Byzantium's Crown (3 page)

More and more Marric approved of this sister of his. "Has Irene revealed anything of her plans?"

To his surprise, Alexa nodded her head yes. "She watches me, Marric, and I hate it! You know what her eyes are like—deep green, slow poison. They drink your will." Alexa dropped her head briefly, then forced herself to meet Marric's eyes again. "And I have heard her recite strange words . . . "

Marric knew such study had always fascinated Alexa. So she might feel that Irene's delving into lost powers made her more dangerous.

"She uses Ctesiphon to make my life a continual misery. Ever since the harvest failed, they both have been hinting that he and I should appear together in the temples and bless the empire."

That was Marric's privilege as rightful emperor. He hissed with anger. "The bastard presumes! I am father's eldest son, born in the porphyry chamber while Irene was little more than a concubine. Our mother, not Ctesiphon's, was the tree Isis."

"I told him, 'Brother, Marric is your elder and my full sibling, Alexander's lawful heir,' but he laughed and warned me that Cherson was full of strange fevers. I was afraid that he might—"

"I prefer Huns to that kind of game," Marric said slowly. He had resented exile. Now he saw the sense in his father's decision.

Had Alexander known his second wife's capacity for betrayal? Pray Osiris, Ptah, and all the other gods that he had never guessed bow Irene had caressed his elder son with her eyes. Marric had been in his early twenties then, with a reputation that fully justified her interest, even were he not the royal heir. But perhaps Alexander had known; why else would he send Marric away and die without sending him a word? Or had he feared that Irene would seduce his son only to kill him?"

"I think," mused Alexa, "that only the fact that Irene has no daughter has kept me alive this long. She needs a daughter . . . now she schemes for a marriage between herself and the Reaver-jarl of Jomsborg—"

"The city is dying!" Marric interrupted. "I saw. It needs its proper ruler right now. When I came up here, the guards were drunk, and there were corpses in the gutter. That never happened when Father ruled. Alexa, have you told me everything?"

"I haven't," she whispered. "Ctesiphon sees what you see. That is why he presses me to appear in the temples. I too think, if the harvests continue to fail, that I might have to . . . for the empire's well-being." Then she burst out, "Don't look at me that way! It's my realm too! Father raised me to put it first. Do you think you're the only one who wants power?" Then she covered her face with both hands. He could barely hear her next words.

"And there's more too. He leeches!" Alexa cried in a low, passionate voice. "Since he came of age, he has lounged about me until I fail to invent ways of dismissing him. Or Irene summons me, and there he is, standing too close, touching me while she smiles. They watch me as if I were a crippled bird and they a cat!"

Marric slammed a fist down onto the curved arm of his chair. Under his level brows, his dark eyes flashed. Alexa and the empire were his! "If he apes Osiris, then let him look to his dam for an Isis!"

Alexa gasped. Her hand moved in a sign to avert punishment for blasphemy from Marric. That was where they were unlike. Marric's father had complained that Marric paid the priests too little attention; but the priestesses of Isis had cautioned the emperor that Alexa's interest in ritual seemed overstrong. Magic—Marric remembered the druid's vision and made a sign of his own.

"Do you remember that Aillel told us that in some lands, brother with sister is a sin? And Ctesiphon is your half-brother—"

"He sickens me!" Alexa poured more wine and gulped it. "Marric, you are the rightful emperor, and that is the way of things. Before I let him touch me, I will draw a blade across my face or swallow fire!"

"No need," he soothed her. "By the gods, 'Lexa, he sickens me too. He always has. What do you suggest?"

Alexa gestured to the mosaic on her chamber wall. Wrought there was the story of how the line of Old Rome had united with that of Alexander's Egypt after Antony and Divine Cleopatra's victory over the pretender Octavian had won them Empire. A stoop-shouldered, pockmarked Octavian knelt and offered up his blade to the divine pair. Behind him stood a priest and a physician, waiting with the poison that was stark imperial mercy to the defeated foe. Had he won . . . a Roman world: what a solemn bore that would have been. Like the Marcellini, those walking solemnities his father had bade him learn from.

"I have collected gold, gems, horses—purchased under other names. I have even arranged passage with"—she laughed and seemed only a young girl, not a princess or a conspirator—"Do you remember a Northerner who styles himself 'Bearmaster'?"

