Like Fire Through Bone (7 page)

Vasilios felt a flutter of unease in his stomach at the idea of telling Panagiotis even a half-truth. He’d never lied to his master about anything before, but he remembered the oath of silence Markos had spoken of, and he squared his shoulders.

“And Vasilios”—Markos took his arm as Vasilios passed him on his way to the door—“remember what I said about coming to me immediately if you have another dream.”

Vasilios nodded, trying to ignore the warm weight of Markos’s hand on his upper arm. “As you wish.” He inclined his head. “May God bless your house, my lord General Markos.”

“I’m not going to be able to convince you to call me Markos without the General or my lord, am I?” Markos let go of Vasilios’s arm with a small smile and rubbed his hand across his hair, fluffing his hair in a completely different direction this time.

Vasilios had to look away to keep from smiling. “No, my lord General Markos.”

“God bless your house as well, Vasilios Eleni,” Markos said, humor in his voice but also a little bit of sadness. Vasilios bowed again and turned back to pull the door open and let himself into the hall.

W
HEN
Vasilios arrived back at Panagiotis’s house, he found to his relief that Panagiotis hadn’t asked for him while he’d been away. The kitchen, however, was in an uproar over one of the serving women who had not gone to market and purchased the fruit for the morning meal.

Vasilios could hear the servants arguing all the way down the hall as he headed for the kitchen, although the sound stilled when he walked in.

“You, boys.” Holding up a pouch of coins, Vasilios pointed to two serving boys. “Run to market and buy more fruit and sesame seeds. The concubines at least will want fruit with their tea, if there was none for breakfast.” He gave the boys his most formidable glare. “If either of you tarry or do not bring back the proper amount of coins, I will see you severely punished for it, you understand?”

“Yes, Vasilios.” They both bowed and then ran.

“Now.” He turned, his arms folded over his chest as he frowned at the entire kitchen staff. “Who decided because I was not there you did not need to do your duties?”

Everyone looked at the ground, some of the young men frowning and muttering darkly.

“Obedience, doing your duty whether there is someone there to force you to or not, is the way that you uphold the good name of your house and get into your master’s good graces,” he said, shaking his head.

“Everyone’s evening meal will be less today, and no one from the kitchen staff will be drinking wine for a week. You earn these things.” He shook his head again. “I know all of you think I can do whatever I want without working for it. That Panagiotis doesn’t expect me to work for anything and will still give me whatever I want. Maybe you think I got the privileges I have because I was on my back with my legs open?”

He looked directly at the young men who stood glaring at him from behind the women. He glared right back.

“Everyone earns what they have, including me. Everything I have is because I do my duty and more, without being asked, without being threatened or disciplined. And those of you who sneer about the jewels or concubines and think what they do is easy, know that they work hard for the privileges they have, and harder than you have worked today.” He kept right on glaring at the young men, and one of them finally dropped his gaze. “A jewel who refuses to serve his master in bed gets beaten with a switch, not merely less wine for a week. I am being lenient. Be grateful and work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Everyone muttered unhappily and shuffled their feet.

“What?” Vasilios snapped.

“Yes, Vasilios,” they all chorused, and he nodded curtly, then turned and walked out of the kitchen.

“I’m going to need a guard posted on the servants’ wine stores,” he told Bröndulfr when he found him talking to the guards of the women’s quarters. “The kitchen staff aren’t allowed to have any for a week.”

Bröndulfr nodded and then gave him a strange look. “Are you all right?”

Vasilios scrubbed one hand across his face. “Yes, just tired.”

“Kuo told me when he came off duty that you went to General Markos’s house early this morning.” Bröndulfr frowned, and Vasilios waved a hand dismissively.

“I can’t—it was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Bröndulfr gave him another dubious look. “You might want to change. I’ve never seen you wear clothes that clash, and if I noticed, then I’m sure he’ll notice too.”

Vasilios nodded and headed up to his room to change. He was tired, he thought, but he couldn’t imagine wanting to sleep, not if he was going to dream. Someone had put a tray of food in his room, but Vasilios couldn’t eat it. He changed into a fresh ankle-length tunic and picked out a new scarf and redraped it around his shoulders. After shuffling through the papers on his desk, he swore as he realized he’d meant to take papers to Damianos about a potential buyer for their silk shipment. He collected the papers, pulled his scarf over his head, and headed for the door.

“A
RE
you all right?” Damianos asked, peering across his desk at Vasilios, who jerked a little where he knelt on the floor.

“I am fine, Master Damianos.”

“Are you ill? You’ve seemed run-down all day.”

Vasilios kept his expression blank. He’d been kneeling here as Damianos had gone over the papers he’d brought and then drafted a possible contract, all of which had taken several hours.

“I’m fine. I just did not sleep well last night.” He bowed. “I will endeavor to be more attentive.”

“Good.” Damianos went back to the contract he was drafting. “You should get more sleep. We can’t have you drifting off all day long.”

Vasilios inclined his head but stayed silent.

“Also, I’m not sure what father would do if you weren’t in top form.” Damianos smiled.

Vasilios simply concentrated on keeping his eyes open and remaining upright.

“Here, let me read this clause to you.”

Vasilios looked straight ahead and counted backward from fifty as Damianos’s voice droned through the clause he’d already rewritten twice.

“Oh no, I’m going to want to word that differently.” He began scratching out the line, and Vasilios tried to think of anything besides the fact that the muscles in his legs were on the verge of cramping and all he wanted to do was go to sleep. It would be a long time before he got to sleep. Damianos would most certainly make him stay until the contract was complete, and then there was the evening meal to attend to, and Panagiotis might want him for something afterward.

