Out of the waters bote-2

by David Drake

  "No," said Corylus. "I'll be fine. I just like flowers, you know."

  "If it's all the same with you, master…?" Pulto said. "I'd like to chat with my buddy Lenatus in the gym."

  "Yes, of course," Corylus said. Pulto nodded gratefully as he strode through the gateway to the house proper on the heels of the servants.

  There was nothing unusual about the request. Lenatus, whom Saxa had hired as the family trainer, was an old soldier whom Pulto had known when they were both stationed on the Rhine. The haste with which Pulto moved would have puzzled Corylus if he hadn't known the reason, however.

  So long as Pulto thought the vision in the theater was stage trickery, it hadn't disturbed him. Now he had realized that it was real. That made him all the more uncomfortable about magic and the traces it left.

  Corylus looked around. He was alone in the garden except for Maximus, who had pulled the gate closed and stood against it with the lantern, looking unhappy.

  "Ah…," said the doorkeeper. "I suppose you'll want me to keep you company back here, sir?"

  Maximus had the shoulders of a bear and arms that hung almost to his knees. His strikingly ugly looks caused him to be stationed at the back gate, not at the front where the Senator's distinguished visitors entered, but Corylus had found him intelligent and, surprisingly, literate in Greek with a smattering of Latin as well.

  "I don't see why," Corylus said, smiling. "It seems to me that you can guard things just as well in the alley as here. I'll just think for a while."

  "I guess you know what you're doing, sir," Maximus said. "Only me-it doesn't feel right back here since the pear tree died, you know? It used to be that other fellows would come sit with me, you know? But none of the servants like to come back here now. And, ah… I sometimes think I'm seeing somebody. In the corner of my eye, you know?"

  "I'm sure I'll be all right," said Corylus; he gestured toward the back gate. "And you can take the lantern. There's plenty of moonlight for me."

  "Thank you, sir!" the doorman said with an enthusiasm that a gold piece for a tip couldn't have bettered. He was out into the alley again, banging the gate closed, almost before he'd spoken the last syllable.

  Corylus looked around again, his smile rueful. The garden wasn't a ruin, not yet, but even the crescent moon showed him that it was neglected.

  Ten days since, Saxa and the Hyperborean sorcerer who had gained his confidence had held an incantation here. Their magic had resulted in a blast of intense cold which killed the pear tree, and it had also worked deeper changes to the setting.

  Corylus had his own reasons for being here, but he wasn't surprised that the servants kept away. That included the gardeners: the dead pear had been removed, but no one had watered or weeded the flowerbeds since the incantation.

  There was a covered walkway against the partition wall between the garden and the house. Corylus settled himself on the pavement, facing the alley. The peach tree on the left side of the garden was in full flower. Its branches, fluffy and white in the moonlight, overhung the wall at several points.

  If all those flowers are allowed to set fruit, Corylus thought, the weight will break the branches. If the gardeners won't do something, perhaps I should- A woman-a female figure-stepped into the moonlight, as he had expected she would. Corylus rose to his feet. "Good evening, Persica," he said.

  The dryad flinched, but she didn't disappear. "Are you angry with me?" she said in a small voice. She turned her face away, but he could see that she was watching out of the corner of her eye.

  "No, Persica," he said. "I think we've both learned things since we met before."

  The nymph had tricked him into a past time. Her malice came from petty stupidity rather than from studied cruelty. She-"Peaches"-was small-minded and not over-bright, so how else could she have acted?

  "I'd be angry if you tried to do it again, though," he added.

  Persica sniffed. "No fear that!" she said bitterly. "The woman here-she's a demon! She said she'd peel my bark off with a paring knife. She meant it!"

  "If you mean Lady Hedia…," Corylus said, hiding his smile because the dryad would have misinterpreted it. "Then I suspect you're right."

  Persica gave a peevish flick of her hand. "I don't pay any attention to humans' names," she said. "Why should I?"

  She kicked morosely at loose dirt where the pear tree had been. Though the gardeners had grubbed out the frost-shattered trunk, they had neither planted a replacement nor resodded the soil turned when they ripped up the roots.