"By the hawk! Audun!" Marric exclaimed. "I knew him when I was a lad."

"Shortly after Father died, he brought you a bear cub, did Audun. White, of course. Irene coveted it, but"—Alexa's laugh was malicious—"when she stroked it, it scratched her. She ordered it killed, and Audun was furious. He never came back here until a few weeks ago, when I bespoke passage from him. Like Cleopatra, we'll flee the palace and return with an army!"

"To Tmutorakan in Cherson?" Marric considered the idea. Perhaps his army there would follow him. Or the Huns and Northerners might help him gain his throne. He rose and paced panther fashion across the room. Alexa had planned carefully. Surely Ellac and Uldin, sworn to him by exchanges of hospitality and gifts, could be trusted—assuming he could trust Huns at all. And the Bearmaster—Audun had never been a party to intrigue . . . at least, not before this. Alexa's plan would do.

Then Marric stiffened. As the silver door opposite the garden whispered open, his hand went to his dagger. But a middle-aged woman, stout, decorously clad as befitted a palace servant, entered: Alexa's old nurse.

"Be careful, Princess. Ctesiphon is coming!"

Alexa flushed, her initial surprise and fear turning swiftly to anger. "I've dreaded this. Ctesiphon's been trying to get his courage up to force himself on me so I stand dishonored unless I submit to an evil marriage."

"You have me with you, sister. Can you flee now?"

"I'm ready."

"Well done." Marric might have been a general approving a subordinate. Alexa was so strange, yet so familiar. If the nurse hadn't been in the room, he would have kissed her. Of course he must spirit her away; she was too precious to risk. For himself, he would prefer to stay and fight. He had been silent and stealthy for too long: every nerve in his body strained toward release either in passion or in blood.

Alexa ordered her nurse to fetch simple, warm clothing and then to disappear. Outside her suite came the measured step of one very sure of his path, and surer still that no one would dare hinder him from a long anticipated scheme of pleasure. Marric and Alexa looked at one another. Then Alexa nodded almost ceremonially, as if opening the games. Let it begin.

She moved a chair to face the door and seated herself. Chin raised, eyes distant, Alexa looked as regal as if she wore the moon crown of Isis and held audience for mere mortals.

"That's my girl!" Marric padded noiselessly to the door and flattened himself against the wall. He drew his scabbarded dagger from his belt and tapped its heavy pommel against his hand with satisfaction.

Alexa flung off her scarf so that it drifted behind her. She drew her shoulders back, revealing the fine lines of her body more fully. Only the pulse that fluttered rapidly at her throat betrayed her tension: after so long a wait, to finally face battle!

The door swung open, and Ctesiphon swaggered in.

"All alone, sister mine?" he asked. His eyes roved down her body. "Contemplating the god and goddess? Shall we do that together—or, better yet, unite to become gods ourselves?"

Ctesiphon had the cockiness of a spoiled adolescent, Marric decided. Irene's idolatrous love for her son had marred the weakling further. Marric signaled Alexa to rise and walk toward their half-brother. Ctesiphon wore purple-dyed silk sewn with pearls. A collar of rubies and moonstones circled his thin shoulders and delicate neck in imitation of the ancient style of the pharaohs. A dagger too richly encrusted with gems to be of much use hung from his girdle. He was dark-haired like his elder half-brother and sister, but there the resemblance ended. Ctesiphon lacked Alexa's tensile strength or Marric's toughness. Marric was tanned from field duty. Ctesiphon was as pale as Alexa; a courtier-prince, but never an emperor. Weakness betrayed itself in the thick-lipped petulance of Irene's treacherous, sensual son. Marric wanted to slash the gloating expectation from his face with Ctesiphon's own gaudy dagger.

Enticingly Alexa moved toward him.

"It grows late, my brother. Too late for idle visits. You do me no good by coming here when I am alone."

"But Alexa, it is only good that I would do you!" Ctesiphon declared fulsomely. He reached out to embrace her, fingers curving greedily toward her breast.

As Alexa tensed in revulsion, Marric moved forward silently on the balls of his feet. He struck Ctesiphon on the side of the head with the bronze pommel of his dagger.

The princeling fell forward into Alexa's arms. Taking his weight, she staggered. Then, with a disgusted little sniff, she let him fall onto the marble floor.

"Do you think you killed him?"

