Silk Dreams - Songs of the North 3 (30 page)

“I will see you soon, love,” Landina said to the disembodied head. When Mahomet raised his sword again, she actually gave him a tremulous smile.

Landina's little head rolled to a stop in the grass at Valdis's feet. It lay there blinking up at her for the space of several heartbeats. Then the bright eyes dulled and her smiling lips went slack.

“Behold the mercy of our lord and master," Publius began chanting. The cry was soon taken up by the women around her.

Valdis did not join them.

When she looked up, Mahomet was standing directly in front of her. He kicked the Frankish girl's head away and studied Valdis for a few moments.

“You will dine with me this night,” he declared.

Valdis swallowed the gorge that rose in the back of her throat and bared her teeth at him, hoping he would mistake the expression for a smile.

He seemed satisfied and moved on.

Valdis bored a hole in his back with her gaze. She understood why Landina smiled before the blade fell. She had known love and the knowledge freed her from fear, even fear of death.

Valdis had known love too—love that unseats reason and drives all other passions before its unassailable tide. There was nothing Mahomet could do to her that would wound her more than the loss of Erik. She was untouchable. She was beyond the reach of her master’s cruelty. Death would be welcome when it came for her.

But before I leave this Middle Realm,
she promised herself,
I will kill Habib Ibn Mahomet.

Valdis wandered slowly through Hagia Sophia's arcade and under the huge floating dome with its enigmatic
Kristr
gazing down. Perhaps the god of this great city looked graciously on her in her grief. Last night she'd escaped Mahomet's bed once again.

Damian had been Mahomet's other dinner guest. Thanks to his surreptitious signals, she managed to satisfy Mahomet with vague predictions about silk prices and the coming chariot races. Her gift triumphed over his lust.

Her master was pleased enough by her prognostications that he called for another odalisque to service his body's needs later that evening. Valdis was grateful, but she was even more relieved he allowed her to continue her daily outings to the Hagia Sophia. Though it drained her heart’s blood to visit Erik's runes in the church gallery, it also anchored her to this world for another day.

Her steps slowed as she mounted the marble staircase. She liked this time of day with the mellow golden quality of light shafting through the windows. It was between worship services, so there were few people around. The basilica was quiet enough that she sometimes fancied she heard sibilant voices floating on the air currents, soughing through the man-made cavern. She never caught any actual words, but the sound was restful, and if her heart needed anything, it needed rest.

Usually she was alone in the upper gallery, but today she saw a hooded figure at the top of the staircase. He turned away as she approached and disappeared into the shadows. That suited her purpose. She preferred solitude.

Valdis found her seat and settled into her ritual of mourning. She pushed back the burka so she could see the runes more clearly. A gasp escaped her throat.

Instead of just the first two letters, someone had finished Erik's name. Then the rune writer had carved the most astonishing word.

Alive.

Valdis covered her mouth with both hands to keep from crying out. She wanted to laugh hysterically, to dance till her feet bled, to run screaming his name at the top of her lungs.

Erik is alive.

She whispered her thanks to the solemn mosaic on the dome. Then she dropped to her knees and pressed her lips against the runes. If Erik were alive, then the world was put on its head. The sunlight was brighter streaming in the circle of windows along the base of the dome. The colors of the mosaic tiles were crisp and vital. The scent of incense tickled her nostrils for the first time and it seemed as if the half-heard voices that whispered through the vaulting space were laughing softly with her.

She stood to go and nearly ran into the man with the hood.

“Your pardon,” she said as she slid past him to the stairway.

“Valdis,” he said so softly she barely heard him.

She stopped dead. There was no mistake. It was Erik's voice. She turned to him, but his face was still hidden. Her hand crept to her breast to make sure her heart was still beating. Then she slowly walked toward him.

His gray eyes flashed in the shadows.

“It is you?” She scarcely dared believe it.

“Almost,” was the cryptic answer. The man threw back his hood.

Valdis's eyes widened. But for the fact that he was now clean shaven, the left half of his face was the same—the angular strong lines of his jaw and cheekbone, his high broad forehead, just as she remembered him. She'd never seen him without a beard and mustache. He looked years younger.

But the right side of his face had been ravaged by fire. The angry red skin boiled across his cheek and down his neck, disappearing under his clothing. Valdis wondered how far the river of melted flesh flowed. There was only a blackened nub where his ear should have been and what remained of his hair hung in wisps on that side of his head.

He was like the defunct two-headed deity Janus. Seen in profile, he might have been taken for either a handsome young god or a monster.

But he was still her Erik.

And she loved him more than her next breath.

She lifted a tentative hand and touched his cheek. His jaw tensed and she drew back, fearing she had caused him more pain.

“Oh, my love,” she said with a sob. “What have they done to you?”

“If you can't bear me, I hold you blameless. I will leave this city and never trouble you again. Erik the Varangian is dead. His oath to the emperor died with him,” he said, his voice still husky from smoke. “But if you think you can stand the sight of me, I would take you with me, Valdis.”

“And I would go,” she said without hesitation.

He drew her into his arms and with great gentleness, he kissed her. For a moment, Valdis wondered if she were having one of her spells and this was only a vivid dream. Surely this couldn't be real, and yet his lips were warm. She slipped her hands under the folds of his cloak and his firm flesh met her touch. His big hands slid down her back and cupped her bottom. When he pressed her against him, she felt his groin harden with unsatisfied desire.

This was no shade, no phantom. It was Erik back from the dead. Wonder and joy expanded in her chest as her body responded to his with warm moistness. As their kiss deepened, tears coursed down her cheeks, washing away the last of her grief. When he finally released her mouth, she laid her head on the expanse of his chest, breathing in his dear masculine scent and listening to the rioting thump of his heart.

