Mary Reed: Ten for Dying

“Did you inspect the damage?”

Felix shrugged. “Why? I know nothing about grapes.”

“Except when they are in your wine cups. Oh, Felix, you may not be a farmer but you can be a perfect chickpea.”

“You don’t think my stewards lie to me, do you?”

“Everybody lies. How would people live without lying? It would be impossible. You are going to be a general soon, my love. You have to stop thinking like a soldier and start thinking like a general.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

She leaned over to kiss him lightly. “Of course I’m right.” Her breath felt hot against the side of his face. He had a sudden urge to pull her down onto the bed and forget his finances.

As if reading his mind she straightened up and crossed her arms over her breasts. “You must have put your money into something other than land, Felix.”

He forced himself to look away from her. He stared at the door, half wondering if someone might indeed be lurking behind it. “What’s wrong with land?” he muttered. “Land is what wars are fought over. I’ve seen colleagues bleeding to death on the battlefield over a piece of ground smaller than the Augustaion.”

“Don’t you have investments?”

“Investments! Yes. I almost forgot. Another excellent way to diminish one’s fortune.”

“Let’s see. Your business partners advise you that they encountered unforeseen circumstances. Just a little more money is all it will take to overcome them. Enough to hang on until conditions change, and then the gold will start to rain down.”

“Exactly! How did you know?”

Anastasia gave one of her pretty little laughs. “Oh, my poor dear…”

Realizing she was making fun of him, Felix felt his face flush. “I’m not so stupid that I don’t know people take advantage of me. I detest business. I hate the smell of ink and lawyers. I try to choose advisers I can trust, then forget about them. But as you say, everyone lies, so I’m always disappointed. I’m not a fool, you know.”

Anastasia tried to look chastened. She didn’t do a good job of it, but the attempt mollified Felix.

“But how much money can you make smuggling relics?” she asked.

“Enough to pay certain of my debts. Gambling debts, if you have to know. The charioteers I’ve backed lately have served me as well as my vineyards. Every time they take to the track, their horses are struck down by a hailstorm of bad fortune.”

“Why not sell a vineyard to pay the debts?”

“It wouldn’t look good. People at court would wonder why I was selling off land, and they’d ferret out the reason. Besides, land is land, even if it isn’t sprouting gold. I’ve fought hard for that land.”

“So then tell the gamblers to consider their loans to you as gifts to Justinian’s soon-to-be general, and hint at benefits to come.”

“Those men aren’t generous. They want payment now.”

“Tell them to get into the habit of giving or go to Hell.”

“They’ll all be in Hell soon enough. I doubt they’re in any rush to get there.”

“Have them arrested for threatening you. Whatever they say, accuse them of lying.”

“It isn’t that easy. I’m not the only one caught in their web. They’ve spun their sticky strings from the palace to the dome of the Great Church. Too many high-ranking officials would be eager to flay me alive to save their own skins.”

“What a strange turn of phrase. Do spiders skin flies before they eat them?”

“I apologize for not being a poet!”

Anastasia put her arms around his shoulders. “Now, now, my big bear. I don’t want any poets poking around me with their nasty little pens. I was only trying to make you smile.”

Felix apologized for his apology.

“What a repentant bear you are this morning.”

“You do understand I would never agree to help smuggle the Virgin’s shroud?”

“Who says you’ll be asked? Perhaps the robbery was a coincidence. No one brought anything to your doorstep last night. I know. I was here.”

“Yes. How could I forget?” He reached out to paw at her but she squirmed away.

“Not now, Felix. What are we going to do about this? Why don’t you tell these people dealing in relics that you’ve found out about their scheme-if it turns out you’re right-and you won’t help them any longer?”

“Because they’ll go to my creditors and complain that I refuse to work to pay off my obligations.”

“You think the smugglers and gamblers are working together?”

“For all intents and purposes. And my financial difficulties could prove more dangerous than smuggling. The knowledge could easily be used against me. An ambitious underling might point to the possibility of my being bribed. After all, I’m the man who guards the emperor…you can see how it would seem to Justinian. He’d have my head, especially given his state of mind right now.”

“So you’re afraid of losing your head as well as your skin. You’ll be little more than those relics you’re smuggling. Yet you have just confessed your debts to me.”

Felix found himself gazing at her speculatively. Why should he trust this woman he barely knew? Weren’t there dozens like her swarming around the palace, attending to their superiors, hoping to catch an aristocrat of their own? Dressed in expensive silks, her face expertly painted, Anastasia resembled an empress. But didn’t they all? Most likely she was the daughter of an ambitious petty official. Or, given her age, the widow of such a man.

“You can’t sit here and brood, Felix. You need to do something about this. Time flies.”

Who was this woman to order him about? He started to protest, then stopped himself. She was right.

Besides, she wasn’t just any woman. There was something different about Anastasia.

As Felix passed the doorway to a boarded-up shop he felt the edge of his cloak being grabbed. He went for his sword, then saw the feminine hand belonged to a skinny young girl who reeked of perfume. She simpered at him with crookedly painted lips and used her free hand to yank down the top of her tunic, displaying an undeveloped breast.

He pried her fingers from his cloak and continued on.

“Eunuch!” she spat after him.

Felix couldn’t help wishing John were here. The Lord Chamberlain would know better how to extricate him from a delicate situation like the one in which he was embroiled. But John and his family must be on the Marmara by now, gazing back at the dome of the Great Church for the last time as it dwindled and finally sank from sight.

Felix could see sunlight flashing off the dome between gaps in the ramshackle wooden tenements along both sides of the street, a vision of heaven even as he passed archways from which the heat of metal forges issued, akin to the fiery breath from gateways to the Christians’ Hell. At the edge of the Copper Quarter, the air smelled of smoke. The buildings, coated with soot, looked diseased. People in the street glanced at him furtively, suspicious of someone in a helmet and cuirass. It was the sort of area where its inhabitants made their livings by robbing one another.

He had never understood why the man he needed to see, his contact with the smuggling ring, chose to live in such an insalubrious place. But then Julian-the Jingler, as everyone called him-was a most uncommon man.

Felix entered the doorway of a five-story wooden building indistinguishable from its neighbors, and climbed the stairs to the top floor. Worn slick, canted at odd angles, the boards sank alarming beneath his boots. A sickening miasma of boiled onions and fish filled the building.

He rapped on Julian’s door. There was no answer.

“I know you’re in there, Julian,” he shouted. “It’s Felix.”