Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

Ensconced in the bed, fairly buried under heavy quilts and thick fluffy woolen blankets, Nikos tried to nod his head in greeting. Half his skull was wrapped in bandages that covered the cuts he had sustained during the mudslide. His one unobscured eye glittered in anger, however. He hated being bedridden. His grandmother had taught him at an early age that people tend to die of sickness in bed, so he avoided them whenever possible-unless of course the bed wasn't being used for sleeping or convalescing.

"I live," he growled, "and thanks to the barbarian, too. What gall he has, dragging me from the fire!"

Anastasia turned, dimpling her cheeks, and smiled at Jusuf again. Today, with her hair piled up on her head like a storm cloud, bound back by thin strings of pearls; narrow, diamond-tipped pins; and a particularly well-contrived corset, she looked both at ease and stunning at the same time. The expanse of carefully presented bosom and the long, smooth neck that it ornamented had not gone unnoticed by the Khazar prince, who smiled back. His long, usually dour face fairly lit up in comparison with his usual expression. Silently, in his mind, Nikos groaned. He had worked for the Duchess for six years on her "special" teams. He had started as a doorman, using an iron crowbar or a ram. Before being tagged to follow Thyatis and see that she learned the business, he had been a team leader for a little time. He thought the Duchess was beautiful, too, but it never ever paid for the peasants, as his father was fond of saying, to stomp grapes with the nobles. His father, Mithra bless him, had been a wise man.

"My lady?" Nikos coughed politely.

The Duchess turned, making a pout that only Nikos could see, and her eyes hardened. Nikos felt a great sense of relief seeing her slide her business face on, crushed amethyst eyeliner and all. "So-I have the tally of the dead," she said, pursing rich red lips. "Sixteen men, all veterans, lost, as well as a building destroyed by the emergence"-the Duchess held the sheet of parchment up to the light from the window and raised a thin, elegant eyebrow-"of something that you can only describe as an ignis dracorus."

"Yes, milady," Nikos said, struggling, he managed to free himself from the sheets and blankets. Sighing in relief, he squirmed up until he could sit with his back to the wall. The pain in his arm and leg and side, or the throbbing sensation in the shattered half of his face, he put aside. There was business to be done. "A winged creature, nearly a hundred feet long, with a long tail and a flat, triangular head. It burst free from the burning house-it flew away. Our horse handlers on the hillside saw it. It had wings like an enormous bat-dear lady, do not laugh at me!"

The Duchess put a carefully manicured hand over her mouth. Rings of lapis and rubies and emeralds set in bands of white gold and silver glittered on her fingers. Her nails were painted a forest green to match her gown. She smiled, but then took command of her features again.

"I saw it, mi'lady-it was real. Someone, a powerful someone, a wizard or sorcerer, was at work in that house. Whoever it was, they fled on that fire-drake. We got there just a little too late-"

"No," Jusuf interjected, ignoring the Duchess, who had opened her mouth to speak. For a moment, cold anger flickered across her features, but then it was gone, like it had never existed. "We did arrive in time," the Khazar continued, his voice filling with anger, "but we could not pass their guardian. That thing gave them the time they needed to flee."

"Ah," the Duchess said, a grim shadow around her eyes. "The monster."

"More than a monster," Nikos said in a heavy voice. "A killing machine; something out of the African jungles, perhaps, or the uttermost East. A creature that lives-loves-to kill and hunt. It was waiting for us-for someone to come-and it took joy in that slaughter."

The Duchess nodded. The loss of the praetorians was a heavy blow. She had only gained influence over a portion of their number, and now most of those were dead in this disaster of an arrest. She pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking. "If… if you were to meet this thing again, now that you have gauged its speed and power, could you best it?"

Nikos looked to Jusuf, who shook his head sadly. The Illyrian's face settled into grim lines. "My lady, this thing was a match for twenty experienced men. It was faster than anyone-anything-that I have ever crossed blades with. Even if Thyatis were here… this thing is wicked."

Anastasia raised an eyebrow again. "You would not set Thyatis against it?" She cocked her head to the side, regarding Nikos as a Nile crane might a tasty frog. "She who is the best of us, to hear you tell it?"

Nikos flushed and wiped sweat from his brow. He nodded his head slowly. "One on one, we have no one to match it. Our only hope-if we were to hunt this thing-would be a trap, or a cage, or some stratagem… catch it while it sleeps, perhaps…"

"A thought for another time," the Duchess said, twisting slightly on the couch so that she could see both men. "You saw no one else-no other people in the house, no sign of our informant?"

Jusuf shook his head.

"No," he said, "only fire and the storm and dead men. Whoever else was there got away, as clean as the snow fox in a hencoop."

– |"I'm sorry," Maxian whispered, squeezing Krista's hand as she sat on the side of the bed. "I brought you near death again."

Krista, smiling, shook her head. She smoothed his hair back, then turned her hand over to test the temperature of his forehead. He seemed better. Not well, perhaps, but past the fever and mending.

"Since you were here to bring me back, I'll forgive you this time."

She smiled again and put her hand on his cheek, though fear seeped like ice in her heart. This bed was better, at least, than that hovel on the Aventine where Gaius had taken them. At her urging, one of the physician-priests in the Temple of Asklepius had taken her coin and come to look at this patient. The man-a stout fellow with a short, thick beard-had not seemed surprised to find a feverish patrician with scattered burns holed up in a slum. He had taken the thick gold aureus that she had pressed into his hands, too. The Duchess had always told her that heavy red gold worked wonders, even among the principled and devout. Maxian's fever had broken, and once he woke he had completed the restoration himself.

"Did anything happen," the Prince asked, his voice still a little weak, "while I was in the fever? Are Gaius and Alexandros well?"

Krista cocked her head to one side, frowning in incomprehension. "What do you mean?" she asked, pursing her lips. "They seemed fine, just tired after a time. For a little while they could barely walk, but it passed."

The Prince nodded and tried to sit up. He failed, and she pressed a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back down on the bed. They had found sanctuary in one of the many houses that the Duchess maintained throughout the city. To the best of her memory, Krista did not believe that this one had been used in more than a year. It sat, perched over a narrow, brick-paved street, on the side of the Ianiculum hill, outside the walls of the city to the west of Tiber, in a "good" neighborhood.

Well, good for brothels and outlawed temples and lotus-eater houses, she thought, grinning to herself. It had a pleasant garden in the back, with a fabulous view of the city across the river. At night, it looked out upon a galaxy of jewels. You could even see the temples of the Capitoline and the Forum Romanum from here if it wasn't too hazy. There was enough room, too, for the Walach to come in from their hiding places in the rubbish yards south of the city. And a fine private bath, she sighed to herself. With blessedly hot water…

"I feared," the Prince said after he had recovered his breath, "that they would suffer when I was unable to maintain the shield around us. What of the others?"