by Mia Marlowe
“It's a pity, but don't trouble yourself overmuch. We both knew this was likely to happen,” Damian continued. If he made light of it, perhaps she'd view it that way as well. “If you become a favorite, Mahomet will confide in you readily enough. You won't be able to feed him erroneous information as easily, but if you have his ear, you'll still be useful.”
Valdis put a hand to her forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“Coyness does not become you. At least, not with me. Let us speak plainly then. If you were still bleeding when he sent you away, enough for you to leave a stain on these linens as well, Mahomet was probably brutal with you. I regret that it happened thus, but there's little to be gained by dwelling on it. Do you require a physician?”
She bit her lip.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” Damian said, determined to keep matters businesslike. He was nearly overcome with the desire to take her into his arms to offer her comfort. “Tell me what you discussed with Mahomet. Now that your master has deflowered you, how do you intend to proceed?”
“Mahomet did not—” she started, then stopped, her eyes frozen on a spot on the polished floor.
Damian followed her gaze. A horn-handled knife lay near the open window. Damian recognized the weapon immediately.
The Varangian.
He crossed the room and all but pounced on the knife. Valdis was on his heels.
“Damian, please, you don't understand.”
“Oh, I understand a good deal more than you think,” he said with vehemence. “How could you be so undisciplined? So gullible? Do you realize what you've done?”
Fury rose in him that he suspected had nothing to do with the risk to the mission.
“I'll do what I can to save you, though it may not be possible,” Damian said. “Mahomet will eviscerate the man.”
Valdis blanched pale as a corpse. “No, please. It's not his fault.”
Damian tossed a murderous look at her.
“This is all my doing. I asked Erik to come to me. I had an evil dream and I had to warn him,” she said. “Then things just happened.”
“Don't tell me you believe your own lie about having the Sight? How could you do this? After all my instruction, after meeting Chloe and seeing what will happen to a woman who's found to be impure, how?”
“I love him,” she said simply. “I couldn't bear not to let him love me.”
“Love? What kind of love consigns another to the torture Mahomet will surely order?”
Her face crumpled in misery. “I don't know. I didn't think.”
“If you survive this night's work, you'll have time to think. For the rest of your life, you'll be able to think about the fact that your own actions brought about the very unpleasant death that awaits your Northman.”
Damian turned to go. If he told Mahomet what
“No, wait.” Valdis threw herself to the floor and hugged his knees, impeding his progress. “Please, Damian. No one else knows of this. Why must you destroy everything?”
“I am not the destroyer,” he said, resisting looking down into her pleading eyes. “You brought this on yourself.”
“Damian, please don't,” she cried. “I've done everything you asked. Mahomet trusts me and believes in my powers. We can turn him whichever way you wish. If only you guard this secret, I'll... I'll do anything.”
Since his gelding, Damian experienced random erections. He never trusted them to last long enough for him to give a woman pleasure and he feared trying, even with a well-paid whore. It was the only thing that kept him from going back to his wife Calysta and his son. For a blinding moment, Damian had a vision of Valdis, naked and willing, spreading her legs for him so he could test the limits castration put on his sexual abilities. If there were a chance he could return to Calysta as something resembling a whole man, he'd leave the Imperial service in a heartbeat and disappear back into the Macedonian mountains to watch his son grow to manhood and redeem the lost years with the woman who'd become a memory.
“Please,” the woman at his feet repeated. “I’ve learned where Mahomet's allegiance lies.”
He looked down into her strained face, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, her full lips trembling. Valdis feared him. Perhaps that turn of events was no bad thing. It might protect her from future folly.
“And where does your allegiance lie?”
“With you, Damian,” she said quickly. “Absolutely with you.”
He knew her declaration for a lie, and an artless one, at that. If the big Northman so much as waggled his finger in her direction, Valdis would go running, no matter the cost. Well, there were ways to deal with the Varangian that Valdis never need know about.
“Very well.” He hid the damning knife in the folds of his garment. “I will keep your dirty little secret, but should your master learn of your unchaste behavior in another way, I cannot help you. And you must promise me there will be no repeat performances.”
“I promise.”
“Now, tell me what you have learned of the worthy merchant's politics?”
While Valdis related the events of the previous evening, in the back of his mind, Damian was already formulating a plan to remove the Varangian from Mahomet's household.
Permanently.
"The best plan never lets the right hand know what the left is doing."
—from the secret journal of Damian Aristarchus
Chapter 23
* * *
Two mornings later, Erik lay on his sagging straw-filled mattress, his fingers laced behind his head. As he listened to the muttered curses of the boy tasked with mucking out the stables next to his tiny cell, Erik congratulated himself on not making a repeat visit to Valdis's chamber.
When he first came to Miklagard, a Greek tagmata with whom he served told him the stories of their heroes. Erik's favorite was a man named Odysseus, a great wanderer who lashed himself to the mast in order to hear the seductive song of the Sirens, but not be able to run his ship aground in a disastrous attempt to answer them. Odysseus knew the danger posed by the Sirens, but he tormented himself with their alluring voices anyway. Odysseus took a foolish but calculated risk.
