Like Fire Through Bone (14 page)

Around him the kitchen exploded into action, and Vasilios allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief.

He oversaw the cooking and serving of the meal and then knelt on the floor of the dining hall during the entire thing. The servants cleared away the food when the family had finished and gone their separate ways for the evening. Vasilios made sure that everything was cleaned and put away as it should be and that food was sent over to the women’s quarter for the concubines and their families, before the servants sat down for their own meal.

Vasilios really should have eaten, but instead, he made his way back up to his own room. He stripped off his clothes and collapsed in bed, asleep before he was even fully aware of lying down.

B
RÖNDULFR
woke him before dawn the next morning, looking almost as grim and haggard as Vasilios felt. He dressed and went with Bröndulfr back down to the kitchens to prepare for the morning meal.

The Church of the Holy Cross was packed with people for the funeral. Most of the court was there, along with many of Panagiotis’s business partners and his whole household. The ceremony, with its chanting, incense, and prayer, went by Vasilios like a haze. The Bishop presided over it with his deep voice and golden robes. Vasilios stared at the linen-wrapped body, which had been draped with a heavy, bejeweled cross and cloth of gold.

He remembered the first time he’d met Panagiotis, back when he still had hair, thick and dark, face beginning to round out with age. Vasilios had been refusing to eat, determined to die with honor or whatever his fifteen-year-old self had thought that was, thin and almost skeletal in shackles, still healing from where he’d been made a eunuch.

“He’s young,” the man who’d been selling off the prisoners had said. “Untrained, but will work well in a kitchen or stable.”

“Ten solidus.” Panagiotis voice had been loud, clear, and strong.

Vasilios shook his head and looked away from the body before the altar. He wondered what Markos and Aritê were doing, whether they’d managed to rid the Empire of that demon. Everyone knelt and then stood and then knelt again. Vasilios barely paid attention, letting himself move with the crowd. Candles were lit and the choir sang. Each of Panagiotis’s sons moved forward to the front of the church to read prayers for their father’s soul.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the Bishop began his journey down the main aisle, followed by priests bearing crosses and more incense and candles. Panagiotis’s family followed and surrounded the bed with the body, which was carried by Bröndulfr and Eòran. The procession headed out of the church to the grave site and the burial rites there.

Vasilios gathered up the rest of the household—guards, eunuchs, the concubines and their families—and led the little group back to the house. Once there, he made sure the concubines and their children were comfortably settled in the women’s quarter.

The sun was already starting to set low on the horizon and Vasilios felt tired, considering he’d spent the entire day either sitting or kneeling. Still, the evening meal needed to be cooked and served, and he turned and made his way to the kitchen to make sure everything was going along as it should. The atmosphere in the house was noticeably tense, from the women’s quarter to the kitchen, as everyone wondered what would happen to them.

The funeral service would soon be over, and the setting straight of Panagiotis’s estate would begin.

“Some tea for the women’s quarter,” Vasilios said to one of the serving women, who nodded and bustled away. She came back a few minutes later carrying a tray with several tiny teacups, a silver tea sieve, and a silver pitcher of tea. Vasilios carried the whole thing back across the courtyard and up the steps to the women’s quarters.

The concubines were huddled together, still in their fine clothes, with their eunuchs hovering around them. Mada, the daughter of the eldest, stood and came over when she saw him with the tray.

“Tea,” he said to her. “I thought you all could use a little refreshment.”

She nodded and took the tray, looking tired and rather drawn, and Vasilios turned away, pausing once at the doorway to watch the little group before sighing and heading back down the stairs.

He didn’t get to go to bed until late that evening as well. The evening meal needed to be prepared, and then he waited upon the family during the meal and oversaw cleanup afterward. Much like the day before, he did not linger in the kitchen after his duties there were over. Instead he went straight up to his room and crawled into bed.

I
T
WAS
the sensation of falling that alerted him to the fact that he was dreaming. For a moment, he struggled to wake up, overcome by terror and dread. Much like with the other dreams, however, all attempts to wake before the dream had run its course failed.

