I’d assumed that the information was no longer considered sensitive. It was obviously not as sensitive as it had been, but still too delicate for Siyavak’s attention. I was being rewarded for my Romanizing. Priscus gestured to his secretary to let the others in.
Siyavak looked tired and strained. I thought he was pleased to see me, but he would not look at me for long and sat at the opposite end of the room. I wished that I could talk to him: I had no idea whether he was still my ally, after all this time spent with Bodica. We discussed how many horses the fourth dragon could spare as brood mares and afterward some other business that affected both our companies, until the secretary stuck his head around the door again and said that it was time for the dinner party. It seemed we were all expected to be there- except, of course, Eukairios.
“Hercules!” exclaimed the legate. “Is it five o’clock already? Well, we’d better go then. Not polite to keep a lady waiting!” He stamped out the door. Victor hurried after him, trying to discuss some bit of legion business that had been pushed aside before, and Siyavak slipped out behind them. I paused to say good night to Eukairios and arrange to meet him in the morning, and started after the others. When I stepped into the corridor, I found Siyavak waiting.
“I thank the gods!” he whispered hoarsely. “I was beginning to think I’d get no chance to speak to you at all.”
“Are you safe?” I asked him.
“For the time being. She thinks I’m drunk with admiration for her, like the rest. Have you thought of a way for us to communicate? I don’t dare speak long now: if we come in to this dinner together, she’ll notice.”
I took a deep breath, prayed to Marha, and gave him the name and password that the Christians had given me that afternoon. “That is a man who can write letters for you,” I said, “and send them secretly. He’s a kind of ally-but I beg you, make no mention of him to anyone. He’s a member of an illegal cult, though a different one from the druids, and he’d die for his faith as much as they would for theirs if his allegiances were known. But do you want to arrange a meeting with me now?”
“I want to, oh gods! — but it’s not wise, Prince. She has spies everywhere in this city, and I’ve seen what she does to people who betray her. I must go now, or she’ll become suspicious.” He pressed my hand and hurried ahead, and I followed, slowly, dreading it.
There were seven of us at the dinner: Siyavak and Victor; Priscus and Bodica; myself and Facilis-and the centurion I’d met the night before, Publius Verinus Secundus, who turned out to be fort prefect for Eburacum. We were seated in the three places in those pairs, with Secundus sharing a couch with me and Facilis, on our host’s right. (I took my sword off and hung it on the arm of my couch when I arrived.) Bodica looked more beautiful than ever, dressed in a gown shot with the silk we’d given her husband, her hair arranged very simply with a few gold hair combs. But, to my surprise, she was in an obvious and appalling temper. The reason soon emerged: her hairdresser had gone missing.
“The silly little slut’s still gone!” she was telling her husband while the slaves were showing me to my place. “She’s been missing since this morning now, and you said it was nothing to worry about! I told the duty officer to keep an eye out for her on the gates-I’m sure the little bitch is hiding somewhere, and means to run away for good. She knows I was angry with her and she’s trying to get out of being punished. When I catch her, she’ll-”
“Now, now,” said the legate soothingly, “you know she had that baby recently. It disturbs the minds of even freeborn ladies, losing a baby, and she’s just a feeble-minded girl. She’s probably just panicked and run off to cry over it.”
“But look at my hair!” protested Bodica. “I don’t dare let that idiot Vera curl it, she never gets it straight, and now we’ve got all the officers here and it’s twenty years out of fashion!”
“My dear, you look lovely as ever,” Priscus said gallantly, taking her hand and escorting her to the couch, “and I’m sure the officers agree with me. Gentlemen don’t notice fashion nearly as much as you ladies seem to think we do, and who cares for curls when the hair and face are so charming without them?”
We all agreed, and Bodica, though still seething, settled down to her part as hostess. I remembered how Facilis had been enraged by Bodica’s treatment of this slave girl before, and glanced at him. He reclined stolidly on the other end of the couch, looking expressionlessly at nothing in particular. The slaves handed us our cups of wine.
