Solis

by Kat Ross

  “But how will you find them?”

  “Kallisto knows more than she shares. When the time comes, she will know what do to,” Rhea said firmly. “And Herodotus must have discovered something important or why else would the Pythia be holding him prisoner? When we rescue him, he will tell us what it is.”

  She sounded so certain, Nazafareen let it drop. In truth, all the talk about Vatras and talismans meant little to her. Whether or not they had truly come back, it wasn’t her fight.

  “What about you?” Rhea asked. “Would it offend if I asked how you lost your hand?”

  Nazafareen shook her head. “You can ask, but I don’t know the answer. I lost my memories just before coming to Nocturne.”

  “All of them?” Rhea asked incredulously.

  “Every single one.”

  She made a noise of sympathy.

  “That must have been terrible. Were you struck on the head? Kicked by a horse?”

  “I don’t think so. Darius, he’s the daēva who brought me here, says I broke a powerful talisman that held a forgetting spell. The backwash of the magic erased my own memories.”

  Rhea’s grey eyes widened. “That’s like something from a story.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve learned to live with it. But sometimes I wonder what the old Nazafareen would have done. Did she like the same things I do? Was she smarter or braver?”

  “You were brave to fight the chimera.”

  Nazafareen shrugged. “It was that or die. In truth, I’d rather not use my magic at all. It’s dangerous.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Well, there’s the elemental part. That bit’s okay. It doesn’t make me ill like the other, though I’m not very good with it.” She sighed, remembering her miserable sessions with Darius. “I suppose I can do little things. Like the flame just now. And when the wind ship was about to crash, I called air to fill the sack.”

  Rhea nodded encouragingly. “That sounds useful.”

  “It’s the breaking magic that frightens me,” Nazafareen admitted. “It seems to have a mind of its own. And it only works against other magic anyway. Darius brought me to Nocturne so I’d be protected from it. The magic only works if there’s fire nearby. Even the sun will do.”

  “Darius?”

  “He’s a…friend.”

  Rhea leaned forward. “Is he handsome?”

  Nazafareen smiled. “Yes. But I’m angry at him. He knows things and he won’t tell me.”

  “Why not?”

  “They must be bad.”

  Nazafareen found herself telling Rhea everything about Darius and the darklands. She described Victor and Tethys, and how she had come to travel by wind ship across the Umbra.

  “Poor Javid,” Nazafareen said ruefully. “He must regret not throwing me overboard.”

  “The Pythia is to blame, Nazafareen, not you.”

  “Do you think Javid will be found guilty?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Rhea replied. “He is Persian. That alone makes him guilty in some men’s eyes.”

  “Well, I won’t let the Pythia burn him—no matter what. I’ll break him out myself if I have to.”

  Rhea gave her a wry look.

  “It’s a dungeon,” she said. “Thick walls, no windows, lots of heavily armed soldiers. You’d need an army to get inside, and a bigger one to get out—”

  Nazafareen grabbed Rhea’s arm and pulled her back behind the wall as the Stork’s wife emerged from the house, her cheeks flushed.

  “Follow her,” Rhea whispered. “I’ll stay to see who lives in this villa.”

  Nazafareen nodded and waited for her to reach the corner, then strolled after. Once they’d reached the busier commercial district, the woman paused a few times to examine pieces of pottery but didn’t buy anything. The set of her shoulders seemed more relaxed, not hurrying as she had before. When she reached her house, she glanced around again, then went inside and closed the door.

  “Find anything?” Cyrene asked, when Nazafareen headed over to the cart.

  Nazafareen shrugged. “She went to a house, then came back. I don’t know who lives there.” She sighed. “I don’t think there’s anything magical inside either house though.”

  About twenty minutes later, Rhea arrived.

  “A well-built young man left the villa shortly after,” she reported with a smirk. “He looked rather smug. I’d say the Stork—”

  “There he is,” Nazafareen hissed.

  The sight of him set her pulse pounding. The sun glinted off his balding pate as he strode through the crowd, nose in the air. There was something awkward and spider-like about the way he moved, as if his joints bent in odd directions. Nazafareen remembered the soldiers roughly dragging Herodotus away. Remembered the Stork lying through his teeth.