Erik decided he was even more a fool than the Greek hero. He had no mast. All that kept Erik from the siren song of Valdis's nearness was his own will. Though he'd always prided himself on possessing resolve as hard as iron, he felt it melt each time a shadow passed behind her curtain.
That stolen night was the worst kind of folly. Far from slaking his thirst for her, their tryst only sharpened his desire. Now, instead of imagined delights, he had fresh memories, myriad tiny images, sounds and smells to torment him—the unbearable softness of the skin of her inner thigh, the small groan she tried so hard to suppress as he pleasured her, the scent of her arousal...
He was lost and he knew it.
She'd sent him another runic message: "Knife found." He wondered if Valdis were trying to warn him that they had been discovered and he should flee to save himself. If that was her aim, she'd be sorely disappointed. He wouldn't leave of his own volition, even if they intended to flay him alive.
Then when another day and night passed without incident, and without catching so much as a glimpse of her, Erik decided Valdis had found the knife herself and was safekeeping it.
The chief eunuch came and went with irritating frequency. Damian Aristarchus came bearing his herbs as if he were a physician instead of a secret puppet master. Erik had watched through narrowed eyes as the eunuch ascended the curving stairs to the upper story of the house.
He longed to change places with Aristarchus for those few moments.
No, whatever it cost him, he would not endanger Valdis again. As long as they bided in the silk merchants sprawling household, he wouldn't go to her. He set all his energies toward discovering Mahomet's political bent, so he could help Valdis satisfy Aristarchus and gain her freedom faster.
Since he'd given up her ownership, Erik wasn't sure how the chief eunuch would secur
e her manumission, but however he might dislike Damian, he sensed the eunuch was a man of his word. No one could rise so high in the emperor's service without some redeeming qualities.
A discreet scratch on his door brought Erik upright in a heartbeat. He forced himself to walk instead of bound to the portal. Living in Habib Ibn Mahomet's house made him jumpy. The frowning outer walls enclosed the space like a miser brooding over his hoard of coin. Far from giving him a sense of safety, the walls seemed to contract on him.
Erik's enemies were already within the gates.
The scritching noise came again, this time accompanied by a cough. If it was someone intent on mayhem, he reasoned, they'd have battered down the door instead of scratching for admittance. Still, he wished for the familiar worn hilt of his horn knife in his hand.
A eunuch clad in white linen waited for him. “The master commands your presence,” the servant said tersely.
Erik dressed carefully, making sure his beard was freshly trimmed and his breastplate gleaming before mounting the stairs to Habib Ibn Mahomet's receiving room. A rat of panic gnawed at his belly. He recognized the annoyingly Christian emotion known as guilt. He'd cuckolded the man he'd come to nominally protect. Erik must be careful not to let Mahomet see his discomfort, lest he endanger Valdis.
It might be nothing, he told himself. Mahomet may just want a report on my changes in the household security.
If that was the case, Erik had no cause for concern. He'd beefed up the guard at the house's tall gate and set a strict schedule for patrolling the roof garden. He even pointed out the kitchen charcoal chute as a possible point of entry and ordered a lock put on it. If someone had observed him wiggling in and out of it the night he killed Barak's would-be assassin, he could always claim he was testing the perimeter of the great house for unlikely methods of entry.
He was totally unprepared to see his friend, Haukon, standing at ease, conversing in his stilted Greek with Habib Ibn Mahomet.
“Erik, you sandbagger,” Hauk's voice boomed in his more comfortable mother tongue. “Is this the duty that kept you from joining us in Antioch? You should have been there. We filled the corbeys' trencher with fresh meat and made the desert run red. The Saracens will think twice before testing that Imperial outpost again.”
Erik clasped forearms with Hauk. “We must raise a horn and you can tell me all about it. What are you doing here?” The words spilled out of his mouth before he felt the shrewd dark eyes of Mahomet on them. He switched to Greek. “Haukon is my countryman and friend.”
“It is clear you know each other very well,” Habib Ibn Mahomet said. “Perhaps it comes as no surprise to you that your worthy companion has been sent to replace you, though I myself confess to puzzlement over it. I have no complaints with your service, centurion.”
“What's this?” Erik was sure Mahomet's words were genuine. The silk merchant had more inventive ways of ridding himself of people who'd displeased him. If the Arab knew of his tryst with Valdis, Erik had no doubt he'd die horribly.
Being ordered from her made him feel as if a horse had just kicked him in the gut. He knew he should be relieved. At least he'd not endanger Valdis again. This was safer than Odysseus's mast.
“Why am I being replaced?”
“I'm only obeying orders,” Hauk said with a slight lift of one eyebrow. He knew more than he was admitting. “You're to report to the general at once for reassignment.”
“Acquaint our new security advisor with the changes you have implemented and then you may go,” Mahomet said to Erik. “Please convey my thanks to the esteemed General Quintilian for his interest in the well-being of my humble household.”
Mahomet put his fingertips first to his lips and then to his forehead, sketching the graceful Arabic gesture of farewell.
