Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
If anyone looks at us wrong, I’ll slit her throat myself.
Julia spent the entire way from the palace in stark fear of an errant glance. Alaric seemed entirely capable of carrying out that threat. The wine and Blue Lotus still coursed through her, but the fiery courage that had inspired her to press her knife into Alaric’s hand was gone. Now she felt sick and exhausted, alcohol sweating through her pores.
Alaric was up ahead, laughing with his men in Gothic as if this was an afternoon picnic. Alaric of the Goths seemed like the kind of person whose idea of a picnic involved the taking of hostages. She was starting to believe she’d made a terrible mistake.
But outside the city, his laughter evaporated and a fierce, focused look came to his face, like a man attempting to walk the sharp edge of a sword. Julia caught barely a glimpse of him before she was surrounded by a throng of men and horses. Then the wine sickness claimed her and the swamp closed hot and thick around her.
There was a cart, and then a boat. The moon shone high on stretches of watery marshland threaded through with sluggish rivers, and a heavy hand of exhaustion pressed her down flat in the bottom of the boat. Eventually she curled up in a pool of warm and brackish water and slept.
* * *
Julia awoke slung like a feather bolster over the back of a galloping horse.
For a blinding moment, all she knew was pain. A pounding apocalypse of blood in her head and the ground rushing by at terrible speed, stubbled with rocks and hard little hillocks. The animal’s flank was a wall of surging muscle inches from her face and every stride sent a breath-stealing jolt into her stomach.
“Let me up.” She had barely the breath to say it. “I can’t breathe. Let me up .”
A hand grabbed the back of her dress and the world righted itself with a dizzying lurch, mountains and trees and sunset-stained horizon falling into place. Julia looked down and saw thick, muscled wrists; strong, square hands controlling the reins. She recognized those hands.
Dear God, what have I done?
Alaric of the Goths guided the horse at breakneck speed over rough country. I am going to die , Julia thought. I am going to die, thrown from this horse, my head dashed open on a rock. Her stomach rebelled and whatever she had eaten last night shot up her throat. She had to get off this horse. It had to be now .
“Stop!” she shouted. He was either perversely ignoring her or couldn’t hear her over the sound of their passage. The beast gave another lurch and suddenly there was no more time. Julia leaned over and retched.
The horse came to a bone-jerking standstill. She was on the ground and there was a stream. The water was very clear; little fish darted among colorful stones as the remains of last night’s dinner came up her throat.
Behind her, the ground shook beneath the hooves of galloping horsemen. Julia shut her eyes, up against the hard wall of her own sobriety. The night before assembled itself in her memory. The taster falling forward into a plate of roasted swan. Herself, pressing a knife into Alaric’s hand. What a joke. The one thing she’d succeeded at since she’d decided to become a player was getting kidnapped by Goths.
A hand touched her shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her skin.
It was Bromios. He stared down at her grimly, the bruise on his cheek turning yellow. He looked positively like a villain.
Julia had never been so relieved. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Saving my skin. Someone had to guide Alaric of the Goths through the swamps.” He glanced at the surging knot of men and horses kicking up dust behind them. “I overheard them talking. I’m concerned our reward will be a gash to the throat.”
“That monster! I rescued him from that banquet!” But what should she expect? Alaric was a lawless barbarian. “I will handle him,” Julia said calmly. “I shall speak to him like one royal to another.” Her brother set the bar low; no doubt he’d be grateful simply to have his status honored as King of the Goths.
Bromios’s expression was carefully bland. “I think I’d better do the talking.”
Then he glanced over her shoulder, his face going pale.
Alaric of the Goths stood behind her, leaning on his spear. Watching them. His eyes sharp slices of blue beneath heavy lids.
With deliberate calm, Julia rose and turned to face the screaming calamity her life had become. She inclined her head regally. “I owe you my thanks, King of the Goths. I am in your debt.”
The polite answer would be to acknowledge that he was equally in her debt, considering it was her quick thinking that had saved his life. He did not offer the polite answer. Instead his gaze drifted down in a lazy perusal that was nothing short of insolent.
She gritted her teeth. He wasn’t even pretending at civility now.
Bromios shoved in front of her—elbowing her hard in the ribs—and threw himself at the warlord’s feet. “Please, King Alaric! It was I who led you out of the city through the smugglers’ ways, and now I beg that you take me with you. I can be useful! I know all the secret ways from here to the mountains—I can play the lute—I can find you the best wine and opium. Only don’t leave my poor carcass here, I beg you—”
One of Alaric’s men wandered up in the midst of this tirade. He was barely taller than Julia, his hair golden, loose, and brushing his shoulders. He and Alaric exchanged a glance as Bromios continued his pleading tirade. The other man said something in rapid-fire Gothic; Alaric’s reply was curt.
The blond one spoke in Latin. “Can you sit a horse?”
“Of course I can!”
