"Do you believe me?" Marric admired the hollows and curves of her face, drawn fine with concern. He had trusted her unreservedly from the moment when her voice had drawn him back from death.
He nodded, and she kissed his forehead.
"Must you do this thing tonight?"
"Yes. Not for pride, love, but because I can truly see no other way." He stood and pulled her up against him. "You will be safe here."
"Do not fear for me," she said. "I no longer do."
"After tonight there will be no reason to fear," he promised.
"I know." Her hands cupped his face and drew it toward hers. Urgently she kissed him. As he embraced her, she melted against him until he lifted her off her feet and held her. Her arms pressed him even closer.
"I love your touch," she said against his mouth. "Have we time now?" She caressed him with an abandon new to Marric. She was tense: had she chosen this as a way of easing her anxiety? It didn't matter. Her desire would be his joy to assuage. Marric lost himself in the rose scent of her hair, the softness of her lips, and the instinctive movements of her body as it received him.
"I do not want to leave you," he whispered much later, then kissed the valley between bet breasts. Lazily he fondled them and laughed softly as her nipples stiffened again. He slid his hands down over her belly, between her thighs for the pleasure of watching her react, then of responding to the demands her body made. Abandoning herself, she cried his name, and fell back almost unconscious.
Finally Marric drew apart from her and raised himself on his side. He kissed her eyes, heavy-lidded from ecstasy.
"When I return tonight, we will finish what we have begun."
"I will wait for you," she promised. Languorously she watched him wash and dress, smiling sleepily at the splendor of violet silk he wore.
When he knelt by her side to kiss her again, she seemed to have drifted into sleep. Marric touched her face, wishing they had a child, then turned away. Swinging a dark cape over his shoulders, he left for the Hippodrome.
I have led armies in the field! Again Marric reminded himself. His palms were sweaty, and he twisted in the harness that stagehands adjusted about his body, concealed it under the robes of the god he was to represent, and left him alone. He forced himself not to move. If the harness were not perfectly adjusted, he might fall.
To fall in front of the whole city: Marric preferred an honest battle. At least, if you took a sword thrust or an arrow, you died fast among men who understood what was happening. You didn't have to think of the long drop to the spina—or the arena floor itself—to lie broken, possibly screaming in pain as Irene looked on, highly entertained.
The actor playing Xuthus, the foreigner who adopts Ion, stalked by, tall in the high boots of ritual drama. He held his mask like a helmet in the crook of his arm. Incredibly, he reached out to touch Marric's shoulder.
"We've all felt what you feel now, Prince. I imagine it's like before a battle. The ropes are sound, and our stagehands know their business. Just remember: before you begin the god's speech, breathe deeply."
Prince or no prince, at that moment Marric loved the actor like a brother. Ion walked past him and nodded. He was followed by an actor masked as a priestess and the file of the chorus.
"Born of a mortal father or of Apollo Loxias," a man in a rumpled tunic hissed at Marric for the fifth time that hour. "That's your cue. Prince, Prince, will you hold yourself like a god and not a tyro! Remember, you begin your speech after Ion finishes his. Do not look down or at the audience, or you will forget your lines." The man turned away, muttering something about amateurs.
At least Marric's voice was trained on the parade ground. And there was a speaking trumpet built into the mask of Apollo that fit his head far less comfortably than his helmet. Marric held the mask in his hands and looked at it: a handsome thing, richly polychromed, its features chillingly, inhumanly regular.
It was almost time for the god to speak.
Marric put on the mask and waited for his cue.
" . . . born of a mortal father or of Apollo Loxias."
The machine swung him into the air, and the harness tightened about his body. When the god in the machine appeared, the audience always hushed in awe. But this time the mood spread even to the actors. The chorus' disciplined line broke, Creusa recoiled before the god who had been her lover, and Ion made as if to run. The actors knew that Marric's speech was more than a ritual representation of the god to mortals. And they were frightened: Irene's vengeance was swift and terrible.
