The Shadow of Ararat (12 page)

"No," she said, surprising herself, "you do not... intrude. There are too many people here for me to be comfortable in the house, or on the lawn."

He laughed—a rich sound like river water. "I hate crowds. Particularly ones like this, filled with all of the people you always see and all of the ones you cannot stand seeing again. The bickering and little games over who has more of this, or more of that. Ah, and the hostess, the dear Lady. A matron of great stature in the... community, and of unquenchable appetite."

Unseen, Thyatis smiled. "You know her, then," she said.

"For years! She has always wanted me to be one of her retinue of promising young men. Do your feet hurt?"

Thyatis blinked. "Ah, they're sore from the sandals. They're new and... I'm not used to them."

"May I?" came his quiet voice. In the darkness, Thyatis felt two hands, strong and broad, touch her right foot, perched on the edge of the bench. "I have some training in the temple, I can make the pain go away."

"You sound young for a priest," she said, but she swung around as well, placing both of her feet on the bench. Gentle fingers brushed over her toes and slid along her instep.

"When I was younger, I showed some talent for the arts of Asklepius," he said "so I was enrolled by my mother. I think that she wanted me to avoid the fate of government service that had taken my father. That plan was a failure, I fear. I spend all of my time now on things relating to the Offices." The laugh came again, a pleasant burr in the gloom. Thyatis leaned back against the thick leaves of the hedge. His hands rolled and kneaded her tired muscles.

"This feels wonderful," she said, her voice languid. "Working for the Lady is equally diverting. At first you are told that you will be doing one thing, a thing that you enjoy and show promise and skill at, then the next day another, something that you detest. She is maddening much of the time."

"And gracious and serene the next," he said. "I hope you did not take offense at my description of her before."

"No!" Now she laughed. "All too accurate. She is not happy unless all things around her are in their proper place. The properness, or the placement, may change from day to day... Ow!"

The hands paused, then gently probed the aching spot. There was a soft noise, like the hum of a bee, and for a moment a light sparked between his hand and her foot. Thyatis gasped at the tingling shock that traveled through her foot, up her leg, and to the top of her head. In the brief light she caught an image of long dark hair, a small beard, and a strong nose. Then there was darkness, even more complete than before.

"Sorry," he said, his voice a whisper. "You injured your foot long ago? A cut, or stepping on something sharp?"

"Yes. I was in the stableyard and stepped on a horse nail. It was driven all the way through the bottom of my foot." By iron control, she kept from shuddering at the memory of the long days that she had lain in a fever afterward. "Pay it no mind."

"Let me finish what your body started," he said, his voice even..

"How so? It has been healed for years."

A well-trimmed fingernail traced the old wound and then up the back of her calf to her knee. Thyatis hissed at his touch. It tingled through more than her leg.

"See?" he said. "There is still a knot here of old injury. If you will allow it, I can make it go away. You will notice the difference, I assure you. Old wounds linger, even when you cannot see them, disturbing the balance of the body. Odd headaches, dizzy spells, shortness of breath..."

Thyatis was quiet for a long time and she drew her knees up to her chest. The priest settled back against the opposite hedge in companionable silence. Even the prospect of a healing magic filled her with dread. Giving up control of her body, particularly to a stranger, even a well-spoken one, was unthinkable. The feel of his hands now reminded her all too much of Anastasia's caresses. At last, with an odd trepidation, she said, "No, thank you. I do not feel it... proper."

"No matter, lady, such things are personal."

I am not a lady,
she started to say, but the warm orange light of a lantern now spilled into the little clearing around the pool and the faun. Thyatis blinked and picked up her shoes. The priest, now illuminated, squinted up at the slender figure holding the half-shuttered lantern.

"Ai, Krista, it has been awhile since I've had the pleasure of your company."

"My lord," answered Anastasia's handservant, bowing deeply. "My mistress sent me to find you. The dinner is almost ready to be served. She begs your indulgence in joining her at repast."

The young man shook his head in dismay but got up all the same. In the light of the lantern, Thyatis saw that he was tall, with a clean-limbed form, and long dark hair tied back in a fillet. He was dressed in the robes of a philosopher, though he looked more like an athlete. He began to turn to Thyatis, reaching out a hand to assist her up, but Krista slid into the space between them instead. She smiled prettily. "Please, my lord, we mustn't be late."

