Like Fire Through Bone

by E. E. Ottoman

  When they came around the side, Patros was sitting on the ground with his back against the front outside wall of the house, while Markos rummaged through their packs.

  Patros stood as soon as he saw them and bowed to Aritê. “Amma.”

  She waved at him, her sleeve making a small arc in the air. “Nonsense, I am not anyone’s Amma. Just a foolish servant of the Lord.”

  “We should be able to start back soon,” Markos said, and Vasilios sat on the ground as Patros had done. The moment he sat, exhaustion crashed down over him like a wave, and he swallowed hard, fighting against it, and leaned his head against the cool clay wall.

  Patros said something, and Vasilios was dimly aware of Markos’s deep, rich voice and Aritê’s higher but equally melodic tone as she replied. Vasilios must have drifted off, because he jerked awake when someone touched his shoulder.

  “Vasilios?” Markos’s voice sounded concerned. “You must wake up. We need to begin back now.”

  He looked blearily up at Markos, whose face smoothed out into a smile as he reached forward and cupped the side of Vasilios’s face with one hand.

  “I know you’re tired,” Markos said, voice gentle and full of enough affection to make Vasilios’s chest ache. “I would let you sleep if I could, but we must go now. The sooner we get back to the capital, the better.”

  Vasilios nodded wearily and then forced himself to his feet.

  “We will have to walk and lead the horses for a time,” Markos told Aritê when they moved over to where she and Patros stood.

  She nodded and then began trying to pull the scarf she wore around her shoulders off and lift it over her head. Vasilios wondered if he should offer help, but she had not asked, and she was so strong willed he doubted she would welcome the offer. It took her several tries, but she finally managed the feat.

  “Let us begin.” She nodded to the three of them, and Markos picked up his horse’s reins, and with the rest following, they started off.

  The trek was as long as Vasilios had remembered, and soon his world shrunk to the task of putting one foot in front of the other and nothing else. The sun grew hot and unyielding overhead as they walked, and Vasilios began to suspect he was going to have a nasty burn across the parts of his face not shielded by his scarf. At least the cloth over his mouth and nose kept them from filling with sand as a breeze picked up. He did have to squint against the tiny burning particles, though, raising an arm to shield his vision with his sleeve. Walking had moved beyond painful to a level he really didn’t even want to think about, and Vasilios swore he would never walk across even an inch of this twice-cursed desert again. His feet were going to be raw by the time they got back to the capital.

  They hit the foothills finally, where the land sloped up and the sand receded. The wind no longer tried to tear up the landscape and throw it at them. Seeing and breathing became easier as they moved away from the sand, although the sun was still intense. They stopped by the stream they’d rested at on their way to the desert.

  Vasilios nearly cried when Markos made him bathe his feet in the stream. They all sat and rested for a while, drank the rest of the water they had brought with them, and refilled the drinking flasks.

  “We can ride the rest of the way,” Markos said, chewing on a piece of dried fruit.

  “I am sorry we cannot offer you your own horse, Amma.” Patros turned to Aritê. “Would you rather ride behind the General or me?”

  She considered for a moment. “I would rather walk.”

  “We cannot spare the time for that,” Patros said.

  “Then I will ride with you.” Aritê managed to lift a piece of bread close enough to her mouth to eat it.

  They packed up their supplies, and Vasilios pulled himself up behind Markos as Aritê sat in front of Patros on his horse so he could use one hand to steady her if she needed it.

  IT STARTED to rain halfway to the capital. Vasilios stared up at the sky as they rode, and thought that this was the first spring rain, and soon the Lethe would overflow her banks on the west side of the city. There was a line at the east gate when they got there—merchants, soldiers, and farmers lined up in the pouring rain to get into the city. No one looked twice at their little group as they stood with everyone else in line until finally the gate was raised.

  The soldiers watched carefully as each person in line passed into the city, but they let Vasilios’s group go through without comment. Vasilios barely noticed the ride through the streets, and instead kept his head down and concentrated on staying on the horse. Finally they passed through Markos’s gate into his courtyard, and Vasilios slid off the horse’s back when Markos gently tugged at him and guided him onto the tiled ground.