We talked harmlessly about the wine and the food and what we’d done during the Saturnalia through the first courses. I deliberately spilled my first cup, managed to wipe my plate off before eating from it, served myself the appetizers from the opposite ends of the serving dishes, and then ate as little as I decently could. Facilis noticed, of course, but said nothing. Bodica noticed as well, and gave me a sweet smile and a dangerous glare. I assumed that the wine was safe: it was served, as always, from a common mixing bowl, and the slave had no opportunity to slip anything into my cup alone. I was aware, halfway through the main course, that I was probably drinking too much of it. But I was hungry-the meeting with the Christians had caused me to miss my lunch-and very tense, and the slaves kept refilling my cup as fast as I emptied it.
When the main meal was finally over, Priscus swung his legs off the couch, sat up straight, and gave all of us a benevolent smile. “Now,” he said, “to what I really wanted to discuss this evening. Ariantes, who is trying to kill you?”
I stared at him, shocked by the suddenness of the bolt after the earlier lulling silence. I wished I’d left the wine alone.
“Don’t try to pretend you don’t know what I mean,” Priscus said, when I’d sat stupidly for so long that it became awkward. “You have an enemy: who is it?”
“My lord legate,” I said at last, “I have told you I trust your goodwill. Why should you believe that I know?”
He snorted. “This whole affair reeks of conspiracy so badly they can smell it in Londinium. The commander of the fourth numerus was sent a message purportedly from this very fortress, a piece of Sarmatian paraphernalia with British writing which made him mutiny. At just that time the Selgovae and Votadini staged a major raid, and prisoners interrogated afterward revealed that they’d been forewarned of the mutiny-by an unknown person whom they believed to be a senior officer of this legion. You, who stopped the raid, went to look at the treacherous message and reconcile the rest of the men to Roman service, and you very nearly never came back. Your good friend and brother prince, Arsacus, who was with you, says it was a hunting accident; you claim to remember nothing about it. But you had no business going in the water with a bow case if you were after a boar, as Arsacus says, and if you were after wildfowl, why was your bow found unstrung in its case?” I glanced quickly at Facilis, who looked away; Priscus noticed. “Yes, of course I’ve talked to him about it!” he snapped. “Him and others. A man is then murdered near Corstopitum, and a cursing tablet with your name on it is shoved in his mouth. You come here, and the house in which you’re thought to be sleeping is set on fire as soon as you arrive-the house that was the house of your friend and brother Arsacus, which he could easily have prepared for you. Come on! I’ve been patient, man, I think highly of you, I think I understand your motives for silence-but I’m not a damned imbecile! You know something, somebody else knows you know, and you’d better spit it out before the somebody’s efforts succeed!”
He was not a damned imbecile: he’d pieced more together than I’d realized. I even wondered for a moment if he was right that Arshak had prepared the house for me. He had wanted to set fire to it-but that was impossible: when I’d met him on the road there’d been no suggestion that he was contemplating such a cruel and alien method of murder. It was much more likely that Bodica’s friends had done it. If they’d told him they wanted to burn it after he’d left, he would have been pleased and asked no further questions. And I was still afraid to accuse the legate’s wife, particularly here in this fortress where she had spies “everywhere”-though a glance showed me she’d gone still and was watching me in terror.
“No Sarmatian would murder by arson,” I told Priscus. “My brother Arshak favors the spear, but even if he would dishonor himself with murder, he would not use fire. It is sacrilege to pollute Marha’s image with death. That is a Roman custom. And the man killed at Corstopitum was not killed in any manner familiar to my own people.”
Priscus was silent a minute, blinking, as he had when I first informed him of the cursing tablet.
“I can’t believe you’re right to be suspicious of Arshak, Tiberius,” Aurelia Bodica put in, rushing the words, her eyes dark. “He’s not the conspiring sort; you must have seen that. He revels in killing, yes, but he’s not a planner.”
Priscus grunted and stood up. “Very well,” he said, picking up a lamp from the stand in the corner. “It’s pretty
