by Mia Marlowe
The general cleared his throat with a growl. “I'm not going to let a bunch of fat aunties steal the march on the Guard. Not without a fight. You have no idea what Aristarchus suspects?”
“He's closemouthed as a corpse when it suits him.”
“Then we'll have to dig up the information on our own.” Quintilian leaned back and folded his arms across his beefy chest. “But time is against us. It's no easy task to buy a reliable set of ears and eyes in some places. If it's taken Aristarchus months to arrange a plan, how could we expect to accomplish it in less?”
Erik gave his beard a thoughtful stroke, as if trying to think up a course of action. “I suppose you could tell Mahomet that you've caught wind of an assassination plot against him. If, as you say, he's a leading man in the silk guild, such a threat has the ring of truth. Isn't it often said that men of power attract enemies like a dung pile does flies?”
Quintilian grunted his agreement with the earthy comparison. “This Mahomet can probably think of at least a handful of traders he's cheated over the years who would shed no tears over his untimely demise. Good plan. Puts him off balance. I like it. Then I could offer to place a member of the Varangian Guard in his household to oversee matters of security till we've run the plot against him to earth.”
“A good idea, General, but you’d better insist rather than offer. Couch it as a mark of Imperial favor and Mahomet would be unable to refuse.”
The general nodded. “And I have just the man for the job.”
Erik held his breath.
“You'll have to put off getting back to your cohort for a while longer, I'm afraid. A month, maybe less if you do your job quickly.”
“Me? I'm no spy.”
“No, you're not, which makes you perfect for this. Mahomet will never suspect there's a worm in this apple even after he takes a bite.” The general dipped his stylus in the ink pot on his desk and started scratching out Erik's orders. “With your ear for languages, you'll be picking up some Arabic, I shouldn't wonder. I'll expect weekly reports, oftener if something urgent arises. Whatever you do, don't let Aristarchus realize you're there on my account.”
“I doubt he'll think that.” Damian would know full well Erik was there for Valdis.
“Your time with Aristarchus was well spent. Congratulations, Heimdalsson,” the general said as he sifted sand over the parchment to set the ink on his missive. “You've learned to think like a Roman.”
Erik tucked the scroll into the pouch at his waist and saluted the general. Thinking like a Roman? It wasn't a compliment he sought, but the weapon of guile fit as neatly to his hand as the handle of his ax these days. Deception wasn't a blade he felt comfortable using, but if it put him within sight of Valdis, it was a sword he was willing to sling.
* * *
Damian burst through his apartment doors rubbing his hands together with barely disguised glee. “The deed is done, Valdis. You are one step closer to freedom.”
Her belly fluttered at this news. She'd been sold as Damian planned. Since the day she'd had her last public spell, she'd known this was coming. Now that it was upon her, all she could think was that she was about to enter a harem, a silk-lined prison from which few women ever emerge.
“You've agreed on a price?”
Damian smiled. “Even more than I hoped. I won't even have to dip into the emperor's treasury to pay my agents for their work in making sure your prophecy came true. Mahomet will be paying for his own windfall, so to speak.”
Valdis had been instructed to predict an obscene profit for the silk merchant. Damian held up all the dhows bearing the luxurious fabric in specious customs inspections. All except the ones consigned to Mahomet. For a few days, the Arab trader enjoyed an effective monopoly on the cloth of choice and was able to charge exorbitant prices for his wares. Several other members of the silk guild were beggared, but Damian counted that an acceptable loss when so much was at stake.
“And what of Erik's suggestion?”
“That you remain a virgin to ensure you retain your powers? Yes, yes, he's agreed to all that even though it makes little sense to him.” Damian bustled around the room brimming with nervous energy. “After all, in Habib Ibn Mahomet's homeland, as here, a woman lives to give birth to a son. The fact that you will not even have a chance to demonstrate your fertility will make you an object of pity among the other women of the zenana.”
