The Legions of Fire (33 page)

The cat stretched to its full height, then ripped both forepaws down. Strips and fragments flew from the trunk; the top wobbled, causing the man to adjust his position. The cat couldn't reach to within fifteen feet of him, but in a few minutes the severed trunk would topple him to the ground.

The cat moved back slightly and paced, its eyes always upward. Alphena had thought it was a cat beyond the size of any lion she'd seen in the arena. When it moved out from the shadow of the leaf, she saw that its head was human—or almost human.

The creature's long, narrow face wouldn't have aroused comment on the streets of Carce so long as it kept its mouth shut. When it opened its jaws for another high-pitched, terrible scream, Alphena saw teeth like the points of javelins.

She recognized the creature then: it was a sphinx. Had Persica transported her to the lands below Egypt where such monsters might live?

The sphinx leaped at the tree, slashing furiously with both forepaws. The top swayed, tipping toward the creature despite the attempts of the man hiding there to shift his weight to the back.

His only chance of survival was to distract the beast long enough for him to get away or at least to a more secure refuge.
He could have called its attention to me easily enough, then run the other way. He didn't do that
.

The sphinx's back was toward her as it ripped into the tree trunk. Alphena sprinted toward it. The short sword wasn't the best weapon for the job, but if she had her choice she wouldn't be here at all.

The beast must have gotten an inkling of her presence just before she reached it, because it twisted down at her with astonishing speed. She thrust toward its kidneys, but the tip of her sword skidded across its ribs instead of biting into the vitals.

The sphinx's paw batted the shield like a stone from a siege catapult. Alphena skidded backward to the edge of the leaf from which she'd charged. Her left arm was numb, and the creature's claws had ripped through the wood in three places. She braced her legs under the long shield, knowing that she couldn't get up yet.

The sphinx poised. Its tail stood straight up like a bulrush with a bristly tip; it waggled twice, side to side. Alphena saw the stranger leap down from his trembling vantage, cloak fluttering.
At least this is going to work out well for somebody
.

The creature leaped onto Alphena. Her thighbones stood like pillars to take the strain, but the pain on her knees and hips was incandescent. She stabbed upward, too blind with agony to have a target.

The weight came off instantly. The sphinx tumbled sideways with a querulous shriek and backed a few feet away. Blood dripped from its side; the turf sizzled where drops fell.

Alphena rolled to her feet. The tatters of her shield hung from the strap; her left arm couldn't hold it out from her body. She hadn't been sure her legs would support her either, but they did: she guessed the emotions surging in her blood masked the pain for now. She didn't suppose she would live long enough to feel the hurt.

The sphinx gave her a look of savage rage. Its jaws opened silently; moonlight glinted on its fangs. The tail tuft twitched once, twice—

The cloaked man grabbed the tail and twisted it to the side. The sphinx shrieked and pivoted toward him. Alphena lunged with a strength she didn't know she had remaining and stabbed the creature through the neck.

The cloaked man ducked to avoid a swipe of the creature's forepaw. When Alphena's sword drove home, the sphinx tried to twist back. Its left hind leg folded and the creature fell on its side. The man sprang away, barely avoiding having it roll over him.

Alphena clung to the sword's ivory grip with her right hand and as much support as her left could add now that she'd given up trying to hold on to the shattered shield. The blade withdrew more easily than she'd been afraid it would. Blood gouted from the wound and from the creature's mouth.

The sphinx bunched its legs to leap—but sprawled forward instead. Alphena tried to step back but her left leg buckled; she went down on that knee. It took all her concentration to keep the sword lifted.

The sphinx struggled to its feet and turned toward Alphena; she couldn't read the expression on its human face.

The creature collapsed onto its left side and began to thrash. The fountain of blood from the wound suddenly faltered. Though the violence of its spasms lessened, as long as Alphena remained where she knelt, trying to gather strength, there was always a limb or a knot of muscles under the moonlit hide twitching.

Sod smoldered over a wide area. Places where blood had poured out in quantity were burned into craters.

