Prize of Night

by Bailey Cunningham

  Morgan took a breath and walked into the sunlight.

  The market was a wave of color and sound. Awnings fluttered beneath a stale breeze, providing little scraps of shade. The stalls dealt in every item imaginable. There were stacks of golden belt buckles, rich summer wines, blades, embroidered cloaks, and fine gloves. One stall was piled with birdcages, while another dealt in brooches made of amber and rock crystal. A domina was bartering with one of the vendors. Behind her, three servants waited, carrying baskets already laden with expensive cloth. She was smiling as she spoke with the vendor, but her hands moved swiftly, describing a number of complex shapes. The domina was fluent in the hand signs of the market, and whatever she was actually saying, the vendor didn’t like it one bit. He scowled as his own hands flickered a counteroffer. Finally, he stared at the ground and mumbled something. He’d lost the battle.

  Morgan looked up, expecting to see a familiar network of stone skyways, but they weren’t there. The city must have an alternate mode of transportation. Here, the sky was the pale yellow color of the domina’s stola. It shimmered like a newly minted coin beneath the heat. The cries of the vendors filled her head. She was thirsty but had no money. Fel had kept the coin purse. It had seemed like a wise idea, but of course, she hadn’t anticipated being stranded, penniless, in an unfamiliar city.

  Meet me at the hagia.

  Those were the spado’s words, before the world dissolved. She didn’t even know what a hagia was, let alone where it might be located. Her mouth was dry. Not for the first time, she had to question her shadow sister’s choices. A little preparation would have made this a lot easier. But she’d never been one for planning. If there was some twilight world in which they could meet, face to face, Morgan resolved to give the woman a piece of her mind.

  She saw an aquarius, hurrying by with a giant amphora of water. He was quite thin. Upon arriving in Anfractus, Morgan had tried out a variety of jobs, including water-bearer. It was dusty, exhausting work, and it had barely kept her fed. However, running up and down flights of stairs, in order to deliver water to rich clients, had made her quick and strong. That certainly helped when she approached the Gens of Sagittarii for the first time.

  Some people never joined a gens. They labored beneath the powerful, waiting. She used to wonder why they bothered. Why leave a comfortable life to work as a water-bearer? The answer seemed to revolve around power. If you wanted something badly enough, you’d start over, scrape the tablet clean.

  Morgan stopped the aquarius, making certain that her bow remained visible. She could still look as if she had money, however false that might be.

  “I have a question,” she said.

  The boy looked uncomfortable. He didn’t have time to dawdle, but he also couldn’t afford to be rude. After a moment, he inclined his head.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “I’ve just arrived here, and I’m a little disoriented. Could you perhaps give me directions to the hagia?”

  She wasn’t even sure if she was pronouncing it correctly. The aquarius tried to hide his look of disbelief, but it was still obvious.

  “Where is your ladyship from?”

  Morgan froze for a moment. She couldn’t risk saying Anfractus, since Basilissa Latona had spies everywhere. But she didn’t know any other cities.

  “I move around too much to settle anywhere,” she replied. “I’m meeting a member of my gens at the hagia. What’s the quickest way there?”

  “All roads lead to the great hagia, my lady.” He made a vague gesture, as if directing her past the market. “Follow Via Scintilla until it widens. The song of the bells will lead you to the hagia. Have a care, though. Ambers are wild today.”

  He left before she could decipher what that could mean.

  “Ambers are wild,” she murmured. “Well, at least I’m armed.”

  She continued down Via Scintilla until the market was behind her. Wagons and litters clogged the street. Morgan kept to the edge of the paving stones, careful not to twist her ankle on the deep wheel ruts. People gathered by large white stones, waiting for traffic to disperse so that they could cross. Morgan passed by a taverna whose sign depicted a scarlet cock. She could smell pungent fish sauce and roasting chickpeas. Her stomach growled, and she tried to ignore it. Her next adventure would need to be better funded, that much was obvious. She didn’t even have a spare coin to buy a cold lemon sharbah. If the water boy hadn’t paid obeisance to her uniform, she might have wandered around the market forever, searching for a building that she couldn’t even describe.

