Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
Julia’s muscles felt like tenderized meat after riding until dark. By the time Alaric let her off the horse, she wanted to curl up and die.
They stopped in a dry gully under a low rock overhang. After hours of riding through trackless wastes and burned-out fields, avoiding the main roads and inhabited towns, she had no blessed idea where they were. Julia hoped Stilicho would be similarly confounded.
Alaric seemed unconcerned about capture. He left her in a tent at the edge of the camp, in the hands of those pale twins who followed him around. He gave them quiet instructions in Gothic and looked at her exactly once. An ice-blue glance that sliced through her like wind. Then he left.
The twins regarded her with ghost-pale eyes, rimmed in red. Julia glanced between them uneasily. They were wood from Alaric’s tree, but at least Alaric’s brutality had a reason behind it. She had a feeling these two just wanted to watch the world burn.
Even so. She was an Imperial Princess. She would not be afraid of two teenagers in a musty tent. “Well?” she demanded. “What did he say just now?”
One of them gave a devil smirk. “He said not to kill you unless the Romans attack.”
“But don’t worry,” the other added. “You are gently born, so we would do it quick.”
“Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” Julia muttered. She glanced around the tent. Unfurnished and plain, it appeared to be a simple cavalry tent. “Is this how Alaric always entertains his high-ranking hostages?”
“Sometimes he lets us have fun with them. Finger breaking. Eyeball gouging. That sort of thing.” One of them grinned, his canines strangely sharp. “We send bits of you back to your people, to encourage them to pay ransom.”
Julia eyed the long knives at their waists with trepidation. She wasn’t entirely sure they were joking. But even if they were—they were right that Alaric would ransom her back to her brother. She was a windfall dropped in his lap. It was what she would do, in his situation.
Alaric must not ransom her back. Going back to Honorius might as well be a death sentence. Instead she must persuade him to provide her with the army she needed, so she could go back on her terms.
Of course, that was easier said than done.
Seduce him , Cleopatra whispered in her mind. A strange, deep thrill shot through her— No. The very idea was beneath her. Besides, she could offer a homeland. Surely that was more beguiling than momentary pleasure.
The boys settled in front of the doorway. Julia crouched on the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest, trying to control her rising impatience. Alaric could be making plans to get word to Honorius even now. She had to get to him.
The boys unrolled a scrap of cloth. It was a portable latrones board, stitched into a scrap of old leather. Julia edged closer. “Is that latrones ?”
One of them slanted her a speculative glance. “You play?”
“Will you teach me?” Boys loved teaching things to girls.
“All right.” Soon they were talking over each other, explaining the rules. There were a few differences from the way she’d learned the game, but Julia could adapt.
As they spoke, Julia pulled out the flask Verina had given her. Pure Blue Lotus, in unwatered wine. The boys looked at it with curiosity. “It’s from the banquet.”
One of the boys took the flask without hesitation, taking a long, hard pull. He frowned. “This doesn’t taste like wine.”
“It’s Caecuban. A rare vintage. Very special.”
The boy shrugged and passed the flask to his brother. Eventually they passed it back to her. She took a small sip. Just enough to dull her fear. She would need all her courage for the conversation with Alaric to come.
They had names, these barbarian twins. And they were not quite as identical as they seemed. Hengist was slightly taller, with a quiet, introspective air about him; Horsa, the one with the chipped front tooth, seemed the more wild. Julia examined the tooth necklaces that circled their necks and wondered if those were wolf teeth and whether they’d had to kill the wolves themselves. She decided not to ask.
She watched them drink and listened to them launch into further explanations of the rules, trying to look vapid as empty sky.
The play began. Outside, horses snorted; men walked by with weapons jangling. The world shrunk to the sixty-four squares in front of her and the cool, soothing click of the stones in her hands. She’d forgotten how she’d loved this, once. There had been a time when her father used to call his generals in to try to defeat her. And beam with pride when they failed.
Meanwhile, she drank herself, just a little, and watched the boys carefully. She would take only enough to assuage suspicion, and dull the jittery anxiety that swept through her as she contemplated spending time in Alaric’s company. She would not enter his presence afraid.
The boys were not inured to this drug. They would crash into sleep, any moment now. And then she would go seize her destiny.
* * *
What Alaric remembered most about his childhood was the starving time.
It had begun with the Huns. He had an old memory of them lined up on the north bank of the Danube, hulked over their tough little ponies. A line of houses blazing, a smell like cooking meat. Then the river’s overwhelming current. Clinging to a hand and losing it.
Those who made it across the river were warehoused in camps. The emperor had sent food, but the Roman guards had stolen or sold it. He promised land, but year after year, the refugees stayed trapped on the river’s south bank until parents were selling children into slavery for the promise of a full belly. Even his proud father had been reduced to taking the deal the guards offered: one child for the slaver’s block, one dog for the roasting spit. At least, his father explained to him, his new Roman master would feed him when his parents could not.