  “You can sleep now.” Markos’s voice was soft and warm against the side of Vasilios’s face, and Vasilios thought vaguely that they were standing far, far too close to one another, Markos’s hand loosely on his waist.

  “General Markos,” a voice said, and Markos turned to answer. “There was an urgent message from Panagiotis Xarchakos last night,” the voice said, and Vasilios turned to stare unseeingly at the soldier who usually stood at Markos’s front gate. “The servant was looking for Vasilios Eleni.”

  “I need to go.” Vasilios pushed away from Markos and took a few halting steps forward.

  “Stay here,” Markos said. “Let me send someone to Panagiotis’s house and see what this urgent matter is while you rest.”

  “No.” Vasilios wavered a little. Gods, all he wanted to do was sit down. “Panagiotis wants you as an ally. He’d do anything to please you. He would not have sent for me unless it really was dire.”

  “You need to rest.”

  Vasilios shook his head, trying to focus his eyes, which was something of a struggle.

  “No, I need to go.”

  “I’m sending someone with you,” Markos said, but Vasilios wasn’t really listening.

  Someone touched his elbow, and Vasilios turned to look at Patros who smiled at him. “Come along, then,” Patros said. “If you really insist on going now.”

  “No, you should rest.” Vasilios shook his head and pushed a little at Patros’s chest. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

  “If I let you walk even a couple of blocks in your condition,” Patros said in a gentle tone, “the General would have my head.” He removed Vasilios’s hand from his chest.

  Patros led him out the front gate and down the street again. Vasilios’s feet screamed with every step, and he limped heavily at this point. He could barely concentrate on anything and twice almost ran into a servant hurrying through the street. In fact, he would have walked straight into them, if it hadn’t been for Patros’s hand on his arm.

  The guard at the gate of Panagiotis’s house saluted Patros and opened the gate to let them into the courtyard where Patros put down Vasilios’s bag, which he’d been carrying without Vasilios having realized it.

  “Are you going to be all right?” Patros touched his shoulder, watching him carefully, and Vasilios managed to nod.

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then, be well, Vasilios.”

  “And you.” Vasilios raised his hand in a half wave, and Patros smiled back at him as he turned to go.

  “Vasilios!”

  As the gate swung shut behind Patros, Vasilios turned to see Bröndulfr coming across the courtyard toward him.

  “You have to come with me,” Bröndulfr said, looking unusually grim. “Damianos and Mistress Eudoxia are in the blue receiving room.”

  “What’s happened?” Vasilios asked, hurrying to keep up with Bröndulfr’s swift pace as he led the way through the house. “What is going on?”

  “Master Panagiotis is dead,” Bröndulfr said, turning to him outside of the door to the blue receiving room.

  6

  IT WAS like a slap across the face, snapping Vasilios at least partly out of the exhausted haze he’d been in. “What?”

  “He died yesterday,” Bröndulfr said. “We sent word for y
ou as soon as it happened.”

  Vasilios stared at him as Bröndulfr turned and pulled open the door.

  “Vasilios has arrived, Master Damianos, Mistress Eudoxia,” Bröndulfr told the room and then stood back, allowing Vasilios to enter.

  Vasilios moved into the room and knelt on the hard, tiled floor, feeling numb. “My apologies, Master and Mistress,” he said, barely aware of what he was saying. “To be absent at such a time is unforgivable, and I will accept any punishment you see fit.”

  From across the room, he heard Eudoxia sigh. “It was not your fault, Vasilios. It was my husband, after all, who loaned your services to General Markos, knowing full well the General intended for you to accompany him out of the city.”

  Vasilios didn’t say anything to that, but kept his head bowed, eyes on the floor.

  “Yes, well.” Damianos sounded exhausted and on edge. “As Mother says, your absence was unavoidable, but now that you are here, we will need you to assist Mother in preparing the household for my father’s funeral, and I will need your assistance with setting his estate in order.”

