"I am Anatol," he said in a thick accent. "I bring a message from our mistress, Lady Krista. She bade me hurry-please, I must make my way swiftly before anyone notices that I am gone."
Hearing him speak, Anastasia knew that he was very young, perhaps only thirteen or so. Her mind considered and discarded a dozen replies before settling for the simplest one. She would investigate this matter of Lady Krista at a later date. "We will not keep you," she said, touching the boy's hand. "What is the message?"
Anatol ducked his head nervously and drew a scrap of parchment from a pocket of his vest. He pressed it into her hand, and she felt his long nails, tapered and sharp, press into her wrist. She met his eyes again, smiling, and inclined her head. "Tell Lady Krista that I think of her often, and miss her company." She nodded to the guardsmen. "Open the door and let the boy go. He must hurry."
"Thank you, noble lady." Then he was gone, slithering out the door like a black streak, and she could hear him running, his feet soft on the stones of the street. Anastasia turned from the door, unrolling the scrap of paper. A vague foreboding threatened, inchoate fears and worry clouding around her.
My lady, said the paper in the brisk angular letters that Krista favored. I am with the Prince, who has returned to the city. We will be leaving soon for the South. He says Cumae, but I do not believe it. He is dangerous, but you must tread carefully, for he has powerful servants. He will not abandon his purpose.
Anastasia hissed, feeling a deadly weight settle around her heart. The stairs to her study seemed even steeper now, and she felt terribly alone. Krista, Tros, Thyatis-all were gone, and she felt the weight of their absence keenly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Mile Marker, Constantinople
Nicholas pushed through the crowd, a garland of flowers twisted around his head. The thunder of the mob of people in the Forum of Constantine rolled over him like the sea. He had never seen so many people in one place before in his life. The energy of the crowd-its delirious good humor and relief-was infectious, filling him like the finest wine. Vladimir, his dark face grinning fit to burst, pushed along behind him. The Northerner had a blonde on his shoulders; her pale, plump legs tucked in his armpits. She was laughing, wine spilling down her chin and soaking her blouse. Nicholas had a girl too, but she was pressed close to his back, her slim hands in his belt. The crowd surged around them like a riptide, pushing them away from the line of columns that ringed the Forum.
Nicholas looked over his shoulder, catching Vladimir's eye. The Northerner's hands were curled around the blonde's smooth white thighs. Nicholas jerked his head, shouting, and Vladimir grinned back, mouthing, I can't hear you! Waves of sound battered them, drowning all else. Somewhere, across the vast circle of the Forum, lines of victorious soldiers were marching, their armor bright and shining, their heads held high, their spears and lances sparkling in the sun.
Of all days, the gods had blessed this one. The dreary clouds of winter and the haze of the campfires of the Avars had been blown away by a southern wind. The sun rode high, shining down upon a jubilant city, summoning the populace to the greatest revel that anyone had ever seen. The Emperor, crowned in majesty and favored by victory, would enter the city this day to be greeted by his people in unrestrained joy. The army, hardened by war and laden with loot, had been unloading from the fleet for three days. The civil authorities, however, had begged the Emperor to delay his entrance until they could prepare.
Now he entered, and the city met him with open arms.
Nicholas squeezed around the side of a heavy cart filled with jugs of wine. The merchant was selling them out of the back of the wagon in job lots, passing them over the heads of the crowd that thronged about him. Coins sparkled in the air, cast by thirsty citizens. The merchant was laughing, his face red and flushed, while his assistants-two scrawny boys-scrambled to catch the denarii. Nicholas reached a wall, marked with the painted sign of a tailor's shop, and turned, taking the redhead in his arms. She smiled up at him, her full lips moving, saying something. Nicholas smiled back and shrugged. Over the din of a hundred thousand people shouting, singing, releasing all the pent-up joy and jubilation at their delivery from their enemies, he couldn't make out a word anyone said. He kissed her, instead, feeling her press tight against his body, her breasts firm and round against his chest. She dug her hands into his hair, dragging him down to lose himself in her sweet lips.
