Fires of Alexandria

by Thomas Carpenter

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sepharia slipped past the line of chained slaves, her eyes wide, barely containing a grin. Even their unwashed bodies didn't bother her.

  She'd seen slaves from the window of her room at the workshop before, but walking the streets amid them made her feel alive. A thought which came with some trepidation because she pitied the slaves. Her aunt had taught her as much, but given her lifelong sequester in the workshop, being on the streets during the day dressed as herself seemed like being freed from slavery.

  A shoulder slammed into her. Sepharia spun around to catch a hateful look from a richly dressed man.

  She tried to rein in her giddy enthusiasm. Heron had given her a special errand. She'd waited fourteen years to walk the streets of Alexandria during the day, she didn't want to ruin it and get locked up again.

  There was a book Heron wanted from a particular merchant. Sepharia touched the coin purse under her robe, chastising herself as she did it. Plutarch had warned her even thinking about one's coin purse would give thieves its exact location.

  She glanced around to see if anyone looked like a thief, but realized it was foolish. She wouldn't be able to tell.

  Guilty feelings faded fast as she passed a kabob vendor. The scents of spiced meat made her mouth water.

  Sepharia passed it and then in a fit of impulse, ran back to the vendor.

  The blue-eyed vendor wrapped in layered desert gear, squinted as she came up to his booth. She could feel his eyes paw at her. Sepharia regretted stopping but deciding leaving without food would be worse.

  "How much?" she asked, trying to sound casual.

  "Three ha'pennies," he said.

  His toothless smile gave her shivers.

  Sepharia pulled her purse out and handed him the coins. She knew she was supposed to haggle with him, but she didn't feel like it.

  When he handed over the stick of meat, he rubbed a finger across her hand.

  Sepharia skittered away, glad that she had purchased her meal in the daylight. She wrapped her light turquoise robe around her and continued her journey.

  The way to the book seller passed by the Library. The ornate columns outside the main entrance enticed her to stop. Three men in togas stood outside on the steps, engaged in a fierce argument.

  It seemed to Sepharia that the chubby scholar with bright pink cheeks was winning the argument. She could only tell by his body language, confidant and punctuated with deft thrusts of his outstretched hand. As if he was skewering his opponents with his verbal barrage.

  Sepharia snuck closer, feigning her admiration of the architecture. Her ruse wasn't so outlandish as others stood in the shadows of the Great Library, pointing and gesturing toward the building.

  She wondered if the men argued on the steps so they could demonstrate their intellect to the gathering crowds.

  Sepharia kept moving closer and closer, careful not to reach the steps, which were forbidden to women, until she could hear their debates.

  "...but Man fits amid the Earthy clockworks as was intended by the Heavenly masters," said pink checks. "We are but perfect tools of creation."

  A hawk-faced scholar with an all too serious grimace, scowled the words out of his mouth. "Man is but a locust by a different name. We must lay waste before we can build, thus creating our own order, without reason to Earthly matters. Therefore the Heavens intend for us to be lords of the Earth, crushing that which does not amend itself to our ways."

  The third scholar, a man with pale skin the color of chalk, squeaked out his argument. "Ahhh...and that is where you are both wrong. Man must tread carefully through a den of sleeping lions, lest they awake and rip the heart from our chests."

  The three scholars constantly glanced at the audience assembled before them. Sepharia detected a rising of their voices whenever the crowd moved away, as if to lure them back in.

  "Basking in the glow of the Library's wisdom?" asked a man in a toga standing on her right.

  He was barely taller than she, though she was tall for her age, and he had a distinct Roman nose.

  "I'm afraid someone left old fruit out to rot on the steps of the Library," she said, hoping the man would wander off.

  He raised an eyebrow. "Is someone an amateur philosopher?"

  Sepharia regretted her choice of words. She wasn't supposed to be learned at all. Only queens like Cleopatra had ever dared spar with the scholars of the Library.

  "They sound like actors rehearsing their lines," she said, covering. "And they preen like peacocks at the Royal Palace."

  "And you have been to the Palace?" the man asked, his eyebrows nearly at his hairline.

  Sepharia shifted from foot to foot. "Um...no. I heard it once. I'm not even sure what a peacock is," she said, then scrunched up her face.

  The scholar seemed to accept her excuse and reached out his hand in greeting, beaming a wide smile.

  "I'm Gnaeus Genucius Gurges," he said.

  "Seph...," she mumbled.

  "Pleasant acquaintances, Sef," he said.

  She nodded, deciding if leaving would be rude. She couldn't make up her mind so she stayed and feigned continued interest in the debating scholars. Gnaeus stayed as well.

  After a span of time in which she heard three logical fallacies and one reductio ad absurdum, Gnaeus spoke.

