Air and Darkness Read online

  Alphena turned, wheezing as she gulped in air. Instead of being a servant, the intruder was Marcus Pulto, Corylus’ man.

  Corylus is here!

  “Your Ladyship,” Pulto said with a nod as he closed the door behind him. “I can leave if you’d rather. I’m just here to chat with Marcus Lenatus while my master’s in with the senator.”

  While the door was open, Alphena had seen at least a dozen servants crowding the hallway beyond. Saxa had more than two hundred servants in this town house. Many of them had nothing to do most of the time and some never had anything to do, so anything unusual drew a crowd.

  In this case they were probably hoping to hear Lady Alphena screaming abuse at the fellow who had interrupted her sword training. Not long ago they would have gotten their wish, but Alphena had recently begun to moderate her temper. The change surprised her even more than it did those around her.

  Alphena had grown up angry and frustrated because she wasn’t allowed to do certain things: she was a girl in a world ruled by men. Her brother could learn literature and public speaking in classes, then prosecute or defend others in court, or he could enter the army as a general’s aide and proceed to command legions and even armies.

  In fact, Varus had no interest in either of those careers. Instead he wanted to read books and discuss their ridiculous contents with scholars as addled as he was, an activity open to the poorest freedman in the Republic.

  Alphena declared that she wanted to become a gladiator. Not even Saxa was so easygoing that he would permit his daughter to debase herself in a profession filled by slaves and criminals, but Alphena proceeded stubbornly to practice swordsmanship in the private gymnasium, wearing the full armor of a soldier of Carce.

  Even so, she wasn’t allowed to spar with a human opponent. Instead she hammered a stake with her weighted practice sword. Lenatus critiqued her form and demonstrated technique, but Saxa had warned him that he would be executed if he allowed Alphena to bully him into engaging her directly.

  The trainer was a free citizen of Carce; no one had the right to execute him without trial. That said, neither Lenatus nor Alphena herself had any doubt that Saxa would do exactly what he threatened, nor that the wealthy senator would escape any retribution for his action. The authority of a father over his offspring was one of the most revered customs of ancient Carce.

  The rule against Alphena sparring had been loosened recently. Alphena and her sword had stood between the world and monsters that would have destroyed the world, and Hedia had watched.

  “Didn’t know you were supposed to be doing that,” Pulto said mildly, making a brief gesture with his left hand that might have been meant to indicate the gear in which his friend was sparring.

  “Oh, it’s all right, Pulto,” Alphena said. “For Lenatus to fence with me, I mean.”

  “I never had a problem with it, Your Ladyship,” Pulto said in the same falsely calm voice. He looked back to Lenatus and said, “You remember Tiburinus? Had the Third Century back when the Old Man had the Fourth?”

  Alphena frowned. The change of subject made as little sense to her as one of her brother’s declamations would have. She set her practice sword in the rack, wondering if she should unstrap her shield as well.

  “Yeah,” said Lenatus. “We’re none of us going to forget that soon, are we?”

  “We all thought Tiburinus was screwing the maid of the Legate’s wife, Your Ladyship,” Pulto said, turning to Alphena again. “Pardon the language.”

  “Go ahead,” Alphena said. She had started to understand where this was going.

  “Thing is, it wasn’t the maid but her mistress that he was seeing,” Pulto said. “Which the Legate figured out too. I was on headquarters guard that night, but I guess you could hear the shouting in the cantonment outside the walls. After that, Tiburinus manned a one-man listening post on the other side of the river until he deserted.”

  “Tiburinus stuck it out a month,” Lenatus said, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “I guess he hoped the Legate would calm down eventually.”

  Pulto smiled at the recollection. He said, “He hopped it when he heard there was going to be a sweep into Free Germany. He knew when that happened he was going to be sleeping outside the palisades of the marching camps.”

  “But this”—Lenatus tapped his shield boss with the flat of his sword, making a clack instead of the clang of steel—“is straight. The senator called me into his office and told me he was letting Lady Alphena”—he nodded toward her—“spar now. Only not with Corylus, that’s the only off-limits. It nigh knocked me on my ass to hear him say that.”

