Thomas Harlan: The shadow of Ararat

A half block away, Nikos was looking in her direction, his stubbly face turned up under a broad straw hat. He caught her eye and nodded, then touched the brim of the hat with a thick finger.

From her great height of almost six feet, she could pick him out as he melted into the flow of traffic, pushing steadily in her direction. Distantly, there was a trumpeting sound and the rattle of gongs. It was hot in the Subura district and the air was heavy with a long familiar stench. Thyatis turned the other direction, casting her eye to the opposite side of the avenue. The crowds continued to spill in their disorderly way into the street, blocking traffic and causing the girl to weave her way slowly forward.

The crowd thinned as the road made an inelegant turn into the dye-makers' district. Her sharp nose flared, catching the wretched smell of old urine. She trembled a little, though the sun was hot in the lane, as bitter memories picked at her thoughts. She snorted in disgust and mentally pushed them away. Then her clear gray-blue eyes widened as she caught sight of the Persian.

He stood in the doorway of a tannery, oblivious to the noxious reek that was billowing from the arched windows piercing the wall above the door. He was of a moderate height, only four feet and odd inches. A beaded round brimless hat clung to his head, and a fine watery green robe, bordered with a dull crimson, was draped around his shoulders. He was speaking to a brown-faced man in a brown leather apron, brown cowhide boots, and a sullen brown disposition. As he spoke, the Persian repeatedly pointed across the street to the closed door of a linen shop. Gold bracelets wrapped the Persian's wrists and held back the cuffs of an immaculate white linen shirt.

One of the Roman girl's eyebrows crept up unconsciously as she took in his supple silk pants. She was surprised that the tanner, obviously of old Roman stock, would even trade words with such an obviously decadent Easterner. She turned and pulled back the hood of her robe. A cascade of deep gold-red curls spilled down her back, only barely constrained by two dingy ties of cotton cloth.

Consciously forcing herself to look to the right as she crossed the street, away from the Persian to her left, she loosened the cheap copper clasp of the robe. The robe fell back from her lightly tanned shoulders, drawing the eyes of the tannery workers in the immediate vicinity. She smiled briefly at the nearest one, but the quirk of her plush red lips did not reach her eyes and the young man averted his gaze.

Unseen beneath the robe, one hand loosened the short stabbing sword in the sheath tied to her right leg. Her left hand rose, bunching the flap of the cloak and drawing it across her front. It slid away from her right thigh, revealing a short cotton kilt, a generous expanse of smooth golden-tan leg, high doeskin boots coming almost to her knee, and the loosed sword, clasped lightly in the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. With unhurried steps, she walked up the narrow brick walkway to the front of the tannery. The Persian, gesticulating with his left hand and raising an exasperated voice to the tanner, was utterly unaware.

Something flickered at the edge of her vision.

Only feet from her victim, Thyatis leapt to the left, crashing sideways into two slaves carrying great bales of raw Egyptian cotton. A javelin shattered against the tannery wall, causing the Persian and the tanner to turn in surprise. Snarling, Thyatis surged to her feet, her cloak falling away behind her, the sword darting out like a steel tongue. The Persian, his eyes wide with astonishment over a small mustache and a neat goatee, screamed loudly and bolted past the tanner into the building.

Without sparing a glance for Nikos or her other backup, Thyatis bounded after him. For a moment she rushed forward blind, but then her eyes adjusted and she caught sight of the Persian's green robe fluttering around a corner on a landing at the end of the narrow work-hall. She took the stairs three at a time, then skidded around a corner into a whitewashed room filled with tables, surprised clerks, and clattering shutters as the Persian exited the other side through the window.

Beyond the window, she found a narrow brick balcony looking out over the sprawling yard of the tannery. The space between the buildings was crammed with vats, trestles, and brawny half-naked men laboring to raise stinking hides on long iron-hooked poles from the great barrels. An acrid stench billowed up from the hundreds of vats. She ran lightly along the balcony, ducking under twisted hemp lines strung across the space to hold laundry and rugs. At the far end of the balcony, the Persian staggered to a stop, looked at both directions, and then sprang outward, arms outstretched.

The Roman woman sprinted to the end of the balcony and kicked off, her legs flashing in a brief passage of sunlight that had worked its way down between the haphazard brick tenements. Like the Persian, her reaching hand caught a heavy guy-line that was holding up a decrepit banner between the back of the tannery and the building across the alley. For a moment a sea of marveling faces flashed past below her, then she was through a poorly scraped sheepskin window with a loud ripping sound and crashing through a light framework of slats into the room beyond.

She went down in a welter of rough parchment, filthy sheets, and the crushed remains of a flimsy bed. Thyatis rolled up, slashing with the shortsword, but her blade caught nothing. The enormous ebony man that had sprung up from the bed wailed with fear and scuttled backward, toppling a bedside table and an amphora of water. The hanging that served as a door had been ripped from the rod that held it, and Thyatis rolled up and darted through it without a second thought. The dingy walls and reed-scattered floor receded as the edges of her vision clouded with gray. A fierce grin stretched her face, but she was unaware of her appearance.

A hallway filled with tiny doorways flashed past. At the end, a narrow flight of stairs rose up into smoky gloom. Thyatis bounded up the crumbling steps but found them blocked by old chests and empty grain jars. Cursing, she leapt back down the steps four at a time and ran to the one doorway where the hanging was pushed aside. A room occupied by a puzzled-looking naked legionnaire and an irate lupa blurred past before she slid the sword back into its sheath and leapt up to grab the sides of the window casement in her hands. With a heave, she hauled herself up and leapt out through the window.

A sloping tile rooftop met her as she spilled out onto it. She tried to get to her feet, but the tiles cracked with a sound like ice breaking and she slithered down the slope of the roof. Flailing wildly, she managed to grab the cornice before pitching off into the garden below. For a moment she swung by one arm, suspended fifteen feet above a confusion of squatters' tents, then managed to hook her foot on the edge of the roof and dragged herself back onto the tiles. Levering herself up, she glanced about. There was no sign of the Persian. Below her, the old widows and immigrant families living in the courtyard of the building stared up at her in amazement.

"Hecate!" she cursed. Teetering, she stood up on the tiles, her eyes running along the windows, rooftops, and disreputable roofs of the nearest buildings. Nothing. She turned back to the window, finding it occupied by the amused faces of the young soldier and the younger prostitute. She grimaced.

The sound of cracking tiles snapped her head around. At the far end of the tile roof, near the back wall of the garden, the Persian had crawled out of a similar window, now without either his hat or his expensive silk robe. He scuttled down the tiles to land heavily on the edge of the garden wall. Thyatis whistled, a long piercing sound that drew the attention of every face in the garden below.