Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (40 page)

A moment later, she found she was almost right. Both the orchard and wall ended at the guest cottage, but no gate lay in view. The wall wasn’t much taller than her, and its blocks provided moderately helpful steps, but she hadn’t scaled a wall in decades.

She tossed Kaleb’s key over first. It landed with a soft crunch in dead leaves.

Horses’ whinnies reverberated between structures somewhere a few buildings over, back toward the road into the city. As she reached the wall’s wide top, the horses’ clamor was replaced by clopping hooves and the rattles and clanks of one or more chariots, but then abruptly stopped.

She glanced about her in search of onlookers in the darkness, but found none.

Nonetheless, she rolled off the wall, crashing down into the soft leaf pile. With her hands wrapped once more in her stola, she swept around the leaves in search of the buried key.

“Who’s there?!” called a gruff, old man’s voice, and Patra spotted him on a balcony ahead.

She hadn’t entered the Caesarium, but one of the many wealthy estates speckled throughout the area. She guessed he was one of the consuls in the magistracy, and would no doubt recognize him given a closer look. He must have been watching the parade when she crunched into his garden. Leaning over his balustrade, he inspected the courtyard, but even if he saw her, he wouldn’t be able to recognize her in the dark. Nevertheless, just one block away, it sounded as though something had stalled the Emperor’s chariot ride out to his legions.

“I hear you there,” the resident said. “If you’ve come for spoils, you’ve come to the wrong quarter. Back to the slums with you before I summon the entire Army!”

Definitely a consul.

Patra searched the courtyard for a gate or other accessible exit away from the house. Her only quick option seemed to be a half-wall dividing the outlying garden from a veranda area. The half-wall intersected the main wall—offering a much easier ascent than her prior effort—leading directly to a shoulder-width gap between two adjacent structures.

Wrapping Kaleb’s key back in her stola, she left the noisy leaf bed (after two final crunching steps), scurrying to the low wall.

“I see you there!” She must have appeared as some shadowy creature by the new tremble in his voice. “I see you right there! I see you! Go! Just go!”

Patra vaulted herself up the two wall tiers, threw her legs over the top, and paused. The space between the small structures was as black as the Library’s secret tunnels. She was as likely to land on piles of twisted metal as much as discarded blankets.

Unwilling to leave it to fate, she clinched the key under one arm, and pressed her feet and arms against both walls, slowing her descent. Not as bad as she’d feared, but a splintery board had been shoved into the small space, and tore her stola as it scraped up one of her legs. The sting lasted only an instant, however, because some hidden animal bustled about in the blackness, only a step ahead of her.

Was it a city dog? A large cat?

Its head turned to her, and froze—the minutest white glow dotting each eyeball. Reason preempted her instinct to shout it away. If it lunged for her, she could strike it with the key’s stone end. Rather than waiting, she thought to thrust a desperate kick to its backside, when a faint aroma curled into her nostrils.

She inhaled … deeper.

A pungent odor she generally associated with Coptic men pervaded the dark gap—stale though, as that of old clothes versus fresh sweat—but it was the unique scent it carried with it that sent her thoughts asunder.

It was the smell of … “Kaleb?” she whispered.

“By the grace!” he choked. “Patra!”

Each rushed forward, colliding in the tight gap, and their arms became crazed serpents embracing every part of the other, as if each strip of the other’s back must be held for validation. He grasped her shoulders and neck. She seized his jaw and cheeks, and fell into him once more, planting her face in his neck. There, she found, his scent dwelt most prominently, and his borrowed peasant’s rags could hardly infringe.

“You made it out!” he whispered right beside her ear. His breath warmed her entire body. “Philip? Others?”

She didn’t want to begin an exchange just yet, needing to live in this a moment longer. She nuzzled into his neck, stroked his cropped-off hair, caressed his face. A vague observation that his beard was gone.

“Alive, alive, alive …” she droned, and then desperately needed to say more. She clutched his head beneath the ears, holding his face right before hers. “I love you, Kaleb,” she said quietly. “Kaleb, I love you.”

“I love you, too, Patra,” he whispered, worried they might be heard. He tried to glance back, but she held him fast. His hands wrapped around her wrists. “You know I do.”

