Chapter 15. Now Maris
NOW: MARIS
There were three whole seconds when time wound back, like light spinning backward over a sundial.
Iola stood half veiled in shadow, the glow of firelight soft and warm behind her.
It was terrifying how quickly I forgot the last six months, memory wiped clean of it all.
My mother’s blood on the floor, the bodies hanging from the bridge, Luca’s voice whispering my name in the dark.
For those few seconds, the sight of Iola drove it all away.
She leaned out of the doorway, checking the stairs behind me before she took hold of my chiton and pulled me inside.
“What are you doing here?” she rasped.
Zuri slipped in behind me before the door shut and the bolt dropped into place.
Iola’s eyes ran over me, wide and bright as if she couldn’t believe I was standing there.
I wasn’t sure I could, either. I’d been sure I’d never see her again, and I found myself studying the lines of her face, the curl of her hair, to convince myself she was real.
“Maris,” Iola whispered again, impatient, “you shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe. For any of us.”
She led me deeper into the flat, where the glow of the oil lamps swelled in the back room.
The window was open to a western view of the city, but the Citadel District was completely dark, its boundary visible only by the moonlight that sparkled on the surface of the river.
There was a time when the district shone brighter than anything in the city.
Now it was just a place that had lost all its light.
“By the gods, I thought you’d be on the other side of the walls by now.” She pulled the curtains closed.
My eyes drifted past her to the kitchens, where a small round of dough was rising.
There was a steaming pot of water that smelled of herbs and jars of what looked like prunes cooling.
It was a sight too familiar, the woman who’d raised me fluttering in the kitchen with the scent of food in the air.
When the fighting first began, I’d been kept awake by nightmares of her and Zuri starving or sick, the domus flattened.
But it appeared they were making do better than most.
When she finally stopped to look at me, a long breath escaped her. She softened, hand finding my face. “Do you know what they’re doing to members of Magistrate families if they find them on this side of the river? You need to get out of this city. Now.”
“I can’t.” My voice was a small thing.
“Families from the Citadel District have paid to be smuggled out. Gods know your mother can afford it.”
“She’s dead,” I said flatly, and it was maybe the first time that it felt true.
The lack of emotion in my words mirrored the look on Iola’s face.
For years, she’d cared for me as if I were her own, but she’d never had a drop of love for my mother.
When Iola came to our household, she’d barely been fifteen, tasked with raising me like so many other young women from the Lower City.
She’d done it for a meager wage that barely helped to keep her and Zuri fed.
Now I was a woman, a far cry from the girl she’d put to sleep each night.
I swallowed against the thick feeling in my throat. “I need your help,” I said again.
“I can’t get you out,” Iola whispered, paling just a little.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then what is it? What do you need?” she said, breathless. As if whatever it was, she was ready to give it.
“I need you to get me into the Loyal Legion’s camp.”
Iola’s hands fell heavily to her sides, her owlish eyes widening. “Are you mad?”
Behind her, Zuri watched us nervously.
“I know you work in the camp.” I moved toward her, but she stepped out of reach. “I know you serve Centurion Matius.”
The cold, sterile mention of his rank and family name was all I could muster. Even thinking about letting his given name pass through my lips made my heart feel like it was in my stomach.
Iola gave Zuri a quick, furious glance. She didn’t need to voice the reproach for it to be felt in every corner of the room. “If I’d known you were spying for a Magistrate—”
“I’m no spy,” he snapped.
“What are you thinking, putting him in that kind of danger?” Iola turned her attention back to me. “Nearly every moment of my day is spent keeping him from joining up with the New Legion and getting himself blown to pieces.”
She stared at me, the tightness of her mouth relaxing just a little. It took me a moment to realize she wasn’t waiting for an explanation. She was already putting it together herself.
“The grain,” she said. “It’s from you.”
Zuri cleared his throat awkwardly. I didn’t know what explanation he’d given for the grain he’d been bringing home, but it was clear Iola didn’t know about him crossing the Sophanes.
The dole was the city’s allotment of grain to its citizens.
A sacrifice the people of the lower city had made when they chose a side.
“I need to get into the camp. I need to see him.” Again, I couldn’t bring myself to speak his name aloud.
