Read Online Byzantium's Crown by Susan Shwartz - Free Book Online Page B

true, healing sleep which his body craved. "Where are we bound?"
    "Still Alexandria."
    Marric bit back the laughter that might have hurled him into madness. Bound for the city of Alexander, first Horus-on-Earth of Marric's line, and he would arrive in chains.
    * * *
    The waters of the Delta cast the ferocious sunlight back at the slaves. They squinted and shuffled unsteadily off the dromond onto the dock toward the holding pens.
    No one asked in this part of Alexandria whether a ship were Arab or imperial. What mattered were goods to sell and the gold to buy them.
    Marric tried to shield his eyes. His upraised arms tightened the other slaves' chains and they swore at him. The slash of a whip distracted him from the pain of the glare. His feet shrank from the wharf's heat, then scuffed in hot, soft dust.
    Tears ran down Nicephorus' contorted face as he grimaced at the light. It was doubly painful to his weakened eyes after the darkness of the slave hold. Nevertheless, he gazed eagerly about.
    "So much gone," he mourned. "I'd hoped to see the Pharos, but of course, we were below decks. And the library—a sad day for Empire when the pirates sacked the city. Oh, Antony Philadelphus could rebuild the lighthouse and the causeway, but all that learning gone. I would have given my eyes to have it untouched."
    "And how should you study then?" Marric asked. "The last emperor promised to have it restored but—"
    "Like all else. Libraries are not as important as better ships, faster horses for the Hippodrome, flashier trappings and finer weapons for the Tagmata regiments . . . and for Irene herself—"
    "Silence!"
    The lash curled about Nicephorus' shoulders but did not cut too deeply. The Arabs clearly wanted their wares undamaged to attract better prices. But Marric's healing scars would only give him a character for fierce strength: useful should someone want a bodyguard or a fighter, an interesting challenge for a master who wanted to try his hand at slave breaking.
    Alexandria's harbor was almost bare of grain barges. The water level was low, and beggars hunching against the old warehouses looked even thinner and more ragged than normal.
    Alexandria had been tossed from allegiance to allegiance so many times that it seemed to be neither Arab nor Byzantine. Had it any loyalties at all? Marric sensed in Alexander's city the same aura of loss, corruption, and sinister pleasures that had disquieted him the night of his disastrous return to Byzantium. Languorous Alexandria might be, but it sheltered a secret excitement. Marric felt his blood begin to stir, but be marched forward, eyes on the whip.
    Several times he nearly felt it on his back for turning to stare at the harbor. His ancestress Cleopatra might have stopped right there, he imagined, when she came to Antony dressed as the Goddess.
    Nicephorus too kept turning to look at the city. Finally they were shoved along twisted streets shadowed by overhanging houses, their plaster cracking and their narrow windows barred. From time to time the file of slaves had to give place to a troop of cataphracts who thundered down the crowded streets with total unconcern for the dust their horses kicked up—or the people the horses kicked.
    In the Apostases, the warehouses where pottery, wine, and cheeses were stored, Arabs jostled Hellenes. No one thought it strange, least of all the native Egyptians, poorest of the city dwellers. They had outlasted pharaohs, caliphs, and emperors already. Imperial Alexandria had sunk to the level of a thieves' market.
    "The Temple of Osiris." Nicephorus jerked his chin at a huge and imposing building. "A great one, they say, though a greater yet lies down the Nile at Heliopolis."
    The City of the Sun! So long ago Heliopholis' priests had taught his ancestors to revere Horus, Isis, and Osiris in the undying lands and to use their powers well. What powers? Marric thought bitterly. He had none—or had he?
    Chains, fall from me, he commanded silently. Then he