B007IIXYQY EBOK (115 page)

Auriane passed beneath the door and was quickly immersed in the brown-and-gray gloom of the adjacent chamber’s forbidden recesses. In this vaster room, veterans of the second grade were given their meals. The three halls were set in a row, from humblest to highest, and the revelry issuing from the banquet of Aristos was much louder here.

Auriane strode determinedly down one of the long rows, between crowded tables that glistened with spilled oil and wine. She was not dressed much differently from the commoner sort of prostitute who moved among the men, so at first her presence raised no alarm. All about her, drunken voices were raised in challenge or quavered in crude song; coins gleamed as bets were paid, huge fists drummed on tables and wooden ladles clattered loudly against great bowls steaming with a mysterious, sinister-looking stew. A girl of no more than seven, naked but for a bejeweled girdle and crown of vine leaves, did a sluggish dance on one of the tables, as though given some draught, while the men nearest clapped a slow rhythm.
Dead souls underground,
Auriane thought as malignant laughter followed her and heavily muscled arms reached for her from evil shadows. If I tarry they will pull me into their twilight land forever.

“Come here, little dove,” a man called to her. “See what I’ve got for you. By Priapus’ crown you’ve never seen the like!” Nimbly she dodged him.

At that moment Corax saw her. He was eating at the last table with a collection of trainers of the lowest grade. He shot up from his place and made frenzied gestures to the guards stationed at intervals along the walls. They ignored him.

As she passed him, he seized her arm. “Crazed spawn of a she-ass, get back to your place. Guards!”

“Give us food we can eat and I will,” she replied quietly.

A croaking voice from the charnel gloom next to Corax said, “What are you willing to do for it, pretty little bitch?” A half-dozen hands moved in gestures of copulation.

Corax looked like a colicky infant preparing to erupt into a lusty tantrum. “You’ll not get out of this one, Aurinia,”
he said, breathing heavily as he caught one of her wrists, pinning it behind her while twisting it painfully. “I’ll see you flogged naked, with chains, before all the men of your grade. And don’t think that meddling slumlord-and-pirate Erato will save you.”

With her free hand Auriane caught the handle of a bronze bowl brimming with a black, fishy-smelling soup and dragged it toward Corax with all her strength, sloshing its scalding contents all over the front of him. He let out a shriek and released her. There came a brutish chorus of laughter. Auriane got free, then streaked off through the connecting door.

“Guards! Murderess! Stop her!” Corax yelped, hopping, holding his dripping tunic away from him. He darted for the small fountain at the room’s center, clutching his burned arms and chest. Several of the guards smiled at him blandly, as if not comprehending, while others gaily waved at him as though he summoned them for an assignation. They despised Corax for his repeated attempts to ingratiate himself with Torquatus by reporting their selling of favors. The unruly wench they counted no more than an amusing distraction.

But one of the guards recognized Auriane and realized she was not one of the prostitutes. Swiftly he started after her.

Auriane, however, was well ahead of him. She had no precise plan other than to seek out and shame some man of rank. She was not fully aware of how much this action would outrage custom. Although she did know of the ruthlessly rigid hierarchy of social grades among these people, it was too unlike what she knew at home for her to understand how deeply it governed their every sentiment and thought. She was like any foreigner who, under duress, reverts to the native tongue—in her country no one was so humble that he could not appeal to the most celebrated chief for redress of wrongs.

She darted through a short, barrel-vaulted passage, keeping to the shadows; then she ascended a flight of marble steps flanked by winged Victories decked in laurel. Beyond, the cramped passage opened into a mammoth cave, its vastness pulsing with ruddy light. She saw it all through a bluish haze of incense and lamp smoke. Competing spicy odors made the air seem too rich to breathe. Everywhere were clusters of small flames seeming to float on air; she realized she was among a virtual forest of delicate “trees” of bronze with tiny tongues of flame in place of leaves. Her senses froze at the sight of this nether cauldron teeming with all manner of odd and glittering life.
They do lie down when they eat
was one of her first confused thoughts as she looked on a field of beds, which must be what Decius called couches. On them reclined bantering, gracefully gesturing noblemen, flushed with drink, and courtesans with arrogantly arched black brows, jaded eyes, blood-colored lips with a cruel beauty, their hair heaped high on their heads like a complexity of scrolls.

