Air and Darkness (9 page)

“The big Galatian,” Alphena said, placing the man. Hedia chose good-looking men for her escort. Minimus was unscarred, but he had been trained as a gladiator and would give a good account of himself if anyone attacked Hedia.

“I kilt plenty men as big as that 'un,” Drago said with satisfaction.
“Plenty.”

That was likely enough. Rago and Drago were former sailors—and doubtless pirates—who'd been bought to work one of Saxa's farms in leg irons. Before they were transported, Agrippinus had diverted them to string awnings over the central garden when Hedia decided to give a summer fete for other senatorial wives. The pair had remained at the town house as much as anything because nobody had bothered to send them away.

“A whole mob come out of the air, Minimus says,” Drago said. “Whoop! Right outa the air. And when things settled down, they, whoever
they
was, went back where they'd come, but the mistress and your brother was gone.”

“Out of the air…?” Alphena repeated.

She saw Charias standing at the stairhead, quivering with interest and concern. “You!” she said. “Get all the secretaries in the household to write down what the servants who've returned from Polymartium are saying. Everyone who can take dictation, I don't care whose suite they belong to.”

The understeward's lips pursed in hesitation.
“Now,”
Alphena said. “If anyone makes a problem, tell him I'll come down and deal with him at once.”

“Hey, send
us
, lady,” Rago said. He smiled so broadly that Alphena could see that half his teeth were missing. “You told him nice, so give us a turn.”

“I doubt I'll need to do that,” she said. “But a crowd of people out of the air? You mean magic?”

“Dunno,” said Drago. “Sure sounds like it, don't it?”

“Are we going up there to sort it out, lady?” his cousin asked.

“The first thing I plan to do,” said Alphena, “is to discuss the business with Master Corylus and Master Pandareus. Once we know what the business is, as best Mother's escort can describe it.”

She looked at the cousins. Both wore clean blue tunics, but apart from that they appeared to be dangerous roughs—which of course they were.

Hedia had chosen the members of her escort. The servants who accompanied Varus when he went out had been picked for him, probably by the majordomo. They would be eminently suitable for the task of maintaining not only Varus' physical safety—rarely a real concern in Carce, where he spent most of his time—but also his status as a member of the nobility.

Alphena hadn't chosen her escort: they had chosen her. On a night when Lady Hedia had vanished in the hands of demons and the household was in uproar, Alphena had held herself in the icy calm that she had learned from her stepmother.

A few servants had grouped themselves around Alphena, simply because the young lady hadn't lost her head. They were odds and ends, supernumeraries and outcasts. Most spoke bad Latin or none at all, and the Illyrian cousins weren't alone in having shaky Greek. There was a potboy, a gardener's assistant, and a spare litter bearer.

What they all had in common was the willingness to face
any
bloody thing, so long as they had a leader who would tell them what to do. For these men, uncertainty was a worse enemy than demons. They were willing to follow, and they had decided that Alphena was able to lead.

Which I was,
Alphena thought.
Which I am.

“I'll wait for the information that my colleagues will want,” she said calmly. “It will take some time to get the reports together, even with everyone available to write them down. We'll leave in an hour, though, if we can't leave sooner. I don't want to risk class breaking up and Corylus and his teacher being gone.”

She took a breath and added, “You can alert your colleagues now, but there'll be a delay.”

“Right,” said Drago as the cousins turned toward the stairway. “We'll make sure everybody's dressed for business.”

“No!” Alphena said. “No, no weapons for now. We're just making a visit to scholars in the Forum in broad daylight.”

“Aw…,” Rago said in disappointment. Being caught wearing a sword within the religious boundary of Carce meant a death sentence even for a freeborn citizen; the slaves of Alphena's escort could expect even less consideration. And what good would swords do against magic?

“Wait,” Alphena said to the cousins' backs. “Come back for a moment. We have time.”

Rago and Drago came up from the stairs. They watched her uneasily, afraid they'd done wrong but not sure how.

Florina and the breakfast servants stood in a silent row. They were thrilled to watch others deal with a crisis but terrified that they would be dragged into it as well.

