Sword and Serpent Page 2

  Jurian watched her hurry away, hardly daring to breathe.

  But Varro didn’t rebuke him, or threaten him with arrest. He only released Jurian’s shoulder and said, “Walk with me.”

  Jurian followed him wordlessly toward the Legion fortress. His breath caught as they passed under the broad stone archway into the castra. It had been three years since his father’s death and the arrival of the Valerii…three years since he’d walked within these walls.

  Three years since his family had been turned out of their home and left forgotten in the streets of Satala.

  He tried not to stare at the praetorium gleaming golden under the late afternoon sun, with its Roman columns and the fruit trees that he and Mariam used to climb. It was just a building now, not a home. He’d trained himself to forget this place…to forget what it felt like to be respected and honored.

  Varro stopped at the quintana a few streets from the praetorium. The air here was thick with the smell of hot bread and spiced meat, and noisy with the calls of merchants and the too-loud conversations of a handful of Legionaries. He plucked a handful of ripe figs from a basket at one of the market stands and flipped the merchant a few bronze coins.

  “Now then, Jurian,” Varro said, offering him a fig. “Would you have actually struck Casca?”

  Jurian regarded Varro for a moment, a bit surprised at the boldness that blazed through him. Maybe it was the air of this place that gave him courage.

  “Yes, domine. I would have. And…I wish you had let me.”

  “I respect your honesty,” Varro said, nodding his approval. “What did he say to you?”

  Jurian hesitated, but he’d already gone too far for caution. “He insulted my father. He said he wasn’t a true Roman. That he was a disgrace to the Legion.”

  He kept his eyes fixed on Varro, determined not to show the shame and fear that roiled in his gut. Varro’s expression remained perfectly neutral, all but the slight tightening of his jaw.

  “Well,” he said, his mouth quirking in a smile. “I probably would have punched him too.” He glanced across at the Legionaries, then down at the fig in his hand. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking we all believe as the Valerii do about your father. Gerontios was a true leader and a noble man. I admired him greatly.”

  Jurian frowned. For so long he had wanted to talk to someone—anyone—about his father. His mother was too grieved and too weak, and his sister, sympathetic though she was, could never really understand. Now when Varro gave him the chance, the words seemed to catch in his throat, and he didn’t even know why. Jurian knew his father had trusted Varro. He wanted to trust the Tribune, too, but trust was a hard commodity to come by.

  “I understand, domine,” he said at last. “But when the Legion returned defeated by King Narseh, they said that my father dishonored himself in battle, that his failure had caused the Legion’s defeat.” He dropped his voice and added, “And even worse, that my father killed himself to restore his own honor, but left Caesar Galerius to be humiliated by Diocletian.” He gritted his teeth. “I have to know the truth, domine. Is that what happened?”

  For several long moments they stood side by side in silence under the shade of the pomegranate tree, then Varro said, carefully, “I wasn’t there when your father died, Jurian.”

  That wasn’t what Jurian had hoped to hear. He set his jaw and stared at a group of Legionaries across the quintana, who were laughing over a game of dice. From somewhere deeper within the castra came the sounds of steel striking steel in soldiers’ drills, the steady rhythm of a smith’s hammer.

  “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” Varro asked, gripping Jurian’s arm. “I can offer no witness. And my position forbids me to contradict the official report.”

  Jurian frowned. “Do you mean—”

  “I mean,” Varro interrupted, his voice a harsh whisper, “that I couldn’t say anything even if I believed your father had died under peculiar circumstances. Or if I thought his death was untimely and a great loss to the Legion, or if I believed superstition smothered common military sense. These things would be forbidden for me to say, even if I believed them. I wish that I could give you some consolation, but as you see, I cannot.”

  He swung his gaze away and dropped Jurian’s arm.

  Jurian swallowed hard. Were Varro’s suspicions correct? Had his father been killed by his own Legion? And what if the Emperor didn’t know the truth? If he could be told…perhaps he would restore the honor of Gerontios’ name. Restore his family’s honor. They could go back to Rome, or to Antioch, and leave Satala forever. They could live as they were meant to live…as respected Roman citizens, not outcasts.