Valdis cared little for that so long as she could save herself from bedding a stranger.
There'd been no time to bid Erik farewell when he parted company with her master's entourage; no time to arrange for her to find him if she finally managed to win her freedom.
No, not if. When, she told herself with sternness. Nothing would interfere with that goal.
“Hurry, Valdis. You can stare into space later. You've packing to do.” Damian directed Lentulus to gather Valdis's wardrobe into a large chest. He loaded the pots of paint and her silver comb into a smaller chest himself. “Publius is sending a sedan chair for you and he expects you to present yourself ready to go by sunset.”
Valdis rose and mechanically went about the business of packing her belongings. She realized with a start that as Damian's slave, she'd amassed an amazing cache of goods—beautiful pallas made of the sheerest silk, soft kid-soled sandals with gilt leather straps, and an amazing assortment of jewelry. She refused a nose ring and Damian didn't force her, but she delighted in the tinkling earrings that dropped from her lobes, the gold bangles on her wrists and ankles and multiple rings on her fingers and toes.
It was all part of the illusion. If Valdis was to be taken for a woman of power and importance, she must dress the part. Even little Loki had been fitted out with an extravagant collar crusted with gems. She'd trained herself to stare at the flashing lights sparking from the dog's collar to bring about a spell when Damian signaled for one. So far, it had worked each time she tried.
Damian was right. Knowledge was power. She knew the trigger that caused her fits. One of them, anyway. Repetitive flashes of bright light. She hoped never to discover more, because this one was easy to avoid. Loki still seemed able to sense the onset of a seizure. He always growled and tugged at her hemline before she slipped into the abyss of the sickness.
She picked up the little dog and hugged him till he squirmed. "I will be able to take him, won't I?"
“Of course,” Damian said. “I told Publius the dog was your familiar and Loki will be allowed to stay with you in the zenana. I hope you realize what a concession that was. It was almost harder than the virginity clause, because followers of the Prophet consider a dog to be a dirty animal. You’ll have to keep him away from the other women.”
“Loki is cleaner than most people.” Valdis dropped a quick kiss on the little dog's muzzle and set him down. “Thank you. I will be grateful for his company in a strange place.”
“You won't be completely alone,” Damian said. “I will still visit you. I convinced Publius that I must administer a special infusion of herbs to you each day in order for you to be able to control your powers. Since I will maintain contact with you, I suppose there was no need for you to learn to read and write Greek.”
“And yet I'm glad I did,” Valdis said as she picked up the leather-bound volume of poetry. She flipped the thin sheets of vellum till her eye fell on the poem Erik had recited to her.
The delights of a thousand dreams await within,
Yet I stand rooted outside your window,
Trembling like a tamarind in the breeze.
Unable to move,
Unable to breathe,
Hoping for one flutter of your curtain.
Would he ever wait for her again? She put the book down.
“Take that with you, if it pleases you,” Damian said.
“You mean it?” Valdis snatched the book up again. Of all the treasures her master had heaped upon her, this book was the most precious. Costly to produce, difficult to obtain, owning a book was such a mark of wealth, even some ill
iterates who had amassed enough disposable income made a great show of purchasing one. “You would truly give this to me?”
Damian shrugged. “What use do I have for love poetry? Read it to your new master, if you would like to please him. Surely Chloe has taught you that being alluring while being unobtainable is the most powerful aphrodisiac employed by womankind.”
Valdis nodded. Even the stylized hand movements of the dance Chloe had taught her mimicked alternating invitation and refusal. “Come here—go away” was a persistent theme, a method of seduction all harem favorites mastered. Even though a master might take his women by force on occasion, a man of refinement such as Habib Ibn Mahomet would surely prefer at least the pretense of courtship and overcoming maidenly defenses by his own amatory skills.
“Now that I think on it, literacy in a woman is something Mahomet has yet to encounter,” Damian said. “It will set you apart and place you in his confidence. Make use of it.”
