Byzantium's Crown Read online

  What I could do with such powers, Marric thought. Gods . . . His mouth twisted sardonically. After Alexander announced to the court he was a god, he had run mad through the streets and died. No one was fit to be trusted with such gifts.

  "You have your life," Marric spoke at last. "Leave me before I regret the gift."

  "My life is not yours to give, but the Goddess'. Let her bless you, Prince Marric." The druid raised a hand, sketched a sign that glowed blue-white in the fetid night air, and vanished down the dark street.

  Marric shook his head. One sun-bronzed hand went to his throat where an amulet underlay the uniform he wore. No Osiris priest had ever read Marric that swiftly. Even they, he remembered, claimed to respect the druids as supremely gifted prophets. If only half the stories were true, no wonder druids wandered free in Byzantium.

  This one knew too much. Marric toyed with hunting him down and silencing him. He smiled mirthlessly. How would he find him? Had the druid even needed Marric's protection? He could easily believe that the old man had used it merely to deliver his warning.

  Surely there had been a moment when the druid could have killed Marric. He could still betray him. But something about the old man commanded his reluctant trust. He had no hope but to be rash and trust him. He started off toward the palace again. Rats and the lights of burning trees danced together. Whores, beggars, and guards reeled past, and Marric eluded them all.

  Now he could smell the fragrances of the stalls of the perfumers by the palace walls. Here the streets widened and were kept immaculate. Up ahead loomed the portico of the Temple of Isis. Across from it was the Temple of Osiris, her husband and god-brother. Marric began to hear the splashing fountains from within the walls.

  Ahead was the gate. Marric waited at a safe distance as the watch changed, and soldiers marched back and forth. Marric was tempted to try to overhear the password. If only he had had more time—in a month or two at most he'd have ridden into Byzantium at the head of an army thirsting for Irene's blood.

  There was no point in might-have-beens, Marric decided. Away from the state entrances, around back, were trees he might climb, as he had done when making his first forbidden explorations into the city. Once again he would slip quietly into his home.

  With his height and strength, the trees were easier to climb than he remembered. A leap brought him from the branches onto the walls, then down into the gardens. The moon shivered in the water of a flower-bordered pool. Marric nodded thanks to it, then set off toward the women's quarters.

  In the shadows of the exquisite garden, behind a great fountain, Marric stood outside Alexa's suite. Its furnishings were rich: gilded, sleek-lined ebony, the backs of chairs and couches coiling up in smooth spirals atop taloned feet. Sheer draperies brought from the silk routes over deserts and mountains blew back, revealing the girl who stood in the center of the room as if she were on a stage.

  Alexa's profile was as pale and cool as that of the mosaic portrait of Isis she gazed at. Goddess and princess shared a beauty that only seemed fragile, and a pride that was anything but that. Except for Marric's sunburn and more prominent brow and jaw line, Alexa's face resembled his. But where he was tall, she was tiny and very slight, the simple white robe she wore outlining her body as it fluttered in the night breeze. Her long dark hair, so much straighter and finer than his, flowed loose, bound only by a thin circlet of gemmed lotuses.

  Her lips moved in a silent prayer to Isis and to Osiris who stood in his jewelled wrappings next to his queen. But the patrons of Empire, as if ignoring the plight of their descendants, stared out into infinity.

  "Goddess, grant it." Alexa's voice drifted out to Marric. He started toward her from the shadows. Had she prayed for him? She turned and drew a filmy scarf about her slender shoulders. She gazed out over the garden as if watching for someone. From her lips came a trilling sound.

  Marric grinned. So the little vixen had remembered their old signals! He whistled softly, and his sister's face lit with joy. They had never shared with anyone else the codes that had enabled them to dodge their tutors. Connivance started at an early age in Byzantium. Marric stepped into the room and pushed his helmet from cropped, wavy hair.

  Even though Alexa had been expecting him, she drew back at his sudden entrance. Her hand reached for a dagger with an emerald-set hilt, and she drew herself up to face him. Fast reactions, he noted with approval, and no fear. Good girl.

  He threw off his dark, coarse cloak.