  “Of course.” Vasilios stared at the floor, his vision blurring in and out with exhaustion. He guessed he was not going to be allowed to sleep anytime soon.

  “I am going to need you to oversee the preparation of my husband’s body,” Eudoxia said. “We hope to move him to the Church of the Holy Cross this evening.”

  Vasilios nodded and waited to be dismissed, and when Eudoxia waved at him, he stood stiffly and forced himself to make his way out of the room and down the hall toward Panagiotis’s private bedchambers.

  Panagiotis, son of Xarchakos, lay on his massive linen-covered bed, face still and gray in death. Two of the household eunuchs had already begun the process of preparing the body. They both bowed when they saw him and then stepped back, away from the bed, as Vasilios drew close to look down at Panagiotis where he lay.

  Vasilios had expected Panagiotis to appear peaceful in death, but staring down at the body on the bed, he thought Panagiotis looked old. He had been Panagiotis’s eunuch for almost two decades, living in his house, obeying his rules, being everything Panagiotis needed or wanted him to be. He reached out and touched the back of Panagiotis’s hand lightly. The hand was cold. Vasilios drew his fingers back and thought suddenly that he no longer belonged to Panagiotis. They were equals in some strange way, because in death Panagiotis no longer held the wealth and power he had in life, the ability to enrich or destroy Vasilios’s life with a single word.

  Vasilios didn’t know what to do or how to feel now.

  He stepped back finally, and gestured to the other two eunuchs to continue the preparations. A kind of numb calm settled over him as he watched them wash the body and perfume and wrap it in linen.

  Two guards brought the funeral lectica, a heavily carved wooden litter, up to the room. The lectica was draped in plain cotton cloth, and Vasilios directed the two eunuchs to lift Panagiotis’s body onto it. Vasilios led the way from Panagiotis’s bedroom, and the two eunuchs carried the body atop the lectica behind him. One of the largest receiving rooms had been cleared of all furniture save for a platform where the lectica was to rest.

  Lukas and his sons and wife were in the blue receiving room when Vasilios went to find Eudoxia, as was Anthimos with Nereida, his wife.

  “My master’s body is prepared and lies in the first great hall,” Vasilios informed them, going to his knees, head bowed.

  “Come.” Eudoxia rose from where she had been sitting on one of the couches. “Let us go and pray for your father’s soul.”

  She led the way out of the room, followed by her sons and their families. Since no one had ordered him to do anything more, Vasilios finally made his way up to his own room. He bathed, redressed, and then sank onto the couch. He’d dozed off when a servant knocked on his door to tell him that Eudoxia had requested he oversee the funeral procession from the house to the Church of the Holy Cross, close to the Imperial Palace. Vasilios felt more than a little bit like crying, but he stood and hurried to obey his mistress’ request.

  The entire household accompanied Panagiotis’s body up to the massive, gold-domed, white stone church. Panagiotis and Eudoxia’s two daughters had arrived with their husbands and children, and his sons and their families accompanied the body, along with almost all of the guards, all of the household eunuchs, Panagiotis’s personal servants, and his three concubines and their children. One of the priests of the Holy Cross led the procession, his deep voice chanting the funeral prayers, which were answered by the higher voices of the women.

  Vasilios kept his head down and his eyes on the road as they made their slow winding way toward the church. The massive wooden doors had been opened, and Panagiotis’s body was laid on a platform that had been set before the altar. Everyone knelt, and the holy Bishop came forward to pray.

  From beneath his eyelashes, Vasilios studied him. The man was large, barrel-chested, with a flowing gray beard. He was swathed from head to toe in rich golden robes, and a gold cross studded with precious stones hung around his neck. The Bishop’s deep voice boomed and filled the huge space of the church, and Vasilios remembered Aritê calling the Bishop weak with such conviction and open disapproval, and he smiled a little.

  The prayer ended, and everyone began filing out of the church, except for Eudoxia, who made her way up to the front to speak with the Bishop directly. Vasilios waited along with her ladies, daughters, and guards for her to finish with her business before heading back to the house.

