by David Drake
A pair of beggars were huddled on the second-floor landing. They were regulars; they scrunched to the side when they saw who was coming down and one of them, an old soldier, croaked, “Bless you, Master Corylus.”
Corylus passed with a nod. Anna had probably seen to it that the fellow had eaten today. He was a former Batavian auxiliary whose Latin was still slurred with the marshes at the mouth of the Rhine; but he’d been places that Pulto and the Old Master had been, and he wouldn’t go hungry while scraps remained in the suite.
Corylus stepped into the street and took his bearings. Someone moved in the shadows opposite; a quick waggle of the staff let the moonlight shimmer on the pale hardwood. The movement ceased.
Smiling, Corylus strode westward, toward the center of Carce. Half a block down, a large jobbing nursery filled a site large enough for an apartment block. A crew was unloading root-balled rosebushes from an ox-drawn wagon.
It would have been an easy enough task if the roses had been pruned back severely, but wealthy customers didn’t want to wait till next year for their plantings to bloom. By definition, anybody who owned a house with a garden in Carce was wealthy. The workmen were cursing as canes whipped and caught them unexpectedly as they moved the bushes.
“Where’s Demetrius?” Corylus said as he approached.
The man on his side of the tailgate turned his head and snarled, “We’re closed! Come back in the bloody morning!”
He was a new purchase. The thorn slash across his forehead was still oozing despite his attempt to blot it with the sleeve of his tunic.
“You stupid sod, that’s Master Corylus!” his partner said. “Do you want the back flayed off you too? Go on back, sir. The master’s working on the accounts back in the shed, like usual.”
Corylus walked through the crowded lot, feeling the tension recede. Not disappear; it was still waiting out in the night. But the presence of bushes and saplings hedged him away from the unseen dangers, the way they had insulated him from the pressures of Carce when he first came here to take classes under Pandareus of Athens.
He wasn’t a peasant who grew up in a rural hamlet: the military bases of his youth were crowded, boisterous, and brutal. Legionaries lived as tightly together as the poor on the top floors of tenements in Carce.
But the total number of people gathered into this one city had stunned Corylus. The entire army which guarded the frontiers of the Empire was about three hundred thousand men, including the auxiliaries who were not citizens. There were far more residents in Carce than that.
A single lamp burned in the office, one end of the shed along the back of the lot where tools and shade plants were stored. Demetrius, a Syrian Greek, was usually there; Corylus suspected he slept in the office occasionally. He had married his wife while they both were slaves, but with freedom and wealth she had become increasingly concerned about status and appearances. Demetrius simply loved plants and having his hands in dirt, which made time spent in his luxurious apartment a strain.
“Granus?” Demetrius called. “Have you got those bushes—”
“It’s just me visiting,” Corylus said as he stepped through the doorway.
Demetrius grinned over the writing desk at which he worked standing. Two clerks were reading aloud invoices written in ink on potsherds; he was jotting the totals down on papyrus.
“Oh, you’re always welcome, Publius,” Demetrius said. “Say, I’ve got some apple grafts I’d like you to cast an eye over. I didn’t have a chance to see them when they were delivered, and I’m not sure about the technique. They’re end-butted on the twigs. You’ve got the best eye for how a tree’s doing that I’ve ever seen.”
I should, Corylus thought. My mother was a hazel sprite.
Aloud he said, “I’ll take a look, sure. I just wanted to sit with something green for a while and work on a declamation. Is that all right?”
“Any time, boy, any time,” Demetrius said cheerfully. “Say, you wouldn’t like a pomegranate tree at a good price, would you? I had an order for six, but there was only room for five in the garden when I delivered them and they sent one back. You could have it for my cost.”
Corylus laughed. “I don’t think it’d fit on a third-floor balcony, my friend,” he said. “It’s a bit crowded with potted herbs as it is.”
“Now, don’t turn it down till you see it,” Demetrius said. “Pomegranates need to be root bound to bear best, so it doesn’t take up as much room as you’d think. And the pots are nice glazed work, blue with birds and flowers. One of them’d dress your apartment up a treat!”