  "I never thought I'd miss Pirus," the dryad muttered. "So full of herself because she had nice hair. As if nobody else had nice hair!"

  Persica tossed her head but swayed her body as well, so that her long red-blond hair swirled in one direction and her garment in the other. The fabric was sheer. It had scattered light in bright sun, as Corylus remembered, but now in the moon glow it was barely a shadow over her full breasts and the rippling muscles of her belly.

  "I used to watch you humans, at least," she said. "You aren't much, but you're company. Now I don't even have that."

  She looked squarely at Corylus and pleaded, "Is it because of me? I wouldn't hurt them! I didn't mean to hurt you, just, well, I was angry. Who wouldn't have been angry with that Hyperborean sorcerer killing Pirus right beside me?"

  "I don't think it's you, Persica," Corylus said. He touched one of the flat marble spinners which hung from the roof over the walkway. They turned in the breezes, scattering light into the shadowed interior. The nymph had used their reflections to send him to another time and place…

  But if Persica hadn't indulged her whimsical malice, Corylus wouldn't have gained the tool and the knowledge that had helped save Carce from destruction. As a matter of fact- "If you hadn't tricked me the way you did, Persica," he said, "I would have been burned to ash or less. And so would you."

  Every land and perhaps the seas as well would have burned, would have been buried under fire. Except that a peach dryad had, in a pet, sent the youth who rejected her advances to the place where he needed to be and where the world needed him to be.

  Perhaps the Stoic philosophers were right and gods did look after men. Chance, the whim of atoms clashing together, seemed a slim reed on which to support the series of events which had saved the world.

  "Well, anyway, I didn't mean any harm," Persica muttered. She seemed to be walking aimlessly, her eyes on the ground, but she meandered closer to Corylus. Looking up, she said, "But I'm so lonely. I don't let humans see me, but I just wish they'd come here to the garden again."

  She tossed her head and gave him a knowing smile. "You can see me," she said, "but you're one of us. Your mother was, and on her side you are."

  "That may be true," Corylus said. "But it doesn't matter."

  He was uncomfortable talking-thinking-about what Pulto had recently told him about the mother who had died giving birth to him. It didn't really matter whether she was a beech nymph or the Celtic girl his father would have married as soon as he could at the end of his military service. I am a citizen of Carce!

  Aloud Corylus said, "The Hyperborean's magic clings here, that's all. It's like the smell of rotting blood in the arena, even though they change the sand after every performance. It makes the servants uncomfortable, that's all. That'll wear away."

  He smiled encouragingly, knowing that what he said was only partially true. The powerful magic which had been worked here created a weak spot in the fabric of the cosmos. Ordinary humans in this garden-Maximus, for example; the doorkeeper who spoke of seeing things out of the corner of his eye-became more sensitive to matters that would ordinarily be hidden.

  "It won't have time to," Persica said bitterly. "The Hyperborean is gone, but it's still going to end quickly."

  She shivered and hugged herself. Looking up she said, "You can feel it too, can't you? The sea will do what fire did not."

  Corylus rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips were dry. "You mean Typhon?" he said, rem
embering what Varus had said in the theater.

  The nymph flicked her hand again. "What do names matter?" she said. "It will be the sea and the thing that is the sea."

  She had sidled to within arm's length of Corylus. Now she leaned closer, not quite to the point of touching him.

  "A little warmth would be so nice," she said. "It isn't much to ask, is it, when the end is coming so soon."

  "Persica, please don't," Corylus whispered.

  Varus would be back shortly, but even if he weren't… Corylus thought of the monster he had seen, then imagined that it was tearing apart Carce instead of some crystal echo of a philosopher's dream. He was frozen inside, and the only emotion he felt was fear.

  Persica didn't edge closer as he thought she would do. She hugged herself again and said, "I don't really mind dying. I'm a peach, after all, not an oak or one of those ugly pine crones. But a little warmth, cousin…? Just a little warmth?"

  "I can't, mistress," he said. He heard a babble of voices in the central courtyard. Varus must be coming back. "Please, I can't."

