The Mongoliad: Book Two

She was the only one left. She had to be careful.

Rome was caught in the throes of two crises. There were those who were still mourning the loss of the Bishop of Rome; others stood in the shadow of the walls and looked for signs that Frederick, the Holy Roman Emperor, was losing his taste for the blockade. Ocyrhoe wasn’t privy to most of the political and religious machinations, nor did she profess to understand all of them, but she understood the rhythm and the pulse of the people, and in it she sensed a great deal of unease and danger.

And this had been true even before her kin-sisters had begun to disappear.

Two weeks ago, she had spotted the white pigeon on the statue of Minerva. When it had still been there the next morning, she had dared to climb up and retrieve it. The message on its leg had been written in the secret language, and without her sisters to help her, Ocyrhoe had spent most of the day deciphering it. The message was nothing more than a simple question, and she knew instinctively that it was meant for her: Where are my eyes in Rome?

The others were gone, taken-or driven off-by the Bear’s men, or they had fled before the Emperor’s armies had set up their camps outside the city. She was the only one left-too small to be noticed, too young to flee the city that had reared her-and so the task fell to her: to watch, to wait, to learn what was happening. And when the time came-when another bird appeared on Minerva’s shoulder, as she knew in time it would-Ocyrhoe would be ready to report on everything she knew, on everything she had seen.

Today had brought these two: the drunken priest and the wild man-child.

The younger one wasn’t very tall or broad, but he was more square than round in the chest. His shaggy hair had been bleached blond by the sun a long time ago, and what was left of his natural brown persisted as shadows and stripes through his beard. A rustic, homemade bow and quiver were slung across the withers of his horse. A small knife was thrust through his belt. The older man was trying to be a nondescript traveler, but Ocyrhoe sensed he was a priest. His hooded robe-stained and worn from travel-was a simple garment and gave no hint as to what sort of priest he might be. But the thin cord wrapped around his waist-from which a plain satchel was hung-was a rosary. He had cut off most of the long tail, but the short stem still had a few knots.

They were strangers, and she only had to watch them clumsily navigate the flow of people, carts, and draft animals through the market to know that, but there was something else about them that drew her attention. She had been training with Varinia-before her kin-sisters started to vanish-and the older girl had marveled at Ocyrhoe’s instincts. You read patterns too readily for an orphan, she had told Ocyrhoe. Ocyrhoe hadn’t understood what she meant and only shrugged. There was nothing that mysterious about her ability; she kept her eyes open, watching, and just knew when something wasn’t right.

She tagged along after the pair, staying two horse-lengths back in the crowd. She knew the local cutpurses well enough to avoid their closeness, and little else distracted her focused attention.

The priest swayed on his horse, dependent on his companion’s guidance. His head rolled loosely on his shoulders, and his pale, greasy hair stuck damp and matted to his forehead. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes couldn’t stay still. As Ocyrhoe slipped closer, she revised her assessment of the man’s condition. He wasn’t drunk; he was sick.

She kept at arm’s length to one side of the young man’s mount, not to be kicked, as they navigated the tangle of stalls and carts. The youth had a purpose but didn’t know his destination. Ocyrhoe read the frustration on his face as he pulled his elder into an impassable clump of vegetable sellers. She feigned interest in some apples as the youth confusedly turned the horses around-eliciting shouts of derision and annoyance from the surrounding merchants-and pushed back toward the center of the square.

The gimlet-eyed merchant whose apples she was appraising regarded her with suspicion; she raised her left fist and shook it as if clenching a coin tightly between her fingers. The man crossed his arms over an ample belly and continued to stare, wordlessly calling her bluff. She actually did have a few coins in a tiny leather pouch that hung from a strap around her neck, but she wasn’t about to waste one here.

As the two horses passed behind her, she made a display of mock outrage that this peasant would think she’d deign to steal from him.

“Run along, rat.” He laughed at her.