Why had they helped him? Conviction? The delight of achieving a spectacular effect on stage? There was no time to think. High in the air, Marric kept his body immobile, held his masked head high, and began to speak.
Nicephorus had adapted the words from the Ion of Agathon, sweetest of the ancient Athenian playwrights. Strain roughened Marric's voice; he had none of the melodious diction of the actors. But the horn in the mask carried his words to the uppermost rows, and thrust them into the ears of Irene. She sat in the royal box across from him. They were almost on a level. Red-gowned and glittering, she twisted some gauzy white fabric or other in her hands. Naturally she wouldn't believe in this sham, but her subjects must be impressed.
"Do not look at the audience," Marric had been told. But as he spoke his first line, something made him gaze out over the crowd. "I am no enemy that you should flee from me, but gracious toward you."
The audience seemed like some pain-ridden beast, crouching as a newcomer approaches it, not certain if it will be a hunter to kill it or its keeper, to bandage its hurt and reassure it before taking it to a safe home.
"Hear you the will of the gods."
As the audience gasped, the receptivity to mood for which all actors pray fell upon Marric. Just so, he remembered, had the combined will of the priests on board ship channeled through him to call down lightning against his enemies. The audience wanted to believe him, wanted truly to witness the god's descent to announce his will. And it wanted to end the torment of blood and doubt that the red empress inflicted—even for an hour.
They wanted it fiercely. Marric's voice became more resonant and took on the reassuring overtones he had used to hearten recruits or comfort Stephana.
"Take this youth and go to the city of Empire. Set him on the throne," proclaimed the god.
In a play the god could restore order so easily. The audience sighed in wonder. They wanted more. Their need made Marric draw on reserves of strength and spirit. These were his people, his empire, and he would save them. Who needed the priests? These actors had a magic all their own.
Now his speech told not of Ion's misfortunes, of how he had been left swaddled on a hillside to die and been rescued by a prophetess, but Marric's own story: captured, enslaved, sent far from home, but returning.
In the royal box Irene stiffened, her ringed hands tearing the white gauze they clasped. Around her whispered the patricians, forming into small groups that dispersed and reformed into new sources of new whispers. Among them, Marric knew, were aristocrats whose favor he had to have. Throughout the Hippodrome Marcellinus' men would he reaching for their weapons in case Irene set her own troops on the crowd.
But still the audience leaned forward, enthralled and unsatisfied. More still? What else could Marric give them? His speech was ending, and they were still not satisfied. Their longing tore at him.
Going down to hell to rescue Osiris, Isis had had to strip herself as the price of entry and before Osiris could be restored to life. Could Marric do less?
"Cherish your blessings. Ion shall lift his scepter over Asia in splendor. I decree for the city a happy fate."
As the echoes of Marric's final lines died, he reached up and removed the mask of the god. For a heartbeat, for several heartbeats, there was silence. Then the actor playing the prophetess ran forward waving a serpent-tipped wand.
"Marric!"
From all over the Hippodrome Marric's supporters took up the cry.
"Marric, Marric!"
Below Marric on stage, even the actors were shouting. The audience, sensing the answer to their needs, joined in.
"Mar-ric, Mar-ric!"
They made his name into a chant. The paired syllables rang out deafeningly. Marric forced his chin higher, seeking look like the palace sculptures of the gods, his face proud and immobile, his eyes staring past these mortals into infinity.
"Mar-ric, Mar-ric!"
Now they were stamping their feet. From the boxes of the aristocrats, from the doors into the arena itself ran soldiers. Just as Marcellinus had planned, here was Marric's guard.
Irene's eyes locked with his. He saw rage there, a burning, almost mindless malevolence that a pyramid of skulls could not satisfy, a thirst for blood that she could not slake even by turning the Golden Horn red.
