Far Edge of Darkness

Chapter Seven

To Charlie's vast surprise, Xanthus was actually kind to him. As kind as he'd been since Charlie's initial purchase. He even allowed Charlie to crawl up the ladder onto the deck, where the clean scent of fresh air revived him at once.

"You're no value dead," the trader muttered. "Here. Drink all the water you want."

He handed Charlie a waterskin.

Charlie slaked his thirst frantically. He closed his eyes, lost in the ecstasy of life-giving fluid soaking into parched tissues. He would have given anything to drain the whole water bag, but Xanthus said, "Share the rest with Aelia."

Reluctantly he lowered the waterskin. "Thank you, Master," he whispered.

Xanthus' lips twitched. "Still trying to avoid the sale, eh? Should have thought of that before you took liberties with another man's virgin slave."

"Master, I didn't do anything to her—"

"Don't lie to me again, boy. I saw the look on your face—and hers." He scowled, then let it go with a dramatic sigh. "I suppose I'd better feed you. Bericus will want you reasonably healthy. I suspect he'll find ways of getting the healthy brats he wants out of you. I've been too lax with you, I suppose. Adflicta tells me I'm much too soft to try what would really work."

Charlie shivered. He didn't even want to think about what Bericus might try to turn his children from lead-poisoned, pitiful little things into healthy, strong sons to be sold to the Imperial gladiatorial school. Most Roman medical treatments quacked like a whole flock of ducks.

Xanthus sighed, seeming almost human in that moment. "If only you would submit to my orders..."

His doom already sealed, Charlie saw no sense in pulling his punches. "I might have, if you'd been charitable with kind words now and then. But you had to be tough, beating me into submission. Would you want your sons put through what you've put me through these past two years?"

Xanthus' eyes flashed, then a slow glint of respect appeared. "No. But I'm a patrician of an old family. You're a slave. Does my horse care if I geld its foal? What concern is it of yours what I do with my property? Mithras' pity, most slaves could care less what happens to their brats. They sleep with whatever woman they can get to open their legs and enjoy life where they can." Xanthus' brows twitched down. "But then, you always were an odd one. Even in the arena. I'm tempted..."

Charlie waited, wondering what his master was considering.

"No." Xanthus sighed. "Bericus tried that and you put a gash in his chin trying to kill him."

Charlie shuddered involuntarily, remembering.

"I'll let him deal with you. And with your incorrigible temper. Too bad. I couldn't feel more disappointed if one of my own sons had failed me. Achivus!"

"Master?"

"Give him enough food for himself and that girl of Caelerus'. Rufus, feed yourself and Aelia, too, when she wakes up." He tossed Charlie a heavy iron key, which he caught awkwardly.

Charlie considered only for a few seconds leaping overboard and trying to swim for it. He might make it to shore. But that would leave Aelia trapped below and Lucania trapped with Bericus. So he crawled meekly back into the hold as ordered. One of the sailors handed down a bucket of gruel, two bowls, and two spoons. Then, astonishing him, the sailor tossed down a limp wineskin and a couple of rough-hewn wooden cups.

"Maybe if she's drunk," Xanthus muttered, "we won't need as much of the drug. Can't have her fighting Bericus again... ."

Charlie had to make two trips and nearly went down several times as the ship rolled through the swells. The motion compounded the light-headedness that swept through him every few moments. What wine would do on an empty stomach... It'd been four years since he'd tasted anything alcoholic. Wine ought to taste wonderful. And if he couldn't avoid being sold to Bericus, alcohol might deaden nerve endings enough to endure his first night.

He set everything down beside the locked door, then fished out the key Xanthus had given him. Iron grated rustily, then the lock gave and came open in his hand. He swung open the door. When it threatened to slam shut again, he braced it with his crutch.

Aelia had flattened herself into one corner, a she-wolf at bay. Her gaze came up, focused on him...

Tension drained visibly from her body.

"What's up?" she asked.

The phrasing, so un-Latin-like, reminded Charlie painfully of home. A brief supposition crossed his mind, but he dismissed it immediately. That would be stretching odds just a little too far.

"Xanthus told me to feed you when you woke up."

She looked hopeful. "Is it edible?"

He grinned. "Edible as the last meal I brought you."

"Faugh..."

"But there's wine." He couldn't help sounding smug.

"Wine? Great heavens, has Xanthus discovered a sense of mercy?"

"No," he answered honestly. "He thought if you're drunk, he might not need as much of the drug next time. Just what did you do to Bericus?"

