In the street the mob boomed, “Hail the Dragon from the East!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“What I don’t understand …” said Perennius. He dipped his bread into the pot of lamb stew which had been brought up to the roof for Gaius, Calvus, and himself – “… is why they sent a woman. Your – government, I mean.”
Gaius nodded vigorously around his own dripping mouthful of stew. The group’s baggage was stacked around them, along with straw-filled leather mattresses. The agent had suggested the roof, despite its ten degrees of slope, in preference to being crammed into one of the common rooms. The family’s own apartments were more crowded still, because the members had doubled up in order to devote half the space to paying guests in the present glut. The roof gave the party a measure of privacy and protection from thieves that they would not have had inside under the present circumstances. They would be better off under a tree if the weather broke, of course; but at the moment, it was a pleasant evening.
“That wasn’t really a matter of choice,” Calvus said. “We – my sisters and I…” She paused for a moment, but her eyes showed nothing until she continued, “We are female for the same reason that workers ants are female, or bees.”
“They are?” the younger Illyrian asked. He felt the thought which Perennius did not express even by a glance. Mumbling an apology for the interruption, Gaius took some celery from the condiment tray and began to concentrate on it.
The traveller nodded placidly and took more stew herself. Calvus ate with a quiet neatness that suggested boredom with the process. “Sterile females, myself and my sibs. With a … common lineage.”
Calvus paused again. “I don’t have all the words I need to explain,” she said, spreading her hands. “But I don’t mean only a common parentage, or that we five are as close as twins from the same egg. We are one. The thoughts I think, my sibs think – all of us.” The tears suddenly brightened the tall woman’s eyes again. “We were one. We were one.”
Perennius ate. He refused to look at Calvus beside him. If she wanted to steer a practical question into emotional waters, it was her doing alone. Tarsus climbed a few steps out of the sea behind him, so that there were facades facing the agent against the further background of the Taurus Mountains. Higher yet, clouds covered the sky like etchings on silver. Every shade of gray and brightness was represented in swatches which blended imperceptibly with one another. Like life, like the Empire . . . and sunset was near.
“One effect of sisterhoods like mine,” Calvus continued in a dry voice, “is that the birth group is more important to the individual than her self. The species as a whole is worthy of the sacrifice of the self; and this by nature without any necessity of training. You will have seen ants react when their nests are broken open with a stick.”
“Some run,” the agent said softly to the sky.
“Some run,” the traveller agreed, “to assess and repair damage, and to carry the young of the nest to places of greater safety. Because they were raised so that their natures would cause them to do so for the good of the nest. And some bite the stick, or swarm up it to bite the hand wielding the stick. . . . We were not all raised to patch walls and carry babies, Aulus Perennius.”
“If we had some time,” Perennius said, “I’d teach you to use a sword – if I thought I could find one that would hold up. I’m not complaining, Lucius Calvus. I just wondered.”
A slave popped up the ladder with a mixing bowl of wine held in both hands. He switched it without com-
ment for the bowl which the three diners had almost emptied already. From below, where Sestius and Sabellia shared dinner with the innkeeper’s family, came a burst of laughter and an order which the house slave appeared to understand. He grumbled a curse in Phrygian. Holding the bowl, he disappeared through the trap door again with his body vertical and his back to the ladder.