Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (31 page)

Grandma Bubsy had stopped talking and both women now watched the odd gregarious display through their respective mirrors.

Absko shed the false poise. He growled, “You apparently care nothing for your friends and family! I will swaddle you
both
in sheets of your sister and mothers’ flesh! I will feed you your favorite pets’ entrails! You, Matthew, may already be dead when this happens, but have no doubt it’ll happen, and my whore wife will
certainly
not doubt she’ll be very much
alive
and absent the mercy of eyelids when I open up her son in front of her and before I cut off her lips and extract her-”

Eyes widening and brow knit with hyperbolic terror, Matt interrupted, mocking him, “Favorite pet’s entrails? Have you used that one before? You have, haven’t you? Anyhow, fear not …” Absko tried to interject again, barking something about Matt thinking this was all a joke, but without pause, Matt repeated, louder, “…
Fear not
about me doubting your ultra-villainous wrath, or whatever. I’m sure once you—or really
anyone
with narcissistic personality disorder—sets their mind to something, they’re fully committed to staying the course. But considering how your world is crumbling around you, I
kinda
don’t really see you making it another four hours with your head still attached to the rest of you—
maybe
six.”

An eerie calm fell upon Absko’s face. His eyelids sank to half-mast as he drew his phone closer, focusing on the camera as Matt had, and enunciated, “I’ve survived unimaginable warzones and-”

“Pffft! You survived
shit
. Save your fictional war stories for someone who hasn’t explored every rancid corner of your memory. How about this, Mr. Survivor? I’m so confident of your imminent deadness that I’ll save you the time tracking me down! Alexandria. Karmus Hilton. Tower two, room six-thirteen. Now, that’s the
Karmus
Hilton, not the Cornische over by the sea. I don’t want you to get lost, okay? You’ve got toddlers to murder and skin blankets to wrap me in. No time to dilly-dally.”

Absko’s callous mug glared silently for a moment, and then disappeared.

Amaranth Vineyard ended the call.

Matt inhaled deep. Exhaling, he felt his neck and shoulders ease out of a rigid tension he’d only just then perceived.

Joss piped up from the front, “Well that sounded like a sensible, well-grounded, not-at-all-suicidal speech.”

“I needed him to come here,” Matt said flatly as he removed the battery from his phone.

Grandma Bubsy chimed in, “Honey, that didn’t sound like a man I’d want in a thousand-mile radius of a thousand-foot pole.”

He held up his phone battery, motioning Joss to pull hers, as well.

“One way to achieve complete strategic surprise,” he said, “is to commit an act that makes no sense, or is even self-destructive.”

Library of Alexandria

O. Von Corven, woodcut, circa 1870

Hello Steward,

The voice conveys knowledge.

The scribe preserves a word.

Alexandria, Aegyptus – 271 CE

In the Governor’s atrium yesterday, as Patra concluded her hour-long dialogue with her childhood friend and pseudo-sibling, Cassius, a strange thing had punctuated the increasingly warm exchange.

Shortly before they’d stood to say their farewells, Cassius had finally pledged his ongoing support, referring her to a former senior Centurion named Barbillus, available for hire along with a personal army of highly-trained warriors. He’d told her where to find Barbillus, how much she should expect to pay, and that it’d be best to go alone or with only one other.

Patra had thanked him, and the subsequent minutes exhausted all remaining wine as the conversation digressed to fond memories. Musing over a former city prefect for whom they’d shared contempt. Patra’s father feeding an insatiably famished hippopotamus, rolling cabbage after cabbage down an embankment. The debacle before Cassius’s wedding ceremony during which the sacrificial pig—only half-sacrificed—tore through the crowd, spraying blood, defiling pristine wool and linen.

“If ever there was a bad omen to be heeded,” Cassius lamented.

He set elbows upon knees, casting his gaze floorward to the polished tile. He slid a palm over his smooth head, quietly chuckling.