The stranger had picked up his hat; he came toward Alphena. She fought to her feet and stayed there, though she wavered for a moment. She managed to thumb the support strap off the rivet in the belly of the shield and let the debris fall away. The broken layers had begun to separate.

The stranger stopped a polite six feet away. He was tall and, despite the cover of the cloak, seemed thin.

“I am Deriades, mistress, and I owe you my life,” he said. “I believe I owe you a sword as well. If you'll come with me, I'll discharge the latter debt at once. Our home isn't far.”

Alphena looked at her sword for the first time since the fight began. Half the blade had wasted away. As she stared, another blob of steel dripped onto the ground, where it continued to sizzle slightly.

Alphena flung the hilt away in horror. “If you could find me something to drink,” she croaked, “I'd like that even more.”

H
EDIA TURNED
as one of the chairmen came into the back garden holding Anna's two walking sticks. The second chairman followed the first, carrying the arthritic woman herself.

Between them, the servants set Anna down. One held her upright until the other had put the canes in her hands and made sure her feet were firmly on a path of marble chips. Only then did they step back.

Anna glared at one, then the other, pivoting her head like a screech owl. “There was no need for that!” she snapped. “I could have walked through the house!”

Hedia gestured the chairmen toward the door to remove their irritating
presence from her guest's sight. She and her maid were now alone with Pulto's wife.

“I regret that my servants were overzealous, Anna,” Hedia said, touching the older woman's hands on the heads of her canes. “Still, it was well meant, so I won't punish them too seriously. Will you care to sit down? And I can send Syra here to bring whatever refreshment you'd like after your journey.”

In fact she'd make sure the chairmen got a silver piece each for their initiative. The chair itself wouldn't fit through the doors and turns of the town house, but the servants had judged that Anna wouldn't be a problem simply to carry—and had done so, ignoring her false insistence that she didn't need the help.

“No, I don't want anything to drink,” said Anna, softening slightly. “And I won't sit down either, not just yet. What is it you saw?”

“My daughter was standing over here,” Hedia said, walking to the spring. “On the coping. She was wearing that armor she practices in; Lenatus said she left the gymnasium looking for Corylus. And I think I saw a blond woman, quite pretty in a common fashion, right there in the portico. But then they both vanished.”

She touched her lips with her tongue and went on. “No one has seen Master Corylus either, since he came into this garden to eat his breakfast. He wasn't here when I entered.”

Anna stumped over to the coping and looked at the stones without speaking. She raised her head and said, “No wonder my boy stank of magic when he came home from your house after the reading. This place—”

She gestured around her with one cane.

“There were altars in the woods,” she said, “when I was a girl in Marruvium. There'd been sacrifices on those altars when my grandmother was a child, and probably back to her grandmother's grandmother. But they didn't have the
reek
that this garden does.”

“We knew Nemastes was a wizard,” Hedia said calmly.

“Aye,” said the older woman. “And now we know how much of a wizard he is. I don't like it, your ladyship. I truly do not like it.”

There was a moment of gray silence as Hedia and Anna looked from the well curb to the corner of the portico, then back again. “Omphale saw the woman with Lady Alphena,” said the maid unexpectedly.

Hedia snapped around. She composed herself in the space of three
heartbeats before she said, “Syra, who is Omphale and where did she see the woman?”

“Omphale is a downstairs maid,” Syra said in a little voice. Her eyes wandered in a nervous circle, never quite meeting her mistress's cold gaze. “A new one, she was only bought a month ago. She fancies Master Corylus, your ladyship, and she was peeking through the door”—Syra gestured without moving her hand any distance from her body—“to see if he was still here. She saw Lady Alphena and the woman in the yellow shift before she ducked back again. She was afraid because they were arguing.”

Anna had walked from the well to the portico, moving more easily than she had when she entered the garden. The emotions the old woman felt—and Hedia suspected that the thrill of a challenge was as significant as the fear she'd confessed to—were making her joints more flexible.