When he stopped struggling against the dream, he realized this time he was standing in the desert. The sun was low in the horizon, turning the sky orange and red around the edges, and there was a slight breeze that tugged at the scarf he had pulled over his head and face. He turned slowly, surprised that he could move at all, and saw the outlines of sandstone cliffs in the distance behind him.

A voice began to speak then, the voice of a girl, and Vasilios whirled, turning in a complete circle, searching for the speaker, but could find no one.

“Then an angel of the Lord came down,” the voice said, “and she was much afraid, but the angel said to her, ‘Fear not! For I bring word to you that the Lord has heard your cries, and knows of your suffering, and has made your heart strong against it,’ and then she said to the angel, ‘But how can this be, that the Lord would know of me and my suffering, for I am not one of the great saints or prophets.’ And the angel said to her, ‘Do you doubt that the Lord has longed for your love and awaits you with tears of joy and open arms? For I tell you that he has long awaited you, and even now knows you by name and calls you beloved.’”

The voice died away, and the wind picked up, blowing the sand into spirals and clouds reflecting the last light of the sun. Vasilios turned in a slow circle again but still saw no one. He turned back and watched the sun slowly sink below the horizon as the sky turn to dusky purple and gray.

He awoke feeling strange. The dream had been nothing like any of the others, not violent, sickening, or terrifying. It had possessed a strange vividness, not at all like the normal dreams Vasilios had experienced from time to time, but like actually being bodily transported somewhere else altogether. For a long time, he stared up at the ceiling through the darkness, trying to make sense of it.

Maybe it had to do with Aritê and her visions of angels, he thought finally, getting up and pulling on a lamb’s-wool robe before going to sit on the couch. He poured a cup of wine, and thought about what Aritê had told them about how she had come to live in the desert. Finally he rubbed one hand across his close-cropped hair and then down across his face with a sigh. He still didn’t know what it meant for him to see these things. Maybe he should go to Aritê or Markos, but he couldn’t think of any excuse he could possibly use for leaving the house now, not with all the upheaval and chaos. Besides, Aritê might have gone back to the desert by now, having long rid the city of the demon she had come there to exorcise. The dream might be nothing, conjured by too many hours spent in church listening to liturgy. Vasilios snorted and finished off his wine before standing and heading for the bath.

R
IGHT
after the morning meal, Damianos ordered Vasilios to attend him in Panagiotis’s old office so they could start going through Panagiotis’s paperwork. Most things would go to Damianos as eldest son; they already knew that. What would go to the other two sons, if Panagiotis had made arrangements for Eudoxia before his death, and how many debts were still outstanding all remained to be seen.

Vasilios started by going through all the papers one at a time, noting down all of the people Panagiotis had owed, how much was owed, when they had been last paid, and how much had gone toward repayment.

A few hours into the work, a servant knocked on the door, causing Damianos to look up from where he’d been frowning over inventory sheets. “Yes? Speak.”

“There is a woman….” The serving boy glanced nervously between Damianos and Vasilios. “Here to see Vasilios, Master.”

Damianos blinked, then turned to look at Vasilios, who kept his eyes on the floor. “Is this woman of a well-placed family?” he asked the boy.

“I….” The boy glanced back and forth between the two of them again. “I don’t know, Master, but I don’t think so.”

Damianos’s gaze immediately dropped back to the inventory sheets, and he waved one hand at Vasilios. “Go see what she wants.”

Feeling slightly perplexed, Vasilios followed the serving boy out of the room, down the hall, and through a few courtyards to arrive at the front of the house.

Aritê was standing in the center of the front courtyard, looking exactly like she had the last time he’d seen her, from her plain undyed dalmatic and scarf to her messy braid and sandals.

“Vasilios Eleni.” She turned to fix her intense gaze upon him.

“Aritê.” He bowed to her in greeting. “What may I do for you?”

“I cannot do it.”

He stared at her and blinked several times. “What?”

“Exorcise this demon,” she told him, tone calm and matter-of-fact. “I know its name, Gyllou, an old and dangerous foe indeed. We have met each other, and I have frightened it into hiding, but one does not merely cast out such powerful creatures, one drives them into the Abyss, and while my will is strong enough, that will involve opening a door, which I cannot do.”

