Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (19 page)

I sleep with a silken net weighted with lead pellets wrapped around my hand. It is a very compact version of the type that retiarii gladiators use, and I have it with me always. It lets me seem unarmed until it is too late for those who would escape me. With a single movement I threw back my blanket and flung the net at the lissome shape amid the shadows, then launched myself after it. The lamp winked out and my arms closed on nothing. I crashed heavily to the floor.

A foot caressed my leg. I lashed out with a kick but my foot struck only the table. I got to my feet, cusring loudly and trying to ignore the pain in my toes.

"Lycius!" I shouted.

"Lycius, myself, try stopping," said a voice to my left. "Failed."

I spread my arms and lunged but caught only air. My own net of fine silk descended over me, then my foot was swept from under me and I fell with great force, unable to put out my entangled hands to stop myself. A body with silken soft skin over iron muscles descended upon me and Vishesti's legs entangled mine, pinning them firmly. The ifryt was warmer than a real person, but I could only see a deeper blackness just above my face.

"I curse you, I curse Rome. Mortal husband, of mine, killed. Our children, stolen. What I love, you taken. What you love, I taken."

"I never touched your children. I'm trying to return them to you and—"

She dug her thumbs into my neck, just below the jaw. It is one of the pressure places we slave catchers use to inflict agony on runaways without adding bruises to their skin. As I gasped and writhed in pain, Vishesti exhaled into my face. Her breath compared badly to pig shit mixed with garum in a vomitorium's pail.

"See, only, Gaius Maximus Secundus," she hissed.

Again she made me gasp, again she breathed into my face. My senses deserted me.

A month had passed by the time I awoke. My illness was a brain fever, according to the physician. Askar, my personal slave, had looked after me for the whole time.

"You've changed something," I said as he sat beside me, feeding me lentils in hot wine. "Your hair, perhaps…or did you once have a beard?"

"I have always shaved my face and head, master."

"Have you lost weight, or gained it?"

"Not that I have noticed, master."

I was suspicious of everyone. All could be Vishesti in disguise, and Askar was the same height as her.

"You say Lycius fell and broke his neck?" I said, waving his spoon away and closing my eyes.

"On the very night you became sick, master. His body was cold when I found him."

"And you didn't hear me cry out?"

"No, master."

Some hours later, I had another visitor. Askar tapped at the door and asked whether I was fit to receive Gaius Maximus Secundus. I greeted Maximus warmly, more out of relief than friendship. When he presented me with ten thousand sesterces, my surprise knew no limits.

"Vishesti returned to my household and told me how you brought her children to meet her," he said as he paced before my bed, too excited to sit down.

"I don't remember doing that, but who am I to say? I have been very sick."

"The first thing I did was have her tell Crassus how to make the oil of bitterness. Imagine my delight when I tried it on one of the small navitars and saw that fish were unable to attack it. I had forty amphorae of the stuff made that very day. It never hurts to have a reserve, whatever the goods may be."

"So, have you sent word to the emperor?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, and I was summoned to meet him!"

"You were?" I gasped.

"Yes! Can you imagine? I owe it all to you, Marcus. That was three weeks ago. He was charming to a fault, the best of all emperors. He's staged wonderful games and races, canceled the treason trials, and burned the court records. He—"

"Gaius, I live in Rome, I know the young emperor's a just and popular ruler. Did he like the navitar?"

"He's only seen a little navitar pulling a toy boat in a palace pool. He had intended to come to Ostia to ride the sea chariot, but then he fell sick. He's only just recovered."

"I thought emperors were protected by the gods and never got sick. Augustus and Tiberius reigned sixty-four years in good health."

"Ah, yes, but the gods also smiled on our glorious third emperor, so he's well again. He still wants to ride my sea chariot. That's why I'm in Rome, to make the arrangements for his visit. It's tomorrow. I received a scroll with his very own seal impressed in the wax. Why, I could hardly bring myself to break it."

Maximus invited me to Ostia to see the emperor ride the sea chariot and perhaps meet him, but I had to decline. Although I was recovering, even the short trip to Ostia was beyond me.

