Kiss Across Chains

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  When she finally sat back, black spots danced in front of her eyes, and her cheeks were wet with tears.

  Kale silently used a corner of her robe to wipe her face clean. “The chariot driver you wanted to find. That is him, is it not? Braenden?”

  Taylor nodded.

  “He is one of the most popular drivers in the city,” Kale said, gently wiping. “Everyone loves him. The businessmen like him because he makes them a lot of money each time they bet on him. The women…well, they like him because he is who he is.” Kale lifted Taylor’s chin and looked at her, her brow lifted.

  Taylor knew what she was carefully not asking. Kale wanted to know if Taylor was merely a groupie, a fan who wanted to use her privileged position to gain access to him.

  Taylor cleared her throat. It burned and throbbed. “He is my husband,” she told Kale.

  Kale let her robe drop and made a slow fuss of putting it back to order. “Well, then,” she said finally. “There will be maids and matrons crying into their bolsters tonight at that news.”

  Horror bloomed in her chest. “No one must know!” Taylor whispered.

  Kale nodded. “Not while you pass as the Lady Ariadne, at least.”

  “Or until I get him out of that pit,” Taylor added.

  “Get him out?” Kale repeated. “He’s a slave. Where else is he supposed to be?”

  Taylor got tiredly to her feet. Her answer would take ten centuries of human evolution and ethics to explain and she keenly felt the ticking of the clock. How many more races would Brody survive?

  “He’s not a slave,” she told Kale. “He’s not supposed to be there.” It was the best she could do for right now. She looked around the tiny room they were in. A shelf with a hole in it told her the function of the room, as did the rich biological aroma. A candle was burning on a shelf and was the only source of light.

  Kale looked wise as she dropped the contents of the bucket down the hole, and rinsed it with water from a second. “Is that why you came to Constantinople? To free your husband?”

  The truth would require another long answer, but the core of that answer was that Brody had pulled them here because despite sixteen centuries of freedom, he still hadn’t shaken off the bonds of this place.

  “Yes, I need to set him free,” Taylor told Kale. “Then we can go home.”

  Kale smiled as she opened the door to the privvy. “You’re as much of a dreamer as my mistress. She was always chasing adventures, too.”

  * * * * *

  The aftermath of an adrenaline spike was something else that Brody had forgotten after so many centuries. He eased himself off the platform of the chariot, unsure whether his shaky legs would be able to support him.

  The choice was taken from him after three steps, when guards grabbed his arms and reattached the chains. They hauled him down the steps into the wide bricked passage that led back to the slaves’ quarters, by-passing groups of other slaves and guards coming along the passage toward the Hippodrome for later races.

  The passage had many off-shoots and by-ways turning off it, for there were many chariot owners with slave quarters that reached the Hippodrome directly via underground passages.

  The people travelling the passages thinned as they moved deeper, until they turned into the tunnel that led directly to Genesios’ cavern. The guards didn’t speak as they walked, but they weren’t jostling or hitting him, either. That probably meant they were pleased he had won the race.

  When they reached the big cavern, Basilides was standing by the cooking fire, his arms over his big barrel chest,. He watched Brody approach with a scowl on his face.

  There was something cooking in the big pot on the fire, rich with spices and even some meat. The smell of it made Brody’s stomach grumble and cramp, and his mouth water. He carefully didn’t look at the pot.

  Evaristus was sitting on one of the second tier bunks, cross-legged.

  “I hear you won your race,” Basilides growled.

  Evaristus grinned.

  “You heard right,” Brody answered. He tried to hide any tiredness or weakness in his voice. Basilides would take advantage of it if he revealed it.

  “It proves the power of a good beating,” Basilides went on. “Next time I won’t spare my arm.”

  Brody made himself shrug indifferently. The chains at his wrists rattled softly.

  Basilides’ face darkened. “You arrogant pup! You’ll wish you’d never been born by the time I’ve finished with you!” He waved to the guards standing stoically next to Brody, holding the ends of his chains. “Go about your business. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  The guards unhooked the chains and headed back toward the Hippodrome tunnel, leaving Brody standing alone in front of Basilides.

