Eventually he would rise and join his father, who had set up a headquarters in the Portico of Agrippa across the road. Since the Urban Prefect hadn't arrived, Saxa had taken charge of rescue and the firefighting-which, thanks to the rain, wasn't the danger which a shower of burning timbers could have posed.
Eventually he would get up; but not now.
"Good afternoon, Lord Varus," Pandareus said from close beside him. "A very good one, in as much as we are both alive and Carce is not a flaming ruin."
Varus jumped to his feet. "Master!" he said.
Then, more calmly and with a smile for himself, "I'm sorry, I was completely lost in myself. 'In thought', I would say, but I think what I was really doing was trying not to think."
Before Pandareus could reply, Varus really looked at him. "Alive, yes," he said, "but what happened to you, Master? Are you really all right?"
The left side of teacher's face was badly swollen. The greasy look was probably unguent smeared on the cut over the cheekbone, but it looked terrible. Both his wrists were splinted, though his fingers seemed to move normally.
"Quite well, really," Pandareus said. The swelling distorted his smile, but it was clearly meant to be cheerful. "Though our ship fell to the ground, I managed to hold on to the railing. Unfortunately-"
He lifted his forearms to call attention to the splints.
"-I appear to have injured myself that way as well, though not as badly as would have happened if I had been thrown out. Pulto assures me that in a month I will be able to swing a sword just as ably as I ever could."
Varus went blank, then giggled in what he realized was release. Only then did Pandareus let his battered face warm in a smile.
"Corylus is all right, then?" Varus asked, raising his head. A pair of mounted couriers raced up the road from the barracks of the City Watch and headed south down the Flaminian Way. Only Hercules knew what they were doing.
Varus grinned wryly, glad to realize that he was regaining an interest in life. The rain seemed to be slacking, though his toga was so sodden already that walking in it would be like wearing a waterfall. Wool could absorb enormous quantities of water.
"Master Corylus is well," Pandareus said, "which is quite remarkable-even granting that I knew from our first meeting that he was an athlete as well as a scholar. He took his companions into the enclosure around the Altar of Peace, and his man Pulto is standing in the entrance to see to it that they're not disturbed. Pulto seemed pleased to see me and bandage my wrists, though."
"I'm glad of that," Varus said. He wondered who his friend's "companions" were and why they needed privacy. He could ask Corylus about that later, if he felt he had to know and if the information hadn't been volunteered. He shrugged in preparation to getting up, but the sloshing weight of his toga made him hesitate a little longer.
"Lady Hedia is in quite her usual form also," Pandareus said, "although she seems to have had received some rough handling in the recent past. She has taken your sister in hand and they're repairing their wardrobe and toilette in the shops of the portico."
"I'm sure mother is in better shape than whoever tried to get in her way," Varus said, smiling faintly. Until father got involved with magic, he hadn't appreciated how terrifying an enemy Hedia would be.
"I thought…," Pandareus said with a hint of reserve. "That I saw you and your sister arrive here on the back of a gryphon?"
"Yes," said Varus. "That's what it seemed to me also. It may have been a metaphor, though."
He lurched to his feet. The toga clung to his legs, threatening to bind him. Well, if that was the worst problem he had-and it was-then he was a very fortunate man, and Carce was fortunate also.
"Master?" he said. "Typhon isn't a danger any more, because of my sister. Alphena saved us all."
Pandareus lifted his chin in acknowledgement. "I gathered from what Lady Alphena said to your mother that the danger was past. I'm glad to have that confirmed, though. Your sister, ah, seemed distraught."
I really don't know what has been happening to my sister since she disappeared from our garden, Varus thought. And I think it will be better if I never try to learn.
Aloud he said, "Come, my honored teacher. I will greet my father, the consul; and then we too should look into a change of garments."
Alphena lay on the table under the hands of the masseur. He was a tall eunuch, a friend and perhaps relative of Abinnaeus, whose shop Hedia had taken over with her usual brusque authority. The clothier would be paid, of course, and probably greatly overpaid, but Alphena doubted he'd been thinking of money when he leaped to obey the cascade of orders.
Alphena had stopped crying. The rough toweling had warmed and dried her, and she'd found herself drifting into a blurred reverie punctuated by flashes of vivid memory.
She and Hedia lay with their heads in opposite directions on parallel tables-display tables, originally, but sturdy enough for this use-and each had turned her face to the right. When Alphena opened her eyes, her mother was looking at her.
"Are you feeling better, dear?" Hedia asked, her voice pulsing with the quick rhythm of the assistant masseur who chopped at her back with the edges of his hands. He was a Libyan with dark skin and tightly wound hair as coarse as wire.
Hedia had insisted that the master work on her daughter, so of course that was what happened. Alphena could watch the assistant, though, and she had been impressed by the economy, strength, and precision with which he moved. He'd make a good swordsman…
"I don't feel anything," Alphena said as the masseur worked the muscles of her right buttock with fingers as hard as wood. "I don't think I'll ever feel anything ever again!"
Her voice sounded petulant, even to herself, and she knew as she spoke that the words were a lie. She wouldn't have been able to judge the Libyan's skill if she hadn't resumed taking an interest in the world around her.
"That isn't true," she said flatly before her mother could say anything. "I don't want to feel anything, but I do."
To her furious amazement, she started crying again. "I feel awful! Awful! What they did was wrong!"
Hedia sat up abruptly. "You may all leave," she said, gesturing toward the outer door.
"At once, your ladyship," said Abinnaeus, who with his two assistants had been standing before the hanging which covered the storage room and stairs to the upper level. "Since your own attendants haven't arrived yet, would you like me to leave one of my boys? He speaks only Aramaic, though I suspect he's picked up some Common Greek. Not Latin, though, as he's only been in Carce for the past week."
"I think my daughter and I can pour our own wine in a crisis, Abinnaeus," Hedia said calmly. "Though if my maid Syra arrives, you may pass her through."
Smiling at Alphena, she said, "I sent a messenger to the house to bring my servants when I arrived, but I don't expect them to reach us for some while yet. I'll get some wine, dear."
Alphena sat up slowly. The masseur, his assistant, and the four attendants accompanying them went out first. They had started to pack up their paraphernalia, but after a quick discussion with Abinnaeus they had simply left it behind. The clothier's assistants chivied them to move faster.
Abinnaeus himself followed at the end of the procession. Before he banged the outer door behind him, he dropped a neatly folded packet on the table beside Alphena.
She picked it up: it was a napkin. She wiped her face and eyes, then blew her nose on it and set it down again.
Alphena had known that people obeyed her stepmother's orders, but nobody had given the shopkeeper an order about the napkin. Hedia surrounded herself with people who thought for themselves, which was a very different thing.