She slipped past him into the hold, then pulled a face at the stench. "I hit him in the balls," she said crudely. The flash in her eyes betrayed intense satisfaction.

Charlie just groaned. "Dear God, Aelia. He'll kill you on your first night with him."

"Oh, no." She shook her head emphatically—in the manner of Americans, not Latin fashion. Just where was Aelia from? "He was quite lurid about what he was going to do to me." She set her jaw. "I'll survive it. Then I'll escape. If necessary, I'll kill him first." Her lips tightened. "Even a clay lamp is a weapon, if you use it correctly. Come to think of it, if one of us set the house on fire, we might be able to slip away in the confusion."

Something, some quality of quiet ruthlessness in her tone and her eyes, spoke to Charlie in a way he'd never before experienced. The women he'd known as a teenager had been hard as old leather; they, like he, had known what it was to fight and claw for survival, had known it from early childhood.

He'd have bet money Aelia didn't. There were too many things about her that said, Nice kid, sheltered from a lot of life's ugliness. Yet there she stood, on her way to an unspeakable future, having made a decision to survive and grimly outlining one possible plan of attack. Despite her probable protected upbringing, in her determination she reminded Charlie of... himself.

He realized quite suddenly Aelia was probably not nearly as young a child he'd first thought. His initial guess of fifteen could be a couple of years short, at least. Charlie narrowed his eyes, recalling the sight of her body when he'd bathed her, that first morning she was ill. He'd thought she was simply a well-developed fifteen-year-old. Hell, he'd busted thirteen-year-old whores who'd looked at least twenty. Just how old—or young—was Aelia?

He wanted to know a great deal more about her. Who she was, really; where she'd come from. Why everything about her seemed oddly familiar, when he knew he'd never laid eyes on her in his life. In part, that was the cop in him. Wanting to ferret out the facts. But also part of it, Charlie realized, was that her determined attitude (now that it wasn't filtered through the drugs) somehow made him feel less alone.

To not be alone... Against his will, Charlie found himself wishing for impossible things—that he could keep her out of Bericus' clutches, that he could have the time to solve her mysteries. Then he shook his head, banishing the false mirages. He could deal with only one thing, if he were to survive: what passed for real life in this place.

Quite simply, Aelia's determination must be based on illusion. Charlie could tell Aelia still didn't understand what Bericus was capable of doing to her. Charlie knew one thing very well. If she fought him, he'd hurt her. Maybe even kill her.

"I'm starving," she said, breaking off the agony in his mind. She gestured toward the gruel bucket. "I suppose we might as well make do."

He nodded a little distractedly and allowed the cubicle door to bang shut while he fumbled with his crutch. She'd sat down virtually at his feet and had begun dishing up gruel. Light filtering down from the open hatch caught the play of highlights in her dark hair.

Charlie eased carefully past her, taking extreme caution not to touch her at all for fear of frightening her more than she must already be, then sat down on the spare sail again. He poured wine for both of them. Sweating rowers nearby eyed them with cold hatred.

Then Aelia handed him a bowl of gruel and he handed back a cup of unwatered wine. Her hands were trembling just the tiniest bit.

"Rufus?"

It took him a moment to remember his Latin "name."

"Yeah?"

He found her peering worriedly at him. "You— Are you ill?"

"Just a little light-headed," he said, truthfully enough. "I haven't eaten since yesterday. At dawn."

A tiny worry frown creased her brow. "You had better eat, then, before Xanthus interrupts us."

Charlie nodded, touched by the kid's concern.

When she lifted the wine to her lips, Charlie said quickly, "Careful, it isn't watered."

She halted in midair, causing the wine in her cup to slosh. A dark frown created vertical lines between her brows. "Watered wine," she said softly. "Watered wine. Where have I heard that?"

The moment passed, too quickly. She scowled and muttered under her breath, then downed most of it in a gulp. "Gah..."

A moment later, she held the cup out. "More, please."

He met her gaze. "Are you sure?"

Her stern eyes reflected both her pain and her struggle. "Maybe if I'm drunk enough to deaden those headaches, I'll remember something important."

Wordlessly, Charlie refilled her cup. For her sake, he hoped so. Her amnesia and the crippling attacks of pain whenever she tried to remember still bothered him deeply. If she remained in this condition...

Well, her first night with Bericus was going to be brutal, no matter what condition she was in. He wasn't sure whether to admire her bravery or give in to despair. Her innocent ignorance would soon be as dead and gone as the dinosaurs, leaving... what? He still remembered, far too vividly, what Bericus had done to him for daring to strike the Roman.