  Corylus expected a tantrum or worse, remembering the way the nymph had behaved the first time they met. Instead her face scrunched up in misery.

  "Will you at least come back and talk with me?" she whimpered. "Before the end? Please, I get so lonely."

  He swallowed. "I'll try, Persica," he said. "I'll… yes, I'll come back!"

  The gate to the house opened. Varus strode through, beaming with success.

  ***

  Manetho reached the side doorway from the central courtyard into the owner's office. A footman stood there, blocking it, and Candidus trotted over immediately.

  "Make way for Lord Varus!" Manetho said. The footman turned sideways, squeezing back against the pillar. He was letting the deputy stewards snarl at one another while a lowly footman pretended to be back herding goats in the Pyrenees.

  "The Consul is receiving his clients in his office," Candidus said, carefully looking at Manetho and pretending not to be aware of Varus himself behind the servant. "No doubt he will attend to his household when he has finished his duties to the Republic."

  I wonder if he would take that line if I were Alphena? Varus thought. He certainly wouldn't do this to Hedia.

  The idea made him smile. If Candidus had been paying attention, the expression might have disconcerted him; but of course he wasn't. Why be concerned about Saxa's bookish, ineffectual son?

  Varus tapped Manetho on the shoulder and gestured him aside. "Candidus?" he said pleasantly. "Get out of the way or I will ask my sister to have you tortured. I'm sure she can find something interesting to do to an uppity slave."

  Candidus blinked, stepped back, and blinked again. He wasn't so much ignoring Varus' order as too stunned to obey it.

  Agrippinus appeared. Varus hadn't raised his voice but the major domo, overseeing the whole levee while his deputies handled specific areas, demonstrated his ability in a fashion that Varus wouldn't have recognized till recently.

  Agrippinus touched Candidus' neck with his right hand; his fingers were pudgy and each had at least one ring, but the tips dimpled his deputy's flesh. Candidus staggered-half propelled, half jumping-into a corner of the office.

  Agrippinus nodded minusculely to Varus, then turned and announced in a carrying voice, "Clear this room for the honorable Lord Varus, who wishes to address his noble father, Consul Gaius Alphenus Saxa!"

  The client in the office with Saxa was one of the Marcii Philippi, a distant cousin of Saxa's first-and his second; they were sisters-wife; he was therefore a relative of Varus as well. Despite Philippus' rank, he lived in straitened circumstances; though that hadn't, Varus noted, kept him from eating himself into grotesque obesity.

  "I say!" said Philippus in offended surprise.

  Agrippinus walked toward him with his arms spread slightly and his hands raised, as though he were pushing the client's considerable weight. He didn't actually touch Philippus, but he moved the fellow back by force of personality. He said, "The Consul will summon you when he is ready to receive you again, your lordship."

  "But I-" said Philippus. Four junior members of Saxa's household moved toward him; one was the footman who had been in Varus' path to the office. He acted with particular zeal, apparently concerned to redeem himself in the eyes of the son of the house. Philippus returned to the entrance hall, backing so hastily that he almost fell into the pool fed by the opening in the roof.

  The hall would normally have been crowded with clients. Now all but two clients at a time had been relegated to the street outside, because the consul's twelve lictors took precedence. Varus had considered the lictors a pointless complication, but he realized now that they might turn out to be useful.

  Varus joined his father, feeling a mixture of amusement and disgust at the servant's reaction to his threat. Alphena had a vicious temper. She had been known to throw things at people who had made her angry, and it wasn't unimaginable that worse might happen if she flew hot when she happened to have a sword in her hand.

  Alphena was not, however, cruel: torture would have been as unlikely for her as sexual congress with a donkey. If the servants had bothered to think, they would have known that as well as her brother did.

  Varus had learned that generally people didn't think: they just reacted. He supposed that should have pleased him, because it gave him an advantage over most of the world. Instead, it tended to make him sad.

  Saxa was seated on his ivory chair. He faced the hall, the anteroom, and the street beyond on a single axis. The entrance was designed to put the householder in a frame, focusing all eyes on him.