This is the banquet of Aristos, she realized, awestruck as the child who witnesses her first sacrifice. She moved forward, meaning to lose herself in the exotic confusion, conscious that she was most likely being pursued. Maids in fawnskin flitted in front of her, sprinkling perfumed water into the air. Tall, graceful slaves glided among the tables, bearing great oval platters of food complex as a cityscape. She saw nothing she recognized, but the sight of such abundance rekindled her rage—there was enough on one platter to keep poor Sunia content for a month. From somewhere came the silky, shimmering sound of a cithara—music much too gentle for a people who were such lovers of cruel sports and dark punishments. The soaring walls were alive with battle scenes; the outsize forms of horses, goddesses and heroes were rendered with such hypnotizing reality she imagined that when she turned her gaze from them, they secretly moved. At the hall’s center was a monumental fountain. Here a towering Diana the Huntress loomed up, contemplating her bow; she gleamed like new snow in moonlight. About her naked nymphs played; Auriane looked, amazed, at the twin streams of water jetting from their nipples. Every odd thing that could be, she thought, these people have brought forth.

Then she saw, beneath a great shrine to Mars set into a niche in the wall, a table set apart on a low platform. Surely this was the place of honored guests. As she moved resolutely toward it, the banqueters paid her scant attention; she might have been anyone’s slave bearing a message for her master.

It was indeed the table of honor, for as she moved closer she recognized the soft, pendulous outline of Torquatus’ profile, and his corrupt mouth; those rapacious eyes were gentled somewhat by strong drink. Was there lingering within the man the smallest capacity to feel shame?

Reclining to Torquatus’ left was a woman whose countenance was bold and queenly as that of the painted face of the eternal woman adorning the wall. And to his right, turned so that his back was to her, was a massive man whose shoulder-length, red-blond locks were curled at the ends with an iron; he was crowned with a garland of roses.

Auriane stopped at a respectful distance before Torquatus, who was clapping with delight as a serving girl cut into an impossible pastry fashioned to look like a goose and grapes and other unknown fruits tumbled out.

Torquatus then saw Auriane. From his look, she could have been a rat’s carcass floating in his bath water.

Auriane inclined her head slightly and said gravely, “I am sorry to intrude upon you, my lord, but I do so with a just complaint. I come on my own—my companions tried to prevent me. We beg you to find us edible food and…to punish the men who are fouling it.”

Torquatus’ guests stared, bewildered by this humbly clad woman with regal bearing. Torquatus knew her at once for what she was—a novice criminally out of place.

His cold, closed expression gave way to the hesitant look of one who makes rapid calculations. Slowly, evenly, he said, “Of course. You’ll get everything you want. Just stay put…don’t move now…. What was it, again, you said you wanted?” All the while one hand reached for a jeweled dagger, and the other signaled unobtrusively to the guards stationed by the great arched door that opened onto the practice arena. Six started forward at once, approaching Auriane from behind so they would not alarm the madwoman and frighten her into attacking him. To delay her further, Torquatus gave her a barren smile. “For now,” he said, “why not take one of those capons?”

Auriane knew at once all was wrong and she was doomed.

Across the table a serving maid was setting down a platter of what surely were small chickens browned and glazed with an unknown sauce, nestled among alien southern fruits. Auriane looked closely. Yes—real
chickens, not pastries fashioned to look like them. How they would delight Sunia.

I am a dead woman whether I take one or not. Why not present Sunia with a last gift?

Quickly, warily, Auriane took a capon, dropping it into her tunic; the rope that secured it about her waist held the bird fast. As she did this, she was aware of how the powerfully built man with the rose garland remained unnaturally still, carefully keeping his face turned from her. Why did he not stare at her as the others did?

