Fires of Alexandria Read online

  Chapter Nine

  Heron recognized the men as thugs of the Alabarch. Fingers dug into her arms as they steered her through the crowd. While they kept to the center of the main streets, Heron played along. If they veered away towards an alley or a doorway, she would fight them.

  The thug on her right had the breath of a dung beetle and a jagged scar on his chin. It appeared that something with powerful jaws had bit him long ago.

  Lefty, as she began thinking of him, dragged his leg slightly at each step. If she had to get away from them, she'd only need to outrun dung breath.

  They were broken men, but useful to one such as the Alabarch. Hired muscle was cheap in the city, only one step above slave.

  She assumed they derived pleasure from their actions. Lefty leered at her venomously, the intent of what he would do with her in a dark, secluded room was apparent on his scruffy face. She doubted he would care the nature of her sex, only pausing with an amused snort when he ripped off the molded genitalia before assaulting her.

  As they reached the square near Pompey's Pillar, the feeling in her arms had given way to needles. A crowd had gathered on the cobble stones, pushing each other around a hastily built stage.

  The moment she saw the man and woman on the stage, Heron knew the reason she'd been brought. The pair lay on their backs chained to a box with unsupported limbs hanging over the edge. A second box, heavy by the size of it, rested on their chests.

  The woman moaned a high keening wail like a babe crying for milk. The man was visibly trying to stifle a cough. When he finally did, it set off convulsions and a second round of coughing. Even above the crowd, Heron could hear his whimpering.

  "They owned the Spinning Wheel trading company, though not much longer if they can't pay their debts," said a familiar voice.

  The thugs spun her around to face Lysimachus. The Alabarch had dyed his bouncy curls the color of gold. His pot belly was hidden beneath a chlamys of maroon silk and his many perfumes overcame even dung breath's stench, making her want to retch. He held his ring encrusted hand to Heron.

  "You can release him, I only wish to talk, this time," said Lysimachus.

  The thugs milled nearby, keeping hands on the daggers at their belts.

  "Escaping to the Library isn't going to get my coin back," said Lysimachus.

  "I had a question for an old friend," said Heron. "A problem I was stuck on."

  Lysimachus laughed, holding his hands out as if he were giving a speech on a stage. "The Michanikos going to ask for help? You lie poorly."

  Heron rubbed her arms, trying to get the feeling back.

  "Why were you really at the Library?" said Lysimachus. "I should get to know what my investment is doing, right?"

  "I thought you were the customs collector for the City," she said, goading him into changing the subject.

  Lysimachus held his arms high, letting the silk sleeves fall to his shoulders. "Why Heron, I am the City. For whoever controls the coin, controls the city. Even Flaccus, that dreadfully boorish fop dares not oppose me. I keep him supplied in boys and he does not bother to open his beady little Roman eyes."

  The woman on the stage broke into a soul wrenching scream that faded into more crying.

  "These two fools thought they could escape the city and their debts," said Lysimachus. "But as I am a vengeful Alabarch, I am also merciful, so when their three days are complete, I will let them return to their business so they may work off their debts."

  The crowd seemed bored by the continued anguish of the couple and dispersed, flowing back into the city or outside to the camps.

  "In your case, I could be even more merciful, forgiving the whole of your debt for one small favor," grinned Lysimachus.

  The Alabarch held his hand to Heron's face, pressing a ring into her nose. The effluence of perfumes made her eyes water.

  The ring had two golden claws on the sides of a ruby. Heron held her ground, not even flinching as the claws bit into her flesh. "I would treat her fairly, of course," he said, speaking of Sepharia. "Assuming she did everything I commanded."

  Lysimachus pulled his hand away and wiped it on Lefty's leg.

  "We both know that women are the dull half of the species." Lysimachus winked. "If it weren't for their wet thighs and warm wombs, what need of them would we have?"

  The Alabarch smirked and patted Heron on the shoulder. "And the Governor doesn't need them at all does he?"

  The thugs both laughed while Lysimachus kept his hand on Heron's shoulder.

  "Staying silent isn't going to protect your daughter," he said.

  "She's not my daughter," said Heron, truthfully.

  "Fine," he shrugged. "Call her what you want. Staying silent isn't going to protect that girl that lives in your home. Be she your daughter or some common whore."

  Lysimachus and Heron matched gazes until the Alabarch finally broke away.

  "'No,' is the answer it seems," said Lysimachus, gritting his jaw. He poked a finger into Heron's shoulder. "It seems your debts are coming due earlier than planned. I will stop by tomorrow at dusk for sixty talents, or I will be taking the girl with me."

  Heron kept her gaze level.

  "I will be keeping a close watch on the workshop. Don't think about running. You're much too well known to make it far." He tilted his head, looking her up and down. "And eat something, you look like a long discarded mummy."

  The Alabarch put his face up to hers, waiting for a reaction. When she didn't move, he punched her in the gut, doubling her over.

  "Lex talionis," he whispered, leaving her kneeling in the dust. The two thugs left with the Alabarch.

  "Lex talionis," she replied. The phrase was Latin for: "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth."

  Heron stood and dusted off her knees, checking to make sure the thugs hadn't taken her coin purse when they'd dragged her through the city. She would have to figure out how to get another ten talents later, but for now, this close to the outskirts of the city, she had an errand.

  Heron, clutching her stomach, weaved through the tents and improvised buildings. A pack of camels lashed together, stomped dust into a brown cloud. One reached toward her and snapped its teeth.

  "See Amenemope!" said the camel herder to another man, wrapped in layered, dusty coverings. "I told you that camel was dumber than a Roman soldier. It tried to bite that stick of a man."