Valdis nodded. She would do what Damian asked. It was her only path to freedom. The only chance to be with Erik in honor instead of living as fugitives. She finished packing with efficiency.
“The sedan chair has arrived,” Lentulus announced as he peered out the window.
Damian escorted her to the Imperial gates.
“I'm surprised you would see me off yourself,” Valdis said as the gilded gates closed behind her for the final time.
“It is vital that Publius's servants be impressed with your importance from the outset. Begin as you mean to continue, Valdis. Let no one show you disrespect. Guard your stature in the harem as fiercely as a lioness,” Damian advised in a whisper; then as he handed her into the waiting chair, he raised his voice. “I will visit you on the morrow to deliver your medicinal herbs, Valdis Ivorsdottir. Your powers have been of inestimable value to me. Go with your gods.”
Damian's benediction gave her no comfort. She was entering a strange man's home under a pretext of lies with the intent to spy. Valdis doubted any of her gods would approve of the charade she was about to begin, with the possible exception of Loki, the shape-shifting trickster. And didn't the sagas teach that he would be the one responsible for Ragnarok, the battle at the end of the world that heralds the Doom of the Gods?
As Valdis jostled along in the sedan chair, her stomach curdled. If only the most unreliable god in the Nordic pantheon would lend his blessing to her deception, it boded ill for the entire venture. Either she must seek a different mode of life ... or a different god.
“The falconer never knows if his training worked, till the moment he first lets the bird fly free."
—from the secret journal of Damian Aristarchus
Chapter 16
* * *
Valdis had ridden in a sedan chair only once before, right after Damian purchased her off the auction dais, her feet still bleeding from the beating they'd taken with the bastinado and her soul in a state of profound shock. That day the bizarre city careened past her jumbled senses in swirls of color and sound that made little sense to her dazed mind. The calm man who'd bought her had spoken soothingly, if unintelligibly, to her. Only his steadying presence that day had kept her from screaming at the madness around her.
But this time Damian was not with her. She was alone in the cushioned, curtained chair, save for the small black dog on her lap, a slave borne along by four other slaves. She kept herself veiled as Damian had instructed, but she couldn't resist the opportunity to peep out of the enclosure to see where she was headed.
They trotted through the bustling market, where vendors touted their wares in strident superlatives. Exotic spices tickled Valdis's nose. Her bearers took her by way of colonnaded forums and splashing fountains, then turned off the Mese, the main thoroughfare, into a residential district. There was no code in the city requiring homes of a certain degree of luxury to be situated near each other. A hovel and a mansion might coexist uneasily on the same narrow street. But as her bearers started an uphill climb, Valdis noted that hovels were few in this district.
A long alley curved between the white marble buildings and for just a moment, considered leaping from the chaise and making a run for it. If her feet hadn't been damaged on her last ride through Miklagard, it's what she would have done without a moment's hesitation.
Now she was wiser. Though she understood the language and had a better chance at flight than she would have had when she first stepped off the dock, Valdis knew more of the dangers, as well. Miklagard was not all showy palaces and gilt statues. It was also pox-ridden brothels and rotting tenements and opium-addicted cutpurses and thugs. The city was a large carnivorous beast that regularly ate its own young.
But she would not be one of its victims. She was gaining the safety of a harem, a coveted place of preferment for many women, Chloe had told her. It still seemed a type of prison to Valdis. She looked up at the open sky. Would the first peeping stars seem different this evening once the bars of the harem swung shut behind her?
She didn't have long to puzzle over it, for suddenly they reached their destination. The chair turned under a sheltered portico and through a set of wide double doors that seemed to open for them by magic. The porter closed them behind Valdis with a resounding thud.
This new gaol had iron bars after all.
“There you are. Finally.”
