Death of an Eye

by Dana Stabenow

  He progressed unhurriedly up the long hall and came to a stop next to Tetisheri. The guards seemed to melt away in his presence. “It grows late, love,” he said, sliding a familiar arm around her waist. “I thought you might need an escort home. The streets of Alexandria being what they are at night, and citizens going about their lawful business being at risk.” He looked up to cast a glimpse around the room, his smile razor-sharp. “As they so obviously are.”

  Tetisheri allowed herself to lean against him, and managed to pull her mouth into a trembling smile. “How thoughtful of you, my dear.” Her voice was shaking and she took a deep breath to steady it. “Your timing is impeccable. It has been a tiring day, and I am ready for my bed.”

  He dropped a light kiss on her nose. “Then we shall adjourn there forthwith.”

  They might have been alone in the room for all the notice they took of anyone else in it. Tetisheri felt a fine shudder begin in her bones and only hoped it would hold off long enough for them to get safety out of this room.

  Predictably, Linos and Philo spoke together in real or feigned outrage.

  “O king, such insolence!”

  “You have yet to question the woman, you cannot allow—”

  Thales cleared his throat again, and Linos and Philo shut up.

  Into the sudden silence came a laugh and Tetisheri looked around to see the two Roman youths lost in amusement at this show to which they had the very best seats. “Pity,” one said. “The king did promise us a bit of fun before the evening was over. I was hoping she was it.”

  “Let her go mate with her crocodile,” his brother said. “What can you expect from a bunch of animal worshippers?”

  “She would not make it worth your while, friends, believe me,” Hunefer said, his voice disdainful. “I tried for two years.” He smiled and pulled on the leash. The little girl was jerked to her feet. “Never fear. We have other toys.”

  The Roman boys looked at the beautiful girl on Hunefer’s leash. “I suppose we can make do.”

  Tetisheri saw Apollodorus’ eyes narrow and felt the arm around her waist tighten. “Oh, there was just one thing before we take our leave,” she said, making her voice clear enough to be heard by everyone in the room. “May I?” She got her hand on the gladius at his belt before he did, barely.

  For one fraught moment she thought he might refuse her. And then he pulled the sword from its sheath and offered it to her with a slight bow.

  It was solid and heavy in her hand. She turned, holding her bruised and shaken frame severely straight, and walked straight at Hunefer, who squawked like a startled duck. It did not speak well for the king’s guard that they did not immediately leap between the two of them but then she was moving pretty fast. One swing of the blade and the leash holding the Egyptian slave girl fell neatly into two pieces. Hunefer dropped his end with another squawk.

  The girl didn’t move, looking from the severed leash to Tetisheri and back again.

  “Come with us,” Tetisheri said, and turned before she could see if she was obeyed. She paused long enough to return Apollodorus’ gladius and walked swiftly through the doors, stepping lightly over the bodies of the two men who had been standing guard in front of them. Behind her she heard a scamper of feet. Hunefer squawked again but the girl passed Apollodorus and Tetisheri like they were standing still.

  Outside again on the dark street the three of them paused, the girl poised to run, and who could blame her.

  “Do you speak Greek?” Tetisheri said in that language.

  A pause, then a short nod.

  “You can run if you like,” Tetisheri said. “No one will stop you. Or you can come home with me.”

  “What will I have to do once we get there?” The question was laden with suspicion.

  “Bathe, put on clothes, eat if you are hungry, sleep. In the morning we’ll find you something to do to earn your keep.”

  “A slave again. Why would I do that?”

  “Not a slave,” Tetisheri said. “You will be paid, and you will be free to take other employment if you wish.”

  “Can I go home?”

  “Where is home?”

  The girl looked away, her chin trembling.

  “How long have you been in Alexandria?”

  She didn’t know the answer to either question. “Come home with me for now,” Tetisheri said. “You’ll be safe, and warm, and fed, and you will live among other free men and women of Alexandria and Egypt. My uncle and I keep no slaves.”