  Varus stepped around in front so that his father didn't have to twist sideways; folding senatorial chairs weren't very stable and neither was Saxa. He said, "I'm very sorry to trouble you, sir."

  "What's the matter, b-b…," Saxa said in concern. He composed his expression and said, "What's the matter, my son?"

  Rather than "boy." Varus had risen in his father's estimation-more accurately, had risen into Saxa's awareness-when Commissioner Priscus had made a point of praising the boy when he met Saxa ahead of a session of the Senate five days recently.

  "Sir," said Varus. The office had a high ceiling and two mosaic scenes on the floor. The panel to the householder's right showed Pentheus being torn to pieces by women maddened by their worship of Bacchus. To the left was Acteon, human-headed but with the body of a stag, being devoured by his own hunting dogs; the goddess Diana, whom he had glimpsed bathing nude, gestured angrily from a pool

  The room had been decorated by Saxa's father. Varus didn't suppose he would ever know what his grandfather had been thinking of when he ordered the mosaics.

  At least a dozen clerks and other servants watched expectantly from the service aisles on three sides of the room. There was no privacy in a noble household, any more than there was in a poor family's apartment where three generations were squeezed into two rooms and as much of the staircase of they could claim against other tenants.

  On the other hand, there was no reason why anything Varus was about to say to his father would seem worth repeating, even within the household. Not if he phrased it carefully.

  "Father," he said with quiet earnestness. "My studies have reached an impasse of sorts, and I need to enter the house of Marcus Sempronius Tardus. I was hoping that you might help me in this."

  "Tardus?" Saxa said, frowning in concentration. "Well, we're not close, you know, son. Indeed, I probably know as little of him as I do any other member of the Senate. The ones who live most of the year in Carce, that is."

  He coughed into his hand. "Ah…," he said. "And there was that business at the Temple of Jupiter a few days ago, when Tardus was there as Commissioner of the Sacred Rites. That was necessary, but it didn't, well, endear me to him."

  Saxa was obviously hoping his son would say something to let him out of what threatened to be an embarrassment. When that didn't occur, he grimaced and resumed, "I suppose I can send a not
e to him. What in particular is it that you wish to see? His library, I suppose?"

  "Not exactly, sir," Varus said. "My, ah, studies indicate that the Sempronii Tardi have a secret temple to Serapis in their townhouse. I would like to-that is, I think perhaps I must see that temple. In order to, ah, gather information of importance to the Republic."

  Saxa blinked. For a moment he looked like a fish displayed for sale on a marble slab; then his cheeks and the lines of his mouth became curiously firmer.

  "Marcus Priscus spoke very highly of you the other day," he said. "I believe it's the first time he has addressed a word to me except in answer to a question of my own. He's a very erudite man, you know."

  Varus bowed slightly again. "Yes sir," he said. "The Republic is very fortunate to have men as learned as Marcus Priscus and yourself at its helm."

  Saxa snorted; his expression went sour for an instant, or as sour as someone as pudgy and good-natured as he could look. That cleared and he said, "Not me, my son, much as I wish it were. But perhaps you in time; Priscus believes you will grow into his equal. I hope I may live to see that."

  Varus didn't know whether or not he should speak. Since he was in doubt, he held his silence.

  If more people followed that practice, he thought, the world would be a quieter and less obviously foolish place. His smile didn't reach his lips.

  "I was going to ask if Marcus Priscus intended to make the inspection with you," Saxa said. He was trying to sound neutral, but there was evident hope in his voice. "I suppose you couldn't tell me, though?"

  Father is so in awe of Priscus that if I said this was his idea, my request would be granted immediately. I won't lie, but if I tell the truth in the right form of words…

  "I would not expect Commissioner Priscus to be present, sir," Varus replied carefully. "I believe his friend-and my professor-Pandareus of Athens may accompany us, however. If you are able to effect entrance to Senator Tardus' house, that is."

  "I believe that Tardus will respect the authority of a Consul," Saxa said. "And I rather think the Emperor would have something to say about it if he did not. The Emperor is notably traditional in his regard for the forms of government."