Videssos Cycle, Volume 2 (61 page)

Alypia on his arm, he wandered the quarter’s mazelike side streets for some little time, rejecting one dive because it was full of hooligans who leered out at the two of them, another because it reeked of rancid oil, and a third for its signboard, which prominently displayed the four vertical bars. He had no more desire to meet Makuraner religious enthusiasts than their Videssian counterparts.

The inn he finally chose was a neat two-story building whose sign carried no hidden meanings, religious or political, being merely a bright daub showing a jolly fat man in front of a table loaded with food and
drink. The smells that came from inside were some of them unfamiliar but all mouth-watering.

The ground floor of the inn was packed tight with tables, and almost all of those packed with people. Scaurus looked round in disappointment until he spotted a small empty table set against the wall near the open kitchen. “Perfect!” he said, and shouldered his way to it through the crush, Alypia close behind. In summer the blast of heat from braziers and cookfires would have been intolerable, but on Midwinter’s Day it was welcome.

Three waiters scurried from tables to kitchen and back again, but the holiday crowd made service slow. The tribune had a chance to look the patrons over: ordinary Videssians for the most part, neither rich nor poor. A few affected Makuraner style, the men, their hair and beards curled into tight ringlets, wearing coats longer behind than in front and their ladies in linen caftans brightly dyed in geometric patterns, with hairnets of silver mesh on their heads. All the talk sounded friendly and cheerful, as if the place’s sign had been painted from one of the patrons.

Eventually a server came up. “Hello, stranger, my lady,” he said, bowing to Alypia as though he recognized her as a princess. “Phos bless you on the day. What will it be?”

“Wine, for now,” Marcus said; Alypia nodded. The man hurried away. Scaurus thought he had Makuraner blood; he was a touch swarthier than most Videssians, with pitch black hair and large, dark, luminous eyes.

The wine arrived with reasonable speed; the waiter poured for them. He said, “My name is Safav.” That confirmed the tribune’s guess. “If you want more or decide to eat, yell for me.” Just then someone did. Safav dodged off toward him.

As Videssians usually did before wine or meat, Alypia Gavra raised her hands and murmured Phos’ creed, then spat in the rushes on the floor in rejection of Skotos. Scaurus simply drank. Although she did not seem put out by the omission, Alypia’s smile was a bit rueful. “I’m so used to thinking of you as one of us that it sometimes jolts me to remember you have your own customs,” she said.

“It does me, too, sometimes,” Marcus said. But the traces of his birth-speech gave his Videssian a sonorous flavor it did not have in her mouth and, as usual, he found the wine sticky-sweet on his tongue. “But never for long.”

Syrupy the wine might have been, but also potent; it did as much to warm him as the fires at his back. He looked across the table at Alypia. She masked her thoughts well—not from policy, like her uncle, but from pensiveness. He remembered the quiet attraction that had grown between them and wondered whether she chose to do so, too, or as quietly to forget. Behind the cool façade it might have been either.

Was she even fair? he asked himself. Certainly her body lacked Helvis’ rich curves—he frowned and cut that thought short. Her face was not as long as Thorisin’s or her father’s, nor as sharply sculpted; she left her cheeks pale and did nothing to play up her fine green eyes. But there was no mistaking the keen wit and spirit behind them. Conventionally beautiful or not, she was herself, something harder to attain.

A waiter—not their own, but an older man—bustled out of the kitchens past his elbow, cutting into his reverie. “Your pardon, sir,” the man said, lifting a square bronze tray higher to make sure it missed the tribune. Agile as a lizard, he slid between tables toward three couples in Makuraner costume. He set enamel bowls before them, ladled soup from a copper tureen. Then, with a flourish, he took the lid from a pan, dug in with a wooden spoon, and plopped light-brown steaming chunks into the soup bowls.

The soup hissed and crackled as though hot metal was being quenched. Scaurus jumped. So, he saw, did Alypia and several of the more Videssian-looking people in the inn. Those before whom it was set, though, ate with gusto. A mystery to be explored! “Safav!”

The waiter handed a patron a plate of broiled prawns and hurried over to the tribune. Marcus asked, “What’s the secret of the soup there? Hot pitch, maybe?”

“Sir?” Safav said, confused. Then his face cleared. “Oh, the sizzling rice soup? Would you care for some?”

