A polite cough behind him heralded the entrance of his aide. Galen turned, taking care to show a slight smile and betray nothing of the sadness that now filled him.

“Ave, Augustus,” Aetius said, bowing slightly. The boy was still a little stiff in his presence, a tendency made worse by the ritual of the Eastern court. Galen shook his head in dismay; had anyone ever been so young? Romulus Aetius Valens was the scion of one of the few patrician families left in Rome that still boasted numbers of sons. Nomerus Valens, the patriarch of the family, had been smugly pleased to obtain the appointment for his son, but from Galen’s point of view there had been a paltry number of suitable candidates put forward. Of them Aetius was the best, even if his instinct was to bow at any occasion.

“Aetius, I am only a man, not a god. You need not bow and scrape before me.” Galen’s voice was gentle and filled with wry amusement. Aetius looked up and saluted again.

“Stand at ease, lad, and tell me the news.”

Aetius saluted again, standing straight. His short brown hair was cropped in a severe line above his brows and his usually pale skin was beginning to brown in the Greek sun. He pulled two wax tablets from under his arm, placing them on the writing desk that stood between them. Galen sat down in his camp stool and perused the tablets. While he did so, Aetius reported:

“Augustus, the third and sixth cohorts of the Seventh Augusta, the equites of the Sixth Gemina, and four thousand Gothic auxillia have landed today at the harbor. With these men, the numbers of the Western vexillation here in the capital have grown to twenty-five thousand men. The quartermaster has requested that I inform you that we are out of places to put more troops. If, perhaps, you could discuss this with the Emperor Heraclius…”

Galen waved off the rest of the statement. His men could double or triple bunk for the short time that the army would be in the Eastern capital. Now that both he and the Eastern Emperor were in the same place and able to meet face to face, the coordination of the great expedition had vastly improved. The use of the telecast had been intermittent and tremendously tiring to the sorcerers maintaining the link. The ancient devices still tended to lose focus and drift to other scenes or faraway lands. Though they had shown great promise, they were not a reliable mechanism. Galen had been forced to dismiss them from his calculations save as a means of emergency communications. The trouble now was not on the part of the Western Empire, but rather the East, for Heraclius was engaged in a power struggle with the great landowners that supplied the majority of his fighting men.

“Go on, what other news?”

“Resupply of the ships continues apace, though it seems backward that we should come here to bring on supplies when all of the supplies in the city are already brought in by boat.” Aetius paused, but Galen did not respond to the implied question. Gamely the youth continued, “The word from the chamberlain of the palace is that the Khazar embassy has still not shown up, delaying that meeting and a letter came by messenger from the Duchess de’Orelio.”

Galen raised an eyebrow at this last and put down the tablet. “Where is the letter?”

“In the hands of the messenger, Augustus. She informed me that she had been directed to deliver it in person.” The boy, if anything, became stiffer. Galen shook his head-he was afraid that the boy’s reaction would only be a small reflection of the trouble to come with the Easterners.

“She is here, then?”

Aetius nodded.

“Show her in then, lad, and stop looking like you’d swallowed a prune pit.”

“Ave, Augustus!”

Aetius turned on his heel and marched to the door. A moment later the messenger entered and Galen raised an eyebrow in surprise. Rumor had held for some months that the notorious and “oriental” Duchess had finally decided to bring her mysterious ward out into the open. Though An-astasia had been the Imperial spymaster for three Emperors and had never given Galen any indication that she was anything but utterly loyal to the state, he was pleased to see some indication that she was mortal.

An Emperor required many spies and informers to serve his will and be his eyes throughout his domain. Over the last eleven years, the de’Orelio faction had gathered nearly all of those resources to themselves-first when the old Duke had been the spider, now that his widow was. Galen had taken pains in the last year to establish his own sources of information, ones that were not beholden to Orelio, but it was slow work. Most damnably, he had not found any man who could execute the covert strategies of the state as well as the Duchess. It galled him, though he felt no ill will toward de’Orelio, that she was so obviously his superior in this area.

The messenger planted her feet and stood at parade rest before the writing desk. Galen noted with interest that she was both as young as had been reported and as beautiful. Too, she wore simple garb, most reminiscent of a Legion scout. Tall worn leather boots, light-green cotton breeches in the Gothic style, a loose tunic of weathered brown with piping at the collar and cuffs. A dark-gray cloak was pulled back a little off of broad shojjjders. Her hair, a rich gold-red, was braided back from her head. Gray-green eyes surveyed him calmly, even as he looked upon her.

“Ave, Augustus Caesar. Thyatis Julia Clodia, centurion, Legio Second Italia, at your service,” she said, handing him a scroll tube. “Greetings from my mistress, the Duchess Anastasia de’Orelio. She hopes that you are well and that your venture is blessed with success. I am to tell you that if there are any questions, I am to answer them.”

Galen nodded at the politeness, breaking the thick wax seal at the end of the tube. Within were thick sheaves of finely rolled papyrus sheets. They were covered with the spidery writing, in dark ink, that de’Orelio favored. He be gan readirtg but put the report aside after the first page. Much of it was routine business and the other he would go over in private. The messenger interested him more than the message. He gestured that she should sit on one of the stools facing the desk. With only a minute hesitation, she did so.

“Aetius, could you go and get something for me to eat. Something light. And wine, but not the Greek, something we brought with us.”

The boy bowed and hurried out, closing the door behind him. Galen smiled again and scratched his ear, looking sidelong at the young woman sitting across from him. How to approach this? He realized with a rueful chagrin that he had never had a “business” conversation with a woman save the Duchess. De’Orelio had always made him nervous, though she did not give him heart palpitations as she did the Senate. Galen realized that the foremost reason he trusted the Duchess was the effect she had on the senatorial class.

He shook his head slightly, then decided to dispense with the usual politeness that obtained between women and men in his social circles. This was one of his officers, for all that she was a woman, and he had work for her to do. Being polite and following convention would not speed things up or make them more efficient

“Clodia, you are a bit of a puzzle for me, given that you are, to my knowledge, the only woman officer that I have on this expedition, indeed, the only woman soldier that I have in my army. I have discussed you and your situation, and your talents, with the Duchess on more than one occasion and I will be blunt. I did not think that you could do the work that she set you to. In fact, I was entirely opposed to the concept of this… ‘special’… contubernia when she proposed it to me.”

Thyatis was very still, not even blinking. Galen paused a moment, seeing if he could gauge her reaction. She waited patiently, so he continued.