“Aren't you afraid of magic?” Alphena said to the Illyrians.

Everyone
was afraid of magic. Corylus' servant Pulto was as brave a man as ever faced a German ambush or a charge of Sarmatian cavalry, but he trembled to admit that his wife, Anna, was a witch from the Marsian region.

“I guess,” Rago said. “I'm scared of lots of things.”

“Being crucified,” said his cousin, nodding in agreement. “Bloody near happened too. Near happened twice.”

“Thing is,” Rago said, “Drago and me likes fronting for you, lady. I guess that's the same with the rest of your outside crew, right?”

“Yeah,” said Drago. “You tell us where to go, lady, and we'll go there ahead of you.”

Alphena swallowed. “All right,” she said. “For the present, that's to the Forum. I don't think we're in any danger except for the chance that we'll be bored to death by speeches. You may go.”

Grinning, the cousins trotted down the stairs. Alphena took a deep breath as she watched them go.
How can they trust me?

“I'll dress to go out now,” she said to Florina. “With traveling shoes but not army sandals.”

Pandareus will know what to do. And Corylus. Corylus will take charge.

*   *   *

“
T
HIS WOMAN COMMITTED ADULTERY,
you say!” Corylus thundered from the north end of the Rostra. “The sacred laws of our forefathers, the founders of Carce, demand that she be punished!”

Pandareus and his class, save the absent Varus, watched below the steps. A pupil of Fulvius Glabrio was declaiming to his immediate left. Corylus had been taught to project his voice by centurions on the frontier where lives depended on their troops hearing orders in the crash of battle. The Forum, though crowded, wasn't much of a test for him now.

“Well and good!” Corylus said. “Her punishment is to be flung from the Tarpeian Rock, that awful crag!”

He pointed his whole arm in a broad, dramatic gesture. He would have used a motion as quick as a spear thrust if he were informing a legion's commander—or directing the troops he was about to lead in an assault.

A noble entourage was pressing through the crowd, past the ancient altar to Vulcan. Corylus recognized the leaders as the Illyrian members of Alphena's suite. No other noble would be seen in daylight guarded by such men, so even before the girl's head became visible beyond the taller escorts he was certain that it was her.

“And so she was punished!” Corylus said. A successful orator couldn't allow himself to be distracted by what was happening in the audience or beyond it. “But since the immortal gods preserved her unharmed by the fall, what business is it of mere men like ourselves to object to their august decision? The laws of our forefathers have been carried out, and the mercy of the gods has been displayed. Release her now!”

He swept his pointing arm across the arc of his fellow students. Piso was ostentatiously chatting with his toady Beccaristo, but the others listened intently. Two were even jotting notes.

“Release her,” Corylus repeated. “Or set yourself against the will of our ancestors and the judgment of the immortals!”

He lowered his arm. Pandareus nodded approval, and a pair of strangers—Corylus didn't know their names, at least—stamped their feet in applause. There were always loungers in the Forum; some of them had become good judges of a speaker's ability.

I'd like to think these were two of the more knowledgeable ones,
Corylus thought. He smiled at himself.

Pulto stood at the back of the class with the servants of the other students. Alphena spoke with him and he—not Alphena's own escorts—led her through the chattering students to the teacher's side. Pandareus bent his ear to her words, then mounted the first step of the Rostra.

“Young gentlemen,” he said, “we will delay our discussion of Master Corylus' presentation to the morrow. Other business calls us now, and possibly pleasures call some of you.”

Laughter rippled. The class broke up with the suddenness of a bird's egg falling to the pavement.

“Your Ladyship,” said Pandareus, stepping down from the Rostra to meet Alphena. Julius Caesar had rebuilt in marble the curving steps decorated with the bronze rams, the Rostra, of Carthaginian warships captured centuries before. The Rostra was the Senate's original meeting place, but today and most days the senators were under the cover of the Basilica Julia on the southern edge of the Forum.

