B007IIXYQY EBOK (99 page)

Between throws, Auriane strove to ply them with questions. The other captives drowsed, or watched her with vague amazement, wondering how Auriane had the spirit to attempt to extract information from the enemy when they were still paralyzed with sadness.

“I hear much of this coming procession of triumph,” Auriane asked once, pronouncing each Latin word with trepidation while holding back the dice cup before a throw. “Is this some rite for your gods?”

“I’d find that schoolmaster who tutored you in our tongue and sue for my fee back,” the one called Justus said wryly. He had an abandoned laugh, sharp, watchful eyes, and a cynicism that seemed a tepid copy of Decius’.

“A ridiculous, gaudy show to dazzle the rabble into grateful silence is what it is,” responded the black-haired Guard, a massively made young man with a deeply tanned, gnomish face that gleamed with perspiration, a name she could not pronounce, and breath that reeked of an as-yet-unknown spice these people heaped generously all their food. “The cursed procession—and not the land taken—is the real
purpose of war, if you ask me.”

The answer was unsatisfactory, but Auriane sensed they were growing impatient with her questions. She gave the cup several more noisy shakes, then tried to insert one more.

“Who is this man
Aristos
who is on everyone’s tongue, night and day?”

“Enough talk,” Justus protested with mock annoyance. “Throw.”

Auriane released the dice.

“Venus again,” the black-haired Guard exclaimed while he regarded the dice as if they were alive and full of malice. “This northern wench has Fortuna hog-tied.” Sulkily he slid another copper coin beneath the bars.

“If she wins any more I say it’s time for another search,” Justus said.

“Your last throw, my barbarian Circe. Have the decency to lose this time.”

Auriane drew the slender cup farther from the bars, tarrying on purpose, transfixing Justus with a look, not knowing where she found the strength to say playfully, “World’s end will come and go before I throw these dice unless I get my answer.”

“Persistent as rodents…she’ll chew our arms off if we don’t tell her.
Aristos,
then. You know, Justus, they should march Aristos
in that fool’s parade. Word is the Palace is pitifully
short of captives.”

Auriane frowned in puzzlement.

“He means Aristos was a captive of
this
war,” Justus explained, “back at its beginning, over a year ago it was, but now that he’s celebrated and all—”

“Of this
war? He is a man of my people?”
Auriane asked, sitting forward, eyes intent. “But you speak of him as though he were a prince among you.” They talked in riddles when they spoke of Aristos. He had been condemned to death, but he dined with noblewomen. He was not a soldier, but he won battles.

“Well, he’s a prince to us. He’s—”

They heard fast, clipped steps on stone.

“Fabatus,” Justus muttered.

Auriane hid the dice cup in the straw. Both guards sprang back to their stations along the wall. But their Centurion was in an affable mood; he strode up to them and put a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Aristos won!” Fabatus said loudly, and slightly drunkenly, Auriane thought. She felt a line had been pulled taut; she stood very still, struggling to catch every word, full of a shadowed sense that it was important she understand this.

“He saved us and half the city, praise be to Bellona and Mars!” Justus responded.

“He’s to be formally given his freedom tonight,” Fabatus went on, grinning proudly as if he spoke of some great achievement of his own son.

“He’s signing on
again, I hope,” the gnomish one asked, true alarm in his voice.

“Of course. Kings don’t step down.” Their Centurion added in a covered voice, “Torquatus opens the School to the public tonight. There’s to be a banquet celebrating Aristos’ freedom—five hundred sesterces apiece gives you both leave to go.”

After this, they said no more. And so she learned little more from this baffling exchange than what she already knew—that bribery was rampant at all levels of their army.

The next day these two Praetorians were replaced with others, and when their festival time had come to a close, the Guards played dice with her no more.

Auriane recorded the number of days by scratching marks on the wall with a copper coin the Guards forgot. It was on the eleventh day that Sunia threw herself on the straw, convulsed with hard sobs. Auriane went to her and knelt down, taking her shoulders in her hands.