  Basilides circled him. “You’ve ruined your tunic,” he declared. “There’s blood all over it.” His hand thumped against the back of Brody’s shoulder, sending him staggering a pace or two forward. “You’re ever careless. You need a lesson.” He lifted his voice. “Bring my whip!”

  Evaristus was suddenly there. Brody didn’t see him climb down from the second row of bunks. He rounded the cooking pot and lifted his finger. “Might I suggest eating first?”

  Basilides looked affronted. “Why would I eat first?”

  “Not just you. All of us. Then you get the pleasure of anticipating what is to come, while he gets to anticipate…what is to come. All throughout his meal, he will be thinking about it. It will occupy his entire attention.”

  Basilides was uneducated, but he was not stupid. He grinned. “A fine idea,” he declared. He sent Brody a smile that was full of evil intent. “After you eat, Celt.” He walked away, looking very pleased with himself.

  Brody shuddered, cold fingers rippling down his spine.

  Evaristus gripped his arm tightly. “Come and eat. You need strength. Have you forgotten about the need for nourishment after so many years without it?”

  “I’d forgotten so much my head is exploding with what I now have to remember,” Brody told him.

  Evaristus drew him toward the fire and the cooking pot where the other slaves were gathering and sharing out the meal. He pushed a small wooden bowl into Brody’s hands.

  A watery stew was ladled into the bowl. No utensils were provided.

  Evaristus drew him over to the edge of the cavern, between the end of the bunks and where the square cages sat in a long row. Three of the cages were occupied, the slaves inside watching the food being dispensed with greedy longing.

  Brody and Evaristus squatted on the floor of the cavern in the shadows cast by the tall wooden bunks. Brody sipped the gruel until the food itself was cool enough to handle with his fingers.

  Evaristus pushed his bowl over to Brody. “You’ll need it,” he said, “And you know well that I do not.” He sat back and wrapped his thin arms around his knees. “Basilides will have forgotten about beating you by the time he has eaten his fill. If he does remember, he will be too full to stir himself.”

  Brody nodded, sipping at the stew.

  “It seems you remembered how to drive a team after all.”

  “It came back to me.” The entire days’ events so far had been a series of memory-evoking triggers. From pulling on the tight driver’s tunic, to walking around to the nose of each horse and talking to them in Gaelic to settle them and pat their noses, before stepping onto the platform of the chariot. When he had stopped struggling to remember and let himself move through the day with a superficial calm, the knowledge had returned, just as he had needed it.

  He had correctly wrapped the reins about his wrist by letting his mind go blank and his body take over and go through the motions, instead of reaching deep for the old memories of how he had once held the strapping. When he was done, with the reins in his hand, it had felt right.

  There had been a secondary advantage to keeping his mind in neutral, too. It had also kept the fear at bay.

  He had let himself float around the first circuits of
the race the same way, until the jolting of Euripides’ cart against his had jerked him out of the daze. Then the old strategies and tactics had dropped into place like his brain had changed gears.

  He had known he was going to win the race from the beginning of the fourth circuit, when Euripides had let him take the outer edge of the track too early.

  That certainty he remembered from before, too.

  The certainty, the understanding about race strategy and that he had won the race by the second-last circuit had given him half-a-lap of freedom to scan the stands. He had known Taylor would be there, but seeing her and confirming that she had seen his race both terrified and reassured him in one great indrawn breath.

  He didn’t want Taylor to see this side of his life, but having her here was changing it, making it different.

  “I saw Taylor today,” he told Evaristus. He could still see her white face. The way her hand had clutched at her heart.

  “That be the one who looks like Ariadne, Matthew’s wife? The one you were caught dallying with?”

  “The one I came through time with,” Brody murmured, reaching for Evaristus’ bowl.

  Evaristus thought about that for a while. “And the other one, who you must wait for before you leave again? Who would that be?”