Patra followed the thick, ring-laden fingers up his scalp, herding a roll of skin from forehead to crown.

“You know,” she began, “we’ve never once acknowledged that time in your father’s vineyard.”

Cassius sat up. He said nothing, regarding her with only his characteristic vague smile, revealing no perceptible intent to reply.

To fill the air, she went on. “It may be long from your memory, but I’ve gone back there—in here—from time to time, replacing my young eyes with these, and I feel just so …
absurd
.” She lowered her voice. “We two probed and rubbed and squeezed for
ages
, and yet it wasn’t until the kiss that I understood what was going on! In my silly mind, it’d all been a fascinating investigation! Looking back, some years later, I supposed that if we’d pubesced alike, or—if I recall my own flowering correctly—had the encounter been just eight months later, we’d have found ourselves splayed and stacked, no doubt.”

His placid face held.

Uncertain whether she’d overstayed her welcome, or perhaps failed to emphasize her gratitude for his support, Patra bent forward, reaching out to caress his hand, but he leant back, reclining against the pillows, and began twisting one of his rings around its finger. She touched his knee instead, and noticed him brooding on her hand.

Both had then stood to say their farewells, and Cassius—apprehension saddling his face—added, “Never mind Barbillus and his mercenaries. I’ll send a century of my city guards to the Musaeum.” And then he stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her middle, and pulled their bodies together, resting his cheek on her shoulder.

The pair hadn’t shared a hug since adolescence. So taken aback was she that five seconds may have passed before she allowed her floating arms to drop and return the embrace. Cassius’s chest rose and fell against hers. Was that a whiff poached from her palla? The soft, fleeting hum of a lover?

He’d released her and met her eyes, smiling. “I don’t want you to be afraid. Get your collection moved to the Serapeum as fast as you can, and leave the Musaeum to me.”

Crossing the palace’s garden to the rear gate, Patra had mulled those final minutes with Cassius. By the time she’d reached the delivery road’s end, she’d deduced what had happened.

Just as she’d suspected, he’d planned to betray her, but only at first. Somewhere along the way—perhaps the more they spoke, the longer those numbed eyes beheld her—he changed his mind.

Initially, this mercenary, Barbillus, and his army would arrive at the Musaeum gates, allowed inside to inspect the walls’ strengths and weaknesses, and instead capture or slaughter any member in sight. But then it was
“Never mind Barbillus …”
Forget he ever mentioned the name. And the embrace: an unspoken apology for an unspeakable plot. To squeeze and absorb the warmth of this being he’d nearly forsaken.

* * *

The city guards arrived late that night, and at an auspicious moment. The Emperor’s land attacks thus far had been small, harassing excursions meant to either assess or taunt the city’s defenders, while the majority of the armada loomed at sea—a full-force assault possible any second.

In the observatory—the Musaeum’s highest point—Patra rested her elbows on the balustrade, stretching her sore back as she surveyed the beleaguered city with Philip. Twilight had nearly surrendered to dusk, and the smoke wafting from a string of fires along the coast cloaked the harbor and much of the sea beyond.

“Have they seized the lighthouse?” Philip asked.

Patra stood up straight, peering out to the dim, gray space in the sky where, for her entire life, at this hour, a brilliant light had unfailingly shone. “It’s possible, though that’s not why it stands dark. Orestes has kept it unlit these past three nights to dissuade attacks.”

“Wise,” Philip murmured. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Back to it? Kaleb believes we’re over halfway there.”

Patra sighed and turned to follow him. “You know he hasn’t−”

“Hold on,” Philip interrupted, and dashed back to the balustrade. “The smoke …” He studied the entire panorama, scrutinizing every faint patch of light outside the Musaeum walls. “Couldn’t it be a cunning tactic to conceal the armada’s movements?”

He was right, and while the fires had been set seemingly at random throughout the day, the smoke’s distribution now appeared spaced ideally to create this veil.

