Shadows on the Aegean (75 page)

C
HLOE WOKE UP IN THE FALLING ASH
. It was clogging her nostrils and her mouth. She coughed, then struggled up and ran for the still standing wing of the palace.
She would not be left outside like trash! She had to see Cheftu.

He’d been so still, so silent. Her burns hurt, but nothing like the agony she imagined he was suffering. Was Dion taking care
of him? The thought brought her up short, but Chloe straightened her shoulders and walked on. If he had tired of her, Cheftu
would have to tell her good-bye. His kisses had not been the kisses of a woman-weary man. She was a novice in some ways, but
she also had excellent instincts and knew Cheftu’s body and desires better than her own.

If he were gay—she’d better say homosexual or they would have another talk about joy and happiness—he would have to come right
out of the closet and confront her face-to-face. Otherwise he was hers! Bug off, Dion, she thought, marching now down the
hallways. Mimi had once told her crazy Aunt Rina, not to be confused with her twin, crazy Aunt Lina, that any woman who could
not hold her man was not worth the starch in her petticoats.

Chloe had stripped off her petticoats, but she still had Kingsley blood.

Cheftu, if he lived, wasn’t going anywhere.

Please God, let him live
.

D
EATH WAS EVERYWHERE
. People with a spectrum of wounds covered every available surface. Cheftu blinked, opening his eyes—one eye. The oil had
blinded him, he realized. But he was alive. He inhaled—the air was filled with the smell of fire and roasting flesh. He was
lying on his stomach, facing a wall. His hands were numb beneath him, and he turned his head, pushing himself upright.

Recognition and recall flooded his mind: the eruption, protecting Chloe, screaming as hot oil rained onto his back, his head,
his hand.

Blackened, misshapen things were lying on the floor beside him.

Burn victims.

I am a burn victim, he thought, looking at his hand. Blistered and broken, two useless fingers, and the other hand? Cheftu
sat on the edge of the couch, looking at his hands. He was horribly burned, huge blisters rising up on his skin. Would he
be able to practice doctoring again? Did he dare touch Chloe with these talons?

Would she want to see him? Half-blind, nearly maimed? With trembling fingers he touched his eyebrow and felt the puckers of
skin that covered the side of his head.

He stood slowly, stepping away from the couch. He ached, and blisters pulled and tightened as he moved. Aye, he’d been hurt,
but he could walk. How was Chloe?

A scream made him turn, and he saw a serf faint dead away. Nestor, stained and rumpled, his blond hair dark with ash, stepped
toward Cheftu. “By the holy bull of Apis,” he breathed. “You live?” Atenis stood behind Nestor, her gray eyes wide.

“Should I not?”

“I’m here to bathe you. You were but a mass of wounds, with little hope.”

“I still am, my friend,” Cheftu said. His throat hurt dreadfully, but his mind felt clearer than it had in many moons.

Nestor walked around Cheftu in silence. He picked up a vial from the couch; just a few drops remained in the bottom. “He did
it anyway,” Nestor whispered.

“Did what? Who? Why are you so shocked?” Atenis asked.

“Do you recognize the vial, Cheftu?” Nestor asked.

Cheftu looked at the glass vial. Of course he didn’t recognize it. Abruptly he turned to Nestor. “Wait! The—?”

“Say it, Cheftu.”

“He gave me the elixir?”

Nestor turned the vial, watching the drops fall and merge. “It would appear so.”

“The immortality elixir?”
Mon Dieu!
It was unknown, not tested! Cheftu tried to check his fear. “This cannot be. Where is Sibylla?”

Atenis laid a hand on his shoulder, “My sorrow with you, Egyptian.”

Cheftu blinked. Atenis was sorry? Realization dawned on him, but Chloe could not be dead. “Where is she?”

“She has begun her journey.” Nestor nodded his head in regret. “She seemed well enough, but she collapsed and Dion had her
laid outside with the others.”

“It was too late for a lustral bath,” Atenis whispered.

Black rage shielded what remained of Cheftu’s vision.

“You live!” Dion cried, running into the room, embracing Cheftu.

Livid, Cheftu swung at Dion’s jaw, then his gut. His fists connected with satisfying thuds, the reverberations traveling up
Cheftu’s arm. He was amazed at how good it felt to hurt the man. “You gave me the elixir?” he hissed.

“I wanted you to live. Beside me,” Dion whispered, panting. Atenis helped him up, and Cheftu smiled grimly when the chieftain
winced.

“You took my choices from me, Dion!”

“I could not let you die.”

Cheftu continued to glare at Dion, his hands clenched into fists. “Where—is—my—wife?” he asked, enunciating every word.

Dion rubbed his jaw, frowning. “I didn’t know you had a wife, Cheftu. You don’t wear a tattoo.”