  “My mother thought there should be a change,” Alphena said, speaking precisely and a little louder than she would have needed to. She could feel herself blushing, but part of her hoped that if she pretended that it wasn’t happening neither of the men would notice. “She talked to Father, and he agreed.”

  Pulto chuckled. “I don’t guess there’s many people who don’t agree with Lady Hedia when she makes up her mind to do something. Men, anyhow.”

  “I don’t have much luck arguing with her, either,” Alphena said. She suddenly smiled.

  “Partly,” she blurted, “because I see that she’s right when I really listen and think about it.”

  Alphena was treating these two commoners as equals. That would horrify and amaze virtually any noble or member of a noble household; Agrippinus would be furious if he heard the discussion.

  But another way of looking at it was that these two veterans were treating a sixteen-year-old girl as an equal. Alphena had earned their respect because of what they had observed and because people whom they respected, Hedia and Corylus, respected her.

  “Say, you couldn’t promote a jar of wine, could you?” Pulto said, speaking to his friend but looking sidelong at Alphena.

  “Well, we just got started here…?” Lenatus said, also eying Alphena.

  She took the hint, but as she opened her mouth to end the session Pulto said, “Say, go ahead. Now that I think about it, I’d like to see this for myself. If that’s all right?”

  Instead of speaking, Alphena picked up her sword and faced the trainer again. She was breathing normally again after the break.

  Lenatus cinched the strap of his shield tighter to the stud over his left shoulder; he’d loosened it to rest the bottom of the shield on the ground while they talked. Without warning he thrust for Alphena’s right shoulder.

  She circled back and left as usual, letting the blade barely tick the top of her body armor. Lenatus followed her, one step and then two. His shield lagged a hair farther out of position at each step.

  Alphena retreated a fourth step and then, as Lenatus advanced, thrust for the point of his right hip. Lenatus jumped away, but he stumbled and dropped to his knee to keep from sprawling on his back.

  “Buggering Venus!” the trainer shouted.

  Alphena backed away. She bent forward so that she could fill her lungs more easily. She had gotten solidly home that time. And he didn’t touch me! she thought.

  “That the best you can do, Marcus?” Pulto said, leaning against the gymnasium’s shaded wall.

  “You think you can do better?” Lenatus said. He straightened carefully, rubbing his hip with the pommel of his sword. “She’s bloody good, I tell you.”

  “That suit you, Your Ladyship?” Pulto said over his shoulder as he walked to the racks of equipment.

  “Yes,” Alphena said, trying not to snarl. She had almost objected that she was winded from the bout with Lenatus, but Pulto was an old man and clearly out of shape. Besides, that would have been whining.

  Pulto took down the wooden equivalent of a long cavalryman’s sword and small buckler whose twin handles he gripped together in his left hand. He turned to face Alphena.

  “I’ll wait for you to get the rest of your armor on,” she said, puzzled.

  “I got the web of this helmet adjusted for me,” said Lenatus, holding it out to his friend. “It oughta f
it you unless yours has been swelling since you left the Alaudae.”

  “I’m all right,” Pulto said, smiling toward Lenatus. “We’ll pretend I’m a German, though their crappy shields are generally bigger’n this.”

  He grinned broadly at Alphena. “I’m ready, girlie.”

  It was the tone more than the words that drove Alphena to a sudden rush behind her upraised shield. Even as she started to move, she realized that Pulto hadn’t been carelessly relaxed the way she had thought.

  He took the shock of her heavy shield on his buckler without any more give than a fortress wall. An instant later, something banged into the back of Alphena’s head, knocking her helmet off and spilling her sideways in the sawdust.

  Alphena rose to her knees with difficulty, tangled with her equipment. Besides the shoulder strap, her left forearm was through the double staples on the back of the shield, a part cylinder of laminated birch two inches thick. It was heavy and awkward when she was in the best of shape; now she was sick to her stomach and her eyes weren’t right.

  Her helmet had bounced off the wall and now rocked beside her. The bronze had a deep dimple just behind the left earpiece.