“No. Beyond that,” she said, breathless. “You’re everything to me. I can’t live without you. You’re everything. I love you.”

Wind whistled softly into his nostrils as he inhaled. She didn’t care if he said something dismissive, or grateful, or generic, or something about his wife. There was no need for promises of some glorious, imaginary future together. In this moment, she’d simply felt compelled to say those words to his face, and to continue holding him. But he was hiding nothing from her as he had in the past. His true feelings surged through her hands and into her head, and he pulled her to his lips.

* * *

Leaning against the opposing walls near the end of the building gap, Patra and Kaleb’s arms interlocked beneath each other’s sleeves.

Closer to the road, dim starlight shone on Kaleb’s face from a patch of open sky. “You’re certain Philip got out of the city?”

Patra’s thumbs stroked his forearms. “Not absolutely, but fairly.”

“And the smoke was from the Library? Not the halls?”

“Fairly certain.”

Kaleb sighed and nodded and peered back toward the wall at the end of the space. “I thought that official was calling to
me
. Saying he could see me somehow. I thought the Emperor would hear and send legionaries. His convoy was stopped just beyond the stables there.” He nodded to the long building across the road.

“Who was the man at the docks? Everyone thinks you went to the palace to turn yourself in. That you sacrificed yourself—for no real benefit, I’ll add. I couldn’t believe you would be so stupid. I was utterly lost.”

“I see that. I’m so sorry. And no, I could never. I thought you’d know, I’m far too much of a coward. What they did to that man …” He stared off in a haze.

“Who was he?”

“A Kush farmer. His land was seized by the magistracy last month. He’d come to me offering himself into slavery if I’d support his family.
Eleven
children. I sent for him yesterday, offered his family half my wealth and all of my titles. He didn’t hesitate a second, even after I explained there’d likely be unimaginable torture. He asked to swap clothing at once, only wishing to know when I’d deliver on my end of the bargain. I told him to spend time with his family, meet me again today. I trimmed his beard to my way, shaved off mine, and I had him do this to my hair.” His gaze drifted again, toward the wharf. “I watched it all from this spot.”

Patra felt his pain and remorse. She hazily grieved for the dead man and his family, but only Kaleb mattered at this moment. Only his warm skin and beating heart and that face. “You look like Philip now.”

Kaleb stared at her like a riddle, then emerged from the fog in his head.

He eyed his rags, smiling weakly. “He’d take offense.”

“Your key!” Patra shuffled deeper into the gap and probed the ground with her sandal. She found it near the wall and bent down.

“Don’t touch it!” Kaleb whispered behind her.

“I’m not.” She picked it up with her stola, and turned back to him.

“I don’t want it,” he hushed. “I
can’t
have it … And you shouldn’t either. Get rid of it.”

“I will not.” She touched his arm again. “Now … What’s next?”

“I commissioned a porter to meet me here with a large chest, or some sort of crate requiring multiple carriers. He’s late.”

Patra glanced out to the road. “How late?”

“Hours. He was supposed to arrive at sundown. And no, I didn’t pay him first. I provided a small stipend. And yes, he may have recognized me, and yes, he may have sought a larger pay-off by turning me in.”

“And perhaps met with laughter and discipline for his attempted fraud. They’ve already killed Prince Kaleb, have they not?”

He nodded. They stood there a moment, thinking.

Kaleb gripped her arm. “Kiss me again.”

“Rich man!” called a hushed voice in rough Greek.

They looked up. No one stood in view outside the space.

“Rich man! You still inside?”

Muted knocking on thick wood.

Kaleb slid past her. “That’s him.” He poked his head out the gap. He whispered, “What are you doing? Where have you been?”

“Rich man! You said you be in here.”

“Not in there. In
here
. It doesn’t matter. Where’s the load?”

The unseen voice wore a constant smile with many missing teeth. Even having only heard the voice, Patra didn’t trust him. “We have around that side … Over there.”

“We?” Kaleb whispered, irritated. “Who’s ‘we’?”

A dramatic singsong—the negotiator’s hymn: “Rich maaan … How I bring load for many
people
… with no many
people
?”