  I’d like to shake you until they rattle in your head like dice, she thought savagely. I’d like to—

  “Come.” Rhea’s hand touched her arm as the Stork disappeared inside the house. “The hour grows late. We should go meet the others.”

  “But we haven’t learned anything useful,” Nazafareen objected.

  Rhea gave her a pitying look. “His wife is unfaithful and I can’t say I blame her. If she meets her lover again tomorrow, we can search the house to be sure.”

  “Oh.” Nazafareen frowned, feeling naïve—a condition she’d grown sadly accustomed to. “Of course.”

  She climbed into the wagon bed and Charis shook the reins, coaxing the oxen through the narrow alley and out into the street beyond. The cart rocked and jounced, but at least Nazafareen wasn’t imprisoned in the cask this time. She peered through the slats at the Acropolis hulking in the distance, its sheer fortified sides exposing slabs of white stone. The Temple of Apollo perched at the apex, a massive rectangle flanked by tall columns on all sides. Somewhere within its walls, the Oracle was…doing whatever Oracles did.

  Can the Pythia sense me? Nazafareen wondered uneasily. She’d seemed to at the execution, though it was impossible to be sure. Nazafareen couldn’t see the fountain, but she felt the gate beneath it. A powerful throb of magic. The Pythia hadn’t known about that, had she? She isn’t all-knowing or all-powerful, even if she tries to convince people otherwise.

  The cart turned onto the Street of the Glassmakers, a wide boulevard lined with stalls and workshops whose wares caught the sun, sparkling in all the hues of the rainbow. Above, a wind ship drifted silently through the sky, its silken red sack tilted in the direction of the breeze. Delphi seemed a great humming beehive, ten thousand souls building and destroying, buying and selling, making music and writing poetry and arguing over philosophy. For a moment, Nazafareen felt a keen admiration for the irrepressible labors of humanity. Our lives might be brief as insects compared to the daēvas, but we can make things of beauty too.

  She almost understood the hatred and fear of magic. What had Javid told her? That scientific advancement was humanity’s proud heritage. Nazafareen sighed. Who am I then? Which world do I belong to? Mortal or daēva? And which will I choose, knowing the truth?

  The Street of the Glassmakers fell away behind and they entered a seedy district with rundown mudbrick buildings and dirt streets. The Temple of Dionysius looked as she remembered it. Crumbling walls overgrown with ivy. A sad little stone slab that served as a catafalque to withered bunches of flowers. But the structure itself was on a much grander scale than its neighbors and had an ancient, timeless feel as though it had always stood on that spot—perhaps even before the birth of the city itself.

  Charis drove the cart to a stable at the rear and unhitched the mules while Nazafareen and Rhea climbed up a short flight of steps into the house of the god. Pillars supported a high ceiling that showed signs of flaking gold and purple paint, though what images might once have appeared there were anyone’s guess. Scorch marks blackened the stone walls where unlit torches rested in brackets. A little sunlight penetrated through the doorway, but there were no windows to alleviate the gloom.

  T
he twins rose from where they’d been kneeling by the altar. To Nazafareen’s relief, she saw no sign of the resident snake.

  “How’d it go?” Alcippe asked, shaking a fringe of light hair from her eyes.

  “We’ll search the Stork’s house tomorrow,” Nazafareen said, relating his wife’s regular liaisons at the villa. “Though I fear we won’t find much. What about the Weasel?”

  “No luck,” the other twin replied. “He’s not married, but he has a manservant who never seems to leave. He sends a boy to do the shopping at the agora. We watched all day and he didn’t go anywhere.”

  Other than the altar with its great stone bull’s head, the main sanctuary was bare of decoration except for a few grapevines carved into the lintel of the entrance. The floor had been recently swept clean though, so Nazafareen took a cross-legged seat at the foot of a pillar. Her feet ached from standing all day.

  “Maybe we can lure him out somehow,” Rhea suggested.

  “Or just knock him on the head,” Megaera said.

