0316382981 (45 page)

“Alexander.” Arsinoe turned to embrace her friend.

He wiped the blood against his stained tunic before looking up at her. His eyes were wrong. They weren’t the gray-green of Alexander’s, but as dark and murky as her own.

“What’d ya call me?” he asked, his head cocked to one side. From here, she saw, he looked nothing like her palace friend. The same age, perhaps, around the same build, but not even a glint of resemblance beyond that. He didn’t even
sound
like Alexander. She’d been a fool to think that her childhood companion, spoiled by court life, had followed her out here.

“Nothing,” she murmured.

“I’m Cerberus.” The boy grinned.

Cerberus. Hades’s three-headed hellhound. Arsinoe would have smiled at the name if her insides didn’t feel rubbed raw. Not all street children took on gruesome monikers, but she’d discovered that many did. Even the ones who didn’t adopt grisly names rarely went by their birth ones. Ajax, he was Little Ajax, and his lost cousin had been the “Big” of the pair. Two warriors of the great poet’s songs. Arsinoe doubted that their mothers—whatever lowly sort of women they might have been—would have had the gall to name their children after such lofty figures.

“You got a name?” the boy asked, staring at her with interest. He wasn’t shy about looking at her. There was an impudence to it.

Arsinoe shook her head; she had no answer to that question. She didn’t even have a name. “I’m no man,” she said. Like Odysseus.

“I got eyes to see that.” He laughed. “You got quite a swing on ya, no man. What’s that you got?”

She held out the bone to show him, but not too close. Who knew what sort of boy he was, this boy who caught himself up in trouble among the catacombs?

“You’re not no man.” He whooped with delight. “You’re Osteodora.”

Osteodora
. The bone bearer.

Snug between the bodies of her two companions, she was safe. The easy rise and fall of breath calmed her heart. She’d no reason not to be content. She was warm. Her belly was full, or full enough. No one could touch her in this place. As the moon climbed higher against the black, her mind wandered through the darkness, out of the catacombs and back to the palace, to those who had died and those who soon would. She no longer soared at night; she only slithered.

“Osteodora.” Bony fingers poked her ribs. “Ya can’t sleep all day.”

She sealed her eyes tighter, as though that might stall the dawn. Lying here, she felt cozy and unwound. Once she rose, she’d have to face all the dangers of the day.

“Dooooo-raaaaa,”
Ajax cried in that frightful singsong voice of his.

“Dora, I’ve told ya a hundred times over. I’ll slog ’im if you don’t shut ’im up.”

“Dora!” the little one squealed.

Her eyes shot open. Cerberus had caught Ajax by the ear and was pinching his flesh so hard that it began to redden.

“Don’t torment him,” she chided.

The older boy groaned. He didn’t understand why she kept Ajax around, why she fed him and taught him to use her knife. “He was passed to me,” she’d tried to explain. It was no use, but she’d no other way of telling of the guilt that plagued her. Cerberus wouldn’t understand. As far as she knew, he had thought nothing of the man he’d slain the day they met. But even as days bled by, the boy’s cousin haunted her, the image of his head smashed in the crypts. On cool nights, when her comrades slept easy, her wounded heart would hope that Big Ajax still lived. And then the sun would rise, and she’d be grateful for his death, for the luck it had brought her, and for Cerberus.

As the three picked their way through the bustling street, Little Ajax ran out ahead. He was friends with twice as many people as she and Cerberus put together, which made him useful—she would remind the older boy of that. Ajax, with his sweet and easy smile, fetched the day’s news for them, sussing out which merchants were absent, and which had hired new guards, and which had received fresh shipments of goods. That bit mattered most. More Romans meant more mouths to feed—mouths more important than those belonging to beggar children like herself.

“Today’ll be a good one. I feel it, y’hear?” Cerberus whispered.

“Why d’ya say that? Why’s it different from yest’day?” She aped his voice’s rhythms, the lulls between jammed-together words.

“You still talk funny.” He smirked.

“I talk better than you.”

“Ya call th’ be’er?”