“Sorry, Demetrius,” Corylus said. “Where’s the apples?”
“On the west side of the lot,” Demetrius said, gesturing. Ever hopeful, he added, “And the pomegranate’s there too. I’ll bet she’d fit fine, boy.”
Corylus made his way along the paths winding through the nursery stock. Demetrius brought only what he had under immediate contract into the city. Even so, his lot was stuffed to capacity.
He imagined Anna hauling enough water for a tree up to the third floor. Well, she would organize it as she did the household water already; other residents of the building, generally young women having problems with romance or with the results of romance, did the work that Anna’s arthritis didn’t permit her to accomplish herself. Corylus didn’t care what sort of charms and potions Anna provided in return, and Pulto didn’t want to know.
There were four grafted trees. The trunks were probably crabapples and appeared healthy, and the grafts appeared to have been done well also. Demetrius mitered twigs onto branches, but these mortise cuts were clean, tight, and tied with strips of inner bark in a thoroughly satisfactory fashion.
“I wonder how the gardener would like it if they cut his hands off and tied somebody else’s onto the stumps?” said the woman suddenly standing beside him.
Corylus didn’t jump, but his head snapped around quickly. She was short, no more than five feet tall, and remarkably buxom. She wore a shift that was probably red or blue—moonlight didn’t bring out the color—but was so thin that her breasts might as well have been bare.
“Ah, mistress?” he said. How did she creep up on me?
Then he realized. “Oh,” he said. “You’re a dryad. Of one of these trees?”
He gestured to the apples, looking furtively at her plump wrists. They seemed unblemished.
Always before when Corylus had seen tree spirits, it was in the wake of great magic. Demetrius’ nursery was a simple business concern, unlike the back garden at Saxa’s house where the wizard Nemastes had worked spells that might have drowned the world in fire.
“Them?” the sprite sneered. “Well, I like that! I’m not one of those drabs. I’m sure they’ll be giving themselves airs whenever they come out of that butchery, but they’ll still only be apples. I am a pomegranate.”
She threw her head back. The movement didn’t exactly lift her breasts—that would have required a derrick—but it made them wobble enthusiastically.
“Of course, Punica, I beg your pardon,” Corylus said. There at the end of the line of apples in terra-cotta transfer urns was a pomegranate tree in a fine glazed bowl, decorated with a garden scene. The pot was indeed very nice, but it was much smaller than Corylus had expected. The tree looked positively top-heavy.
Oh. He blushed.
“I was glad you came to see me,” Punica said. “I’ve been lonely.”
She put her arm around his waist; he shifted sideways, recovering their previous separation. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m surprised to see you. That is, I don’t usually see, well…”
He made a circular gesture with his left hand, the one that didn’t hold his staff.
“It’s what you’re wearing,” the sprite said. “What’s in the glass.”
She leaned forward and twitched the thong around Corylus’ neck, bringing the amulet out from under his tunic.
“Not the hazelnut,” she said. “The other thing. And I wouldn’t care to be
wearing it, I promise you; though since you’re half-hazel too, I suppose you’re all right.”
“What?” said Corylus. He lifted the bead—it was the size of the last joint of his thumb—up to the quarter moon. He knew he was being silly as soon as he did that: the glass had barely shown internal shadows against the full sun, and now it was as black as a river pebble.
He lowered the amulet. “What is it inside, Punica?” he asked.
She shrugged impressively. “I told you I didn’t like it,” she said, moving closer again. “That’s all I want to know about it. I like you, though, Corylus. Why don’t you just take off—”
She reached for the thong again. Corylus caught her hand and lowered it firmly to her side.
“I don’t think so, Punica,” he said. “I—maybe I’ll come back. But right now, I have to get home.”
“Oh, must you go?” she called as he squirmed between potted oleanders on one side and a planter of fragrant parsley on the other.