  “Make up your mind,” Apollodorus said, grasping Tetisheri’s arm and urging her down the street. “As soon as the kinglet finds his balls—or his guests find them for him—he’ll send his men out after us.” His pace was closer to a run than a walk and his iron grip on her arm made no allowance for any injuries she had suffered that evening. After a moment, Tetisheri heard the patter of bare feet behind them.

  “How did you know?” she said, the fine trembling that had begun in Ptolemy’s audience hall starting to manifest itself again now that there was no need to maintain the fiction of invulnerability.

  He cut down an alley. “I heard you scream.” They emerged onto a street, crossed it, went down another alley that became increasingly narrow, which then opened up into a broad avenue that Tetisheri recognized as near the Palestra, two streets up from the Way. They were headed west, toward the docks, and home. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have walked you to your door and seen you safely inside.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She attempted a laugh. It sounded pitiful even to her own ears. “Aristander would be wounded to the core if we told him his streets weren’t safe.”

  “For those on the queen’s business, evidently they aren’t,” he said, and she remembered that only the night before, the Eye of Isis had been murdered on those same streets. “I came as fast as I could.”

  “They were moving pretty fast themselves,” she said, remembering that jolting trip through the streets. “They must have feared pursuit. If they’d been following us they would have known it was you.” And they wouldn’t have been eager to match swords with one of the Five Soldiers.

  The Queen’s Guard encampment, tents pitched in orderly rows, materialized on their right. A sentry snapped to attention. “Halt, in the name of the queen!”

  “Glaucio?”

  “Apollodorus?” The sentry peered at them as they came closer. “You’re out late.”

  “I’m headed for home as we speak.”

  By this time Glaucio had taken in Tetisheri. “Oho.” He grinned and waved them on. “Have a good night!” He tensed again, looking behind them.

  “She’s with us,” Apollodorus said, and they left Glaucio swearing and shaking his head. They turned down a side street, walked rapidly past the Thermophoriom and came at last upon the docks. Here Apollodorus kept to the middle of the street, one hand still grasping Tetisheri’s arm, the other drawing his sword with a hiss of metal.

  “Are they behind us?” She was breathing hard, trying not to trip over her own stumbling feet.

  “I don’t think so, but I’m taking no chances. How badly hurt are you?”

  “Not too badly, I don’t think. They were just getting started when you came. Oh, Apollodorus.” Shamefully, her voice broke on his name.

  His grip tightened for a moment, painfully so, and then loosened again.

  They stumbled at last to a halt in front of Uncle Neb’s door. Tetisheri knocked quickly, three times, and they waited, Apollodorus with his back to her, watching the street. After a wait came the sounds of the lock and the door swung open to reveal Keren, looking rumpled and sleepy-eyed. “Sheri? What—”

  Apollodorus muscled the two of them inside. Looking over his shoulder Tetisheri said, “You, come here.”

  The little slave girl shuffled inside, looking as exhausted as Tetisheri felt but with her glare intact. She didn’t trust a one of them, no, she did not.

  “Do you have a name?” Tetisheri said.

  The glare,
if anything, intensified. “I won’t be called by what he called me!”

  “Fine, you can choose a name tomorrow. This is Keren. Keren, this is a new friend. Please find her a sleeping shift and a bed. We’ll worry about the rest tomorrow.”

  Keren took this without a blink. She smiled at the girl. “Are you hungry? Come with me, we’ll see what we can find in the kitchen.”

  The girl hesitated, looked at Tetisheri, and then followed Keren into the house.

  “Apollodorus—”

  He sheathed his sword and turned to her and took her in his arms, pushing her back against the wall. Her sore shoulders made themselves felt and she gave a muffled protest. “What—”

  His face was in shadow, hers in the moonlight shining through the open door. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get there in time.” Before she could stutter a refusal he kissed her and she froze in place, eyes wide open, staring at the fans of his eyelashes as they lay on his cheeks. Lips touched her eyes, the corners of her mouth, the heretofore unknown and alarmingly sensitive place beneath her ear. He pulled back to look at her. “I’ve never been so frightened in all my life.” He slid his hand up her spine to hold her head where he wanted it and leaned in again, running his tongue down the seam of her lips, and she gasped, any thought of beatings and bruises forgotten.