Marcus hesitated, but at Alypia’s nod he said, “Why not?” He was more suspicious than he sounded. All but unknown to the Romans, rice was not common in Videssos either. Despite sputters, the tribune foresaw
something on the order of barley mush, not what he wanted for holiday fare.

But when Safav reappeared, the soup bowls he gave Scaurus and Alypia were full of a delicate golden broth rich with peas, mushrooms, and big hunks of shrimp and lobster. “In Makuran, now, this would be lamb or goat, but seafood works well enough,” Safav said. Scaurus, waiting for the sizzle, was hardly listening.

With the same flourish the other waiter had shown, Safav whipped the lid from the thick iron pan on his tray and dropped a steaming spoonful into each bowl. They crackled heartily for a few seconds, then sank. “Reminds me of burning ships,” the tribune muttered. He prodded the crisp chunk of rice with his spoon, still dubious.

“How is it done?” Alypia asked.

“First boil the rice, then fry it in very hot oil until the moment it starts to scorch. It has to be hot to sizzle, which is why this,” Safav said, tapping at the heavy pan. He laid a finger by the side of his nose. “You never heard that from me, my lady, else my cousin the cook comes after me with a big knife. Most people I would not tell; they ask just for talk’s sake. But I could see you really want to know.” Someone shouted the waiter’s name; he bobbed his head shyly and left them.

The tribune gave a tentative taste. The soup was splendid, the crisp rice in it nutlike and flavorful. “What do I know?” he said, and emptied the bowl.

Tuna followed, broiled with oregano and basil; wine; greens with garlic and mint; wine; simmered squid stuffed with lentils and currants; wine; lamb stew with celery, leeks, and dates—another Makuraner dish; wine; squash and beans fried in olive oil; wine; quinces and cinnamon; wine.

Alypia had hold of the conversation without seeming to, deftly steering it to divert him but lay no demands upon him. For all her tact and skill, that game could go on only so long. As the grape mounted to Marcus’ head, his responses grew steadily shorter. “Have you done what you set out to do, then?” Alypia said, her tone slyly bantering.

But the tribune was not fuddled, as she supposed. Rather the wine had left his thoughts clear and simple, stripping veils of pretense from him. Too well he remembered standing in front of her like an automaton,
nakedly spewing forth his inmost, most secret self under the influence of Nepos’ cordial. He stabbed at a chunk of lamb with needless violence.

Sensitive to his swing in mood, Alypia put her goblet down; she had drunk much less than he. She could be direct as well as artful and asked it straight: “What’s amiss?”

“What are you doing here with me?” Marcus exclaimed. He stopped in dismay, mouth hanging foolishly open.

“I could ask the same of you,” Alypia replied with some heat. But her annoyance was not for his candor, for she went on, “When you sheered off from my servant—oh yes, he saw you—I thought you were angry at me, as you have a right to be. Yet here you sit, peaceably enough. Explain yourself, if you would.”

“Angry at you? No, never. I owe you a debt I cannot hope to repay, for finding a way to make your uncle believe me loyal. But—” The tribune fell silent. Alypia waited him out. At last he had to continue. “How could I have anything to do with you, when I blight everything I put my hand to?”

The furious stare she gave him said she was of the Gavras clan after all. “I did not think you would belittle yourself. Who saved my headstrong uncle from Onomagoulos’ assassins? Who warned him of Drax, though he would not listen? And who beat Drax in the end? Unless I’m much mistaken, the finger points at you.”

“And who let all his prisoners get free, for being, for being—” He had to take a long swallow of wine before he could get it out. “—for being too blind to see his woman was using him as a carter uses a mule? That finger points at me, too, from my own hand.”

“There’s no denying your Helvis had a hard knot to untie, but I thought better of her.” Alypia kept her voice judicious, but her nostrils flared in indignation as she spoke Helvis’ name. “But to do as she did, taking advantage of your love for a weapon against you—” She made a gesture of repugnance. “I wish I had not heard that. No wonder you blame me for urging Thorisin to try Nepos’ potion.”

“Blame you?” Scaurus said, echoing her again. “I just told you I did not; you were doing what you could to help me—and in fact you did. How can there be blame for that? But,” he paused to gather his thoughts,
“it’s hard to meet you, to know what to say, to know how to act, after baring myself before you.”

