Barbarian's Soul (29 page)

Bran frowned. “How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

Bran’s gut tightened. The dangers were dire enough, but for a young girl? In this depraved Roman world? “This woman, this Miriam. She took you in?” Or had she used her to her advantage? The smile that came to Adria’s face lessened his fear.

“Yes, she did, though she was a widow with six children of her own. It was a burden to her.” She gave him a sideways glance. “I did what I could to lessen the burden.”

By thievery. But as he took in the squalor, the scarce resources, imagined a woman alone feeding a family of eight? Would he not have done as much himself?

You have done as much and more, to survive.

The realization of just how self-righteous he’d been hit Bran like a boulder to the chest. Yes, he had suffered, his sister, his clansmen had suffered. But there were others who did, too, each doing what they needed to get through life. Adria had done what he had—survived.

From the corner of his eye he witnessed a beggar reach up from where he sat crouched on the walkway and snatch a passing merchant’s purse. By the time the man turned his scathing gaze on the cripple, the purse was well concealed beneath his rags and the man was moaning his plea for alms.

Bran kept his balance as Adria came to an abrupt stop in front of him. He tightened his hold on her hand, drew her back against him and joined her in looking up at the four story tenement. It was an unremarkable building, made of mud brick and timber, its varying levels obviously having been added on over the course of years. As ramshackle as it was, it still looked better than the dilapidated surroundings. “This is your house?”

Adria nudged him with her elbow. “No, it is my home.”

He made no reply as she led the way inside. To his surprise, there was a small courtyard in an open space around which the building rose. A cracked fountain dominated the central area. Women of varying ages scooped up bowls of water for cooking or buckets for washing the clothes that hung from ropes strung across the end of the space. Children scampered around, playing with a pair of mongrel pups. For all its poverty it was a very domestic scene.

Adria raised her hand in greeting to a young woman who peeled a bowl of turnips nestled in her lap. “Hello, Lucia!”

The dark-haired woman looked up, her smile fading as she saw Adria and it wasn’t because she was in the company of an obvious foreigner. No, Bran recognized fear for what it was.

Adria looked puzzled and hurt. But she smiled weakly and started up the stairs. Bran glanced back over his shoulder and saw the residents in the courtyard scurrying over to Lucia, whispering excitedly, casting worried looks after them.

Bran scanned the area as they climbed the flights of stairs. Something did not feel right, and when a burst of red flashed across his vision it took everything in him not to throw Adria over his shoulder and seek cover. The warning faded, but not the prickle of unease on the back of his neck.

Adria’s eyes took on a glow of excitement as they reached the topmost floor. Her cheeks were flushed and her breath short from the exertion of the eight flights of stairs. The happiness faded from her eyes as she looked at him. “What is it? What is wrong?”

Bran shrugged his shoulder and scanned the small hallway again. “I am not certain.” That much was true. His sight only indicated danger, it never shared anything useful such as what type of danger, who might pose the danger and how to kill the threat. He could hardly explain such things to her. He shook his head and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “It is nothing, I’m sure. Just the quiet is all.”

She looked at him with solemn eyes. “Do you have visions like your sister?”

Bran looked at her askance. Before he could respond she spoke.

“Can you see the future like Bryna? Does it involve Linus?”

He frowned at the anxiety laced within her words. “Linus? Why would I have visions of Linus?”

Adria quickly averted her gaze. “No reason.”

Something was indeed not right.

Adria knocked on the rough hewn door before swinging it open. “Miriam?”

The apartment was empty. Bran suspected it had never had much furniture in it to begin with, but what little was left was either overturned or smashed to bits on the floor. A shredded heap against one wall may have been baskets at some point. Adria dropped his hand and picked her way around piles of ripped pillows and coverlets wadded into a sodden mess. Adria’s face paled. Bran followed her gaze and pressed his lips together at the dark crimson stains on the bed.

“Get out!”

Bran was beside Adria in two steps, positioned his body in front of her which earned him a strong shove from behind. He allowed her to step beside him but no further.

“I said, get out!” repeated the balding man in the doorway.

