Byzantium's Crown (15 page)

"I thank you, my aunt, but Isis! she's a melancholy little thing and far too thin. Smile, can you not, girl?"

"I can now, lord," whispered Stephana. "Thank you. Thank you."

"You may go, child," said Heptephras, and Stephana fled.

Sweet Isis, she thanked that lout for letting her alone! Marric thought his heart would burst. The lights in the room swung in rainbow shimmers, and something within him snapped.

Marric saw all the people in the room, the pretty frivolous room itself with a clarity he had never before known. They treated him like a beast of burden with an uncertain disposition, regarded Stephana as a physical convenience, that was true. But in the far greater order under the eye of Horus, they belonged to him: Heptephras and her fears, Thutmosis and his misplaced ardors, Strymon and his accounts. They were his responsibility as surely as he wore their collar. He felt a sudden protective warmth. It burnt away his anger as fire combats fire. Gods grant he could protect them. Then he could watch over Stephana too. If only he could kiss her as that young fool had, he would persuade her to abandon all her fears.

When Strymon dismissed him a little later, he stumbled back down the corridor in a daze of revelation and worry. His responsibilities were greater than he had dreamed. It seemed Empire was a thing of the spirit as well as the land, and he had never known.

He flung himself down on his pallet, glad of the thin door that helped protect him from the multitude of self-betrayals that wore out a slave's life. His back no longer hurt. Even the exertion of his work and the humiliation of the scene with Heptephras had left him restless rather than exhausted.

If he could not pace off some of his restlessness, he would go mad. He rose and looked out. There was no one in the corridor, no sound, even in the kitchen building where sometimes the upper servants gathered for a late meal or to prepare refreshments for wakeful guests.

Kicking his reed sandals off, Marric padded along the dusty floor toward the courtyard. The fountain, the pool, the fresh green things would refresh his spirit. They were worth a risk. Then he laughed shortly. Had the lady not said he was to guard her?

No lights gleamed within the women's courts. Lady Heptephras must have taken her fears with her to an early bed. Moving soundlessly, Marric entered the garden. He remembered another time, another garden onto which a bright room had opened like a stage. There Alexa had helped him play out the scene that had brought her to death and himself to slavery. The man he had been—how would he regard the Marric he was now?

Today in the market, for example. Perhaps a real emperor would have let the boy die. And Nico too? History was full of men dying for their emperors. He himself had had men die for him. Doubtless, he would again. But as he walked under the trees, grateful for the fresh green smell and the moonlit glimpse of large blossoms, he began to understand. Marric-that-was might have sacrificed the individual for a larger goal, like that young Thutmosis who so blithely terrified his aunt with his talk of stripping Alexandria's garrisons. But now Marric was unable to sacrifice anyone he cared for . . . if he could prevent it. Even a slave's life had meaning.

Seeing that Marric had to live a slave's life, that was just as well.

He brushed aside a low-hanging branch and came out in front of the pool. There, on the stone curb, a silver pitcher at her side, sat Stephana. At least she had not been packed off to Thutmosis' bed! Marric felt sudden gratitude for this and counted it another weakness.

He paused, unwilling to intrude on her visions. She might have been a moon-silvered statue, so quietly she sat. The wind cast a cloud over the moon and rippled the pool.

Stephana dashed her hand across the surface of the water and began to rise. Sadness showed in the very slump of her delicate shoulders. She turned and saw him. One hand went to her mouth in alarm.

"Don't tell me I should not be here," he said, holding up one hand. "I know it well. But you too: you do not rest."

"I am too tired to think clearly or rest," said Stephana. "I had to spend hours with Lady Heptephras, soothing her. Each time I thought perhaps to get away, she fancied some new terror and I could not leave her."

"You are wearing yourself out and"—Marric decided to be frank—"today has been a horror for you."

He came out to join her.

"Did you have another vision just now?" he asked, low-voiced.

"I can see nothing beyond what I told you this morning!" Stephana whispered, looking into the pool. "Berbers riding in, and blood stains polluting the water. We will be defenseless when the regiments leave."

"Not so," Marric said.

