The Legions of Fire Read online

  Corylus nodded to show he was listening. He tried to take a sip of wine and found his cup was empty. He set it down and reached for the mixing bowl. He gave up on that because his hands were shaking.

  “Well, there was other women in the cantonment,” Pulto said to the table. “Women who’d come with the cohort from previous stations. The local women, even the ones who’d shacked up with troopers, they wouldn’t have anything to do with Coryla, but there wasn’t trouble finding help with the lying-in. It all went pretty well, not that the Old Man nor me was looking at anything but the bottom of wine cups—and we weren’t mixing it, boy, you can count on that. But everything was fine. Only the barbs”—he waved his left hand before him—“the locals, I mean, but they was barbs, they got into the plantation while Coryla was out of action and they cut down the other big hazel. And your mother, she died.”

  “In childbirth?” Corylus whispered.

  “Sure, in childbirth!” Pulto said. “Hecate knows, boy. She’d born you and she died. Women die all the time, right?”

  The bowl was empty. Instead of refilling it, Pulto lifted the jar and drank directly from the spout. Still balancing the heavy jar on his arm, he said in a raw growl, “Well, that was destroying army property, right? The hazel tree. So the army held their investigation, that was the Old Man. And there might’ve been some complaints to higher authority about just how he did the investigating, but as it turned out the locals were all killed while resisting the duly constituted authorities.”

  “All of them?” Corylus said. He could scarcely hear his own voice.

  Pulto nodded emphatically. “Every bloody one,” he said. “And the girls in the cantonment who must’ve known what was up but didn’t warn anybody, they resisted too.”

  He poured unmixed wine into Corylus’s cup, then swigged more from the jar. “Your father was a popular officer, boy,” he said. “Not lax. Troopers don’t respect a lax officer even when he’s easy on them in peace. It won’t always be peace, you see, and the veterans know it. But the Old Man always looked out for his men, so when this happened—”

  Pulto shrugged. His grin was much like the one he’d had at the door of the gymnasium when he said nobody was going to disturb Corylus and his friends.

  “—nobody questioned his orders. And afterward, nobody talked to outsiders about what had happened. Till I did just now, because after that business today, I thought you maybe ought to know.”

  There was a hint of challenge in Pulto’s voice as he met his master’s eyes.

  “Yes,” said Corylus with a crisp nod. “I see that. Thank you for—”

  For what, exactly?

  “—for your loyalty to my father and myself, Pulto.”

  He cleared his throat and went on. “Now, do you think we’re ready to go back to the apartment? Because I’m to meet Pandareus and Varus at Jupiter on the Capitol tonight, and I’d like to get some food in me before that.”

  He patted his cup, empty again. “To settle the wine,” he said with a grin which after a moment became natural.

  Pulto set down the jar and stood, grinning even more widely. “Ready and willing, young master,” he said. “And I’ll pay the score here, if you don’t mind.”

  The old soldier shook his head with a look of wonder. “For seventeen years I’ve wanted to tell you the story,” he said. “Doing it now, well, it’s a weight off me that I’m bloody pleased to be shut of.”

  Hooking his left index finger through one loop of the wine jar, he sauntered toward the counter, where Maura would measure the damage with a rod. He was whistling “The Girl I Left behind Me.”

  Corylus followed. His mind was full of more questions than he’d had before this sudden dose of truth from his servant.

  And he wondered even more about what they would learn tomorrow from the guardian of the Sibylline Books.

  VARUS SAT ON THE CURB around the spring in the back garden. The stonework beneath him was ancient; the garden wall kinked to enclose it. Instead of marble or even patterned tiles, the blocks were volcanic tuff: porous and sometimes light enough to float, but able to support more than an equal weight of concrete. The stone looked black, but it was light gray beneath the stains of algae and centuries.

  Varus’s hands were in his lap, closed over the ivory head. He wasn’t looking at the figurine, nor was he really conscious of anything else in the present world.