Blisters on his hand stretched as Cheftu tensed. “Where is Sibylla?”

“Sibylla was your wife? She was not your equal.”

“By the gods! Are you insane, man?” Nestor shouted at Dion, stepping between them.

“Show respect, Dion,” Atenis said, pulling on Dion’s arm.

“She began her journey, Cheftu. I laid her in the ash myself.”

Cheftu didn’t step forward and break the man’s neck. Chloe was alive, and every minute spent killing Dion was a moment not
spent finding Chloe. “My wife is a warrior. An artisan. She loves with a grace and power that leaves me weak.” He stepped
back from Nestor, picked up a kilt discarded on the floor, and belted it, then threw the stone disk he’d worn around his waist
for months onto the floor. It shattered on contact. “You, Dion, are the one who is unworthy even to speak her name.”

“I have given you life!” Dion cried.

“What was that?” Nestor asked as Atenis knelt over the pieces of stone.

Cheftu turned at the doorway. “I am sure my wife will thank you for my life, for I will spend it with her.” He looked at Nestor.
“Get your cloak and come with me. Now.”

“He is my clansman and brother, Cheftu.”

Atenis was gathering up the shards of stone, stained with Cheftu’s blood. “What was this, Spiralmaster?”

Cheftu looked from one face to the other. “The recipe for the elixir. Spiralmaster gave it to me. There will be no more grasping
at godhood.”

It was utterly silent.

Cheftu stumbled through the palace to the gardens. It was impossible to discern whether it was night or day. Everything was
gray. Looking southeast, he saw naught but destruction; looking back to the section of the palace he had just left, it hardly
seemed the world had rocked and regurgitated.

“They were laid there,” Nestor said, pointing to ash-covered lumps. He didn’t meet Cheftu’s glance, but the fact that Nestor
had accompanied him needed no words. Cheftu knelt and felt beneath the warm coating of ash, trying to touch any limb that
seemed familiar.

The bodies were closely lined up, but there were a few gaps. Nestor dug on the other side. “Cheftu,” he said into the stillness,
“come see this.’

Footsteps led away, hidden by dustings of ash. Big feet.

Grâce à Dieu!

J
UST AS
C
HLOE HAD BEEN READY
to break into a chorus of “Stand By Your Man,” she heard a voice in the darkness. Though the accent, even the language, was
different, the tone was the same. A voice that pleaded, terrified because the owner’s world had crashed, collapsed, fallen
around her ears. The same cry that had gotten her into a mess of trouble in ancient Egypt.

A voice asking her for help.

More specifically, asking Sibylla for help.

Before Chloe had the option of literally playing dead, a chorus joined it.

“Mistress Sibylla! Praise Kela!”

“I knew you were right, mistress, I told my husband I did, but he never did listen to me—”

“Help us, lady! Please!”

There were dozens of them, asking for help. She, after all, had predicted this collapse. Fire and water—oh, aye, those had
been her words. They wanted to leave; there was no way out.

Well, there was one way.

Chloe blinked in the night like darkness. She knew the passage now, was that the point? The Labyrinth was easy—she should
have figured it out before. Daedelus had constructed it, and the man knew one symbol. The Greek key. She’d seen it on his
clothes in Knossos; it was the only piece of jewelry he wore. She obviously hadn’t been thinking clearly. One Greek key depthwise,
three widthwise. That was the Labyrinth. Would the boat below hold this motley crew?

Their voices grew louder, yammering at her, pleading with her. “I will take you!” she said. “But it is not an easy journey.
We travel through Hades itself.”

Silence.

One brave soul spoke. “With you we will get through. Left here we will die.”

“Are the Golden fleeing, mistress?”

I really don’t know, Chloe thought. But Cheftu is not leaving with Dion, that I can promise you. “If we are going, we need
to go,” she said.

As if they were first-graders on a class trip, Chloe paired them up, swiping torches as they walked through the deserted palace.
Instructing them to be quick and quiet, she led them down the steps.
Please let the boat be there. Please let everyone fit!
She hardly wanted to exercise values clarification by deciding who stayed and who fled.

The first complaints came when they actually saw the lintel marked Hades. Chloe wiped her brow and led on. The starting point
was the scariest, to her, anyway. Her arms braced on the ledge, her feet flailing for the shallow steps of the ladder, she
stopped sweating only when she felt her toes touch, then grab.

After crawling a ways down, she coaxed the first few through the tunnel, then scampered farther below, listening to them talk
to each other. Great, building teamwork! They passed the first level, then reached the second. Chloe stuck her head in the
horizontal passageway, sniffed; wrong one. Down again. The trek was very recognizable now.

She wasn’t going to tell them about the chute. She’d just step and they’d follow.