The priest frowned but allowed himself to be led away. Even as they passed the entrance to the little grotto, Krista was telling him a long story about the candied fruits at the feast. The lantern light flickered on the hedges, then faded away. Darkness crept back in, and the thin moon shone down once more, picking silver highlights off of the faun.

Thyatis considered the shoes in her hands, then sat them down on the gravel and began the laborious process of lacing them back up.

Even with nearly a hundred slaves stationed along the walls with fans stirring the air, and all of the windows in the house thrown open, the dining hall was almost unbearably hot. Thyatis stood in an alcove off the passage from the kitchen to the series of chambers that held the throng of dinner guests. From her vantage behind a curtain, she could see the main room where Anastasia and her coterie of male admirers spilled off a reef of couches. Among them, the young priest was set in the place of honor at the hostess's side. While Thyatis watched, the mistress of the house was making a messy job of feeding him jellied eels. Their laughter rose above the din of the other guests. Thyatis turned away, shaking her head.

"There you are!" Krista stormed into the little alcove, carrying a copper platter burdened with fresh-cut fruit arranged in the shape of a map of Achaea. Her pert features were filled with anger. "You're supposed to be out there, with the mistress, entertaining!"

Thyatis glanced back out through the break in the curtain. "I think the Lady is doing just fine all by herself," she said in a very dry voice.

Krista shifted the platter onto a ledge and rubbed her shoulder.

"The mistress is not supposed to be doing that, you are," she hissed. "You're supposed to be the mysterious niece with a gorgeous dress and plenty to put in it. It should be you being clumsy with the jellied eels and bending over a lot to pick them up."

"Me?" Thyatis said. "I'm dreadful, as the past three weeks have shown, at being coy and alluring. To quote you, I'm dense and have no sense of rhythm."

"I'm a slave, you lackwit! I can get the Prince into bed, but I surely can't marry him, now can I?" Krista was spitting mad and the drape of her tunic kept getting out of line. Irritated beyond measure, she slid the shoulder strap back into place again.

Thyatis stared at her in puzzlement. "The Prince?" Krista rolled her eyes and carefully drew back the curtain, pointing through to the dining chamber and Anastasia's couch.

"Him, you cow, the one that you were in the garden with. You know, for a moment I thought that you had some real flair for this, getting him alone before hardly anyone even knew that he was at the party. But you didn't even know who he was..." Krista sat down on a little stool pushed up against the wall, her face a picture of despair.

"Minerva preserve us, you're so... so... I don't even know what. We show you and show you—but you just don't care!" Krista picked one of the little plums cut into the shape of a tiny Greek temple and began nibbling at it. "This is not going to work well at all."

Thyatis was still staring out into the dining chamber, her mouth hanging open. She turned back to Krista with a look of astonishment on her face. "That's the Prince? The one that the Lady has been maneuvering for weeks to get to this party so that I can be paraded in front of him like a prize milch cow?"

Krista nodded, saying, "That's one way to put it."

"He's a priest!" Outrage filled Thyatis' voice. "I'm supposed to seduce a priest? That's illegal! They'll lock me up in some pit in the ground and starve me to death."

"Quiet! That only happens to Vestals!" Krista whispered around another of the plums. "Your duty to the mistress is to do whatever she commands. You may be her 'ward' and a member of her family, but you still work for her. Tonight that means that you attract, and hold, the attentions of that young man out there, who will, if things go as the mistress foresees, someday become Emperor. Then you would be Empress, if you manage to get him to marry you, which will be a chore and a half, I can see."

"I don't want to be Empress, you flat-chested conniving little wretch! I want to go back to doing the job I was doing before, the one I liked!"

"Well, Miss Too-good-to-do-the-work, you owe the mistress as big a debt as anyone, so I suggest that you fix your hair, paste a nice smile on your fat peasant face, and get out there before the mistress winds up in an orgy with that bevy of young boys out of boredom waiting for you to show up. Otherwise you'll be on the block again, with a hundred strangers measuring your body with their eyes!"

