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ROMA MATER, ITALIA
A thin slat of daylight filtered down from above to cast a pall on the face of the young woman in the stained blue robe. Unconcerned with the thick crowd thronging the narrow alleyway, she pushed through mendicants, draymen, butchers with hogs’ heads slung over their shoulders, and off-duty aediles to finally reach the end of the sweetmeat lane. At the corner, she sneezed in the dust of the wider city street and then quickly crossed between two crowds of chanting priests. Each troupe bore a profusion of ba
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 stead ily 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 thi
He stood in the doorway of a ta
One of the Roman girl’s eyebrows crept up unconsciously as she took in his supple silk pants. She was surprised that the ta
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 ta
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 ta
Something nickered 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 ta
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 ta
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 ba
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 legio
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.