Corvus (35 page)

He glared at her,
and for a moment they measured up to one another in a crackling silence. She
lifted her hand again and touched the reddening welt on his face.

“Kassander is
right - we should marry and get it over with. Then we could make up like
married people do.”

The fire in his
eyes smouldered. He took her by the upper arms and kissed her, hard enough to
blush her lips into a bruised rose.

“I am a
big-bellied slave-dealer with a streak of drama running through me. At heart I
am still only that. I mind these things. I cannot play the great man and put
them to one side.”

“Machran is lucky
to have you.”

“I wish I could
believe that.” He kissed her again, gently this time, then turned and faced the
fire, watching the smoke rise up to be sucked out of the slats in the roof. The
moonlight was red outside, the smoke taking colour from it as it left the
house.

“Will you go to
Rictus’s wife in the morning Kassia? Tell her about her husband. I cannot do
that. Maybe I am Speaker of Machran, but I cannot stand in front of that
wretched woman with such news.”

She nodded. “I
will.”

“And Kassia, tell
her that she is safe here. She can come or go as she pleases.”

“You want her
under your roof, knowing you had a hand in her fate?”

“I deserve it. I
too must pay.”

She stood beside
him and twined her fingers in his.

“Karnos, they
burned a thousand men on a pyre today, and it was counted a victory. The times
we live in are full of blood. Before this thing is done, we will have it on all
our hands.”

“I wonder
sometimes if it’s worth it. To fight like this - and for what? So we can tell
ourselves that we are free men? What did freedom mean to my father? He was more
a slave than Polio is. Freedom is a word, Kassia.” “There has to be something
worth dying for. Remember what Gestrakos said:
a man who cares for nothing
is a man already dead.
”

Karnos grimaced. “There’s
another saying, about ends and means. Let me show you something.”

He led her down to
the end of the long room. At the bottom a tall cabinet of dark wood stood, barely
lit by the oil lamp in the corner. Karnos touched the bottom of the cabinet and
there was an audible click. A door opened, taller than either of them.

“I had Framnos
make this, the same time he built me my couches,” Karnos said. “Now you know
how it opens, as only he and I did before.” He swung open the door. There was a
darkness within, and in that darkness a deeper black.

“Reach out and
touch it.”

Kassia put her
hand out hesitantly, then recoiled. “I can’t see - what is it?”

Karnos brought the
lamp over and held it high. Set within the cabinet was a black cuirass. It
seemed to soak up the light of the flame, like a hole in the fabric of the
world. And then they saw a gleam run over it here and there, like a delayed
reflection.

“The Curse of God,”
Karnos said.

“Karnos - I never
knew - how did you find this?”

“I stole it,” he
said with a crooked smile.

Her mouth opened. “You
cannot steal this, Karnos. These things -”

“It belonged to
Katullos. I was with him when he died. He wanted it given to his son, but his
son is not twelve years old. So I took it for myself. I, the Speaker of
Machran.” “It’s not right. His family -”

“Call it fortune
of war.” Karnos reached out and touched the lightless contours of the armour. “I
shall wear it on the walls, when the end comes, for good or ill. It will do the
city more good on my back than in the family vault of the Alcmoi.”

They stood looking
at it, until Kassia shivered. “I don’t like these things - they are not of this
world.”

“You may be right.
But they are part of what we are. They cannot be pierced, damaged or destroyed.
They simply exist. As long as they do, so shall we.”

He closed the
cabinet door again. “You think me a thief now, I suppose.”

She looked at him
closely, studying his face, the mark she had left upon it. Tears welled up in
her eyes.

“What is it,
Kassia? Are you ashamed of me?”

“No - not ashamed.
Afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I know you,
Karnos. You are many things, but a thief is not one of them.

“You stole that
armour because you see yourself dying in it.”

With the morning
came the light in
the room, a bright winter sun edging over the Gostheres to the east. She lay
and watched it brighten the blue slots above her, breaking in the slatted
windows up on the wall. With it came the smell of woodsmoke, of bread baking,
and the unfamiliar sea-surf sound of the waking city beyond.