  The two men laughed abruptly, at the camel as much at her. Heron ignored them, slipping between two tents.

  The mass of humanity piled on top of itself outside the City walls made the heat stifling and the dust ever present. She held an arm to her mouth to breathe through the fabric.

  Heron passed a squad of Persian mercenaries: loose-fitting garments reinforced with iron guards around their torsos, nicked bronze helms with wings fitting comfortably on their heads and availability for hire announced with crimson knots on swords.

  She overheard them mumbling and pointing at her, referencing Roman scum, so she casually changed her direction to not pass by them. Two mercenaries started to follow her, but she ducked under a pavilion, startling a woman breast feeding a babe, and ran out the opening.

  With a little distance between her and the mercenaries, she slowed. The temporary road that circled through the camps to the front gates, blocked her way. A major trade caravan rumbled past, kicking dust up from wagon wheels, feet and hooves.

  A great silken covered pavilion on a cart, pulled by a train of horses, riding on a dozen gilded wheels, towered over its surroundings. Male and female slaves, dressed only from the waist down, worked huge feathered fans, blowing air across the great merchant perched on his sedan chair.

  Carts followed the massive structure, loaded down with goods from across the known world: yaka timber from the deep jungles south, bundles of ivory tusks from Ethiopia and richly-stamped Babylonian brick. Heron recognized the trade markings of Chorasmia
, Ionia, Sindh and Arachosia, among other foreign and fantastic places.

  She assumed the trader made two or three year circuits, traveling far east to the lands of the gaja-vimana. At the rear of the caravan - after the wagons filled with precious stones, silver, gold and spices had passed - was a large troop of slaves, chained to posts on wheeled platforms.

  Heron recognized men of Sardian, east of Thracia, who were prized for their stonecutting skills. It was said the stone-wisdom of the Sardis had helped Sostratus construct the Lighthouse of Pharos.

  Other nationalities were bound to the posts, ready to be sold in the flesh markets of Alexandria, and possibly further north in Rome, for this great caravan must make stops in all the great cities.

  "Wasteful," was all she remarked before resuming her trek into the camps outside of Alexandria.

  Avoiding further trouble, she found her way to a small tent surrounded by the markings of the Mazda. A simple stone brazier smoldered outside of a dusty azure tent where a withered old man with a brown stub at the end of one leg, sat and rocked and gummed a soft willow branch.

  His eyes widened in recognition and he peeled back the tent flap for her to enter. Heron ducked through, where the heady incense and lack of a recent meal made her lightheaded.

  "May Ahura Mazda fill you with his purity," said the priest.

  He huddled over a small fire in the center of the tent, while smoke drifted out through a hole in the top. He wore white robes smudged gray with time.

  Heron took the spot across from the priest. She pulled the coin purse that had been given to her that morning and weighed it briefly before tossing it to him.

  The priest gave her a warm smile tinged with concern. "While my gifts will sustain you for long periods, they will not sustain you indefinitely."

  Heron held her hand out impatiently. The priest sighed, picked up the coin purse that had landed in his lap and peered in.

  "I suppose it will do," he said.

  The priest pulled up the corner of the woven mat he sat upon, revealing a box in a hole. He pulled the box out and rummaged through it, until he pulled out a coin purse similar in size to the one she'd thrown him. He tossed it to her.

  Heron nodded reverently and prepared to get up.

  "Before you go," he said. "I have words for you."

  She hesitated, wanting to get back to the workshop. She sighed and nodded.

  "A dream I had, two nights ago." The priest's eyes grew hazy and dim, like he'd returned to his faraway dream.

  "You were the principle actor, with a circlet of silver upon your head. Though hair fuller, and longer, and different." He seemed to rest upon this thought, unsure what it meant, and then continued.

  "In your hand was a blur. A strange apparatus I could not lay my sight upon, for it must have been veiled by the Ahura Mazda," he said. "And from this device, the world shook, and a crack formed traveling north, and then floodwaters, floodwaters roiling with turbulent foam, came down the crack and its fury scattered men and women like seeds."

  The priest's breathing had gone shallow, and his voice tempered with worry.

  "There was more. Beyond the floodwaters, but my mind could not hold onto it, or I am not meant to know it, except down in the deeps where Ahura Mazda blesses me," said the priest. "But I have had this dream for three nights straight, and that portends."

  And then he looked into her eyes with the haze now gone and his deep brown eyes, like the thick yaka woods of the jungle, poured into her. He opened his mouth to speak, to possibly explain what the dream might have meant.

  But she left, ignoring the cackle of the stump-footed man outside and rushed back toward the city and her workshop. For if there were gods and goddesses, she did not abide by them, nor honor their rituals except when it served her purposes.

  Stepping over a sleeping goat, she tucked the bag into her belt, securing it from thieves. The oppressive sun warmed her back, as she'd felt strangely chilled in the priest's tent.

  But now outside, it quickly turned to sweat, so she wiped her brow, smearing dust. The path to the tent had seemed tortuous and winding, but now with her purchase securely acquired, she whipped time back to the city.

  Passing the Roman guards at the gates, she saw Lysimachus' coin reflected in their eyes. Her return to the city would be known by the Alabarch before she reached the workshop.

  The matter of the ten talents and her niece would have to be dealt with when she returned home. Her work on Agog's business would have to wait. She just hoped the Fires payment would arrive before Lysimachus did.

  Heron rubbed her temple with one hand, mind wheeling with plans for Lysimachus, as her other hand covered the pouch on her belt obsessively. Time, ever the enemy, had cast its stones against her.