  Her husband had never kissed her. He had raped her, though, and she knew the meaning of the length of flesh pressed against her belly. Her first thought was to resist, to fight, to free herself, to run. Her second thought was that Apollodorus’ mouth was so very warm and so very coaxing. He nibbled at her lower lip and something strange happened to her knees and she sagged against him. Her head fell back on a suddenly limp neck, her eyelids fluttered closed, all the better to concentrate on the feel of his lips, and his hands, and his body. He gave something between a grunt and a groan and kneed her legs apart and settled between them, and something that she had thought long dead, murdered at the hands of her husband, roused suddenly, outrageously, overwhelmingly to life.

  “Agape mou,” his said, his voice low and tender. The words seemed to strum against her body.

  She should pull away now, she thought hazily. She really should. But she could still breathe, and she wasn’t bound or under threat. At some deep level she knew if she made the slightest protest he would free her at once.

  She didn’t, which may have been the most amazing event in an evening made up of one continually amazing event after another.

  He raised his head at last, his face still in shadow so that she couldn’t see his expression. Her lips felt swollen and ever so slightly scorched, and she was shocked to see that her arms had wound themselves around his neck of their own volition. His hands slid down to her hips to hold her firmly against that hard length. His voice was deep and rough. “Are you frightened?”

  She swallowed. “No,” she said, stunned to know that she was telling the truth.

  “Good.” He kissed her again and this time she allowed herself to forget the world, to be lost in this moment. Her skin felt as if it were on fire, her heart beat so hard and so fast she was afraid it would leap from her throat. Her breasts felt full and heavy and the secret place between her legs had turned hot and liquid and wanting.

  He stepped back, reaching for her hands to pull them from his neck and clasp them in his own. “We will continue this, but not now, and not here.”

  She swallowed, and to her own amazement, couldn’t deny it.

  “Why do you save them?”

  Involuntarily she ran her tongue over her lips, marveling at how sensitive they felt, and he growled deep in his throat and gave her a slight shake. “Tetisheri. Why do you save them?”

  “What? Who?”

  “The girls. I know Uncle Neb does it because you asked him to. I know you’ve been doing it since before your marriage. Why?”

  Her racing heart began to slow, and she tried to summon some order to her whirling brain to form a coherent answer. “Because they have no one, and they need someone.”

  “Why must it be you?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Our queen is a good queen, but even she has slaves.”

  He stood silently, absorbing this. “Because she won’t help them, you will?”

  She shrugged.

  “You can’t save them all.”

  “But I can save some.”

  The smile was back in his voice. “Especially if it means stealing one right out from under Hunefer’s nose?”

  “He had her on a leash,” she said, and there was no trace of a responding smile at all in her voice.

  She saw a flash of teeth. He raised one of her hands to his mouth. As he had before, he kissed it and then reversed it to kiss her palm, only this time he bit the flesh at the base of her thumb. Some sound came out of her throat that she had never heard before, and he soothed the bite with his tongue.

  He dropped her hand and stepped back. “I’ll send word to the queen of the king’s action this evening, which will I imagine stave off any further attempts on your liberty.”

  Tetisheri imagined so, too. “I wonder if she’ll kill him.”

  “We can only hope.” He sighed. “No, probably not, not with Caesar still here.”

  “Why is Cleopatra the only one of the Flute Player’s children who has even a passing acquaintance with logic?”

  “The same reason his brother decided to swim the Nile in full armor, and why Arsinoë tried to take the throne while her father and sisters and brother were still living.” He shrugged. “The Ptolemies bred for blood, not brains. The result of the only time they didn’t is on the throne now.” He turned. “I’ll see you tomorrow when I get back from Busirus. Try to keep out of trouble until then.”

