“Your friend is quick,” Gaius Julius said sorely, sitting on the steps to the upper floor and kneading his inner thigh to try to get the knot out of the muscle. “Another two fingers to the right and I’d have been puking my guts out while she made like Diana into the woods.”
Maxian ignored the dead man, all of his concentration was focused on the deep wound on the side of the girl’s head. The rock the old man had brought her down with had cracked her behind the ear and left a bad cut. Little sharp fragments of the stone had been driven into her scalp and the fleshy part at the top of her ear. The power buzzed and trembled in his hands, flickering a faint green while he worked. Under his gentle fingers, the slivers of stone trembled and then slowly eased themselves out of the flesh with a liquid pop. Skin knit closed behind them and shattered veins closed up.
After fifteen grains, he smoothed back her long hair and the flap of skin settled back into place, becoming one with its fellows. There would be no scar. Maxian smiled and felt in himself a simple joy that he had not felt in a long time. For just a moment, his mind was clear of the heavy dread of his burden. He gently turned her face back up and raised her head to slide a brocade pillow under it.
“Known her long?” Gaius Julius’ voice was carefully neutral. Maxian looked up, his eyes narrowed. Abdmachus, sitting in the background, turned away a little and concentrated on his notes and writings. The dead man regarded the Prince with a level eye.
“Two years,” Maxian said, his voice cold.
“What are you going to do with her? By your account she is the servant of a possible enemy of ours. By her presence I’d say that she had been spying on us for quite some time. I’ve checked the hillsides both above us and below us. There are places on the upper hill where two people have been.regularly watching the house. This Duchess of yours, she knows that we’re here. She might even know what we’ve been doing.“
Gaius Julius’ voice was calm and mildly curious. With a start, Maxian realized that the dead man really didn’t care that he had just nearly killed a sixteen-year-old girl-but he was concerned about the effect she would have on their tactical situation. For a moment the Prince was fully conscious of the vast gulf between the old man, who had done more than his share of terrible things in the name of the old Republic, and himself. Then he shook his head and reminded himself that the margin they trod was very narrow and, sometimes, for the good of the people, some few might have to be expended.
“We are not going to do anything with her, beyond keeping her here. You’re right, the Duchess may know. If we assume so, then we have to move again. How soon do you think we’ll have to go?”
Abdmachus coughed quietly, and Maxian turned away from the dead man. The Persian was standing on the other side of the table that the Prince had used for his impromptu surgery, gazing down at the unconscious girl with a quizzical look on his face.
“What is it?” Maxian asked.
“My lord… please do not take this amiss, but when you were working on her wound, did you feel the curse within her?”
Maxian paused for a moment, reconstructing memories of his work in his mind.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I felt the lead in her body, of which there is more than a little, but not the contagion.”
“Has she lived in the city her whole life, then? Or is she another import, like the Mauretanian?”
Maxian considered-though he had spent more than one enjoyable afternoon or evening, or even night, in the house of de’Orelio in the company of the slave girl, their conversation had rarely turned to herself. With a little start, the Prince realized that he had told the witty green-eyed girl far more than he had* ever intended about himself and his brothers.
“I don’t remember it well, but I think that she was raised in the house of the Duchess. The daughter of house slaves, probably.”
Abdmachus scratched his head in puzzlement. “So she has lived in the city for-what?-sixteen years? Yet she is not afflicted. You have lived here for only twelve years and you carry as much of the curse as that old man of fifty. I think, my lord, that what we seek is not tied to the city at all. The lead, surely, is as much an affliction to the people of the city as the coughing sickness in winter. This is something else, something that is tied up in the Empire. It only manifests itself in the city so strongly because so much of the effort of the Empire is concentrated there.”
The Prince nodded slowly, as his mind broke apart the Persian’s argument and turned it around and about, examining it from all angles. He rubbed his nose, deep in thought.
“The old man,” he said at last. “What do you know of his life, Gaius Julius? What was his occupation? Did he always live in that district, or did he come from somewhere else? What did he doT
The dead man spread his hands.
“Well,” he said, “to hear the neighbors tell of it, he had always lived there, in a top-floor apartment with a bad view. He did tinker’s work-repairing shoes, leather goods, pots, pans, things like that. He drank his share of wine, didn’t make any trouble, and kept out of the way of politics and crime. By my view, quite a respectable citizen. You prob: ably know him better, having“ been in his guts and see: what he ate and shit the last day of his life.
“But I know one thing that they seem to have forgotter I wager he never mentioned it, less he was dead drunk ani the wine wasn’t enough to keep his memories at bay. H was a citizen-a twenty-year man, by the Legion brand 01 his shoulder and the discharge mark.”
Maxian turned back to look down on Krista’s recumber form. Her chest rose and fell slowly under the grubby cot ton tunic she was wearing. Without thinking of it, h checked the pulse at her neck and wrist. She was sleepini easily now. He ran his hand over her face and the sleq deepened. When she woke, she would feel no pain or af tereffects of the blow.
“A citizen. I am a citizen, by birth and action. The slave are not…”
Something tickled at the edge of his thought, somethin: from his youth in Narbonensis, something about…
“… the children of citizens, or citizens themselves. I re member a herdsman on my father’s estates in Narbo, h said that the young of a strong bull are stronger than th offspring of a weak bull. The blood of the father and th mother affects the child.” His voice sharpened.
‘This contagion is carried by those who art citizens o the children of citizens of the state. It must be passed b; blood from generation to generation.“
Abdmachus rose from his chair and joined Maxian b; the table.
“Eventually,” the Persian said, speculatively, “it wouli affect the majority of the population, save those whose wer never citizens or whose parents had always been slaves. 1 might even get stronger with each generation.”
“A pretty theory,” Gaius Julius said from the steps, “bu how did it afflict the citizens of the city in the first place The lead didn’t carry it if what you say is true. I somehov doubt that a wizard wandered around the city, bespellin] everyone. Someone would have noticed. So, how did it firs happen? And, more to the point, is it still happening now?“
Abdmachus sighed and returned to his chair. He was growing weary of the strain of all this. He devoutly wished that he could slip away and find a ship to take him back home. It was nearly a decade since he had last seen the green hills of his homeland or ridden under night skies familiar from boyhood. He had trouble understanding merchants from home now, and he continually caught himself thinking in Latin. Sadly, he put those thoughts away and wrote down the latest conclusions in short-stroked characters on the wax tablet that he carried with him always.