“Lycus,” said Adria, “it is I, Adria.”

The man propped gnarled fists on his hips and spit on the floor. “I know it’s you. We have no business with the likes of you.”

Bran saw Adria’s brows furrow in confusion. “What has happened?” she demanded. “Where is Miriam?”

A flash of pain displaced the man’s anger. “She’s left.”

“What? Why?” Adria shook her head. “I’ve not been gone so long.” She clenched her jaw. “Your rent increases have not gone into effect.”

Bran felt a twinge of regret. He had forced her to stay with him for a month, kept her from her world, from her family.

Lycus’ anger returned. “Perhaps if you’d been here, she wouldn’t have had to leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some thugs came looking for Adria, the thief. Questioned every one in the
insulae.
Didn’t take too many
questions
for someone to point out Miriam’s rooms.” He looked away, his rheumy eyes filled with moisture. “The manner of asking was not pleasant.”

“Tiege,” Adria whispered in a horrified voice.

Lycus gave a curt nod. “So we found out later, after they beat Miriam.”

Adria gasped and if not for Bran’s support he believed she would have stumbled.

“Is she...was she...”

Lycus glowered.

“Answer her!” Bran snarled.

The landlord cast a belligerent eye at Bran and must have decided he did not wish to die. “She survived. The bastards finally decided she was telling the truth when she said you’d not been living here, had abandoned them weeks before.”

Adria’s face crumpled, her troubled eyes reflecting the same guilt Bran knew so well, the guilt she had chastised him for holding. Now was not the time to point out the similarities. Not when her heart was so obviously broken.

Not when Tiege and his bastards might return at any moment, alerted by others who felt as Lycus did.

“Come,
agara
,” he whispered. “We must leave.”

Adria allowed him to lead her from the rooms. Bran could feel her trembling and when they reached the first set of stairs, he scooped her into his arms, ignored her weak protests and carried her down to the courtyard.

Bran hesitated. He wanted to keep Adria safe, spare her the brunt of the residents’ anger, a dozen or more of whom blocked their way. Beneath his hands, Adria straightened her shoulders. “I will put you down,” he whispered in her ear, as he set her feet on the ground. “But only because I can defend you better with both hands free.”

“You’re not in the arena,” she bit out.

Bran scanned the group and the high emotion reflected there. “Do not be so certain.”

Adria smoothed back her hair, ran a hand down her dress and spoke to a weathered-faced woman. “Where is Miriam, Sola?”

The woman moved her toothless gums in a chewing motion, stared with bleary eyes at a goat tethered beside her.

“Sola?”

“She is as old as the dirt beneath our feet,” said

Bran. “Perhaps she did not hear you?”

Adria’s jaw clenched. “She hears well enough, especially if coin is involved.”

Sola flicked her gaze to them, then returned to the goat when she saw no silver in hand. Bran hoped the goat spat on her.

Bran stayed close as Adria approached the woman she’d greeted on their arrival.

“Lucia?”

Lucia turned away.

Adria faced the circle of residents. “Demetri? Agnes? Please, Agnes. Do you know where Miriam went?”

Each person in turn either met Adria’s inquiry with sullen silence or a display of scorn. Bran’s anger flared at the hysterical edge in her voice. “
Agara
, come.”

Adria raised her eyes to his, their violet depths bright with tears, tears she had not, nor would she, shed in front of these bastards. Placing a threatening hand on the hilt of his sword, Bran glowered at the cluster of people until they cleared a path for them to leave. Still keeping a wary eye on them, Bran escorted Adria out into the street, vowing that he would kill the master thief for her pain.

“Adria?”

The voice was so soft, Bran almost missed it, but Adria had not. With unerring accuracy Adria moved into the shadow of a nearby alley with him close on her heels, and found a small girl hiding there.

A soft smile curved Adria’s mouth as she knelt down in front of the girl. “Mili! I am so glad to see you.”

Mili smiled shyly, sparing Bran nothing more than a curious glance with eyes as big, brown and beautiful as a doe. He forced himself to ease lest he frighten the child.

