Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth (20 page)

It serves him right for his presumption.

“Sit down, dear,” Hedia said, patting the bench. As expected, two of Alphena’s servants placed a red plush cushion on the marble under the direction of the girl’s chief maid, Florina.

Alphena obeyed, crossing her hands primly on her lap. She was still wearing the outfit in which Hedia had sent her with her brother to the Cispius house: a rose-colored tunic with a white wrap. Her sandals were white leather and very chic, but their soles were thick enough to allow the girl to walk or even run comfortably on stone streets.

Hedia’s smile turned inward.
There have been times recently when I would have been better off in sturdier footwear. Perhaps as Alphena has learned from me, I should learn from her.

“Do you mind a little sun, dear?” Hedia asked.

“What?” said Alphena. Instead of blurting, “Of course not!” she went on politely, “No, Mother. I don’t need the parasols.”

At home in Carce Alphena practiced swordsmanship daily in the gymnasium at the back of the town house. Hedia hadn’t objected—she knew to pick her battles—but besides the unladylike tan, the equipment rubbed the skin. Some of the calluses were obvious in a lady’s daily routine; others would only be seen under conditions of greater intimacy—but that was a matter for the girl’s eventual husband.

Hedia sighed internally. At least she hadn’t had to worry that Alphena would refuse to sit with her in direct sunlight.

“Leave us,” Hedia said. She glanced up at her chief maid. “Syra,” she said. “My daughter and I wish to be alone. See to it.”

Hedia didn’t raise her voice. Nor did the maid—but Syra spoke with the authority of her mistress, and the urgency of her whispered demands cut like a hooked whip … which was what the overseer would apply in the evening to the back of any servant who hadn’t responded as quickly as Syra thought Lady Hedia would have wished.

A fish had noticed her. It came to the surface; immediately several more joined it. All Hedia really cared about fish was how they tasted. It was an article of faith among fashionable cooks that no dish should resemble the creature that provided the flesh, so she couldn’t even tell which of these she would like for a meal.

The servants had withdrawn into the house. That didn’t mean that mother and daughter had real privacy, but it was more or less possible that they did.

“A man once told me that King Midas had the ears of a donkey,” Hedia said as she watched the fish gape hopefully. “The only person who knew was his barber, whom he swore to secrecy. The barber had to tell someone, though, so he spoke the secret into a well.”

She met Alphena’s eyes. The girl looked puzzled.

“But the reeds around the well heard him, and now reeds all whisper, ‘Midas has donkey’s ears,’” Hedia said.

She smiled reflectively. “I wasn’t impressed by the man,” she said. “But I still remember that story. I don’t remember nearly as much about most men.”

“Mother?” Alphena said.
She’s completely at sea … and I’m trying to avoid my duty.

“I’m going to ask you to do a very hard thing, dear,” Hedia said. “I want you to go back to Carce immediately.”

“What?” said the girl, jerking back in surprise. “But Pandareus and I have just found something that, well, may help with my dreams and whatever Varus saw. As soon as he and Corylus get back, we’re going to tell them!”

“I’m sure Master Pandareus will be able to inform them by himself,” Hedia said. With no hesitation that another person would have noticed, she continued, “I’m going to be involved in my own affairs soon. I’m going to be spending time with Melino, the magician we met last night.”

Alphena went from being hot with frustration to cold with disapproval.
Her face would make a study for an artist,
Hedia thought sadly.

“I’m telling you this,” Hedia said aloud, “not because it has bearing on the danger that concerns us, though it does, but because I probably won’t be able to pay the necessary attention to you. I won’t be able to pay attention to you and Publius Corylus.”

“Mother!” Alphena said. She half-stood, then forced herself to sit down again.

“I know what it is to be young…,” Hedia said. There was only seven years’ difference between her age and her stepdaughter’s, but they had been seven eventful years. “And I know that the excitement of working with an attractive man can translate into other excitement.”

“Mother, I would
never
do that,” Alphena said earnestly. Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Even so,” Hedia said. “It would become known.”