  “Veris. A…Northman.”

  “He doesn’t sound like one from his name.”

  “It’s the name he uses now. You know how it goes.”

  “Then he’s vampire, too?”

  Brody nodded.

  “If he comes from the north, then you’re going to be here a while yet, aren’t you?”

  “He comes from Britain.”

  “Even worse,” Evaristus declared. He grinned. “It’s a good thing you’ve got hope.”

  Chapter Nine

  They arrived in Panormos later that afternoon, far earlier than Veris had reckoned the journey would take, which was a bonus.

  Panormos was a small harbor that did a roaring trade for there was a steady stream of foot traffic from across Asia Minor that wanted to avoid the longer journey by land to Constantinople. Fast, hardy boats could make the trip from Panormos across the strait to Constantinople in a day and a night, with decent winds, where the journey by land around the Horn could take five days.

  Inns had set up to cater to passengers passing through, along with associated brothels and businesses, including money-changers, milliners and tailors, ironmongers and more.

  Rafael, a seasoned traveler, stared at the noisy cosmopolitan stewpot with wide eyes in a way that made Veris laugh. “If you think this is distracting, you will love Constantinople,” he told Rafael. “Panormos is but a flea on an elephant. Constantinople is a three ring circus, all year round.”

  Rafael frowned. “What is an elephunt? And what is a circus?”

  Veris laughed again. “Don’t worry about it. Let us say that Panormos is nothing to get excited about. The best is yet to come.”

  Rafael considered it. “Okay,” he said, testing out the word he’d heard Veris use and had demanded he define, which had flexed Veris’ language skills, for the word was anachronistic for this century—it had slipped from him when he had been thinking hard. The real definition of the word involved twentieth century events, politics and concepts. He had given Rafael the cultural use of the word as an equivalent to ‘alright’ or ‘yes’ instead and omitted the etymological roots.

  Veris nodded toward the harbor. “There’s our ship,” he declared. It was an open, two-masted merchant ship with frame and canvas shelters at the rear end and a high prow at the front for pushing through waves. It had clean lines and sturdy construction that reminded Veris sharply of the vessels he’d used when he’d travelled to Britain and then back to the mainland. Northman ships had once thrown fear into the hearts of men when they had been spotted on the horizon. Now their designs were copied by sea-farers everywhere.

  Rafael lifted a brow. “It looks very small,” he said, sounding nervous.

  “It’s safe enough,” Veris assured him. “Trust me. Let’s buy two places.”

  But the captain wasn’t willing to set sail on the evening winds, even though he already had two other passengers booked, which gave him a full compliment. He was an old and experienced sailor and he looked at the sky with a troubled eye and shook his head, telling Veris he would start out tomorrow.

  Veris pulled the old man to one side and got out his purse. He started laying out gold Bezants, very slowly, placing them in front of the man so that the last of the sunlight made them glint. When he had laid out ten of them, Veris picked them up and started to put them away again.

  The man caught at Veris’ wrist with a sigh and nodded. “We go,” he said. “But it will not be a nice sail, no?”

  Veris shrugged. “I want fast, not smooth.”

  The old man grinned, showing a row of missing and broken teeth. “It be very fast,” he said, his Greek strained.

  “That is all I ask.”

  The captain, Reshef, sent his boy over to one of the nearest inns to collect his other two passengers, a man and his wife, a well-veiled woman with lots of baggage and a personal slave. Veris and Rafael began loading the contents of Veris’ cart onto the ship where Reshef indicated, even though stevedores could have been found to handle the cargo if they had wanted to avoid the labor themselves. But Veris was just as happy to evade the prying eyes and fingers of strangers in amongst his possessions and the work was done just as quickly and more efficiently if he did it himself.

  Within the hour, they were underway, Panormos falling behind them, the lowering sun to their left and a damp breeze blowing in their face.

