Out of the Waters (64 page)

Smiling at Alphena, she said, “I sent a messenger to the house to bring my servants when I arrived, but I don't expect them to reach us for some while yet. I'll get some wine, dear.”

Alphena sat up slowly. The masseur, his assistant, and the four attendants accompanying them went out first. They had started to pack up their paraphernalia, but after a quick discussion with Abinnaeus they had simply left it behind. The clothier's assistants chivied them to move faster.

Abinnaeus himself followed at the end of the procession. Before he banged the outer door behind him, he dropped a neatly folded packet on the table beside Alphena.

She picked it up: it was a napkin. She wiped her face and eyes, then blew her nose on it and set it down again.

Alphena had known that people obeyed her stepmother's orders, but nobody had given the shopkeeper an order about the napkin. Hedia surrounded herself with people who thought for themselves, which was a very different thing.

Alphena was suddenly glad to have become one of the people around Lady Hedia.

Hedia handed Alphena the two cups she had filled at the sideboard and sat down beside her. They sipped together.

The wine was straight from the jar. Alphena had already learned that what she drank with her mother was likely to be the pure vintage.

That was all right this time. Alphena took a deep draft. It was probably better this time, though she didn't expect to get drunk.

Hedia took another sip and looked at Alphena over the rim of her cup. “Who treated you unfairly, daughter?” she said. Her tone was mild but her face was not. “I may not be able to put it right, but there's a chance that I can demonstrate to those who wronged you that they have made a serious mistake.”

“It's not me,” Alphena said. She snatched up the napkin but she managed not to resume blubbering. “It was Uktena. I know what you think but he's not a monster, not really, he's a man, a brave man, and he, and he—”

She broke off because she found herself crying after all. She felt Hedia take the cup from her hand though she'd probably sloshed out half its contents already. A moment later, Hedia's arm went around her shoulders.

After a time, Alphena snuffled. She blew her nose hard into the napkin, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Uktena is your name for Typhon, dear heart?” Hedia asked. Her voice was calm, hinting of no emotion except kindly concern.

“No!” Alphena said. Then, very quietly, she said, “Yes, I guess so. But it isn't fair. He only got that way because he had to fight Procron. His own people sent him away, put him in
prison
because they were afraid of him. He saved them!”

“Drink some more of this, dear,” Hedia said, offering the cup again.

Either she had somehow refilled it or it was the one she had poured for herself. Alphena took a gulp, then second and third gulps.

“Did they have reason to be afraid of Uktena?” Hedia said. She lowered her arm but she continued to sit very close.

“Yes,” Alphena whispered. “But it doesn't matter. He got that way by saving them! They can't cast him away like that, it isn't right!”

Hedia turned her face toward a wall where bolts of silk were stacked, but her eyes were far away. In a voice which throbbed with an emotion which Alphena couldn't identify, she said, “I suppose it must be right, dear, because that's what happens to soldiers all the time. We give them land to settle on the frontiers, because that way they don't come back to Carce. They're far too dangerous, you see.”

Alphena looked at her. “He's a warrior,” she said. “He fought for them.”

“Yes, dear,” Hedia said, meeting her eyes again. She smiled; a sort of smile. “The tribunes don't spend long out there, a year to be qualified for office and then come back to find jobs in the government. But sometimes a year is too long. They go away boys like your brother, and when they come back they're not really human.”

She hugged Alphena again, harder; taking comfort this time, not trying to give it. “And there's nothing anyone can do, dear one, not after it's happened,” Hedia said. “Except that sometimes we women can bring a little solace. Remember that, when you're older. Remember your friend Uktena.”

Alphena swallowed. She put her cup down to free herself to embrace her mother.

*   *   *

C
ORYLUS FUMBLED WITH HIS BODY
armor as he climbed the steps to the west entrance of the Altar of Peace. The orichalc cuirass was heavy, awkward, and it shone even during the rainstorm, calling unwanted attention to him. He would have taken it off before now, except that he couldn't get the catches to work.

On other days, the naked sprite beside him would have attracted even more attention, but the scattered fires and confusion had left many people running about the Field of Mars in states of undress. Coryla was more attractive than most, but the crowd was too excited about the flaming battle in the sky to pay attention to women, even pretty women.

As for the golden-furred Ancient on the sprite's other side—Carce was used to exotic animals. Mostly they died on the sand, shot by archers who stayed on the other side of the fence from their victims, but not a few came as pets for the great and good.

Pulto halted at the top. “Here, master,” he said, reaching for the catches.

Corylus heard the
click, click, click
and felt the breastplate sag from his right side. “I got it on with no trouble,” he muttered. “I've had it on and off lots of times since, since…”

His voice trailed off. He couldn't remember when all this had started. Days ago, but was a day in that dreamworld the same as one here in Carce?

“You take care of your business,” Pulto said, lifting away the breastplate. “Then we'll get you to the baths and a long soak in the steam room. I ought to know what you need, as often as I've been standing where you are.”

Blood still streaked the orichalc despite the storm which was only now slackening. The Minos had bled like a whale spouting when Corylus jerked his sword free; gore had covered his right arm as well.

“Right, take care of my duties,” Corylus said. He looked into the altar enclosure, feeling his mind sharpen a little; tactical awareness became reflexive on the frontier, especially if you regularly visited the far side of the river.

