Empress & Soldier Ch 9 part 2
In which Eudekia is sent away.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 part I
Chapter 6 part 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8 part 1
Chapter 8 part 2
Chapter 9 part 1
PHILITOS CAME BACK THE NEXT AFTERNOON with a question for my father, he said. But when their conversation—a brief one—was done, he asked Mahir to find me. We met in the atrium again.
“My lady Eudekia.” Philitos greeted me with the same smile as yesterday, the one that reached his eyes. From a pouch on his belt he drew out something small, offering it to me on an outstretched palm. “For you.”
I took the little object, careful not to touch his hand. It was a cat, sitting up with its tail wrapped around its front paws, its head tilted upward as if asking for attention. “It’s lovely,” I said. I stroked a finger along the curve of its back. Should I accept it? Could one refuse a present from the prince of Casil?
“From a country far to the east.”
“Thank you,” I said, because what else could I say?
“It represents a deity who concerns herself with women’s responsibilities, I am told,” he said, “and so I thought it suitable for you.”
“Then I think my desk is the appropriate place for it.”
“Will you give it a name?”
“Surely the deity has one?”
“I suppose she must. But I do not know it.”
“Bashti,” Mahir said. We turned. He bowed to Philitos. “Forgive my presumption, Prince. The goddess is called Bashti.”
“Is she a goddess of domesticity?” Philitos asked. He was truly interested, I thought. Nor had he outwardly shown any affront at being spoken to by my father’s secretary.
“She is. Her usual place is at the hearth.”
“Then that is where she shall go,” I said, before Philitos could speak. Mahir’s words could be taken as a reprimand.
“As you wish,” the prince said. “She is yours to place wherever you think fit. And now I must leave you. I am sure your man will see me safely to the door.”
I heard him asking Mahir more about the goddess as they walked away. I looked again at the bronze cat I held, mildly disappointed not to be part of the conversation. But I could ask Mahir later, and perhaps the prince and I could discuss it next time he came.
OUR MEETINGS IN THE ATRIUM became part of the prince’s routine on the days he came for his tutoring. After Philitos’s third visit, my father had called me to him. “I see no harm in your meetings,” he’d said, “but you understand you must be chaperoned. For his sake as much as yours.”
I’d laughed. “Join us, if you like.”
“I won’t,” he’d said gravely. “Perhaps it is wise to allow the prince to test his ideas against someone who is not his tutor, or even his elder. But either Mahir or Nishan should be nearby.”
I understood. Were Philitos only a young dignitasi man, courting me, we would be free to discover our compatibilities. But he was the heir to the throne, and before long would choose, or have chosen for him, an appropriate bride. We were friends, and nothing more.
“Of course,” I’d said.
Nishan sat on a bench where he could see us, but he was reading, only glancing up now and again.
“Do you believe the future can be read in the entrails of a chicken?” Philitos asked. He’d witnessed a soothsayer from his litter on the way here, he’d told me.
“Divination is a widely-held belief. Did not Cotta describe an enemy who would fight only if their priestesses had determined the signs were right for victory?”
“You have read Cotta?”
“Why are you surprised?”
“I have never met a woman who has,” he said, spreading his hands apologetically.
“Men willingly believe what they wish,” I said.
He cocked his head. “Are you using the great general’s words now to refer to divination, or to my assumption you would not have read military history?”
“Both.” Our laughter made Nishan look up from his reading, but he just smiled and dropped his eyes again.
“I should have asked before,” Philitos said. “Do you play xache?”
“Yes. My father taught me when I was six.”
“Six!” He looked surprised. “I was perhaps a year or two older. It was presented to me as a way to learn tactics, and consider what losses are acceptable in a campaign. Surely this was not your father’s approach with you?”
“No. It was to teach me to consider the implications of choices, to look beyond the immediate. To plan, but to never assume plans will work.”
“Not so different,” Philitos said. “Shall we play when I come again?”
“If you like.” He’d be a challenging opponent, I thought.
Footsteps made us both turn. “Prince,” Philitos’s guard said, “you will be late if we do not leave now.”
Philitos exhaled, loudly. “Then I suppose I must. I look forward to our game, my lady Eudekia.”
“As do I.” I watched them go, feeling vaguely troubled. Tactics and acceptable losses. Philitos would be Emperor someday, and armies and war were something real to him. He would send men to their deaths. How did a person do that, and live with himself?
I ATE A LIGHT MEAL with my father in the early evening; he rarely stayed at the palace now for meals, on his doctor’s advice. His illness had left him older, and the prince still came to him some days, staying to discuss books or play xache with me at least once a week. I looked forward to those days, enjoying both his conversation and his company. Ennaia had left Casil, accompanying Kaeso to a posting in a town north of the city, and she’d been my only real friend.
After dinner I curled up in a chair to read. The tabby cat joined me, quietly purring on my knee. I stroked her, my fingers noting the bulge of her belly. Barely past kittenhood herself, she was pregnant. But that was the way the world was for cats. Distantly, I heard voices, and footsteps going to my father’s room. Messengers came and went; I paid them little mind. Were I needed, someone would fetch me.