  A wagon drawn by mules pulled up in the alley behind the house. As it did so, a flock of house servants led by Agrippinus entered the garden from the house proper. Waddling self-importantly with them was a middle-aged man with Greek features.

  The majordomo saw Varus. “Quiet down!” he rasped to his companions.

  Instead of obeying, the stranger bowed low to Varus and said, “My noble lord, I am Decimus Livius Gallo, chief attendant of the Temple of Tellus. I—”

  “Shut up, you fool!” snapped Agrippinus. Unasked, a pair of husky under-stewards grabbed Gallo by the shoulders and jerked him back so that he was no longer addressing Varus. “You don’t speak to your betters in this household unless they give you permission first!”

  Varus turned slightly, his eyes tracking the freedman—he would have been the slave Gallo who took the name of Livius, his former master, when he was freed—without interest or full comprehension. He was in a reverie of sorts.

  Servants unbolted the back gate, then stepped away. Agrippinus held a low-voiced discussion with Gallo and the wagoneers. The streets were supposedly barred to wheeled traffic during daylight hours, but the wagon in the alley had edged the law by an hour or so. Perhaps Gallo figured that because they were temple servants, or because they were carrying the goods to the home of a prominent senator, they didn’t risk confiscation by the magistrates as lesser mortals did.

  Varus dreamed, though his eyes were open. He was riding past a great hound; it strained at its tether as it bayed with bloody jaws. The thunder of its fury shook the universe, and its open maw could swallow the world.

  “Don’t look at me!” said a wagoneer to Gallo. He spat on the pavement in emphasis. “Our job is to drive the mules, not muscle around the crap in the wagon.”

  “All right, get with it,” Agrippinus said in a low snarl to the waiting house servants. “And if any of you in the Senator’s household think that you’re too good to carry temple treasures, then you can spend the rest of your lives on one of his estates following a team of oxen and learning to break clods with a hoe!”

  The servants shambled into the alley without muttering. The conscious part of Varus’s mind noticed that a few directed troubled glances toward him, but he didn’t react.

  Varus rubbed the ivory with his thumbs. A powerful man clad in sealskin stood on a rocky shore, looking out to sea. Behind him at the tide line hunched a female whose body was covered by her own coarse hair. Her breasts hung to her waist; they were hairy also. Four children, halflings with her flat features but less hair and that of the blondish shade of the man’s, stood to either side of her, looking puzzled.

  The man raised his face. He howled to the choppy sea in an agony of soul.

  Six servants eased through the back gate, carrying a tusk. It was enormous, easily eight feet in length if measured along its sweeping curves. The part of Varus which remained in the present wondered if it really came from an elephant. Did the world hold some vastly greater creature whose tusks resembled those of the beasts he had seen in the amphitheater?

  “Get that bench out of the way, Callistus,” the majordomo snapped to the servant standing nearest the summer bedroom on the right corner of the garden. These, one on either side, were masonry-framed structures. They had tiled roofs but walls of wooden louvers. “We’ll put the tusks under the portico and the bronze and silver in the summer houses.”

  “But where do I stand if it rains, hey?” asked one of the men carrying the tusk. He was half bald and paunchy, though his shoulders were impressively wide. Varus didn’t remember the fellow’s name, but he was one of the l
ow-ranking watchmen; he wasn’t handsome enough to be put at the front door, at least during daylight.

  “Then you’ll bloody get rained on, Castor!” Agrippinus said. “And by Hercules! I’ll have somebody checking you every hour, so you’d better stay alert. This is the god’s treasure you’re watching, do you understand?”

  The servants shuffled under the portico attached to the wall of the main house. Through the louvers came Castor’s muttered, “I’m no Latin, so she’s no god of mine!”

  The ivory figurine had a sizzling warmth, like amber rubbed with a cloth. It made Varus’s fingers prickle.

  A man hung by one leg from a branch. His other leg crossed the tethered one, knee to ankle. His gray beard fell over his face, but through its cloud his one eye blazed like blue lightning. A babble of voices surrounded him, speaking all the knowledge of all time, and the Tree extended forever.

