B007IIXYQY EBOK (118 page)

They rose together, causing hardly a pause in their dinner companions’ conversations. Those who did take notice thought her eagerness natural; all knew how frustrated she was by the delays in the construction of her library. As she walked ahead of him, she felt like some adventurer starting out on a narrow bridge, high over a shallow, rock-strewn stream. Though her mind assured her the structure would hold, on looking down, her palms moistened, her knees quivered.

While they were still within hearing of the Guards, he said, “Now stand here.”
Below them was the great gouge in the earth where Atrides had tried and failed to set the foundation. “What do you see to the west? That would be the vista, if the entrance were placed as I think it should be. The radiant heating could be extended through here, despite what Atrides says. Now step down here and consider the vista from the east….”

He took her hand to help her balance in her sandals, which were fragile as spider webs; she took four mincing steps down to the garden’s edge. The hand he held quivered like a trapped dove.

Julianus regarded her critically, worried suddenly that she was too delicate to withstand what he meant to do next. Though Domitia Longina was a matron, her face was that of a woman not fully grown; it was too softly modeled, with a child’s fullness and light sweetness in its expression; those lips were set permanently in a girl’s petulant pout. Her eyes were blue smears of uncertainty—soft, seeking, gelid; he thought of scallops pulled from the shell. That pale hair, wispy and indefinite as her thoughts, was drawn back at the nape of her neck, but most of it escaped to form a gauzy aura about her face. Her skin had a fine translucence; even the caress of her azure silk stola seemed too rough for its overprotected softness. That unformed body, pliant as cushions, defied utterly the notion that somewhere within was muscle and bone. She appears too vulnerable for this world, Marcus Julianus thought uneasily. Yet there is a spirited lift to her chin, a capacity for dangerous mischief in those eyes. She generates her own sort of elusiveness. This, I would wager, is at least part of what keeps Domitian’s attentions upon her, for he is at his weakest with women who imply by act and gesture they do not want him.

He released her hand when they were beyond hearing.

“I requested an audience,” he said quietly “and, of course, I understood that you could not respond.”

Domitia Longina felt suddenly the weight of the night on her chest; she could not breathe. “One cannot always control one’s life,” she whispered, her voice pale. “It relieves me you know it was not done from ill will toward you.” She kept her gaze on the site, frowning and nodding, feigning comprehension of an explanation of an architectural point.

“You are gracious and kind,” he continued in a low voice. “Have I your permission to introduce the matter I had in mind to approach you with then, now that our purpose is disguised?”

“Yes,” she said breathlessly as a young girl repeating the marriage vows. But she managed to maintain a bland expression.

Moving his left hand as though he described an arch, he said, “I mean to inform you then, I intend to murder your husband.”

Her body spasmed as if a noose had been tightened about her neck. The fright that came into her eyes was senseless, unpredictable, blind. Slowly she brought up a trembling right hand.

He closed his eyes.
Oh, curses on all of life, on love, on all striving…on the infernal gods. I misjudged her. She is summoning the guards. I am a dead man.

But the Empress uttered no sound. The hand she raised stopped at her throat. This automatic defensive gesture she smoothly transformed into the motions of fidgeting with an errant strand of hair. When he looked at her again, to his amazement her face was composed, although she would not look at him. He sensed this was protective, as if she feared he might see too much of her soul.

I judged her rightly, he thought. There’s a firm core of sensibility beneath all that flightiness and fretting.

When she spoke, her voice was bare of all lilting, womanly intonations—it was the flat, pragmatic voice of a woman in the marketplace. “You are mad to so casually place your life in my hands. Why are you so certain of yourself…and of me?”

“It is not done casually. It was a carefully made judgment that your love of freedom overbalances your fear. And I’m not so sure of myself as you may suppose—I’ve made a life of sounding more certain than I am.”

“So that
is honesty. I’ve heard tales of it.” She looked at him briefly, appreciating what seemed a Homeric determination in his eyes, mingled intriguingly with a quality of gentleness. She thought: I am not so easily read. This is a necromancer who reads in eyes what Chaldeans read in the stars.

“You frighten me.” It was a fugitive’s voice, not an empress’s. She thought suddenly the ground was too distant, and earth and air were all one liquid medium, tugging at her, rolling in gentle swells. This could not be happening, but it was.

“That is the last thing I wish. I’m sorry to tell you this way but…you are too isolated by your jailers.”

“Most people envy me.”

“They are blinded by eminence. They do not see the woman beneath.”

“I could change my mind tomorrow. Dawn will come and I won’t be pleasantly half drunk, and I’ll realize you’re off your head. Perhaps then
I’ll go the Prefect of the Guard. I hold a dagger at your throat.”

“I wished it so, for how else could I have gained your trust?”

“Of all the plots conceived, how many succeed—and how many end in a series of executions?” Her voice became a soft growl. “You had better not be playing with me.”

He suppressed a smile at the undisguised eagerness in her voice. The fruit had long been ready to fall; the tree needed but one firm shake. He sensed she questioned him now merely to test how he would respond, as a collector of bronzes might continue to turn and handle a vase after he has decided he will buy it.

“It will succeed because of what I learned from the failures of others. The ground will be prepared slowly; the first consideration will be the safety of the conspirators—there are shortly going to be quite a few of them. We will do nothing until we have found a successor loved and respected by everyone. It might take a year and more. And I must tell you, I have Caenis’ letters. If it is your wish, I will show them to you.”

“How in the name of Venus did you get them?”

“A tale for another time.” He knew he must hurry or her companions would begin to feel this discussion oddly prolonged. “If you wish to be a part, we will go no faster than you determine. But I wanted you to know at once—aid is coming to you.”

Julianus smiled casually for the benefit of a Guard who seemed dazed with tedium as he glanced their way while scratching an arm and shifting his grip on his javelin.

