by David Drake
His smile widened as he considered the situation. His replacement consulate was an honor, of course, but he probably hadn't considered it to be a position of authority before this moment.
He sat straighter and looked firmly at his son. "We'll go tomorrow afternoon, then," he said. "Let's say in the eleventh-" counting from dawn to dusk in twelve equal segments, regardless of the season "-hour. Please inform Master Pandareus of the plan. And anyone else you believe should be present."
"Thank you, sir," Varus said. "I had considered asking Publius Corylus to accompany us, as his different viewpoint might be helpful."
Saxa smiled faintly. He said, "He's the boy with an army background, isn't he? Just as you like, son, though I hope that particular specialty won't prove necessary."
Before Varus could turn to leave, his father coughed and said, "Ah, son? As you doubtless heard, Senator Priscus and your Pandareus will be dining with me in two nights' time. I hope you will choose to join us? Priscus was very complimentary about you."
My father is willing to risk his life by using consular authority in a fashion he knows may be open to question, Varus thought. If all he wants in return is for me to add a little extra luster to a dinner which already glitters with intellectual capacity-so be it!
"I will be honored to join you and your guests, father," he said formally. Bowing, he backed from the office and turned toward the garden.
I'm risking my life too, I suppose, he realized, but I'm doing it to save the world from destruction by Typhon. My father is doing it merely on my word that it is necessary.
May the gods grant that I be the worthy scion of so brave a man.
***
Alphena had returned to the house with Hedia, in the double litter. She found it odd but nonetheless comforting to regard her stepmother as an ally-a friend even-instead of a demon sent to torment her.
Hedia was the perfect lady: beautiful, her hair and garments in the current style; familiar with all the trivia of Carce's highest social circle. Hedia had seemed all the things that her stepdaughter had been determined never to be.
Hedia was all the things she seemed, but Alphena had learned that her stepmother was also as hard as a blade of fine steel and every bit as deadly when the need arose. She had determined to bring Alphena safely through whatever troubles arose, no matter what her own risk was.
Alphena wasn't sure how she felt about that. She prided herself on being independent. She was certain, though, that it was much better to have Lady Hedia as a friend than as an enemy.
There had been no place in particular where Alphena had to be after they reached the house. There was never anywhere she had to be, a realization that brought a familiar flush of anger to her face.
Varus was being educated in literature and the arts of rhetoric. All aspects of public life were governed by oratory. The most brilliant general would be laughed at-albeit behind his back-if he couldn't report his accomplishments using chiasmus and litotes, praeteritio and asyndeton and a thousand other absurdities. Absurdities!
The empire had been won at the point of a sword, but Varus could no better wield a sword than he could fly. Alphena had practiced weapons drill as assiduously as any army recruit, but she would never be allowed to join the legions.
She didn't want to spend her life reading poems that didn't make any sense she could see, nor in learning scraps of history from eight centuries ago because they might make useful embellishments for her summation speech in a murder trial. She didn't want to do those things-but she wouldn't be allowed to, whatever she wanted. She was a woman, so she had no share in government or the army or in anything that mattered!
But while all that was completely true and completely unfair, Alphena found herself thinking about her stepmother. If Hedia set out to accomplish something, Alphena would expect it the way she would expect the sun to rise in the east. She couldn't have given a logical explanation of why she was so confident of her stepmother's abilities, but logic- Alphena grinned. Logic was a matter for students, like her brother Varus. Hedia's competence was real, which was a very different thing.
Alphena found she had walked the length of the house, to the private gymnasium and bath located between the courtyard and the back garden. She used the gym regularly, so it wasn't surprising that she would find herself at the door if she wandered without paying attention.
She looked around. Her maid, Florina, was close behind but flinched back when her mistress turned. Six other servants were following Alphena, presumably people Agrippinus had assigned to her suite. They stopped dead when she did, their eyes focused on various things but never on Alphena herself.
I should slap their sniveling faces! Alphena thought, then felt a little queasy. She took a deep breath.
