David Drake - Out of the waters

Servants were already bustling; when Lady Hedia gave directions, you obeyed or you wished you had. To the table generally she said, "I'm sure their lordships will be pleased to be joined by youth and beauty."

Priscus, twisting his body to better look toward the two women, chuckled. "If I were a great deal younger, your ladyship," he said, "I'd be tempted to show you just how much I would appreciate that opportunity. Younger or drunker."

Hedia laughed like a string of little silver chimes. "Perhaps a trifle younger, Marcus dear," she said.

Alphena settled onto the end of the couch, what would have been the middle couch if there had been the normal three. She took most of her meals in her suite, sitting upright. She'd only complained because her father had directed her to sit instead of reclining, and now she realized-as an instant's thought should have told her-that it was her stepmother, not Saxa, who had decided that.

She'd seen an insult where there hadn't been one. She had to stop doing that and not pick unnecessary fights.

Alphena grinned. She wasn't sure what the vision in the theater meant, but it seemed likely that it involved enough fighting for even the most pugnacious of young ladies.

The servants had finished washing the guests' feet, and the first round of wine was being served from the mixing table. "We're having it three to one, Hedia," said Priscus with heavy gallantry. "I fear that if it were stronger, I'd find myself too ensorcelled by your beauty to remember the proprieties."

Hedia and-a moment later-Saxa laughed. Tardus sipped his wine and said, "You mention sorcery, Marcus Tardus. Were you in the Theater of Pompey for our host's gift, The Conquest of Lusitania by Hercules? For it certainly seemed to me that the impresario was a magician to have achieved those effects. Quite marvelous, didn't you all think?"

Priscus turned to look at his neighbor on the couch. "I wasn't present, no," he said, "but I've certainly heard enthusiastic descriptions. I suppose-"

He gestured toward the teacher with a broad grin.

"-that the impresario was one of you clever Greeks, eh Pandareus, my friend?"

"So I've been told," Pandareus said blandly.

"He was indeed, Lord Priscus," Varus said, sounding calmly interested. "Sometimes I wish I were more of an engineer so that I could understand such wonders, but my talents seem to limited to literature. And even in literature I'm only a spectator, I have learned."

He smiled, but Alphena saw momentary wistfulness in her brother's expression.

Alphena didn't know anything about rhetoric, but she understood dueling better than anyone else present. As servants placed a tray with deviled eggs and olives on the little table in the U of the diners, she said, "I noticed the attendants with you during the performance, Lord Tardus. If I noticed correctly, they're with you tonight as well. I wonder where you found them?"

Tardus turned his head in surprise. "How interesting that you should ask, Lady Alphena," he said. He coughed onto the back of his hand, gathering time to respond.

Alphena didn't smile, but she felt fiercely triumphant. I pinked you that time, didn't I, you old weasel!

Tardus had been pushing her father to talk about something that he didn't want to. Indeed, Alphena wasn't sure that Saxa had any more knowledge of what had happened in the theater than Agrippinus, who'd been here in the house at the time, did. Perhaps Tardus was reacting to the embarrassing visit her father and brother had made to him the day before, but perhaps there was more to his curiosity.

Regardless, Saxa was her father. She wasn't going to let this old man badger him when simply asking a blunt question would change the dynamic of the bout. Nobody expected perfect deportment and courtesy from Saxa's boyish daughter, after all.

"Well, strictly speaking, I met them when they arrived here in Carce eight days ago," Tardus said, looking over his shoulder at Alphena. His gaze had a hard fixity that she hadn't expected from so old a man. "But as to where they're from, they say 'the Western Isles.'"

"The Hesperides?" Saxa said, cocking his head with interest. "What language do they speak, if I may ask?"

"They speak Greek to me," Tardus said. He spoke with studied care, quite different from the aggressiveness with which he had begun the discussion. "I suppose they have some language of their own, but I haven't heard them speaking it. And as for the Hesperides-that isn't their name for their home. Perhaps their 'Western Isles' are what Hesiod meant when he spoke of the Hesperides, but apart from summoning him from the dead, I don't see how we could be sure."

"And even then," said Pandareus, "we couldn't be sure without teaching him modern geography first. In any event, I don't think-"

He smiled faintly. Alphena decided that her brother's teacher was joking, which she hadn't been sure of at the start.

"-that I would choose to start my discussion there if I had the opportunity. I would be much more interested in details of how he created his masterpieces. The style of the Theogony is quite different, it seems to me, from that of The Works and Days; more different than I would have expected to come from the pen-the throat, rather-of a single man."

Priscus and Varus both laughed; Saxa blinked, then grinned weakly. Tardus was frowning, which was understandable, but there still seemed to be something odd about his demeanor.

The discussion turned to how much Hesiod and Homer knew know about geography. Tardus listened glumly.

Alphena grinned. She supposed the situation should please her: her mother's plan to convince Tardus that this was simply a literary evening was a resounding success. She was utterly, bone-deep, bored, however.

She took a olive from the dish, then paused and looked at it more closely. A man's face had been carved into it. She popped the olive into her mouth-it was stuffed with anchovy paste, a startling but tasty combination-and picked another one, green this time. The features were female.

"I wonder, Marcus Tardus?" Hedia said in a break as the fish course came in. "Are your Hesperians nobles from their own country who should be dining here instead of down with the servants?"

"I don't…," Tardus said, clearly taken aback. "That is, I believe they are priests or wise men rather than, ah, nobles. From what they say. But they didn't wish to call attention to themselves."

Are you still pleased that you blackmailed your way into this dinner, Lord Tardus? Alphena wondered. She took what looked like a small crab, complete to the stalked eyes; it proved to be a thin pastry shell stuffed with a spicy fish paste.

"If I may ask, Lord Tardus?" Pandareus said. "You suggest that your guests are the western equivalent of the Magi. The Magi ruled Persia until Darius broke their power in a coup, and even now under the Arsacids they have a great deal of authority. They are certainly as worthy of a place at Gaius Saxa's table as-"

He curled his hand inward.

"-a professor of rhetoric."

Pandareus had done full justice to the eggs and olives, and he was now attacking a seeming mullet molded from minced crabmeat. Alphena decided that his lanky frame was a result of privation rather than ascetic philosophy.

"I don't know what political arrangements exist in the Western Isles!" Tardus said. "The, the… my guests, that is, they said that they would prefer to eat with the servants. They didn't expect to arouse comment, as I understand it. They've come to Carce to observe our customs, and they hoped to do that without their presence affecting those observations."

The conversation drifted back to literature when Saxa mentioned Plato's conceit of a Scythian visitor to comment on Athenian society. Tardus ate morosely without adding much to the discussion of fictitious Brahmins, Magi and Egyptians.