“I will tell you then, I loathe the man more than death itself,” she whispered, the low flash of fire in her eyes revealing the wrath of Medea beneath that innocuous face. “Slaves in the silver mines, no, the donkeys that turn the millstones, have freer lives than this. If you would give me the greatest gift, then let me be witness
to the death blow. I want the monster to know, as he dies, I had a hand in it…and that I go on living. Know this, Marcus Julianus: While the city mourns my miscarriage, I secretly carry thank-offerings to Juno…for that was no miscarriage. I rid myself of it with the pine draughts. I risked my life because I refuse to have his loathsome spawn ripening in me. There, are
you justly satisfied I am committed to your cause?”

“My lady, please, the Guards,” Marcus Julianus said as he took a quick step forward so that he blocked the Guards’ view of her angry countenance.

“I can tell you much. I can tell you, through Carinus, what precautions his astrologers advise him to take when he travels by carriage. We can—”

“Enough now! That is good. But you’ve galloped too far ahead. Now listen carefully. We will communicate through books. It will look most natural—you are building a library and it is generally known I have sources in Alexandria who supply rare and ancient books for me. There is, however, one thing I must ask of you, and it must be done at once.”

“I can deny you nothing. You restore me to the living.” She was eager to bind him with a favor, for she sensed this was a man who would not forget and would probably return it fivefold.

“If properly done, this should not be dangerous.” He set forth quickly his plan for Auriane’s escape, telling her only the part that she, Domitia Longina, would play in it.

“Who is
this poor, wretched creature, who is not, however, so poor and so wretched as to have failed to attract your notice?”

“It is safer if you know nothing.”

She frowned. The woman temporarily in residence fled; the resentful girl returned. She regarded him with bland, innocent eyes.

“I will agree to this only if you take me to your bed.”

Curses on Nemesis, he thought—she is jealous of Auriane. What has become of her concern for her own safety? Diocles was right—
feathers for brains.

“My lady, with greatest respect—you are putting me in a cruel position and yourself in an extremely dangerous one.”

She gave a gay, abandoned laugh, eyes glittering with mild contempt. What a fool you are, her manner said, to take seriously a dinner-party joke. But she was disappointed in her effort to embarrass him; he met it with an understanding smile.

That thirst for petty vengeance, Julianus thought—in the future it may serve us well.

“I only asked to test to see if it was someone you loved,” Domitia Longina said in a voice light and insubstantial as decorative bells, “and I thought that you would ask for something for
you.”

“You said before I would be giving you back your life. Do this, and you will be giving me mine.”

She caught her breath; in her eyes was a solemnity close to awe. He saw—though his intention had been no more than to tell the truth—this reply greatly appealed to her.

“Perhaps I should add,” he said, smiling, “that her safe removal will irritate Domitian beyond measure.”

“Will it truly?” The impish light returned to her eye. Together they turned and began to walk back to her guests. “I am your ally in all things,” she replied, her voice almost lost in the rustle of her silken garments. “And yes,
I will help you rescue your love.”

CHAPTER XLIII

A
FTER THE
F
EAST OF
S
ATURNALIA,
A
URIANE
began tracking the days with charcoal marks on her cell’s stone walls so her people would know their festival times and could celebrate them with small offerings to the ancestors. It was the last day of Wolf’s Moon when, in the still part of the night, she was startled awake by the light of a torch thrust into her face. She looked into the leering, stubbled face of Harpocras, the guard who was Keeper of the Keys.

“Up with you now, sleeping princess,” he said in a voice full of sour humor as he hoisted her by her tunic before she was fully conscious. In a moment of confusion Auriane was thrown back to the time when Helgrune roused her at midnight to take her before Ramis.

Where am I going? Who awaits? Why do they take me at night?

Avenahar, you are not yet born, and Ramis waits over black water. I go to my life or I go into oblivion…. Ramis, you are going to tell me I will be a queen in death. Whatever in the name of Hel’s hosts did you mean by that?

With a dull jolt of fear she remembered where she was.

“Walk ahead of me, clumsy cow. Go,”
Harpocras commanded, spitting through his broken tooth as he spoke. “There’s a man who demands to see you.”

As she moved through the twisting, tomblike passage, he guided her with his javelin, directing her toward the kitchens. Harpocras followed with shambling gait—he had a shortened leg from an old injury—and it caused his keys to rattle softly in that particular rhythm that always signaled his approach. “This is against every rule,” he complained between bouts of coughing brought on by his catarrh, filling the air with the smell of stale raisin wine. “A word of this to anyone and we guards will put it out you attacked one of us. After we’ve disposed of you, be sure there’ll not be enough left of you to make a healthy meal for the beasts.”

Harpocras felt uneasy as a fox trapped in a barn. He had agreed to this meeting only because the bribe was more princely than any he had ever received, and because the man who demanded it presented him with a written order bearing the imperial seal. Harpocras was ready to believe the seal counterfeit but not quite ready enough; if this were some game, it could be deadly, one he had best discreetly play. He prayed Nemesis this breach of security came to no one’s attention.

He ordered Auriane to halt before a low oak door opening onto the grain storage room. Auriane said nothing; her heart felt like a dancer ready to spring. She feared to hope.

Harpocras slid a long, slender key into the lock. Once she was inside, he planned to lock her in, just to make certain no one blundered in accidentally and found them. The door’s hinges complained with a catlike mewling. Auriane saw by the light of one dim lamp a jumble of grain sacks, a cluster of amphorae of olive oil, and the shadowed form of a man concealed beneath the hood of a
paenula
. She felt a rush of exuberance as though she had drained a cup of unwatered wine. She did not need to see his face; she knew it was he, as any creature knows its own kind.