The Gate of Fire (47 page)

"My lady?" Nikos coughed politely.

The Duchess turned, making a pout that only Nikos could see, and her eyes hardened. Nikos felt a great sense of relief seeing her slide her business face on, crushed amethyst eyeliner and all. "So—I have the tally of the dead," she said, pursing rich red lips. "Sixteen men, all veterans, lost, as well as a building destroyed by the emergence"—the Duchess held the sheet of parchment up to the light from the window and raised a thin, elegant eyebrow—"of something that you can only describe as an
ignis dracorus
."

"Yes, milady," Nikos said, struggling, he managed to free himself from the sheets and blankets. Sighing in relief, he squirmed up until he could sit with his back to the wall. The pain in his arm and leg and side, or the throbbing sensation in the shattered half of his face, he put aside. There was business to be done. "A winged creature, nearly a hundred feet long, with a long tail and a flat, triangular head. It burst free from the burning house—it
flew
away. Our horse handlers on the hillside saw it. It had wings like an enormous bat—dear lady, do not laugh at me!"

The Duchess put a carefully manicured hand over her mouth. Rings of lapis and rubies and emeralds set in bands of white gold and silver glittered on her fingers. Her nails were painted a forest green to match her gown. She smiled, but then took command of her features again.

"I
saw
it, mi'lady—it was real. Someone, a powerful someone, a wizard or sorcerer, was at work in that house. Whoever it was, they fled on that fire-drake. We got there just a little too late—"

"No," Jusuf interjected, ignoring the Duchess, who had opened her mouth to speak. For a moment, cold anger flickered across her features, but then it was gone, like it had never existed. "We did arrive in time," the Khazar continued, his voice filling with anger, "but we could not pass their guardian. That thing gave them the time they needed to flee."

"Ah," the Duchess said, a grim shadow around her eyes. "The monster."

"More than a monster," Nikos said in a heavy voice. "A killing machine; something out of the African jungles, perhaps, or the uttermost East. A creature that lives—
loves
—to kill and hunt. It was waiting for us—for someone to come—and it took joy in that slaughter."

The Duchess nodded. The loss of the praetorians was a heavy blow. She had only gained influence over a portion of their number, and now most of those were dead in this disaster of an arrest. She pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking. "If... if you were to meet this thing again, now that you have gauged its speed and power, could you best it?"

Nikos looked to Jusuf, who shook his head sadly. The Illyrian's face settled into grim lines. "My lady, this thing was a match for twenty experienced men. It was faster than anyone—anything—that I have ever crossed blades with. Even if Thyatis were here... this thing is wicked."

Anastasia raised an eyebrow again. "You would not set Thyatis against it?" She cocked her head to the side, regarding Nikos as a Nile crane might a tasty frog. "She who is the best of us, to hear you tell it?"

Nikos flushed and wiped sweat from his brow. He nodded his head slowly. "One on one, we have no one to match it. Our only hope—if we were to hunt this thing—would be a trap, or a cage, or some stratagem... catch it while it sleeps, perhaps..."

"A thought for another time," the Duchess said, twisting slightly on the couch so that she could see both men. "You saw no one else—no other people in the house, no sign of our informant?"

Jusuf shook his head.

"No," he said, "only fire and the storm and dead men. Whoever else was there got away, as clean as the snow fox in a hencoop."

"I'm sorry," Maxian whispered, squeezing Krista's hand as she sat on the side of the bed. "I brought you near death again."

Krista, smiling, shook her head. She smoothed his hair back, then turned her hand over to test the temperature of his forehead. He seemed better. Not well, perhaps, but past the fever and mending.

"Since you were here to bring me back, I'll forgive you this time."

She smiled again and put her hand on his cheek, though fear seeped like ice in her heart. This bed was better, at least, than that hovel on the Aventine where Gaius had taken them. At her urging, one of the physician-priests in the Temple of Asklepius had taken her coin and come to look at this patient. The man—a stout fellow with a short, thick beard—had not seemed surprised to find a feverish patrician with scattered burns holed up in a slum. He had taken the thick gold
aureus
that she had pressed into his hands, too. The Duchess had always told her that heavy red gold worked wonders, even among the principled and devout. Maxian's fever had broken, and once he woke he had completed the restoration himself.