Her daughters were
with her in the bed, Ona curled up in her arms, Rian spooned against her back.
For a few moments, Aise was able to lie and listen to them breathe, and be
herself again. She could put out of her mind the pain of her blistered feet and
throbbing face, the dull ache of her insides. There was not a part of her they
had not touched.

The moment was
gone, so quickly lost it had not truly existed. She lay in the clean bed
breathing quickly, heart hammering, no longer seeing the sunlight on the wall.
Her mouth was full of dirt, her face pressed into it, and they were holding her
down, entering her in the darkness, filling her body with foulness, the hot
filth jetting out of them to find its way to her very heart.

She drew breath
deeply, listening to the sleeping heartbeats of her daughters, blinking her way
back to the present. It was over, it was finished with.

And yet the men
who had done this to her were still in this house, mere yards away.

She sat up in the
bed. Rian and Ona stirred, but did not waken. She wriggled out from between
them and pulled the blanket over their shoulders, smoothed the hair from their
faces.

I made the
bargain, and the gods kept it. I took the worst thing on myself, and they
allowed me that grace. I must be thankful.

She kissed her
sleeping daughters one after the other.

There was a pile
of cloaks and clothing on the other bed in the room. She selected a heavy
peplos, a woman’s winter garment, and wrapped it around her shoulders. The
stone floor was cold underfoot, but it soothed the ragged tears in her feet.
She limped out of the room, closing the door without a sound.

She was in a tiny
courtyard with a pool in the middle, a colonnaded walkway all around, and
plants in pots. In
pots.
She touched a pungent juniper, smelled
lavender, bay, and mint. All dying back, all past their best, but easing her
mind with their scents and their memories.

How marvellous it
was to be free of fear, just for now. To stand and feel the winter sunlight on
her face and rub lavender between her fingers…

The smell of the
clothes chests at Andunnon.

A slave entered
the courtyard with a basket, looked at her, startled, then bowed and scurried
away. Aise sank back against a pillar, not sure what this might presage. It was
only a few moments before a well-dressed woman appeared in the slave’s place. A
dark-haired lady with a broad, handsome face, her hair braided up behind her
head. She was young, perhaps not yet thirty, but she had a direct gaze, and
there was nothing hesitant about her as she approached.

“I am Kassia, my
dear. My people looked after you last night. Did you sleep well? How are the
children?”

Aise folded her
arms inside her cloak. “We are well,” she said.

“Perhaps you would
like to break your fast? Karnos’s cook baked bread fresh this morning, and
there is honey to be had, and clean water.”

Aise stood as if
rooted to the spot. At last she said, “I’m sorry. I am not -”

The woman called
Kassia took her arm. “It’s all right. You’re safe now. You brought your
children through this, and you are all alive. The rest is a matter for time and
Antimone’s mercy.”

“I must go back to
them. They’re sleeping,” Aise said, edging away.

“Let them sleep,”
Kassia told her. “Please. Come with me, Aise. There’s a fire burning and a
table laid.”

Eunion, biting
into a purple onion at breakfast, the last thing he would ever eat.

“No, I cannot.”

“Listen,” Kassia
said, and her eyes left Aise’s face for the first time. “I have news you need
to hear, something you should know. And it were best I tell you now, while your
children are asleep.”

Aise’s face became
blank. “Tell me, then.”

“No, please, not
out here. Come join me at the fire. We’ll have some wine.”

“I will not drink
wine,” Aise said.

“Then I will.”
Kassia smiled, flustered now. “Please come with me.”

Unwillingly, Aise
allowed herself to be tugged along by the arm. They left the courtyard and
entered a room in which the walls were painted the colour of an earthenware
pot. There was a small corner hearth, its beehive interior full of fire - olive
wood, by the smell. And a balcony. Aise stepped over to it in wonder. There was
a thick wooden balustrade the height of her thigh, and beyond it, a soaring
view of Machran. She caught her breath at the sight.