  Her fury scoured away the dizziness. Alphena jumped to her feet and shouted, “Lenatus, you hit me from behind! I’ll have you crucified for this!”

  “Peace, Your Ladyship!” the trainer said in surprise. He had been bending toward her but jerked upright.

  “He did not,” said Pulto, stepping between Lenatus and his furious mistress. “I don’t need help to larrup a recruit who leaves herself as open as you did. Watch!”

  “I wasn’t open!” Alphena said, but in a calmer voice. “I was behind my shield!”

  “Watch!” Pulto repeated. He turned to the heavy post that Alphena had dented with over a year of blows with a practice sword. Pulto’s arm swung wide as he leaned forward. The tip of his long blade moved sideways and cracked the top of the post from behind.

  Pulto straightened and looked at her. “You were behind your shield,” he said. “So you weren’t watching me. Got it?”

  “Yes,” said Alphena. She had dropped her sword when she went down, so her right hand was free to unbuckle her shield strap. “Master Lenatus, I apologize. I’m a fool.”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, hoping that she wasn’t crying or that, anyway, the tears would be mistaken for sweat. Her whole body was trembling. As soon as she had shrugged her arm out of the shield loops, she sat heavily on the bench built into the back wall.

  “Don’t move,” Pulto said. Alphena felt his fingers probing her hair. He was extremely gentle, so she wasn’t expecting the sudden jolt of pain when his finger moved slightly. She gasped and jerked her head forward.

  Lenatus rose from the cabinet he had opened, holding two faience mugs and a pear-shaped glass jug. He unstoppered the wine and poured some into the mug that he offered to Alphena.

  “She’s all right,” Pulto said as he stepped away. He was speaking to Lenatus. “Look, Your Ladyship, I’m sorry I caught you so hard, but I figured you had to learn.”

  “I don’t feel all right,” Alphena muttered. She drank, spluttering as some of the wine went down the wrong throat.

  “You want some water with that?” Lenatus said. “I didn’t think…”

  Then he said, “Your Ladyship, it’s my fault. You’re not a recruit, and we shouldn’t have treated you like one.”

  “If anybody’s going to the cross for this one, it’s me!” Pulto growled. “I did it and I’ll take the punishment.”

  “Stop it, both of you!” Alphena said. “Nobody did wrong except me. I thought I was good and I wasn’t. If anybody asks, I slipped when I was practicing on the post—”

  She gestured.

  “—and hit my head on this bench.”

  She took a deep breath, then finished the wine. “And the wine’s fine, I don’t need to water it,” she said. “I just drank the wrong way.”

  “Thank you, Your Ladyship,” Lenatus said. He looked the other way.

  “Yeah, from me too,” Pulto said.

  “Lady, you really are good,” he went on. He squatted instead of sitting beside her on the bench. “You’re as quick as I’ve seen in a while, and you’ve got a lot of strength for a girl.”

  “Bloody Death, she’s strong enough for anybody!” Lenatus said, rubbing his hip gingerly.

  “What you don’t have yet is thirty years’ practice killing people,” Pulto said. “One of these days you’re going to meet somebody who does and who isn’t using a wood sword. From what I’m told, you’re likely to be closing the left side of my boy Corylus when that happens. So I don’t want it to happen.”

  Lenatus poured her more wine. Alphena looked at him and said, “Lenatus, have you been going easy with me?”

  She spoke calmly, but the implications were threatening even if the tone wasn’t. Pulto stepped verbally between his friend and the noblewoman, saying, “Naw, he wasn’t coddling you. I watched, remember? But you’re used to him, and you’re not used to me.”

  He grinned and stretched out his right arm. “I got more reach than Marcus, here, and besides—”

  Lenatus was grinning also, expecting what was coming.

  “—I figured you wouldn’t be playing your top game against a fat old man. And I was right.”

  Alphena burst out laughing. “Yes, you were right,” she said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  She sobered and looked squarely at Pulto. “But I’ll make others, which I hope you’ll help train me out of, Master Pulto. If Publius Corylus permits it, that is.”

