Byzantium's Crown (2 page)

"I'm changing your game," he told the soldiers. "Catch!" He spun the woman toward them. Ironically he bowed to the woman, who wound her arms sinuously about the waist of the nearest soldier. "I am sure these soldiers will . . . amuse you. Unless, of course, they prefer druid hunts—" Another laugh, knife-edged to slash at their male pride, completed his statement. What half-drunken guard—or what prince—would not choose to rut rather than pursue an elusive old druid? And if Alexa had not summoned him . . .

After the group staggered past, Marric beckoned the druid out of hiding.

"If you want to live . . . "

"I would be on the next ship for the Isles of the Mists," the druid agreed. "But where the Goddess' will is concerned, what is my life? So I remain here. By her will, it seems I owe you a debt. So listen to me, prince—"

Marric grasped the man's robe at the throat. A ropy-veined hand restrained him. Marric raised his eyebrows: many had claimed that the druids were strong.

"Look." The old man turned, and Marric turned with him. "Beware the port."

He raised hands over a scummy puddle in the alley. Were there accomplices lurking hereabouts? Marric doubted it, and followed the druid's motions as if this were foreordained.

The druid's lips moved in an invocation to the Goddess Marric had always called Isis. Intrigued, he bent forward to watch; conjury had always amused him. Surely he saw figures forming in the oil on the water.

"By the Hawk!" The priests of Osiris required extensive preparations before they scryed, but this shabby barbarian performed his magic in the streets. Clear images were indeed forming: a man and a woman fighting, light erupting from her form; a body falling; another man, bleeding from many wounds, swinging a blade, then falling near a ship.

A prowling cat wailed in the background, and Marric's dark hair roughened with fear. Was the body that fell Alexa's? Ever since their mother had departed beyond the horizon so shortly after Alexa's birth, his father had kept the imperial heirs close to his side. With Alexander dead, there were few people Marric trusted, and only one whom he loved beyond all measure. Even as a child, he had been so devoted to Alexa that her servants had called him the imperial nurse. Alexa—the thought of his sister-queen waiting for him—had sustained him in his exile. When he gained the throne from Irene, Alexa would share Empire with him as Isis, sister, wife, and mother of the next heir.

"Is that your sister, prince?" The druid chuckled. "Love is like fire. It nourishes, or burns. Take care that yours, and hers, are of the right kind."

All right, so the druid recognized him. All these tricksters have craft. Aillel, a Varangian he had taken a fancy to in childhood, had told him that. But Marric resented his loose talk about Alexa.

"The gods rot you!" He raised a lean fist, and the druid chuckled again.

"I show you but a possible future, and you would wreak the very vengeance on me that you denied those soldiers?"

Stymied by the fearless old man, Marric stepped back. Actually, there had been no real insult given. Except for the vision. But the druid would hardly babble that all over the stews. He glanced down at the puddle again. Tiny figures still struggled atop the water. Now guards were dragging the wounded man to lie across a horse. They rode toward a building that looked like a prison. It was all illusion. Marric brought his foot down across the puddle. He would not believe it.

"Prince, prince, you scorn my warning because you are untested."

Untested? What could the druid know of the strain, the discipline, and the pain Marric had suffered? The last strategos of Cherson had been murdered by his own guard. The one before him had died screaming in a flux unlike any his physicians had ever seen. And the assassination attempt on Marric before Alexander's death had left him debating whether to invoke stark justice on the troops or simply leave half the province's nobles without heirs. He had done neither, dimly aware that such choices represented an irrevocable step from law to tyranny.

And then the news had come of his father's death, Irene's seizure of the regency, and Alexa's summons. Marric's grief had been fresh and silent; his fears for Byzantium, left to Irene's slender, beringed hands, grew overwhelming. He had dallied far too long here, wasting time Alexa might need. She might be thinking him captured now, just like the prince in the vision.

Marric heard himself breathing harshly. Though he had never trembled before army or assassin, now he shook before a man thrice his age, an old man whose neck might be snapped by a single blow—assuming he allowed it to fall. Perhaps the druid was referring to the great tests of centuries ago, in the days of the pharaohs. But the gifts of healing, of power over fire, of summoning the Elder Gods, had fallen from Marric's line. Emperors were no longer initiates into the mysteries, able to command divine powers . . . assuming they ever had been.