Thoughts of Publius Bericus still had the power to turn his stomach. And Charlie Flynn had seen a lot of stomach-churning sights. Even before he'd been dumped here to die.

His helplessness clawed at him.

Charlie downed a cupful of strong wine and refilled it, then poured again for Aelia. Her hair curled softly around her face like a cloud of black silk. Her skin was too pale, although when he'd bathed her that first day he'd noticed tan lines, almost like those left by a bikini. Mysterious kid. She had a wistful, lost look to her face. He finally placed in his mind who she looked like. He had to smile at his own foolishness.

Aelia reminded him of a dark-haired Shirley Temple. Half grown up, innocent. And since Caelerus claimed she was virgin... he wondered if she felt as desperately lonely, as hopelessly lost as he did.

"Rufus? What's wrong?"

Charlie roused himself with difficulty. "I'm sorry. Just a little—never mind. What is it?"

She was biting her lower lip. "You told me... what to expect."

He steeled himself.

"I heard Xanthus and Caelerus and Him talking, planning to take me to His villa rustica by ship. But no one said where His house is."

Charlie relaxed. He'd been sure she was going to bring up yet another painful, impossible subject. "You probably won't recognize the name," he said with as reassuring a smile as he could manage. "Not even if you had your memory back. The house is about two hours from a little resort town on the coast, south of Neapolis. Wealthy men retire there for the sun and sailing. I've been there once."

Her brow had furrowed again. "Resort town south of Neapolis... What's the name of this town?" She sounded as though it were very important. He wondered why, then shrugged. Who knew?

"Place is called Herculaneum."

Her whole body went rigid. Her eyes widened, then narrowed savagely.

"Herculaneum... I know that name. I—"

Visible pain hit her like a kick from an angry horse. Her skin turned dirty grey, the color of big-city snow. Then the screams started. He grabbed her around the waist as she toppled. Her arm tangled in his chains as she groped for her temples. Whatever was wrong, it was worse this time. Much, much worse. He didn't know what to do. Aelia felt like iron under his hands. Her cries tore at him, left him panicky in a way he hadn't felt since that snowy afternoon he'd come home from school and found his mother as cold as the unheated apartment, needles and candles and a deep-bowled spoon lying accusingly silent on the nightstand, and hideous white powder spilt everywhere—

Xanthus' fist came out of nowhere. It smashed into the side of his head and sent him reeling backwards. Charlie sprawled against the rough plank hull. His ears rang. His eyes smarted. Blood filled his mouth from cuts in cheek and lip. His angry oath got lost in the salty flood. Charlie coiled instinctively to fight back—then ruthlessly held himself still. He was already chained, already condemned to sale to a human beast. Charlie was aware with a harsh clarity what would happen to him if he dared vent his rage now, if he dared smash his fists into the man's mouth and nose—

"What did you do to her, you crippled dog?" Xanthus' fist caught him again. "Answer me!"

Aelia continued to scream and Charlie's heart again lurched in fear. He shook his head slowly. His eye was already swelling shut. "Nothing! Please, Master, nothing, she got sick again..."

The unalloyed fear in Charlie (for Aelia) must have allowed, for once, Charlie's submissive attitude to ring true to his master, for, to Charlie's amazement, no further blows followed.

"Conniving trader sold us a lousy epileptic whore—"

Through his one good eye, Charlie could see the near-panic on Xanthus' face. This one sale must be more important to the man than the mere sale of a slave had any right to be. Charlie wondered what political dealings were behind the panic... or was it something to do with Aelia herself?

The ship plowed bow-first into a deep wave, catching Charlie off balance. He fell roughly against the planked hull of the ship, scraping bare skin, then lay still, warily watching his master.

"Get up!" Xanthus kicked him.

He couldn't quite suppress a cry of pain. Charlie hauled himself slowly up off the rough planks. He swayed, then got himself awkwardly up onto his knees and caught his balance with manacled hands against the hull. The ship's motion was such, he couldn't get up the rest of the way.

"Now, Rufus Mancus," Xanthus hissed, twisting a hand through Charlie's hair, "get this girl cleaned up! Then drug her again. I don't want to risk her pitching a falling-down fit in front of Bericus!"

"But, Master, it's the drug that—"

The Lycian Roman slapped him hard. More blood spurted from his split lips. "Defy my orders again and you won't live to see yourself sold! Do you understand me, you crippled cur?"

"Yes, Master," he whispered, hating himself, hating Xanthus more.