Vladimir banged into him, pressing his mouth close to Nicholas' ear. "This one says she does not live so far away!" the Northerner was shouting at the top of his voice.
Nicholas nodded, his hands under the redhead's tunic, warm on her bare skin.
Vladimir turned away, the blonde pointing down the street and waving the wineskin like a banner.
Reluctantly, Nicholas followed, pushing the redhead in front of him, though he kept his hands on her stomach. Leg in leg, they squeezed forward through the crowd.
Flowers and a blizzard of cut colored paper rained down from the balconies above, along with the ringing of bells and gongs and the stentorian wail of trumpets and bucinas. Constantinople would not sleep tonight.
– |"Please, my lord, you must come out and greet the crowds-you must make the sacrifice of the bull. The gods are watching!"
Heraclius flinched, seeing the round face of priest Bonus peering in at him. The Emperor slid back to the other side of the litter, even that simple movement bringing tears of pain to his eyes. Outside the wicker-and-gold conveyance, he could hear the rolling shouts of a mighty assembly. He knew, even though he had passed into the city closed in the darkness of the litter, borne by twenty of his guardsmen on a great platform, that a vast throng crowded the Forum. The thought of stepping out, of feeling the terrible pain in his legs, of feeling the dreadful weakness shoot through his body, unmanned him. The Emperor of the East bit at his hand, trying to keep from crying out in rage and fear at his helplessness. The knuckles were scarred already.
"Avtokrator." Rufio's blunt, scarred face replaced the worried visage of the priest. The centurion was well used to this by now, having carried the Emperor by force of will from Cilicia and the high pass of the gates. "I will be at your side, as will the faithful guard. We will see that you do not fall."
The centurion's black eyes were fierce. Heraclius grimaced, seeing the challenge there. He almost wept, feeling the fear of pain clawing at his will. This should have been the greatest of days, his redemption for the long years of struggle and disaster that had followed his overthrow of the madman Phocas. Instead, he cowered in a litter, afraid to step out into the sunlight. Afraid, though he did not admit it, to be seen by Bonus or any other man. His lower body was distended, swollen with this malignant edema. He could barely walk and could no longer suffer anything but the softest fabric upon his skin. His legs were a gruesome parody of the firm, muscular shape of his youth. Gray and stretched, ballooned out like overstuffed sausages.
But this was the day of days, he railed at his mind, at the fear. This is my triumph, as no emperor of Rome has ever held! Persia is thrown down, after centuries of struggle! This is my day, my blessed day!
Rufio, snarling under his breath, half climbed into the litter and wedged a thick muscled arm behind the Emperor. Heraclius cried out, whimpering, and the centurion, his face a mask, bodily lifted him out of the litter. The sun was westering, and the slanting light fell on the face of the Emperor as he emerged, here in the great open space of the temple atrium. Marble pillars faced with gold towered around them, a forest of majesty. They stood on the steps of the Temple of Sol Invictus, that which had once been-in the youth of the city-the abode of Zeus Pankrator. It stretched before them, arcades of marble a hundred feet on a side. Within, in the rectangular apse of the temple, the brilliant disc of the god shone in the late afternoon sun. Thousands of noblemen, their wives, the priests, embassies from the tribes beyond the Empire stood waiting, crowded behind ranks of iron-chested guardsmen. All were silent.
Heraclius put down his feet,
swallowing a gasp of pain. From the litter at the entrance to the temple to the gleaming marble altar below the sun disc was a distance of 120 feet. A thick purple carpet, edged with golden thread, lay before him. He took a step, the guardsmen close behind him, Rufio's left hand under his arm, unobtrusive and strong as a bar of steel. He leaned into it, trying to take the weight off of his legs. Even so, the pain was blinding. He took another step, unable to even feel the rich luxurious pile of the carpet. His eyes watered, and a thin trail of tears seeped down his cheek. This is my day! he shouted in his mind, trying to override the pain. My day.
He took another step.