What I could do with such powers, Marric thought. Gods . . . His mouth twisted sardonically. After Alexander announced to the court he was a god, he had run mad through the streets and died. No one was fit to be trusted with such gifts.

"You have your life," Marric spoke at last. "Leave me before I regret the gift."

"My life is not yours to give, but the Goddess'. Let her bless you, Prince Marric." The druid raised a hand, sketched a sign that glowed blue-white in the fetid night air, and vanished down the dark street.

Marric shook his head. One sun-bronzed hand went to his throat where an amulet underlay the uniform he wore. No Osiris priest had ever read Marric that swiftly. Even they, he remembered, claimed to respect the druids as supremely gifted prophets. If only half the stories were true, no wonder druids wandered free in Byzantium.

This one knew too much. Marric toyed with hunting him down and silencing him. He smiled mirthlessly. How would he find him? Had the druid even needed Marric's protection? He could easily believe that the old man had used it merely to deliver his warning.

Surely there had been a moment when the druid could have killed Marric. He could still betray him. But something about the old man commanded his reluctant trust. He had no hope but to be rash and trust him. He started off toward the palace again. Rats and the lights of burning trees danced together. Whores, beggars, and guards reeled past, and Marric eluded them all.

Now he could smell the fragrances of the stalls of the perfumers by the palace walls. Here the streets widened and were kept immaculate. Up ahead loomed the portico of the Temple of Isis. Across from it was the Temple of Osiris, her husband and god-brother. Marric began to hear the splashing fountains from within the walls.

Ahead was the gate. Marric waited at a safe distance as the watch changed, and soldiers marched back and forth. Marric was tempted to try to overhear the password. If only he had had more time—in a month or two at most he'd have ridden into Byzantium at the head of an army thirsting for Irene's blood.

There was no point in might-have-beens, Marric decided. Away from the state entrances, around back, were trees he might climb, as he had done when making his first forbidden explorations into the city. Once again he would slip quietly into his home.

With his height and strength, the trees were easier to climb than he remembered. A leap brought him from the branches onto the walls, then down into the gardens. The moon shivered in the water of a flower-bordered pool. Marric nodded thanks to it, then set off toward the women's quarters.

In the shadows of the exquisite garden, behind a great fountain, Marric stood outside Alexa's suite. Its furnishings were rich: gilded, sleek-lined ebony, the backs of chairs and couches coiling up in smooth spirals atop taloned feet. Sheer draperies brought from the silk routes over deserts and mountains blew back, revealing the girl who stood in the center of the room as if she were on a stage.

Alexa's profile was as pale and cool as that of the mosaic portrait of Isis she gazed at. Goddess and princess shared a beauty that only seemed fragile, and a pride that was anything but that. Except for Marric's sunburn and more prominent brow and jaw line, Alexa's face resembled his. But where he was tall, she was tiny and very slight, the simple white robe she wore outlining her body as it fluttered in the night breeze. Her long dark hair, so much straighter and finer than his, flowed loose, bound only by a thin circlet of gemmed lotuses.

Her lips moved in a silent prayer to Isis and to Osiris who stood in his jewelled wrappings next to his queen. But the patrons of Empire, as if ignoring the plight of their descendants, stared out into infinity.

"Goddess, grant it." Alexa's voice drifted out to Marric. He started toward her from the shadows. Had she prayed for him? She turned and drew a filmy scarf about her slender shoulders. She gazed out over the garden as if watching for someone. From her lips came a trilling sound.

Marric grinned. So the little vixen had remembered their old signals! He whistled softly, and his sister's face lit with joy. They had never shared with anyone else the codes that had enabled them to dodge their tutors. Connivance started at an early age in Byzantium. Marric stepped into the room and pushed his helmet from cropped, wavy hair.

Even though Alexa had been expecting him, she drew back at his sudden entrance. Her hand reached for a dagger with an emerald-set hilt, and she drew herself up to face him. Fast reactions, he noted with approval, and no fear. Good girl.