  Rhea sighed. “And what if the man cries for help? The city is crawling with soldiers.”

  Nazafareen thought for a moment. Too bad it never got dark. They could have tried to sneak into the house at night when its occupants slept. But with the constant daylight, it was too risky. The streets grew quieter at night but they were rarely empty. Then she remembered how Javid used to talk about bribes the Guild paid out for information and other services.

  “What if we give the boy a few coins?” she suggested. “Ask him about the manservant’s habits and the Weasel’s too.”

  Megaera rolled her eyes—she clearly preferred a more forceful approach—but the twins and Rhea nodded.

  “It’s a good idea,” Adeia said. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  Charis bustled in with loaves of bread and a jar of olives, and soon they made a cold supper in the cellar beneath the temple, where sleeping pallets sat along a wall. Nazafareen looked with curiosity at two statues flanking the doorway. They showed hunched pipe-playing figures with tails and pointed ears. Her gaze moved down to the enormous protuberances that hung between shaggy legs, and she found herself choking on a piece of bread.

  Adeia laughed and clapped her on the back.

  “Have you never seen a satyr?” she asked.

  “No,” Nazafareen managed, coughing up the last crumbs. “Can’t say I have.”

  “I wouldn’t mind meeting a real one, they’re supposed to be excellent companions, but they live in the woods. I don’t suppose you ran across any in the darklands?” she asked wistfully.

  “Sorry. I think I’d remember that.”

  “They too are followers of Dionysius,” Rhea explained. “Lovers of wine, women and song.”

  “We do have a Fury though,” Charis added with a sly smile.

  “Very funny.” Megaera scowled.

  “What’s a Fury?” Nazafareen asked.

  Charis raised her eyebrows at Megaera, who sighed.

  “I was named after one of the Erinyes,” she said. “The three Furies. My mother thought it would be an amusing joke since I came out feet first—”

  “Kicking and screaming bloody murder,” Rhea added dryly.

  “Feet first,” Megaera continued, shooting an annoyed glance at Rhea, “and nearly killed her. The Furies reserve special vengeance for matricide, you see. As a token of thanks for being spared, she gave me the name of Megaera.”

  “Your mother has an interesting sense of humor,” Nazafareen said with a twinkle in her eye. “I think I like her.”

  “Interesting?” Megaera spit out an olive pit. “Perhaps, if you are not on the wrong end of it.”

  “What about you, Rhea? Are you also named for a wrathful goddess?”

  She smiled. “A Titaness. Daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus. And Cyrene is a fierce huntress.” She gave a savage growl. “A lion killer!”

  “So she imagines,” Megaera snorted.

  Adeia raised a hand to her mouth, hiding the discolored tooth, though Nazafareen caught the hint of a smile. “Truly, your mother misnamed you, Megaera,” she said. “She should have chosen Hestia because your nature is so gentle and sweet.”

  The others fell over laughing at this, although Nazafareen didn’t get the joke. The Maenads ribbed each other for a while more, then one by one, drifted off to sleep.

  Nazafareen tucked her stump beneath her cheek. She missed her sword. It had been a treasured gift from Darius—her last tie to him except for the griffin cuff. Nazafareen feared to wear the cuff in case her breaking magic accidentally slipped its leash, but she liked to keep it close. So Kallisto had given her a cloth bag to put it in, which she wore on a leather cord around her neck, next to her heart.

  The thought that Darius might have been the one asking for her at the library tormented her. If it was him, he must know by now that she was a wanted fugitive. What would he do next? Probably continue looking for her. If she was being honest, Nazafareen missed him terribly. But she also prayed he hadn’t come here. It was too dangerous—especially for a daēva.

  Well, they’d never take Darius, even if they discovered what he was. He’d shake the Polemarch’s men off like fleas.

  And we’ll find each other again. We will.

  Nazafareen drifted off to sleep with the bittersweet image of Darius walking up to the temple of Dionysius, dust on his boots and a smile on his face.

  The following day, when the Stork’s wife went skipping off to her erotic liaison, Nazafareen and Rhea snuck around to a weedy garden at the rear and clambered through a window. The house had four rooms, but Nazafareen knew without searching there was no spell dust hidden away.