"You are but one man, Mor. You can refuse to kill one slave or to rescue another. You can protect me, as you did this morning. But what good is one man against an army?"

"You were the one who called me a coward," Marric reminded her. Though Stephana had had the courage to go on living with a quiet dignity that commanded his admiration, she was closer tonight to breaking than he had ever seen her. Her voice trembled and her hands shook. The least he could do was help her renew her courage, if only to go on living as a slave.

"So I did." She chuckled a little. "I wish . . . I do wish you could leave here with Thutmosis. You don't belong here, and Sutekh hates you. You know that if he gets a chance, he will kill you."

"What if I killed him?"

"Why did you have to come here?" The words burst from her, and her eyes flamed the blue of a burning candle's heart.

"Slaves don't choose who buys them. I would have sworn this morning that you were glad I was here."

The fight went out of her. "I was. But then . . . this evening, you heard how I was tossed like a guest-gift to the captain. I think—Isis, I hated for that to happen before you. I was ashamed. No, not that, I try not to hate, but I wanted to scream at Heptephras and ask her how she could treat another woman so."

As he had longed to do, Marric reached out and gathered Stephana into his arms. "You, ashamed? Because you have been forced to submit to what you would never consent to? I wanted to kill them both for belittling you."

Stephana turned her head so that it rested on Marric's shoulder. He could not see her face. "Heptephras is not harsh, and not unkindly," she said drearily. "Not usually. And so long as I hide within the house, I am safe, if slave women are ever safe. But Thutmosis is her heir." She gulped, then laughed a little wildly. "He is young at least, and clean: I have survived worse."

As she attempted to pull away, Marric loosed his hold but did not totally release her. "Is that all you can hope for? To be used and then ignored until, finally, you achieve whatever quest you are fated for?"

"I have trained myself, Mor, not to weep over what cannot be helped. You were right to call me a coward. My life punishes me for it."

"You've more courage than any general. Let yourself rest, Stephana; don't pull away from me. You know I won't hurt you. You can be at peace."

She tore free and stood up. "Don't you see? I am not at peace! Until you came here I had courage to endure till my life's end. Then I saw you, and I knew that if I had lived my life for some purpose, that purpose faced me. Nico—" She sobbed once, then stopped herself. "Nico was kind to me. He didn't want you to die. So perhaps that was it, I thought: saving your life was my purpose."

She walked to stand across the pool from him. "I hoped that I could heal you and you would run away. You didn't. And then, when you treated me gently . . . "

One night she had run to him, her shoulder and breast scored by Sutekh's nails. He had comforted her until his touch had become a caress.

"You touched me, yes. I was afraid. I knew then that you didn't want just my help: you wanted me. Me—to be for you what I have been compelled to be for so many men."

"You want me to escape. But if I did, how could I leave you here? Taran says our lives are bound up together."

Stephana turned her face away again. "Tonight, I looked in the water to read your future. I tried to see mine too, but there were only fragments."

Holding her with his gaze, Marric sat beside her on the basin's edge and reached out a hand. "Look again. Please."

"How can I tell now if what I see is true . . . or what I want to see?"

Marric tightened his arms around her. Now her head rested against his heart. He rocked her, hoping that her body would relax against him.

"Then I will tell you what I see at this very moment. Look in the water, Stephana. Do you see what I do? My vision takes no special magic. Do you see the man and woman sitting beside the pool? Look how well she fits in his arms.

"Look again. In a moment the man will raise her face—as I am doing now—and look into her eyes. Then he will kiss her." Marric brushed her lips gently with his.

When his mouth freed hers, Stephana's hands fluttered. He took them up, cradling them against his chest.

"You disturb my peace," she whispered.

"I don't call what you had peace." He stroked her face. "You were resigned to joylessness. Stephana, do you really wish I had left you?"

He had not wanted this bond with her, but now it overwhelmed him. He saw his face reflected in her eyes, saw pain in it, and hid from the sight by kissing her deeply. His hands stroked her back until all resistance went out of her.