Whoever he was, he stayed longer than most. Perhaps it had been a friend I should have greeted, as domina of the house. But Mahir or Nishan would have come to find me, had that been the case. I dismissed my curiosity and returned to the book, the last volume of Cotta’s histories. Young men eager for war, older men dissuading them. Was that the general Roscius’s role, to counter any passion for war Philitos might express?
There was war, of course. The Boranoi, the people to our north-east, harried the Eastern Empire’s borders, claimed its provinces as theirs, coerced or bribed allies to turn against it. But it was all distant, and fought by men I mostly didn’t know, except for a few officers. If you didn’t know the soldiers, was it easier to see them as xache pieces, to be sacrificed for the greater cause? I put the book down again, considering this.
“Eudekia.” Nishan’s quiet voice. “Your father wants you.”
I lifted the cat gently off my knee, smoothed my tunic, and went to him. “Who was your visitor?” I asked, as I pulled up the stool.
“The Emperor’s secretary. To discuss certain aspects of preparing the prince for his future position.” Before I could ask anything more, he went on. “Eudekia, I am—concerned, shall I say, about my mother. Between the duties as the prince’s tutor and this unfortunate illness, we have not been to see her this year.” Normally we went for a month, in the hottest time of the year, an escape to the cooler breezes of her seaside villa. But the days were growing shorter, the heat lessening, and we had stayed in the city.
“Concerned? Why?” Her letters arrived with fair regularity, telling us of her garden and her round of dinners and entertainments.
“She is not young. I would like some assurance she is well, and not being taken advantage of by her servants.”
“Surely someone would inform you, if that were the case,” I protested. Several other families of the dignitasi had villas on the same island.
“Nonetheless,” my father said, “I am sending you to her for a few weeks.”
“But—” How could I go? “What about you? What about the clients?”
“Mahir can deal with them, and the ordering of the household.” He smiled. “I am well again, Eudekia. Our lives will not fall into disorder if you are gone for a short time. And you will put my mind to rest over your grandmother, which will be a great help. I find myself dwelling on all that could be wrong there.”
I couldn’t refuse. I will have to let Philitos know, I thought. I could send a message. “When do I go?”
“The day after tomorrow. Nishan will take you, and your maid.”
So soon? “I will have to tell Matea now,” I said, “or she will not have time to get everything ready. Patra, has something happened to increase your worry?”
“A disquieting rumour,” he said.
I thought I knew what he meant. My grandmother’s steward was younger than she, and handsome. And very attentive. “That again?”
“Something like that, yes,” he said. What my grandmother—who was past childbearing—did in the privacy of her home should be no one’s concern but hers. But a too-public show of affection between a dignitasa and a lower-born man was not proper. As I went to find my maid, the thought I was going to be a chaperone to my grandmother made me laugh.
I woke in the early hours, strangely disturbed. From a dream? I lay in the dark, waiting for the feeling to pass. Instead, it became sharper, more defined. I didn’t want to go. I liked my life here, the work I did with the clients, the discussions with Philitos. We were supposed to being playing xache soon. I turned over, pulling the blanket around me more closely. Maybe he would come today; if he did, I would find the time for at least one game.
Philitos did not come; a note did, instead, telling me his father had requested his presence at a review of the palace guard. ‘Palace guard’ was a misnomer: some did guard the palace, but they also patrolled the streets within the walls of Casil. Their loyalty was to the Emperor, not the common people; one Emperor or another—to my shame, I had forgotten which—had deemed a separate city guard too dangerous, too easily corrupted. So the Emperor himself reviewed the troops frequently, and entertained the senior officers to meals, although the day-to-day administration fell to the fiscarius, who paid them. In asking his son to accompany him, was the Emperor finally making a step towards giving Philitos more responsibility? Or was this just another ceremonial duty?
I sent a note back with the messenger, explaining my own absence from the city, and promising to write. The same reluctance I had felt in the night hung over me, heightened into something close to irritation once I learned I wouldn’t see Philitos before I left. I had best do something useful, I thought, and went to oversee the packing of my clothes.
Matea was folding tunics and shawls into a chest. “I never take that one to the villa,” I said in exasperation, reaching for a woollen shawl patterned in green and gold.
“But it is not summer,” my maid said. “The evenings will be cold. You will need it, my lady, and heavier tunics.”
She was right, of course. I apologized, and left the choice of clothes to Matea. Instead, I collected my writing materials, ensuring I had several pens as well as paper. I had a folding case for them, a present from my father some years before for exactly this purpose. I added sealing wax, and a small bottle of ink powder. What else?
Jewellery, I supposed. I wore little most days, but I would need earrings and bracelets, and a pendant or two. I chose my favourites, and several hair combs. Then I looked around my room. What else?
My eyes fell on the little bronze cat. I had never placed it at the hearth, beside the figures representing the household gods that every Casilani home had. I would do that now, I thought. But when I picked it up, feeling its weight in my hand, I changed my mind. I would take it with me.
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I like the sound of grandma.