Erik escorted Haukon out of Mahomet's presence before he dared speak again. He walked the perimeter of the courtyard making small talk about security while his mind raced ahead. When he led Hauk past the stable, the air redolent with hay and warm horseflesh, and on to the room his friend would now occupy, he finally asked the question that burned on his tongue.
“What made the general order me to stand down?”
“Not what. Who. All I know is the chief eunuch was leaving the general's quarters as I was called in.” Hauk tested the sagging bed and grimaced. Then he pulled a small packet from inside his tunic. “Damian Aristarchus bid me deliver this to your hand and yours alone.”
Erik unwrapped the oilskin. His horn-handled knife, freshly sharpened, lay in the protective wrapping.
“Say, that looks like yours,” Hauk said. “Where did you lose it?”
Erik slumped into the room's only chair and dragged a hand over his face. “In the wrong bedchamber, my friend.”
Hauk clicked his tongue against his teeth and chuckled. “Then the eunuch has done you a service by returning it discreetly.”
Erik shook his head. “It's a warning.”
“But you were in his service. You know how to speak with those court types even if you must hold your nose to do it.” Hauk always complained the courtiers of Byzantium wore more perfume than high-priced whores. “What happened?”
Since Hauk was gone from the city when Erik first returned from his time in the mountain villa with Valdis and the chief eunuch, there was much to tell. Erik described how he'd tried to hold Valdis at a distance but failed.
“I love her, Hauk,” he said simply, marveling at the truth of the words and angry at himself for never having said them to her.
“Then it is well that you are leaving this house.” Hauk nodded sagely. “So far, you have been lucky. When does the Court of Asgard allow joy to reign among men for long? It is never wise to tempt the gods.”
Erik's shoulders slumped. He knew his friend was right, but when it came to actually leaving Valdis in this house where she might become nothing more than another man's plaything, his eyes burned with suppressed fire.
“I can't even tell her good-bye.”
“Carve a rune stick. It's clear you've lost your head as well as your heart. I never thought to see the day you dabbled in seid craft.”
“It's a small matter,” Erik said, picking up the knife to begin his final runic message to the woman he loved. “I'd dare more than the spirits' curse for Valdis.”
“The women in the harem are never allowed outside the walls?” Hauk asked, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
“Not since I've been here. But Valdis has asked to visit the big church of Kristr, near the Palatine.” His face lit up. He knew what he would carve now. “I’ll tell her to try to come two days hence. That should give her time to wheedle permission from Mahomet.”
His face hardened into a frown at the thought of Valdis spending time with her master. And having to beg him.
“Cheer up,” Hauk said. “At least you're to be assigned to interesting duty.”
“What have you heard?” Erik asked with dread. The Byzantine Empire stretched from one end of the inland sea to the other. He might be ordered anywhere.
“You're to be given command of a ship.”
Erik's worst fears were realized. A sea voyage took months, years maybe. How could he leave Valdis behind? “What ship?”
“Don't act too excited. It's not what you think,” Hauk said with sarcasm. “The fleet captured a pirate dhow a month back. The emperor wants a spectacle. The Greek commander is going to recreate his naval battle in the Harbor of Theodosius so the court and the populace can look on. It's all a sham, of course, every oar stroke arranged to make the Byzantine drommonds seem the most invincible craft in the world.”
Erik scoffed. He knew a sleek Norse drakar could sail circles around the wallowing Greek vessel. Only the infernal weapon known as Greek Fire had kept a flotilla of dragonships from overpowering the Byzantine navy years ago.
“So now I'm to pilot one of those sea cows?”
“No,” Hauk said. “You get to play pirate. You're to captain the dhow. Oh, you won't be allow
ed to win, of course. From what I hear, they have every turn and bowshot planned out with precision worthy of a band of eunuchs counting out tax revenues. They want no blood. This is to be a set piece, but they wanted someone to pilot the dhow with enough seamanship to give the battle a semblance of reality.”
Erik nodded grimly. As he set his face to his carving, he realized Damian Aristarchus had maneuvered him into recreating another Greek tale as well. He would be Odysseus, strapped to the mast.
On a ship destined to sink.
“Holy writ tells us ‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend.’ I beg to differ.
Sometimes the wounds of a friend are fatal.”
—from the secret journal of Damian Aristarchus
Chapter 24
* * *
“This is most irregular,” Publius said for the twentieth time as he jostled in his sedan chair. The poor slaves manning the poles fought not to collapse under his monumental weight. “Women of the zenana hardly ever leave the protection of the master's house.”
“But we are not leaving the protection of the master. That's why we have you with us,” Valdis said in an attempt to placate him. In the swaying chair next to Publius, she and Landina were swathed from head to toe in modest burkas to shield them from curious eyes. “And it is not without precedent. Did you not attend Rania, the head wife, when she accompanied the master to the games in the Hippodrome only last week? Thanks to your diligent care, she returned home in safety with all proprieties observed.”
Mahomet and his retinue were the guests of the emperor's nephew Leo in his curtained and guarded box for another running of the chariots. Valdis had been able to finesse the information from the eunuch and used it to her advantage. She satisfied Damian that she was busy gathering intelligence for him instead of mourning Erik's removal from the house. The less Damian knew of her true feelings the better.