She whispered, “Then the attack comes now.”

“There!” Philip said with a jerk.

Patra looked and, indeed, ranks of armored warriors had freshly rounded a corner, marching their way. Tight columns snaked from behind the Caesareum’s southeast corner, advancing toward the Street of the Sema.

“We must alert the others!” Philip hushed, as if the approaching legion would hear him over the rolling footfalls and clanking metal.

“Yes,” Patra breathed. “Go.” But she remained frozen on her high perch, entranced by the parade as it reached the Musaeum wall, and split in two—one half continuing on toward the main gate, the other wrapping around the outer wall.

The complex was surrounded in less than ten minutes.

But as she, and the frantic others in the courtyard below, awaited the crash of a battering ram, a new threat arrived silently from the west: armorless Roman fighters in dark garb, carrying only short swords and bows, spilled from the Temple District onto the adjacent street.

The street, however, had been the closest these stealthy intruders came to the Musaeum, as they hadn’t, in fact, come to rejoin a legion of noisier brethren. They’d come alone. So instead of witnessing the new arrivals greet fellow imperial soldiers at the wall, Patra watched them stop in their tracks, and then retreat, cut off by the two hundred city guards sent by Cassius to surround and defend the complex. Not only had the Governor delivered on his pledge, he’d bolstered the donation twofold!

While Patra required no further provocation to hustle, the narrow escape had shaken her, and everyone in her charge. By morning, they’d lost eighteen more dedicated allies, leaving seventeen, including the stewards. With all of their horses, donkeys, and carts dispensed to fleeing members, Kaleb had had to secure replacements from neighbors.

Last night’s close call had quashed any lingering questions as to the Emperor’s primary target, and all of those kind souls who’d previously declared their eternal support for the Library had now reexamined their priorities—once the Musaeum fell, its wealthy neighbors didn’t want the Emperor’s men to find they’d lent a single donkey or horse to the offenders, thence greeting an army at their own villa’s gate. Of course, none cited this as basis for retrieving their animals. They’d all simply found their palaces suddenly overcome by the need for laborious upkeep.

Regardless, the dedicated few Musaeum members and sympathizers who remained to help, did so with only their limbs and backs, but only until reaching the Serapeum…

* * *

Despite five centuries of invasions, weather, and intentional destruction, the Serapeum remained Alexandria’s grandest temple. After the city fell to Rome, the already magnificent precinct was renovated to repair damage, widen the expansive courtyard’s surrounding walls, and to reflect modern Roman architecture. But the temple’s redesigners had done more than extend perimeter walls.

Following Lucas, a Temple of Serapis priest, through a brisk subterranean corridor, Patra observed the milky skylights embedded in the high-vaulted ceiling. Shafts of sunlight plunged from the small squares, banding the wide passage with diffuse bars of light and dark.

How many weeks had it been since Patra stepped over those anonymous tiles, unaware what hid below, on her way to meet with Zenobia? And now, as half of Alexandria’s small fleet lay bubbling beneath the harbor, the other half captured by Emperor Antonius’s armada, and the first significant land skirmishes beginning west of the city, did Zenobia reflect on their conversation and regret her negligence?

“They are here, Steward.” Lucas motioned to a torch-lit passage off the main corridor. Not much older than her, the warmhearted priest carried himself like a decrepit old dog—hunched back, quaking hands. Even his voice meandered from him atop wheezes.

Patra peeked in, observing long shadows and flickering light from deep within. “No one’s entombed in there?”

“No, Steward. The Romans purged all of the catacombs during transition, and these new ones were never put to use. This tunnel …” He hesitated, nodding farther down the main corridor. “… leads to the Temple altar. Its primary use … it’s for
enhancing
ceremonies.”

“No concern of mine, Lucas. May I?” She gestured to the catacomb entrance.

Lucas bid her forth with a trembling hand:
Please do.