David Drake - Out of the waters

Anna sniffed again. "He knows enough not to like it," she said, "but he'll do it for me. And for you, master. He trusts you."

"Ah…," said Corylus. "I'll pay whatever you think…?"

"A silver piece," Anna said. "A day's pay for a grown man, which is fair enough. Mind, there's few grown men who'd do what Dromo will tonight. He's a brave one, which is why I picked him. Though…"

Corylus hooked his hand, as though trying to draw the thought out of the old woman by brute force. It would be simpler if Anna simply spat out all the information in an organized fashion; but then, it would be simpler if everyone loved his neighbor, worked hard, and behaved courteously to others.

There wouldn't be much use for soldiers, then, or attorneys either. Corylus had seen enough of oxen to know that he didn't want to spend his life following a pair of them around a field while leaning into a plow to make it bite. Though a return to the Golden Age, where the fruits and grain just sprouted-that might not be such a hardship.

"I told Dromo all he had to do was show you where the place to dig was," Anna explained. "You and Pulto would do the rest. I've already bought mattocks and a pry bar; they're in the kitchen."

"That will save time," Corylus said, smiling faintly. Anna might have trouble saying things she wished weren't so, but she certainly didn't hesitate to do anything she thought was necessary.

He looked west over the city. Because this apartment was the tallest building for half a mile, he was largely looking down onto tile roofs much like the one he stood on. Potted plants and dovecotes and rabbit hutches; and now and again there was a shed of cloth on a wicker frame that might have anything at all inside it.

People lived ordinary lives here in Carce, the greatest city in the world. None of them perfect, including Gaius Cispius Corylus, a student of Pandareus of Athens… but generally decent folk.

He thought of Typhon, ripping its way through a vision of crystal towers and walls of sun-bright metal. No one had told Corylus that would result unless he-and Anna and Pandareus and Varus and all of them-managed to stop the creature, but it was a logical inference from what he had heard-and what he had seen ten days before, when the Underworld vomited forth its flaming demons.

"Pulto should stay here with you, Anna," he said. There was no reason to force a brave man and a friend into a night's work that would torture him worse than hot pincers.

"No," she said. "You'll be going into the ground, but you'll want a solid man up above to watch your back. My Marcus is that; and anyway, you couldn't keep him away unless you chained him."

She coughed. "I think it's a tomb, master," she said. "An old one, maybe; very old. Etruscan, I'd venture, from before Carce ever was. Though-"

She fluttered her little fingers, since her palms were braced on the smooth knobbed handles of her sticks.

"-that's a lot to draw from a vole's mind, you'll understand. Anyway, it's cut in rock, the place the thing is."

Corylus laughed and hugged Anna again. "We'll find you your bauble, dear one," he said. "How could any man fail someone they love as much as Pulto and I love you?"

He'd made the words a joke, but it was the truth just the same.

I'd best send a messenger to Varus, telling him I won't be able to join him this afternoon after all, Corylus thought.

On his way back from class, he'd been concerned about what they might find in Tardus' home. Now, entering the cellars of a senator's house seemed a harmless, even friendly, alternative to the way he would really be spending the evening.

"Oh!" said Saxa as his entourage formed around him with all manner of shouting and gestures. "My boy, I don't see your friend Corylus. You don't think he's gotten lost on the way here, do you? We really shouldn't wait much longer or we'll arrive at the dinner hour, which would be discourteous."

Tardus will probably regard our arrival to search his house under consular authority to be discourteous enough, Varus thought. Aloud he said, "Corylus was detained on other business, your lordship. We will proceed without him."

Saxa bustled off, surrounded by Agrippinus, who would stay at the house; Candidus, who would lead the escort; and the chief lictor.

It hadn't occurred to Varus that Saxa would remember that Corylus might accompany them. He'd underestimated his father, a disservice which he would try hard not to repeat.

Pandareus had dropped into the background when Saxa approached; now he joined Varus again. With his lips close to his teacher's ear, Varus said, "It seems a great deal of argument for what is really just a six-block walk, doesn't it?"

"It would be, I agree," Pandareus said, for a moment fully the professor. "But I take issue with your terms, Lord Varus. If we were simply to walk to the home of Sempronius Tardus, we would be wasting our efforts. If this is to be a rite of state-a religious act, in effect-then the litanies are to be accepted as being of spiritual significance even though their human meaning has been blurred."

Varus chuckled. In an undertone he muttered the refrain of the priests during the rites of Robigus-the deity of corn smut. It was a string of nonsense syllables to anyone alive today.

"Yes, my teacher," he said. "It does have a great deal of similarity to what we're hearing now. Or at any rate, to what my father is hearing, merging the three speeches."

"Plato believed in Ideal Republics," said Pandareus, watching the commotion with an attitude of bright interest. He was chatting now, no longer lecturing. "I am… willing, I suppose, to accept them also-for the purpose of argument. I don't find them any more useful in studying real conditions than the Chief Pirate's Beautiful Daughter would be in formulating the Republic's mercantile policy."

Varus chuckled at mention of one of the standards of school orations, like the Reformed Prostitute and the Undutiful Son. "I wouldn't say that the reign of Dion of Syracuse was a Golden Age, despite Plato's earnest coaching of his would-be philosopher king," he said. "I accept your point about real politics generally looking like-"

He gestured to the confusion of servants, lictors, and citizen-clients. It looked as though the procession was close to moving off.

"-that. What I don't understand is why it looks like that instead of being, well, smoother."

"It may be that you are asking the correct question," Pandareus said, reverting to his classroom manner. "You're asking it rhetorically, however, instead of using the moment as a real opportunity to learn. Why is it that human societies generally organize themselves in fashions that we philosophers deplore as inefficient? Surely it cannot be possible that human wisdom is limited while the cosmos is infinite?"

Varus laughed again. "I'll want to spend an hour or two considering the question before giving you a definitive answer, master," he said.

Pandareus had a remarkable ability to puncture displays of excessive ego-by using the Socratic Method, proving that his disciple already possessed the information. That was certainly true in the present instance. Varus wouldn't go so far as to claim that the fact something existed proved that it was good-but he did accept that everything happened for a reason.

Candidus spoke to a musician holding a double-pipe. Varus believed the piper was the same man-if that was the correct term for someone so slender and feminine-who had led the music during yesterday's mime. If so, he had come through the ordeal very well.

"We'd best take our places," Varus said. He moved into the place directly following Saxa. Behind them would come the most respectable of his clients, most of them impoverished relatives.

Varus and Pandareus had just reached the column when the pipe began to sing cadence from the front, among the lictors. The procession started off-not in unison, but a good deal closer than most arrays of this sort.