They're treating me like a viper. Except that they wouldn't be afraid to look at a viper.
Calmly, smiling slightly-she hoped it was a smile-Alphena said, "I believe I will take a little exercise now to settle myself before I have a light supper in my suite. Florina, you're dismissed to eat something now before you'll need to attend me."
Alphena entered the small gymnasium, feeling virtuous. Hedia would be proud of me, she thought; but that wasn't really true. She would never match her stepmother's icy superiority to every one and every thing, any more than her chunky form would ever rival Hedia's willowy beauty. It's not fair!
"Your ladyship!" said Lenatus. He and his guest-Pulto, Corylus' man-lurched to their feet. A wine jar leaned against a corner, and each man held a broad cup. A water jug was part of the gym's furnishings, but Alphena didn't see a mixing bowl: the veterans were apparently drinking the Senator's wine as it came from the jug.
Alphena looked at them. They weren't frightened like the bevy of servants back in the passageway, but they watched her warily. They were freeborn citizens who as soldiers had fought the most dangerous of the Republic's enemies… but from their expressions, they would rather be back on the frontier than in the center of Carce, facing a Senator's daughter.
I wonder if Florina thinks that life has treated Lady Alphena harshly? Alphena wondered.
Aloud she said, "Master Pulto, I didn't expect to see you here. Is your master in the house as well? I suppose you came from the theater with my brother?"
"My understanding…," Pulto said carefully. He wasn't a member of Saxa's household, but technicalities wouldn't matter of Alphena lost her temper, as she had a reputation for doing. "Is that Lord Varus wished to have a conversation with his father, the Senator. Publius Corylus chose to wait in the back garden, but he gave me leave to visit my old friend here."
He gestured toward Lenatus with his free hand. His eyes never left Alphena's face.
"Oh!" said Alphena, feeling a tiny jump of excitement that she hoped she had kept out of her voice. "Well, I'll leave the two of you to your reminis-"
She broke off. She could see from the faces of both men that something was badly wrong.
"What is it?" Alphena said. She heard her voice start to tremble, which made her angry. She continued in an unintended snarl, "Is Corylus with someone, is that it?"
Lenatus looked at his friend, who in turn looked as though he had been stabbed in the belly. "Your ladyship," Pulto said, "I got the impression that my master might be talking with somebody, yes."
He's with Hedia.
He's having sex with Hedia in the garden!
Alphena blushed, then staggered as the stupidity of her thought struck her. Oh, Hedia's reputation was deserved: she'd as much as told Alphena so when they were fighting for their lives and very souls. As for Corylus, he was a man, which meant he was a pig; and there was no doubt that he found Hedia attractive. The way his eyes followed her whenever she was in sight proved it!
But Hedia didn't rub her husband's nose in things he would be expected to object to. She was a lady, and Alphena had good reason to know that she loved Saxa-in her way.
Just as Corylus was a gentleman, if not an aristocrat. He would turn up his nose at actions
which the perfumed wastrels of Hedia's social set would have performed without thinking twice.
Alphena swallowed, then forced her lips into a smile. "Well, I won't disturb him, then," she said. "I will have some of that wine, though. But mix mine with two parts water, if you will."
"At once, your ladyship!" Lenatus said. He and Pulto spun toward the wine jar so swiftly that they almost collided. Without a signal Alphena could see, Pulto took the other cup as well as his own and Lenatus snatched an empty one from a cupboard intended for bath paraphernalia.
Alphena expected the trainer to lift wine from the jar with a narrow, deep-bellied dipper, a wine thief. Instead he hooked his thumb in the handle, then lifted the jar on his elbow and forearm to pour. Returning the wine to its corner, he lifted the water jar in the same fashion and brought the level up to a proper distance below the rim of the cup.
"Your ladyship," he said, offering it to her.
Alphena was trembling from all the emotions that she hadn't given into over the past short while. "Sit down, both of you," she said. With that for an excuse, she quickly seated herself on the end of a bench intended for swordsmen tightening the straps of their sandals before they began their exercises.