"Did anything happen," the Prince asked, his voice still a little weak, "while I was in the fever? Are Gaius and Alexandros well?"

Krista cocked her head to one side, frowning in incomprehension. "What do you mean?" she asked, pursing her lips. "They seemed fine, just tired after a time. For a little while they could barely walk, but it passed."

The Prince nodded and tried to sit up. He failed, and she pressed a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back down on the bed. They had found sanctuary in one of the many houses that the Duchess maintained throughout the city. To the best of her memory, Krista did not believe that this one had been used in more than a year. It sat, perched over a narrow, brick-paved street, on the side of the Ianiculum hill, outside the walls of the city to the west of Tiber, in a "good" neighborhood.

Well, good for brothels and outlawed temples and lotus-eater houses
, she thought, grinning to herself. It had a pleasant garden in the back, with a fabulous view of the city across the river. At night, it looked out upon a galaxy of jewels. You could even see the temples of the Capitoline and the Forum Romanum from here if it wasn't too hazy. There was enough room, too, for the Walach to come in from their hiding places in the rubbish yards south of the city.
And a fine private bath
, she sighed to herself.
With blessedly hot water...

"I feared," the Prince said after he had recovered his breath, "that they would suffer when I was unable to maintain the shield around us. What of the others?"

Krista shook her head, feeling both relief at their escape and disgust that certain other things had managed to claw their way free of the rubble of the burning building and live—in their own fashion—as well.

"Abdmachus did not make it out," she said softly. "He must have died when the roof of the cellar collapsed. All of the servants he had gathered—the Persian singers and those funny-smelling Nabatean monks—are dead as well. We four came away in the Engine, with those Walach who were hiding in it from the storm."

"And the
homunculus
?" the Prince whispered, his eyes sliding away from hers. "Did Khiron escape?"

Krista shrugged in resignation. "I was unconscious, too, my Lord Prince. I do not know if he reached the Engine or not. But he is here now, in the basement of this house. Sleeping, perhaps, or whatever he does when he closes his eyes."

"Where is the Engine?" Maxian's face was filled with worry. "Was it damaged?"

"No," Krista said with an edge of irritation in her voice. Did men think of nothing but their toys? Did it not matter at all that the old Persian—
his friend
—was dead? "By Gaius' account, the Engine carried us to safety—far out to sea, where no one would see. But we needed a refuge with food and news, so he ordered it back to the coast. Now it lies hidden in the marshes south of Ostia, well away from the coastal road."

"Good," the Prince said, turning his face away. His mind was beginning to wake again, and his thought turned once more to the struggle before him. "Bring Gaius to me, and the Macedonian. We must take steps to ensure that we may work apart from one another in safety."

Krista sighed, seeing that even this brush with dissolution had not turned him away from this impossible task. Anger warred with sullen resignation in her heart, but she damped both, though fear stirred in her. She listened quietly, and made the notes he requested on one of her waxed tablets, but he seemed already distant from her, a stranger.

She went downstairs, looking for the two dead men, resolve hardening in her heart and, with it—as she made her decision—a curious lightness as her worries eased.

Galen, Emperor of the West, made a face like a small boy confronted with steamed asparagus. "This is disgusting," he said, pushing a silver platter away from him. "What have you done to the cooks, my brother, killed them all and replaced them with trained monkeys?" The platter was swimming with thin fillets of fish in a creamy orange sauce.

Aurelian looked up from his platter, which had once held the same kind of fish. A trace of the orange sauce streaked his beard. His eyebrows, bushy and red, rose in puzzlement. "You don' like it?" Aurelian was still chewing. "It's good and peppery!"

"That," Galen said with a freezing glare, "is the problem. This fish—if it ever had a pleasing taste—is so drowned in pepper and thyme and basil that I cannot discern a flavor... other than pepper and thyme and basil. Please tell me, brother, that you have only
instructed
the cooks of the palace, not
replaced
them?"

