gossip in the ranks of the entire army fighting off the Malwa siege in the Punjab. What the hell is that girl doing, anyway? being only the most polite of the speculations.
The general sighed and rolled his eyes. Then, closed them. It was obvious to everyone that he was reviewing all of Calopodius' now-famous Dispatches in his mind.
'We're both idiots,' he muttered. 'We've maintained proper medical and sanitation procedures here, sure enough. But ...'
His words trailed off. His second-in-command, Maurice, filled in the rest.
'She must have passed through half the invasion staging posts along the way. Garrison troops, garrison officers -- with the local butchers as the so-called 'surgeons.' God help us, I don't even want to think ...'
'I'll write it immediately,' said Calopodius.
Belisarius nodded. 'Do so. And I'll give you some choice words to include.' He cocked his head at Maurice, smiling crookedly. 'What do you think? Should we resurrect crucifixion as a punishment?'
Maurice shook his head, scowling. 'Don't be so damned flamboyant. Make the punishment fit the crime. Surgeons who do not boil their instruments will be boiled alive. Officers who do not see to it that proper latrines are maintained will be buried alive in them. That sort of thing.'
Calopodius was already seated at the desk where he dictated his Dispatches and the chapters of the History. So was his scribe, pen in hand.
'I'll add a few nice little flourishes,' his young voice said confidently. 'This strikes me as a good place for grammar and rhetoric.'
Barbaricum
Anna and her companions spent their first night in India crowded into the corner of a tavern packed full with Roman soldiers and all the other typical denizens of a great port city -- longshoremen, sailors, petty merchants and their womenfolk, pimps and prostitutes, gamblers, and the usual sprinkling of thieves and other criminals.
Like almost all the buildings in Barbaricum, the tavern was a mudbrick edifice which had been badly burned in the great fires which swept the city during the Roman conquest. The arson had not been committed by Belisarius' men, but by the fanatic Mahaveda priests who led the Malwa defenders. Despite the still-obvious reminders of that destruction, the tavern was in use for the simple reason that, unlike so many buildings in the city, the walls were still standing and there was even a functional roof.
When they first entered, Anna and her party had been assessed by the mob of people packed in the tavern. The assessment had not been as quick as the one which that experienced crowd would have normally made. Anna and her party were ... odd.
The hesitation worked entirely to her advantage, however. The tough-looking Isaurian brothers and Abdul were enough to give would-be cutpurses pause, and in the little space and time cleared for them, the magical rumor had time to begin and spread throughout the tavern. Watching it spread -- so obvious, from the curious stares and glances sent her way -- Anna was simultaneously appalled, amused, angry, and thankful.
It's her. Calopodius the Blind's wife. Got to be.
'Who started this damned rumor, anyway?' she asked peevishly, after Illus cleared a reasonably clean spot for her in a corner and she was finally able to sit down. She leaned against the shelter of the walls with relief. She was well-nigh exhausted.
Abdul grunted with amusement. The Arab was frequently amused, Anna noted with exasperation. But it was an old and well-worn exasperation, by now, almost pleasant in its predictability.
Cottomenes, whose amusement at life's quirks was not much less than Abdul's, chuckled his own agreement. 'You're hot news, Lady Saronites. Everybody on the docks was talking about it, too. And the soldiers outside the telegraph office.' Cottomenes, unlike his older brother, never allowed himself the familiarity of calling her 'girl.' In all other respects, however, he showed her a lack of fawning respect which would have outraged her family.
After the dockboys whom Anna had hired finished stacking her luggage next to her, they crowded themselves against a wall nearby, ignoring the glares directed their way by the tavern's usual habituйs. Clearly enough, having found this source of incredible largesse, the dockboys had no intention of relinquishing it.
Anna shook her head. The vehement motion finished the last work of disarranging her long dark hair. The elaborate coiffure under which she had departed Constantinople, so many weeks before, was now entirely a thing of the past. Her hair was every bit as tangled and filthy as her clothing. She wondered if she would ever feel clean again.
'Why?' she whispered.
Squatting next to her, Illus studied her for a moment. His eyes were knowing, as if the weeks of close companionship and travel had finally enabled a half-barbarian mercenary soldier to understand the weird torments of a young noblewoman's soul.
Which, indeed, perhaps they had.
'You're different, girl. What you do is different. You have no idea how important that can be, to a man who does nothing, day after day, but toil under a sun. Or to a woman who does nothing, day after day, but wash clothes and carry water.'
She stared up at him. Seeing the warmth lurking somewhere deep in Illus' eyes, in that hard tight face, Anna was stunned to realize how great a place the man had carved for himself in her heart. Friendship was a stranger to Anna of the Melisseni.
'And what is an angel, in the end,' said the Isaurian softly, 'but something different?'
Anna stared down at her grimy garments, noting all the little tears and frays in the fabric.
'In this?'
The epiphany finally came to her, then. And she wondered, in the hour or so that she spent leaning against the walls of the noisy tavern before she finally drifted into sleep, whether Calopodius had also known such an epiphany. Not on the day he chose to leave her behind, all her dreams crushed, in order to gain his own; but on the day he first awoke, a blind man, and realized that sight is its own curse.
And for the first time since she'd heard Calopodius' name, she no longer regretted the life which had been denied to her. No longer thought with bitterness of the years she would never spend in the shelter of the cloister, allowing her mind to range through the world's accumulated wisdom like a hawk finally soaring free.
When she awoke the next morning, the first thought which came to her was that she finally understood her own faith -- and never had before, not truly. There was some regret in the thought, of course. Understanding, for all except God, is also limitation. But with that limitation came clarity and sharpness, so different from the froth and fuzz of a girl's fancies and dreams.
In the gray light of an alien land's morning, filtering into a tavern more noisome than any she would ever have imagined, Anna studied her soiled and ragged clothing. Seeing, this time, not filth and ruin but simply the carpet of her life opening up before her. A life she had thought closeted forever.
'Practicality first,' she announced firmly. 'It is not a sin.'
The words woke up Illus. He gazed at her through slitted, puzzled eyes.
'Get up,' she commanded. 'We need uniforms.'
A few minutes later, leading the way out the door with her three-soldier escort and five dock urchins toting her luggage trailing behind, Anna issued the first of that day's rulings and commandments.
'It'll be expensive, but my husband will pay for it. He's rich.'
'He's not here,' grunted Illus.
'His name is. He's also famous. Find me a banker.'
It took a bit of time before she was able to make the concept of 'banker' clear to Illus. Or, more precisely, differentiate it from the concepts of 'pawnbroker,' 'usurer' and 'loan shark.' But, eventually, he agreed to seek out and capture this mythological creature -- with as much confidence as he would have announced plans to trap a griffin or a minotaur.
'Never mind,' grumbled Anna, seeing the nervous little way in which Illus was fingering his sword. 'I'll do it myself. Where's the army headquarters in this city? They'll know what a 'banker' is, be sure of it.'
That task was within Illus' scheme of things. And since Barbaricum was in the actual theater of Belisarius' operations, the officers in command of the garrison were several cuts of competence above those at Chabahari. By