“I didn’t say multiple—Ah. Forget it. It works, actually. My apologies for doubting you.” Kaleb stepped out of the gap, and Patra peeked out behind him, seeing the porter’s face for the first time. Kaleb clapped his back warmly. “You tell anyone else about me?”

Astonished innocence. “Anybody
else
? What anybody
else
?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“You rich man!”

Kaleb turned back to Patra and said in Latin, “I’d have never guessed in a hundred years, but he’s telling the truth. Let’s go.”

At the Caesarium’s front corner, three other men loitered by a large, sealed crate resting upon two carrying staves.

As they approached, Kaleb said, “We’ll only need one of them. The others can go.”

The dismissed two complained in Coptic as they shuffled off, demanding to still be paid. The fast-talker told them they’d discuss it later.

Kaleb positioned himself at one of the front ends, motioning Patra to take up the other end of the staff behind him. All four knelt and gripped their respective pole positions.

“What’s in the crate?” Patra asked before lifting.

“Heavy thing!” the porter beamed, and then counted down, “Shomunt, sno, wah!” The crate rose with minimal effort—likely only the weight of the crate itself and the staves. The group paused at waist height, then he called, “Eetsweh!” and they brought the poles to their shoulders. “Pah-awtz!”

They commenced walking toward the Canopic Road, followed the two turns before the road widened, and offered a direct view of the amassed Army.

“Turn before the Canopic,” Patra said in Coptic.

“Ah, like a true Egyptian!” the porter said with delight. “Like an Egyptian priest, most comparable, I think.” As they reached the last east-west road before the Canopic, he ordered, “To the right!”

Two blocks later, the thick smoke from the Library came into view, and the voice of the Emperor or some other official or general broadcasted an impassioned speech.

“Steer clear of them,” Kaleb murmured, and Patra stuck her head out to see past him. “Steer wide … and slower.”

Files of legionaries extended all the way from the main thoroughfare to this parallel road, their unit’s flag and torch-bearing end rank blocking half the intersection. Patra now regretted the arbitrary choice to carry the left staff. If any soldiers glanced back at them, both she and Kaleb would be in full view. Thankfully, at the moment, neither of them stood out as particularly affluent. Her hair was in tangles, and she imagined her face must be thoroughly smudged with assorted filth.

“…and despite strategic setbacks, it was the faith, skill, and perseverance of all of
you
who won not a narrow victory, but a decisive one!” Cheers from the throngs as Kaleb and the porter led them in a wide arc behind the soldiers. “I needn’t tell you that this woman, despite the hindrances inherent in the sex, is no woman in the Roman sense. Is she
Warrior Queen
? I leave that to her vanquishers to determine …” Laughter from the crowd. Dismayed, Patra tried to steal a glance to the Musaeum stairs. “But there’s no denying her army fought as true warriors, and our fallen …”

Passing the last file, Patra glanced once more, catching a glimpse of not just Zenobia—decrowned and wrists bound, standing on the highest steps, close to the landing—but Wahbi, too, at her side. The speaker in front of them wasn’t Antonius, but some general. Antonius, in his wolf mask and helmet, sat upon a gilded throne above them all in the Musaeum’s front archway, his wide-spread feet resting upon the heads of two lion skins.

“Your Emperor recognizes the bloodline of this boy, and does not fault him for the acts of his petulant mother…”

“You, porter!” a nearby Centurion called as they left the intersection.

“Rotate right,” Patra whispered, and the others complied, bringing the crate around so their Egyptian friend could respond.

“Yes to the soldier, respectfully,” the porter said with his usual pleasantness.

“Come back here,” the Centurion barked. Someone whistled from up the road, and the Centurion motioned to hold, tilting his spear toward the crate-carrying group. “What’s that you’re carrying there? And where are you from? All of you.”

“Rhakotis is my home, and all of our home,” the porter replied, and Patra felt the weight shift as he bowed.

The Centurion sauntered closer, right up to Kaleb, and Patra’s gut tangled up all over again. “I want to hear
him
say where he’s from.”

Kaleb’s skin tone was essentially the same as any native Egyptian, so she didn’t understand why he was being singled out. She wanted to break out ranting at the Centurion in Coptic as she’d seen from upset women on many occasions, but it could just as easily raise suspicions further, rather than help.