  “Well, you see how your mother feels about that and I’ll talk to Master Corylus,” Pulto said, sounding ill at ease. He was still thinking about what his training exercise—his little joke, really—might have led to.

  Alphena felt a pang. It would have been unjust for her to punish the two veterans for doing what she had dared them to do, but the person she had been six months ago might have done so in a blind rage.

  Hedia wasn’t interested in making Alphena “nice,” but she did want her to be effective. The older woman had repeatedly demonstrated that out-of-control people weren’t effective, and her contempt for failure was more cutting than anger could have been.

  “Say, what are you doing here today?” Lenatus said, offering Pulto the other mug. “Lord Varus is off to some shrine in the north with Her Ladyship, isn’t he?”

  Pulto tossed off the wine and handed back the mug. “Wouldn’t mind another,” he said. “I didn’t half get a dry throat there.”

  “Sorry,” Alphena said into her mug.

  “I’m just here with Master Corylus,” Pulto said without seeming to notice the apology. “He come to see the senator.”

  “He’s looking for a posting to a governor’s staff?” Lenatus said. “Say, will you be going off with him?”

  “No, it’s the senator wants to see him,” Pulto said. “Don’t ask me why, because the boy didn’t have any notion himself. It must’ve been good from the way the senator led him into the office, which was a load off my mind and no mistake.”

  The gymnasium door opened again. Pulto turned his head and said, “Come on in, young master. And if you don’t mind sharing a mug with me, Lenatus here has some bloody good wine to drink!”

  * * *

  WHEN VARUS STARTED toward the Indian delegation, Minimus began to swagger along with him. “Stop,” Varus said, halting. “Minimus, go back to Lady Hedia and remain with her until she orders you to move.”

  The big slave blinked as though he didn’t understand the simple Greek. Varus realized that was possible, but it was more likely that Minimus didn’t understand the concept of a chief wanting to meet strangers without a threatening entourage at his back. Furthermore, Varus hadn’t shouted at him the way a chief was expected to do when he corrected a warrior.

  “Go back to Lady Hedia,” Varus repeated, still without raising his voice. It was very hard to keep one’s philosophi
cal calm when people listened to a speaker’s tone and volume instead of the words he was speaking.

  Minimus blinked again. “Yes, Lord Varus,” he said reluctantly as he turned away.

  To make sure that his would-be protector hadn’t changed his mind, Varus watched for a moment then resumed walking toward the Indians. The gardeners were backfilling around the vine they had planted. To Varus’ surprise, the old man stepped away from the delegation and came toward him.

  “Good day, revered sir,” the old man said in good Greek. “I am Bhiku, in the service of the Rajah Raguram and his master, King Govinda. May I ask what brings a magician of your eminence to this place?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Varus said, startled into saying the first words that came to his mind. “I am Gaius Alphenus Varus. Who told you I was a magician?”

  Close-up the Indian was even older than he had seemed at a distance. He was barefoot, and his only garment was a thin cotton singlet that had been washed so often that it was almost translucent now. Varus could see Bhiku’s ribs through the fabric.

  The old man glanced down and chuckled. “I look like a victim after the sacrifice, don’t I?” he said, plucking the singlet out from his scrawny chest. “Nothing left of me but the tongue and the guts. But as for you being a magician, Gaius Varus—”

  Bhiku looked Varus in the face. His own brown eyes were bright and alert.

  “—I am in a small way a magician also, a very small way compared to you. But I see you for what you are, as surely as I could see a burning village if I were standing beside it.”

  “I, ah…,” Varus said. Memories stirred in his mind, demons and monsters and perhaps gods whom someone had seen and things that someone had done. The person seeing had been Gaius Alphenus Varus, and the person working the terrible magic had been that Gaius Varus also … but—

  “That wasn’t me!” Varus said, snarling at himself rather than at the little man before him. Bhiku gave no sign of having heard, save by an almost invisible twitch of his right eye.

  “I’m sorry, Master Bhiku,” Varus said. “I think of myself as a scholar, a philosopher if you will. Things have happened in my presence that I could not explain better than as manifestations of magic, but I have no conscious power over such things. I don’t, I certainly do not, hold myself out as a magician.”