She looked down at the fish. A complicated system of tide pools and siphons filled the pond and changed the seawater regularly. The engineer who oversaw the work had been very pleased with it, and Hedia had found the engineer pleasing for a time.

“You might survive a fling with Corylus,” she continued, “though it would harm your marriage prospects. Corylus would be destroyed. I would see to it that he was destroyed, dear, even if I suspected my daughter had been the aggressor in the business.”

“You would do
that
?” Alphena whispered.

“Yes,” said Hedia. “And I would regret it, because I have great liking and respect for Master Corylus. So. Will you leave the Bay at once?”

She didn’t add “of your own free will,” though that was the truth of the situation. An open threat would put the girl’s back up, but she knew Hedia well enough by now that she had probably heard the unspoken words.

“I think…,” Alphena said deliberately. “That you’re imagining that I’m a younger edition of you, Mother. I’m not. But I believe you have my best interests at heart. I will leave in the morning, for Carce—or at any rate, leave the Bay. And Corylus.”

Hedia didn’t move for a moment. She had been poised for a tantrum, and tears had seemed even more likely.

She had
not
been prepared to hear the girl analyze her motives as coolly as if she were judging the tricks and tells of a gladiator in the arena. Alphena didn’t sound angry, just slightly superior. Which perhaps she had a right to be.

“Thank you, Daughter,” Hedia said. She rose to her feet. “Now, I think that I’ll get ready to go out. Syra?”

Alphena walked back to the house. She was going to change, probably, since she wasn’t comfortable in the garments required for public.

Whereas Hedia herself …

She stretched in the sunlight as her maid joined her. “I will be wearing a full cloak when I go out this afternoon,” she said. “But under it, I think … perhaps the pale green?”

“With what undergarments, Your Ladyship?” Syra said as they too started for the house.

“I’m not sure,” said Hedia. She smiled. “I’m not sure that I’ll wear anything at all.”

CHAPTER
VI

The light four-wheeled carriage was owned by the Republic’s courier service, but Saxa’s wealth put it at his son’s disposal as a matter of course. Varus would have been perfectly willing to rent—or buy—a similar vehicle, but there was no market for them except for the government.

Varus smiled. Rich, powerful men didn’t pay for things. He didn’t know how he felt about that as a philosopher. He was coming to the conclusion that he grasped facts very well, but that ideology was beyond him. Every theory he heard seemed to squeeze between his mental fingers when he tried to grasp it. Yes,
but
 … seemed to be his response to every general statement.

The driver, a government slave, cracked on the three horses—a trace horse on the right of a yoked pair. He had come with the vehicle. The baggage, including a goat, traveled behind in a heavy cart.

“When I was my uncle’s assistant…,” Lucinus said, rocking on the rear seat beside Varus. “We crossed the sea itself on a bridge of air.”

“How long were you with your uncle?” Varus asked. This sort of travel was tedium, because the carriage rocked and rattled too much for him to read. Even conversation was difficult because of the
thrummm!
of the iron tires against the stone highway.

“Ten years,” Lucinus said. “He summoned me when I was fifteen—after Melino betrayed him, though I didn’t know anything about that at first. I barely knew that I had an uncle. My father was a farmer, well enough off to provide for my schooling but no more than that; I was already working with him on the farm. My mother never talked about her brother. But the messenger came, and they sent me off at once.”

He looked at Varus. “They were terrified,” he said. “I didn’t know why at the time, just that something was wrong.”

Lucinus shook his head, thinking back to events that must have occurred seventy years before. “I suppose they thought my uncle might have wanted me as a human sacrifice,” he said, speaking barely loud enough for Varus to hear him over the sound of the tires. “And they were afraid to object. But all Uncle Vergil wanted was an assistant, an additional pair of hands to reach things he didn’t want to touch with his own.”

The carriage was keeping a steady pace without having to buck traffic even in congested areas. Four cavalrymen hired from the transient barracks in Capua rode ahead, using the weight of their horses—and, when necessary, the flats of their swords—to clear the road for the carriage.

If Saxa had used his own servants for the purpose, there was a risk that he would be accused of raising a private army. Supplementing the income of off-duty soldiers was more politic.

