Up-time politics would wreck them for her.
Chapter Three
Marcus had not known such fear since his one-time master had tricked him through the station's Roman gate and sold him back into a slavery from which Skeeter Jackson had rescued him. Abandoning the Down Time's bar without a backward glance, he bolted into the chaos loose on Commons, hard on the heels of Robert Li, the antiquarian who'd burst into the bar with the white-faced news: "Marcus! Someone's shot at Skeeter and Ianira!"
Ianira! Fear for her robbed breath he needed for running. Everything that was good and beautiful in his life had come through her, through the miracle of a highly-born woman who had been treated cruelly by her first husband, who had still managed, somehow, to love Marcus enough to want his touch, to want the love he had offered as very nearly the only thing in his power to give her. He had been a slave and although Marcus was free now in a way he had never dreamed possible, he would never be a wealthy man, could never give Ianira the kind of life she deserved.
If anything had happened to her, anything... He could not conceive of a life without her. And their children, how could he tell their beautiful little girls they would never see their mother again? Please, he prayed to the gods of his Gallic childhood, to the Roman gods of his one-time masters, but especially to the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus, the Great Mother of all living creatures, whose temple Ianira had served as a child in that ancient goddess' holy city, please let her be unharmed and safe...
Marcus was struggling to thrust himself through a packed crowd at the edge of Urbs Romae when a hand closed around his arm. A voice he didn't recognize said, "As you value your children's lives, come with me."
Shocked, he turned—and found himself staring into haunted grey eyes.
He could not have said if the person watching him so narrowly was male or female. But there was pain in those grey eyes, desperate pain and fear and something else, something dark and deadly that made his pulse shudder.
"Who—?"
"Your wife is safe. For the moment. But I can't keep her safe forever, not from the people who want her dead. And your children are in terrible danger. Please. I can't tell you why, not here. But I swear to you, if you'll just come with me and bring your little girls, I'll do everything in my power to keep all of you alive."
It was insane, this impulse to trust. Too many people had betrayed Marcus over the years, and too much that was precious to him, more precious than his own life, depended on his making the right choice. This is Shangri-La Station, he found himself thinking desperately, not Rome. If I am betrayed here, there are people who will move heaven and stars to come to our aid...
In the end, it came down to one simple fact: this person knew where Ianira was. If Marcus wanted to see her, he had to go. And the girls?
"I will not risk my children until I know Ianira is safe."
Impatience flared in those grey eyes. "There's no time for this! My God, we've already killed one of them, before he could shoot her. They'll murder your little girls, Marcus, in cold blood. I've seen how they kill! Cassie Tyrol died right in front of me and there was nothing I could do to save her—"
Marcus started. "The woman from the movies? Who played the priestess of Artemis, the Temple harlot? She is dead?"
Pain shone in those grey eyes. "Yes. And the same people who killed her are trying to kill Ianira, her whole family. Please, I'm begging you... get your little girls out of danger while there's still time. I'll tell you everything, I swear it. But we have to move now."
Marcus pressed clenched fists to his temples, tried to think clearly, wishing he possessed even a hundredth the skill Ianira did in reading people's hearts and intentions. Standing irresolute in the middle of a panic-stricken crowd jammed into Commons, voices echoing off the girders of the ceiling five stories overhead, Marcus had never felt more alone and afraid in his life. Not even as a child, thrust into chains and caged like an animal for sale. Then, the only person at risk had been himself. Now...
"They are at the school and daycare center," he decided, voice brusque. "This way."
He still didn't know if the grey-eyed person at his side was a man or a woman.
But when they reached the day-care center and interrupted an ugly, heart-stopping tableau, Marcus discovered that his shaky trust in his new companion was well-founded. They skidded through the day care center's doors at an all-out run—and found an armed Arabian Nights construction worker holding Harriet Banks at gunpoint. Another armed man was dragging Artemisia and Gelasia away from the other children. Rage and terror scalded Marcus, blinded him, sent him forward with fists clenched, even as the grey-eyed person with him erupted with a violence that would have struck terror, had that violence been aimed at his family.
Marcus barely had time to see the gun before it discharged. The roar deafened in the confines of little daycare center. His ears rang even as smoke bellied out from the antique gun's barrel. Children screamed and scattered like frightened ants. The construction worker closest to them, the one holding a gun on Harriet Banks, jerked just once, then fell like a man whose legs have been abruptly jerked out from beneath him. The hole through the back of his skull was far smaller than the one through his face, where the bullet had plowed through on its way out. Shock caught Marcus like a fist against the side of his head—then the black-powder pistol discharged again and the man holding Artemisia's wrist plowed into the floor, obscenely dead.
Marcus snapped out of shock with the grotesque thud as the second body landed on the daycare center's floor. He flung himself toward his screaming children. "Hush... it's all right, Daddy's here..."
He gathered the girls close, hugged them, wept against their hair.
"Marcus! Come on, man! More of the bastards are headed this way!"
Marcus had no time to say anything to Harriet Banks, who was trying to get the other children out through the back door, away from the carnage in the playroom. He simply scooped up his daughters and ran with them, following his unknown benefactor into the chaos on Commons. There were, indeed, more construction workers racing toward them, with weapons clutched in their hands as tourists screamed and scattered.
His benefactor's voice cut through shock and terror. "Do you know any better way to reach the Neo Edo Hotel? They're between us and any safety we've got on this station."
Marcus took one look at the burly construction workers running toward them and swore savagely in the language only he, alone of all residents on TT-86, could understand. His Gaulish tribe was as extinct as the language they'd spoken. But his children were still alive. He intended to keep them that way. "This way," he snarled, spinning around and plunging toward Residential. "Down-timers know all the secret ways through this station!"
Skeeter had taught Marcus routes he'd never suspected could be used to get from one side of the station to the other. Those escape routes had proven useful when he and Ianira had needed to slip away from the pressing attentions of her adoring acolytes, trying to gain a little privacy for themselves. Marcus had never dreamed he would need them to save his little family from cold-blooded murder. Why anyone would want to kill them, he could not imagine. But he intended to find out.
Marcus might be nothing more than an ex-slave, a down-timer without legal rights. But he was a husband and a father and an " ‘eighty-sixer," a member of the insane, fiercely independent, intensely loyal community of residents who called Time Terminal Eighty-Six home. Whoever sought to kill them, they had failed to take that particular fact into account. ‘Eighty-sixers took care of their own.