She did, falling in behind the pair, ducking her head slightly to use the horses themselves as cover from the riders. As the youth nudged his horse, directing it to their left, the priest’s horse-caught off guard by the sudden change in direction-stopped and pawed the ground. Ocyrhoe came to an abrupt halt as well, close enough to touch the priest’s horse. The urge to reach out and put her hand on the animal’s flank was strong, and she wrestled with the desire. As the priest’s horse tossed its head and stepped after the young foreigner’s horse, she let out the breath she had been holding. She stood still and let them get some distance.

Too close. Before she could castigate herself further, the priest twisted around and looked straight back at her, as if he knew she was there. As if he knew what she had almost done.

She panicked and did exactly what she shouldn’t have: stood rooted to the spot by the intensity of his gaze. There was a light in his eyes, a glitter of some fire beyond the burning distress of fever. She shivered despite the hot sun beating down heavily on the square. Her skin turned cold, gooseflesh racing up her arms and chest. A procession of images flickered in her head like bits of a half-remembered dream. The two men had traveled a great distance, she knew this instinctively: through a dense forest, across the stark terrain of a high mountain pass, over a trampled and bloody field.

When she blinked, it was as if a cloud flew in front of the sun, and when it was gone, so was the priest’s attention.

She swallowed thickly, the back of her tongue tingling. As she tried to make sense of the flash of insight, she noticed a squad of the local militia, rough stock sporting the white and purple of the Bear. Their path was going to intersect that of the riders. The leader was a thick-necked man with a round face and tiny eyes-he reminded Ocyrhoe of a hungry pig-and the confusion sown by the pair of riders had caught his attention.

The squad leader raised his hand, open palm directed at the horsemen, and his men-at-arms slapped their bracers against their leather jerkins. The sound broke the cacophony of the market, as the market-goers instinctively pulled back. A bubble opened up around the soldiers and the foreign horsemen, and a hush fell over the square.

“What is your business in Rome?” the squad leader asked, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two newcomers. He stood in front of the youth’s horse, feet planted apart, looking like a dun-colored boulder.

The young man said something in a foreign tongue, pointing at the priest, who was swaying in his saddle, his focus elsewhere. Ocyrhoe stepped behind a vendor’s cart, out of the priest’s line of sight. She didn’t think he was looking for her, but she was still spooked by that prior moment of clairvoyant connection. She wanted to slip away into the crowd and vanish. But she stayed, dropping to a squat so that she could still see what was going on from beneath the cart.

When the squad leader repeated his question, his men punctuated it by loosening their swords in their scabbards. The rattle of metal made the foreigner talk more rapidly, his strange words tripping over one another like the chorus of a child’s chant. Ocyrhoe picked out the one familiar word before the soldiers, but finally it dawned on them too: “Peter,” he was saying. “St. Peter.”

“St. Peter. The basilica? Do you wish to see a priest?” the squad leader asked. “There are many priests-many churches-in Rome.”

Ocyrhoe crept forward to get a better angle. She couldn’t see the young foreigner’s face-but she could see the reaction of the soldiers as the boy held something up. In unison, their eyes widened and their brows furrowed.

“St. Peter,” he repeated and pointed at the priest on the other horse. Ocyrhoe saw he was holding a ring. He hadn’t understood the squad leader’s words, but the gist of the man’s question had been plain. Likewise, the visual aid of the ring and the swaying priest were enough to make his response clear.

The priest gasped like a fish, finding a moment of lucidity, but his voice was so ragged and strained that Ocyrhoe could barely hear it. “The Pope,” the priest rasped. “I have urgent news for His Eminence.”

“What news?” the squad leader demanded.

The priest shook his head, lapsing into the babbling cant of his scripture. “Quod perierat requiram,” he sighed. “Et…et quod abjectum erat reducam, et quod confractum fuerat alligabo, et quod infirmum fuerat consolidabo, et quod pingue et forte custodiam…”

The squad leader crossed himself, then stepped closer to them, gesturing for the ring. The young stranger