That princess was now his people’s only chance at avoiding that again.
Alaric strode through the camp, on his way back from checking their boundaries for threats. A thing he did compulsively. This gully was well hidden, a haven for smugglers. They’d gone sixty miles today, avoiding the villages and main roads, in a direction Stilicho would not anticipate. They had seen no riders following them; that meant Stilicho was probably using his limited troops to block the ports.
They would have to be very careful indeed to avoid being spitted on a Roman sword.
“Alaric.” It was Riga, the Hunnic mercenary, stepping into his path, laughing as if at some private jest. “You’d better come to your tent. You have a visitor.”
* * *
Alaric thrust aside the door flap with one arm, staring with no small measure of astonishment down at the princess Julia.
She was staring up at him, swaying slightly on her feet and looking surprised to see him in his own damn tent.
Alaric glanced at Riga, speaking in Gothic. “How the hell did she get in here?”
“Mystery to me. I think she’s drunk.”
That much was certain. There was a fresh scent of wine on the woman’s breath, and an unfocused look to her eyes that spoke of something more. Opium, maybe.
He switched to her own Imperial Latin. “Hello, Julia.”
“Send your men away, won’t you?” She looked at him beseechingly. The pitch-perfect tone of a manipulator in distress. “What I have to say concerns your ears alone.”
Alaric gave her a particularly nasty smile. “No.”
Clearly people didn’t tell her that very often. Julia’s delicate jaw clenched and her eyes lit with temper. “Have it your way. I’ll say it right here.” She raised her chin. “You were talking to the wrong child of Theodosius at that banquet. I’m here to give you an empire.”
* * *
If Julia was capable of one thing in this world, it was holding her liquor.
She’d drunk only enough to drown the fear. But now, craning her neck to meet the barbarian king’s gaze, she realized too late that it hadn’t worked. She was terrified.
His eyes slid to her lips and suddenly she was very aware of his nearness, in a way entirely different than fear.
“You have my attention, Julia.” He gave her a mocking smile—he knew exactly the effect he had on her, damn him—and crossed the tent, taking a seat in a battered camp chair. At his signal, one of his men brought her a three-legged stool. “Sit.” She did. “What is it you want?”
So blunt. If I was a man, I would be given all the courtesies. She needed wine, of the nondrugged variety; that would calm her nerves. “I believe it’s customary to offer refreshment to a royal guest before negotiations.”
“So, we are to negotiate now,” he said softly. But to her surprise, he acquiesced. At another of his wordless signals, someone handed him a wineskin. Alaric poured some onto the ground, speaking in Gothic. Then he drank, muscles moving in the golden column of his throat. “A tradition among my people,” he told her solemnly, offering her the wineskin. “We drink to Woden, that he may grant us wise and fruitful conversation.”
Julia eyed what he offered with trepidation. She’d never drunk to honor a barbarian god. She wasn’t sure such an action was entirely sanitary.
But there was challenge in Alaric’s eyes. He didn’t think she had the nerve.
Julia snatched the wineskin with firm resolve. “Wise and fruitful indeed,” she said, smiling through her teeth. Then she put the wineskin to her lips and drank deep. Searing fire streaked down her throat. “Bloody hell ,” she managed, bent in half by a fit of gasping coughs. “What in all that’s holy is this?”
“ Ealu. A liquor made from barley.” He watched her struggle with cool dispassion. “If it is too strong for you, we have water—”
“A pox on your water.” She took another swallow. The bright, burning line lit up the inside of her throat again, but this time she was ready.
The drink was good. The drink was what she needed.
* * *
“Does she know she’s supposed to sip it?” Riga asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
“Perhaps we should tell her,” Ataulf mused, looking not the least inclined to do it.
“We can’t let her drink all of it. That’s the last of the batch.” Thorismund sounded distinctly irate. “If you piss-weasels won’t stop her, I will.”
“No.” Alaric held up a hand. “Let her dig her own grave.”
Whatever she wanted, she seemed intent on making a fool of herself in getting it. Maybe she’d come to seduce him to her cause, he thought, eyes lazily tracing the fine lines of her collarbones. Maybe he’d let her try. “You’ve had your drink.” Custom demanded they pass the skin back and forth between them, taking small sips as offer met with counteroffer. Julia gave no sign she intended to pass it back. “Now, speak.”
Her voice dropped low, the affected purr of a gifted seductress. “You plan to ransom me, but I have a better proposition. We share the same enemy—my brother. Put me on his throne, and you can have any land you want. Point to a place on a map, and it’s yours.”
Not a chance. He had been betrayed for the last time by Theodosius and his children. “Put you on the throne.” Alaric struggled not to laugh. “You.”
She frowned. “You laugh because I was born a woman.”