“So,” Vasilios asked, “what will we do?”

“Find someone who can.” Aritê looked at him as if he might be slightly stupid.

Vasilios bowed his head. “I am not sure what you wish my role in this to be?” Or why she’d come alone for that matter.
Where were Markos and Patros?

“You are gifted with
the
sight
,” Aritê said. “If God is to reveal who will open the door for me, then it will be through you.”

“Aritê, Amma.” Vasilios went to his knees then, bowing his head. “I would assist you in this in any way I am able, but the master of this house has died, and there is no way I will be able to leave to attend to anything, no matter how dire. This you must do without me.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Aritê knelt in front of him, and when she spoke, her voice was gentle. “I understand your fear,” she said. “I understand what it is like to be owned, and to feel helpless against worldly needs and powers.” She reached out and touched the back of his hand gently with what was left of hers. “My father was a cruel man, Vasilios, but he was also a rich and powerful man. He kept me locked away in his house, almost my entire life. He married and beat one woman after another, and when I refused to marry my own half brother, he cut off both of my hands so no man would want me but the one he chose. So I know what it is to live in fear.” She stood again, a smooth, practiced motion. “You do as you must, but know one day, Vasilios, you must make a choice.”

“I don’t have a choice.” He kept his eyes down and didn’t look up at her.

“Maybe not now, not yet,” she said, “but there will come a time when you will have a choice, and then you will need to choose between being the obedient eunuch or trusting in God and letting what happens, happen after that.”

She made it sound so simple. Vasilios clenched his hands against the ground as a wave of helplessness and anger washed over him. Dimly, he heard her turn and make her way back across the courtyard. The front gate swung open and then shut, and Vasilios remained kneeling on the ground for a few long minutes. Finally he stood, smoothing one hand down the front of his tunic, and then turned back to attend to Damianos in the office once more.

T
HE
next few days, Damianos and Vasilios worked through Panagiotis’s papers and started paying off Panagiotis’s outstanding debts. On the third day, the kitchen ran out of honey, and no one had the good sense to go out and get more until Eudoxia sent one of her own eunuchs to find Vasilios and ask why there had been no honey for the morning meal.

Vasilios pulled his scarf over his head and headed out. Down the hill, toward the docks, there was the market Vasilios usually frequented when he needed to buy household goods.

“A small jar today,” he told the bent, wizened woman under her red canopy selling honey out of large earthen jars. “I’ll be sending someone along later this week for a larger jar.”

She nodded, picked up a dipper, and poured honey into the jar he’d brought with him. “I heard about your master,” she said, voice cracked and wheezing, and then she shook her head. “May his soul rest in peace and a blessing on your household during these troubled times too. I’m assuming your mistress is well?”

“Yes, thank you, coping as well as can be expected,” Vasilios told her, tone polite, and she held the jar out to him.

“A follis, my dear.” She smiled at him toothlessly.

“That’s too much.” Vasilios shook his head. “Two nummus.”

She clicked her tongue at him. “A pentanummium.”

“All right.” He dug one out of the purse at his waist and handed it over to her.

“Thank you kindly.” She immediately pocketed it. “And come back anytime.”

He nodded and headed back up the street toward the house. Two soldiers passed him in full uniform, riding on horseback, a street away from Panagiotis’s villa. Vasilios watched them go by and wondered what Markos was doing now. Maybe they’d found the person Aritê needed to open the door for her. He hoped so. He hadn’t had any dreams of the creature or of anything at all for that matter, and hoped that was a good sign.

Walking up the street past the huge houses with their guarded gates, he thought about Markos, his easy smile and the way he’d touched Vasilios gently and with tenderness when Vasilios had been so exhausted and hurting. He wanted to bypass the house entirely and keep walking up the hill to Markos’s own home. Vasilios thought the guards would probably let him in, as would Phyllis, although he didn’t think she liked him. Markos might be there, Vasilios might be able to see him, to sit and talk, if briefly.