“What did you do for your uncle?” Varus said, studying his companion. Varus and Lucinus both wore ordinary traveling garments: short cloaks over plain tunics with broad-brimmed leather hats. Varus’ clothing was new, while Lucinus’ was worn though not ragged.

Given the magician’s jar of gold coins, that was additional proof that he wasn’t interested in ordinary material things. Lucinus might be lying, but the ordinary goals of deceit—wealth, luxury, and status—didn’t apply in his case.

Varus didn’t think Lucinus was lying.

“I ground herbs and minerals to his direction,” Lucinus said. “I spoke responses when a spell required two speakers. I read his books—all was open to me—but I…”

He gave Varus an angry glare.

“I am a great magician!” Lucinus said. “Even Melino would not be my equal were it not for his ring, the ring he stole. But even with my years and all my study, there is no one to equal my uncle. My uncle could have burked the Worms by himself, but now—you and I together will be able to control the Worms only if we have Zabulon’s
Book,
and even then it will try our strength.”

Varus thought of Vergil, and thought of his own attempts to write epic poetry. The elements were there, but the result …

“A scholar…,” he said aloud, but to himself more than to his companion. “Can have a vocabulary as great as any poet’s. But he still will not be a poet, however much he might wish otherwise.”

A wisp of thought touched his mind. Vergil had been a great poet and—on his nephew’s telling—a great magician. Varus knew he was not a poet.

But the present situation didn’t call for poetry, and the recent past suggested that Varus might be a magician despite himself.

He smiled faintly.

*   *   *

“
O
OH!” SAID
S
YRA
as she followed Hedia up the short walk to Melino’s front entrance. Two guards watched from the porch, their thumbs hooked in their sword belts.

Hedia frowned, though the change in expression would scarcely have been noticeable to anyone watching. There were various ways to react to the outburst. A number of Hedia’s acquaintances would have had the maid whipped to bloody rags for speaking without permission in her mistress’ presence.

Hedia wouldn’t do that unless she were making a point to the rest of the household, but it was an unusual enough event to demand explanation. She looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

Syra flushed. “My skin tingled when I stepped onto the walk,” she said in a quiet voice, her eyes downcast. “I’m sorry, Your Ladyship.”

Hedia nodded minusculely and mounted the three steps to the porch. She had felt nothing, but she suspected that Alphena would have had a reaction similar to the maid’s. Alphena was sensitive to magic, as her mother was not.

The guards wore helmets and body armor like soldiers on active duty. The small one was probably Greek or an Arab, but the larger guard—over six feet tall and heavily built—was more exotic. He was armored in scales of black horn sewn onto leather backing. His cap was made of boar tusks, of all things. The teeth were laid with their points upward in four alternating rows so that they described S curves from the helmet rim to the peak.

“You are expected!” he said to Hedia with a guttural accent. His black beard and moustache were so thick that she caught only flashes of his teeth as he spoke. “The servant stays outside.”

Hedia considered protesting, but that would be pointless for a number of reasons. The guard would have no real authority, and the maid’s presence didn’t matter: not to Hedia, at least, and probably not to Syra, either.

As Her Ladyship’s chief maid, Syra had more real power in Saxa’s household than the majordomo of the Carce town house did. She was more than willing to pay for her status with occasional discomfort while involved in Hedia’s confidential affairs.

Instead of bothering to respond directly to what the guard had phrased as a command, Hedia said, “Open the door.”

The big man’s expression was hidden beneath his facial hair, but the small one was leering. If she learned that Syra had had trouble with the fellows, Hedia would see to it that they were repaid.

The door valves were already squealing back, pulled not by human servants but by a pair of baboons in harness. They were big brutes, each as heavy as a well-grown man. They had large canine tusks and full manes, and they smelled overpoweringly male.

The baboons were chained to the doors and opened them by backing away. They stared at Hedia, looking more like small lions than large dogs. She walked between them, looking to neither side.

As she reached the reception hall, she glanced over her shoulder. The beasts were pushing the valves closed with their forepaws, walking on their hind legs. One of them met her eyes as he reached up to shoot the bolt.