The two men, one gray-haired, the other with a dark mane, pulled the wagon around to the back garden entrance and unloaded two heavy kegs-filled with wine or water by the apparent weight of them. They rolled the kegs inside the house, raising a clatter on the tile floors. Indistinct voices echoed in the empty hallways. The girl crept lower on the hillside on her hands and knees. Now the wagon was only thirty feet away, across the little side road that ran around the house. The horses were patiently waiting in the traces, The voices continued to echo in the house, though now they receded. The girl looked left and then right. Predawn stillness continued to cover the land.
She waited a moment, but no new movement came from inside (he house. Crouching low, she scuttled across to the side of the wagon and paused, peering under the heavy wooden bed. She could just make out the steps on the other side, but no one was on them. Her nose wrinkled up; there was a foul odor seeping from the wagon, like rotten meat. Oog… what are you doing, pretty Prince? Krista swallowed, suppressing the sudden desire to throw up. There was still no noise from the house, so she crept around the end of the wagon and peered inside the bed.
There were two long shapes, wrapped in ancient, dirty canvas. The smell was thicker now, but she steeled herself and reached into the back of the wagon to twitch the nearest edge of canvas aside. Her face flickered with revulsion at the sight of a gray-black foot protruding from the bundle. It was scabrous and the toes were swollen. Nitrous dirt clung to it in clumps. The smell was worse, like a fist in the face, and she had to sit down behind the wagon, gagging The clatter of boots echoed on the stone steps at the back of the house. Krista started, then realized that she was trapped behind the wagon. Carefully she drew her legs up under her and edged beneath the wooden bed. From underneath the rough boards, she saw two sets of sandaled feet tromp down from the house and go to the back of the wagon.
“Gods, that is a foul stench… like rotten butter.” That was the Prince.
“Huh, you’re an ill-experienced pup. I don’t even note it anymore.”
They bumped around in the wagon and then there was a sliding sound as they dragged the first of the two bodies out. She heard Maxian grunt as he took the weight, then the older man jumped down and took up the rest of the burden.
“Watch the steps,” the older man said, and then they staggered off with the body between them. Krista peered from under the wagon until they had entered the house, then she slipped out from under it and darted off into the shelter of the woods. Twenty minutes later she was back on the hillside, shaking Sigurd’s shoulder. He came awake, only slightly muzzy from sleep.
“Come on, we’ve got to go back to the city immediately.”
The dreadful sickly sweet odor still hung in the air, but Maxian had grown inured to it. His medical training had taken over and now he gazed down upon the two bodies- secretly dug from potters’ fields south of the city and now spread open with clamps and tongs-with a detached air. Gaius Julius loitered behind him, leaning against the wall of the basement of the Egyptian house. The older man wore a butcher’s apron and heavy leather gloves, spattered with dark fluid. Maxian placed his hands on either side of the first body’s head and began to breathe carefully.
Perception fell away as his flesh relinquished control of his view of the world. The hidden world blossomed, an infinitely textured flower opening in his mind. Detail flooded his mind like a swift mountain torrent, and he struggled for a moment to compose and order it. He bent over the body of the ancient man, dead now for weeks. His fingers moved in the body cavity, sliding over the glutinous remains of liver, spleen, and lungs. His fingers, so used to the work, were his anchor and focus now as his awareness plunged into the recesses of the decaying body. Flesh parted before him, and the innermost secrets of the organs were revealed.
Against the wall, Gaius Julius watched with apprehension. He had seen more than his share of death, and it was no stranger. But the air in the tomblike basement seemed chill and noisome compared to a battlefield. Too, the work of the past nights, of trolling the alleys of the Subura and Aventine slums for suitable bodies, had been grim. The poverty and dissolution of the lower classes of the city that he still, after centuries, loved shook him. In his previous life, he could remember thinking of the people of the lower city, below the hills, as nothing but useful tools in his quest for power. Now the decay of the city and its people struck him cruelly in the heart. He knew that during the short period in which he had the power to revise the workings of the Republic or the customs that supported it, he had done little or nothing. And what now? Had he, somehow, caused all of this to come to pass?
An hour passed, grains trickling through the glass. Maxian suddenly shuddered and stepped back from the first body. Sweat trickled down his face and he looked exhausted. The dead man stepped quickly to his side and helped him to a chair next to the wall. Gaius Julius squatted, peering at his young master. The lad’s eyes were flickering, unfocused. His right hand was clenched in a death grip. Gaius Julius stood and brought him back some wine. Maxian shied away from the cup, but the dead man gripped the Prince’s head in his free hand and forced him to drink. After the first taste, the young man took the cup in his own hands and drank deeply.
“How do you feel?” Gaius held Maxian’s head up in his hands, staring at his eyes.
“Exhausted. I may have to wait until tomorrow to examine the other body.”
“Can Abdmachus do it?”
The Prince shook his head, too weary for words. Gaius Julius lifted the Prince’s clenched hand up, so that the boy could see it. Maxian had trouble focusing, but when he did, he frowned. “Odd. Why is my hand doing that?”
Gaius Julius pried the fingers back and revealed a small, irregular clump of pale-gray metal in the Prince’s palm. He plucked it out and rolled it in his fingers. An eyebrow rose. “It looks and feels like a slinger’s bullet. Was it in the body? I saw no wound like this would have made-had he carried it for a long time?”
Maxian, still terribly weary, shook his head no. Then his head rolled back against the wall and he began snoring. Gaius Julius sighed and put the odd ball of metal on the e’nd of the table. This done, he carefully lifted up the Prince and, straining with the effort, carried the boy up the stairs to the main floor of the house.
Anastasia de’Orelio, Duchess of Parma, looked up in irritation at the sound of rapping on the door to her private study. Sighing at the latest interruption, she put down the letter she was reading and composed her hair.
“Enter,” she said, her voice tired and on the edge of open irritation. She sighed again inwardly when Krista entered the chamber and knelt by the side of the desk. Perhaps it had been a mistake to begin using the girl in the field. She was quick and usually circumspect, it was true, and rarely drew attention to herself-she was a slave, after all.
“Yes, my dear, what is it?”
“We kept watch on the Egyptian house in the hills, mistress, until the Prince and his servant returned. They came back very early this morning and they had two bodies, fresh ones, in a wagon. They took them inside the building and we came back to the city to warn you. The Prince is up to something dreadful up there! We should inform the aediles, or the prefect, and stop him.”
Krista was almost breathless. She and Sigurd had hastened back to the city as fast as they could.
Anastasia sighed and looked down at the girl, still kneeling at her side, panting. Youth! she thought to herself, rubbing the graininess from her eyes. Too many late nights, now that the Emperor was gone from the city, and too little sleep were wearing her down.