Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

'You're hurting me!'

I released her hand. 'You have only one chance, Domina. I will not wait. What happened between you and Mir Ager?'

She rubbed her hand. 'You bitch,' she said. 'I know you people. You'll have this inscribed on a tablet for the rest of my life. And every time you need something from me you will get it. There's no escape once the Brotherhood has you! All right, all right, I'll tell you. The bastard looked me up and down as though I were the one who was lying in the dirt of my own waste and said he wouldn't fuck me if it was his last day on earth. Which it was, of course. Sarcastic bastard.'

'So then you tried to seduce him.'

A slow flush started on Fabia's throat and moved up to her face. 'How do you know that?'

J know you. A guess merely. It would be what I would do.' If I had your kind of perverted needs.

'Well, yes, I did. I slipped out of my wrap and put my hands on him – where it counts, you know. And he was as flaccid as a wilted flower. He laughed. He dared to laugh at me and said I was as sexless as a neutered gorclak.'

I gave the faintest of smiles. 'I don't suppose you let him get away with that?'

'I went to claw him. There was nothing he could have done; he was chained up like a bale of shleth

pelts. I would have made him as sexless as a neutered gorclak -'

'But?'

'I couldn't. He stopped me somehow. There was a sort of barrier – I couldn't see anything, but it was there nonetheless. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. He was a Kardi numen. There are numina here, you know. Strange things happen all the time, you'll see.' She shivered. 'Well, I guess I always knew if you play with fire you get burnt. Goddess, how I hate this country.'

I rose to my feet. 'Thank you, Domina. I don't think I will need to put any of this on file.' I smiled blandly and left the room.

›~-w

After dinner that night, I waited until the whole house was quiet and the last of the slaves had gone to bed before reaching under my divan to take out the weapon I had hidden there. I examined it again, running my hand over the hilt, touching the smoothness of the glass-like material in the short blade. It had a – a perfection about it, a flawless essence to it, and I began to wonder if it had not been crafted by mortal man. I considered the myriad stories about gifts from the gods: arrows from the Goddess of the Hunt, books from the God of Wisdom, dream powder from the Goddess of Sleep.

Swords from… Melete? Ocrastes? Ridiculous!

I prayed to Melete, on occasion, I gave money to her temples, but that was more habit or expediency than conviction. In my heart of hearts, I was dubious about the existence of any of the pantheon of gods and goddesses who supposedly governed the different aspects of Exaltarchy life. Yet, as I sat there with that sword in my hand, I felt it was somehow god-given. The idea was so outlandish it confused me, a confusion overlaid with the memory of that golden

woman tearing away her anoudain and snatching up a similar weapon…

Vortex, I couldn't have been born of a goddess, surely?

My whole body rebelled at the thought. I was no immortal. I was just me, Ligea of Tyr…

And then the inner doubt spoke again: You are a woman who knows when others lie. Who senses emotions on the air as easily as pungent scents or evocative sounds, who has a touch that apparently sometimes takes away pain. Is that normal?

I had faced death in Brotherhood service, but I'd never felt the fear I felt right then. Immortal. Doomed never to age arid die, to be condemned to watch all I knew vanish into old age and death and dust, waiting for an end that never came… I could think of nothing worse. Better to be insane. Perhaps I was. I sank down on my knees beside the divan and rested my forehead on the sword hilt. I took calming breaths and tried to clear the tendrils of doubt before they could permeate deeper. I was Ligea. Brotherhood Compeer. I was better than this.

Unbidden, my mind ranged outwards until it touched the familiar. Brand, sleeping somewhere below in the slave quarters. I calmed, and began to think again.

Silently, I took up the sword and left my apartments. If the Prefect posted guards, they must have all been outside in the gardens or beyond the walls, because I met no one. My bare feet made no sound on the marble floors as I made my way, after several wrong turns, to Brand. I paused outside his door, checking with my senses that I did indeed have the right place. Then I took a night lamp out of its niche in the passage and let myself in, glad I had insisted on a single room for him, a privilege of a favoured slave. I shut the door behind me.

The room was not much bigger than a cupboard. A low table and a raised platform for the sleeping pallet were the only two items of furniture. I put the lamp and the still-wrapped sword on the table, next to an empty jug, and looked around. Brand, clad only in a loin cloth and half covered in a blanket, was sound asleep and gently snoring. His clothes hung on a hook behind the door, his personal pack was on the floor – all he owned, if a slave could ever be said to own anything. It seemed pitifully little after thirty years of life.

'Brand?' I asked quietly. He didn't stir. I sat on the edge of his pallet and shook his arm. Even then it took several rough shakes before I elicited a response. At a guess, that jug had contained wine, and the Prefect's Tyranian slaves had been more than hospitable to an Altani freshly arrived with news of Tyr. Brand had been feted that evening.

He struggled awake, befuddled with wine and sleep and still not opening his eyes. 'Who's tha'?'

'It's only me, Brand. Legata Ligea.'

He opened one eye. And spoke, a tentative 'Ligea?' The eye stared at me, puzzled, and then I felt the other emotion in him. When he reached out a hand to touch my bare shoulder, I was – in my astonishment – unable to move. He murmured, 'Sweet Goddess… I have dreamed of this, but never thought -'

'No,' I said in a rush, aghast, and leapt to my feet. I wanted to unhear the words, to have them unsaid. 'No. You misunderstand. I brought the weapon down. I wanted you to hide it. I thought if I kept it in my room, Aemid would find it, and it's important she doesn't know about it.'

He scrambled up, fully awake now, and coldly sober, hope dead in his eyes at my rush of words. He cut off

his emotions from me as he said, 'My apologies, Legata. I was half asleep, and I fear I had too much to drink this evening.' But even as he said the words, we botii knew it was too late to take back what had just happened. ¦¦ 'Oh, Brand,' I said, trying to hide how appalled I was. 'I'm sorry. I never guessed. You – you hid it so well.' But then, he always had kept his emotions hidden. Ever since we were children together. Damn, damn, damn.

'What was the point? I'm just a slave and you had Tribune Favonius.' He glanced across at me with a calculating look. 'He's not here now. You must be missing him.'

'Yes, but – Oh, Brand. Oh damn it, you are – you are like a brother to me. I don't think of you that way.' My thoughts were more shocked: Acheron's mists! You're my slave! I couldn't be having this conversation. I didn't want to have this conversation!

'A brother?' he said bitterly and then, echoing my thought, 'I'm your slave.' He raised a hesitant hand to touch my hair. 'I've never been your brother. And a slave you could bed, for all that custom dictates otherwise.'

'But we were brought up together.' Don't say it, Brand. Don't say it.

'That doesn't make us siblings. And it's not love of Favonius that stops you, either. You don't love him.' He said that with utter certainty.

'No – no, I suppose not. He's a friend and he fulfils a need.'

'I could also be that. And I wouldn't ask for more than I could have.' He trailed his fingers from my hair to my face. 'I have loved you since I was a boy; in all those years, I've learned to be content with very little.' He bent to kiss me, gently brushing my mouth with his lips and moving his hand to cup my breast, but