Air and Darkness by David Drake Page B

stone bench while the two attendants dropped furnace-heated blocks of pumice into a bronze basin of water. Steam billowed through the room. The basin’s handles were cast in the form of the heads of broad-mouthed catfish. The head nearer the bench appeared and vanished again in the steam like glimpses of a monster.
    What will it mean to have Corylus in Father’s entourage? He’d be here every morning. Will he join Father for dinner?
    Alphena didn’t ordinarily dine with the family, but she had done so and could do so again if she wanted to. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, though women weren’t usually part of the sort of decorous dinners that Saxa gave.
    â€œAre you ready for your rubdown, Your Ladyship?” Florina asked. Though the bath had full sets of male and female servants, she had entered the steam room with Alphena.
    How long have I been sitting here? Alphena thought. Sitting and thinking about things she shouldn’t have been thinking about.
    â€œYes, all right,” she said, getting up and walking to the massage bench. Florina isn’t showing her power, Alphena saw in a flash of clarity. She’s afraid that if she isn’t with me all the time, other servants will arrange that she be demoted back to kitchen staff, where she’d been before she was assigned to Lady Alphena as punishment.
    Alphena had been angry at everything, all the time. She screamed abuse at her father and brother, and she struck servants—even the free ones—with whatever was in her hand.
    And then Saxa remarried.
    Hedia had never threatened her stepdaughter, but Alphena had spent a great deal of time observing gladiators and the scarcely less brutal sport of chariot racing. The first time Alphena threw a tantrum at her new stepmother, she saw Hedia’s face change. The utter ruthlessness in Hedia’s expression had shocked Alphena to silence.
    The two women hadn’t become friends immediately. Alphena would have hated any stepmother, even if Saxa had married a former Vestal Virgin for his third wife. Hedia’s reputation had been about as far the other way as a woman could go, and for once rumor had understated the truth.
    The angry truce between mother and daughter didn’t change until Saxa fell under the spell of a wizard who wasn’t a charlatan. Magical disaster had boiled under Carce and the world. Alphena had seen her stepmother react to bad situations and to worse ones.
    Hedia remained poised, cool, and just as ruthless as Alphena had realized the first time she saw the older woman angry. Hedia would do her duty or die; it was much more likely that the person or thing trying to prevent her would die instead.
    Alphena’s respect had deepened into something more, but respect was enough. It was one of Alphena’s greatest sources of pride that she believed Hedia respected her as well.
    The olive oil that an attendant poured from a cruet was cool on Alphena’s skin. The masseuse began working it in with her palms more than her fingers. As she moved down Alphena’s body, another servant used a curved ivory scraper to remove the oil along with the dirt and sweat that it had floated from the girl’s steam-opened pores.
    Alphena felt herself relaxing. The bump on her head had stopped throbbing also.
    â€œIsn’t it thrilling that the master is sending Publius Corylus off on a secret mission, Your Ladyship?” Florina said in a delighted whisper. “And how awful it would be if he failed!”
    Alphena jerked her torso off the bench to look at Florina.
    The masseuse yelped and skipped back. “Oh, Your Ladyship!” she squeaked with an African accent. “Did I pinch you? Oh, please, don’t beat me!”
    â€œBe silent!” Alphena snapped. She was angry, but not at the masseuse—or even at Florina, if it came to that.
    The servant’s terror had given Alphena a chance to collect her thoughts. She had nearly