He threw off his dark, coarse cloak.

"By our father who rules in glory, sister, it's truly me." There was an unfamiliar tightening in his chest. He wanted to whoop, to pick Alexa up and whirl her about as he had once done, before that loathed and soon departed pedagogue had remarked that royal children should not behave so indecorously. Though he had chided them but the once, the memory of his disdain had inhibited them both thereafter. They had dosed him with senna for it and vowed never to forget.

"Marric?" Alexa held out a shaking hand. The poor little one, to have lived in such fear under Irene's rule! Then her green eyes blazed in recognition and joy, and she ran forward to throw herself into Marric's arms.

"Brother!" Her voice was shrill, and it broke. Though she had to stand on her toes to reach, she had her arms about his neck.

"Softly, little one," Marric said, laughing a little shakily. "Here now, sweetheart. Rest easy, 'Lexa. Remember, I'm wearing armor; you'll bruise yourself."

But Alexa burrowed closer into his embrace, no imperial princess now but a young girl too long forced into baffle readiness. Marric could feel her shivers through his breastplate. He wrapped his cape about her and made the soothing noises that he dimly remembered his mother using on a nightmare-ridden princeling. So short a time they had all been together! His mother's face was like Alexa's, yet more serene, with a strength that had enabled Antonia to conceal her physical weakness after Alexa's birth for too long. Even the priests could not help her then.

Alexander had never recovered from her death. First cousins, he and Antonia had been brought up together from childhood as brother and sister: right hand and left of the same body. And then Alexander had married Irene. Granted he did it only to secure peace from a brawling Syrian branch of the imperial family. But Marric, who adored his mother's memory, could not forget that the priests had not saved her, nor could he forgive his father his choice.

Irene's son . . . had there ever been a time when Ctesiphon had cared for Marric and Alexa, or when they had wanted to love him? What Marric remembered most clearly was the day Ctesiphon had jeered at Marric's outlandish Western name.

"It's a barbarian name. Maybe you're not of Divine Alexander's blood at all!"'

"Father says it's a hero's name, the name of a warrior come out of the West. What do you know about the West, you greasy Levantine?"

"He's just saying that. Mother says that I'm the true prince. One day I'll rule as Horus-on-Earth."

"That's a filthy lie!"

Marric had knocked him down, and Alexa had kicked him. Before their pedagogues could separate them, Ctesiphon had leapt at Marric, a jewelled woman's dagger in his hand. So, at age ten, Marric had had his first battle scar from a brother's hand.

Alexa, her body relaxed in his protective hold, turned in Marric's arms. One finger tip traced the thin line, faint after twenty years, in the deep tan of Marric's neck.

"He still hates you," she said. "I didn't want to bring you into danger, but I had to see you, talk with you . . . she . . . Irene . . . "

"Come. Is this how a princess acts? This is my home, not the camps of the Kutrigur Huns—those are dangerous. Did you know that in Cherson, the last two governors before me were murdered? So I'm not afraid here. Besides, Alexa, you know that your fate is also mine. Whatever we face, we face together." His words had a fine ring to them, and he meant every one. Once he was emperor, he would finally make his father proud of him.

Alexa nodded, freed herself, and walked over to an elegant serving table. She poured him wine from a flagon that lay half-buried in snow. "Do you still like honey-cakes?" No trace of her earlier fear showed now. At least Irene had not been able to turn Alexa into a timid fawn, or her creature. The time Ctesiphon had attacked, Alexa had been the first to dab the bleeding scratch with cloth torn from her own tunic. It had been precious cotton all the way from Hind, but that hadn't bothered her. She had been sick afterward. Alexander had termed her reactions hysterical courage and spoken to her gravely of self-command.

As Alexa handed Marric the goblet, he saw a dancer's grace in her movements, the counterpart of his own warrior's training. Brother and sister, sword and dagger. They would be well-matched in their dream of empire.

Marric poured the libation for the gods, then saluted his sister more enthusiastically before he drank.

"Clever work, sister mine, getting that message to me. Not even my spies who watch Irene's spies found it out. How did you manage?"

Alexa drank and smiled. Color flowed back into her face. "Let that be my secret, brother."