  But what did it really matter? As long as the Valerii believed that Gerontios was a disgrace, and as long as they ruled in Satala, nothing would change for Jurian’s family.

  The truth didn’t matter.

  “Are we clear?” Varro asked.

  “Clear, domine,” Jurian said, startled by how unsteady his voice sounded. “And thank you for…for preventing me from getting into trouble with the Legate.”

  Varro smiled. “As I said, I admired your father. I like to think we were friends, even.” He contemplated his handful of figs. “I would do more for you if I could, Jurian. Has anyone taken your father’s place in your training?”

  “Not exactly. My father’s younger brother might have, but he and his Legion are fighting near the Danube.”

  “I see.”

  “But my father had been training me. Weapons, fighting, tactics, governance.” He lowered his gaze. “If I’d known how things would turn out, I would’ve studied harder.”

  “Then you’ve not trained at all these last three years?”

  “Oh,” Jurian said with a short laugh. “I’ve done my best. Leptis runs through drills with me when he isn’t on duty. And our servant Erastos still teaches us. Or he did until very recently.”

  “Leptis is a good soldier,” Varro said. “I’m glad to hear he is working with you. And this Erastos, he was your servant? Not a slave? Where has he gone?”

  Jurian shifted uneasily. “He was a freedman,” he said. How could he explain that Erastos wanted to dedicate himself to the service of God, and that his mother had let him go? He couldn’t, no matter how much he trusted Varro. Instead he said, “He left of his own accord a few months ago.”

  Varro measured him a long moment. “And have you assumed the white toga yet? I see Casca parading around in his as often as he can.”

  “My father was going to bestow it on me after the campaign.”

  “Then it’s high time, I should think,” Varro said. “And your uncle is posted up north. Do you have any other family?”

  “My father’s older brother is in Rome. I don’t know of any other family.”

  “And your mother never married again?”

  “Could anyone take my father’s place so easily?”

  Varro didn’t seem impressed by his outburst. “To provide for her children, perhaps.”

  “She’s too ill.” The words came out stark and cold.

  Varro dropped his gaze abruptly but couldn’t hide the sudden flash of grief in his eyes. “Well, in that case,” he said, quiet, “I’ll ask the Legate if I may stand in your father’s place to recognize your majority. No need to wait for the next festival day.” He clapped Jurian on the shoulder. “We take such occasions as we can find them, here on the frontier, don’t we? Gods know when a chance might be your last. Speak to your mother. I’ll see it done.”

  Jurian bowed. Varro tightened his grip on Jurian’s shoulder briefly, then stepped away and straightened his helmet.

  “I have my duties,” he said. “But we will see you this evening, I’m sure, for the sacrifice.”

  Only Jurian’s practiced mask of indifference concealed his sudden rush of panic. He bowed again and mumbled, “As the God wills it.”

  2

  Cyrene, Libya

  The four days of cleansing rites had finished. T
he old god in the hills had been placated, sated with sacrificial blood for another month, and his sole priestess Sabra, tending his Temple under the earth, could barely recall the victim’s face. Barely.

  That is, until she left the undying fire of the inner sanctuary and faced the total darkness of the Temple’s underground passages, where no light could chase away the vision of the child’s face and the torment of Sabra’s grief. She bit her lip and prayed to forget as she felt her way through the twisting corridors toward the world above. Years of practice steadied her steps along the uncertain path between pillars and over broken stones—years of practice, and more falls and bruises than she would ever admit.

  The darkness had terrified her at first, when the last priestess of the Temple had taken her down into the belly of the earth and showed her the rites of the god she was marked to serve. How foolish, she thought now, to be afraid of the dark. It was almost a comfort to her since she had come to know the terror of god.