  "So which side of the argument do you come down on? The Naturalists, the Man as Tyrant, or the Lion Walkers?" he asked.

  Sepharia glanced around, wondering if Gnaeus was trapping her into admitting her knowledge. But his face seemed amiable enough. Almost encouraging.

  The rhetorical villainy espoused by the three scholars had been gnawing on her thoughts and finally, at Gnaeus' urging, the words burst from her mouth.

  "All. None. Pieces of others they've failed to mention. Arguing Man's place in the world is about as possible as counting the sides of a crystal tumbling from the top of the Pharos. Man is Man by doing, not observing."

  When her words tumbled to a stop, she put her hand to her mouth and looked around to see if anyone else had been listening.

  Gnaeus laughed. "Pay no mind. I do not subscribe to the idiocy of women. My mother had a deadly wit and whipped my feeble mind into the slightly less feeble shape it is today."

  Sepharia let out a relived sigh.

  "And I appreciate your viewpoint," he said. "A practical view of Man makes for thoughts that improve the daily lives of ordinary men."

  Gnaeus put a hand to his mouth as if he were telling an important secret.

  "And these three fools are merely espousing ideas they read in forgotten books, hoping to generate a bit of fame and snare a patron," he said under his breath. "Sophists by a different name, I say."

  "And what kind of view of Man do you have?" she asked.

  "An historical one," he said quickly. "I study the acts of man, so I can better understand, how he will act in the future. Specifically those rough men from the distant north beyond the reach of the Empire."

  She opened her mouth, the coincidence was unbearable. She wanted to ask a question about Agog.

  Gnaeus looked to her expectantly.

  She shook her head. "I have to go. I'm late for an errand."

  Gnaeus bowed. "May we meet again, so that we might once more cross verbal swords," he called out as she scurried off, holding her robe above the dirt.

  Sepharia gave a returning nod as she checked the sun for position. Being late wouldn't earn her any more chances to explore the city. She would just tell Heron that she had to avoid a tipped wagon.

  The book dealer had a diminutive shop between a temple and a snake meat seller. Two priests in red robes milled around the front of the temple, calling to anyone within earshot to step inside. Sepharia had never heard of their god, but new ones popped up and disappeared faster than seagulls' shit on statues.

  Before she ducked through the doorway, she felt the hair on the bac
k of her neck rise up, as if someone was watching her.

  Sepharia spun around. A quick scan of the people passing by the shop revealed no one suspicious.

  She watched for a minute longer until she was comfortable that no one had followed her. Why she'd suddenly become spooked bothered her. Heron wouldn't have sent her out by herself if there was danger.

  Sepharia ducked inside and blinked her eyes, waiting for the spots to clear so she could see. The momentary lapse of vision made her want to step back outside.

  As her vision returned, the details of the little shop came into focus. At first, she thought the book dealer kept a messy shop. Scrolls, papers and books were scattered over the tables.

  But then she realized the shop had been ransacked. The books had deep gashes. Snatches of papyrus were littered around the room.

  The instinct to flee was strong. She could practically hear Heron telling her to leave the shop and return instantly, but she knew the book she'd been sent to get was important. She wanted to show her aunt she could help.

  Sepharia picked up a scroll at her feet. The papyrus had deep slashes and a strong smell.

  The opposite end was wet. She sniffed the wet area and her face screwed into a knot when she realized it was urine.

  Sepharia dropped the scroll and took one step forward, holding her robe up so it didn't touch the floor.

  Surveying the room, she realized that every book or scroll in this part had been ripped apart. The book she wanted was not going to be in this section of the store.

  A dark curtain led to the back.

  Sepharia took another step forward and put her hand to the curtain. After a deep breath, she whipped aside the fabric.

  The book dealer lay on his stomach in the middle of the back room, clearly dead with blood pooling around his corpse. The books in back had been treated the same as the ones in front. His hand lay on a book yanked from a shelf.

  No other exit could be seen and since the back room wasn't even as big as the first, the examination only took as much time as it took to turn her head left and then right.

  Seeing the body didn't bother her after the battle in the workshop. In fact, it seemed almost anti-climatic to find the book seller dead.

  The only thing that kept her from searching the back room was the chance someone could enter the shop and think she'd killed the man.

  Without turning around, Sepharia took one big step backwards. Putting her back to the body wasn't an option at the moment.

  Heron would want to know everything she'd seen, so she memorized the state of the room. Maybe the others would come back with her and search the store for the book, but by then, the magistrate might be investigating the crime.

  Sepharia was focused on the room. Noting details that Heron might quiz her on later. As she prepared to take another step backwards, she became faintly aware that someone was standing behind her.

  Then a hand firmly clamped over her mouth.