– |Her face shrouded in a dark veil of silk, a woman stood at the peak of the little Temple of Hecate Victrix, looking down upon the murmuring crowd below. Though the rays of the sun fell upon her, gilding the dark rich fabrics that she wore, painting golden stripes on the black and gray and charcoal of her raiment, she felt wry amusement. The a'ha-tri'tsu children thronged the precincts of the old Acropolis and the grounds of the temples of the young gods, but none marked her, high above them. They were often a blind people. Statues of the goddess lined the roof of the Temple of Hecate, affording the woman cover as she stood quietly, watching their ceremonies.
The roar of noise from the crowds that had surged out into the city streets had woken her, called her forth to this place, the one remnant of her youth that still stood within the confines of the city. She looked down, seeing the pain and agony of this king of the day-people as he staggered to the altar. She smiled, smelling the poison and disease that was upon him. She wondered, shading her eyes from the burning rays of the sun, which of his servants had turned against him. Who had put the golden droplets in his wine or the shining white crystals in his meat? His fear was rank in her fine white nostrils, even at this distance.
A doomed man, she thought, finding a small pleasure in his agony. Another soon to pass from this way station on the Wheel.
The dark lady turned, fading into the shadows behind the lithe statues of the goddesses. Her pale blue-white eyes blinked, and she smiled. With so many out of their homes thronging the streets, there would be good hunting once darkness fell. She smiled, and the tip of a pink tongue appeared between her sharp white teeth. The pain curdled in her blood, but soon she would have surcease from it, respite in the panting fear of a dying day-man. Like a ghost, she passed among the statues and descended a stair that led down into the nave of Hecate's Temple and thence to the cellars below.
– |Nicholas staggered down the hallway of the apartment, his head spinning with excess. Behind him, in the room with the balcony, the redhead was sprawled amid the tangled sheets and blankets of her too-comfortable bed. She was snoring, overcome by exhaustion. For a moment, as he groped in the darkness, trying to find the edge of the door, he remembered. Then his fingers found it, rough and poorly planed, and he made his way into the stairwell. The insula was a three-story building of cheap brick and half-cured wood quite close to the western end of the Hippodrome. It was not an elegant district-where else could two attractive young seamstresses find lodgings for themselves without undue comment?
Weaving down the stairs, Nicholas felt pleasantly exhausted, the memory of the woman, her skin gleaming with a sheen of sweat, her mouth hot on his, playing back in his memory. He smelled the common privy on the ground floor and managed to keep-by blind luck-from braining himself on the low doorway. He pushed aside a heavy curtain, hung on copper rings from a crossbar, and stepped into the common area between the washroom on his left and the toilets on his right.
There was a sound, an odd moan, and he turned, one hand fumbling for the hilt of his sword.
He had no sword; Brunhilde was upstairs, hanging in her leather and cloth sheath on the head of the big carved bed. Not good, his mind started to say, and then he stopped, eyes widening.
Vladimir was in the washroom, his lean, muscled form naked but for a loincloth, bent over the still body of the blonde. In the flickering light of a night lantern in the hallway between the two rooms, her flesh had turned a pasty white. Nicholas hissed in surprise and backed up. Vladimir turned, his dark eyes enormous and gleaming like the moon with the reflection of the lantern. There was blood streaking his chest and his hands. Behind him, the girl lay half in and half out of the big stone washtub, her hair drifting in the water, the side of her throat a bloody mass of skin.
Vladimir blinked, his eyes focusing, the snarl fading from his face. Nicholas watched in sick fascination as he wiped the clotted blood from his mouth and his bright white teeth. In the dim light, the long narrow head and wiry body seemed streaked with fur. Even the man's hands were twisted and strange.
"Vlad?" Nicholas felt behind him for the edge of the door, his mind, dulled by wine and exhaustion, groping for words. "What happened?"
Vladimir shook his head and then looked around, awareness entering his eyes. He frowned, confused, and put out a hand on the doorjamb of the washroom. "Where am I?" The Northerner's voice was thick, his accent coming back. "There was a woman with hair like pale gold…"
Nicholas cursed, a vile string of words he had once heard a Roman sea captain use, seeing the sleek gray ships of the Scandians closing on his fat merchantman in the waters off the Batavian shore. He stepped forward and grabbed his friend by the arm. "Come on," he snapped, "we have to get out of here."
