"Has Theodora succeeded, then?" asked Sulla's Luck with a smile that would have brought anyone else's head from his shoulders as soon as the Dictator's guards arrived.
Sulla's complexion was mottled even at rest. Now the blotches of red and white stood out as distinctly as badly painted stage make-up, and his grip on the sill and jamb of the window made flecks of sand crumble from the stucco.
He turned his face deliberately toward the garden.
"And after all," continued. Sulla's Luck in a conciliatory tone, "they don't have what you have.
The opportunity to return to the upper world."
"It's always possible to come to an arrangement," said the Dictator. His voice was ragged and husky at first, but he gained control of it and his breathing by the time he had completed the sentence. "Even with an enemy. And I'm no enemy to the - powers there."
He would not say, "to the Gods," but he lifted his bead in a tiny jerk toward the cloud-wracked sky and Paradise beyond.
"I helped you make peace in life with Mithridates," said Sulla's Luck approvingly, "though the price was Asia where he had slaughtered a hundred and fifty thousand of your fellow citizens - and would kill more in the future. But the arrangement gave you peace, and the freedom to capture Rome from your enemies - with my help."
Sulla walked back from the window. He was calm again, but there was an expression of concern on the features which anger had left. "When I've handed over the shipment, on behalf of - " His fingers toyed with the white powder on the table, making a crater like the maw of a volcano in the smooth cone.
"On behalf of the powers who wish hope to be spread as widely as possible throughout this Underworld," Sulla's Luck encouraged, pausing then with tented fingers.
"Yes," said the Dictator and swallowed. He met his companion's eyes. "Will we leave this place?
Will you still be with me?"
Sulla's Luck laughed. "Oh, my Lurius," he said. "I'll always be with you. As I was on the day you, though only a youth, took the surrender of Jugurtha and Rome proclaimed you his conqueror - for anything Marius your commander could say in his own right."
"He never forgave me for that," Sulla said, smiling in relief and at the memory. He twisted the ring on his left little finger, a signet carved with the scene of Jugurtha's surrender. "But Marius died, didn't he? And I ruled Rome."
He met his companion's eyes.
"Of course," agreed his Luck. "Though all men - "
He laughed instead of finishing the caveat, as if oblivious to the shadow his words had drawn across the face dial had in life been that of the all-powerful Sulla.
"And now," Sulla's Luck resumed in a different vein, "the terms are quite clear. If the drugs are delivered today to the caravan you have arranged to distribute them, you - we, my Lucius - will return to the upper world. Perhaps even to Paradise." He smiled. "We can hope, after all."
"Yes," said the Dictator in forceful agreement. "They need have no concern ...
but let's go check the warehouse once more."
He strode out of the office, almost colliding with a servant who cringed away on an errand for his mistress.
"Benito!" Sulla was shouting. "Benito!"
Pausing for a moment in the office, Sulla's Luck murmured, "Oh, I'm sure they aren't concerned, my Lucius," as his fingers teased the powder back into a perfect cone.
The mirror in which Theodora watched her hairdresser work had an ivory handle carved with the figure of Chastity - right arm covering her breasts, left palm over her pudenda. Theodora's hand sweated every time she gripped the warm, slick carving, but she had never demanded that it be replaced.
Once she had attempted to masturbate herself with the statuette - just in case - but that hadn't worked.
Either.
Theodora's bedroom was on a front comer of the house, across the reception court from Sulla's office and the room they nominally shared at night. Through the pair of high windows, slits that flared into the room to admit light but nothing larger than a sparrow, she had heard a woman talking to the doorkeeper in a husky voice, but the sounds were empty of meaning.
Her hand squeezed the mirror until the peaks of her knuckles were as bloodless as the ivory. It was not a good idea to consider what things were empty of meaning. The list could become very long.
But it was not a complete surprise when Benito, the chamberlain, slipped into her bedroom, and said with a slobbery attempt at portentousness, "Mistress, there is a matter which may be of the greatest concern to you."
Theodora did not turn toward the fleshy eunuch immediately. Instead, she held the mirror out at an angle so that she could see Benito past her own face and the plaits of incredible delicacy into which her hair was being woven this morning and every morning.
The chamberlain's swarthy complexion was accentuated when viewed side by side with the alabaster of Theodora's own skin. He began to sweat under her scrutiny. The heavy brocades he had chosen for his robes of office could scarcely have been less comfortable if they were designed to torture him.
Benito continued to hope - against the evidence - that they would increase the honor in which other residents of this place held him.
"Speak, then..." said Theodora softly. She left unspoken the promise - not a threat - of what she would have done to this cringing lickspittle unless the reason he interrupted her toilet were indeed of the greatest concern to her.
"Mistress, a woman has been admitted to the house," Benito blurted. His eyes, fixed on hers in the mirror, held the abject terror of a man who has learned the difference between bluster and an iron will - and who knows that he is only bluster.
"Do you think I care who my husband sees?" Theodora snapped, the pitch of her voice belying the intended content of her words. If Sulla's Luck ever procured him a woman who could do for him what his wife could not - and what he could not do for his wife - Theodora would...
Well, to begin with, there would be two eunuchs in this household. The hairdresser continued to work, weaving strand on strand into a lustrous black embroidery. It might have been worth her life - here - to leave off without being directed to do so; but more than that, her work was the only thing in which she could pretend to find meaning. Her fingers moved in patterns, though she knew her art was as empty as the motions of men drinking and gorging and flinging hollow boasts that led to hollow battles.
Nonetheless, she shifted to the left side of her seated mistress, in order to avoid the eyes that sparked with an anger which threatened to melt the mirror's polished silver face.
"Mistress," said the chamberlain, "it's not- - -that is, the woman wishes to see you. She has an offer for you that could, that could..."
Benito swallowed, then swallowed again. His concern went beyond the normal fear of talking to Theodora - and that went far enough for almost anything.
Theodora laid the mirror flat on her lap and turned to look at the sweating eunuch Over the bronze-sheathed wooden back of her chair. Her loins gave an anticipatory stir, though there was no reason as yet for the hopeful warmth.
"What offer, Benito?" she said in a voice that was almost calm.
"Mistress," replied the chamberlain, no less terrified by the woman's present aspect than he had been by her former one, "I really think it better that she discuss the matter with you alone."
Benito glanced around the painted wall of the bedroom with the skittering panic of a rat in an endless maze. At last, he locked his eyes with Theodora's. A rope of saliva started to drool from the corner of his mouth, but he recalled it through an effort of will.
"Mistress," the chamberlain went on. "I think you should know that this woman once had a child with her. Here."
For a moment, Theodora's mouth and eyes were open. They gave no sign to the outside because of the pressure of what remained within. Then she said, "Perhaps I can arrange she go where the brat is. But send her in. Perhaps..."