  Her legs shook, weak from her four days of ritual fasting, and a headache throbbed behind her eyes, but she forced herself to keep moving. If she stopped, she would lose her sense of place, her sense of direction. The underground Temple was laid out like a labyrinth, its twists and corridors designed to keep the unconsecrated from the sanctuary, but it had almost snared her—her, the god’s voice, the god’s hands—more times than she cared to recall.

  She passed a gap in the right-hand wall and marked it off on her mental map. Three steps later her left hand brushed a raised stone and she turned, feeling her way into the branching tunnel that followed. As always, a breath of warm, dry air sifted over her, strange after the clammy coolness of the deep sanctuary. It was the only reassurance she ever had that she hadn’t gotten lost. Ten more strides and another left turn, and all at once the corridor brightened enough for her to see her hands and, just ahead, the outline of the stone steps where they lurched up toward the street.

  She reached the bottom of the steps and drew a deep breath. The sky over Cyrene opened above her, a pattern of pearls set in midnight silk, wide as the endless sea. After the blindness of the Temple, the dark of night felt strangely empty. There was no comfort in the stars.

  As she dragged herself up the steps, a shower of golden torchlight spilled down the stairs from the street above. She stifled a cry of surprise, recoiling, and threw a hand over her eyes.

  “Mistress Sabra!” a voice called from behind the brightness.

  Her breath slipped out in relief as she recognized Hanno, one of her father’s Libyan eunuchs. He was only a few years older than she was, though he stood nearly a whole head taller than her and was twice as broad. Hanno’s mother had been Sabra’s own nurse, and she and Hanno had shared food and toys and secrets until Hanno had been whisked away to learn his duties for the governor and Sabra had been ushered into the service of the god under the earth. He was the closest thing she had to a friend, and she trusted him even more than her own slave Ayzebel.

  Sabra fumbled her way up toward him, still wincing from the torchlight. As soon as her feet breached the threshold of the Temple she said, her voice a rasping whisper, “Hanno. Can you put that out? It’s too bright.”

  “I’m sorry, mistress,” he said. “I forgot about the darkness.”

  He extinguished the torch in the urn of sand by the Temple stairs, returning the night to moonlight.

  “Did my father send you?” Sabra asked. She pressed her fingers against her eyes. “I’m in no danger.”

  “He thought you might not be able to make it back up the hill.”

  Sabra gave him a dubious look and Hanno grinned.

  “All right, he didn’t. I thought you might not make it.” The smile was already gone from his face. “The god can’t be pleased to see you so spent in his service, tottering around like an old grandmother when your life should be blossoming.”

  Sabra forced a weak laugh, throwing it like a veil over her fear. Deep inside she always worried that the god was indifferent to her. She could serve…or not. She could die…or not. Another priestess would do just as well, or perhaps better. Who could tell what the god was thinking, or what might please or anger him? At least the gods of the Greeks and the Romans—and even that strange new god that some in Cyrene had come to serve—at least their will could sometimes be discerned.

  All Sabra could hope for was that her prayers and fasts were enough to keep her god deep in the earth. She never wanted to imagine what might happen if the rituals failed, but she knew she would never forgive herself if they did.

  Sabra realized she was shaking, and not just from hunger. Dreams of death, of dry stones and fire and blood, had plagued her since she was a child, even before the mantle of the priestess had been laid on her shoulders. And though she tried to dismiss them as only dreams, she couldn’t escape the terrible fear that they were a promise…a portent of what would happen if she should fail.

  “Mistress?” Hanno asked, touching her arm. “Should I call a litter for you? You’re white as sand.”

  “No,” she said. She must not be weak. She must be strong, always strong. “I just need some water.”

  Hanno disappeared without a word, his absence making the darkness deeper. Sabra rubbed her hands over her arms, chilled in spite of the warm wind that blew in from the south. The abandoned streets around the temple district of Cyrene usually didn’t bother her. Despite a lifetime of solitary hours spent in the darkness of the temple, Sabra had never felt alone.

  Tonight was different. Tonight she was afraid, and she was alone.

  Hanno returned with a dripping gourd of water, and Sabra swallowed it all in a few gulps that left her chest burning.

