The Legions of Fire (30 page)

Corylus coughed his throat clear, then swallowed to dispose of the last of the crumbs. “Ma'am?” he said. “You say that the Hyperborean killed this tree? Nemastes, you mean?”

“Come!” she repeated in a sharper tone, patting the curb again. She pouted and said, “I don't know about their names. He and his kind hate anything that's alive.”

Her expression became petulant. Before she could repeat her command, Corylus walked toward her with the care he'd have shown if he were on point for a patrol on the east bank of the river.

Smiling again, Persica—Peaches, a name she'd probably adopted because of her hair and rosy complexion—went on. “I don't know why this one left the Band. They should all stay on the Horn, where there's nothing but themselves and the demons.”

Corylus seated himself on the woman's right, keeping the wine cup—now almost empty—in his left hand. She shifted closer and took the cup, setting it on the curb on the side opposite him, where it didn't get in her way. She snuggled closer still.

He didn't know who Persica was, but she was obviously at home in the town house and she wasn't a kitchen maid. She might be Hedia's sister, come to stay with them. Her behavior was, well, even more blatant than Hedia's.

Or
she might be Saxa's mistress. Corylus didn't know much about how nobles conducted their private lives, but he suspected that any household with Hedia in it would be conducted loosely by any standards.

“Ah, do you know why Nemastes killed the tree, ah, Persica?” Corylus asked. He didn't move from where he was sitting, but he leaned his body as much to the right as he could without being
too
obvious about it.

She put her arm around his waist. “My,” she said as he tensed. “You're hard all over, aren't you? You don't have
any
fat.”

Corylus stood up abruptly. “I was wondering about Nemastes?” he said, giving her a weak smile. He gestured to the pear. “Why he killed this tree?”

Servants would be listening to everything that was going on. Regardless of whether Persica was a senator's mistress or a senator's sister-in-law, the best thing that could result from Corylus getting involved with her would be that he'd be barred from the house immediately.

And though his father was a native-born citizen and a substantial businessman in his own right, there was a real possibility of much worse results. The gap between Corylus and the urban riffraff wasn't nearly as wide as the gap between Corylus and a senator.

Corylus grinned despite himself. Nor was he naive enough to imagine that the fact that the woman had made advances to him would have any effect, except possibly to enrage Saxa even more.

The girl pouted. “You're as cold as a Hyperborean yourself!” she said. “And anyway, he killed pear”—she didn't say “the pear”—“by accident anyway. Not that he would have cared. He was doing a divination and something went wrong.”

She looked up with a cruel grin. “Maybe his friends back on the Horn have found him,” she said. “They're pretty mad, I shouldn't wonder.”

Her pique turned to anger. Glaring at Corylus, she said, “Do you ignore me because of that little girl? Why, she'll
never
be able to do the things for you that I could!”

“Hercules!” Corylus said. “No, that's—well, I'm not interested in Alphena. Hercules! You shouldn't suggest such a thing in her own father's house!”

“Him?” sneered Persica. “Why should I care about that soft old man? Though you're not much more interesting than he is, it seems.”

That doesn't mean she's not Saxa's mistress,
Corylus thought with a grimace. In fact, given what he'd seen of the girl's personality, it was even more likely that she was.

He glanced at the sundial. He was sure that Alphena would come to find him if he wasn't in the gymnasium when he'd promised to be, but that
would be at least another ten minutes. For once the girl's presence—and the scene she would probably throw—would be welcome.

“Mercurial” seemed far too mild a word for Persica's moods. He didn't want to learn what would happen if he tried to leave the garden without a rear guard, so to speak ….

“Where did Saxa get these elephant teeth?” he said, walking carefully toward the portico on the south side of the garden. “I've never seen any so large. Or curved like this either.”

“That's more of the Hyperborean's doing,” Persica said with obvious disinterest. “He brought them here because a foreigner wouldn't be allowed in the temple they came from. He wanted them for a focus. I listened to him and the old man talk.”

