness welled within her. It was an ache that would never go away.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” she asked in a small voice.
“Not particularly.” Erik rose in the saddle, craning his neck to see. The head of the long column disappeared around a hillock. He settled back down. “But I suspect I'll have no peace till I do. A woman is like a leaky roof when she wants to know something.”
“I told you why I was sold south when you asked,” she reminded him.
“Ja, but that wasn't your fault. Your tale only included a minor attempt at witching, not an admitted crime.”
“I'm prepared to hear your side. You must surely have one since the lawspeaker amended your punishment to mere banishment.”
“Banishment is no light matter.” He met her pointed stare. “The lawspeaker only thought he was being merciful. Until I worked my way to Miklagard and found a place for myself among the Guard, I thought I'd never belong anywhere again.”
“So you feel at home in the great city?” Valdis asked. “It's so noisy and smelly and ... foreign. How can you?”
“I have my century, my pledge-men to lead. I have friends.”
“But no home, no family?” She wanted to ask him if he had a woman somewhere in the sprawling metropolis, but knew he must. A man with his rough, hard-bodied appeal would turn feminine heads wherever he went.
“No,” he admitted. “Mayhap a man with my past shouldn't have a family.”
At that moment, Damian came galloping back to them and rattled off a string of orders. Valdis made sense of most of it. Her master demanded that she join him at the head of the long column of carts and baggage animals. She urged her horse into a trot after the eunuch, leaning forward over her mount's neck to encourage him up the incline.
Valdis sighed. Damian hadn't bothered with her all morning. Of all times for her master to suddenly command her presence. She felt sure Erik had been at the point of telling her about the murder of his brother. As revolting as murder was, she wanted to hear his tale. It might help her understand the man.
Erik's horse snorted behind her, straining to burst into the lead. Not being the type to trail another animal willingly, the stallion preferred the head of the herd. She suspected the man on his back felt the same, but Erik muscled his spirited mount into submission, just as he bridled himself to duty.
“It's beautiful,” she said. Damian's smile told her he understood her sentiment if not her words. “Does the emperor have many houses like this scattered about his empire?”
“This doesn't belong to the Bulgar-Slayer,” Erik said in Norse. “There'd be a guard of ten with a decurion in command if it were a residence of the emperor. No, this belongs to the eunuch himself.”
Valdis never thought of Damian as a landholder. As a eunuch, he was more a glorified servant, albeit one held in high esteem. Now it was clear he was a man of property, wealthy in his own right.
“You see why noble families geld their spare sons in hopes of preferment,” Erik continued in Norse. “Eunuchs tend to rise high in Byzantine society.”
“Parents do that to their own sons?” She was astounded. The mutilation still struck her as too bizarre to contemplate. “Do you suppose that’s what happened to Damian?”
“No,” Erik said. “He's what they call a late-made eunuch. Those that are cut in their early years never develop a beard or have their voices drop. Some grow unnaturally long arms and legs. It's almost as if their bodies don't know what to do with what's become of them. They tend to carry extra flesh and some even grow breasts like a woman.” Erik shook his head. “It's not a life a man would choose willingly.”
Valdis sensed Erik's revulsion. However ordinary neutered males were in Byzantine society and however highly regarded some came to be, she suspected Erik would die before he was forced to live as less than a man.
Damian was talking again as they rode three abreast, obviously untroubled by the Norse conversation she had shared with Erik. She was grateful her master didn't seem to realize he'd been discussed so intimately. Valdis rode between the two men, puzzling over which secret vexed her most—Erik's murder of his own brother or the manner in which Damian fell under the castrating knife. She promised herself to discover the truth of each tale before she parted company with these men.
For she did still intend to shake the dust of Miklagard from her feet somehow. Freedom called to her from the distant mountain peaks, whispered to her on each breeze and sang a siren's song with each blue wave cresting on the distant sea.
Damian pointed to the villa nestled in the sheltered valley. She could see more details now as they looked down on it from the heights. It was fashioned in the shape of a square with a wide columned portico wrapped around each side. The tip of a cypress stabbed the sky from the open courtyard in the center.
“Your room is on the east corner, he says,” Erik relayed Damian's message. “It catches the morning light but is spared the afternoon heat.” Erik's brows knit together as he listened to Damian's next words. “Your master says your room is right next to his—not adjoining, but close ... as a mark of his favor and his protection.”
“Protection?” Valdis asked. Other than workers toiling in the surrounding fields of grain, she didn't see another soul. “What do I need protection from?”
“From me,” he admitted. “Aristarchus is very pointed about protecting your virtue. He seems to regard all Varangians as rutting beasts who can't be trusted further than he can throw them.”'
Valdis lifted a brow at him.
Erik cast a wolfish grin back. “He could be right.”
She laughed. His rough good humor warmed her. Being with Erik was like being whisked back to the fjords. His speech, his face, his way of looking at life all spoke to her of home. But in some ways he was even more of a safe haven than the fjords had ever been. Erik accepted her unusual malady without a qualm.
As they neared the villa, a gaggle of servants scurried from the wide carved double doors and formed a line of greeting. Damian dismounted and strode to confer with his head caretaker, leaving Erik to help Valdis to the ground.