  The song of the bells will guide me. That sounds rather nice. I can’t imagine being killed in a place with bells.

  She passed by a lararium, a shrine to the elemental spirits. The altar was pale green marble, and oil lamps burned upon it, their wicks freshly trimmed. Engraved bowls held scraps of bread and meat for hungry salamanders. Even spirits needed to eat. Representations of the lares had been carved into the surface of the altar. The undinae resembled little waves with sharp eyes, while the gnomoi clustered beneath a mountain slope, digging through the dark matrix of rock with their claws. The shrine was well tended, more so than any that Morgan had seen in the city of Anfractus. People stopped to throw in a coin or a bit of oil. They paused to look upon the faces of the lares, whose expressions were impossible to read. Shrines in Anfractus were generally worn-down, and a few had even been graffitied, but this one was burnished and well loved. Perhaps these people valued their ghosts more.

  A few tinted clouds moved overhead, and sunlight kissed the back of her neck. Morgan passed beneath the shade of the lime trees and followed Via Scintilla until it began to widen. Crowds of people were moving in the same direction. An artifex walked while studying a tablet, her coterie of mechanical spiders chittering behind her. She was oblivious to the heat and the sounds of life around her. The world had narrowed to lines drawn with a stylus, gorgeous formulae that might change everything, if she could only give herself fully to them. Morgan understood the impulse. Beside her, a medicus puffed as he carried his bag of instruments. Maybe he was late to a surgery. Two furs were stalking him, while maintaining a respectable distance. She gave them a long look and made as if to reach into her quiver. They took one look at her bow and scattered. The medicus was oblivious. He was probably thinking about how to lift a shattered bone, or what prayer to engrave on his polished brass instruments. If Fortuna bent an ear, the pain of a wrecked body might be softened. His patients needed luck more than anyone.

  Morgan spied a miles, keeping to the other side of the street. For a moment, it might have been Fel. But then the woman stepped into the light, and Morgan saw a long, puffy scar, like a rend in fabric, that traced its way down her neck. The miles saw her looking, and Morgan tensed, ready for some kind of altercation. But the woman merely nodded. Her eyes were strangely kind. Morgan nodded back. It was unusual for a miles to acknowledge her. Although their gens weren’t precisely enemies, there was no love lost between them. A sagittarius was expected to protect the battlements, while the miles patrolled the grounds below. One gens could quite literally look down upon the other. This had bred a healthy resentment for longer than anyone could remember, and Morgan was used to a much colder reception. At the very least, she expected the woman’s expression to harden as she placed one hand lightly on the pommel of her gladius. The flash of amity was unexpected.

  This really is a different city.

  In the distance, she heard cheering. There must have been a chariot race at the Hippodrome. They weren’t always bloody, but a race without at least a minor accident was considered a boring affair. That was where she’d first met Fel. The miles had fought after a successful chariot race. Blood on the sands always made people spend more freely. Morgan remembered watching her gladius dance, the sun flashing against her greave. The curious way that she refused to accept any praise for winning the match. And later, that same sword, parting bone
as easily as an ivory comb might part hair. The look on her face, a cloudless sky, as she whirled in the heart of chaos. The nightmares would come later. A miles wasn’t supposed to regret. Polish the chips from the blade, oil the armor, test the cunning brass straps. In and out. That was the purpose of the gladius. The short sword had been invented to make combat quick and easy. In and out, like adding a line to a ledger, a stone to a mosaic. Simple. But grief remained. Morgan could see it in the lines around her eyes.

  She had killed, as well. She could never forget that night on the battlements. Watching the silenus come at her, eyes guttering like lamps in the dark. The click of hooves on wet stone, and the smell of him. It was deep earth, and water carried from the profound shadows of a forgotten well, and rust settling on the surface of a dead world. She’d won her die that night. The symbol of her gens. And regret was there too. She felt it against her chest. Morgan reached beneath the leather hauberk and touched the die. It was hers. This magic that she scarcely understood. She might choose to roll, so long as she was willing to pay.