Xanthus shoved him backwards. He was unable to catch himself from falling flat on his back because of the manacles. For a moment, all he could do was lie still and try to breathe against pain. Charlie lay very still until Xanthus had climbed back up to the main deck. When he finally let his breath out, it whistled explosively into the silence. He winced. Then lifted chained wrists to touch his mouth and wipe away blood with the back of his hands.

Charlie finally looked over at Aelia. She lay with her back to him, huddled down between the spare sail and the cubicle wall. She'd wrapped both arms around her head. Aelia apparently hadn't moved since he'd dropped her. Charlie cursed Xanthus under his breath and crawled closer.

She was weeping. But Aelia was also muttering softly to herself between shaky, watery breaths, in a language that sounded strange to his ears. He leaned over to listen more closely—

"—just don't get it, my God, how did he do it, this is crazy, nobody's got time travel..."

Charlie forgot about the bruises, forgot about the blood on his face, forgot his swollen eye. He even forgot to breathe.

She was speaking English.

With a Deep South accent he'd heard before, from native "crackers" who called home "North Florida, USA."

"Uh," he said, intelligently.

She rolled quickly and glared up at him.

"Omigod!" She bolted upright. One hand came up, as a horror-stricken expression darkened her eyes. She touched the swelling along the side of his face. He winced back from her fingers.

"What happ—" She broke off abruptly. Then blurted, "Oh, dear God..." Something in his eyes must have clued her that she wasn't speaking Latin, because she swallowed and said in that language, "Xanthus beat you because of me. Didn't he?" She touched his bleeding mouth. Fresh tears welled up in anguished green eyes. "I'm so sorry... ."

Charlie had to look away. He couldn't talk for a moment. No one, not even his mother, had ever cried over him.

"Yeah," Charlie said heavily, aware that he was taking a gamble he might not be able to afford. He didn't care. English felt as strange on his tongue as it sounded in his ears. The only times he'd used English over the past four years was to curse without being understood—and therefore punished. He used more, gauging her reaction. "The bastard gets a real kick out of it."

For a long moment, she didn't register it. When she did, her eyes widened. Her lips parted over soundless air.

"And my name's not Rufus Mancus," he added bitterly. "It took me a while to figure out what the name Xanthus had given me meant. I... had a different name before that one." Red the Cripple. How appropriate.

She blinked a couple of times, but still said nothing. The color of her eyes had deepened to the shade of the Emerald City. Charlie suspected from the curious depths in them that her mind was racing well ahead of her expression. When she finally did manage to say something, it wasn't at all what Charlie expected to hear.

"It's not the theft, it's the anachronism! Of course he had to get rid of me. One way or another—" Before Charlie could comment on that, she looked directly into his eyes. A steel-hard core had sprung into existence. "Obviously someone thought you were dangerous," she said, with a chill like New Jersey snow. "Or you wouldn't be here. Care to tell me what happened?"

Charlie managed a laugh, a grating, harsh sound. A delicate shudder rippled through her. "That's a good question, lady. They drugged me. Last thing I remember was Carreras' laughing face." He watched narrowly for any hint of recognition, but saw none. He added, harshly, "I woke up... here. In chains. You already know the rest."

"Carreras? Who's Carreras?"

Despite the sudden rush of wanting to share everything, Charlie just couldn't risk it. Not yet. Not until he knew exactly who she was and why she was here.

Charlie shook his head. "We'll get to Carreras later." He winced and wished for a piece of raw steak, or an ice cube. Or an aspirin. "I, uh, take it your memory came back?"

She shuddered. "Yeah. Nearly threw up, it hurt so bad. It was, uh, hearing the name Herculaneum did it."

"Oh?"

She sat up and rubbed her nose with the back of one hand, like a kid would. "I... I spent some highly interesting time there recently. You know, this is beginning to make sense, in a bizarre sort of fashion. I'd only been back in Florida for a week. And after—" She didn't elaborate. Instead, she chewed a thumbnail and said, "I was driving down a dirt road on my way to campus. There was a thunderstorm. Nothing unusual about that, it was late afternoon, summer."

Charlie snorted knowingly. "Yeah."

She looked up, her eyes hooded. "Oh? You've spent time in Florida? You sound more like New York."

The native Floridian's deep-seated distrust of Yankees—particularly "Goddamn Yankees" who came to stay—colored that dour observation.

"New Jersey," he corrected unhappily, aware that the distinction probably wouldn't improve his standing in her eyes. "And yeah, you might say I've spent some time in Florida. Go on."

She hesitated. Charlie waited.

