One With the Darkness (30 page)

“You can do nothing, old friend. Now go from here before anyone finds you’ve returned.” He might have brought the Guard down on them already, if he had been seen. She glanced to Jergan and saw his hard eyes and a muscle working in his jaw. He thought the same. She put a hand on Lucius’s arm to guide him to the door, but he pulled away.

“I can take care of your wants, my lady. You need to eat.”

“Jergan cooked eggs for me.” She smiled. “I am sated.”

“I’ll wager he didn’t make you tea. What does a barbarian know of a fine Roman lady’s needs?” Lucius’s tone was almost pleading. He must truly be frightened to be so overset.

She looked again to Jergan and shrugged. The damage was already done. Sending Lucius off again just provided another chance for someone to notice him. Jergan nodded, once.

Lucius saw the exchange. He let out a breath. “I’ll go to the kitchens.”

“You won’t find much there,” Jergan called. Lucius acted as though he didn’t hear.

“Excellent,” she sighed. “Now I am responsible for putting him in danger as well as you.”

Jergan came and put his arm around her. “I am responsible for myself. Remember, you freed me. Therefore, the choice is mine to stay or go. His, too.” He nodded after Lucius.

“I wish the sun would go down.” Livia began to pace. She must find out what was so important that she couldn’t leave this house.

“I can go look,” Jergan said. He propped his big frame on one elbow on the bed.

She stopped in her tracks. “I’m not sure you would recognize whatever it is when you see it. But I will.”

“As you wish. I might mention that there is no way to hurry the sun by pacing.”

She sighed. “It is only to make me feel like I am doing something.”

He shrugged, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. “In that case, please continue.”

Lucius returned with a pot of hot water and some pungent-smelling leaves. “I found a pot for steeping that wasn’t broken,” he said, looking around for some place to set it. He settled on a chest, now without drawers, that still stood in the corner. His hand shook as he took a small oilskin of leaves and poured them into the water. What was that smell? Her tea usually didn’t smell like that. But beggars could not choose.

“I am eternally grateful for your kindness, my lady,” Lucius was saying. His voice drifted back over his shoulder, drenched with too much emotion. “I’m only sorry I can’t repay you more suitably.” He turned. The tea steamed in a goblet with a crack in the lip. His eyes were filled with tears, no doubt a reaction to stress.

She took the cup. It felt warm and soothing in her hands. She sipped.

The bitter taste was a shock. She looked up to Lucius. His tears were spilling now. They should. How could he think she wouldn’t recognize the taste of hemlock? She lifted her brows. “Why, Lucius?” The betrayal felt like a knife in her heart. She had bought this man, owned him, freed him, and employed him for ten years. She depended on him to run her household, trusted him. He knew more of her secrets than anyone else alive, except Jergan.

“The Guard took my sister and her boy,” Lucius choked. “If I don’t do this, they will die in the arena.”

He had bought their freedom, Livia knew.

Jergan stepped up and grabbed a fistful of his toga. “Who told you to poison her, Chaerea or Asiaticus, you little worm?”

“Neither. Neither,” Lucius panted, looking frightened. “Just the soldiers who came to tell me my family had been taken.”

“Did they tell you to use hemlock?” Livia asked. It was an odd choice for poisoning. One couldn’t miss the bitter taste.

Lucius deflated as though all the blood had been drained from him. “That was my idea, my lady,” he said. His voice was dry as dust.

The hemlock wouldn’t kill her, deadly as it had been to Socrates. Perhaps a moment of stomach cramps. “Well, then, you can go and tell them you delivered the dose and claim your reward.” She upended the cup and drank the whole, then handed him the cup.

“Livia!” Jergan shouted, dropping Lucius like a stone. He knocked the cup from her hand. “Are you mad?”

“It won’t kill me,” she assured him. She turned to the man who had betrayed her. She understood his dilemma. He did not look happy about what he’d done. But he didn’t look relieved that the dose she’d taken wouldn’t kill her. He might not win his family’s release if Livia wasn’t dead. “I have some pressing business at sunset. Then tell the Guard you’ve done what they asked. I hope they release your family.” But she wasn’t sure they would.

Her stomach cramped and she doubled over, trying to breathe. Hemlock was a forceful poison. Jergan grabbed for her and swung her onto the bed. She took a breath and relaxed. “Better now. I told you.”