  Morgan heard the bells. Soft at first, then louder. They moved through her in trilling vibrations that seemed to leave a mark on her body, a fleeting touch. Three streets intersected, and now people were merging into a large crowd, following the sound. The mechanical spiders nipped at her feet, but she paid them no attention. Even the medicus had stopped looking worried and was now staring straight ahead. The hagia rose before them, its bronze cupola gleaming like a second sun. The entrance was supported by massive pillars, carved with reliefs that depicted scenes from the city’s history. The façade was a mosaic, where Fortuna appeared in all of her guises. Her eyes were impenetrable black stones, while colored tesserae burst to life around her. A few vendors had set up stalls by the entrance, selling worship wheels and tablets of common prayer. The doors were blushing marble, and two miles flanked them. Rather than scanning the crowd, they were playing a game of mora, which involved rapid hand movements and guesswork. The miles on the left was clearly losing, but he didn’t curse. He just smiled sheepishly as people walked past him.

  She couldn’t shake the confusion that had been gnawing at her. Everyone in this place was serene, as if they’d just taken a draught of nightshade. They smiled politely and made room for each other. She could detect no smoldering grudges, no sense of real danger. Even the furs kept their distance. The shrines were well attended, and as people entered the hagia, she could almost feel their piety. In Anfractus, people cursed Fortuna and pissed on her relics. Here, she was the object of their devotion. As Morgan watched, two spadones entered the hagia, carrying painted icons of the goddess and her wheel. They didn’t whisper or nudge each other. Neither carried a flask. Something other than politics had brought them here.

  Morgan followed them in. She expected dim light and incense, but the dome of the hagia was full of oval windows that admitted the sun. At the apex of the dome, a sheet of painted glass had been installed, and light poured through it. Added to that was the coffered ceiling, which reflected the glow of a hundred hanging lamps. The brilliance fired vast mosaics, until every stone gleamed like an ember. She saw forests of winking emeralds and packs of hunting silenoi, their eyes made of sinister carbuncles. There were lares of smoke, made from pale stones that made them resemble gathering storm clouds, and Fortuna in full armor, raising her gladius to one of the shining windows. Every legend, every scrap of song or dream worn smooth by time and the wash of memory, was displayed on the walls. Penitents gathered within the narthex, lighting lamps and offering up jeweled icons. Morgan realized with a sense of chagrin that she had no offering.

  I don’t see Narses, but I know that he’s watching. If I don’t leave something, he’ll think me a heathen. Not the surest way to earn his trust.

  She drew an arrow from her quiver. Several people gave her an odd look. It wasn’t quite the same as drawing a sword, but it still had a whiff of aggression. Carefully, she laid the arrow in one of the ceremonial bowls. It had a trilobe tip, with lovely barbs. It was one of her favorite arrows. Morgan arranged it in the bowl, as if it were a flower.

  It’s no pretty icon, but I’ll bet you can find a use for it.

  She walked down the nave to the altar, where a giant wheel had been erected. Water turned the wheel, and it seemed to whisper as it moved. Every gens was represented in the light and shadowed faces of the goddess. The dispassionate sicarius, who killed for profit. The sly trovador, who remembered the old ballads, and what they still meant. The masked meretrix, who offered sex and even love, for the right price. Cold whores of the mind, they were called. Six day gens to maintain the city by sunlight, and six night gens to betray it after sunset. Like guilds or families, they controlled commerce and offered unique masteries to their members. Every gens had a tower that rose above the tallest insulae, save for the tower of the Fur Queen, which hid beneath the ground like a blind root. The silenoi remained the wild gens, hunting at night for their own pleasure. Somehow, the wheel kept them all in balance. Or so everyone liked to think.

  “A prickly offering.” The spado’s trilling voice emerged from the crowd. “I have a dagger, if you’d like to go all in.”