 
I WAS STILL UNSTEADY the following morning, but I decided that I needed to be seen. Rumors spread so easily in the Sabura, and if it was being said that I had died of my fever, clients would go to other slave catchers. Askar walked with me, and I noticed that there were a lot of unfamiliar faces in the crowd.

"Salve Foldor."

"Salve."

The man was tall and his voice familiar, yet I did not know him. Once he was past, I turned to Askar.

"Who was that man?"

"Titus Polibius, the quaestor."

"What!" I exclaimed. "Titus is one of my best friends. That man is nothing like him."

"I have known him for five years, master."

Again I began to suspect that Vishesti had taken on Askar's form and dumped his body into the Tiber. I stood aside while Askar spoke with the slave of a nuntius about declaring my recovery. Several people greeted me, but although I recognized none of them, I waved and smiled.

"Marcus Foldor, so you're back from the underworld," said a man wearing the colors of the Aventine College around his neck. "What happened? The ferryman refuse to take you?"

The man knew me. Clearly I should have known him.

"He sent me back to catch a runaway slave," I joked. "What brings you to the Sabura?"

"The attack on Senator Vintus. Are you the only man in Rome who's not heard?"

Marhavi's master. Imagine two icy hands reaching into your body and squeezing your stomach, and you will appreciate how I felt just then.

"I've been sick," I managed. "Tell me."

"It happened last night. Some say that a single man stole into the senator's villa, killed five of his guards, then ripped the eyes out of his head and nailed them to his door with iron spikes."

"Truly?"

"As I live, breathe, and fart, it's a fact."

"What was it about? Revenge? Politics? Women?"

"How should I—Oi, the nuntius is getting up."

The nuntius was dressed colorfully so that crowds might focus upon him as he made his announcements. His face was not familiar, but his clothes were.

"Be notified that Senator Titus Vintus has offered one hundred thousand sesterces to any citizen or freedman who provides information leading to the capture and crucifixion of the vile intruder who blinded him."

By the time the nuntius got to the announcement about my return to health, most of the crowd had hurried away. The senator had existed to take delight in the swaying bodies of his dancers, but now he was blind. Ravindra had lost the perfection of skin that his master prized so highly. What those great Romans valued most had been taken. Vishesti had attacked me, but had taken nothing.
Her curses don't always work
, I thought, but I could not believe my own lie.
I am cursed, but the blow has not yet fallen
. The day was unseasonably warm, yet I stood hunched over and shivering.

"Master?"

An unfamiliar slave was standing before me with a scroll.

"I'm not your master," I said, waving him away.

"Master, it's me, Askar."

It was only then that I realized the truth. I could not recognize faces. It was not fear that gripped me so much as horror. Even though I continued to go through the motions of living, I could not be truly alive without faces.

I was lying on my bed when someone tapped at my door. I remembered drinking a cup of wine when I got home, to stop my hands shaking. I drank another cup. I remembered running out of wine some hours later, then I must have fallen asleep. Now the room was in darkness. The tapping at the door sounded like thunderclaps and my head felt like a bag of broken glass.

"Go away," I mumbled, wincing at the sound of my own voice.

"Master, it's Askar."

"Let me die."

"Master, please. It's important."

"Show yourself. Bring a lamp. A dim lamp."

"You won't recognize my face, but hear my voice and know me. You have a visitor. Gaius Maxiumus Secundus. He's in the atrium."

"What…what's he want?"

"The emperor burned his villa. The smoke was blowing over Rome all afternoon. You were insensible by then."

Fear revived me. Besides, there was something important about Maximus…his face! Since my fever, his had been the only face I recognized.

"Go to the roof, Askar, attach the fountain's pipe to the rain vat."

In spite of the pain in my head, I managed to get up, vomit, drink some water, vomit again, then shamble out to the atrium. Maximus was sitting on the edge of my little fountain, staring at the flame of a pottery lamp. He was dressed in rags and reeked of fish.

"Askar says you can't recognize faces," he said, standing as I entered. "I'm Gaius Maximus Secundus."

I decided not to tell him that I knew his face, alone, out of all others.

"Sit by the fountain and keep your voice low," I said. "Splashing water muffles words."

"Can't your slave be trusted?" he gasped, already backing away for the door.