“Another time,” he murmured over his shoulder. He was old enough to have learned that nothing a man said on these occasions was going to be sufficient, so you might as well stop with bare politeness. He didn’t strictly owe Punica even that, except as to another living being; which Corylus believed should be enough to demand courtesy.
The crew which had unloaded the wagon was in the office when Corylus returned there. Demetrius had sponged the injured slave’s forehead clean and was looking at it. The jagged tear didn’t seem serious without the wash of blood, though the fellow would probably have a scar. He hadn’t been much of a beauty to begin with.
“The apples are going to be fine, Demetrius,” Corylus said. “Did you buy them from a new grower?”
“No, I got a Gallic arborist myself, a freeman, and I hadn’t seen his grafts before,” the nurseryman said. “Ah—you slipped a girl in, sir?”
Corylus understood the question, though it gave him a shock to hear it. “That’s all right, Demetrius,” he answered with forced calm. The workman must have heard him—and heard Punica as well, which meant the glass bead on his breast really did have power. “There’s no hole in your fence. But just put it out of your mind, all right?”
“Sure, lad,” Demetrius said, relaxing a little. “It’s no problem, only I’d like to know if, you know, it comes up again.”
Corylus cleared his throat. “I looked at the pomegranate too,” he said, “and I think I will take it. But not for me. Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa has a house in the Carina. Do you know where it is?”
“I can learn,” Demetrius said. “I don’t believe he’s bought from me in the past.”
“He’s been letting me use his gym,” Corylus explained, though in fact he wasn’t sure that Saxa even knew his son was letting a friend use the training facility; certainly he didn’t care. “A pear tree in his back garden died. I thought I’d give him the pomegranate as a little thank you.”
“I can get in a nice pear tree in forty-eight hours,” Demetrius said. “And if you’re worried about the price—”
Corylus stopped him with a smile and a gesture. “I’m not,” he said truthfully, “but I’ve taken a liking to that pomegranate. Only—plant it in the ground, will you? I think it’ll be more comfortable if its roots have a chance to spread out.”
Demetrius shrugged. “It won’t bear as well,” he said, “but I don’t suppose I’m going to change your mind about how to plant trees. Sure, I’ll send it over in the morning. Just one tree, Bello and Granus can carry it on a handbarrow so we don’t have to wait for nightfall to use a wagon.”
“Send the bill to me,” Corylus said as he started toward the front gate. “I’ll clear it on the first of the month.”
He wondered how Punica and Persica would get along. They’d squabble—the spirits of fruit trees tended to be self-centered and quarrelsome, in his experience—but he thought they’d both be happier than they would be alone.
Corylus began to whistle as he crossed the street. He was ready to sleep now.
Two men were running toward him; from the way one clutched his cloak to his side, he was using it to hide a sword—illegal to carry in the city and a bad sign anywhere except on the frontier. Corylus paused and put his back to the wall.
“Lad, is that you?” Pulto called hoarsely.
“Right!” Corylus said, relaxing again. He recognized the other man as a courier from Saxa’s household. “I’m glad it’s you.”
“Well, turn right around,” Pulto said. “There’s trouble at the senator’s house and Lord Varus said to bring you!”
CHAPTER VIII
Pandareus wanted to leave by the alley after dinner, saying it would be shorter by two blocks for him to get home, so Varus walked his teacher into the back garden. To his surprise, Alphena came with them.
By now he wasn’t surprised that none of the servants followed them into the garden, though Varus hadn’t felt the sense of unease that the staff claimed to. He wondered whether the problem had been a single nervous footman worrying himself twitchy and infecting his hundreds of fellows with fear of nothing.
Alphena stood arms akimbo as they entered the garden and glared at the surviving fruit tree. Varus looked at her with lips pursed, but whatever had brought that on seemed to be satisfied when nothing had happened after a moment or two.
“I’ll stand outside, your lordships,” said the doorman on duty. “I’ll leave the lantern—or would you rather I take it into the alley, your lordships?”