When she had entered the gymnasium, the men had been beside one another on the raised stone slab into which posts were set when the grounds were used for fencing practice. They sat down as directed, but Alphena noticed that they had moved as far from her bench as they could get.
Pulto gave a little cough and swigged wine. Avoiding eye contact by looking into his cup, he said, "Master Corylus has spoken well of your judgment, your ladyship."
Alphena froze. What does he mean by that?
She smiled. At first she was forcing the corners of her lips upward, but the humor of the situation struck her.
"Thank you, Master Pulto," she said. "Though if you mean that I can recognize circumstances in which a proper young lady knows better than to walk in on a male acquaintance, I can only say that mother hasn't yet made that proper a young lady of me."
Lenatus choked, blowing a spray of wine out his nose. Pulto simply froze.
"Fortunately…," Alphena continued. She enjoyed the feeling of being in control of a situation without screaming at people. "Master Corylus is a proper gentleman. Despite my own failings, the worst would not have happened."
Mother really has taught me things. As soon as I was willing to learn them.
"But let's change the subject," Alphena continued calmly, looking at the old soldiers over the rim of her wine cup. "What do you-both of you-think about what happened in the theater this afternoon?"
If she had asked that question bluntly when she walked into the gymnasium, they would have mumbled and lied. They were off balance now, because she'd delicately hinted at a bawdy joke that they understood very well. They would much rather talk frankly with a senator's daughter about magic and sorcerers than to join her in a discussion of sexual shenanigans.
"Your ladyship…," Lenatus said. He wasn't mumbling, but his voice was low. "I wasn't… I mean, I was here in the house when all that happened."
"Yes," said Alphena crisply; no one could mistake her tone for agreement. "But you were talking to your friend about it, were you not?"
Pulto croaked a laugh. He emptied his cup and said, "This is dry work, your ladyship. Do ye mind if I have some more of this good wine while we talk?"
"Not at all," said Alphena. Her nose was too snubby for her to look down it with aristocratic hauteur, but just trying made her grin; which was perhaps an equally good way to get information out of these veterans. "Here, you can top off mine-"
She held the cup out.
"-too. Don't worry about more water."
"It's going to be hard times if his lordship needs me escorting him when he goes out to a show," Lenatus said wryly. He offered his cup when Pulto had filled Alphena's. "Mind you, I'd prefer that to what's going on now. Whatever it is."
"Right," said Pulto, sitting down again. "You always know where you're at in a fight."
"Of course," Lenatus offered, "where you're at may be so deep in the soup that you'll never see the surface again."
They were… not so much treating Alphena as one of them as talking as if she wasn't present. Which was good enough.
"I hate for my wife to be mixed up in it," Pulto said, taking half the cupful without lowering it from his lips. He looked at Alphena. "You know about that, right, your ladyship? That Lady Hedia is going to see my Anna tomorrow?"
"Yes," said Alphena. "I'll be accompanying my mother."
After a pause for thought, she went on, "I think in these times that we all should help to the degree we can. Help the Republic, I mean."
Lenatus looked at her without expression, then took a silent swallow of wine. Alphena had the uncomfortable suspicion that if she hadn't been his employer's noble daughter, he would have spat onto the dirt.
"I guess Lenatus and me know a bit about serving the Republic, your ladyship," Pulto said. He sipped wine and swizzled it around his mouth before letting it go down. "And Anna too. She was there on the frontier as sure as me and the Old Man and the boy. Who isn't such a boy now, is he?"
"I'm sorry, Pulto," Alphena said, feeling her cheeks burn. Ordinarily she would have reacted by shrieking angrily at the cause of her embarrassment, but she wasn't going to do that again. Or anyway, she wasn't going to do that this time. "I'm uncomfortable about it too, that's all."
She cleared her throat. "But what was it you saw?" she said. "What did you think it was?"
Looking at Lenatus, she said, "What did you just tell your friend Lenatus it was?"