Julia snorted. What a lie. Bromios had never ridden a horse in his life.
But the man swung up on his horse and pulled Bromios after. Julia could only stare, outraged, as the two of them galloped off, Bromios waving goodbye with a mouthed good luck . Leaving her alone with Alaric.
That little brigand.
Alaric was still watching her, amusement gleaming in his eyes. “That’s an impressive weight of metal on you.” There was a Gothic edge to his Latin that wasn’t there last night. “I’m surprised you can stand.”
“I brought it for you, King of the Goths.” She would not avert her eyes like a slave. “I wish to propose an alliance.”
He laughed softly. “Perhaps I should tell you that among my people, it’s the man who offers the dowry.”
A bright heat rose to her face. Blushing! What was wrong with her? He said nothing, only raised a hand and Julia flinched back, almost putting herself in the stream. Oh good God, he’s going to throttle me and toss me in a ditch.
But instead he reached behind her hair and undid the clasps at her throat.
Julia fell utterly silent as he bent to his task, bronze hair falling forward, each brush of his fingertips sending bright shocks down her spine. His fingers were deft at her neck, undoing the clasps of a dozen necklaces as if he had infinite practice denuding ladies of their jewels.
When he pulled back, she was breathless.
“Your rings?”
She flushed hot. “Oh. Yes. Of course.” She slid off the rings—seven of them, all heavy gold and delicate filigrees and gemstones worth a kingdom—and gave them into his hands without a thought.
Only then did she realize she’d given him her mother’s ring too.
“There is an opal ring among those you took. I’d like it back.” She drew a careful breath. “It’s worth nothing to you, but a great deal to me.”
“Too late, woman. What’s yours is mine now. Consider your debt paid.” He grinned rakishly. “Ravenna is sixty miles to the southeast. That way.” He pointed. “Good luck.”
And then he turned on his heel and strode off into the churning dust.
Julia stared after him, open-mouthed. This could not be happening. He could not simply leave her here, to be scooped up by some passing patrol. She hitched up her torn skirt and plunged into the mob of men and horses, barely avoiding being trampled to death.
She found him holding the reins of that enormous black mountain of a horse, his head bent in conversation with another of his men. “A word, if you please, King of the Goths.”
He turned, and something in his ice-blue eyes made Julia step back. What the hell was she doing? Bodies impaled below the walls. Starvation in the streets. She would be lucky to have this man release her to her fate. Grow a spine , she admonished herself. “You cannot possibly leave me here. I am far too valuable to simply leave by the side of the road like a—”
“Valuable?” Amusement flashed across his face. “I doubt I’d get more than a quarter talent if I tried to ransom you.”
Julia’s jaw dropped. A quarter talent? “Just who do you think you’ve abducted? Some expensive Greek house slave?”
Alaric swept her a glance, coolly evaluative; she could practically feel him weighing the value of her like a sack of wheat. “You think you are worth more?”
She had a terrible feeling he was toying with her. “I’m worth more than your entire two-cent army. You’ve never seen as much money as I’m worth.”
He was laughing now; a warm, powerfully infectious sound she could sink into like a bath—if only it wasn’t at her. “Woman, you’re smeared in filth and you reek of wine and vomit. If I left you by the roadside in this state, not even the swineherds would touch you.” Beside him, the giant warhorse stamped an impatient hoof. “Now go, and do not test my mercy. The boy emperor misses his concubine.” And then, in one fluid motion, he was up on his big black horse.
Julia stared, speechless. Concubine. The man had no blessed idea who she was.
* * *
Alaric nudged his horse forward, thinking that would be the end of it. The woman had other ideas. She lunged for the reins. Hannibal reared up, all black muscle and flying hooves.
“I’m not a concubine, you idiot,” she shouted. “I’m Honorius’s sister .”
Hannibal didn’t like people messing with his head. Alaric fought to control his furious horse before he stove her skull in with his hooves. “Let go,” he barked at her, but she didn’t. Her fist was clamped on the rein as if her life depended on it.
Only then did he realize what she’d said.
He managed to calm Hannibal, stroking the bunched muscles on his quivering neck. “You are the emperor’s sister.” It beggared belief. “You.”
Even from this distance, she smelled like a winery. But he watched her draw herself up, her face smoothing into a proud, flawless self-possession that could credibly be Imperial, despite the ruin of her clothes and the wild, sunset wreck of her hair. A neat transformation.
“I am Julia Augusta, second child of Theodosius and the empress Galla. Sister and daughter to emperors,” she declared.
Well. This changed the calculus. Twice before, he’d tried to carve a homeland from the Empire’s stinking corpse. Maybe this time, with an Imperial hostage in his pocket, it would all end differently. And this way he would not be going back to his people empty-handed.
Alaric grinned in a way that made her back up a step. “Princess, it would seem your ransom value has just shot up tremendously.”
Then he reached down and hauled her up before him on the horse.