Thyatis' eyes narrowed and her forearm was a blur ending in Krista pinned to the wall of the alcove. Thyatis leaned close, her teeth bared in a smile.

"Remember what I do for a living, little girl?" she whispered. "Don't threaten me with talk of debts or my past again, or you'll be in the Cloaca Maxima, facedown, with a ticket to the river." Almost gently, she released Krista from the arm lock and put her upright. "Here's your tray. Don't drop it."

Krista frowned and straightened her tunic. For a moment Thyatis thought the smaller woman would attack her, but then the moment passed and Krista shook her head.

"You and the mistress can discuss it," said Krista, her eyes flashing. Then she left.

There was a wicker box of wine jugs on the floor of the alcove. Thyatis bent down and tugged one free of the straw wrappings. She pried the wax seal off of the top with a fingernail and took a very long draft. It was thick, resinated Greek wine. She took a second pull on the bottle, then put it aside. She checked her hair, straightened her gown, and made sure that all of the arm bangles and bracelets were still in place. Finally ready, she pulled aside the curtain and stepped back out into the corridor.

Entertain the Prince,
she thought.
Attract the Prince. Right.

Three risings of Ra passed and the dhow passed into the thickly congested waterways of the delta. Hundreds of ships, barges, and rafts passed up and down the great arteries of the Nile. The dhow picked its way between them, nimbly sliding past the huge stone-carrying barges and the three-tiered galleys of the Imperial government. At last, the stultifying heat of midday was broken by a fresh wind from the north carrying the smell of the sea. The dhow captain was well pleased to have made the capital with such speed.

His voice grew harsh with shouted commands to the lazy mob he called a crew. Near dusk the channel of the river widened at the village of Fuwa and the granite lock gates of the Alexandrine canal rose up on the western bank. So late in the day, the locks were clear of traffic and the captain muttered a fervent prayer of thanks to the patron of travelers. His little ship heeled over and ran across the current into the momentary darkness under the vaulting lock gates. The canal diverged from the Nile and ran on a straight course through the center of Alexandria and into the greater, or military, harbor. That passage, however, was restricted to military galleys alone. The captain pursed his lips in thought as he leaned on the tiller, guiding the dhow through the second of the massive lock basins.

His first intent upon reaching the end of such a journey should be to dock at the guild warehouses on the lesser, or merchants', harbor and offload the cargoes he had brought from the South. The boy from the witches' house and his mumbling daze precluded that. The captain scratched his shaven pate and peered thoughtfully at the thick clusters of shacks and crumbling red-brick buildings along the side of the canal. The dhow tacked against the wind, and their progress slowed as the countercurrent from the sea mouth of the canal began to run against them.

The captain handed the tiller off to the mate and clambered down a narrow ladder into the low-roofed cabin under the rear deck. The boy lay there, wrapped in blankets, against the rear wall. His eyes remained open, flickering, unfocused. His skin, as the captain touched his forehead, was damp and hot. The captain shook his head and wiped his fingers on his tunic. His orders from the old witch-man were to deliver the boy to the great military citadel overlooking the second, or greater, harbor of Alexandria. Since he could not sail straight into that harbor, he would have to take the cutoff canal to the lesser harbor and then swing around, outside of the two harbors, past the
pharos
and into the military harbor.

He tapped his fingers on the decking. That would take a great deal of time, and he would have to either pay the dock porters more to work late or wait until the morning to unload his cargoes. The captain shook his head to clear his thoughts and looked down with disgust at the trembling boy in the blankets.
There must be some other way,
he thought, and then climbed back onto the deck.

Even as Ra slid down through the thick smoke haze over Alexandria, turning the holy disk a ruddy brass, the last rays of the beneficent god crawled slowly down the whitewashed white wall in Ahmet's quarters, far to the south. The young master lay on his narrow cot, feet up on the wooden rail at the bottom. In the dimming light of Ra, his chiseled face was troubled. Liquid dark-brown eyes followed creeping bars of gold down the irregular surface of the wall, but the subtle beauty did nothing to lighten his heavy mood. At last, unable to shake the sensation of tremendous weight that lay on him, he rose.