His mind skittered back to thoughts of that morning, and Vasilios wondered what Markos was doing and what the running of his household was like. He’d met the two soldiers and the one servant, Phyllis. From the street, the house looked quite small, as if it would be easily managed with one or two people tending to it.

“All right,” Damianos said. “I’m going to read it again.”

Vasilios clenched his hands in front of him hard enough that his nails cut into his palms. “As you wish,” he said, keeping his eyes down and his voice soft and completely devoid of emotion.

By the time he dragged himself back to Panagiotis’s house, the kitchens bustled with preparations for the evening meal, overseen by Felicity, one of Eudoxia’s serving women.

“You should go rest,” she said as soon as she saw him. “You look exhausted, and I can handle things here. I’ll have some food sent up for you.”

He nodded, not even trying to argue, and turned to leave. “If our master wants me, send someone.”

Once inside his own room, he collapsed on the couch. He massaged the muscles in his legs and the joints of his knees, both of which had gone stiff. “You’re getting old,” he told himself with a sigh. It was true. If he’d wed and had a son instead of going to war, that child would have reached manhood several years ago and would probably be married with his own son by now.

Vasilios shook his head, not liking to dwell on what hadn’t happened. He stood and stretched until his back cracked and popped.

A knock came at the door, and Vasilios turned to see a servant standing in the doorway.

“I’m sorry, but the master wants to see you,” the servant said. “He wants you to go over the work you and Damianos did on the silk buyer’s contract.”

Vasilios nodded and took a deep breath, then dropped into that place where how tired and ill he was feeling didn’t matter.

“Thank you. I’ll go attend to our master, then.”

Over the last few weeks, Panagiotis’s health had worsened further. Vasilios needed to stop several times in his report while Panagiotis coughed into his linen handkerchief until he spat blood. He started nodding off halfway through Vasilios’s recitation of the terms of their final draft of the contract.

Eudoxia, with her embroidery in her lap, had been sitting on the second couch in the room that was set at a right angle to the one on which Panagiotis reclined.

“Thank you, Vasilios,” she said when Panagiotis began to snore. “I think you can retire now, and I’ll have some of my own eunuchs see my husband to his room.” Vasilios stood from where he’d been kneeling and bowed to her. “Thank you, Mistress.”

“And get some sleep,” she told him. “You look like Damianos worked you to the bone today. Did he have you kneeling the whole time on that tile floor in his office?”

Vasilios was torn between not wanting to imply Damianos had done something wrong and not wanting to ignore a direct question from Eudoxia. He finally bit his lip and nodded a little.

Eudoxia shook her head. “I’ve told him to get a rug. It just doesn’t occur to him that his eunuchs, not to mention you, are going to have to be kneeling on it. But I suppose being aware of these things and thinking ahead comes with the experience of age.” She turned back to Panagiotis, reached forward, pulled from his hand the square of linen he still clutched, and used it to dab at the corners of his mouth. “My women tell me that there was quite a commotion in the kitchen this morning.”

Vasilios wanted to sigh deeply, but instead looked down at the floor. “I had to go to General Markos’s house early this morning, and some of the kitchen staff decided because I was not there, they were not going to run to you or one of your women to ask for permission to go to market and instead didn’t go to market at all. I gave them a talking to when I got back and cut off their wine shares for a week.”

Eudoxia frowned at that. “What did General Markos want?”

Vasilios’s heart began beating so fast he was afraid she might be able to hear it, and he swallowed dryly. “He wanted to tell me that he’d read over the papers I had delivered to him, and wanted us to put an offer on the land parcel for him.” To his great relief Eudoxia nodded.

“You may go.”

Without a second glance, Vasilios bowed again, ducked out of the room, and headed toward his own. When he got there, he found someone kind had left him a tray of food from the evening meal. He drank some wine and ate a little cheese and bread, but his stomach heaved and almost rebelled at the mere smell of the meat on the tray.

Finally he pulled off his clothes, discarded them on the floor, and slid into bed. He never slept naked or left costly clothes on the floor, but this time he was too tired to care. For a long time after he’d blown out the lamp, he stared unseeingly at the ceiling. He was tired, it had been a long, emotionally challenging day, and he hadn’t slept well for several nights. He was also terrified that if he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, he would have the dreams again. As he lay there, his mind began to present him with every image, every horrible, sickening detail of the three dreams. His hands shook, and Vasilios wondered if he’d do his eyes harm by staring fixedly at the ceiling above his bed without blinking.

Eventually, though, his mind lost the fight against his body, and he did sleep. Luckily he did not dream.

T
HE
message from Markos came several days later, while Vasilios was overseeing the sorting and storing of a new batch of linen that Eudoxia had ordered for the women’s quarter. Some of the linen would be made into pillows, curtains, and other household items, and part would be made into new tunics, trousers, and drapes for the concubines and their daughters.

“A message from General Markos’s household for you, Vasilios.” One of the concubines’ eunuchs bowed deeply to him. Vasilios turned away from where another eunuch was holding up each piece of linen and then putting it into the household or garment pile, depending on what Vasilios instructed.

“Oh yes? Give it here.” He held out the hand not holding the wax tablet with the inventory list on it.

With another little bow, the eunuch handed him a folded piece of paper. Taking the paper, Vasilios felt a twinge of guilt over the fact that after he’d had the young eunuch lashed, most of the eunuchs acted as if they were afraid of him.

He unfolded the paper.

Requesting your presence a quarter past the evening meal. I
have already sent word to Panagiotis.