“Bring her here,” Hedia said without raising her voice. “Tell her I want her immediately.”

Instead of disappearing into the house proper, Syra tapped three times on the door. It opened and a pert girl entered the garden with an abruptness that suggested she had been pushed. Obviously the servants had decided among themselves how to handle a business that might be very dangerous for them.

“Your ladyship,” said Syra, pinching the girl's left ear and drawing her toward Hedia with that grip. “This is Omphale. Tell her ladyship the story, and
don't
lie.”

“They're all against me,” the girl whined to the ground; she was afraid to meet Hedia's eyes. “They dragged me here, your ladyship, and they said you'll boil me
alive
if I don't tell the truth!”

“Then you'd best tell the truth, hadn't you, Omphale?” Hedia said calmly. “What was my daughter and the other woman arguing about? And do please look at me, child.”

She'd seen the girl before, but she couldn't have put a name to her. The enthusiasm with which the other servants had turned on her suggested that Omphale hadn't made herself well liked during her short tenure; she was pretty, and she was too young to have learned that pretty alone didn't last.

Omphale raised her eyes with trepidation. “The young ladyship wanted to know who the other girl was and what she was doing in the garden,” she said.

When Hedia nodded encouragingly instead of doing something violent,
the maid went on. “She said she was Persica. She wasn't a servant, anyhow; she wasn't taking nothing from her young ladyship, just like she was a great lady herself.”

“And what happened then, child?” Hedia said. She thought of patting the girl encouragingly, but she was afraid that in her present state Omphale would burst into tears of terror.

“Your ladyship, I ran away!” Omphale whimpered, lowering her face into her hands and speaking through her whimpers. “The ladies were really angry and I was afraid that if anything happened I'd have to testify in court and I'd be
tortured
! I didn't see anything, your ladyship, I didn't see anything!”

“I'm sure you didn't, child,” Hedia said. Her voice was calm, though her mind was filled with doubt and darkness.
None of this helped!
“When I saw this Persica and my daughter, they were both unharmed.”

A slave's testimony against a citizen was permitted only under torture. This girl had obviously feared that Persica and Alphena were going to come to blows or worse. Her fear proved that the discussion really was angry—not just a girl dramatizing an ordinary conversation for the servants' quarters.

“Send her away, your ladyship,” said Anna, standing near the peach tree. She lifted one cane to indicate Syra. “The other girl might better go as well. We have private things, you and me.”

“I'll call you when I need you, Syra,” Hedia said. She appreciated Anna's discretion. Syra knew quite a lot about her mistress's personal affairs, but this business involved magic. Sometimes that affected people in ways that something as ordinary as sex did not.

The door closed behind the two servants. Hedia turned to Anna, who grimaced and tapped the peach tree with a cane.

“Persica is the spirit of this tree,” the older woman said. “A wood nymph. I don't suppose it's a surprise that she might appear, with as much magic as Nemastes let loose in this garden.”

Anna stared glumly at the tree. “She must know what happened to your daughter,” she said. “Likely she had something to do with it, and maybe with my young master disappearing besides. But I can't make her come out to answer questions.”

“Perhaps I can, then,” Hedia said, taking the small dagger from the folds of her girdle. She stepped to the tree, thrust the point into the trunk, and peeled a strip of bark down.

A shrieking blond woman appeared beside them. The thin silk of her synthesis couldn't absorb the blood welling from the long wound on her right thigh. She clapped her hand over the injury. Glaring at Hedia, she cried, “You bitch! How would you—”

Hedia backhanded her across the mouth. She wore rings on all four fingers; two of them cut the skin of the nymph's cheek.

“You would be Persica, I assume,” Hedia said, smiling. “Watch your tongue, girlie, or you won't have it anymore.”

“Not her tongue,” Anna objected calmly. “We need her to talk.”

If we'd rehearsed this, Anna couldn't have responded better,
Hedia thought with a rush of appreciation.
Of course neither of us is joking
.