  Beside the well curb was a pear tree. Its blackened leaves lay on the grass, where the killing frost had dropped them. Some twigs had split, and bark was already beginning to slough.

  The pear had been healthy as recently as this morning. Two weeks ago it had been covered in white flowers, but their petals had fallen and they were beginning to set fruit.

  “Watch that!” Gallo said, stepping forward; he pumped his forearms upright beside his face. “You’re going to scrape it on the pillar!”

  “Shut up, twinkie, unless you want this up your bum!” said the assistant gardener at the front of the group bringing in the second tusk; it was slightly shorter than the first, and the tip had been worn to a wedge by grubbing in the ground. “And if you don’t get out of the way, you’ll be lucky if that’s all that happens to you!”

  The men doing the work were members of Saxa’s household. Whether slave or free, they had a clear awareness that no temple flunky was going to give orders to a senator’s servant.

  Varus stroked the ivory figurine. He knew what was happening in the garden; beyond the present he saw ice and fire, and monsters moving through them.

  But close about Varus in the shadows of time were the twelve hairless men whom he had seen during the reading. They danced with jerky motions of their legs and arms.

  Demons with furious faces danced among them, and together they whispered: Nemastes is a traitor. Nemastes must die.

  CHAPTER IV

  Alphena took a deep breath. Porters were fitting the polished maple poles into the sockets of the family sedan chair in front of the house, and a gaggle of attendants milled in the street.

  Hedia, wearing an ankle-length linen tunic and a short wool cape dyed bright yellow, waited on the steps. Alphena had thought her stepmother might wear a thin silk synthesis as she did when she went out in the evenings, but apparently at midmorning that was too blatantly racy even for her.

  The slut. Looking down her nose at everything and everybody, like a perfect ivory statue!

  At this hour there was little traffic on the cul-de-sac where Alphenus Saxa and seven other wealthy families lived, though people traveling between the center of Carce and the northeastern suburbs thronged the boulevard at its head. The Senate was in session; Saxa had gone off to the session, accompanied by the throng of clients who’d arrived at dawn to pay their respects to him.

  Venus be thanked, Father really was at the Senate House instead of with his Hyperborean friend. The Emperor was addressing the Senate today. Any senator present in Carce who didn’t attend would be marking himself for quick attention of a bad kind.

  Alphena marched past the doorman, startling him. “Good morning, Hedia,” she said. She was trying to sound coldly sophisticated, but she heard her voice wobble like a wren trilling. Her face went hot and she hoped she wasn’t blushing.

  Hedia turned; her maid hopped to the side with a twitter to avoid standing between them. Hedia wasn’t tall, and Alphena stood on the step above her besides. Even so, the older woman gave the impression that she was staring down from a great height.

  “Good morning, Daughter,” Hedia said. “Usually at this time of day, you’re at your exercises, aren’t you?”

  Her voice was pleasant and cultured and cool. The only insult in it was “your exercises,” but even that was a gibe only if you felt that it was unwomanly and improper for a girl in armor to swing a sword at a post.

  I have every right to exercise whatever way I want to! My brother could and I can too!

  “I’m coming with you to Master Corylus’s apartments,” Alphena said, hearing her own shrillness. “That’s where you’re going, isn’t it?”

  I’ve practiced this! I’m going to be calm. But she wasn’t calm, of course.

  “I’m going to see Anna, Master Corylus’s cook and housekeeper,” Hedia said. She sounded amused, but Alphena had seen her eyes narrow. “I presume her master will be in class in the Forum with your brother Varus, dear. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

  “Well, dear,” Alphena said. “You seem to think that you’re spending your time properly when you interfere in my life, don’t you? So I’m returning the favor. I guess you could say that I’m learning from you, do you see?”

  Hedia lifted her chin slightly. “I’m your mother, girl,” she snapped. “Keep a civil tongue in your head!”