  “I’ve no interest in your little blade.” She stared fixedly at the wheel.

  “You’re the first to express that sentiment. Most people quite enjoy it.” He moved closer, until she could smell the sweet herbs on his breath. “Are we done jesting? I know that banter is essential, but someone is waiting for us.”

  Morgan looked at him strangely. “You’re different here.”

  “Everything is different here.” Narses gestured to the crowd. The lamplight made his red hair gleam. “Welcome to Egressus.”

  “This city makes me nervous.”

  “It should. You have no reputation here. You’re practically a nemo.”

  Her expression hardened. “I belong to a gens.”

  “You’ll find that your family ties, such as they are, don’t really extend to this part of the world. Nobody cares whether you live or die. Nobody but myself, of course.”

  “Why so unctuous? You’re a general, not a courtier.”

  “Here, I am many things. And you must be the same. You’ll learn soon enough.” He offered his arm. “Come. Time grows short.”

  “If I had a gold maravedi for every time someone said that—” She looked up, but he wasn’t smiling. After a beat, she took his arm. “Fine. I’m coming.”

  “Stay close. I’m not the only one here with a blade.”

  “I thought weapons were forbidden in a place like this.”

  “Forbidden?” Now it was his turn to smile. “They’re essential.”

  He led her past the nave and through a corridor lined with reliquaries. Bones and ashes, belonging to forgotten heroes. One was shaped like golden hands in prayer, while another was a beautiful woman’s face, rendered in wire and precious stones. As they walked, the air cooled, and the oil lamps grew more scarce. Long shadows moved across old tapestries. The mosaics were difficult to make out, smoothed by the wear of countless footsteps. Morgan felt as if she were moving along fate’s path. Something was guiding her through this dim place, as it had guided so many before her. Was it Fortuna? Did she stoop to concern herself with a fair-weather archer, a poor player living in two worlds? It seemed as though she must have more celestial concerns. Morgan tried to feel her in the dark, in the flashing tesserae, in murmured supplications rising on invisible currents to the oval of painted glass. In the end, she didn’t know what she felt, precisely.

  “I’ve heard Fortuna’s voice,” Morgan said quietly. “Perhaps I’ve even seen her outline, if only for a moment. Like heat haze on baking roof tiles. A shimmer, and nothing more. It happened, though. It wasn’t a dream.”

  “Are you trying to convince me,” Narses asked, “or yourself?”

  “I’m not certain. Should we believe everything that we see?”

 
“I’m the wrong person to ask.” He lifted the hem of his green robe so that it no longer trailed the marble. “Belief is expensive.”

  “You’ve picked an awfully inconvenient time for a crisis of faith.”

  “Faith lives within crisis. You can’t have one without the other.” He stopped in front of a small lararium, where a single lamp burned sentinel. “Besides, I didn’t say that belief was impossible. Just costly.”

  “I’ve no money to leave at this shrine, if that’s what you’re getting at. I left all my coins with someone else.”

  “The lares don’t need money.” He laid a hand on the edge of the shrine. “Like any spirit, all they’re looking for is a bit of attention.”

  He pressed a hidden lever. Morgan heard a soft click, then a grinding sound as the altar slid away from the wall. A narrow doorway greeted them. She saw the faint impression of carvings on the lintel, but time had worn them down to mysterious lines. The air coming from the doorway smelled slightly acrid.

  “What is this?”

  “A shortcut,” Narses replied. “It was here before the hagia was built. Very few people know about it. Now that you’ve joined that select group, you’ll be watched carefully.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  He shrugged. “You were already a person of interest. Now you’ve simply grown more interesting. Consider it a promotion.”

  “That should come with an increase in pay, don’t you think?”

  “Just follow me.” He picked up the lamp, which was carved with vaguely threatening silenoi in the midst of a hunt. “The passage is too narrow for both of us to walk abreast. You’ll have to keep close behind me, and follow the light.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Be thankful for the close quarters. The passage was designed to frustrate attack. This way, nobody can surround us.”

  “My bow is next to useless in here.”