He leaned over her. That was odd. He looked … blurry. His green eyes swam as though they were underwater.

“Jergan?” The whole room seemed to float. And now there was a noise somewhere. Many feet. Shouts. Were they far away?

“What … what have you done, Lucius?” she managed. “That wasn’t hemlock.”

Jergan lifted her in his arms, his face a rippling mask of concern.

Lucius stood at the end of the bed. “Yes, it was, my lady. I needed the strong taste of hemlock to cover the essence of poppy.”

“Nooooo,” she wailed. “How did you know?” Had Jergan told him? The room was running together. Her limbs felt like water, too.

“When I realized you were a vampire I searched out ancient texts that told me of your kind. They were most informative. So when it came down to betraying you or letting my kin be killed, I knew what to do. I didn’t tell them about decapitation. And they can’t keep you drugged forever. You still have a chance to win through.”

The darkness burst apart. Men clattered into the room. Jergan dropped her on the bed. He would be drawing his sword. She couldn’t quite see. Lucius must have given her an incredible dose of the drug to subdue her Companion.

The room was filled with boiling movement. She couldn’t make out what was happening. Her limbs felt limp and heavy. Her eyelids closed in spite of her best intentions. She must help Jergan. But she couldn’t.

She was powerless for the first time in her life.

J
ERGAN WHIRLED, SWORD
slashing. One guard went down, fingers grabbing at the blood spurting from his neck. The bastards were well armored. They could be brought down by a thrust only at the neck, the jointure at the waist, or sideways into the groin under the protective
flaps of hardened leather. He tried each way in turn. Three lay at his feet. He felt a sword point find his hip and jerked back. There were too many. He had to protect Livia. The flash of steel made him think about decapitation. Fear shot through him. Lucius said he hadn’t told them, but he had lied before. Or they might happen on it accidentally.

“Halt! All of you!” a voice yelled through the throng. The attack ebbed. Chaerea himself pushed his way through his men. He looked like a carrion crow come to pick their bones with his gleaming black armor and the stiff black crest on his helmet. A black cape with a border embroidered in gold swirled around him.

Jergan crouched, panting, waiting.

“Look behind you, barbarian.”

Jergan felt a cold hand on his heart. He chanced a glance to the bed. A soldier held an insensible Livia by the hair, his sword lifting her chin.

“He’ll slit her throat.”

Or worse. Jergan let his sword clatter to the floor.

“Bind him,” Chaerea ordered. Two of his minions pulled Jergan’s wrists behind his back, while another confiscated the abandoned weapon.

“And you, you have done well.” Chaerea clapped Lucius on the back. Lucius looked ready to cut his own throat. “What is it you gave the witch to take her powers?”

“Distilled essence of the poppy,” Lucius whispered. “It takes a massive dose.”

“Then you have served your purpose.” Chaerea’s sword slithered from its scabbard and buried itself in Lucius’s belly. The man doubled over with a groan, his hands scrabbling at his abdomen and the fount of blood that gushed there.

“My sister …” he gasped. “Her boy …”

“Good fodder for the arena,” Chaerea grunted. He turned to watch the guards wrap Jergan’s wrists together with strips of leather. His hands would soon be numb.

Behind Chaerea, Lucius fell to his knees and toppled over. His eyes glazed. Chaerea had saved Lucius the trouble of suicide. And the man hadn’t even rescued his family. Rome had ground him under her heel, as she did so many. Jergan looked to Livia. She seemed only half-conscious, though he could hear her low moaning. They had found her Achilles’ heel. Even if they didn’t kill her, they could make her suffer. He gritted his teeth, feeling helpless to protect her. And that was what he had sworn to do.

“Bring both of them,” Chaerea barked. “Caesar awaits.”

T
HE ENDLESS MARBLE
halls of Caligula’s palace were gloomy at night, in spite of the lamps and braziers that burned everywhere. Jergan looked up and saw that the ceiling had been painted with animals in exotic array, probably cheerfully gilt, now dim with smoky lamp oil and menacing. He was being marched, limping from the wound in his hip, into the bowels of the palace by the group of a dozen Praetorians. Cassius Chaerea stalked in the lead and one soldier carried a limp Livia, her head lolling so that her hair hung over his arm in a heavy black curtain. Jergan was in some pain from his hip, but he could still walk, so the ligaments hadn’t been cut. If he could but get a sword …

Fruitless thoughts. A sword would do him no good against these odds, with an unconscious Livia to carry through endless corridors and halls. He must bide his time. He swallowed his fear, but still it churned somewhere in his gut.

