Ten for Dying

Chapter Forty-four

Dedi sat on a bench in the palace gardens next to a statue of Justinian and mournfully gnawed at a chicken leg stolen from the imperial kitchens while pondering what he might do next to revive Theodora. Dead, his former employer was of less use to him than the deceased chicken which was providing him a meal. For the time being he was managing to live like a rat in the walls but that couldn’t go on forever.

He’d been thwarted in his initial attempt at the mausoleum, and a fine waste of frogs that had been! But what could you expect when demons were on the loose, interfering with rituals by raising the alarm? Clearly, his magick was powerful enough to achieve his aims. Look at how effectively he had controlled Tychon through the agency of the servant’s stolen belt. A pity the result had availed him nothing. On the other hand, the obvious lesson was to obtain a memento of Theodora. Except that being dead she was no longer likely to invite him into her inner sanctum to entertain her.

Those had been the days! How Theodora had laughed when he presented the radish colored cat, a gray feline he explained as resembling a radish that had grown old and molded. And no matter how many times she had him tell the joke to her courtiers they laughed just as hard. Well, what choice did they have?”

His appetite suddenly gone, he tossed the remains of the chicken leg into the rose bush behind the bench. Two cats-neither radish colored, one as black as night and the other brown and white-appeared as from nowhere and commenced a vigorous discussion as to which would eat the remaining scraps.

It was at that instant he caught a glimpse through the rose bushes of Anastasia passing by.

Lady Bast sends a sign, he breathed, ignoring the marble Justinian’s disapproving stare at such pagan blasphemy. For after all, was not Bast the protectoress of cats, women, and secrets? Surely his sacrifice of chicken to her sacred animals, unintentional though it may have been, would cause her to smile on his endeavor to use secret means to return the late empress to life?

Hadn’t he been wondering how he might gain admittance to Theodora’s private domain? Wouldn’t something from her sister, a blood relative, serve to attract the interest of Theodora’s wandering shade and be far easier to steal?

He jumped up and followed her, taking care to stay concealed behind shrubbery, hedges, and trees. Anastasia threaded her way across the palace grounds, passing under an arbor draped with grape vines, through a garden of Greek statuary set against a somber background of pine trees, past an artificial lake shaped as a map of the empire and inhabited by several swans that hissed as he crept by. Now and then she glanced back, as if suspicious she was being followed. Each time he crouched down, scarcely breathing, until she turned and resumed walking.

To his surprise, her destination was the Hormisdas Palace, where Theodora and Justinian had lived before he became emperor. More recently, Theodora had used the Hormisdas to shelter religious refugees adherent to the heretical sect toward which she was sympathetic. They were still in residence.

“By the gods of Egypt!” muttered Dedi, peering around the corner of a frescoed corridor at a raucous reception room buzzing with an assortment of ill-clad men attended by hordes of flies. The din was that of a public market, the smell a combination of refuse heap and public toilet. Apparently Theodora’s protection extended from beyond the grave. At least until Justinian decided otherwise. He had always indulged his wife’s whims but would he continue now that she was gone?

Dedi offered a prayer of thanksgiving for the crowds of humanity concealing him as he stalked after Anastasia. She had gone directly to the reception room, which still retained traces of its former frescoed glory despite the palace occupants’ unfortunate habit of lighting fires on its floors, and from there up the wide, green marble stairs formerly guarded by excubitors and into a room with a gilt-decorated door a few steps to the right of the top of the staircase. After a short stay, she emerged and then trotted quickly downstairs, carrying a package.

Dedi kept her in sight as she exited via a polished oak door, passed through corridors, and out into a rapidly fading warm, gray twilight.

As twilight deepened into velvet darkness, Dedi kept close to Anastasia’s heels.

She reached Antonina’s house where she was bowed in through the front entrance. Dedi scrambled over the back wall of the grounds. Creeping along on all fours from sheltering bush to bush, ears strained for shouts of discovery, he finally rose to his knees and peeked through a window into a dimly lit room.

He was startled to see Anastasia and Antonina standing a hand’s breadth away on the other side of the lattices. Had they spotted him?

They gave no indication they had. He heard Anastasia say, “I’ve brought something you might like to see.”

What it was remained a mystery, because his gaze went past the two women and he gasped in mingled delight and fear.

His magick at the empress’ tomb, though interrupted, had been powerful enough to work, after all.

Theodora was also in the room, staring out toward him.