Looking around the room until he spotted Kerin, Conan waved for her to come to the table. She hesitated, then came over stiffly.
“Is Ariane here?” he asked her. The first part of saving her head was to let her know about Leucas, so she could stop him.
“She went out,” Kerin said. She looked straight at the big Cimmerian as if Hordo did not exist. “She said she had to arrange a meeting for you.”
“About that message this forenoon,” Hordo said suddenly.
Casually Kerin leaned over and tipped his winemug into his lap. He leaped to his feet, cursing, as she left.
“Beheading’s too good for her,” he growled. “Since we’ve both been abandoned, as it seems, let us go to the Street of Regrets. I know a den of vice so iniquitous that whores blush to hear it mentioned.”
“Not the Sign of the Full Moon, I trust,” Conan laughed.
“Never a bit, Cimmerian.” Hordo broke into song in a voice like a jackass in pain. “Oh, I knew a wench from Alcibies, her nipples were like rubies. Her hair was gold, but her rump was cold, and her … .” A sudden, shocked silence had descended on the common room. “You’re not singing, Conan.”
Laughing, Conan got to his feet, and roaring the truly obscene second verse they marched out to horrified gasps.
X
“Are you certain?” Albanus demanded. Golden lamps suspended on chains from the arched ceiling of the marble-columned hall cast shadows on the planes of his face, making him look the wolf he was fiercer cousin to.
Demetrio bristled sulkily, half at the doubting tone and half for having been made to wait on Albanus in the entry hall. “You wanted Sephana watched,” he muttered. “I had her watched. And I’m certain. Would I have come in the night were I not?”
“Follow me,” Albanus commanded, speaking as to a servant.
And he no more noticed the young catamite’s pale lips and clenched fists than he would have those of a servant. Demetrio followed as commanded; that was all that was important. Albanus had slipped already into his persona of king. After all, it was now but a matter of days. His last essential acquisition had been made that very day.
The dark-eyed lord went directly to the chamber where he so often sported himself with Sularia, but the woman was not there now. He tugged the brocaded bell-pull on the wall in a particular fashion, then went straight to his writing desk.
“When?” he demanded, uncapping the silver inkpot. Taking quill and parchment before him, he scribbled furiously. “How long have I before she acts?”
“I was not privy to her planning,” Demetrio answered with asperity. “Is it not enough that she gathers her myrmidons about her this night?”
“Fool!” Albanus grated.
With quick movements the hawk-faced lord sprinkled sand across the wet-inked parchment from a silver cellar, then lit the flames beneath a small bronze wax-pot. A slave entered, his short white tunic embroidered at the hem with Albanus’ house-mark. Albanus ignored him, pouring off the sand and folding the parchment, sealing it with a drop of wax and his signet.
“Had all Sephana’s conspirators come, Demetrios, when your watcher brought word to you?”
“When the third arrived, he came to me immediately. She would not have three of them together if she did not mean to strike tonight.”
Cursing, Albanus handed the parchment to the slave. “Put this in the hands of Commander Vegentius within a quarter of a glass. On pain of your life. Go.”
The slave bowed and all but ran from the room.
“If all have not yet come,” Albanus said as soon as the slave had gone, “there may yet be time to stop her before she reaches the Palace.” He hurried to the lacquered chest, unlocking it with the key that hung about his neck. “And stop her I will.”
Demetrio eyed the chest and its contents uneasily. “How? Kill her?”
“You have not the stuff of kings in you,” Albanus laughed. “There is a subtle art in shaping punishment to fit the crime and the criminal. Now stand aside and be silent.”
The slender young noble needed no second warning. He buried his nose in his pomander—was it not said that all sorceries had great stenches associated with them?—and wished most fervently that he were elsewhere at that moment.
Carelessly sweeping a
priceless bowl of Ghirgiz crystal from a table to shatter on the floor, Albanus laid in its place a round silver tray graven with an intricate pattern that pained the eye which tried to follow it. With hurried movements he pushed back the flowing sleeves of his deep blue tunic, opened a vial and traced a portion of that pattern in scarlet liquid, muttering incantations beneath his breath as he did. The liquid followed the precise lines worked in the silver, a closed rubiate intricacy that did not spread or alter.
A packet containing powdered hair from Sephana’s head—her serving maids had been easily bribed to provide the gleanings of her brush—was emptied into a mortar wrought from the skull of a virgin. Certain other ingredients were minutely measured on burnished golden scales and added to the skull, the mixture then ground by a pestle made of an infant’s thigh bone.