  "By our father who rules in glory, sister, it's truly me." There was an unfamiliar tightening in his chest. He wanted to whoop, to pick Alexa up and whirl her about as he had once done, before that loathed and soon departed pedagogue had remarked that royal children should not behave so indecorously. Though he had chided them but the once, the memory of his disdain had inhibited them both thereafter. They had dosed him with senna for it and vowed never to forget.

  "Marric?" Alexa held out a shaking hand. The poor little one, to have lived in such fear under Irene's rule! Then her green eyes blazed in recognition and joy, and she ran forward to throw herself into Marric's arms.

  "Brother!" Her voice was shrill, and it broke. Though she had to stand on her toes to reach, she had her arms about his neck.

  "Softly, little one," Marric said, laughing a little shakily. "Here now, sweetheart. Rest easy, 'Lexa. Remember, I'm wearing armor; you'll bruise yourself."

  But Alexa burrowed closer into his embrace, no imperial princess now but a young girl too long forced into baffle readiness. Marric could feel her shivers through his breastplate. He wrapped his cape about her and made the soothing noises that he dimly remembered his mother using on a nightmare-ridden princeling. So short a time they had all been together! His mother's face was like Alexa's, yet more serene, with a strength that had enabled Antonia to conceal her physical weakness after Alexa's birth for too long. Even the priests could not help her then.

  Alexander had never recovered from her death. First cousins, he and Antonia had been brought up together from childhood as brother and sister: right hand and left of the same body. And then Alexander had married Irene. Granted he did it only to secure peace from a brawling Syrian branch of the imperial family. But Marric, who adored his mother's memory, could not forget that the priests had not saved her, nor could he forgive his father his choice.

  Irene's son . . . had there ever been a time when Ctesiphon had cared for Marric and Alexa, or when they had wanted to love him? What Marric remembered most clearly was the day Ctesiphon had jeered at Marric's outlandish Western name.

  "It's a barbarian name. Maybe you're not of Divine Alexander's blood at all!"'

  "Father says it's a hero's name, the name of a warrior come out of the West. What do you know about the West, you greasy Levantine?"

  "He's just saying that. Mother says that I'm the true prince. One day I'll rule as Horus-on-Earth."

  "That's a filthy lie!"

  Marric had knocked him down, and Alexa had kicked him. Before their pedagogues could separate them, Ctesiphon had leapt at Marric, a jewelled woman's dagger in his hand. So, at age ten, Marric had had his first battle scar from a brother's hand.

  Alexa, her body relaxed in his protective hold, turned in Marric's arms. One finger tip traced the thin line, faint after twenty years, in the deep tan of Marric's neck.

  "He still hates you," she said. "I didn't want to bring you into danger, but I had to see you, talk with you . . . she . . . Irene . . . "

  "Come. Is this how a princess acts? This is my home, not the camps of the Kutrigur Huns—those are dangerous. Did you know that in Cherson, the last two governors before me were murdered? So I'm not afraid here. Besides, Alexa, you know that your fate is also mine. Whatever we face, we face together." His words had a fine ring to them, and he meant every one. Once he was emperor, he would finally make his father proud of him.

  Alexa nodded, freed herself, and walked over to an elegant serving table. She poured him wine from a flagon that lay half-bur
ied in snow. "Do you still like honey-cakes?" No trace of her earlier fear showed now. At least Irene had not been able to turn Alexa into a timid fawn, or her creature. The time Ctesiphon had attacked, Alexa had been the first to dab the bleeding scratch with cloth torn from her own tunic. It had been precious cotton all the way from Hind, but that hadn't bothered her. She had been sick afterward. Alexander had termed her reactions hysterical courage and spoken to her gravely of self-command.

  As Alexa handed Marric the goblet, he saw a dancer's grace in her movements, the counterpart of his own warrior's training. Brother and sister, sword and dagger. They would be well-matched in their dream of empire.

  Marric poured the libation for the gods, then saluted his sister more enthusiastically before he drank.

  "Clever work, sister mine, getting that message to me. Not even my spies who watch Irene's spies found it out. How did you manage?"

  Alexa drank and smiled. Color flowed back into her face. "Let that be my secret, brother."