“I laugh because you were born a lapdog. Perhaps I should let my people bleed and die to raise one of your brother’s peacocks to the purple. It makes just as much sense.”
The look she gave him could freeze fire. “They’re cockerels .”
“I wonder,” he mused lazily, “what would drive an emperor’s sister to slip me a knife in the middle of a battle and engineer her own kidnapping?”
“You’ve met my promised husband. Olympius,” she said coolly. “I loathe the very ground he stands on.”
She meant it well enough; the venom in her voice was real. So, the woman was running away from her engagement. “And what is this to do with me?”
“Honorius ordered me to marry him. The only way to argue with Honorius is with an army at my back.” She raised her eyes, blue-green and fierce as a cat in a trap. “Your army.”
* * *
Julia took another hard slug from the wineskin. If she just kept drinking, she could be Cleopatra. “You will need allies when the time comes,” she informed the barbarian warlord who was currently glaring at her in an intimidating fashion. “No one knows the snake pit of Roman politics like I do. You cannot hold Rome by force of arms alone. Take it, maybe, but not hold it.”
“Who says I want to hold it? Maybe I just want to see it burn.” He bared his teeth in a brutal smile. “Grow up, woman. What does it matter if you hate your husband? Marriage does not follow love; it never has. You’d be less of a fool to lie on your back as you were made to do.”
Julia bristled. A searing flush swept across her body—bright heat just beneath the skin. Outrage choked her throat. The nerve.
“How far down the peninsula do you think you’ll get without support from at least some of the people?” she snapped. “Not everyone in Rome is happy at my brother’s rise. I could lend your next invasion legi— legi timacy.” Somehow her tongue got tangled over the word. “And beyond that, money. I have a fortune in villas all up and down the coast. All yours, King of the Goths.” She let out a hiccup. When had there become two of him? “I think I should sit down.”
Alaric’s reply seemed to come from the bottom of a well. Julia barely heard. Slowly she slid off the chair and onto the bearskin rug.
* * *
Alaric watched the princess slide off the stool and list onto the bearskin like a sinking ship. That last pull from the wineskin had been the one that broke her.
He could not trust a thing she said, of course. She was a daughter of Theodosius; she’d shred any agreement the moment it suited her.
Even so, he wanted her. Even now.
“You’re already sitting.” She ignored that. He knelt beside her and offered her water, which she regarded with scorn.
“I’d be emperor already if I were a man,” she declared accusingly.
“Certainly,” he drawled. “Drink.”
She took the waterskin. Up close she smelled of ealu and sweat and beneath it the intoxicating scent of roses. She took a sip and grimaced. “This is water .”
He laughed. “And what else should it be?”
She stared up at him as if just realizing he was there. Eyes green as gemstones one moment, dark blue the next, like the sea over a vast crevasse. “What else do you want from me, King of the Goths?” Her lush red lips curved in a drowsy, knowing smile. Her hand rested boldly on his arm. A scorching burn.
Fuck. He’d put her in the farthest tent from his. He’d been scrupulously careful. “Do you even know what you’re offering, Julia?”
“I—” She let the sentence fall away, her mouth a breath from his, begging to be plundered. Fuck it. He could send his men away, then press her back on this bearskin and take what she offered. He would make her sob for him. It would be his own kind of revenge.
“I believe I shall take a nap,” the princess Julia announced to the room at large, fingers curling in the bearskin. “I am indisposed. You may all come back later. Come back tomorrow.” Then she lay down on her side on Alaric’s bearskin rug and let out a particularly loud snork .
For a breath, quiet reigned in his tent.
“Well,” Riga said cheerfully. “Now what?”
“Let’s have a bit of fun with her,” Thorismund growled. “Show her the consequences of drinking the last of a man’s batch.”
“Maybe tie her to a stake outside,” Riga said agreeably. “Leave her for the beasts.”
“Not one of you touches her.” Alaric spoke softly but with a force that shut them up.
The edge of her stola rode up her perfect leg and he took off his cloak to cover her.
There was a thin line of drool dangling from her mouth now. Drool. Alaric shook his head in disgust. He didn’t even like this woman.
“We cannot take her,” Ataulf said. “She’s a distraction.”
Alaric glanced pointedly at Ataulf’s new lover, the Gothic ex-slave with the calculating eyes, who had stayed conspicuously quiet. “As if you don’t have your own distractions.”
“Do you honestly think the Romans will bargain for her? She’s defied her own brother.”
“They’ll bargain,” Alaric said. “The boy emperor can’t afford to look so weak as to have his kin kidnapped out from under him.” He lifted his eyes to the twins, who had come bursting into the tent just now. He hadn’t the patience for whatever elaborate excuse they’d no doubt invented to explain their failure to keep the princess confined. “Take her back to the tent,” he ordered them before they could say a word. He would deal with them later.
Then he called his men around him and bent over the maps, the plan for their escape already building in his mind.