The alabaster-faced beauty said teasingly to the shy man, “Does she frighten you, Aristos?”

Aristos.
Of course.

Then Auriane sensed the approach of the guards. She whirled round and saw them, coming at a trot, twenty paces off. Their swords were drawn.

She could not let them slaughter her like an animal, not with the sign of the god of war carved into her flesh. She would bring shame on the holy groves. Beyond Aristos a kitchen slave patiently sliced a haunch of mutton. She lunged for his carving knife.

Aristos chose that moment to heave himself up and extend his wine cup to a maid who held out a jug. Auriane struck Aristos in the shoulder and sprawled beside him on the couch.

And she saw his face.

No, it cannot be. It is not.

You are dead—Sigwulf was certain of it. All whom I trusted reported you slain.

Monster, crawl back down to Hel.
How can you be in this place?
Bane of us all. Fiend of fiends, murderer of Baldemar, great betrayer who led an army against our back.

Aristos was Odberht.

She scrambled up, carving knife forgotten, and started to run, threading her way around tables, struggling against a powerful sickness of heart that threatened to drag her down.

It must not be, but it is. We are doomed. Baldemar and my country lie utterly unavenged.

She realized the scar on Aristos’ thick neck was the result of the wound she had given him with the broken glass horn, on that night so long ago when he savagely assaulted her in the bog.

The health of the Scourge is my people’s sickness. How he thrives in this place! It is no wonder my people suffer so.

In back of her, Auriane heard women’s shrieks, a chorus of yelping guards. The banqueters rose and milled nervously, terrified by the sight of the guards’ drawn swords. Auriane ran blindly, as intent on escaping the specter of Aristos-Odberht as she was her own death. As a dozen guards closed in upon her, one of the Syrian snake dancers lost her snake—the testy serpent, longer than a horse, glided to the floor and for a time followed Auriane. The guards dropped back to give the creature room, allowing Auriane a chance to dart behind the fountain of Diana. The floor about it was marble, and it was wet. She began to slide, colliding with an overburdened table; silver platters and ewers crashed to the floor. Lamps were upset and oil streaked everywhere; the flames greedily followed the oil, and soon there were several small fires in her wake.

The cry “Fire!”
brought everyone to their feet; panicked diners concealed Auriane’s flight and greatly hampered the guards. A few made token attempts to catch her, but most urged her on, laughing and shouting. A reveler struck a guard who had knocked him down, and fights erupted. Rising over all the din was the wail of the Syrian snake dancer calling out in her harsh, masculine voice for her beloved snake.

Auriane leapt in one bound down the flight of stairs she had climbed earlier, ran hard through the passage and was soon lost among the veterans and prostitutes of the Second Hall. She felt prodigious walls of stone crashing down upon her. How quickly all of life had gotten utterly, fatally, out of hand.

At least I die knowing I protested this madness.
This place has unraveled me. The Fates mock us with promises of order, and toss us into chaos. Once they would not let me die for my people. Today they let me die for a chicken. How absurd to perish for a lesson I thought I learned when young—never to allow myself to be carried off on a tide of wrath.

When Corax saw Auriane running, the guards in close pursuit, his loathing of her snatched the last remnant of his reason. He scurried for the skylit central chamber where the practice arena lay, pushed past the guards and gave several vigorous pulls on the rope of the bell that gave the alarm for a general breakout.
She cannot possibly escape just punishment this time.

The manic clangor of that bell alerted the Praetorian Guards at the Palace and caused two detachments of the Urban Cohorts to begin advancing upon the school. The sound of it greatly worsened the general panic; tables were overturned as people bolted for the entrances.

The guards were barricading the passages between the chambers, fearful the men of the Second Hall might attempt to rush the doors. Now, surely, they judged they had the wretched woman trapped. But she was proving as tricky to catch as a rat in straw. There she was, darting down a tabletop. Then she leapt down, disappearing beneath the turbulent sea of people.