“I’m glad to see you too, Adria,” replied the girl. She made a face. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. Grandmother is very well. She says the oranges brought her back from the river Styx.”

“Adria,” he said in a low whisper, kneeling down beside her. “It would be best if we did not delay our departure.”

Mili pointed a small finger at Bran’s chest. “My grandmother says it is not polite to interrupt someone when they are talking. Do you want to act like a barbarian?”

Bran raised both brows as Adria nearly choked on a spurt of laughter. He supposed he could ignore the set down and insult if it eased Adria’s sorrow.

“You’ll have to excuse him, Mili,” she said. “But he is right. The people of the
insulae
are not keen for my presence.”

Mili shook her head, nut-brown curls bouncing. “Because of Miriam?”

Gods, Bran thought, don’t let this child know what had happened.

“She got hurt. Some bad men came and hit her a lot. They made her cry.”

“I know,” Adria said, her voice thick with emotion.

Mili peeked out from the alley, then lowered her voice so that Bran and Adria had to strain to hear her.

“She is well, Adria. My grandmother took care of her until she could get on a pony and leave. She and all of her children left for some place far away.”

Bran felt the tension drain from Adria. He placed a hand on her back and gently rubbed.

Mili chewed on her lower lip. “It is too far away, where she went. I can’t play with her little girls anymore.”

“I know,” Adria answered. “But they are safe and there are lots of other children for you to play with here.”

The depth of compassion in Adria’s voice caused Bran’s chest to constrict.

Mili looked quizzically at Adria. “I could play with you.”

“No,” Adria answered. “I will—” she paused “—I will not return to the...house.”

Bran recognized the emptiness echoed in her words. A loss of home, of family—he looked around the crumbling alley—the loss of one’s sense of self. But she wasn’t alone, he thought, not as long as he had breath in his body.

He would take Adria to Eire.

Chapter Eighteen

A
dria sighed, reveled in her new favored position, on her side, nestled against Bran’s warm body, one leg draped across his firm thigh. She would be content to remain here the rest of her days, making love by dawn’s new light and dusk’s waning. Food and drink would be inconsequential as long as she was in Bran’s arms. She sighed again.  She didn’t have time to lay about in bed.

Not when there was revenge to seek and a confused boy to save.

Her contentment drained away. Her relief at discovering Miriam had survived her ordeal and fled to safety did little to assuage the guilt of causing Tiege’s men to seek out her foster mother. Her chest tightened. If not for her, Miriam would not have been hurt. Fool! Gods, she’d been so arrogant and stupid to believe that the master thief with his vast network of cronies and a burgeoning interest in her skills would not have known where she lived. Information that became all too useful when she publicly humiliated him. Because of her, Miriam might well have been killed.

She would not make the same mistake with Linus.

The youth continued in his secretive ways, avoided Adria as if she had the pox, but he knew better than to be too-long absent from Bran’s attention. Oh, he hadn’t mellowed, had continued to snarl and be argumentative. Adria pressed her lips together. Clever boy, taking advantage of Bran’s distractions. Another pang of guilt pricked at the knowledge she was part of that diversion.

Part of her pushed to be done with it and tell Bran what she knew about Linus’ involvement with the gang. So many different scenarios played out in her mind with that choice and all of them full of danger. The worst was the thought of Bran donning his gladiator persona and attacking the nest of
Vipera.
The monsters were feared and loathed among the plebeians but the authorities would not hesitate to arrest a former slave, a barbarian, for the slaughter of citizens, no matter how nefarious.

Adria pushed that fear from her thoughts.

She shifted and studied Bran. He looked so relaxed in his slumber. Black lashes fanned in a crescent over his bronzed skin, the lines of strain around his full, firm, wonderful mouth erased. Since they had started sharing a bed, his nightmares visited less often. If one made it through, Adria had only to smooth his brow, claim his mouth and the night terror was thwarted. Would the dreams of blood and death return with her departure? Gods, she prayed not.

And she would return to the streets. Once she had Linus back on a safe path, she would disappear. She would never lead Tiege to her family again.