  Reshef sniffed the breeze, scowled at the scudding clouds on the skyline and muttered under his breath before bellowing commands at his two man crew, who scurried to let out the big square sail and the smaller sail in front. Reshef was controlling the speed of their crossing. He didn’t want to head too smartly over the horizon into the unknown with a night’s worth of travel ahead of him.

  Veris joined him at the prow where the old man stood with both legs spread against the rocking of the boat in unconscious balance gained from years at sea. “Phoenicia runs in your blood, no?” he said in Arabic.

  Reshef looked up sharply. “Almost completely,” he replied, his Arabic pure and clean. “My family has always been sailors.”

  “Phoenicians were all superior sailors,” Veris agreed. He nodded toward the horizon. “You fear what lies ahead.”

  “I do,” Reshef agreed easily. “I prefer to meet it in daylight, but it’s coming too fast.” He grimaced. “You insist on a fast crossing. It may be faster than either of us like. Faster …or slower than honey on cold day.”

  Slow, because the ship had foundered, Veris interpreted.

  “I know something of the sea,” Veris told the old man, who was still staring moodily at the bad-tempered horizon.

  “Northman, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so.”

  “If it’s coming too fast to pick your meeting ground, wouldn’t you be better to speed up, anyway? Race through it as fast as grace allows?”

  “And Hades be damned?” Reshef spat over the side. “Well, you wanted speed…” He laughed and switched back to Greek and began to call out instructions, setting the sheets for maximum speed.

  Veris yanked off his dalmatic and rolled up the sleeves of the robe beneath. Reshef would need a third and fourth hand before the night was through, if his dour face was anything to judge the coming storm by. Veris went back to where Rafael crouched against the bulwarks. Rafael’s face was grey.

  “We’re doomed!” Rafael cried.

  Veris stared at him, truly stunned. “Why do you say that?”

  “These waters will kill us all in this little boat!” He unclenched one white knuckled hand from the gunnels long enough to point to the waves beyond as the ship cut cleanly through them.

  Veris grinned. “These are just waves, Rafael. These are nothing
.” If he was sick at the sight of relatively calm waters, tonight was going to give him hysterics. Veris touched his shoulder as he handed him his outer garments. “You need to bear up, Rafe.” He leaned down so he could drop his voice. “It’s going to get bad, later. If the others see you panicking, it’ll infect them like a sickness and the last thing we need is hysterical passengers. It’s not unheard of for sailors dealing with a bad storm to drop passengers overboard if they get in the way.”

  Rafael’s eyes widened for a moment. Then they got infinitely wiser and older. “No matter what happens, you want me to pretend all is well. Yes?”

  Veris shook his head. “You don’t have to go nearly that far. But stay out of everyone’s way. Including mine. It’s going to get bad before it gets better and you’re not a sailor.”

  “You are a sailor as well?”

  “I suppose that’s one of the professions I forgot to mention.” He grinned. “The good side of this, Rafe, is we’re going to get to Constantinople in record time. The wind from this storm is blowing in our favor.”

  “You have my felicitations,” Rafe said dryly. He clutched at the gunnels as the ship tilted sharply up the side of the big seventh wave and gasped. “If this really is just normal, I hope you judge what is to come is worth it, my…Veris.”

  Veris thought of Brody and Taylor somewhere in the city that lay on the other side of this sea. He knew that both of them would be working with the mistaken assumption that he was somewhere in Britain, months away from finding them.

  He cursed that he and Brody never discussed this part of their lives. Brody had always sheered away from talk about his enslavement. The topic was verboten, for it stirred up all too human pain and panic in Brody. Veris had never pushed to resolve the issues Brody still carried after so many decades, figuring there was still time. There was always more time.

  It had been a shock to Veris to learn that Brody had been a chariot driver in Constantinople—a nasty shock. He knew something of the death and carnage that featured in the Hippodrome. Byzantines liked their entertainment strong and bloody, which stirred neither disgust nor pleasure in him. In ten centuries, nothing had changed except that now the blood and carnage was fake and issued via Hollywood. Twenty-first century citizens would be appalled at the comparison, but Veris had a longer perspective.