She laughed at his voice, and at his beaming face. He exaggerated his accent sometimes to test her, to see if she’d take her own too far. But he didn’t ask her about it; he had his secrets too. Like how he’d learned to kill a man with a swift jab of a knife.

“Come.” Her eyes scanned the crowd. “Why’s it got to be such a good day?” Hunger gnawed at her. On good days, they found food before famine’s fingers clawed their bellies and sucked away their strength.

“’Cause I got a secret. I know where we’ll get our next meal.”

Her ears perked. “How do you? Half the merchants don’t even have food to sell.”

“I know o’ one who does.” Cerberus’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We steal from Bes’s shop. He’s gone each day. I know what time. And I heard his best guard’s got sick.”

She shivered. Bes frightened her. A hefty man whose family hailed from the Upper Lands, he had established himself as one of the city’s most prominent merchants—and the most ruthless. She heard that he cut off the hands of a young assistant who dared steal from him, and gouged out the eyes of a street boy for staring too lustily at his wares. And besides, Cerberus was many things, but prudent wasn’t one of them.
People let all sorts of idle gossip stand unchallenged,
she reasoned with herself. She should know. Even so, Bes wasn’t the sort of man she was eager to cross.

“I don’t—” She cut off her own protest when she caught sight of Ajax, skirting back through the crowd. His head hung low; his whole frame hunched in on itself. She knew that face, that walk. No news, no shipments—no luck. She met Cerberus’s eye and shrugged. “It sounds like a good enough plan.”

Entering Bes’s shop was easier than she had imagined. Cerberus stood guard, Ajax sprang the lock, and soon she and the younger boy had crept into the store. While the other shopkeepers had been picked clean, the merchant’s wares were plentiful: fruits, nuts, sweetmeats. Anything she could dream of. She rushed first to the cashews. Nuts filled bellies like nothing else; she’d learned that lesson quickly enough. Ajax hurried over to gather dates. He was still plagued by a child’s sweet tooth.

“Ajax, don’t fill your arms with those. Steal something useful.”

“These are useful.” His mouth squirted juice.

“Hurry, though. We can’t stay here long.”

She scraped another armful of almonds into her cloth. Deftly, she tied its ends around her bone. She no longer wondered about who its previous owner had been. Now it felt as much a part of her as her own fingers.

“Dora,” her companion squealed.

“Shut up,” she snapped. The shop door creaked open. She held her breath.

“You’ve come to the right spot, my friend.” The man addressed an unseen patron. Osteodora pressed herself against the wall. “I’ve supplied many an excellent feast. And I imagine there’ll be many now to celebrate the king’s homecoming.”

In the edge of her sight, an object tumbled to the ground. For a moment she was sure it was Berenice’s head. Osteodora shook away the sight; her visions came upon her at strange moments now. With so much death, the gods refused to spare even her days. And no sooner had Berenice’s face turned back into a pomegranate than another portent rose: carrion crows slain and guards tearing up her chambers. Myrrine weeping. Myrrine beaten. Myrrine dead. Crimson spilled beneath the bed frame. Blood spread before her eyes and her sight blurred red.

“You filthy thieves,” a voice hissed.

“Run,” Ajax whispered, shaking her already unsteady frame. “Dora, run—now!”

Her comrade dashed forward. The man grabbed his wrist, but Ajax twisted away. Osteodora dug her nails into her flesh. She wouldn’t be haunted by Berenice’s death, nor by Myrrine’s. Those women belonged to another life.

The shopkeeper loomed before her, his mouth curled into a snarl. “Where’s your courage now, girl? Come, give me what you’ve stolen, and perhaps I’ll cut off only a few of your fingers.”

He held out his hand; that was his mistake. As the shopkeeper reached for her bundle, Osteodora wrested it away and sank her teeth into his fleshy palm. Her knee sprang up, hard and fast, and crashed into his groin. As the man doubled in pain, she slipped out the door into the street.

Her eyes darted one way and then the other. She couldn’t return to their meeting place—not at once, at any rate. And so she rushed headlong in the opposite direction, away from the canal and the catacombs. Her feet knew the twisting lanes as well as that other girl had once known the palace plazas and porticoes.

