“That’s me, lovely—Marcilla, too. We’re here to get you free of all this, the both of us, tonight.”
Her drooping head turns, eyes still shut, white lids blind in the cloud’s erratic light. “‘Cilla . . . it’s dark yet? Must be morning, by now . . . ”
“Long past, Chryse; go back to sleep now, will you? Baby must need it, I’m sure.”
But Chryse’s pleasant face sours at that, her brows wrinkling; she tries once more to wrench her lashes up past half-mast, only to flop a fresh tangle of sweat-slicked hair back over them instead. And:
“ . . . ’S not . . . ” she says, at last. “ . . . I mean, I think, ‘s not . . . ”
. . . What? Gnaius’ baby? Hers? Or, perhaps, not even—
(a baby?)
Then, to Gnaius: “I had that . . . dream . . . again . . . ”
She doesn’t need to explain which one, of course: The dream of the Empty Eye, the Open Gash, a hole opened up to the world’s heart and deeper, with a blazing light at its bottom. The dream that stops people sleeping.
“We’ve all of us had that dream, Chryse,” Marcilla says, shortly.
Gnaius, obscurely insulted: “I haven’t.”
But Marcilla just elbows him in the ribs, not stopping. “Go faster, fool,” she orders. “And quieter.”
That he understands, at least; you can always get Gnaius to do what you want, Marcilla’s observed, so long as you make yourself sound like his drill sergeant. Gnaius hoists Chryse higher and moves, fast and quiet both. Soon enough, they leave the skewed light and thick air of the peristyle for a brief jaunt through the oddly honest gloom of the bathhouse, calidarium, tepidarium and frigidarium alike all empty but for dust. And then the courtyard, as empty as the peristyle but wider, its cobbles sifted over with ash and slippery with fallen sky-rock. Marcilla lets something that might be hope stir to tentative life as she spots the doors, standing open to reveal the road beyond—
—which is, of course, exactly when Dromio moves out into that same doorway, Gnaius’ spare gladius gleaming in his hand.
A moment’s shocked silence, indignantly broken by Gnaius: “That’s mine!”
Dromio tilts the blade to catch the horrid, bloated light. A half-dug shallow trench by his feet reveals what he and the others have been doing all this time, and while there may be no Legion’s SPQR brand on his shoulder, the lethal competence of his stance is unmistakable. “No, Gnaius Vespis,” the slavemaster corrects him. “This is the Villa’s—like her, or her. Or you, come to that.”
“Step within my reach, old man, and make that claim again.”
Marcilla takes a step back, automatically, at the snarl in Gnaius’ voice; Chryse barely looks up, hugging Gnaius closer, which undercuts the challenge’s immediacy somewhat. But Dromio merely shakes his head, as though he’d expected as much.
“Where was it you three thought to go, exactly?” he asks, almost sadly. “There’s nothing past here but Gods-wrath and Chryse’s wrong-looking road, children; believe me, I’ve already checked.”
“We’ll take our chances.”
Another head-shake, sadder still. “Can’t let you, I’m afraid. You must know as much.”
Gnaius gives a strange sort of full-body shrug, a great cat poising to spring, and shifts Chryse so his arm’s around her waist, freeing his sword-hand. “Come on, then,” he says, and raises the blade so its shadow crosses Dromio’s from above, the way Vesuvius’ does them all.
But: “Enough,” a third voice puts in from where the garden wall runs to darkness, kitty-corner to the bathhouse door. And the Lady Locusta herself issues forth, unhurriedly—earrings chiming cool on this dust-laced wind, long train of her summer-weight dress trailing forgotten over the ashy grass, the turned-up earth. To her right, Marcilla sees a shallow, new-dug trench running from where the mundus-lid stands slightly open, for once; a shovel stained with new dirt leans against one edge, no doubt abandoned by Dromio, who must have been the last to use it.
“More runaways, Mistress,” Dromio informs her, unnecessarily. “Gnaius and his whore, the Pictish girl . . . ”
“So I see.”
“Cowards, all of ‘em, to leave you like this. Should cut these ones down here and now, for the insult to your family name alone—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dromio.” Locusta is close enough to lay her hand on his blade now, urging it gently downwards. “I hope you trust me capable of disciplining my own slaves, should I feel they merit it . . . but unnatural times call for unnatural measures, so you need not bloody your blade tonight. Gnaius, Chryse and Marcilla are all entirely free to go; you too, if you wish it.” Then adds, turning to Marcilla: “Though if you, in particular, were to stay and help me one last time, I would be very grateful.”
They make a pretty group for just a moment, posed together against the looming sky: Dromio gaping, Gnaius uncertain how to react, Chryse barely able to stand. While Marcilla, similarly caught by surprise, finds herself abruptly looking straight into the lady’s particolored eyes, unable to fall back on her normal policy of self-protective dumb insolence. Thinking: She has charmed me, surely. I must fight it, her, must break free, before . . .
But she finds she does not know before what, no matter how she strives to grasp the concept. Is unable even to form the question, let alone answer it.
“Will you help me, Marcilla?” Locusta asks once more, softer still, and sweeter. “It is such a small thing I ask for, you see—but I cannot do it by myself.”