“I have booked passage on a ship bound for old Rome,” he said. “It doesn't leave until next week, but I don't think I can wait till then to have you.”

Though she wanted him with a fierce yawning ache that caught her by surprise, Landina and Bernard's death was freshly scored on her mind. Now that Erik was alive, she had every reason to go on living.

And everything to lose.

“We must be wise. I cannot go missing until the ship is ready to sail or Mahomet will set his hounds on my trail,” she counseled as she planted a kiss at the base of his throat. “And I have a debt to pay before I can leave this city.”

She told him of Landina's end and her vow to bring Mahomet to his grave. To her relief, he nodded in agreement.

“I will help you,” he said. “If everything I have learned is true, your master and his confederate were behind the attack of the lion on the emperor's ship and on my crew. I may not be oath-bound to the Bulgar-Slayer any longer, but I owe Mahomet a taste of the agony he gave my pledge-men who died in the harbor.”

“Then let us plan, beloved.”

“Try to find out what new scheme your master is hatching and I will do the same,” he promised. “And once we have finished with this cursed place, we shall drink deep from the horn of love for all our days.”

She kissed him once more and forced herself to pull away, promising to come at the same time on the morrow.

As she walked back to her waiting escort, Erik's words played in her head like a half-remembered song.

“We shall drink deep from the horn of love all our days.”

She only hoped the number of those days would be more than the fates had allotted poor Landina and Bernard.

“Valdis, my oracle, the worthy chief eunuch's wine bowl is empty,” Mahomet said. “And that serving girl has made herself scarce again.”

Valdis couldn't blame the child. She was no more than twelve, her tiny breasts mere buds, and yet each time she refilled Mahomet's glass of pomegranate juice, he made a point of fondling her. Once he even joked about checking to see if the figs were ripe enough to be plucked. Damian smiled politely, but refused to join in her master's laughter.

She liked Damian better for it.

“Run down to the kitchen and scare her up,” Mahomet said with a sly grin. “Aristarchus looks parched and dry as a stick.”

A dry stick.
Was that not the new derogatory term for a eunuch she'd heard only last week? Damian's lips thinned slightly at his host's wit. She marveled at his forbearance.

“A good jest,” she heard him say sardonically as she glided from the room. “Isn't it a pity we dry sticks run everything worth having in this Empire?”

Once she reached the kitchen she found the serving girl sobbing in a corner. Valdis bent to whisper to her. “Get you to your bed, child. I will tell the master you are ill.”

The girl swiped her cheeks with her small fists. “He'll have me beaten.”

“No, he detests malady of any kind in his servants.” Valdis winked at the girl. “Why do you think I've escaped his attentions? It's my falling sickness that turns him from me. Stick your finger down your throat and purge your stomach. You'll be safe for a few days.”

The girl's face brightened, then fell in mock illness. She grabbed at her gut and moaned.

“Good girl,” Valdis whispered and then went to fetch the wine Mahomet kept for his non-Muslim guests. With any luck at all, she and Erik would successfully rid the world of her child-mongering master before the girl's "illness" passed. She hadn't thought of a plan yet, but she was determined.

She climbed the stairs back up to Mahomet's ornate dining room and paused just outside the closed door. Damian was speaking, but she could hardly believe the words coming from his mouth.

“I've arranged for the guard to be negligent the night before the race,” the chief eunuch was saying. “Your hired courtesan should be able to slip in and drug Heracles with no problem. He should be incapacitated for several days. The Greens may be the finest examples of horseflesh ever to grace the oval track, but without their driver to make them run as one, the Blues will take them without trouble.”

Damian was planning to fix a chariot race. What devilment was this?

“As you requested, I have placed the word on the street that the Blues anchor, the Arabian mare that runs on the inside, has turned up lame. She assuredly is not, but even her trainer has been paid handsomely to say so,” Mahomet said. “Because the Greens are so heavily favored, no one will back the Blues against them.”

“No one but our purple-born friend,” Damian said.

Purple-born?
Was the emperor betting against his own team? From Mahomet's words, it seemed as if the chief eunuch, and not her current master, was the author of this plan. Valdis pressed her ear to the crack in the door.

“This will ruin the aristocracy and most of the high-ranking guild members, who will bet lavishly on the Greens, because to do so shows their support for the old Bulgar-Slayer without risk,” Mahomet said with relish. “Leo Porphyrogenito will own them after the race turns the economy on its ear. They will be unable to extricate themselves from crushing debt unless they support the lion's claim to the throne.”

Leo.
As Damian had intimated, Leo was looking to hurry his uncle off the throne. The only surprise was that Damian seemed to be helping him.

The chief eunuch wasn't trying to flush out the emperor's enemies. He was trying to join them, even to lead them, if she could credit her own ears.

“That is why we should also plan to storm the Imperial box after the race, to press our advantage,” Mahomet said. “While those in power are still reeling from their losses, we strike. Cut off the head of the serpent and its body may writhe for a while, but it has no way to spread its poison.”

Poison.
There was an idea with merit. If she could slip poison into her master's drink, she would be free. She and Erik could leave the city without fear of pursuit. Let the Byzantines intrigue among themselves.

But Damian’s duplicity troubled her. Lies, if such they were, fell from his lips as easily as if their conversation were about the weather instead of unseating the emperor. Valdis could trust no one. Her hand shook as she pushed open the dining room door. A tingle ran from her fingertips up her arm to her spine. Her vision tunneled. If Loki were with her instead of shut up in her chambers, the little dog would be growling now. She recognized the beginning of her sickness, but she was powerless to stop the Raven from descending to claim her. The wineskin slipped from her hand.

“Stand back. Give her some air,” she heard Damian through the murk. Valdis followed the sound back to the waking world. “She's coming around.”