Two girls were arguing over a bracelet in the upper hall. Their shrill voices softened quickly into overtures as the men and Julia pushed by. One of the troopers paused a half-step when the blond prostitute caught his eye and stroked her bare breast. A snapped command from Ursinus moved him on again.
“Here,” said Julia. She reached out and tapped a door. The usual price marker had been removed from its peg, leaving a lighter square on the door panel.
“Hey, you can’t go in there,” called the blond girl who had tried to accost them. “That’s a special rental, sort of.”
Sacrovir knocked louder.
The latch snicked, allowing the door to open a crack. It would have closed again if one of the troopers had not blocked it with his foot. “Go away,” rasped an indescribable voice. “I am not to be disturbed.”
“We offer you help for help,” said the seeress. She shrugged and her cape dropped away. The different sheens and patterns of the costume beneath blended into an odd unity. Perhaps that was a trick of the uncertain light. “The power of our Emperor, for the – power you control.”
The bouncer, naked except for breeches and a three-foot cudgel, pounded up the stairs. The oil with which he had been being massaged shone on his bunched shoulders. Ursinus motioned one of his men to his side, though neither Gaul drew a weapon for the moment.
The door opened fully. The figure within the room was short, caped and cowled as the seeress herself had been. It wore a veil. The features beneath the shadowing veil were so still as to belie their appearance of flesh. “Come,” said the figure in its harsh voice that did not move its lips. Something bright as jewelry, too bright for a weapon, winked from a fold in its garment. “What is it that your Emperor thinks he allies himself with?”
Julia moved like a sleepwalker. She followed the figure back into the chamber. On the other side of the room was a door open onto a balcony. Daylight blurred and haloed the other figure. Sacrovir paused on the threshold and looked back to the other men of the escort.
Ursinus clenched his fist with the thumb displayed in a gesture from the amphitheatre. “We’ll keep our friend company out here,” the decurion said. He nodded toward the bouncer. “Convince him that there’s nothing going down that he needs to worry about.”
Sacrovir jerked his head in assent. He slipped into the private room after his mother. The door latched behind him.
“With your help,” Julia was whispering, “there can be an Empire united again on Trier. I have seen it, seen armies melting away before Postumus like trees struck by summer lightning. . . . What do you wish of Postumus, then? We are sent to make it yours.”
Sacrovir backed without noticing his own motion until his shoulders pressed against the door panel. His eyes jumped around the room like sparrows in a bush. The youth did not let them light too long on either his mother or on the sunlight-shimmering figure his mother had journeyed so far to meet.
“You know nothing,” the figure said in wonder. The object it held was no longer so clearly not a weapon.
“We know you have the power to destroy armies,” the seeress replied without emotion.
“These others are fighters?” the figure asked abruptly. Its gesture rumpled but did not pass the enveloping cloak.
“My son, yes, and soldiers,” Julia said. “There are thousands more soldiers for the Emperor Postumus to lead at your bidding – and with your aid. There are infinite futures, but I have seen …”
“No,” the figure said, the word alone without the gesture of negation to be expected with it. “Not thousands. I have hired certain fighters here … but yours might serve
me yet tonight. Then later, there is a – treasure – to guard. For a year.”
“You pledge your support to the Emperor, if we help you tonight and guard a treasure?” Sacrovir demanded. He spoke to release the tension which the figure’s grating voice raised in him.
“The treasure is in Cilicia,” Julia said, neither a question nor a demand. “We would have gone there, but you in Rome were closer.” In her present state, the seeress had little connection with the immediate world. She did not note the way the glittering object shifted toward her when she spoke. Her son noticed. His general tension focused on a tighter grip on his sword.