Alphena's escort had moved up. They pressed closer to their mistress than better-trained guards would have done. Pulto stood back, watching with a friendly smile. Corylus hadn't been sure how the old soldier would get on with Alphena's toughs, but there hadn't been any trouble. The parties respected one another, and nobody felt he had anything to prove.

Corylus joined them on the Forum pavement. Alphena backed to give him room, bumped one of her Illyrians, and snapped, “Drago! All of you! Get back three steps or I'll leave you back at the house the next time!”

That struck Corylus as an odd threat, but the escorts retreated obediently—not three paces, but enough to provide elbow room. Alphena made a grimace of apology to Corylus and said, “They have something to learn about deportment, but they're very, well, loyal.”

Corylus lifted his chin in agreement. “They can learn deportment,” he said. “I noticed you asked Pulto to lead you through the crowd, though.”

“I thought that was better than explaining to Father that my guards had broken the ribs of some of his colleagues' sons,” Alphena said with another grimace.

“I applaud your restraint, Your Ladyship,” said Pandareus. “I have enough difficulty collecting my teaching fees as it is. But I presume you had a reason for visiting this morning? Besides the excellent presentation by Master Corylus, that is.”

“What under Heaven was that about, anyway?” Alphena asked.

“An adulteress was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock but survived,” Corylus said, embarrassed to hear himself explaining a rhetorical conceit to a layman. Laywoman. “I was defending her against the opinion that she should be thrown down again to complete her execution.”

Alphena frowned and looked up the rugged side of the Capitolium. The roof of the Temple of Juno—the Mint—was barely visible from this angle. Acanthus plants grew over the rocks at the bottom, but their tender leaves would not cushion a hundred-foot fall.

“But nobody could survive that,” Alphena said.

“The purpose of the rhetorical exercises is to teach students how to reason and to argue,” Pandareus said mildly. “The stated facts are merely to provide an occasion for learning.”

He coughed and added with what Corylus thought was a smile, “I could explain this at any length that Your Ladyship might wish, if that is really the purpose of your visit?”

Alphena looked startled, then realized that Pandareus was making a joke. Her expression went in an eyeblink from anger—the old Alphena, being mocked by a wretched little Greek—to ruddy embarrassment.

Corylus frowned. The new Alphena who didn't rant and raise her voice if balked had been a pleasant metamorphosis. He wasn't sure how he felt about an Alphena who blushed, however.

“Varus and my mother disappeared yesterday,” Alphena said. “In Polymartium. I just learned about it.”

Then she said, “I'm sorry. I'm afraid. I was jabbering because I was afraid to face what happened. Whatever it was.”

“The Temple of Saturn is empty at this time,” Pandareus said, nodding toward the ancient building behind him. “There's a useful library in the attached treasury”—a pair of matching outbuildings on the opposite side of the altar platform from the main temple—“so I've gotten to know the priests and staff. They won't make a problem.”

One of Alphena's guards said something Corylus didn't catch, but a scarred Illyrian growled, “Let 'em try,” in bad Greek.

“Yes,” Corylus said in Greek in a carrying tone. “Pulto, only the three of us will enter the building. You and the other servants will remain outside.”

“Huh?” said Pulto. “Sure, it's just an empty temple, right?”

“Thank you, Corylus,” Alphena said quietly. “Stylo”—a servant, one of Saxa's librarians—“give your case of notes to Master Corylus. All of you wait for us out here.”

Pulto might not understand that his master had just avoided an embarrassing scene, but she did. While Alphena might not have her brother's intelligence—Corylus wasn't sure he knew anyone else who did—she was a great deal smarter than he had given her credit for being when he first met her.

Corylus took a basket of pierced wood inlaid with ivory and burl. There were over a dozen slim rolls of papyrus inside and a number of wax tablets besides. It was an ordinary book storage container, pressed into service for transport.

Pandareus beckoned from the temple entrance, where he was discussing matters with the doorman. Corylus palmed a silver piece from his purse as he followed Alphena, slipping it to the servant discreetly. It was an excessive tip for the purpose, but Publius Cispius was well-to-do by any standard but that of a senator.