A man swore as her bundle struck his cart. She wove and darted through the onslaught of passersby. Every street, every alleyway, every boulevard was swarming on this first warm day of spring.
Persephone returns, and the world blooms with life.
There was another return as well: the return of her father and her sister to Alexandria. But Osteodora wouldn’t think of that. That was Arsinoe’s family, not her own. And they’d abandoned her.

When she was sure she wasn’t being followed, she doubled back through the streets, slowing her pace to a walk. Still too many eyes picked her out. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t disappear. A youth walking with his lover gave her a lingering look, and an older man wearing the white robes of a priest stared at her for a long while. Perhaps Ajax was right: the bone did draw glances. But she took pleasure in them. It was better to be seen as a threat, looked upon with fear and disgust, than as another shrinking street mouse. The bundle dug into her shoulder. Her rough-spun clothes scratched against her skin. And slowly the crowds began to thin as she approached the canal. Ajax, reliable Ajax, sat waiting, his legs dangled over the clear waters.

“Here.” She tossed him a pomegranate. He tore into its peel with his teeth, not bothering to open it with his knife.

Teeth mottled pink with seeds, Ajax peered up at her and mumbled, “Shouldn’t we wait for Cerberus?”

“I’ll tell him you already wolfed down half your bit, if it makes your eating easier.”

Her eyes scanned the three streets that opened onto the canal for Cerberus’s skinny form. Her weight shifted from foot to foot. She fingered the coin belt she wore knotted against her skin. Its denizens bore the face of her—Arsinoe’s—father. When she’d sold her palace clothes, she’d stared in awe as the shopkeeper handed over gold piece after gold piece. Ajax had kicked her and hissed, “Bite ’em or put ’em away.” And then he’d shown her how to cut a stretch of cloth and stitch it beneath the filthy tunic she now wore. “That way,” he’d told her proudly, “the coins won’t fall out, and won’t get stole neither.” Their numbers had dwindled there against her waist. She wouldn’t use the remaining ones for food, only for favors or for tonics—things too hard to steal.

She watched as her friend ate his share as ferociously and joyously as he always did. She wondered, as she often did, how he’d ended up with Big Ajax, what had brought him to the streets. For a long while, she’d been waiting to ask him—and now, with him so utterly jubilant, the moment felt ripe.

“Ajax,” she asked quietly. “Where’s your mother?”

The boy blushed to his neck. He must be ashamed of the woman, then, of whatever had happened to lead him to this place. Osteodora realized that many of the street children weren’t orphans. They couldn’t be. The city hadn’t seen plague or war in years; their parents couldn’t have all died off. Many of her new compatriots, she imagined, had been raised on the streets. And when they reached the age when their smiles no longer helped their mothers beg, they were turned out—or they fled. Cerberus had mentioned it once: “Why shoul’ I steal for that old hag when I coul’ steal twice as good for me?”

“I—I don’t remember her,” Ajax stammered, eyes cast out over the still water.

“Not anything?” she pried. Curiosity overwhelmed her. She’d never been good at holding her tongue. And besides, she was crafting her own account. Sooner or later, she imagined, someone would ask.

“Not much, Dora. I don’t remember much of anything, really, before Big Ajax took me…” He shrugged his bony shoulders. He looked so little huddled against the great canal. Had he seen even eight summers? She couldn’t tell. Street children ran small for their age, and most took her for older than she was.

Bundle clutched to her chest, Osteodora sat down beside Ajax. He looked up at her with his gap-toothed smile.

“What about your mother, Dora?”

“Ran off. Took my two brothers, left me to fend for myself.” She told Arsinoe’s story, in broad strokes. How she was betrayed and left behind. A lump formed in her throat; it was strange that the tale still affected her. “She always wanted boys anyway,” she added, harshly, coldly.
And what of Ganymedes, then? Did he want boys too?

The sound of feet scraping against stone. She leapt up: Cerberus. And there he was, bruised and beaten, walking across the boulevard—staggering, more like. He couldn’t keep his steps in a straight line. He favored his left leg with each stumbled stride.