"Oh gods," she whispered. Then her arms went around him, and she embraced him with the urgency he had hoped to kindle. But her hand kneading along his shoulder rubbed an open slash, and he winced.

"Mor, Mor, I hurt you!"

Marric laughed. Now he knew how to proceed with her. "We have been harshly treated, Stephana.
So now we must be gentle with one another. There's no pain now." He rested his head between her neck and shoulder, delighted to feel her hand stroke up the back of his neck and tangle in his hair.

"Don't think it's simply gratitude, or that now I've my health back, I simply want a woman, any woman. Do you think you don't trouble my thoughts as I do yours?"

"No. Oh no." She was stricken by that, yet still her hands stroked his back and, very carefully, his shoulders.

"But yes. We escape together, if we escape at all." He pressed his lips against the pulse that beat in her throat, smelling the rose scent he loved. "Stay with me, be with me, Stephana, my rose. I need you. Isis, witness how I need and cherish you . . . "

How much he meant it shook him. One-handed he plucked the pins from her hair and let it fall about them both, enclosing them in sweet-scented waves. He buried his head between her breasts, cupped them in his hands, and felt her tremble. Then he raised his head to look at their bodies reflected in the water.

"You see, Stephana? The woman in the water, how she responds?" Again he kissed her before he stood up and raised her to stand beside him.

"You can still draw back. But won't you come with me now?"

Stephana's eyes were enormous. They never left his. Her lips, reddened from his kisses, said "yes" without sound.

Marric propped himself on one elbow, watching the setting moon's light tangle in Stephana's hair. He put out a gentle hand and brushed it away from her face and breast. Even as she slept, she smiled at his touch. Her face held such joy that Marric wanted to weep.

When she stood before him in his tiny
room, she had not been afraid, though she knew only the painful invasion of her flesh slavery had made her submit to. After loosening her belt, then her long chiton, Marric had run his hand along the sweet curve of her side until she had pressed against him for warmth. Only then had he lowered her onto his bed, and knelt beside it to pull off his clothing. He would need all the tenderness, all his memories of joy to heal her.

"'I wish we had a better bed," he had murmured against her lips. He remembered a room he had shared with a lover once, sleek taffetas on the bed, cool against bare, heated skin. It had rose-scented oils that he could rub into his lover's soft skin, wine in an exquisite goblet they would share, and veils to drift over her. How would that pale body, marred only by a thin scar on her side, look wrapped in blue gauze?

"I would like to drape you in pearls," Marric whispered. He kissed her ear and heard her laugh, a carefree, joyous sound.

For a long time she had lain still, as if gauging her own response to his touch. Finally she met his ardor with her own. Her astonished joy—how could I have forgotten this?—leapt through him at the moment of her ecstasy. As her breathing slowed, she slid a hand between their bodies to try to touch where they were still united. The gentle, questing touch reawakened his desire. And this time she moved eagerly beneath him.

"My rose, my heart's dearest," he had called her and meant it.

Now, her legs still entwined with his, Stephana lay sleeping against his side. Marric caressed her. The moonlight had silvered her body; that he touched soft flesh and not precious metal came as an intoxicating surprise. He traced a flower on her breast, centering it around her nipple, and then kissed it. Her flesh hardened under his lips and tongue, and she gasped, waking into passion once more. She raised her hands to stroke his face, reading his eyes as she had read the visions in the pool. What did she see?

When she spoke, Marric knew that he had betrayed himself to her entirely in the act of love.

"Marric," Stephana whispered. "Marric. My prince."

Marric took her hands and pinned them above her head. His body held hers beneath him.

"Where did you learn that name?" he asked.

Stephana arched her back and brushed his mouth in a fleeting kiss. She tested his grip and apparently decided not to struggle. "Knowledge came to me with our union; I suspected before. You called me your heart. How could I fail to know? Even as a slave you act the prince. So I know you now, Marric. Does it change anything?"

She lay completely vulnerable to him, trusting him completely. Even if he had to, how could Marric bear to kill that newborn trust?

"You hold my life in your hands," Marric said. Delicately he kissed the hollow of her throat, right below the fine wire of her collar. "And I am well content to have it so."