“Take it with you,” Varus said before it struck him that his sister might not find the moonlight as adequate as he did. Well, if that’s the case, Alphena has never had trouble making her opinion known.…
Instead she hugged her arms around herself, then smiled wanly. “I don’t know what was going on at dinner,” she said. “I was hoping one of you could tell me.”
“For somebody who didn’t understand,” Varus said, “you certainly reacted quickly enough. Quicker than I did, anyway.”
He shook his head, feeling disgusted with himself. “Actually, I don’t think I would have thought to demand the, well, artifact myself if I’d had all night. My brain doesn’t work that way, I guess.”
“All I knew,” Alphena said, “is that Tardus wanted to take the tube and you—”
She was looking at Pandareus.
“—didn’t want him to. Is there something you want to do with it, ah, master?”
As soon as Tardus and his attendants had gone down the staircase, Hedia gave the chest with the murrhine tube to Alexandros to return to its place in the library. Saxa had a collection of similar curios among the baskets of scrolls, as well as busts of those he considered the wisest men of past ages.
Along with Solon, who gave laws to Athens; Lycurgus, who gave laws to Sparta; and Socrates, who chose to die to uphold his philosophy, there was a bust of Periander, the famously ruthless Tyrant of Corinth. Varus had always considered that an odd choice for his gentle father.
“I’m sorry, no,” Pandareus said. “I’m not a magician—”
He quirked a smile toward Varus, who felt his cheeks start to warm. Fortunately the moonlight wouldn’t show his blushing. I’m not a magician either!
“—and scholarship doesn’t take me beyond the obvious, that the object is very old and probably came from a tomb. I was reacting to the fact that Lord Tardus wanted it very badly; and though I don’t have any idea why, I had—I have—the feeling that his purposes would not be to the benefit of anyone I could consider a friend.”
Varus nodded in understanding. He said, “And Father wouldn’t have refused a fellow senator simply because a foreigner—no offense meant, master.”
“None taken, my pupil,” Pandareus said with a nod of deference.
“A foreigner, even a very learned foreigner as Father knows you to be,” Varus said, “didn’t approve. But the wishes of his own daughter certainly did matter.”
He shook his head again. “Or his son,” he said. “Except that his son wasn’
t quick enough off the mark to intervene.”
Alphena looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read, then hugged him. Varus stood stiffly. He didn’t believe there was anything his sister could have done that would have surprised him more.
“Dear Gaius,” she said, stepping away again. “I don’t think you could have accomplished anything no matter how hard you tried. You’ve just been so nice to everybody all your life. But I’ve been a screaming bitch often enough that Father would listen to me.”
She smiled wryly. She wasn’t boasting, which was also a surprise. Alphena had always seemed proud of the way she made people cringe when she was in a bad temper.
“Well…,” he said. “Thank you, sister.”
Varus smiled. He’d never really approved of Alphena’s behavior—not that he would ever have said anything—but her past behavior was paying dividends. Her unladylike practice with a sword had saved his life when she stood between him and an army of fire demons.
“Did either of you notice the men who came with Tardus?” Alphena said. “They were the same ones who’d been with him in the theater when the city appeared. I mean, three of them were.”
Pandareus was answering. Varus heard the teacher’s voice, but the words didn’t seem to have meaning. He felt himself drifting into the fog that separated him from the Sibyl’s dreamworld. He tried to speak, to warn his companions, but grayness closed in before he could force words out through his throat.
There was laughter in the fog, silvery and cheerful. Varus felt his heart jump as if he had heard a scream of fury, though there had been nothing frightening in the sound itself.
His smile was bitter for a moment, then warmed into humor. Quite a number of frightening things had happened recently. He couldn’t help being afraid, but he could simply walk on regardless.
He had no choice, after all. Not if he were to help save the world. He thought of the monster he had seen engulfing Carce.
The fog brightened; in another step, he burst out into sunlight. The old woman stood on the edge of an escarpment, holding a hank of yarn and a pair of bronze shears. She turned toward Varus.