"I... drove through a hole in the air. Lightning was shooting out of it. I tried to back up, but something went wrong with the car. I lurched forward, instead, right into it. I have really distorted memories of what happened next." Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated. "I remember Bartlett"—her voice took on a vicious edge when she said the name—"and someone else I'd never seen before. I think they must have hypnotized me, maybe under the influence of drugs. I seem to recall needles... ."

Christ, which branch of the Carreras family had she gotten mixed up with? And why?

Charlie nodded grudgingly. Her guess made sense with her symptoms. "Drug-enhanced posthypnotic suggestion might account for the memory block and pain."

But again, why? He knew only too well why he'd been marooned here. Charlie tugged at the chains on his wrists and thought about the relationship he was probably killing with every word he uttered, then said it, anyway. "And? None of what you've said tells me why you were so dangerous they hadda dump you here."

Her expression darkened into a scowl. "Neither have you."

Fair was fair.... But he wasn't ready to trust her that completely just yet. An agony of indecision kept him silent.

She glared at him, like a wolverine ready to spit ten-penny nails and rip out chunks of flesh with claws and teeth; then she looked away, a hint of too-bright liquid in her eyes. When she spoke, her voice shook. "Oh, hell. Why not? All we've got's each other."

Great. Make me feel worse than I already do.

But she'd started to talk. "Tony Bartlett tried to frame me for something he did. Something he stole." Her eyes glittered, angry, hard-cut emeralds. "No one suspected him or believed me, not at first. But Professor Clarke convinced the Italian authorities I couldn't possibly have had the connections to fence something like that. Dr. Clarke can be pretty persuasive and he speaks fluent Italian."

"Good thing for you."

She really did resemble a furious wolverine with her back up. "Too right," she growled. "He was the only person who stood up for me. Everybody else just tossed me to the wolves."

Charlie wouldn't have wanted to be the wolf on the receiving end of that wolverine glare. Then she shook her head and the glare faded into an expression slightly less lethal.

"Anyway, there were other inconsistencies in the whole setup, once the police started looking for other suspects. Things like Bartlett's nonexistent background. And that anachronism in the grid sector where Bartlett and I found the stuff he stole. The lowlife creep tried to convince everyone it was my mistake, that I'd somehow contaminated the site, cast doubt on the genuine antiquity of what we'd just unearthed."

Slim jaw muscles had clenched. Her eyes flashed again. "Bartlett and I had quite a fight. It was one reason the police were willing to believe I was guilty, at first. I had this supposed motive..."

Then she glanced up at him and actually blushed. She looked mortified that she'd had to air such sordid laundry. Did she actually care that much whether or not he believed her? She's young and scared, idiot. Of course she'd care that much.

He forced himself to scrutinize her story as dispassionately as he'd once taken apart the testimony of eye-witnesses after a crime.

Either her story was true—it was disjointed and bizarre enough to be—or she was a consummate actress. Charlie was inclined to trust his instincts. God alone knew, he'd had a bellyful of making snap character judgments over the years. She simply did not strike Charlie as the type who would steal. Or lie.

"Anachronism?" Charlie finally asked. "You said something about an anachronism? And what kind of 'grid sector'? What are you talking about?"

She looked blank for a moment. "The grid sector of our dig, of course. What else would it be?"

Well, that was clear as the muddy Tiber.

"Dig?" Charlie prompted.

"Archaeological dig," she said, as if that explained everything.

"Oh. Great." Archaeology had never been one of his interests, not even a minor one. Images of Indiana Jones raiding King Tut's tomb and unearthing glittering golden urns came to mind.

"I'm a grad student," she added helpfully. "Physical Anthropology and Classics, with a specialty in early Imperial Rome. That's why I speak classical Latin. I was," and her voice turned bitter again, "only a semester away from a Ph.D."

He grunted, hardly having heard the last statement. He didn't want to admit the sense of inadequacy her fluency in his "adopted" language had given him. "All right. So this Bartlett was implicated, but not apprehended?"

"He vanished into thin air. And from the looks of things, maybe literally."

Charlie nodded. There had to be a tie-in to Carreras, somewhere. "So, putting aside for a moment the technical how-to's of this, you think he marooned you here because you spotted something which gave him away, or at least something he thought gave him away?"

She leaned against the wall of the cubicle and sighed. "We were in the process of uncovering a sizeable wooden box we found in one of the beachfront grid squares. It was very well preserved. But while we were clearing it, I came across some things that shouldn't have been there. First, there was a problem with the soil. The box was covered with a different kind of soil from the rest of the site."

"Different soil? What are you talking about?"