The touch of her fingers was gentle on his. She slowly dipped her head; her eyes were lowered to the tabletop as she reminded him, “Marcus, you have also seen me naked.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

The tribune remembered her, calm with Vardanes Sphrantzes’ dagger against her throat, her slim body revealed by the transparent silks that were the only garments the elder Sphrantzes allowed her after taking her as plaything from Ortaias. His hand closed tightly around hers. “That was no fault of yours; the crime was Vardanes’.”

“Well, did Drax and his comrades escape by your will, then?” Alypia demanded, looking up at him. “We both know the answer to that.” She did not seek a reply. Her eyes were far away; she was remembering, too. “Strange,” she mused, “that I should thank Avshar in his wickedness for delivering me from my tormentor.”

“He gave short measure, as he always does,” Marcus said. “Vardanes earned worse than the quick end he got.”

She shuddered, still looking backward, but then tried to smile. “Let it lay. I’m sorry I spoke of it.” Her hand stayed in his; he touched the writer’s callus on her middle finger. He was afraid to say anything. He wondered if he was seeing only what he wished to see, as he had with Nevrat.

When Safav came by, he smiled to himself. Marcus hardly noticed the waiter as he set the spiced quinces on the table and slipped away. In spite of his tension, memory held him again, of Alypia in his embrace, of her lips warm on his—for a few seconds, until she took fright and pulled away. Had that only been this past spring?

“So much between,” she murmured, seeming to read his thoughts as she did so often. She was silent again for some time, then drew in a long breath, as if in decision. She said, “As well nothing came of that, don’t you think? I was unready to, to …” It was her turn to come to an awkward halt. Marcus nodded to show he understood; her eyes thanked him. She went on, “And in any case you had commitments you could not have—should not have—set aside.”

“Should I not?” he said bitterly.

By luck, she paid him no attention; she was arguing with herself as
much as talking to him. Her face set with resolve a warrior might have envied, she pushed ahead, a sentence at a time. “But your reasons for hesitating are gone now, aren’t they? And as for me …” Her voice trailed away once more. At last she said, very low, “Marcus, would you see me naked again?”

“Oh, with all my heart,” he said, but a moment later felt he had to add, “if you think you can.”

“Truly I don’t know,” she answered. She blinked back tears. “But were you not one to say such a thing as that, I’m sure I could not try.” In spite of her determination, her hand trembled in his. He looked at her questioningly. Her nod was short and fierce.

Almost before the tribune could wave for him, Safav appeared. He bent to whisper to Scaurus, “There is a room upstairs, should you want it.”

“Damn me,” the Roman said, “my head must be transparent as glass tonight.” He fumbled in his belt-pouch, pressed coins into Safav’s hand.

The waiter stared. “My lord,” he stammered, “this is far too much—”

“Take it,” Marcus said; a goldpiece more or less seemed a small thing here and now. Safav bowed almost double.

“The second door on the right from the stairs,” he said. “A lamp is lit inside; there’s charcoal in the brazier, and fresh straw in the mattress, and clean fleeces, too—we made ready for the day.”

“Good.” Marcus stood with Alypia. She came round the table to him; that his arm went round her shoulder struck him as the most natural thing in the world. Safav bowed again, only to be jerked upright as someone shouted his name. He shrugged comically and scurried away.

One of the men in Makuraner costume gave a sodden cheer as Scaurus and Alypia climbed the stairs. Feeling her flinch, the tribune glared at the tosspot, who was cheerily oblivious to him. But her chin rose in defiance, and she managed a small smile. He lifted his thumb; she knew enough of Roman ways to read his approval. He wanted to hug her on the spot but held back, judging it would only further ruffle her.

The chamber was small, but large enough. Marcus barred the door by the thin light of the promised lamp, which sat on a stool by the bed. He quickly set the brazier going; the room was shuttered against the chill outside, but an icy draft crept in regardless.

Alypia stood motionless in the center of the room while he did what was needed. When he took a step toward her, she started in such trepidation that he froze in his tracks. “Nothing will happen unless you want it to,” he promised. With Roman practicality, he went on, “Warm your hands; it’s cold as a frog in here.” He moved aside to let her at the brazier. She stooped over it, taking him at his word.

Without turning, after a while she said, “Blow out the lamp.” Scaurus did. The flame sprang up for an instant, then was no more. The dim-glowing charcoal in the brazier turned the whitewashed walls the color of blood.