David Drake - Balefires

From the bosom of the stola she wore, Klea took a purse and thrust it deep within the maw of the stone serpent-head which had served Pyrrhus as a pillow. The coins clinked-gold, Dama thought; certainly not mere bronze-beneath the floor. The bench served as a lid for Pyrrhus's treasury, probably a design feature left from the days the building was a temple.

"Oh, Master," the woman said as she walked back to her place in the anteroom.

Tears ran down her cheeks, but even Vettius's experience at sizing up women's emotions didn't permit him to be sure of the reason. Perhaps Klea cried because she'd been denied remarriage during life… but it was equally likely that she'd been overcome with joy at the prospect of joining Pyrrhus after death.

The Prophet took another from the stack of tablets. "Hestiaia, daughter of Mimnermos," he called, and the younger of the pair of women stepped forward to receive her prophecy.

Pyrrhus worked through the series of requests tablet by tablet. A few of the responses were in absolute gibberish-which appeared to awe and impress the recipients-and even when the doggerel could be understood, it was generally susceptible to a variety of meanings. Dama began to suspect that the man who'd been stoned and kicked from the gathering outside had chosen the interpretation he himself desired to an ambiguous answer about his brother's fate.

A man was told that his wife was unfaithful. No one but the woman herself could know with certainty if the oracle were false.

A woman was told that the thief who took her necklace was the slave she trusted absolutely. She would go through her household with scourge and thumbscrew… and if she found nothing, then wasn't her suspicion of this one or that proof her trust hadn't been complete after all?

"Severiana, daughter of Marcus Severianus," the Prophet called. Vettius stiffened as the Prefect's simpering wife joined Pyrrhus in the sanctum.

"Daughter," said Pyrrhus in his clanging verse, "blessed of God art thee. Thy rank and power increased shall be. Thy husband's works grow anyhow. And morrow night I'll dine with thou."

Dama thought: Pyrrhus's accent was flawless, unlike that of the Prefect's nomenclator; but in his verse he butchered Latin worse than ever an Irish beggar did…

Vettius thought: Castor and Pollux! Bad enough that the Prefect's wife was involved with this vicious phony. But if Pyrrhus got close to Rutilianus himself, he could do real harm to the whole Republic…

"Oh beloved Prophet!" Severiana gurgled as she fed the stone serpent a purse that hit with a heavierclank! than most of the previous offerings. "Oh, we'll be so honored by your presence!"

"Section Leader Lycorides!" Pyrrhus called. Vettius stepped forward, hunching slightly and averting his face as he passed Severiana. The timing was terrible-but the Prefect's wife was so lost in joy at the news that she wouldn't have recognized her husband, much less one of his flunkies. Though Pyrrhus's thin figure towered over the previous suppliants who faced him one-on-one, Vettius was used to being the biggest man in any room. It hadn't occurred to him that he too would have to tilt his head up to meet the Prophet's eyes.

Pyrrhus's irises were a black so deep they could scarcely be distinguished from his pupils; the weight of their stare gouged at Vettius like cleated boots.

For a moment the soldier froze. Heknew that what he faced was no charlatan, no mere trickster preying on the religiously gullible. The power of Pyrrhus's eyes, the inhuman perfection of his bearded, patriarchal face Pyrrhus was not merely a prophet; he was agod.

Pyrrhus opened his mouth and said, "Evil done requited is to men. Each and every bao nhieu tien."

The illusion vanished in the bath of nonsense syllables. Vettius faced a tall charlatan who had designs on the official whom it was Vettius's duty to protect.

Rutilianus would be protected. Never fear.

"God has looked with favor on you, son," Pyrrhus prodded. "He will accept your sacrifice."

Vettius shrugged himself to full alertness and felt within his purse. He hadn't thought to bundle a few coins in a twist of papyrus beforehand, so now he had to figure desperately as he leaned toward the opening to the treasury. He didn't see any way that Pyrrhus could tell if he flung in a couple bits of bronze instead of real payment, but…

Vettius dropped three denarii and a Trapezuntine obol, all silver, into the stone maw. He couldn't take the chance that Pyrrhus or a confederatewould know what he had done-and at best expose him in front of Severiana.

He stepped back into place.

"Marcus Dama!"the Prophet called, to the surprise of Vettius who'd expected Dama to use a false name. Diffidently lowering his eyes, the little man took the notebook Pyrrhus returned to him.

"God grants us troubling things to learn," the Prophet singsonged."Sorrows both and joys wait your return."

A safe enough answer-if the petitioner told you he'd left his wife and three minor children behind in Spain months before. Dama kept his eyes low as he paid his offering and pattered back to Vettius's side.

There were half a dozen further responses before Pyrrhus raised his arms as he had before making an utterance from the porch. "The blessings of God upon you!" he cried.

A single tablet remained on the floor beside the stone bench. Vettius remembered the well-dressed thug who'd tried to carry in a dagger…

"God's blessings on his servants Pyrrhus and Glaukon!" responded that majority of the crowd which knew the liturgy.

"Depart in peace…" rasped the bronze serpent from its cross, drawing out the Latin sibilants and chilling Dama's bones again.

The doors creaked open and the worshipers began to leave. Most of them appeared to be in a state of somnolent ecstasy. A pair of attendants collected the tablets which had been supplied to petitioners who didn't bring their own; with enough leisure, even the most devout believer might have noticed the way the waxed surface could be slid from beneath the sealed cover panel.

The air outside was thick with dust and the odors of slum tenements. Dama had never smelled anything so refreshing as the first breath that filled his lungs beyond the walls of Pyrrhus's church.

Almost all of those who'd attended the private service left in sedan chairs.

Vettius and Dama instead walked a block in silence to a set of bollards protecting an entrance to the Julian Mall. They paused, each lost for a moment in a landscape of memories. No one lurked nearby in the moonlight, and the rumble of goods wagons and construction vehicles-banned from the streets by day-kept their words from being overheard at any distance.

"A slick operation," Vettius said.

The merchant lifted his chin in agreement but then added, "His clientele makes it easy, though. They come wanting to be fooled."

"I'm not sure how…" Vettius said.

For a moment, his tongue paused over concluding the question the way he'd started it: I'm not sure how Pyrrhus managed to appear and disappear that way. But though he knew that was just a trick, the way some sort of trick inspired awe when Pyrrhus stared into the soldier's eyes… neither of those were things that Vettius wanted to discuss just now.

"… he knew what your question was," Vettius's tongue concluded. "Is the tablet still sealed?"

"Sealed again, I should guess," Dama said mildly as he held the document up to the full moon. "They could've copied my seal impression in quick-drying plaster, but I suspect-yes, there."

His fingertip traced a slight irregularity in the seal's edge. "They used a hot needle to cut the wax and then reseal it after they'd read the message."

He looked at his companion with an expression the bigger man couldn't read. "Pyrrhus has an exceptional memory," he said, "to keep the tablets and responses in proper order. He doesn't give himself much time to study."