"It looked like someone had dug a hole and mounded up dirt over the box to protect it, before the tufa was laid down. I might not have twigged so sharply to that, though, if I hadn't found the real anachronism." She frowned and squinted, as if looking at something by inadequate light. "It was a coin, a modern coin. He tried to grab it before I could see too clearly what it was. We got into a terrific shouting match. He accused me of trying to contaminate the site and invalidate the find. I yelled right back, said I was a professional, how dare he—"

She halted abruptly.

"It was pretty ugly," she said finally, rubbing the back of her neck. "At the time, I thought maybe the entire grid square had been compromised, but physically the site hadn't been disturbed. You could tell it hadn't, just by looking. You've got to chop through that tufa. There's no way anyone could have hidden signs of that kind of digging."

She turned her gaze away and stared at the ship's hull, while kneading her fingers as though they ached. Shafts of slivered light, falling from the barred hatch farther astern, caught the play of tension in her face.

"Anyway, after I was arrested, I decided he'd planted the coin somehow during the excavation, maybe to throw suspicion on me, give him a reason to stage a fight. It was obvious to me who'd stolen the artifacts. He must have planned to use me as a scapegoat all along."

"Probably. Sounds like a setup job from the start."

She nodded, clearly unhappy with herself. Charlie wanted to tell her it wasn't her fault, that obviously she'd tangled with a pro, but he wasn't sure it would do any good.

"At any rate," she sighed, "the artifacts were gone. And shortly after my release, so was Tony Bartlett. No trace, no nothing." She lifted her hands, palms up. "Just... poof. Gone. It was almost like he'd never existed. The Italians allowed me to come home," her lip curled, "but the university kicked me out of the degree program. Because of the scandal. Then I drove my car through a hole in the air." She shivered. "Obviously, Bartlett thought I knew too much, because of that stupid coin. It wasn't enough he had to ruin my entire career—"

"How was Bartlett connected with your dig, exactly?" He ignored the look of curiosity she gave him.

"He provided the financing." She glanced down into her lap and rubbed her fingers again. "Bartlett endowed the university with a research grant, specified which researchers were to be included, even insisted he accompany us on the dig." She shrugged. "It was a substantial grant. We get money from lots of weird sources. Dr. Clarke didn't imagine Bartlett could do anything to hurt the dig."

Her laughter was as hard as the unyielding wood they sat on. "Isn't that funny? Those manuscripts were priceless, probably worth millions on the black market, absolutely irreplaceable. That hurts almost more than anything else. Lost plays by Euripides, some of Plato's missing work, Julius Caesar's Oedipus and some of his poetry. They weren't even charred, the way the scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri were, because they'd already been buried. The most beautifully preserved ancient manuscripts ever found—and I didn't even get to read them."

Her eyes had filled with tears again. Charlie shook his head. Good grief.

"Sorry," she muttered. She attempted to wipe her cheeks dry. Then held out a hand still wet with tear trails. "I'm Sibyl Johnson, from Newberry, Florida. Well, close enough. Maybe ten miles outside town limits."

Charlie grinned. It must be nice to have such permanence. Apartment living was for the birds. "Charlie Flynn, Ms. Johnson. From Jersey City. Lately from Miami."

The chains at his wrists clanked as they shook hands formally. Hers trembled ever so slightly in his grip. She looked so calm. Charlie knew the stress signs and feared it wouldn't take much more to break her. A brief silence held while Charlie tried to figure out what to say next. She solved his problem.

"Are we really headed for Herculaneum?" That came out sounding little-girl scared. He got the strangest impression she wasn't thinking of Publius Bericus at all.

"Yeah. Should be there in a few hours."

Her face, which had gradually regained some of its former color, paled rapidly, leaving her waxy-pale. "Do you, uh, happen to know... What year is this? By our calendar?"

"Are you kidding? What year is it? The only thing I knew about Romans before I got dumped here was what I saw on videos of Ben Hur and Spartacus." He decided to take the risk. "I'm a cop, lady, not a history professor. I got no idea what year it is."

"A cop?" She rocked back and her eyes went round. She actually squeaked when she said it. "You're a cop?"

Charlie squirmed. He'd been undercover—deep undercover—for months when he'd stumbled onto something Carreras didn't want anyone to know. Not even Carreras knew he'd been a cop. He was two thousand years away from having his cover blown, but was still uncomfortable about admitting it to a stranger. Even one who'd been through everything Sibyl Johnson had been through.

"Yeah," he muttered, trying to ease the fire in his shoulders. "A cop. Miami vice."

"You're kidding?"