"What Askar does not know can't be tortured out of him. Just sit, keep your voice low, and tell me all. I lost the afternoon. I was drinking…quite a lot."

"I walked here from Ostia," said Maximus as we sat down. "Walked all the way, in rags, reeking of garum. Children threw stones at me."

"What happened?" I asked, my head in my hands.

"The navitar! Damn all navitars. Damn all slaves."

"Gaius Maximus, tell me! Start at the beginning."

"The emperor arrived. Can you imagine? Rome's emperor visiting me, Gaius Maximus Secundus. It was my greatest moment, but I did not know it. I thought even greater glory was to come. I ordered the big navitar out of its pool and harnessed to the boat, then went inside to check that the food, wine, dancers, musicians, singers, and poets were ready."

"What went wrong? Was it Vishesti?"

"No, it was…it was the emperor himself. Something about him had changed over the three weeks past. There was mania in his eyes, and those around him had a look of fear only lightly concealed. He babbled about riding my sea chariot, and about waging war on Neptune. When a slave came in bearing a tray of roast fish, the young emperor screamed something about Neptune's spies, snatched a sword from one of his guards, and struck the slave dead. I was in absolute terror as I led him out to my pier. I whispered prayers to Fortune, but she did not listen."

"Had Vishesti slain the navitar?" I guessed through a fog of pain.

"The navitar was being torn apart by a churning mass of sharks and lesser fish. Every damnable seagull in Ostia was swarming above them. The repulsive properties of the oil of bitterness were gone. The beast that should have lifted my family as high as any in Rome was as useless as a dead whale. Was I so very wrong to aspire to greatness, Marcus? The great and noble Pompey was born to plebs, yet he became a consul."

"So, the emperor dipped you in fish sauce, burned your house, and went on his way. You escaped lightly."

"Lightly? Marcus, he had my entire household slaughtered. I fled to the kitchens, hoping that Vishesti could perform some trick to distract him. I found the two slaves who had been guarding her lying on the floor, dead. She was still there, pouring my amphorae of Spanish garum into a vat. Only now did she say that the oil of bitterness retains its potency for just a few days. My stores of the oil were now three weeks old, and as useful as frog piss. I cursed her for deceiving me. She laughed. She said I might escape the emperor's guards were I to immerse myself in the vat of garum and breathe through a hollow reed. That's what I did."

"She helped you escape?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"How should I know? I lay submerged in fermenting fish guts until I began to choke on smoke coming through my reed. When I got out, the place was on fire and everyone was dead. My son, daughters, wife, guests, guards, slaves, every last one of them. Crassus had been stabbed more times than Caesar in the Senate. Bodies lay everywhere. Nobody dared come near the place, not even to loot it. I slashed my clothes into rags then crawled away, hidden by the smoke."

"And Vishesti?"

"Vishesti? Damn her to Hades or wherever her people's dead go. I hope she's dead. Marcus, if I had a copper for every dog and cat that trailed after me on the way here, I'd have my lost fortune back. Not my son, though. Poor Crassus. I managed to leave my very last sesterce in his mouth. No father should have to give his son a coin for the ferryman, Marcus."

"Why did you come here?" I asked, even though I knew.

"Not sure. If Crassus had lived, I might have found the strength to flee to some wild, barbaric place like Britannia and rebuild my fortune trading in tin or woad or whatever the Britons value, but without him there's no point. As it stands…the weight of misery on one side of the scales does not yet exceed my fear of death on the other. Tomorrow, who knows?"

"You can't stay here."

"I know you're a hard man, Marcus, I expect no favors."

"Then what do you want?"

"Just advice. Tell me how absconders stay out of sight and earn a living."

"That's easy. Bind a cloth over one eye, cease shaving, and keep your face and fingernails grubby. You speak smatterings of a dozen languages, so you can lurk about on the Aventine docks, translating for foreign sailors."

"Ah, yes! Yes! And I can tally accounts, and write lists of—"

"No! An educated man on the docks would stand out like a horse in the Senate. Just help sailors to find whores, wine, and money changers. Say you're a freedman who lost everything when some insula burned down. I'll have Askar take you to a tavern where you can sleep on straw in a corner, with no questions asked."