Two golden doors guarded by two immense Nubian slaves with feathered spears blocked their way. Chaerea gave the Praetorian salute, but before he could announce himself, the slaves pulled open the doors. They were expected.

Inside, the echoing room was all black and green marble with huge porphyry vases and white marble busts on pedestals everywhere. Caligula looked strangely insignificant in these surroundings meant to aggrandize him. Asiaticus stood at his side, looking more imperial than the emperor himself. At the sight of the Guard and their quarry, the emperor hurried over, rubbing his hands like a child anxious for a treat.

“At last, Cassius,” he said, with relish. “How ever did you subdue her?” He gave an elaborate shudder. “Did she try to disappear?”

“One of her freedmen showed us how to negate her powers.”

“Well,” Caesar asked sharply, “how?”

“Essence of the poppy, Caesar. We must keep her plied with it in order to hold her.”

“And she was behind the plot to kill us?”

“She was,” Asiaticus’s voice broke in, as though to remind everyone that he was there. “Though she had compatriots. If we keep her drugged, she can’t tell us who they were.” He shot a sharp glance to Chaerea, and Jergan realized that these two competed for Caesar’s favor as though their lives depended on it. They probably did.

“No need to question her,” Chaerea countered smoothly. “I’ve had her confidant, Titus Delanus Andronicus, picked up today, as well as Marcus Belius and several others. They’ve been spreading talk of a republic in the Senate. Presumably the plan was to reestablish the republic after you had been assassinated.”

“The bitch!” Caligula shrieked. “Even crucifixion is too good for her.” He turned and paced to a marble bust of a regal-looking man. In a fit of pique, he pushed it over. The pristine white marble broke in several pieces. A brass plate skittered across the floor. It said “Augustus Caesar” on it. The current Caesar, so much smaller in every way than Augustus, whirled. “How can we punish her if she’s too drugged to feel pain?”

Livia being drugged had a positive aspect. Jergan could be made to suffer, but Caligula was right. Livia couldn’t.

“I have an idea, great Caesar,” Asiaticus said. “If you reduce the drug a bit, she can suffer as much as you want.”

Jergan found it hard to get breath. He twisted his hands against his bindings.

“And what if she disappears and escapes us?” Chaerea growled.

“A risk, true. But you can’t have it both ways. She is drugged but cannot suffer. Or we reduce the drugs a little and chance her escape in order to torture her.”

“Well.” Caesar frowned. “We want to torture her. I suppose there is no choice.” He walked over to the guard who held Livia and squeezed her breast through her tunic. “We should like to have her before she is tortured. But really, it isn’t amusing if she sleeps through the whole.” He turned to Jergan, and his look grew sly. “You haven’t told me what role this slave played in the plot.”

“He is a freedman, great Caesar,” Asiaticus murmured.

“Did you not know that Caesar decreed him slave again?” Chaerea asked in all innocence. “Oh, that’s right: you were not privileged to be there at the time.”

They were like children arguing. Well, perhaps Jergan could turn that to advantage. He took a breath. “You
should ask not what role I played, but what role the captain of your Guard played, great Caesar.”

Caligula perked up. Chaerea stepped over to Jergan and struck him with his fist. Jergan’s head snapped to the side. “The slave seeks to poison your ears with lies, Caesar.”

“I think we should hear him out.” Asiaticus smiled.

“Speak, slave,” Caligula agreed. “It will prevent us torturing the information out of you.”

“Your captain was to be the instrument of your destruction, Caesar.”

“Interesting,” Asiaticus murmured.

Caligula frowned and turned to Chaerea. Jergan had to give the man credit. Chaerea didn’t flinch and he didn’t hesitate. “Of course I engaged with her. How else was I to uncover the plot? But why would I want a republic? The Guard would surely be disbanded in a republic, since any man they backed could declare himself emperor.”

How clever to remind Caesar that it was the Praetorian Guard that provided the power base on which he relied. The emperor grew thoughtful. He had not missed the point. How could Livia have been so wrong about this Chaerea? But of course, he had told her that serving Caesar soiled his honor, and Livia had believed him because she had honor, and would never serve a vile worm like the emperor. The only problem for Livia was that Chaerea lied. He had no honor.