  “Apollodorus!”

  “Lady, it’s late and if you’re not inviting me to stay I’m for my own bed and an uncomfortable night at best. Close the door behind me because this time I’m not leaving until I hear the bolt thrown with you on the other side.”

  And so she found herself standing inside the atrium, listening to water trickle over the fountain, rubbing the warm, throbbing spot on her palm where he’d bitten her, her whole body itchy with a kind of dissatisfaction with which she was entirely unfamiliar.

  But what she found most astonishing of all, not a dissatisfaction with which she was unhappy.

  No.

  She found her way to her room, undressed in the dark and climbed into her bed, where Bast joined her, curling up in the angle between her neck and her shoulder to purr in her ear.

  She had known Apollodorus all her adult life. She’d had a crush on him at ten, but then all the girls in class had, Cleopatra included. He was so very handsome, so courteous and well-spoken, so intelligent, and so very, very capable that one had to wonder what else that capability might extend to. Later, when she was older, sometimes during class where he was demonstrating a handhold meant to disarm or a thrust of a blade meant to disable, he would of necessity have his hands on her, and she would imagine that he looked at her in a different way than he looked at the other girls. But then, she would tell herself, probably all the girls felt the same way. She wasn’t special enough to single out.

  He had seemed so much more worldly, too, with so much knowledge and experience of the world beyond the shores of Alexandria. Now that she was older herself, now that she had been through so much, now that she had journeyed so far with Uncle Neb, Apollodorus seemed nearer in age, less intimidating, more of an equal, more… more approachable.

  She touched her lips again. They still tingled.

  Definitely more approachable.

  It was only much later that she realized that her wonder at Apollodorus’ attentions—and her reaction to them—had filled her mind so completely that it had momentarily obliterated the memory of her ordeal at Ptolemy XIV’s hands.

  She turned to her side and didn’t even notice the ache in her shoulders and back. Bast resettled herself in the curl of her stomach and started to purr ag
ain.

  Kinglet, she thought.

  They slept.

  6

  on the morning of the First Day of the Third Week

  at the Sixth Hour…

  She rose with the sun at First Hour and lay for a moment rejoicing that she had lived to see Ra begin his journey across the sky once again. She was stiff and sore when she rose and Keren tutted over her bruises, anointing them with some tincture that felt better than it smelled but did begin immediately to ease her soreness.

  “Lucky none of these blows broke the skin,” Keren said.

  Lucky for her Apollodorus had come before they’d had broken out the whips, Tetisheri thought. She wondered if the slave boy who had dropped the tray had lived to see the sunrise. Probably not, and her heart grieved for him because surely none would in Ptolemy Theos’ court.

  She dressed and went to break her fast with Uncle Neb and Keren. Her uncle frowned at her. “Where were you yesterday? I had to put off finishing the inventory.”

  “I’m sorry, Uncle,” she said with real repentance, because taking inventory, while essential to a well-run business, was much less fun than buying and selling. “A friend had a problem and needed my help.” If this investigation went on for much longer she was going to have to work up some believable excuses for where she’d been and what she’d been doing to satisfy Neb. All the more reason to conclude it swiftly.

  Something in that careful statement must have hinted him away from the topic because he changed the subject. “Keren tells me we have a new house guest.”

  “Yes. Have you seen her yet?”

  “He hasn’t,” Keren said, “because I can’t convince her to sit at the same table with a man. So she is eating in the kitchen with Phoebe.”

  “Has she decided on a name?”

  “She doesn’t have a name?’ Uncle Neb said.

  “She refuses to be called by the name her former master gave her.”

  Something in Keren’s expression as she looked at Tetisheri made Uncle Neb ask, “And who was her former master?”

  Keren looked at Tetisheri, who sighed. “Hunefer. I, ah, expropriated her from him last night.”