"Fratricide stinks to the gods—even with such a brother. He will escape with a sore skull, though he may be so sick he might wish for death." He had seen enough death in Tmutorakan, his capital, not to relish causing it unnecessarily.

Prince and princess smiled at each other. Marric swept up Alexa's scarf to bind the unconscious man.

"We cannot expect that Irene will send no one to check on her precious son's . . . wooing," Alexa said. "So at least part of the way, we must take him with us. Let his mother think he has borne me off somewhere secret." She attempted to laugh knowingly while she loosed his girdle and bent to gag him with it, but as her hands touched Ctesiphon's face, they trembled. Marric took over the task of gagging him.

When the nurse entered with clothing, Alexa kissed her cheek. "Isis guard you," she whispered. "I've provided for you. Now, run!" She pulled a heavy garment over her white robe.

"We take him with us?" Marric preferred to travel light. "How do you suggest we manage?"

"Like royal Cleopatra again, brother," Alexa indicated a rug nearby. "Here. Wrap this cloak about you, and you look the perfect merchant. A rug merchant, who brought this rug to the palace and will now take it away in a tidy roll . . . with our beloved brother wrapped in its center."

The excitement had stimulated her. Now she seemed a different woman from the fragile girl who had stammered out her fears in her brother's arms. Her eyes, enlarged by kohl, gleamed.

What an empress she will make! Marric exulted. He rolled Ctesiphon in the carpet.

"Ha! He reeks of perfume," Marric commented. "We'll have Audun stop at the first port so he can unload this cargo, and air out his ship." He unsheathed his dagger and cut a hole in the rug above the unconscious prince's face.

"It is a pity to ruin that rug," Alexa remarked. "You take great care for his life."

"He shares our father's blood."

"Does he?" Alexa shrugged.

Marric clasped the cloak with a bronze brooch she handed him. The old druid had been wrong after all. His brother had fallen into his hand like an ornamental fish to a cat's paw. All the oil-borne visions had been ravings.

An orderly march of feet brought him up sharply. He swept up his sword.

"Only the watch, brother."

The guards marched down the hall. Just when they had begun to breathe more slowly, a clash of boots on the paved floor warned them that several men had broken away from the main force and were heading toward their room.

"Set take her!" Marric swore. "Does Irene set watchdogs over her precious son even when he tries to rape a princess?"

"I think she fears I might kill him otherwise."

"You may indeed have to kill someone. Unless, of course, you have guards in your pay." He tossed her a dagger.

"I told them to await us outside!" For the first time Alexa looked dismayed.

"Then we're on our own." Marric drew blade, kissed its hilt in salute first to Alexa, then to the gods in the mosaic. "For luck!" he cried softly. Did some radiance come from the figures as if blessing their heirs? Marric shook his head. Heated by the anticipation of a battle, he was imagining things.

Alexa took Marric's old place behind the door.

"I hear about three men," Marric said. "If I dispatch the first two, can you take out the third?"

"I must!" The footsteps and jingle of harness grew louder. Now subdued laughter filtered through the door, rude jokes coupling Alexa and Ctesiphon. Marric nodded reassuringly and saw his sister grip her dagger more firmly. He doused the lights and waited.

The door edged open.

"Prince Ctesiphon?"

"It's dark. Perhaps he's abed with the little lady. I wish him joy, taming that one."

"He wouldn't welcome interruptions."

"We have our orders. Plague on it, it's dark here. Strike a light!"

As one man struck flint, the hindmost shut the door. Marric lunged at them, his sword slashing out a lethal pattern. Alexa launched herself onto the third guard's back. He fell under her slight weight and shrewd throat slash almost immediately.

As Marric fought the other men, she watched for an opening and darted in to hamstring the second man so Marric could kill him quickly.

"Now, fast!" Hoisting the still unconscious Ctesiphon on his shoulder, he gestured Alexa before him out into the garden. Behind him the delicate curtains bellied into the room where dead men lay and dabbled in the blood on the marble floor.

As Alexa had arranged, there were horses waiting outside the gardens. Unfortunately, guards also hovered nearby.

"Mount and ride," Marric panted. Ctesiphon and the rug were no light burden to a running man. As Marric threw the rug across a pack saddle, Ctesiphon began to kick and shout. Even through the gag, he made himself heard. The guards started forward as Marric made fast his bundle with rope.