Robert & Linda Evans - Wages of Sin

Skeeter felt like what's-his-name, that ancient Greek guy the Athenian city fathers had forced to drink poison. Ianira herself had spoken of it to him one time over dessert in the apartment she and Marcus shared, when Skeeter himself was the guest of honor. So fare the fortunes of men, Skeeter thought bitterly, when seven wolves and a sheep decide what's for lunch. Perfect democracy: everybody got to vote. Even the lunch.

He wondered if this crowd would even bother asking this lunch before they devoured it, metaphorically speaking?

Ianira Cassondra's voice, so soft she might have been whispering her children to sleep, yet so well projected Skeeter was certain even the back row of listeners could hear her perfectly, began to speak. Must've tricked up that little trick in that big temple of hers. He waited for the betrayal to come.

It didn't. Instead, disbelieving, Skeeter listened while she wove a thread that became the yarn of a great tale of evil and danger, with Skeeter caught at the center of it, Skeeter who had, indeed, donated large sums of his earnings to them, donations which had saved many a child's life-and many an adult's, as well.

Then, as he was beginning to squirm with embarrassment, she launched hypnotically into the tale of Skeeter's run for life-Marcus' life-all the way from the back of Residential to the Porta Romae gate, already open with tourists filing through, while he dodged a man determined to kill him. How Skeeter had at last been forced to crash the Porta Romae to try and save his friend from the evil clutches of the man who'd planned all along to kidnap and sell Marcus back into slavery.

A craning, strained glance backwards showed Skeeter a roomful of people leaning forward, intent on her every word.

Damn, I'II bet she was impressive in that temple.

In her flowing robes and flowing hair and that voice ...

Many a man would've thought she was whatever equivalent to angel he knew.

Ianira's magic voice then softened in horror at the fate of each man: one sold to the master of the games and ordered to keep track of inventory-men and beasts. Beside that, she wove the story of the other man, kidnapped and sold to be a gladiator, hardly able to communicate with his captors, beaten and tortured into learning the art of butchering others to stay alive, when his own presence in Rome spoke eloquently of the fact that he could be no killer, that he had come here because he had promised to save Marcus, whatever it took. In trying to keep that promise, he had lost his freedom and was slated to die in the arena on the end of a grand champion's sword.

By this time, there were murmurs in the back rows, murmurs that sounded angry. Skeeter didn't dare hope that note of anger was for him and the foul treatment he'd received.

"And then," Ianira Cassondra cried out, raising both arms in a graceful, possibly symbolic motion, "our Skeeter defeated the champion and refused to kill his opponent! The Caesar-"she pronounced it Kai-sar "gave him both laurel crown and purse as rightfully his. Aware that only more slavery awaited him, victory and prize notwithstanding; aware also that he had not yet freed his friend, who stood with his evil master on the great balustrade above the starting boxes for the races, Skeeter did what only a man with the smiles of the gods at his back could possibly have done."

She deliberately stretched out the tense silence.

Then, all but whispering, as if in holy awe herself, "He galloped his horse for the starting- ate wall. Leapt to his feet on the galloping horse's back---- " a number of people, men from the sound of it, gasped in shock "then dug the butt of his spear into the blood drenched sand and spun himself up and over the balustrade. While every guard on the balustrade gawked just to see him there, instead of fifteen feet down in the arena, Skeeter tossed the heavy purse that was his well earned prize to Marcus' new master as payment for his friend's freedom."

Somewhere behind them, a ragged cheer broke out. Skeeter began to pray with the tiniest smidgen of hope that he might yet live through this.

"And then?" Ianira's voice demanded of her audience. `When our resourceful Skeeter arranged for them to impersonate more highly placed persons than they were, to throw off the slave trackers after them. They hid. They changed disguises and hiding places, again and again. And when gate time came for the Porta Romae, Skeeter caused a great diversion so that he and Marcus could win through to the time gate and come safely home.

"Now," and her voice turned abruptly hard as diamond and angry as a rattlesnake stirred up in the rocks, "I ask you, members of The Found Ones, what was his reward for this? A monstrous fine from that evil group calling itself Time Tours whose employees use us badly and care not a bit for our health, our dependents left behind should we die, our very lives squandered like spare change without anyone ever warning us of the dangers! They actually had the gall to fine him! Both directions! And what followed that? Imprisonment by Station Security-during which he was starved, beaten, humiliated!

"I ask!" she cried, sweeping off her mask, shaking out her hair, revealing her face, alight now with startling holiness-it was the only way Skeeter could find to describe the light that seemed to flow outward from her-"I ask you, each of you, is this any fair way to treat a man who has risked his very life, not once, but many times, for one of us?"

The roar echoed in the confined space like a Mongolian thunderstorm trapped in the confines of a canyon deep in the high, sharp mountains.

Very, very slowly, Ianira allowed her head to fall forward as though infinitely wearied by the gruesome story of treachery, courage, and betrayal she'd just been forced to reveal. When her head rose again, the mask was back in place. Symbolic, then, Skeeter realized. But of what?

Voice carefully neutral again, Ianira said, "He has the qualifications. All of you know already the story of this man's childhood, lost in a time not his own. He has faced all that we have faced-and worse. Yet he has survived, prospered, remained generous in his heart to those in greater need than he. I now ask for a new and final poll of the Seven. Do we Punish? Or Accept?"

One by one the answers came to Skeeter's sweating ears.

In thick-accented English came the single word, "Punish," from the ever-condemning voice of the Egyptian.

A pause ensued. The man who had previously translated the Egyptian's longer speech said very quietly, "Accept."

The next man refused to be swayed, which, if Skeeter were reading the body language under the robe correctly, deeply irritated Ianira Cassondra.

Down the line it went, skipping over Ianira: "Punish." "Accept." "Accept." "Accept."

Skeeter wasn't certain he'd heard-or counted-correctly. Was that really four versus two? Now what? Ianira stepped forward, the final member of the Seven to cast her vote. Skeeter waited to hear her confirm what he thought he'd just heard. "The vote stands at four to accept, two to punish. As there is no chance for a tie, I may cast my vote freely." She looked down at Skeeter, lying helpless on the concrete floor at her feet. "I cannot deny that Skeeter Jackson is a scoundrel, a thief, and a man who charms people out of their money and belongings, to his own benefit.

"Yet I must also repeat that he has saved the lives of many in this very room through donations he thought anonymous. And then, on nothing more than a promise, this scoundrel and thief risked his life to save a downtimer, a member of The Found Ones. I admit difficulty in putting aside personal feelings, for Marcus is the father of my children, but this is a thing in which I was trained at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. to look beyond personal feelings to the heart of the truth.