The Roman officer flushed. His eyes were riveted on Antonina, as if by sheer force of will he would keep them from flitting to the fearsome figure of his paramour’s half-brother.
Thankfully, Ezana was in a good mood. So he eased Menander over the hurdle.
“Best run, boy. Keep my eager sister waiting and she’ll likely take up with some passing stray Arab.” Smugly: “Who will not—given the way Deborah looks—waste any time at all in haggling.”
Seeing the look of sudden alarm which now flitted across Menander’s face, Antonina could not stop herself from giggling. “Go!” she choked, waving her hand. A moment later, Menander did as he was commanded.
When he was gone, Antonina looked at Ezana. “She wouldn’t really, would she?”
Ezana shrugged. “Probably not. The silly girl’s quite infatuated with the lad.”
Antonina’s head now swiveled to bring Ousanas under her gaze. The humor left her eyes entirely.
“Speaking of infatuation.”
Glaring at Ousanas, in the scale of “waste of effort,” ranked somewhere in the vicinity of the labors of Sisyphus. Ethiopia’s aqabe tsentsen responded with the same grin with which the former slave dawazz had greeted similar scowls from Axumite royalty.
“I fail to see the problem,” he said. “True, the girl was a virgin. But—”
He waved his own hand. Ousanas, like Belisarius’ cataphract Anastasius, was a devotee of Greek philosophy. The gesture carried all the certainty of Plato pronouncing on a small problem of ontology. “That is by the nature of things a temporary state of affairs. Certainly with a girl as lively and pretty as Koutina. Who better than me to have assisted her through that necessary passage?”
Antonina maintained the glare, even in the face of that peerless grin.
“Besides, Antonina, you know perfectly well that having the secure loyalty of your personal maid is essential to the success of our enterprise. Koutina will be at the top of the list for every enterprising Malwa spy here in Charax. Of which there are probably several hundred by now, at least half of which are superb seducers—and just as good once they get the girl in bed as they were getting her there in the first place.”
Again, Ousanas made that philosophical gesture. “So I view my activities as a necessary concomitant of my diplomatic duties. So to speak. Foiling the machinations of the wicked enemy with my own incomparable stroke of statecraft. So to speak.”
Antonina hissed: “If she gets pregnant—”
Finally, the grin faded. For once, there was nothing of the brazen jester in Ousanas’ expression. “I have already asked her to become my concubine, Antonina,” he said softly. “Once the war is over. And she has agreed.”
He did not add any further promise. There was no need. Of many things, people might wonder about the strange man named Ousanas. Of his honesty, no one had any doubt at all.
Certainly not Antonina. Indeed, she was quite taken aback by the aqabe tsentsen’s statement. She had simply intended to obtain a promise from Ousanas to see to it that her maid was taken care of properly, once the dalliance was over. She had never expected—
“Concubine,” in Axum’s elite, was a prestigious position. The position of wife, of course, was reserved for diplomatic and political necessities. But an officially recognized concubine was assured a life of security and comfort—even wealth and power, in the case of the aqabe tsentsen’s concubine.
Koutina was a peasant girl from the Fayum, born into the great mass of Egypt’s poor. Her own children would now enter directly into the world of status, with not even the slight blemish which Roman society attached to such offspring.
Ousanas’ grin made its triumphant reentry. “So? Are there any other concerns you wish to raise?”
Antonina cleared her throat. From long experience, she knew it was essential to rally in the face of Ousanas’ grin.
“Yes!” she piped. Sternly: “We must see to the final preparations for the landing at Barbaricum. Belisarius, you know, insists on accompanying Valentinian and the others up to the very moment when they are set ashore in India. Even—so he told me in his last message—if he has to leave his army before they finish the march to Charax.”