When he looked, her green eyes were sparkling. They reminded him of sunlight on the sea. He found himself responding to that look. A grin tugged rustily at the edges of his mouth. "Well, no. I'm not kidding, I mean. I'm no Don Johnson, but I really am an honest-to-god detective in the vice squad, Miami Metro Dade. I can't show you a badge. I don't carry one when I'm that deep undercover—too risky—and even if I had been carrying one, well... I didn't exactly get to keep my former wardrobe." He indicated the stained loincloth he wore. "Carreras—uh, that's Jésus Carreras, head of the Miami branch of the Carreras family—was the key figure in a stolen-arms case I was working on. Crack, smack, horses, dogs, prostitution, numbers, porno films for lots of kinky markets, gun running, you name it. They were into it. The trouble was proving it. Carreras runs one slick outfit."

The laughter had drained from her face. "I'm sorry. He found out you were a police officer?"

"No..."

To gain time while he figured out how much to say, Charlie refilled their wine cups. Sibyl—he had trouble thinking of her as Sibyl, rather than Aelia, even though the name fit her better—drained hers even more quickly than he gulped his.

"No," Charlie muttered after he'd finished the cupful. "And that's the weird thing. Carreras still thought I was a middle-man for a New York buyer. That's my specialty, posing as a buyer down from the City. We were ready to deal, when I stumbled across something he didn't want anyone to know about. Not even a two-million-dollar military arms deal was worth blowing the lid on this particular little secret."

She whistled softly.

He just scowled. "Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to learn much about it. Whatever the Carreras family has going—and it centers around this time-travel thing—it's important enough to plug any leak at all, fast and neat. And what better place to dump the bodies?" He lifted his hands with a clank of iron and a rattle of chain to indicate the dank hold. "Who'd ever find you?"

She regarded him with a steady gaze. Her lips had pursed slightly. "He slipped up, though, didn't he?"

Charlie whistled in turn. "You're fast. Yeah, he slipped up. For all the good it's likely to do me. Or you. I was supposed to die in that lousy execution his people arranged in the arena. Evidently Carreras' boys didn't stick around long enough to make sure of me."

"Tony Bartlett must be--" Her eyes widened. "My God."

"What?" Charlie grasped her arm and felt her tremble under his fingers.

"Caelerus," she whispered, meeting his gaze unsteadily. "Tony Bartlett is Caelerus! I didn't realize, I'm still muzzy-headed..."

Charlie shook the wrinkles out of that one and didn't like what he ended up with, not by a long shot, although he should have seen it coming. Sibyl wasn't the only one suffering from muzzy-headed thinking. That's what came of four years of protein deprivation.

"All right," Charlie finally said, "if Tony has access to whatever it is that opens those doorways in time, he's clearly part of the 'family.' Question is, in what capacity? He must be pretty high in the organization for Carreras to give him access to the time portals."

Sibyl shivered. "God, what a sight... ."

Charlie's skin crawled just watching her remember it. He wondered fleetingly if he should be grateful he'd been out cold when Carreras took him through. It would have been far worse to be fully aware of what was happening, but still powerless to stop it.

Her eyes had taken on a faraway look, the kind of expression he'd always associated with brainless bimbos mooning over stupid romance novels. Charlie got the impression, however, that her mind—far from turning itself off—was actually working at top speed.

Illogically he felt an optimism that should have been completely out of place. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that either of their situations was going to improve in the foreseeable future. The thought of both of them in Bericus' hands broke him out into a cold sweat.

She visibly collected herself and looked up at him. Either she didn't notice the strained expression on his face or chose to ignore it. "I'd give a lot to know who made the time-travel breakthrough, not to mention how the mafia got their hands on it, and how Bartlett's connected with them; but we don't have time for that right now. There's something more urgent I've got to know." She worried her lower lip with her teeth. It was an endearing habit and made her look more like Shirley Temple than ever. When she finally spoke, her question surprised him. "Charlie, how long have you been here?"

"As near as I can figure, about four years."

She nodded. "Okay, that's what I was guessing. Good. Who was on the Imperial throne when you arrived?"

"I'm not likely to forget him. Old guy by the name of Vespasian. I was sorry when I heard he'd died... ."

He trailed off. Her face had gone positively chalky.

"And Titus is emperor now? How... ?" Her voice actually cracked. She stopped, licked her lips, and tried again. "How long has Titus been on the throne? As close as you can figure!"

The intensity in her voice, the white pallor of her skin alarmed Charlie.