  More and more Marric approved of this sister of his. "Has Irene revealed anything of her plans?"

  To his surprise, Alexa nodded her head yes. "She watches me, Marric, and I hate it! You know what her eyes are like—deep green, slow poison. They drink your will." Alexa dropped her head briefly, then forced herself to meet Marric's eyes again. "And I have heard her recite strange words . . . "

  Marric knew such study had always fascinated Alexa. So she might feel that Irene's delving into lost powers made her more dangerous.

  "She uses Ctesiphon to make my life a continual misery. Ever since the harvest failed, they both have been hinting that he and I should appear together in the temples and bless the empire."

  That was Marric's privilege as rightful emperor. He hissed with anger. "The bastard presumes! I am father's eldest son, born in the porphyry chamber while Irene was little more than a concubine. Our mother, not Ctesiphon's, was the tree Isis."

  "I told him, 'Brother, Marric is your elder and my full sibling, Alexander's lawful heir,' but he laughed and warned me that Cherson was full of strange fevers. I was afraid that he might—"

  "I prefer Huns to that kind of game," Marric said slowly. He had resented exile. Now he saw the sense in his father's decision.

  Had Alexander known his second wife's capacity for betrayal? Pray Osiris, Ptah, and all the other gods that he had never guessed bow Irene had caressed his elder son with her eyes. Marric had been in his early twenties then, with a reputation that fully justified her interest, even were he not the royal heir. But perhaps Alexander had known; why else would he send Marric away and die without sending him a word? Or had he feared that Irene would seduce his son only to kill him?"

  "I think," mused Alexa, "that only the fact that Irene has no daughter has kept me alive this long. She needs a daughter . . . now she schemes for a marriage between herself and the Reaver-jarl of Jomsborg—"

  "The city is dying!" Marric interrupted. "I saw. It needs its proper ruler right now. When I came up here, the guards were drunk, and there were corpses in the gutter. That never happened when Father ruled. Alexa, have you told me everything?"

  "I haven't," she whispered. "Ctesiphon sees what you see. That is why he presses me to appear in the temples. I too think, if the harvests continue to fail, that I might have to . . . for the empire's well-being." Then she burst out, "Don't look at me that way! It's my realm too! Father raised me to put it first. Do you think you're the only one who wants power?" Then she covered her face with both hands. He could barely hear her next words.

  "And there's more too. He leeches!" Alexa cried in a low, passionate voice. "Since he came of age, he has lounged about me until I fail to invent ways of dismissing him. Or Irene summons me, and there he is, standing too close, touching me while she smiles. They watch me as if I were a crippled bird and they a cat!"

  Marric slammed a fist down onto the curved arm of his chair. Under his level brows, his dark eyes flashed. Alexa and the empire were his! "If he apes Osiris, then let him look to his dam for an Isis!"

  Alexa gasped. Her hand moved in a sign to avert punishment for blasphemy from Marric. That was where they were unlike. Marric's father had complained that Marric paid the priests too little attention; but the priestesses of Isis had cautioned the emperor that Alexa's interest in ritual seemed overstrong. Magic—Marric remembered the druid's vision and made a sign of his own.

  "Do you remember that Aillel told us that in some lands, brother with sister is a sin? And Ctesiphon is your half-brother—"

  "He sickens me!" Alexa poured more wine and gulped it. "Marric, you are the rightful emperor, and that is the way of things. Before I let him touch me, I will draw a blade across my face or swallow fire!"

  "No need," he soothed her. "By the gods, 'Lexa, he sickens me too. He always has. What do you suggest?"

  Alexa gestured to the mosaic on her chamber wall. Wrought there was the story of how the line of Old Rome had united with that of Alexander's Egypt after Antony and Divine Cleopatra's victory over the pretender Octavian had won them Empire. A stoop-shouldered, pockmarked Octavian knelt and offered up his blade to the divine pair. Behind him stood a priest and a physician, waiting with the poison that was stark imperial mercy to the defeated foe. Had he won . . . a Roman world: what a solemn bore that would have been. Like the Marcellini, those walking solemnities his father had bade him learn from.