She stood and screamed something, bird-shrill Red light spurted out from her palms. Marric smelled hemp burning, felt the ropes supporting him high above the ground begin to tremble and slacken. Where were the stagehands? Let them lower him before he fell! As the ropes yielded to the fire, he felt himself swaying. Then they were lowering him. His feet touched ground, and he threw off the robes and harness of his role to stand free before the crowd in the purple silk of a prince of the city.
Irene shrieked words—a spell?—and threw the fragments of the white veil down. Then, in a storm of crimson silk, she rushed from the royal box.
Where had she gone?
Marcellinus ran up to Marric and embraced him, pounding his shoulders in a joyous victory dance completely unlike anything Marric had ever dreamt that the man might do. They were surrounded by all the men who had schemed with them soldiers from the Mangana or the fleet, nobles who had visited him in the safe house, even a few priests.
The chant of Marric's name and thunderous cheering washed over him. Nicephorus, Marric noted absently, was weeping.
Caius Marcellinus released him and gestured the others to fall back. Now those nearest him wore the white of the Candidatoi, the aristocrats among the city's soldiers. Marcellinus saluted, then stood aside as a much older man, his stern face a refined version of Marcellinus' own, came up beside his grandson. This was Valerius Marcellinus, treasurer of the city, confidant to Princes, his father's trusted minister—and now his.
Splendor gleamed, draped over the old patrician's outstretched arms. He shook out the gleaming folds of a paludamentum, the triumphal cloak of the emperors. It shone white and silver and purple in the light of a thousand torches. Gems encrusted it at throat and hem, and formed a blinding surface on the tablion at the cloak's right side. Slowly he approached Marric and wrapped him in the ceremonial cloak of his heritage. It was much heavier than he had expected.
The treasurer backed away from Marric, as if they were both at court. He bowed deeply, then bent his body in the full prostration accorded only to reigning emperors.
And the cheering continued as the Candidatoi and the nobles surrounded their lord and brought him out from the arena of his victory into the square.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Carried from the Hippodrome on the shoulders of men shouting his name, with torches swooping and waving about him, Marric felt not like the emperor they acclaimed but like the god whose part he had taken. Why had he feared to take up this power? He had forgotten. It was exhilarating; he could see how people came to crave it like a rare drug.
Out the gates of the Hippodrome the crowd of worshippers poured, heading for the palace. Only the Varangians might have withstood them, and Irene had ordered them imprisoned. The heavy folds of the cloak Valerius Marcellinus had laid upon Marric's shoulders were all that prevented him from feeling he could fly there like the hawk.
As the procession surged past the Temple of Isis, something small and fast shrieked his name and hurled itself down the steps and into the path of the mob. A woman! As dancing people shoved her, sending her sprawling, she screamed in panic. She would be trampled, Marric thought. This night of his triumph, no one should die except Irene.
He held up a hand, and the procession stopped.
"Lord Marric, please, my lord, please come!"
He signaled for his bearers to set him down· The paving felt oddly insubstantial. Part of him was still floating above the crowd and contemplating his own invulnerability. He walked forward to where the girl cowered in the midst of men with drawn swords, her face hidden in her hands. Then she turned to face him.
"Daphne! Why aren't you with your lady?"
She ran to him and fell at his feet. He lifted her and sensed how her slight body quivered under his hands. What was the child doing out alone? She clung to him, fearing him less than the crowd.
Marric placed her firmly on her feet and gave her a little shake. It would be hard to reassure her in this tumult of men whose eyes, teeth, and weapons glittered in the torch light.
"Why are you here, Daphne?"
"My lady, she sent me—"
"Alone at night through the streets?"
"Yes, yes, she sent me to beg you; come quickly, oh do come!"
"What's wrong, Daphne?" Marric lifted her off her feet.
"She sent me, said she had to send me away before—"
"What is it, Prince. Marcellinus had come up beside Marric. His eyes widened as he recognized the girl.
"Get Nicephorus. Stephana sent her maid after me. Daphne, she sent you away before what happened?"
