"Bah!" he snapped, embarrassed by his thoughts. "Enough of this. There's work to be done, my lad."
Without looking around, he strode back into the palace, following the red cloak of a passing Legion officer towards the governor's offices. A few moments later he entered a cavernous room filled with hunched, busy clerks, furiously scribbling copies of orders, levies, manifests. Nicholas felt a great calm flow over him, smelling and hearing the machine of the Empire in motion. Standing quietly beside the doorway, Nicholas let his gaze wander across the bent heads. He has to be somewhere... there!
Near the further door, one clerk had a tall stack of leather pouches beside his desk. Each pouch was dark with wear and closed with a winged silver clasp. Two Legion officers were talking quietly to the man. The Greek nodded briskly to the Romans, then accepted a set of parchments. Nicholas touched the packet in his belt again, then pushed away from the wall and walked quickly up to the dispatch master.
"You've charge of the cursus publicus?" Nicholas stopped beside the slave's desk, left arm on the wooden surface, cloak bunched to hide his belt.
"Yes," the Greek said, attention focused on the newly delivered letters. "Just put your messages there in the pile."
Nicholas reached down and seized an exposed ear. With irresistible gentleness, he turned the man to face him. "I have a privy message," he said softly, "from the Emperor, for his brother."
The clerk stared at him in amazement, rubbing his ear. "Fool! I'm the governor's secretary. I'll have you thrown into the street!"
"Will you?" Nicholas drew the message pouch out of his belt, turning the packet to show the dark Tyrian purple seal of the Augustus and God Galen, pressed with the Emperor's own signet, and bound in crimson twine. The Greek's expression congealed into white-lipped fear.
Nicholas' ill humor vanished; replaced by smug satisfaction to see the Greek quail at his words, lean face paling, nimble hands beginning to tremble. "I am the voice of the Emperor, carrying his word, from his own hand. Are you listening now?"
"Yes," whispered the clerk. His eyes focused on Nicholas with gratifying intensity.
"Good." The Latin straightened up, letting the packet drop casually. "I'm on another Imperial errand, my friend, so I leave this matter to you. I've heard the Caesar Aurelian is busy in the eastern delta. You see this reaches him with all speed. I've come straightaway from Rome, and neither the prince nor his brother will be pleased if you delay their correspondence."
"Of course not," the Greek managed to say. He picked up the letter with only the tips of his fingers. "A courier is leaving in a few hours. He'll take it."
Nicholas leaned down abruptly, bared teeth white in a sun-browned face. The clerk drew back, the corners of his eyes tightening in fear. "I'll come back later, to make sure the letter sped to Caesar on swift, sure wings. Mercury could do no better, I'm sure, than you will."
The man nodded eagerly, sliding the letter under a small stack of similar packets. "Yes, my lord. The prince will have it tomorrow morning."
Tomorrow? That's too soon. It's two or three days to Pelusium... Nicholas frowned, right hand knuckled against his side. "Where is Aurelian now? Is the prince on his way back to the city?"
The Greek stiffened again, but this time his eyes flitted around the room, particularly to the door leading deeper into the governor's domain. "Things aren't going well," the clerk whispered. "The Legions are trying to hold a line at Bousiris."
"On the Nile? The Persians are on the Nile?" Nicholas swallowed, throat suddenly dry. Half of Egypt fallen since we left Rome?
He was outside the palace, in the street, pushing his way through porters bent under wooden crates and leather-bound trunks before he was aware of moving. There was a man he had to see. Nicholas started to run, though muttering crowds pressed him on every side. The sun, already swollen orange from its descent into the smoke-haze over the city, was only a hand above the buildings to the west.
—|—
"Seven by seven," Betia chanted softly to herself, "makes forty and nine."
The little Gaul drifted along a side street in a quiet, residential neighborhood. A raw wool chlamys hid most of her petite figure and she carried a heavy wicker basket. Behind her, at the junction of the street and a small plaza, the corner of an old, crumbling temple was just visible. Seven streets and alleys fed into the plaza and Betia had taken her time while circling the crossroads. From the decrepit temple of Artemis, with its half-seen sanctuary and dusty stone goddess draped in bull testicles, she had chosen the seventh opening. The girl thought the placement of the goddess' temple particularly apt, as the smoke-stained, decaying facade of a Mithraic sanctuary squatted across the plaza. The seventh passage was little more than an alley, but Betia had passed into the fetid dimness without hesitation.
Now she counted doorways, measuring her paces against the Huntress' tread. At the ninth doorway she smiled—her count measured forty steps—and paused, setting the basket down and stretching in apparent weariness. Before her, a worn, curved set of steps led down into deep-set alcove. The dark stone of the door arch did not match the buildings on either side.
Bending down to lift up her basket, Betia looked up and down the passage, saw no one, and slipped down the stairs. The soiled gray wood of the door thudded hollowly under her small fist, but she was careful to knock only thirteen times.
—|—
The sun was wallowing down into the west, filling the sky with violent orange threads of cloud, by the time Nicholas managed to reach the Nile Canal gate. Thyatis was sitting, hands on her knees, upon a massive sandstone foot attached to a section of round, weatherworn leg. The rest of Pharaoh's body was gone, shorn off at the ankles by some ancient catastrophe. A matching statue across the canal was in better shape, retaining both legs and part of a pleated kilt. A crowd of local children in shapeless white-and-brown tunics sat on the ground, watching her feet intently.
"Hello, Nicholas." Thyatis did not look up.