  The attendants in the street had stopped chattering among themselves. They shifted so that they all stood with their backs toward their master’s wife and daughter. The rooms facing the street would be filling with servants also, crowding close to the window louvers and trying not to breathe loudly.

  Alphena was sure that if they were asked, everyone in the street would claim he—they were all men—hadn’t heard a word of the discussion between the women. The rest of the servants would claim to have been in the back of the house while it was going on. She was also sure that the row—and it was certainly becoming one—would be the only topic of conversation among the servants tonight and with neighboring households. Well, she didn’t care!

  “You’re my mother?” Alphena said. Her voice rose shrilly, and that made her even more angry than she’d been already. “You’re five years older than I am, that’s all! That’s pretty young for motherhood, isn’t it, dear?”

  Hedia was actually six years older that Alphena, but she knew that she wouldn’t be called on the petty falsehood. Hedia wasn’t petty.

  “Or do you mean that you’ve got so much more experience than I do?” Alphena went on. Words were bubbling out of her; she couldn’t control them any more than a cloud could control the rain sluicing down. “I’ve heard that you do. Is that where you’re going now, to get more experience? Is that why you don’t want your husband’s daughter along?”

  “Dear,” Hedia said calmly as she walked to the bottom of the steps directly below Alphena. “I don’t think this is a good time or place for the discussion. I understand your being upset by the business yesterday. I’m upset too, and when I return we can talk about it quietly.”

  The German doorkeeper had vanished into his alcove; Alphena didn’t think he was smart enough to understand how dangerous this was for a slave, but at least he’d figured out that he shouldn’t stand obviously gaping at his betters.

  “I’ve heard that Master Corylus’s cook is a wise woman too!” Alphena said. She was listening to herself as though she’d just stumbled onto the conversation of two complete strangers. “Does she make potions, do you suppose? Does she make the sort of potion that your first husband swallowed the night he died?”

  For a moment, Hedia’s face had no expression at all. Alphena’s breath sucked in; she’d shocked herself with her words, an accusation of poisoning screamed in public. If anybody took it to the authorities, not only Hedia but Corylus would be in serious trouble. Hecate, make my tongue not have spoken!

  Hedia laughed, a silver trill that broke the brittle silence. Smiling, she patted Alphena on the arm and said, “You’re quite right, dear. You’re an adult, and you’re a part of this business—the whole household is. I shouldn’t have been treating you as
a child.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alphena whispered. “I shouldn’t have … I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  She’d been looking into her stepmother’s eyes. For a moment Hedia had considered all aspects of the situation and all possible responses. She had chosen to laugh, but that was a choice.

  “Nonsense, dear,” Hedia said with another affectionate pat. She wasn’t hiding anger under pretense of cheerfulness: the scene really did amuse her. “Someone seems to be attacking your father by magic, attacking all of us I shouldn’t wonder, and of course you’re upset. I couldn’t be more pleased that you’re willing to help me get to the bottom of the business.”

  She turned to the sedan chair. The bearers were facing up the street. They must’ve been watching the women in the polished bronze fittings, though, because they stiffened immediately.

  “Scylax?” Hedia said. “Is the chair ready?”

  Pairs of men carried the chair, but another pair would trot alongside to take over every fifteen minutes—or less, if they were climbing hills. The chief bearer rose and turned, standing at attention.

  “Yes, milady!” he said. “We just finished putting the poles in, milady. It made a lot of noise, it did, and I almost didn’t hear you calling me!”

  “Well, run up to the boulevard and find another chair as well,” Hedia said, accepting the lie with an icy smile. “My daughter will be gracing me with her companionship. She’ll go with you and I’ll ride in the hired chair. Promptly, now!”

  The bearer trotted toward the Argiletum at the head of the cul-de-sac. He didn’t run, and his arms dangled instead of pumping back and forth as most people would have done. The chairmen were used to moving at a particular speed in a particular way, for as long as they needed to. Scylax wasn’t going to change his technique simply because he’d been told to do something other than carry the front half of a sedan chair.