  "I have collected gold, gems, horses—purchased under other names. I have even arranged passage with"—she laughed and seemed only a young girl, not a princess or a conspirator—"Do you remember a Northerner who styles himself 'Bearmaster'?"

  "By the hawk! Audun!" Marric exclaimed. "I knew him when I was a lad."

  "Shortly after Father died, he brought you a bear cub, did Audun. White, of course. Irene coveted it, but"—Alexa's laugh was malicious—"when she stroked it, it scratched her. She ordered it killed, and Audun was furious. He never came back here until a few weeks ago, when I bespoke passage from him. Like Cleopatra, we'll flee the palace and return with an army!"

  "To Tmutorakan in Cherson?" Marric considered the idea. Perhaps his army there would follow him. Or the Huns and Northerners might help him gain his throne. He rose and paced panther fashion across the room. Alexa had planned carefully. Surely Ellac and Uldin, sworn to him by exchanges of hospitality and gifts, could be trusted—assuming he could trust Huns at all. And the Bearmaster—Audun had never been a party to intrigue . . . at least, not before this. Alexa's plan would do.

  Then Marric stiffened. As the silver door opposite the garden whispered open, his hand went to his dagger. But a middle-aged woman, stout, decorously clad as befitted a palace servant, entered: Alexa's old nurse.

  "Be careful, Princess. Ctesiphon is coming!"

  Chapter Two

  Alexa flushed, her initial surprise and fear turning swiftly to anger. "I've dreaded this. Ctesiphon's been trying to get his courage up to force himself on me so I stand dishonored unless I submit to an evil marriage."

  "You have me with you, sister. Can you flee now?"

  "I'm ready."

  "Well done." Marric might have been a general approving a subordinate. Alexa was so strange, yet so familiar. If the nurse hadn't been in the room, he would have kissed her. Of course he must spirit her away; she was too precious to risk. For himself, he would prefer to stay and fight. He had been silent and stealthy for too long: every nerve in his body strained toward release either in passion or in blood.

  Alexa ordered her nurse to fetch simple, warm clothing and then to disappear. Outside her suite came the measured step of one very sure of his path, and surer still that no one would dare hinder him from a long anticipated scheme of pleasure. Marric and Alexa looked at one another. Then Alexa nodded almost ceremonially, as if opening the games. Let it begin.

  She moved a chair to face the door and seated herself. Chin raised, eyes distant, Alexa looked as regal as if she wore the moon crown of Isis and held audience for mere mortals.

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bsp; "That's my girl!" Marric padded noiselessly to the door and flattened himself against the wall. He drew his scabbarded dagger from his belt and tapped its heavy pommel against his hand with satisfaction.

  Alexa flung off her scarf so that it drifted behind her. She drew her shoulders back, revealing the fine lines of her body more fully. Only the pulse that fluttered rapidly at her throat betrayed her tension: after so long a wait, to finally face battle!

  The door swung open, and Ctesiphon swaggered in.

  "All alone, sister mine?" he asked. His eyes roved down her body. "Contemplating the god and goddess? Shall we do that together—or, better yet, unite to become gods ourselves?"

  Ctesiphon had the cockiness of a spoiled adolescent, Marric decided. Irene's idolatrous love for her son had marred the weakling further. Marric signaled Alexa to rise and walk toward their half-brother. Ctesiphon wore purple-dyed silk sewn with pearls. A collar of rubies and moonstones circled his thin shoulders and delicate neck in imitation of the ancient style of the pharaohs. A dagger too richly encrusted with gems to be of much use hung from his girdle. He was dark-haired like his elder half-brother and sister, but there the resemblance ended. Ctesiphon lacked Alexa's tensile strength or Marric's toughness. Marric was tanned from field duty. Ctesiphon was as pale as Alexa; a courtier-prince, but never an emperor. Weakness betrayed itself in the thick-lipped petulance of Irene's treacherous, sensual son. Marric wanted to slash the gloating expectation from his face with Ctesiphon's own gaudy dagger.

  Enticingly Alexa moved toward him.

  "It grows late, my brother. Too late for idle visits. You do me no good by coming here when I am alone."