Shadow of Ararat

NEAR THE HIPPODROME, CONSTANTINOPLE

Your friend seems to have collected his last secret, Persian.“ Gaius Julius’ voice was droll.

Abdmachus cursed, muttering under his breath, and scratched his thinning hair. The narrow street, crowded by insulae of flats on one side and warehouses on the other, suddenly widened. On the northern side there was a wide gap in the buildings. Smoke-blackened pillars of brick and mortar rose out of a great tumbled heap of masonry and charred wood. In the ruins of the house, local children were picking through the rubble for salvage. The overcast sky and the thin gray smoke that lay over the city heightened the sense of destruction.

“His library will have been buried or destroyed in the fire,” Maxian said, his voice level. He held Krista close to his body, his arms crossed over her chest. Her hands curled around his forearms. He was wearing a broad leather hat that kept the drizzle off both of them. She was wearing a dark-green cloak over a russet tunic and laced-up boots. He had adopted a dark gray and black for himself, something that matched his mood.

“Perhaps not, Lord Prince,” Abdmachus said in a low voice. “It will have been in the basement and well pro tected, both by stone and wood and by unseen forces.“

“True.” The Prince felt grim and determined. He had spent a long time thinking, during the swift voyage from Ostia to the Eastern capital, and had come to some conclusions about his adversary and the strength he would need to overthrow it. Any concerns about the propriety of looting the cellars of a dead antiquarian were of little interest to him. “There are no guards set to keep scavengers off, so any family that might have inherited it must be absent, uncaring, or nonexistent. Gaius?”

“Yes?” the older Roman said, turning away from his survey of the nearby buildings.

“Ask around-see if the property is for sale and for how much. If we can afford it, purchase it. Also, we will need lodgings nearby. Secure these. Krista and I will return to the port and see about getting our baggage ashore and dealing with Captain Ziusudra.”

Gaius Julius watched in interest as the two youngsters hiked off down the street, arm in arm. He put a finger alongside his nose and sighed, thinking of the lost days of his youth. Water continued to dribble out of the sky. The clouds, if anything, were growing darker.

“Huh,” he said, turning to the little Persian, “that leaves you and me to do the dirty work. I expected no less…”

Abdmachus looked back up at him, his eyes filled with concern. “How will we acquire the building? If there are relatives, it might take months to resolve a court case.”

Gaius Julius smiled, fingering a heavy bag of gold aureus strapped to his belt. “No matter, my friend. I once worked with a man who made his living off burned buildings. I think I remember a thing or two. Come along, my fine foreign friend, and I will show you how the city fathers of Rome dicker over the ruins of someone’s dreams.”

“A substantial sum was owed on the property,” Gaius Julius said in a pedantic voice, “in taxes. Some six thousand aureus, to be precise.”

Maxian, sitting in a backless chair in his cabin aboard the Nisir, flinched a little at the sum. The elder Atreus had taken great pains to impress a traditional Roman penuri-ousness upon his sons. As a result, Maxian was loath to spend money, particularly large sums of it.

“And so? Will we have to dig in secret then?”

“Not at all,” Gaius Julius said with a grin, “I was able to purchase the entire property for only four thousand aureus, not counting, of course, a substantial gratuity to the secretary of the city records. It seems that the house had a poor reputation when occupied and is positively unsalable now that it was destroyed in such odd circumstances.”

“Those being?” Maxian had also heard a little of the story from the custom’s office at the port. “That a dragon woke underneath the house and burst forth, spitting flame in all directions before flying off to the east?”

Abdmachus coughed, then covered his face with his hand. He seemed to be laughing.

Gaius Julius glared at him and put a leather satchel on the edge of the table. “Not a dragon, my lord, but rather a wizard, I believe. I spoke with two young men who had been servants in the house, and they agree that a mysterious visitor from the East had been a guest of their master, this Bygar Dracul, right before the explosion and fire. I suspect that our Persian ally’s friend had been negotiating with the enemy…”

Maxian stared at the roof of the cabin for a moment, collecting his thoughts. The little room was warm with the heat from an iron stove built into one wall. Krista had packed all their belongings and was just finishing folding all the blankets and quilts that made the bed built into the opposite wall. He was distracted for a moment, watching her fold and stow the bedding. Her hair was tied back and fell to the small of her back. Her hands were quick and sure. He realized that he did not feet the heavy pressure against his mental defenses that marked his time in Rome.

“These servants, where are they now? We will need to question them.”

Gaius Julius smiled again and stepped to the door of the cabin. He rapped sharply on the frame. “I understand from them-they are foreigners and a little hard to follow, but I managed-that they sort of come with the property. So I told them that they have a new master. Really, they are quite happy about it, though not so happy as the land secretary. When I told him that a priest of Asklepios was moving into the house, he was ecstatic. I think he had put too much credence in all this talk of a curse.”

The door opened, swinging out on polished brass hinges, and two young men entered the room, stooping to pass under the low frame. They were lean looking, with long stringy dark hair and bushy eyebrows. They wore dark tunics the color of freshly broken slate, with bracelets of silver on their left arms. The taller one, with deep-set dark brown eyes, stood a little forward. His fellow looked nervously around the cabin, hunching down a little, his pale white hands clasped in front of him.

“Master,” the tall one said, kneeling on the deck and bowing his head to the floor, “we are overjoyed to enter your service.”

Maxian sat up a little, a feeling tickling at the back of his head. The eyes of the two young men were marked with pain. He could feel, as he had felt the agony of men in a military hospital, some anguish upon them.

“Welcome,” he said, standing from behind the desk. He walked to the side of the first servant and lightly touched the long shank of hair that fell down the man’s back. “You are in pain?”

“Yes, master,” both servants said, bowing to the decking, their breath a soft hiss.

“Perhaps I can ease it,” the Prince said, feeling the eddy and current of their disease brush against his outstretched hand.

“What are your names,” he asked, “and where do you come from?”

Krista finished packing the last of the blankets away and sat down on the bed, yawning.