“I can dismount on my own,” she said as he eased her to earth.
“Maybe I wanted the excuse to span your waist with my hands.” He left his palms on the curve of her waist longer than necessary. Her chest constricted strangely when he leaned close enough for Valdis to breathe in his distinctive masculine scent.
Damian hurried back to grasp Valdis's hand with a pointed glare at Erik.
“Perhaps he’s right to mistrust Northmen," she said.
“And maybe I just want to irritate your master.”
Damian led her from the growing heat of the day into the dim coolness of the interior of his villa. In the grand entrance, an amazing mosaic left Valdis wide-eyed. It was a life-sized portrait of a handsome Greek man, his dark hair and eyes gleaming, an enigmatic smile lifting the corners of his sensual mouth and an erection as long as his arm protruding baldly from under his short tunic. Valdis was reminded of the statue of Frey in the great Temple of Uppsala, his outsized phallus proudly erect. She had no idea the god of increase was worshipped here in the south as well.
“Your master apologizes if the mosaic shocks you,” Erik translated. “He recently acquired this property and hasn't had time to redecorate. Apparently the previous owner commissioned it as a portrait of himself. I can only guess the artist intended to flatter him.”
“I'm not shocked,” Valdis said. “I assume that's the way all men see their own member.”
Erik laughed again, the deep rumbling sound sending shivers of pleasure over her. Damian frowned at him and barked an order.
“Greek only from now on,” Erik said.
Valdis nodded and followed Damian down one of the long corridors of green stone. Thessalian marble, Damian explained. Arches opened on either side—to the open air courtyard on her left and into sumptuously appointed rooms on the right. When they came to an angle in the hall, Damian pushed open a door and held it for Valdis to enter.
The polished floor gleamed in shades of pink-veined stone and one wall glittered in a mosaic of nymphs and dryads capering about a vat-sized wine bowl. A sleeping couch occupied the center of the large room. White silk draped round the bower, fluttering like butterfly wings. But as luxurious as the appointments were, the row of long windows paned with delicate green glass and the open door leading to the shaded portico made Valdis suck in her breath in surprise. Not only was she given a heart-stopping view of the Empress City, glittering in the distance against the deep azure of the sea, but there was no guard at her door for the first time since she was named a slave.
She still had no place to run, no way to take advantage of this new development, but the mere appearance of freedom set her heart dancing.
“Thank you,” she said, turning to smile at Damian.
“I'm glad this room pleases you. But do not imagine we are here to enjoy ourselves. Your training will commence immediately and you will work hard every day.”
“I earn freedom if learn?” she said in what she knew was less than fluid Greek.
Damian nodded. “That is my promise. Varangian, take her into the courtyard for her lesson.”
The two Nordics glide away in their long-legged gaits. The courtyard would be perfect. Erik Heimdalsson would have the quiet needed to tutor the girl and the eyes of the whole household might be upon them at any time, so no untoward behavior would go unnoticed.
“Yes, Valdis, you may earn your freedom,” Damian said under his breath as his gaze followed the graceful curve of her retreating spine. “But it will be more difficult than you think.”
“Regret, like any other emotion, is a monumental waste of time."
—from the secret journal of Damian Aristarchus
Chapter 7
* * *
“The boy's broken arm seems to have healed cleanly with no lasting ill effects,” Damian's informant told him. “He still rides that stallion of his as recklessly as ever, much to his mother's sorrow.”
“That doesn't trouble me, Onesimus. It only proves his spirit was not broken along with the bone,” Damian said with a sati
sfied nod. “And what of his studies? He still has Lector Epiphanes as his mathematics and polemics tutor, yes?”
“Indeed,” Onesimus said. “I had a full report from Epiphanes. Do be aware that Lector is learned enough, but the man is quite voluble after only a bowl or two of Acacian wine. According to Lector Epiphanes, the lad is as quick with his studies as he is with his riding.”
“Very well. We'll let him stay with his current tutor for at least another year, unless Lector's drinking becomes a problem.” Damian fastened his gaze on the report spread before him on the polished ebony desk. If a flicker of emotion showed in his eyes, he didn't want Onesimus to mark it. “What of the woman?”
“The boy's mother is set upon by a number of suitors, but she seems content to remain a widow. She dotes on her son so, another man would be hard pressed to slip into her life, let alone her bed, though there are those who still try.”
“Who?”
“Marcus Nobelissimus, the thematic governor, for one,” Onesimus said. “Your largess has made the lady a woman of property. A steady stream of income is always of interest to an ambitious politician.”
“Perhaps I shall see that this Nobelissimus finds himself removed to Gaul when the time comes for his next appointment,” Damian mused. “She doesn't encourage him?”
“The lady is the soul of propriety.”
Damian smiled. He remembered a time when Calysta was anything but proper. There’d been one balmy night when she slipped out of her father's villa and met him in the ruins of the temple of Eros. Together they offered a fitting sacrifice to the defunct god of lust on that soft summer evening. If he let himself, he could still taste the sweet saltiness of her skin.
“She's been well then? How did she appear to you?” Damian reminded himself that the image he carried of her was veiled by time's shroud.