“Don't worry about the east entrance,” Pulto said. “I had some of Saxa's boys block the doorway with the deck of one of them crashed ships. They'll make sure nobody tries to move it while you're inside. Ah—I told 'em you'd see them right for the work, you know?”

“Yes, of course,” said Corylus. He had to finish this quickly; otherwise he'd fall asleep. “I don't think we'll be long.”

The problem wasn't so much the stress of battle: he would normally still be keyed up by the humors which fighting had released into his system.

His present exhaustion came from the blur of time Corylus had spent in the dreamworld. The release of
that
tension, that existence in a place not meant for living men, had wrung him out more than he could have guessed before the strain released.

“Take as long as you need, master,” Pulto said. “Nobody's going to bother you this way neither.”

Pulto stepped to the center of the entrance and turned his back to the altar; his legs were spread slightly, and his hand was on a barely hidden sword hilt.
No, nobody's going to bother us.

Pulto had stayed with Lenatus in Saxa's house after the attempt to catch the western magicians. That was the proper response for a noncommissioned officer in a crisis: if there wasn't an obvious solution, report to headquarters where people are paid to think beyond straight ranks and a sharp sword.

At the alarm, he had joined the consul's entourage—figuring that reports of ships throwing lightning bolts in the clouds were likely to be cut from the same cloth as Corylus disappearing into thin air. He'd been right.

It had stopped raining, but water stood in shallow pools in the marble pavement and on the charred top of the central altar. The Ancient scraped a finger across the ash, then sniffed what he had caught under his nail. He grinned at Corylus.

The sprite touched the glass amulet, visible now that Corylus had taken off the breastplate. “What now, cousin?” she asked.

Corylus licked his lips. “You both have helped me,” he said. “You've saved me, many times. What is it that you want from me?”

The sprite laughed. “Freedom, of course,” she said. “Freedom to die.”

She looked at the Ancient. He gave a terse growl. He didn't move from where he stood by the altar, but the fur along his spine had rippled.

“Both of us want freedom,” the sprite said. “But you would be a fool to free us, cousin. You need us.”

Corylus took off the amulet and weighed the glass in his hand. He looked from the sprite to the Ancient. Neither of them moved.

“If I didn't treat my friends honorably,” Corylus said, “I would soon have no friends.”

He put the leather thong over his left index finger and held it out to Coryla.

She looked at the bead; her tongue touched her lips. Very softly she said, “The times are in crisis, cousin. The Spirits of the Earth are rising, against you and all who live on the surface.”

“My honor is good!” Corylus said. “I am a citizen of Carce!”

The sprite hesitated. The Ancient took the thong from Corylus and settled the amulet between the teeth at the back of his jaw.

The sprite laughed merrily. She stepped forward and kissed Corylus hard, then put her arm around the Ancient; he bit down.

Then Corylus was alone within the enclosure, except for the pinch of powdered glass drifting to the pavement.

 

 

Read on for a preview of

 

 

Air and Darkness

 

David Drake

 

 

 

Available in November 2015 by Tom Doherty Associates

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
A “Tor Hardcover”    ISBN 978-0-7653-2081-0

Copyright © 2015 by David Drake

 

CHAPTER
I

“Help us, Mother Matuta,”
chanted Hedia as she danced sunwise in a circle with eleven women of the district. The priest Doclianus stood beside the altar in the center. It was of black local stones, crudely squared and laid without mortar—what you'd expect, forty miles from Carce and in the middle of nowhere.

“Help us, bringer of brightness! Help us, bringer of warmth!”

Hedia sniffed. Though the pre-dawn sky was light, it certainly hadn't brought warmth.

The dance required that she turn around as she circled. Her long tunic was cinched up to free her legs, and she was barefoot.

She felt like a complete and utter fool. The way the woman immediately following in the circle—the wife of an estate manager—kept stepping on her with feet as horny as horse hooves tipped Hedia's embarrassment very close to fury.

“Let no harm or danger, Mother, menace our people!”

The things I do to be a good mother,
Hedia thought. Not that she'd had any children herself—she had much better uses for her body than to ruin it with childbirth!—but her current husband, Gaius Alphenus Saxa, had a seventeen-year-old son, Gaius Alphenus Varus, and a daughter, Alphena, a year younger.

A daughter that age would have been a trial for any mother, let alone a stepmother of twenty-three like Hedia. Alphena was a tomboy who had been allowed to dictate to the rest of the household until Saxa married his young third wife.

Nobody
dictated to Hedia, and certainly not a slip of a girl who liked to dress up in gladiator's armor and whack at a post with a weighted sword. There had been some heated exchanges between mother and daughter before Alphena learned that she wasn't going to win by screaming threats anymore. Hedia was just as willing as her daughter to have a scene, and she'd been threatened too often by furious male lovers to worry about a girl with a taste for drama.

“Be satisfied with us, Mother of Brightness!”
Hedia chanted, and the stupid
cow
stepped on her foot again.

A sudden memory flashed before Hedia and dissolved her anger so thoroughly that she would have burst out laughing if she hadn't caught herself. Laughter would have disrupted the ceremony as badly as if she had turned and slapped her clumsy neighbor.

I've been in similar circumstances while wearing a lot less,
Hedia thought.
But I'd been drinking and the men were drunk, so until the next morning none of us really noticed how many bruises we were accumulating.

Hedia wasn't sure that she'd do it all again; the three years since that party hadn't turned her into a Vestal Virgin, but she'd learned discrimination. Still, she was very glad for the memory on this chill June morning.