Aurelian shook his head in negation and waved to one of the servants lurking about at the edges of the dining chamber. The man, a coal black Nubian in a plain white tunic, padded forward and took the plates from the table. The Emperor and his brother were sitting in a half-circle room that had been added to the original Severan wing of the Palatine complex by one of the "short" Emperors—perhaps Decius or Phillip the Arab. It looked out from the height of the palace down upon the eastern end of the Forum and the line of temples that led up that shallow valley to the great edifice of the Coliseum. Tonight Galen had chosen to sup here, enjoying the breeze that fluttered the long drapes hanging by the windows and it's relative isolation. It was far from the kitchens and the hurly-burly of the lower palace.

"Do you want that?" Aurelian looked hopefully at the plate of fish.

The Emperor shuddered slightly, handing over his dinner. Galen sighed, watching in sick fascination as Aurelian emptied his plate and looked about for more. With weary resignation, he pushed a shallow glazed bowl of honeyed rolls in his brother's direction. It was odd, returning to this place, this palace that he viewed more as an extended office than a home. Home was the old villa at Narbo, or even the Summer House at Cumae. When he had left for the campaign in Persia he had not given any thought to the arrangement of it, or to the practices of its inhabitants. Now that he had returned, he found that the busy nature of his brother had rearranged everything to suit himself. The servants, used to the parade of emperors and caesars, had complied, and now Galen would have to restore everything to a state suiting him.

Worse, glaring at Aurelian was useless because the big horse was too busy stuffing his face with honeyed nut rolls to notice.

One of the guardsmen who were sitting just out of sight, around the bend of the hall by the doors, stood and gave a low whistle. Galen looked up, checking the slow passage of sand in the hourglass set by the table. As expected, the Duchess was almost exactly on time.
Neither a grain too slow, nor too fast
. Galen had tried to push his native distrust of the woman aside, but it was hard. Very hard.

The door opened, and Anastasia entered. Tonight, attending upon the Emperor and his brother, she wore simple white—a traditional Hellenic
chiton
of matte silk, dyed with powdered abalone shell. Her sandals were small and gold, with tiny straps that only left a trace of glittering color around her ankles. A dozen paces from the Emperor's table, she paused and knelt, bowing to them. "Augustus Galen. Caesar Aurelian. I bid thee well."

Her hair, carefully coifed and arranged to fall behind her, seemingly loose, struck Galen as familiar. She rose and smiled and glided in her catlike way to a chair set at the end of the table. She sat, folding her legs under her, and put down a pair of wax tablets.

The Emperor's eyes narrowed, seeing the gleam of blue and aqua at her throat and wrists. "Ah," he said, smiling. He remembered where he had seen the arrangement of her hair and jewels before. "Apelle's
Aphrodite Anadyomene
. Subtle, my Lady de'Orelio, and very well executed."

The Duchess smiled brilliantly back at him, her eyes meeting his for just a moment, and then, demure, she dropped them. She clapped her hands together, pale and white, like a schoolgirl showing her appreciation. "You have a discerning eye, Augustus. You honor me with your praise."

Galen looked over at Aurelian and was well pleased, seeing that his brother had missed the reference and was trying not to show it. For a moment he thought of tweaking the lummox with it, but then put the small pleasure aside. There was much business to be done, and it was already late. "What troubles do you bring us tonight, my lady? Is there new word out of the East?"

Anastasia moved the tablets onto her lap, opening them. She took a stylus from her girdle and flipped open the first book. "Augustus, shall I begin with the figures from the corn harvest, or with the intrigues of the Eastern court?"

Galen sighed, settling back himself. This was the meat of the day, here in the late hour, by lantern and candlelight.

"And finally," Anastasia said in a tired voice, "the Princess Shirin, late of the House of Chrosoes Aparvez, granddaughter of the lately departed Khazar
Khagan
Ziebil, remains at large with—one presumes—her children in tow. I have heard nothing to indicate, my lord, that she has returned to her native home, in the grasslands above the
Mare Caspium
, or that she has fallen afoul of the agents of the Eastern Office of Barbarians."

The Duchess closed her books and arranged them carefully on the tabletop. She met Galen's eye with equanimity, for they were both quite tired and thinking more of their beds than protocol or matters of state.