“Sunia, Sunia,” she said softly as if to a lost child. “I feel as you do—”

“You!
You
seem quite at home in this place—playing dice with them! I have not your nature—I can only live in one place. Let me die.” Sunia began clawing at the straw, groping for the surgeon’s tool, which Auriane had hidden because they were regularly searched.

“Stop
this! Sunia, you must have patience. Fate always turns. When they play dice, they talk, and when they talk, we are given weapons and tools so we can live in this place. Sunia, I need you with me. I’m reaching my mortal limits…”

“That
is kept well concealed!”

“Then you’ve no eyes to see. I awaken each morning and I feel my whole soul battered and broken and left for dead by the roadside. I am nothing but a wretched body with severed limbs—one limb is Decius, one is Avenahar, one is my mother, one is our land…. I bleed to death slowly, with no draughts for the monstrous pain. I am close to madness, Sunia. I need your
strength as much as you need mine.”

Sunia sat up slowly, looking faintly bewildered. The notion that anyone, much less Auriane, might need her was a novel one, and it temporarily distracted her from her misery. Auriane lifted the last of the watered wine the Guards had stolen for her to Sunia’s lips.

As she watched Sunia drink, Auriane thought grimly—I truly
am
starving for lack of hope. If I am not soon given more reason to live, my life is done.

At dawn on the seventeenth day, Auriane started as if a spirit-hand shook her to wakefulness. She sat up, feeling expectant. The sun streamed in as always through the high, narrow window, but this morning it seemed to be the steady golden finger of a divinity, indicating her time. She looked over at Sunia, a comfortable dark mound sunk into the straw in animal contentment.

She does not feel it. Whatever has come, has come for me.

A lukewarm porridge of barley was brought. Then at the morning’s first guard change, the cell door was loudly thrown open.

Two ladies’ maids entered. They were startlingly brilliant in multicolored garb, and, Auriane thought, haughty enough to serve an empress. One was an Arabian girl in a tunic of saffron, with mysterious smudges of darkness beneath great shining eyes. The other was an Ethiopian maid swathed in crimson, with brilliant beads of glass woven into her hair. Both wore great hoops of gold in their ears and smelled of cinnamon and hyacinths. They were followed by four slaves bearing an ornate bronze jewel case, a chest of cedar, a bucket of water and several rolls of linen. The captives watched all this in silence, puzzled and alarmed.

The Arabian girl addressed Auriane in her high, strident Latin—Auriane found it easy to follow; slowly, she was becoming adept at the tongue. “We are ordered to prepare and dress you. If you make it difficult for us, then we’ll call the Guards to dress you.”

“Dress
me?” Auriane said in a low voice. “For what purpose?”

The two maids looked at one another, as if uncertain whether they should reply. Then the Ethiopian girl said with an impish smile, “For the pleasure of a god.”

Auriane felt a low shock pass through her, followed by dark excitement. They were giving her to someone of importance, and if the Fates were with her, perhaps it was the Emperor himself. She had not expected to be so soon granted a chance to exact vengeance.

While Sunia looked on like a cornered beast, the Ethiopian girl threw open the cedar chest and swiftly began taking out a collection of terra-cotta pots; the multiple gold rings about her upper arms made a rhythmic jingling sound as she worked. With nimble fingers the Arabian girl removed Auriane’s prison rags and started scrubbing her with pumice. Then, with quick, deft hands, she massaged her all over with hyacinth oil. The maids chattered happily as they worked, but they mixed their oddly accented Latin with an unknown tongue and Auriane understood little of it.

“Don’t look so, they’re not torturing me,” Auriane said once to Sunia as the maids fastened what they called a breastband about her chest and pulled a tunica of thin, fine white wool over her head. Then the Arabian girl, while humming an eerie, amelodic tune, began lightly dusting Auriane’s face with powdered white lead.