Corylus touched the ivory with his fingertips. Though the tusk was faintly yellow, age hadn't begun to craze its surface. The distance between the tip, worn by digging, and the base was as much as he could span with both arms, but the length along its deep curve was much greater.

They were nothing like the tusks of the elephants he'd seen in the arena, trapped on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. Carthaginian explorers had claimed that the elephants living far to the south, beyond the great desert, were bigger—but not this big, and anyway, Corylus didn't take everything he read as true beyond question. The giant serpent that attacked Regulus in Varus's epic was described by historians also—though without the poisonous breath.

He ran his fingers along the ivory. What these reminded him of were the tusks of the shaggy elephants that he'd seen in the vision which ended with Saxa and Nemastes chanting over a brazier.

They'd seen Corylus, also. No wonder the wizard thought that the youth intended to attack him!

He turned. The girl was staring at his back with an unpleasant expression.

“Ah, Lady Persica?” he said. Even if he was overstating her rank, it was safer than making the opposite mistake. “Do you know where these teeth came from originally? That is, are they from … well, Hyperborea?”

“How would I know what there might be in Hyperborea?” Persica snapped. “But yes, I suppose they were. The wizard said something like that.”

She got up and walked into the southeast corner of the portico. Corylus was glad to see that she wasn't joining him but wary about what she
was
doing. She touched the oscillum, the disk of polished marble, there. It was in full sun. As it quivered, it threw highlights across the shaded interior.

“You find the bones of dead
animals
more interesting than me, I see,” the girl said. She didn't raise her voice, but the inflection she gave “animals” was nothing short of poisonous. “Well, would you like to see why he wanted to use them?”

She gave the oscillum a hard flip, making it spin more quickly than a breeze would have done. The reflections licking across Corylus were alternately bright and diffuse: one side of the disk was smooth, while the other bore a low relief of Priapus holding his outsized penis in both hands. The curved side scattered the sunlight more.

“Ah, yes, thank you, I would,” Corylus said. He doubted that he would learn anything useful, but perhaps there'd be something he could describe to Pandareus. Anyway, it would occupy the girl for a time; a long enough time, he hoped, for Alphena to arrive to save him.

“Stand where you are, then,” Persica said. She brushed the bottom of the oscillum to slow it, then gave the edge a tap with her finger to adjust the speed at which it rotated. “The Hyperborean used an incantation too, but he didn't understand light. None of you do.”

She sounded sourly irritated. She was obviously angry that he'd rejected her advances. But what had she expected, here in Saxa's own house?

“What should I do now?” Corylus asked quietly. In Persica's present mood, she was likely to scream at him whether he spoke or kept silence, but he was going to try to be pleasantly attentive even though he didn't expect it to work.

“Stand where you are!” the girl said. “Are you deaf as well as being a eunuch?”

The reflected light made Corylus slit his eyes to watch through his lashes. It wasn't so bright that it dazzled him, but the rhythm was beginning to be bothersome. Persica continued to tap the disk, never hard but minusculely faster each time.

Corylus was becoming dizzy. “Lady Persica—,” he said, about to end the demonstration—or at least his part in it.

Light glinted on snowfields. “Stop this!” he said.

Corylus took a step toward Persica and fell onto a stony beach. His skin prickled, and his eyes throbbed with the flashing pattern of the oscillum.
He heard the triumphant trill of the girl's laughter; then that too was gone.

Corylus was alone beside a river, facing a distant shore on which a snow-covered volcano smoked. Blocks of ice wobbled in the slow current, and in the cold white sky a seagull shrieked.

A
LPHENA STORMED INTO
the back garden. She'd left her helmet behind in the exercise yard, but she carried her shield because she hadn't bothered to unfasten the strap from the stud on her breastplate. Lenatus had chosen not to follow her.

She was furious: with Corylus, who hadn't kept their appointment, and also (though she couldn't have given a reason for it) with her stepmother. All Lenatus could tell her—or would tell her—was that he hadn't seen Master Corylus this morning and that the boy hadn't changed in the dressing room.