Vladimir nodded, still confused, but he followed along readily, taking the steps up to the second floor two and three at a time, like Nicholas. The mercenary's mind was spinning, desperately trying to figure a way out of this fix. All we can do, he realized as he skidded to a halt in front of the redhead's bedroom, is slip away in the night and hope that this one is too drunk to remember what we look like.
He snatched up Vladimir's breeches from the other bed and threw them at the Northerner. "Get dressed, we've little time."
Vladimir nodded dumbly and began putting on his pants. Blessedly, the redhead was still snoring, sound asleep. Blood, dripping from Vlad's chest, spattered on the floor in tiny red dots.
– |"Get out!" Heraclius' voice rose in a scream, and his arm, still strong, hurled a heavy porphyry vase at the priest. The holy father fled, and the vase shattered on the facing of the wall by the door. The Emperor cast about for another missile. The other priests who had made to enter his chamber also fled, seeing his intent. It was dark in his chambers. He had knocked down or put out all of the lights save one guttering candle. In the darkness he could not see his legs, or the bulbous protrusion of his lower body. In the dark, if he lay still, he could still believe that he was a whole man again. Weeping, he crawled back onto the bed, dragging his useless feet. Even those movements, jarring as he rolled onto the silk sheets, sent jagged spears of pain through his abdomen. His breath was hoarse, but he managed to turn over.
The canopy of the bed was a dim shape above him. If the room were lit, he knew that it would be rich velvet, a cerulean blue, like the sky. Now he could distinguish nothing. He could hear voices raised in fear and anger outside, in the hallway. His councillors were arguing among themselves. The Emperor made to rise up, for he could hear the dissention and distrust in their voices. Only his will had bound them together before, and now the bonds that tied the state together would begin to fray.
His leg twinged, and he lost his breath. The pain washed over him, and he shuddered. He lay back down in the quiet darkness.
After a time, the voices quieted and went away. The Emperor dozed, feeling some surcease from his fear in dreams and fantasies.
"My lord?" Heraclius raised his head. It was Rufio-the only one who did not fear him, save his brother Theodore. The scarred face of the centurion was a jarring sight, his dark eyes in shadow. The man was carrying a lantern, half shuttered. In the light of the oil flame, he seemed ominous. "My lord, Empress Martina is outside. She wishes to see you. Shall I let her in?"
"No!" Heraclius blurted before he could think. But the fear was there, and a terrible shame washed around him. "No, good Rufio
, send her away. Tell her I will come to her when this… this affliction has passed. Let me sleep, just for a little while. I will see her in the morning, I am sure of it."
Rufio's face was stolid, but Heraclius thought he saw a flicker of distaste in the man's eyes. The Emperor knew that his voice held the edge of a whine in it, and he loathed himself even more. But the centurion turned, and went away, taking the lantern with him. The darkness returned, cool and soothing, and Heraclius surrendered himself to his dreams again.
– |Nicholas sat on the edge of his bed, Brunhilde bare on a towel on his knees. He held a whetstone in one hand, and oil in the other. While he worked, keeping just the right edge to the sword, he listened.
"It comes upon us all-the people of my tribe-when the hunger grows too great. The pain, you see, the pain can become too much." Vladimir's voice was low and filled with shame. The Northerner was sitting opposite, on his own bunk. Nicholas, not trusting the night, had lit all of the candles he could find, and they clustered on the tiny wooden table like a forest of stars. Their smoke, sweet with the smell of honey, curled toward the ceiling. On any other night he would have thrown the wooden shutters of the window wide, but now-with the image of the dead girl in the washtub floating behind his eyes-he did not. They were latched and locked.
"I did not think it would happen here… but I drank too much wine. I am sorry, my friend."
Nicholas looked up, his eyes cold and guarded. Vladimir had cleaned up in a public fountain, washing the crimson stains from his chest and face. The crowds that danced in the streets had not marked him, no more than any other man nursing an incipient hangover in this city of its millions. "When this hunger comes," he said, his words bitten out, "can you choose who to take? Can you sate this thirst before you lose control? Can you drink just a little?"
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