Next she brought out a jar of
purpurissum,
with which she rouged Auriane’s cheeks. Then she darkened Auriane’s brows with antimony and smoothly shaded kohl beneath her eyes to make them appear round and brilliant, her fingers moving with the quick, polished delicacy of an artist. Finally she blotted Auriane’s lips with wine lees, rendering them startling and dark.

The wondering silence of the women captives was broken by Sunia’s high nervous laughter.

“Don’t laugh at me, Sunia, please,” Auriane whispered tensely, beginning to feel uneasy about it all.

They are mocking me. They are making me grotesque. What sort of cruel game is this
?

“Forgive me, it is just that it is…
different,”
Sunia said. “No, Auriane…it’s beautiful…in a slightly overmuch sort of way.”

Next the Ethiopian maid gathered up Auriane’s hair and bound it loosely back, securing it with two tortoiseshell combs. Then she divided the free-hanging hair into three plaits. Working together, the two maids wove seed pearls into the plaits, then loosely entwined the tresses and twisted them into a serpent-coil atop her head. This was secured with silver netting.

At the last they sprinkled the whole creation with gold dust.

Sunia drew in a breath, envious now rather than amused. She edged closer, extending a hand to touch Auriane’s hair but one of the maids slapped it down. The Ethiopian maid then drew from the cedar chest a garment of shimmering white cloth so fine it seemed to be made of some fiber woven with mist. Auriane shivered as it slid like cool water over her skin.

The Arabian maid said irritably, “Don’t tear this, or you will be punished. It’s worth more than you
are—it’s silk, and it’s sold for its weight in gold.”

Sunia had always thought Auriane pleasing to look on, but
this…it was still recognizably Auriane, but she glowed softly like the moon. This clever exaggeration of her beauty made it seem some sylph possessed her, gently altering her soul.

While the maids were carefully positioning a chaplet of golden vine leaves on Auriane’s head, Sunia moved stealthily up to the cosmetic case and purloined several small squat jars, stashing them in the folds of her rough wool dress. Later she would practice this magic on herself.

The maids then put gem-encrusted sandals on Auriane’s feet, remarking unkindly on how large they were. Then they stood back to admire her.

“She is perfect,” said the Ethiopian girl. “A barbarian Aphrodite!”

“No, a wood nymph, that’s what she’s supposed to be. Wait—the woodland scent.” The Arabian maid reached into the cedar chest and brought out a slender-necked bottle of blue-tinted glass. She moistened a finger and daubed the oil-based pine scent onto Auriane’s throat and temples.

Auriane thought miserably—how will I win vengeance in these flimsy shoes, these filmy clothes?

“Come,
Niobe!” the Arabian girl exclaimed, handing Auriane a bronze mirror. The two maids looked at each other and giggled. “Behold yourself!”

Auriane started at the sight of herself, then felt relief. No, they had not made her ugly. It was just, as Sunia had said, different. And a little overmuch. She might have been wearing a translucent mask: She could still see herself beneath, peering out behind a bold, frozen, high-born Roman matron’s face.

This, then, is what is pleasing to their men. What an odd people. What is wrong with a woman’s face as it is?

When they prepared to take her out, Auriane signaled to Sunia with a furtive glance. Sunia understood. What she must do, she must do now, before everyone’s eyes. Slowly Sunia edged toward the back of the cell. One hand fumbled in the straw, seeking and finding the surgeon’s tool.

Auriane heard then the angry mutterings of the men in the cell beyond. They could see little, but by now word of this sinister ritual had spread to every cell.

“Swine!
She is our holy woman, not a present for one of your soft, lazy noblemen!” Auriane heard one voice above the others and recognized it as Coniaric’s. She feared they might throw crockery and garbage at the Guards. Swiftly she moved to the bars and spoke rapidly in their own tongue, knowing the women in the next cell would relay her words to them.