Abdmachus was sitting on the other couch when he returned to the room overlooking the back garden. The Persian had a wax tablet covered with markings from his survey. He looked up at Maxian’s entrance., “My lord, this house is almost thaumaturgically correct-following Egyptian practices. I think that we’ve finally gotten the blessing of the gods on our pro… is something wrong?”
Maxian had halted suddenly and was staring at the cup of water in his hand. His face was a confusion of emotions. He looked up and thrust the cup at Abdmachus. “Drink this, and tell me what you taste!”
Confused, the Persian took the cup and drank.
“It tastes like water, milord, good water at that. Fresh from the spring. A little coppery.”
Maxian handed the cup across the table to Gaius Julius. “Drink!”
“Faugh! I hate water,” the dead man said, but he drank anyway. “Huh. Sweet and cold. Not like that crap we drink…” The dead man looked up, his face startled. “… in the city.”
Maxian nodded, his face both grim and filled with exultation. “One way or another, everyone in the city drinks water-either straight, or in soup, or mixed with wine.” The Prince’s voice was filled with utter certainty. “They bathe in it, they wash their clothes in it. But they don’t drink it out of the river anymore, the Tiber is too foul for that. And many of the little springs that used to provide the Hill districts with water are dry. Not all, but most. And where does everyone get the water they drink?“ Maxian turned to the Persian.
Abdmachus frowned at him, then the sun rose in his mind. “The aqueducts! Nearly all of the water in the city comes from the eleven aqueducts. All are controlled by the Imperial Offices-they’re critical to the function of the city. A spell placed upon them would affect the waters and, through the waters, every person in the city…”
Maxian nodded sharply. “Here is what we’re going to do, then.” He began speaking rapidly. Abdmachus began taking notes on his wax tablet.
A hundred yards up the hillside from the Egyptian house, in a thicket of rowan trees, two figures sat quietly, their backs to the largest of the trees. From their vantage, they could see down both the overgrown lane that wound up the hillside to the house and into the front garden. Early-morning dew sparkled on the leaves of the bushes and trees around them, but both were thickly bundled in woolen cloaks and blankets against the night chill. The larger was snoring softly, his head at an angle. The smaller was awake, her sharp ears having caught the creak of a wagon and the whickering of horses on the still morning air.
To the east, the sky was a slowly spreading pink and violet. The sun would soon rise over the mountains and wash the land below with light. For the moment, there was a calm stillness as the land still slept, but the dawn crept in on light feet. The dark-haired girl sat up a little and doffed the straw hat that she had been covering her head with. There was a wagon in the lane, with two drivers. They clip-clopped past on the road below and turned into the garden path. Quietly enough to keep from waking her companion, she slid out of the scratchy wool blankets and slunk off down the slope, flitting from tree to tree.
The two men, one gray-haired, the other with a dark mane, pulled the wagon around to the back garden entrance and unloaded two heavy kegs-filled with wine or water by the apparent weight of them. They rolled the kegs inside the house, raising a clatter on the tile floors. Indistinct voices echoed in the empty hallways. The girl crept lower on the hillside on her hands and knees. Now the wagon was only thirty feet away, across the little side road that ran around the house. The horses were patiently waiting in the traces, The voices continued to echo in the house, though now they receded. The girl looked left and then right. Predawn stillness continued to cover the land.
She waited a moment, but no new movement came from inside (he house. Crouching low, she scuttled across to the side of the wagon and paused, peering under the heavy wooden bed. She could just make out the steps on the other side, but no one was on them. Her nose wrinkled up; there was a foul odor seeping from the wagon, like rotten meat. Oog… what are you doing, pretty Prince? Krista swallowed, suppressing the sudden desire to throw up. There was still no noise from the house, so she crept around the end of the wagon and peered inside the bed.
There were two long shapes, wrapped in ancient, dirty canvas. The smell was thicker now, but she steeled herself and reached into the back of the wagon to twitch the nearest edge of canvas aside. Her face flickered with revulsion at the sight of a gray-black foot protruding from the bundle. It was scabrous and the toes were swollen. Nitrous dirt clung to it in clumps. The smell was worse, like a fist in the face, and she had to sit down behind the wagon, gagging The clatter of boots echoed on the stone steps at the back of the house. Krista started, then realized that she was trapped behind the wagon. Carefully she drew her legs up under her and edged beneath the wooden bed. From underneath the rough boards, she saw two sets of sandaled feet tromp down from the house and go to the back of the wagon.
“Gods, that is a foul stench… like rotten butter.” That was the Prince.
“Huh, you’re an ill-experienced pup. I don’t even note it anymore.”
They bumped around in the wagon and then there was a sliding sound as they dragged the first of the two bodies out. She heard Maxian grunt as he took the weight, then the older man jumped down and took up the rest of the burden.
“Watch the steps,” the older man said, and then they staggered off with the body between them. Krista peered from under the wagon until they had entered the house, then she slipped out from under it and darted off into the shelter of the woods. Twenty minutes later she was back on the hillside, shaking Sigurd’s shoulder. He came awake, only slightly muzzy from sleep.
“Come on, we’ve got to go back to the city immediately.”
The dreadful sickly sweet odor still hung in the air, but Maxian had grown inured to it. His medical training had taken over and now he gazed down upon the two bodies- secretly dug from potters’ fields south of the city and now spread open with clamps and tongs-with a detached air. Gaius Julius loitered behind him, leaning against the wall of the basement of the Egyptian house. The older man wore a butcher’s apron and heavy leather gloves, spattered with dark fluid. Maxian placed his hands on either side of the first body’s head and began to breathe carefully.
Perception fell away as his flesh relinquished control of his view of the world. The hidden world blossomed, an infinitely textured flower opening in his mind. Detail flooded his mind like a swift mountain torrent, and he struggled for a moment to compose and order it. He bent over the body of the ancient man, dead now for weeks. His fingers moved in the body cavity, sliding over the glutinous remains of liver, spleen, and lungs. His fingers, so used to the work, were his anchor and focus now as his awareness plunged into the recesses of the decaying body. Flesh parted before him, and the innermost secrets of the organs were revealed.
Against the wall, Gaius Julius watched with apprehension. He had seen more than his share of death, and it was no stranger. But the air in the tomblike basement seemed chill and noisome compared to a battlefield. Too, the work of the past nights, of trolling the alleys of the Subura and Aventine slums for suitable bodies, had been grim. The poverty and dissolution of the lower classes of the city that he still, after centuries, loved shook him. In his previous life, he could remember thinking of the people of the lower city, below the hills, as nothing but useful tools in his quest for power. Now the decay of the city and its people struck him cruelly in the heart. He knew that during the short period in which he had the power to revise the workings of the Republic or the customs that supported it, he had done little or nothing. And what now? Had he, somehow, caused all of this to come to pass?