Kassia joined her,
lifting a winecup off the table that sat like an island in the middle of the
room.

“It’s quite
something, to see it all from here,” she said, smiling. “We are high up on
Kerusiad Hill, and you’re looking west. There’s the Empirion, and Round Hill
rising behind it. All of Machran at your feet. I never tire of looking at it.”

“I’ve never seen
it like this, like a view through the eye of a bird.”

“The Kerusiad is a
tall hill. At the top of it is the citadel of Machran, an old fortress where
the Kerusia meet in session. They’re repairing it now, just in case we…”

“In case Corvus
and my husband breach your walls,” Aise said. She turned around. “Lady, you
seem a kindly woman. Of this Karnos I know nothing except that he has a
reputation as a womaniser and an orator. Tell me, what does he intend to do
with my girls and I?” Aise stared at Kassia unblinking. The white of one eye
had half-filled with blood, and its socket was a purple hollow.

“Karnos is a good
man, whatever you’ve heard of him,” Kassia said earnestly. “He detests what was
done to you. He has told me that you and your children are welcome to make his
home your own for as long as you wish.”

“He sounds like a
man with a guilty conscience,” Aise said. “I know we are not here on a whim. He
seeks to use me against my husband.”

Kassia set down
her wine carefully on the tabletop.

“Aise.” She glided
forward and took the older woman’s hands in her own, looking her full in that
beautiful, broken face.

“Rictus died
yesterday in an assault upon the walls.”

Aise stood very
still for perhaps three heartbeats. Then she jerked her hands out of the
younger woman’s grasp and backed away.

“That is a lie.”

“I am so sorry.”

“I do not believe
you.”

“I would not lie
about such a thing. Aise, yesterday morning Rictus’s second, Fornyx, came to
the city under a green branch and asked to retrieve his body.”

“Fornyx?” Aise
backed away further. One hand came up and covered her mouth.

Kassia followed
her, opening her arms. “Believe me when I say Karnos has no hidden plans for
you. With Rictus gone -”

“With Rictus gone
I am without worth,” Aise said. And spoke his name again, so softly it could
barely be heard.

Tears burned
bright in her bruised and blood-filled eyes. She drew a breath that was part
sob, part snarl.

All this time the
knowledge that he was there in the world, a black-armoured invincible pillar of
her life - it had kept her on her feet. The fact of his very existence had made
her take one step after another when she wanted nothing more than to give up,
to lie down and shut herself away from the memories poisoning her heart. Rictus
would find her. Rictus would set things right, if he had to tear Machran stone
from stone to do it.

A childish belief,
but it was the last hope she had possessed.

And now he was
dead.

“Aise -” Kassia
began, her face twisted with pity.

“
Stay away from
me.
” The look in Aise’s eyes halted Kassia in her tracks.

She walked to the
balcony and stood there with her hands on the reassuring wood of the balustrade.
All Machran loomed out below her, a surf of noise and activity that filled the
world. Men shouting, dogs barking, mules braying, the rattle of cartwheels, and
unending, ceaseless chatter. Tens of thousands talking, talking.

She set her hands
on her ears, the tears trickling down her face, thinking of Andunnon, the quiet
world of the hills, making bread that last morning before it was all destroyed.
She would never know peace again, now. She knew that.

Even in the most
silent hour of the night, she would hear them laughing as they violated her,
and see their faces. Rictus would have killed them. He would have made things
right.

Rictus was dead.
Her world was destroyed.

“Aise,” Kassia
said. “In time…”

She had made a
bargain with the gods, and they had kept it.
Let it all be on me,
she
had prayed, and her prayer had been answered. Her daughters were alive and
whole.

“You say you will
look after my children.”

“Yes - of course.”

She had done
enough. All her life she had been doing things for others. Now she would do one
last thing for herself.

“Aise!” Kassia
screamed, and lunged forward.

Too late. Rictus’s
wife leaned out over the balcony and let herself fall. A flash of turning
pictures galloped past her mind, bright leaves from a forest of memories; and
then there was a shattering blankness. And she knew true peace at last.