  Mrs. Stork clearly focused her energy on activities other than housekeeping. The place had a stale, neglected feel to it. Dust—the regular kind—coated the furniture and dirty dishes teetered in haphazard piles in the kitchen. The only thing of interest was a desk laden with parchment. Nazafareen couldn’t read, but Rhea swiftly sorted through the stacks and shook her head. The Stork might be a villain, but he wasn’t stupid enough to keep anything lying about that would tie him to Basileus or the Pythia.

  It was a bitter disappointment considering they’d wasted two days staking out the house. She hoped the others had better luck at the Weasel’s home.

  They exited the same way they’d come in. Nazafareen stepped out of the alley—and froze. Four soldiers marched abreast down the middle of the street, heads swinging to and fro as they scrutinized each passer-by. They wore helmets with horse-hair crests, heavy breastplates and fringed leather skirts. The biggest one, a bronzed slab of muscle with a square head that sat without interruption on his broad shoulders, stared at them, eyes narrowing.

  “Smile,” Rhea hissed, coiling her arm through Nazafareen’s. “Pretend I’ve just made a funny joke.”

  Nazafareen bared her teeth and tittered. Rhea looked the soldiers up and down in frank appraisal, a wicked grin curving her lips. Their frowns turned quickly to answering smiles. Rhea tossed her mane of black hair, gave them a flash of ankle, and dragged Nazafareen into the throng.

  “Nicely done,” Nazafareen murmured when they were safely around a corner.

  “My birth father was a rich man,” Rhea said as they ducked down another side street. “I grew up at his manor house until Kallisto claimed me. And my nursemaid—the one who colored her hair—was a terrible flirt.” She grinned. “She knew nothing about the real arrangement. I suppose she expected me to grow up to be some fluff-headed heartbreaker. She was always imparting sage advice about men.” Her voice turned to a simper. “Rhea, you must smile more. A woman’s smile is her armor.” She laughed. “I would rather have my own staff, thank you. But it can be useful in a pinch.”

  Back at the Temple of Dionysius, the twins had better news to impart.

  “The boy was thrilled to take a handful of silver,” Adeia said. She held a sprig of myrtle in one hand and danced around the sanctuary as she talked, moved by some inner m
usic. “He doesn’t know much about the Weasel, but he said the manservant reeks of cheap wine. Shakes like a leaf when he takes the baskets of groceries.”

  “The fault lies not in the grape but in the man,” Rhea said stoutly. “Wine is the divine liberator.”

  “Though it can enslave those who worship too frequently,” Cyrene put in dryly. “In any event, it seems we’ve found a weak point.”

  “Perhaps we should deliver a gift to the house,” Nazafareen mused. “A token of appreciation from the Archon Basileus.” She grinned. “With an extra cask for the servant’s trouble.”

  7

  Visions

  The Weasel’s manservant was a thin, sallow man with a gash for a mouth and a bulbous red-veined nose. He opened the door with a frown that softened considerably when Rhea said she’d brought a gift for his master, and one for him as well. He licked his lips as she helped carry the two casks of wine inside.

  Nazafareen watched from behind a small fountain across the street. She’d taken a quick stroll past the house and sensed something inside—something magical. It felt like a slight vibration in the air. A frisson of potential energy. Not as powerful as a gate, which she could feel from a much longer distance, but undeniably there.

  Before the Pythia’s ban two years before, Rhea said talismans were common in the city, at least for those who could afford them. But these days, no one dared keep anything with even the slightest whiff of magic about it. It made whatever was inside the Weasel’s house shine like a beacon.

  They’d seen him set off for the Library some hours before. Nazafareen found him repellent, though it wasn’t his appearance. In truth, he looked average in every way. Dark hair, neatly-trimmed beard, wiry build. The problem was his eyes. They devoured every woman in his path, from young girls to middle-aged matrons. He seemed just the type to entice some poor serving girl into a dark corner and suddenly grow nine arms.

  I wish he’d tried it with me, she thought with a grim smile. I might only have one good hand, but I know how to use it.