Except for the tears that poured down her face, Daphne had herself under control. "My lady said . . . she said I should not be sacrificed to her fate."
Stephana's cryptic remarks, her melancholy, even her passionate response to him that very evening: these were the actions of a woman who saw her fate reach out to seize her and dared not—would not—stand aside.
"No!" Marric screamed his denial, and flung Daphne aside, so that the soldier nearest had to catch her. He ran out of the square, down the twisting streets. Sweat poured down his ribs; the heavy imperial cloak hindered his stride. But its weight was not as great a burden as the sudden, appalling fear of years of power, a desolate lifetime of royalty without Stephana close beside him.
Men followed him, but he outran them and came up gasping, one hand against his side, in the doorway of the little house. Just where a torch usually lit the way inside, the body of a man in a rusty tunic, rustier now with blood, sprawled. Even before Marric turned it over, he recognized one of the temple servants.
He pushed the heavy door open. The house felt vacant. Overturned chairs, polycandela lying askew, their lights snuffed, told a grim story. In the garden he found another of his men dying from a throat wound, lying atop a man wearing the crimson livery of Irene's personal guard.
"No." This time he whispered it. He forced himself to go on. The garden was trampled. He saw more dead men, one lying head down in the tiny fountain Stephana had loved. Did she foresee this? He had accounted for all but one of the house staff when the man staggered into his path. Marric caught him as he fell, and knelt beside him.
"Tell me, he cried.
"Queen's men . . . the red empress with them . . . too many," the man gasped. Bright blood streamed from his mouth and nose as well as from the sucking chest wound that would kill him in a moment or so. "We . . . we fought, lord"
"None better," Marric assured him. The armsman coughed, a hideous, bubbling sound, and died.
He took the stairs to the upper floor three at a time and shouldered the door open. Stephana had summoned him, and he dreaded what he knew he would find.
A bloody dagger lay on the floor. It was the one he had given her. Had she fought at the end, knowing that her guards were dead? These outer rooms stank of power and evil magic Marric would put an evil name to. Irene! He pushed on to the inner room.
The curtains silvered one night by Isis' touch were charred now. Tremendous energies had deflected them to score the walls and trace black burns across toppled furniture. Shards of fragile glass crunched underfoot; the scents of ointments and perfumes mixed
sickeningly with the remnants of Irene's magic.
"Stephana?"
He heard a faint whisper. She lay on their bed, looking almost as she had when he left her there. Now she wore a white shift. It was bloodstained from the dagger buried between her breasts.
She held the knife clasped in both reddening hands, as if she could hold her life within her by force of will.
Marric screamed and dropped to his knees beside her. He gathered her close, as if his touch could ward off her death. While he had been playing the god, exalted as ever any fool could dream of, imagining that everything he had ever wanted lay within his grasp, Irene had moved fast. Stephana must have sensed her death coming for her.
"Daphne found you," Stephana's voice rose weakly. "I am so glad." She sighed. Her eyes lit at the sight of him. One of her hands fell limp against the dragging magnificence of his cloak. He pressed his lips against it and embraced her tightly. She cried out in pain.
"Forgive me!"
"It was my veil," Stephana whispered. "I dropped it . . . the riot that day . . . she traced me."
"You knew this!" he accused. Stephana nodded, then winced as even the slight movement brought pain.
"Knew . . . I told you my fate. I was to help and not fear . . . you, my Marric. You. I did not know it would be so fearful, or so sweet."
It all became clear now. Stephana's pleas for courage, her grief when he tried to plan her future—that damned place in the country!—and the future of the children she knew she would never have: she knew, she knew. Dying at her feet in Alexandria, Marric had claimed her pity, demanded her help, then her love. Now, at the moment of his triumph, he had cost her her life too.
Stephana's hand against his cheek was wet with more than her blood. Then Marric's tears dried.
"Tell me," he begged.
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