The trainer barked out a laugh. "I can answer that, your ladyship," he said. "Pulto here told me he had no bloody idea of what he'd just seen except it scared the living crap out of him, and could I maybe find a jar of wine."
He lifted the cup in his left hand; he'd emptied it again. "Which I did, begging your pardon, but I'll pay it back to your father out of my salary."
Alphena waved the thought away brusquely. This was as proper a use for her father's wine as any in the Republic.
"Mistress?" said Pulto. He grimaced and corrected himself, saying "Your ladyship, I mean. You were there. What did you see? If a fellow can ask, I mean."
Alphena looked at them. At last she said, "I saw a man wearing a breechclout, with his hair in two braids. He was as old as you are, but he looked very fit."
When she heard the words come out of her mouth, she paused in renewed embarrassment. "I didn't mean-" she blurted. She stopped because she didn't know what to say that wouldn't make the insult worse.
"Go on, your ladyship," said Pulto calmly. He clapped his belly with his cupped left hand. "I live in this flesh, so you don't need to tell me I'm not the hard young cockerel I was when first I enlisted."
"Well, anyway," said Alphena, "that's what I saw: a man. And he was destroying what looked like a city, only it was so tiny."
She closed her eyes and forced herself to add, "Just for an instant I thought I saw tentacles and snakes like Syra said. Like a lot of other people thought, I suppose. But I saw a man."
"I saw the tentacles and all," Pulto said, speaking to his empty cup. "Only then I didn't think it was real, so it didn't bother me."
He looked up with a lopsided grin. "It wasn't till I saw how your brother and the Greek professor were taking it that I started to get worried," he said. "And then Lady Hedia coming to see my Anna for charms-because that's what it is, I know from how she asked it-well, that pissed in the wine for sure."
"But do you know what it means?" Alphena said. She suddenly felt very young. She wanted these two hard men to protect her, but she didn't know from what. "You've been in, well, battles! What's going to happen now?"
The men looked at one another. Lenatus unexpectedly chuckled. "You remember Stellio?" he said to his friend. Both of them laughed.
Alphena felt her anger rise despite trying very hard to choke it down. Pulto read her r
eaction correctly. "Your ladyship," he said, "what we mean is that nobody can tell you what's going to happen in a battle. Even if that's what this is, though I don't much see it."
"Stellio was a lazy scut, even for a Sicilian," Lenatus said. He sounded apologetic for being insultingly unclear when he first mentioned the fellow. "And I've seen rabbits with more stomach for a fight than he ever showed."
"We were going to assault a couple German hill forts the next day," Pulto said. "Only Stellio gets his foot under a cartwheel, by accident-he says-and he won't be able to hold his rank when we charge. So he got assigned to the artillery. He can turn the crank of one of the dart-throwers, bad foot or no bad foot. But staying well back from German spear range, you see."
"So we're lined up and waiting the word," Lenatus said, speaking as he refilled all three cups. "The Germans are up on their mound, shouting and booming their spear shafts against their hide shields, and I got to say, I've been places I was happier being. Up rattles a mule cart and hauls around, and it's Stellio in the back with the dart thrower."
"He's grinning like anything," Pulto said, picking up when his friend took a swallow of wine, "and he starts cranking the arms back. And I hear whack!"
"I was looking right at him when it happened," Lenatus said, almost bursting with suppressed laughter. "The lever snapped right at the spring and come flying around on the cord. It caught Stellio on the back of the neck and broke it neat as a chicken for dinner!"
The men laughed together, more freely than before. Alphena wondered for a moment how much wine they had drunk, but she'd drunk more than her usual as well. She joined the laughter.
"And the beauty of it," Pulto said, his voice rising as if to be heard during a drinking party in barracks, "is that we didn't lose another bloody man that day. Not a one! The first salvo, one dart pinned the top of the chief's shield to his forehead and helmet. He tumbled down the hill, stiff as a board, and the rest all bloody ran off the other way."