"Uh..." He thought hard, tried to reconstruct the days. Time had nearly ceased to have meaning for Charlie. "A month, or close to it. I remember the coronation celebrations. They lasted a whole week. Then the week after that Xanthus' favorite gladiator died in the arena and he— Never mind." He looked away from the quick sympathy in her eyes. "Then the week after that, we got in a pair of dancing girls and sold them to Tellus Martonius. Caelerus brought you in maybe six days after that and you were at Xanthus' for a couple of days before we set sail."

She hugged herself tightly. "If the city still exists— That's got to be it. God, what day is this? Titus was only emperor for a month or so before— Wait!" She held up an impatient hand when he started to ask a question. "I've got it. The festival was just—" She leaned forward and grasped Charlie's arm, hard enough to raise welts with her fingernails. "Charlie, has Rome celebrated the Festival of Vulcan yet?"

Charlie shook his head. "It's today. Xanthus was angry at having to miss it."

She shut her eyes. Charlie received the impression she was trying to shut out a vision too terrifying to face. He felt a chill creep over him.

"Murdering son-of-a..." She drew a quivery breath and opened her eyes. They mirrored a panic that left Charlie feeling positively icy. "Charlie, Tony Bartlett doesn't plan for me to stay alive in this time any longer than Carreras planned for you to survive. Whatever else happens, if you want to live through the next twenty-four hours, you've got to get hell and gone away from Herculaneum. With or without Lucania, you've got to get away."

The chill that had overtaken him crawled its way up his spine to his scalp. "Why?"

The look she gave him reminded him of the looks his teachers had given him all through school. Without warning, he was angry clear through. Then she shook her head and chewed at her lip again. Instant irritation disappeared. She was under tremendous pressure, too, and nowhere near as trained for it as he was. Besides, Sibyl was clearly accustomed to dealing with people who spent their lives reading books, not dragging illiterate slime up out of the sewers.

"I'm not much of an expert on Roman history," he said quietly. "You know the old song, 'Don't know much about history...' That's me. I guess I'm thanking Anybody who'll listen that someone who does know came along. So why do we need to snatch Lucania and get out of town?"

She reached over and squeezed his hand. It felt like an apology. Her eyes were dark, though, and she had trouble meeting his gaze. Her voice was pitched almost too low to hear.

"Tomorrow night, just about midnight... Herculaneum is going to be buried under a lot of very hot mud, ash, and pumice. Between, oh, sixty to a hundred feet of it."

Charlie hissed wordlessly.

"You see," she went on, her voice dull, "most people don't remember that Mt. Vesuvius buried two major cities, and a couple of smaller towns, when it erupted and destroyed Pompeii."

Even Charlie had heard of Pompeii. He'd seen the movie.

"Holy shit," Charlie whispered into the silence that followed.

She nodded bleakly. "A lot of people escaped Pompeii before the main eruption—and the fiery avalanches full of poisonous gas and glowing pumice—hit the city. Only the ones who ignored the earthquakes or stayed to wait out the ashfall were trapped. The wealthy resort town of Stabiae—it was famous for its mineral springs, and let me tell you, that place was loaded with money, same as Herculaneum—was eventually buried, too. So was the little town of Oplontis. The eruption lasted three days."

She hugged herself, as though chilled by the images she was describing. "The Imperial fleet tried to rescue survivors. Pliny the Elder, he was the fleet admiral stationed at Misenum, took his ships across the Bay of Naples to rescue survivors. But he couldn't get close enough to get anyone out. He was trapped at Stabiae instead, rescuing people there, and was killed. His nephew at Misenum, Pliny the Younger—the famous historian—left a really vivid account. He was afraid they'd be killed, once the fiery avalanches started. Took his mother and ran for it. The Bay of Naples isn't all that large. A few miles across, no more. Herculaneum's only about four miles from the volcano's summit."

Charlie whistled softly. "So Herculaneum was wiped out, too. How come nobody ever mentions it, if several cities were buried? And how come anybody was crazy enough to build cities on an active volcano?"

"They didn't know it was a volcano. In a.d. 79, Vesuvius hadn't erupted for at least three hundred years. Almost nobody understood what caused the earthquakes all through the Campanian region, like the one that damaged the Temple of Jupiter in Pompeii in a.d. 62. Not even Seneca, who was something of a naturalist, understood it; although Strabo did guess there had been volcanic activity there at one time." She shivered. "We used to think everybody got out of Herculaneum. We'd never found any bodies, not like we did at Pompeii." She swallowed. "Then we, uh... We found the ancient beach. It's about half a kilometer inland from the modern waterfront. Most of them made it that far."

She looked like she was about to cry again.

Charlie sympathized. "Holy shit."

He didn't know what else to say.