“They will kill you, Maris. Especially now.” Her voice rose in pitch. “And you’re not the only one. They’ll turn on Matius if they think he’s got any allegiance to you. You’re putting him at risk.”
“It’s time now, Iola.” I reached up, finding the talisman at my throat and squeezing it in my palm. She was a devout woman who’d taught me to fear the gods. I didn’t know how or why, but they were the reason I was here.
A sound lifted in the kitchen and I fell quiet, listening. The sound was a broken, fragile thing. A soft, whimpering cry.
I took a step toward the doorway, hands slipping from the talisman when I saw the linen blanket in the basket moving. It was the sound of a baby.
Iola pushed past me, scooping the tiny thing up and tucking it against her breast. The swatch of pale cream linen unraveled until I saw a tiny face.
Full, round cheeks were warmed with a flush, lips pursed and parted as Iola opened her chiton.
The child stretched in her arms, arching its back and rooting to nurse.
I stared at Iola, trying to understand what I was seeing. It had been only six months since the rebellion began and I had last seen her.
“You have a child,” I murmured.
Iola gave me a look I couldn’t read. It wasn’t guilt or shame. It almost seemed as if she pitied me. And for a moment, I pitied myself.
“You’re a mother,” I said, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes.
“I am.”
Iola’s place as a servant had made the choice of motherhood for her—she wouldn’t bear a child she couldn’t care for.
She was young enough to be my sister, but I’d become her daughter.
Looking at her now, with her own flesh and blood cradled in her arms, I could see for the first time how foolish it all was.
I’d come to Iola because I trusted her. Because I had no one else.
She was the closest thing to a mother I had, but now this woman had a real child.
“When? How?” I stumbled over the half-formed questions, trying to think back to those days before she left.
“Does that matter now?”
My gaze trailed over the flat again, looking for any sign of a man, but there wasn’t one. Whoever fathered the child didn’t live here.
The weeks before the Philosopher died were a hazy blur in my mind, like paint smeared over a canvas.
The baby still had a frailty to its cry that sounded new.
If I had to guess, I would say the child was less than two months old.
That meant Iola had been pregnant before I last saw her.
How had I missed that? Why hadn’t she told me?
“You were already leaving,” I said, putting it together. That was what she’d been trying to tell me that day when Luca came to the villa.
I won’t always be here to protect you. Not from them. Not from yourself.
She’d been leaving long before the Philosopher was killed. And why wouldn’t she? I was a grown woman now. No longer the child that skipped along on her heels in the market, one hand clutched to the length of her chiton.
Iola stepped back into the light, gaze moving over my face. “They’re saying the New Legion will take the Citadel District any day.” Her mouth twisted in a way that was so familiar that it hurt to look at. “You should leave, Maris.”
I could feel it suddenly—the teetering weight of the city around us. She was right. It was all about to come crashing down, and when it did, the child she held to her breast would inherit what was left.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” I said, voice lost to the heavy silence in the room. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
The baby’s wide brown eyes were open and looking up at me now. The child didn’t make a sound, both arms now freed from the wrap, feet kicking.
I pulled a bracelet from my pocket, setting it on the table. The lamplight gleamed on the polished gold like a writhing flame. It was a pathetic gesture, but the only one I could make. When all this was over, Iola and this child would have a life to build.
Iola’s voice dropped low. “You’re going to need that, Maris.” Her eyes were on the bracelet. “On the other side of the walls.”
I felt a sad smile tug at the corners of my mouth. “I’m not leaving.”
The meaning of the words fell heavy around us. If I didn’t leave, like Iola said, I was damning myself to an inevitable fate we could both see coming. But I’d sworn by the names of the gods that I wouldn’t walk through those gates unless Luca was with me. And he’d made the choice for both of us.
Iola pressed the bracelet back into my hand anyway. I looked down at the baby, who was still watching me with calm, wide eyes. “What did the gods name your child?”
Iola stroked the little face in a gesture that was so maternal and foreign to me. “Muriel,” she said. “Muriel Rullias.”
Iola’s family name had been meant to die with her and Zuri, the last children of their lineage. Now it would live on. When all this was finished, her family would lay the bricks to rebuild this city. Without me.