Alphena had caught a pair of footmen near the door to the gym before they could scatter. They had exchanged glances before one admitted hearing a maid mention that the young man was taking his breakfast to the garden, “—though I haven't seen him myself, your ladyship.”

If Corylus was here, reading a book and forgetting the time they'd set to meet, Alphena would let it pass. Well, let it pass mostly.

But in her heart she was
sure
that Corylus had gone out the back gate to meet her stepmother and go off somewhere together. Hedia was supposed to be at Father's ceremony, but Alphena knew that she could have gotten out of that with no more than a bland excuse that Saxa would never question. She was
awful
!

Corylus wasn't in the garden. Neither was Hedia, but the blond woman who sat on the well curb was even more, well, brazen. She wore a synthesis you could see through, and not so much as a girdle or bandeau under it. None of the servants should
dare
to dress like that!

“Who are you?” Alphena said, goggling. “I've never seen you before!”

“If it's any of your business, Miss Snip,” said the woman, rising to her feet as smoothly as oil flowing, “I'm Persica. And as for what you've seen or haven't, I doubt you look very hard.”

Persica smiled. She was the physical opposite of Hedia, but that expression was one Alphena had seen on her stepmother's face. It had nothing to do with humor.

“I suppose,” she went on with the same catlike softness, “it was the spell that the Hyperborean worked here that lets you see me now. Though I must say, Pirus was a stuck-up bitch but at least she wasn't an ugly little
boy
like you. I'd rather have her back.”

“Why, you—,” Alphena said. She stopped because she didn't know how to continue. Who
was
this woman?

“You're a whore, aren't you?” she said in a shrill voice. “You're just a whore that one of the servants brought in! Why, I'll have you flogged! I'll flog you myself!”

“Do you think so?” said Persica, standing hipshot and thrusting her groin out against the thin silk. “And do you think that will bring Corylus to you, little boy?”

“I don't—,” Alphena said and stopped again. “What do you know about Corylus?”

“I know you're mooning over him like a lovesick heifer.” Persica sneered. Alphena bridled, but the blond woman went on. “And I know where he's gone.”

Alphena gasped, then swallowed. She gripped the ivory hilt of her sword, though she didn't draw it from the scabbard.

“You hussy,” she said, her voice shaking. “You tell me where Corylus is this minute or I, I'll
punish
you myself.”

Persica looked at Alphena's shield where it covered the sword. She must have known what the girl's hand was doing behind it, but she curled her lip nonetheless.

“Poor little boy,” she said, walking to the portico. She touched an oscillum with two fingers of her left hand. “Well, the truth is, Corylus was here in the garden with me. Alone. And after we were done—”

Persica's smile grew broader. She obviously didn't intend to complete the thought until she'd forced Alphena to ask her again.

“Tell me where he went or I'll slap your face!” Alphena said, raising her empty right hand.

“You can't give me orders, child,” Persica said, but her smile had slipped. She stared at Alphena for a moment, rotating the hanging marble disk with gentle touches of her fingers. “I'll tell you what he might have done, though. He
might
have stood on the well curb there.”

“What?” said Alphena, looking at the coping where the other woman
had been sitting when she entered the garden. “Why would he do that? The water has weed in it; it's no good for anything but watering the plants.”

“You little fool,” Persica said contemptuously. “You ask me a question and then you tell me you already know the answer!”

Alphena didn't respond. She walked to the coping and touched it with her fingertips. The porous volcanic rock stayed rough even where it was worn.

“All right,” Alphena said, facing the woman again. “What did Corylus do then?”

“I'm telling you what he
might
have done,” Persica repeated, continuing to turn the polished disk. One side was carved with the image of a sphinx, its human face toward the viewer and one clawed forepaw raised. “That spring is older than Carce, older than mankind, even. Since the Hyperborean opened a door here into the cosmos, many other things were opened as well.”