  “Better now?” Hanno asked, watching her carefully.

  Sabra handed him the gourd, tasting the drops of water that clung to her trembling lips. “Did you taste the water, Hanno?”

  Hanno frowned. “No. Was it sour?”

  “I’m…I’m not sure.” She licked her lips again, trying to catch the taste that had surprised her, but it had gone. “Does that ever happen to you? Something troubles you, and you can’t recall what, and it just festers in the back of your mind like a thorn.” She shook her head. “It was there a moment ago. Something about the water. Now it’s gone.”

  Hanno bent his head. “I should have tasted it first,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, mistress.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, clasping his arm. “It was just…I’m tired, that’s all. And hungry. My mind is playing tricks.”

  He nodded and looped the gourd onto his belt. Then he guided her arm around his neck and started for the long hill that led up to the governor’s palace. Sabra leaned more and more on Hanno as they went, but he never complained.

  She drew a ragged breath and murmured, “It was so hard this time. I don’t know why.”

  “They’re drawing the name tomorrow, aren’t they?” Hanno asked.

  She glanced up at him, surprised to find sadness in his eyes. Sadness and fear, and something like hope.

  “Yes,” she said. “In the evening.”

  “Are you worried?”

  She stopped and faced him, pulling her arm free from his shoulder. “I serve the god without fear, Hanno,” she said, hoping the tremble in her voice didn’t betray her as a liar. Then she dropped her voice to a whisper. “But these are the days I hate above all others.”

  “It never gets easier?”

  Sabra hesitated. Against her will, her eyes dropped shut, and she remembered the last sacrifice as clearly as if she stood before the god’s cave again. High on a hill outside the city, gaping like a maw among the houses of the dead, the cave waited to swallow the victims she provided. Deep in the corners of her memory she could still hear the faint haunting melody of a distant flute, the drums echoing the chaos of her own pulse, the weeping of a child.

  The dry wind stung her eyes and she lowered her gaze. It was only when her lashes brushed her cheeks that she realized they were wet with tears.

  She
swiped at her cheeks. “I don’t regret,” she whispered. “I don’t fear. I don’t fear.”

  Hanno muttered something under his breath and started again for the palace. She stumbled beside him, biting her lip to keep from crying, staring fixedly at the plain tips of her shoes faltering over the paving stones. Somehow Hanno managed to get her all the way up the hill, though she felt so heavy she wondered how he could move with her at all.

  She mumbled a greeting to the sleepy slave who met them at the door and let Hanno guide her into the open peristyle. Her servant Ayzebel knelt beside a low coal brazier under the portico, coaxing the embers back to life. She rose when she saw Sabra, but even then she kept her head bowed and eyes averted.

  Sabra sighed, too weary to be saddened by the girl’s withdrawn attitude. Ayzebel had served her for nearly seven years now—almost half their lives—but the girl never seemed comfortable in Sabra’s presence. At first Sabra thought she was just timid, but lately she’d begun to believe Ayzebel simply hated her. And nothing she did seemed to change that.

  Sabra collapsed onto a pile of embroidered cushions close to the fire, enclosed in its warm circle of light. A cool autumn breeze trickled through the columns of the open peristyle, trembling the leaves on the slender branches of the fruit trees. She leaned toward the brazier to escape the chill, letting the fire’s warmth soothe away the numbness and the aches she’d collected in her vigil at the Temple.

  She stared at her hands, watching the low firelight burnish her too-pale skin. Her father’s complexion showed his Numidian lineage, and, though she couldn’t remember her Roman mother, Sabra imagined that she must have had beautiful olive skin. But Sabra resembled neither of them, with her pallor and her strangely golden eyes. She looked nothing like the sun, and everything like the grave. Marked by the god himself for his service, the old Priestess had said. Serving him was her fate.

  A kitchen slave approached with a dish of dried fruits and nuts and a flask of water. Hanno took them and dismissed the boy, then settled cross-legged beside her.