The Latin slowed to a halt, sweating. The perfect stillness of the crowd of boys drew him up short and he closed his mouth, swallowing a tired-sounding "hello yourself."
A wooden box lay between Thyatis' legs, top knocked askew. Something gray-green rose from the opening, swaying from side to side, a glistening black tongue flicking in the air. Nicholas stiffened as a scaled hood unfolded, revealing a chilling pattern of gray-and-white spots. The cobra's body was the thickness of his forearm. Tasting the air, the snake's flat head drifted from side to side.
Nicholas looked down, saw something on the sand and realized there was a nervous white mouse sitting between Thyatis' bare feet. A bit of twine made a collar and a lead running to the Roman woman's ankle. The little creature lifted its paws, brushing a tiny, pink nose. The cobra's mouth opened in a silent hiss, sensing the motion, then uncoiled in a fantastically quick burst of gleaming scales and thick, corded muscle. Nicholas grunted, a flat-bladed knife flicking from his hand. The metal spun once, then the leather hilt smacked into Thyatis' reaching palm. With the same motion, she reversed the blade and flipped it lazily back to Nicholas.
The Latin caught the blade from the air, mouth open in surprise. There was a strangled hissing, and the box rattled violently as the cobra writhed, head caught between Thyatis' feet. The quivering throat of the snake was firmly clasped in the space beside each big toe. Unconcerned, the albino mouse continued to clean its face, twine drawn almost taut by the movement of the woman's ankle.
"Enough games for today, my friends," Thyatis said. The children scrambled up, speaking in whispers. Most of them were staring with equal fascination at the mouse, the snake, and Thyatis' smooth ankles. One boy approached the cobra, slipped a noose on the end of a stick around the head, then unceremoniously stuffed the reptile back into the box. The snake hissed furiously, body lashing back and forth, but could do nothing. Another child retrieved the mouse, slipping the little fellow into her grubby shirt. Thyatis stood up, rolling from one foot to the other, then bowed gravely to the assembled audience.
The children bowed back, then the eldest—his face twisted into a terrible, tortured grimace—pressed a collection of silver coins into the Roman woman's palm.
"Not a bad day's work," Thyatis said, grinning at Nicholas as she counted the coins into a pocket of her tunic.
Nicholas swallowed, sucked on his teeth, then said: "You're fast with that trick. Do it before, somewhere?"
"The knife, the snake, or the betting?" Thyatis gathered up her sandals, carry bag and sheathed longsword.
"Either—no, the snake. I've never seen one so... large."
"I have." Thyatis' good humor faltered, the corners of her mouth tightening. "There was only one this time." She grinned again. "The game is much easier when you can see them. The naga are from Taprobane, I think. Have any luck finding your friend?"
"Some." Nicholas grimaced, feeling queasy again at the news from the governor's palace. "Have you found a house for us?"
Thyatis nodded, noting his circumspection. Twilight filled the recesses of the gate and lamps were beginning to sparkle in the heavy, dark water of the canal. Soon the massive portals would be closed for the night, but while a smudge of light remained in the western sky a constant stream of dusty laborers, shopkeepers, priests and slaves flowed past, only inches away. She tilted her head, indicating the road leading out into the suburbs of the city. "I have. It's not far."
Beyond the gate, a flat plain stretched away to the south, crowded with gardens and single-story houses. An encompassing tropical gloom quickly engulfed them as they walked, barely disturbed by the intermittent lights of outlying buildings. Only a steady stream of workers trudging homeward into the city lit the road—every fourth or fifth man carried a pitch torch or lamp. No one else was heading out from the gate.
After ten grains, Thyatis turned into a side lane. Ahead, Nicholas saw the glitter of water and smelled the pungent, rancid aroma of cooling mud, rotting cane and birds.
"I found a place on the lakeshore," Thyatis said, voice smiling in the darkness. "Not very popular in the summer, I gather. Too many mosquitoes and flies. But there is a place to tie up a shallow-draft boat and a high wall with plenty of trees."
"Sounds private." Nicholas nodded in appreciation. He slowed his pace a little—the road was rapidly devolving into a muddy track. "I found two of my... ah... friends. One of them told me the Persians have broken through the defenses at Pelusium. The Caesar Aurelian is trying to stop them at Bousiris, on the main channel of the Nile."
He paused, waiting for Thyatis to comment, but she did not. "The other says there is a man at the Museum who knows everything about the Egypt of the old Pharaohs. Particularly those who ruled before the Greeks came. His name is Hecataeus, a Cypriot. I'm told he's a poet, but I find that hard to believe..."
"Hmm. The Museum holds the greatest library in the world." Thyatis' voice was soft in the darkness. She stopped. Nicholas could make out the bare outline of an arched whitewashed gate. "The others are already inside. Does this poet know any of the ancient languages?"
"Supposedly he's the best. Even with really old carvings." Nicholas shrugged, thinking of the restored parchment and the indecipherable glyphs ringing the wheels within wheels of the telecast. "Do you want to show him the... ah... the device?"
"No!" Thyatis chuckled, reaching over the gate to lift the locking bar. "We show no one what we're looking for." Her voice turned wry. "We probably shouldn't know what it looks like ourselves."
—|—
Keeping her fingers from shaking by an act of complete concentration, Betia unfolded the paper. The room hidden under the temple of Artemis was very old. Blackened stones matched the cutwork of the obscure entrance and the arch over the door only a pair of tilted slabs. She was sweating, moisture beading in tiny, shining drops on her neck, though the air in the room was cool, almost chill.