Damian had told her the fat eunuch who ruled Habib Ibn Mahomet's harem was called Publius. Damian regarded him as something of a fool, but he assured Valdis that Publius had a reputation for treating his charges as if he were the hen and they his chicks. He puffed up to the sedan chair and proffered his meaty hand.
“Come, Valdis, let's have a look at you.”
He waddled around her once, making appraising noises. “Not bad,” he muttered under his breath. “I've worked with far less. Let's see if we can remove some of the road dirt before you're presented, shall we?”
He clapped his hands together and a veritable swarm of servants appeared to gather up Valdis's luggage and haul it after them.
Valdis followed the eunuch's lumbering pace with mincing steps as Chloe had instructed her. The Imperial Palace was opulent at every turn, but Mahomet's house exuded its own brand of excess. The house was a large three-story affair organized around a central courtyard garden where hibiscus bloomed around a deep pool. Vines from the roof garden tumbled down a trellis in one corner. Any unpleasant stench from the city was smothered by the fragrance of flowers within this great house.
“You'll be on the third floor with the rest of the women,” Publius said as he began the grueling process of mounting the curving stairs.
The rest of the women. Valdis drew herself up to her full height. "I'm sure the chief eunuch informed you of the requirement my power places on me.”
Publius nodded and swiped the perspiration that gathered on the back of his bull-like neck. “You'll only be housed within the zenana for your protection. Rest assured, after your recent prophecy came true, your gifts in that regard are uppermost in our master’s mind. Nothing will be done to disturb your powers.” He frowned down at Loki. “Are you certain the dog is absolutely necessary?”
Valdis picked him up and held him close. “Before each visitation from the realm of spirits, Loki announces their coming. I need his warning to prepare myself to receive their messages.”
When a fit was about to claim his mistress, Loki hadn't failed to warn of its onset. After consulting with an Egyptian physician, Damian explained to her that some animals do seem to be able to sense the advent of a seizure. The doctor hypothesized that some minute change in the human's natural odor must be the reason, but Damian rejected this notion as pure fantasy. Whatever the reason, when Loki sounded his alarm, Valdis knew to lie down to avoid injuring herself in the throes of the fit.
“The dog's presence is vital.”
“Very well, you may keep it in your private apartments,” Publius said, making the sign against evil with one hand, as if Loki were a demon instead of a small scruffy stray. “Jus
t be sure to keep it out of the master’s sight. He despises all animals except his horse.”
Armed with that cryptic insight into the character of the man who now presumed to be her master, Valdis climbed the stairs behind Publius. The eunuch was panting by the time they reached the top floor.
“This is the zenana common room.” He waved a flabby arm toward the spacious open area dotted with couches and ottomans. Lustrous silk draped the walls and festooned the columns. Nearly two dozen feminine faces gazed at her in open appraisal. “These are master's wives and concubines. There are too many to introduce you to right now, but they will make your acquaintance hereafter, you may be certain. You may unveil yourself here, if you wish. In accordance with our custom, you will cover your face when you are in other portions of the house.”
Might as well satisfy their curiosity, Valdis thought as she reached up to lift the sheer fabric from the lower half of her face.
“How very ordinary,” she heard one of the older women say. “And tall as a man. Habib Ibn Mahomet is no Roman to favor catamites and beardless young men. What's gotten into your head, Publius, to bring this ... this giantess into our midst?”
“Take no offense,” Publius murmured. “Haidah is the master's oldest wife and has been out of favor for so long, no one can even remember the last time she was requested.” Then he raised his voice. “Sheath your claws, Haidah. This is Valdis, the seeress you've heard so much about. She is not a member of the zenana, per se, but will be staying with you for propriety's sake as long as she bides under the master's protection.”
Once it became clear that Valdis was a threat to no one, the women's expressions changed to a wide assortment of emotions ranging from disinterest to curiosity to open friendliness. But Valdis had no opportunity for conversation. Publius was already leading her away down a long balustraded corridor that was open on one side to the courtyard below.
