“Astra.”
“I’m sorry for the way I acted today,” he said. “I was upset at the death of Clavius… and at what his death has cost me. Later I realized you had to have been telling me the truth about the white lotus.”
Astra said nothing, surprised at the unexpected apology.
“I’d like to talk with you,” he said. “Can I escort you to wherever you’re going?”
“My errand… wasn’t important,” she stammered. Thanks to the quake, Morella would be putting her place back together now, in no mood to answer questions. “It can wait until tomorrow. I must get back to my Academy-Readers will be on call to locate people buried in the earthquake damage and to treat the injured.”
She turned to head back up the passageway-and found the wreckage of the scaffolding blocking her way.
“Allow me, Magister!” Zanos said as he swept her up in his arms. Startled by his boldness, she was still groping for words of protest after the gladiator had easily carried her over the debris and set her on her feet.
“Do you always give such ‘help’ to people?” she asked disapprovingly.
“Only to my friends.” He smiled as he took her arm and began to lead the way. “I’ll come with you-there may be other places like this. I’ll help you back to your Academy, and you tell me how Clavius got that white lotus. He certainly didn’t have money to pay for it.”
As they walked, Astra collected her thoughts. “You didn’t give me the chance this afternoon to tell you exactly what I found. There was only a trace of white lotus in Clavius’ blood. If he used the drug regularly, he could not have had any in the past few days.”
Zanos nodded. “Everybody in the stadium was watching the match, but I was concentrating on Clavius.
He had a habit of dropping his guard when he got overconfident. But his actions just before he died could have been like those of someone craving white lotus…”
“Like an addict who had been deprived of it,” Astra mused, “and was just beginning to become irrational. Yes, that would make sense… provided Clavius was taking only small amounts.”
“I don’t think he was ‘taking’ it,” Zanos insisted. “I’ve been in the games for a long time, Magister.
Athletes are sometimes stupid enough to take drugs they think will help them win. Painkillers, to participate despite an injury. Stimulants. But white lotus is not something a gladiator would take willingly-it does nothing at all to improve performance, and taking it for happy dreams means the risk of having it wear off at a crucial moment, leaving the user helpless.”
“Then-?” Astra prompted.
“Somebody drugged my man-or addicted him to the drug and then used him against me. Maybe he was supposed to throw the match today and refused- and his supplier cut off his drugs.” He looked down at her, his eyes earnest. “I do not want to think Clavius was disloyal to me… and now there is no way to question him. “
“The amount in his bloodstream was very small,” said Astra. “He could not have been taking it for long.
You could be right that it was slipped to him without his even knowing it. It’s tasteless.”
Zanos nodded. “Oh, yes-there’s nothing unusual about someone buying a gladiator a cup of wine.
Clavius won four days ago; those who had won on him bought him so much wine at the celebration that he passed out. The drug could have been slipped to him then.”
“But by whom?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might.”
Astra caught flickering images of various faces from Zanos’ mind. All of them were unknown to her, except one-the face of Vortius.
“Do you think your other men are in danger, Zanos?”
“Good question,” he replied grimly. “Fortunately, I have ways of finding out. Perhaps I don’t know everything that goes on in The Maze, but I keep informed. I live near here, you know,” he said, suddenly changing the subject. Astra had expected him to ask her to Read his men. Strange. What was he afraid she would find?
“Let me show you my house,” Zanos continued smoothly. “Should you need it, you will know where you can always find help in this part of town.”
Astra did not miss the hopeful tone in his voice, and Read his intention as sincere-yet he had adroitly steered away from the obvious. She reassessed her earlier opinion of him as stupid, but what was he hiding?
Zanos’ home was a small villa, the most impressive dwelling in the area. “I didn’t know that a retired gladiator could live in such grand style, ” she commented.
Zanos gave a short, rueful laugh. “I may soon lose this ‘grand style’… the villa, my fighters- everything. I lost a lot of money today, and if certain people have their way I could lose a lot more.” An angry look crossed his face, and Astra suppressed a shiver-she couldn’t Read his thoughts at that moment.
Zanos’ pleasant smile suddenly returned. “Come on,” he said, taking her arm again. “It’s too cold to stand out here.”
“Don’t you want to see what damage the earthquake did to your house?” she asked.
“My servants will clean it up. That house is very well built-at most, the quake oroke a few dishes.”
But many buildings were not so well constructed. As they made their way along the street, they came to a spot where a ramshackle apartment building had collapsed. People were digging furiously in the rubble, women weeping as they tried to drag broken beams off the pile.
“Magister!” cried a man as he heaved part of a wall into the street and turned to find someone in Reader’s robes. “Oh, Magister-tell us-are they alive?”
Astra didn’t need the women to converge on her, crying, “Our babies! Our children!” for she could Read four children inside the house-alive but trapped.
“Yes,” she told the mothers, “they’re alive-but we’ve got to get them out. It’s no use trying to get at them this way. They’ve fallen through to the cellar, and the rubble could collapse on them. Come around to the back. Zanos, please-”
He added his formidable strength to that of the other man as they heaved debris out of the stairwell leading down into the cellar. Hearing them, the children began to stir, the youngest to scream and the others to cry in terror.
Their mothers called to them, “It’s all right! We’re coming,” but the children either couldn’t hear over their own cries or were too frightened to be comforted by nothing but voices.
It was dark where the children were, and when they tried to move they encountered hard, sharp objects.
One little boy of perhaps five tried to stand, and gashed his head on something piercing the trash above him. Blood flowed into his eyes, and he cried even louder.
The two women tried to squeeze past the men as soon as they had an opening into the cellar, but Astra cried, “Wait! Be careful! All that stuff could come down on them!”
“I’ll get them,” said Zanos, and somehow levered his huge body through the opening they had created. In a moment he handed out the screaming baby into its mother’s eager arms, then the bleeding, crying boy.
Astra examined the wound, assuring the mother that it was nothing serious, the child more frightened than hurt.
Zanos, meanwhile, was trying to maneuver two little girls into position as they hindered him and one another by trying to climb out on their own. “Mama!
Mama!” they shouted, scraping knees and elbows on the debris and shoving each other-
“Here now,” said Zanos, “let me lift you-”
But just as he captured one of them and handed her out to her mother, the rubble shifted, knocking him down on top of the other child.
Both mothers and the three freed children began to scream in earnest, their panic taking hold of Astra, who was making no attempt to avoid Reading. For a moment she stood shaking, her brow sweating, her heart racing-and then she forced herself to take hold as she Read Zanos pinned under the debris, but still sheltering the child. Somehow, he had managed to hold the roof of rubble up with his own strong shoulders, instead of allowing it to knock him down to crush the girl beneath him.