  Back at the house, there was the evening meal to oversee, made even more chaotic by the influx of unexpected guests and the fact that the kitchen staff was in various states of shock and fear. There was a rumor going around that all the servants would be sold to the iron mines to pay off Panagiotis’s debts.

  “That’s enough!” Vasilios’s voice cracked a little on the last word, unused to yelling so loudly, and the kitchen went silent around him. “We, none of us, know what will happen to us in the future,” he said, voice still loud enough to be heard by all. “We will not know until our master’s estate is put in order, but this is not the time for us to stop doing our duties. On the contrary, this is the time when we should be at our best, because let me tell you, Damianos will surely sell those of us who chose not to attend to our duties while the family was in turmoil. So”—Vasilios clapped his hands—“we have dinner to prepare for three times the usual number. Get to work now.”

  Around him the kitchen exploded into action, and Vasilios allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief.

  He oversaw the cooking and serving of the meal and then knelt on the floor of the dining hall during the entire thing. The servants cleared away the food when the family had finished and gone their separate ways for the evening. Vasilios made sure that everything was cleaned and put away as it should be and that food was sent over to the women’s quarter for the concubines and their families, before the servants sat down for their own meal.

  Vasilios really should have eaten, but instead, he made his way back up to his own room. He stripped off his clothes and collapsed in bed, asleep before he was even fully aware of lying down.

  BRÖNDULFR woke him before dawn the next morning, looking almost as grim and haggard as Vasilios felt. He dressed and went with Bröndulfr back down to the kitchens to prepare for the morning meal.

  The Church of the Holy Cross was packed with people for the funeral. Most of the court was there, along with many of Panagiotis’s business partners and his whole household. The ceremony, with its chanting, incense, and prayer, went by Vasilios like a haze. The Bishop presided over it with his deep voice and golden robes. Vasilios stared at the linen-wrapped body, which had been draped with a heavy, bejeweled cross and cloth of gold.

  He remembered the first time he’d met Panagiotis, back when he still had hair, thick and dark, face beginning to round out with age. Vasilios had been refusing to eat, determined to die with honor or whatever his fifteen-year-old self ha
d thought that was, thin and almost skeletal in shackles, still healing from where he’d been made a eunuch.

  “He’s young,” the man who’d been selling off the prisoners had said. “Untrained, but will work well in a kitchen or stable.”

  “Ten solidus.” Panagiotis voice had been loud, clear, and strong.

  Vasilios shook his head and looked away from the body before the altar. He wondered what Markos and Aritê were doing, whether they’d managed to rid the Empire of that demon. Everyone knelt and then stood and then knelt again. Vasilios barely paid attention, letting himself move with the crowd. Candles were lit and the choir sang. Each of Panagiotis’s sons moved forward to the front of the church to read prayers for their father’s soul.

  Finally, after what felt like hours, the Bishop began his journey down the main aisle, followed by priests bearing crosses and more incense and candles. Panagiotis’s family followed and surrounded the bed with the body, which was carried by Bröndulfr and Eòran. The procession headed out of the church to the grave site and the burial rites there.

  Vasilios gathered up the rest of the household—guards, eunuchs, the concubines and their families—and led the little group back to the house. Once there, he made sure the concubines and their children were comfortably settled in the women’s quarter.

  The sun was already starting to set low on the horizon and Vasilios felt tired, considering he’d spent the entire day either sitting or kneeling. Still, the evening meal needed to be cooked and served, and he turned and made his way to the kitchen to make sure everything was going along as it should. The atmosphere in the house was noticeably tense, from the women’s quarter to the kitchen, as everyone wondered what would happen to them.

  The funeral service would soon be over, and the setting straight of Panagiotis’s estate would begin.

  “Some tea for the women’s quarter,” Vasilios said to one of the serving women, who nodded and bustled away. She came back a few minutes later carrying a tray with several tiny teacups, a silver tea sieve, and a silver pitcher of tea. Vasilios carried the whole thing back across the courtyard and up the steps to the women’s quarters.