A Flame in Byzantium (Atta Olivia Clemens #1) 1

"What rumors? Who is to start them?" She moved closer still and her touch became more insistent.

"Everyone talks, everyone whispers. And you are a foreigner, a Roman—"

"A decadent Roman," she corrected him, catching the lobe of his ear gently in her teeth.

"I'm not joking, Olivia," he said, trying to be stern without much success.

"I know that, and I am hoping to change your mind, at least for a little while." Her hair was damp now and there were soft curls forming around her face, making her seem as young as a girl. "Even if you are right, there is nothing we can do about it right now. So long as we are together, we can take pleasure in each other." She kissed his mouth softly, her lips barely parted. "Drosos?"

"We must speak of it eventually," he insisted, making a valiant last attempt to hold her off from him.

"And eventually we will. For the time being, there are other things we can do." Her kiss was deeper this time, and when their tongues touched, she slid her arms around his chest and brought her legs up around his waist.

With a happy groan he embraced her, his objections fading from his thoughts, and for some little time there were only the sounds of their passion and the splashing of the water in the low and burnished light.

When they finally emerged from the bath, languor had touched them both. They smiled as they pulled on the robes that waited for them, and they found excuses to reach out to each other frequently.

"Here; I'll tie that for you," Olivia offered as Drosos took up the long sash.

"Nothing complicated," he said, handing the long narrow band of silk to her. "That pallium was enough for tonight."

"Don't worry," she said, efficiently crossing the sash over one shoulder and then around his waist. "See? As simple as you'd find on a honey-seller's slave."

"Am I to take it that I am your slave?" he inquired with feigned hauteur.

"No; I do not want anyone who comes to me through compulsion." Her answer was serious, but her face was filled with joy.

"You could become that to me, you know." Again the worry was back in his eyes.

"Then we must take care to keep variety and novelty in what we do and how we do it," she said. "You do not want us to turn all we have into nothing more than a frenzied routine, do you?

"You speak as if it has happened to you," he said, still troubled.

"Yes, it has," she said candidly as she indicated the door. "Come. Niklos will have supper set out for you—nothing too heavy. He said that the cooks have bought some excellent fish, and that with olives and garlic should be waiting in my private reception room." She walked a little ahead of him, turning now and then to look at him.

The house glowed with braziers; her private reception room was no exception. The promised meal waited on a low brass-topped table, and a flask of wine stood open beside the serving dishes. There were two large vases filled with flowers, and before the small ikonostasis a thread of incense curled up toward the ceiling, smelling of sandalwood.

"This is more Konstantinoupolitan than Roman," Drosos said as he sat at the single place laid. "But this refusal to dine with your guests… when I am the only one."

"Romans often did not dine with their guests, but served them and saw to the pleasure of those who reclined on couches at their invitation," she said, then added, "and you know my habits too well to continue to question them."

He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of resignation, but he said to her, "Olivia, think of what your slaves say."

"They say I am a Roman widow, which is entirely correct. They say that I run my household in the Roman manner, which is also true. They say that I do not live as most women in this city live, and I do not dispute that. What else can they say that might trouble you?" She poured wine into a silver cup and held it out to him. "Here."

"I prefer you to the wine," he told her, his eyes darkening with the remnants of his passion.

"If that is what you want, then you may have it, but after you have eaten, if you please."

He capitulated with an easy smile. "Are all Roman women so determined?"

"Those who have lived as long as I have are," she said, her eyes fixed on her distant memories.

"You are not going to start on that again, are you?" He was taking the flat bread on the nearest plate and stopped in the act of breaking it in half. "You always do your best to make it seem that you were around when Roma was founded."

She smiled. "Well, I won't claim that," she said, and moved the small dish of salt nearer to him.

"Good. I wish you would forget the whole thing." He dipped the edge of the bread in salt when it was broken. "You can be quite impossible."

"Thank you." She leaned back to watch him eat. "And you; how do you think of yourself, Drosos? You are fairly young to be a Captain, aren't you?"

"For a man with the few connections I have, yes I am," he said between bites. "If my family were better allied, then it might be different, but since my greatest advocate has been Belisarius, I have found my promotions in war, not in court."

"And Belisarius?" she asked.

"He is the finest General in all the Empire," Drosos said with total conviction. "He was fortunate enough to marry Antonina, and gain the good opinion of the Empress through her. Not that he did not already have the confidence of Justinian, or the marriage would not have been tolerated." He had helped himself to more of the wine.

"And what will this gain you, if the Emperor continues to deal with Belisarius as he has been doing for the last two years?"

"You are the most persistent female," Drosos chided her with laughter. "What is it that makes all you Romans think that you invented politics?"

"Didn't we?" she asked sweetly.

"The Greeks did," he corrected her. "And they knew better than to permit their women to take part in them." He broke off another section of fish. "If you continue to pursue these questions, there are questions that will be asked of you that you will not want to answer," he said, growing serious again.

"Why?"

"You are a foreign woman and you are not willing to live properly," he said. He stopped eating to look at her with great concern. "You are here on tolerance; you admit that yourself. You cannot yet return to Roma, for the war there is worse than it was when you left. What use is it to endanger yourself more than you already have?"

"I don't see that discussing politics will make my life any worse," she said, but with less determination than she had shown at first. "Are you really convinced that it could be dangerous?"

"Yes. I wish you would believe that and be careful," he replied. "I would not like to see you come to any harm, Olivia. You are much too important to me."

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "All right; I'll try to control my urge to explore politics, at least for the time being."

"That's not good enough," he objected.

"As long as you are here, I will do what I can, but if you are posted to… oh, to Nikopolis or Patara or Syracusa, then it might become prudent for me to find other sources of information. As it is, I will fully expect you to keep me informed of anything that might impinge on me to any degree. Will you do that?"

"If you will give me your word that you will not enlist others in this project," he said, finishing the last of the wine. "I am certain that you could be very unhappy if you came under the scrutiny of the Court Censor. You may believe that or not as you wish, but I am a Konstantinoupolitan and I have seen how determined the Censor can be. There are whole families living in obscurity because one member aroused too much suspicion and it tainted everything that the others said and did." He scooped up some of the fish with the bread. "You have an excellent cook."

"So I understand," she said.

"Well?" he asked after a little silence.

"I will keep everything you've said in mind," she promised, and clapped her hands to summon Niklos Aulirios with the sweetened fruit pulp offered at the close of the meal.

Text of a letter from the slave Simones to the secretary of the Court Censor, Panaigios Chernosneus.

To the most excellent Panaigios Chernosneus, secretary of the Court Censor, with full dedication and respect, hail upon the Eve of Lent in the Lord's Year 547.

True to your instruction and the good of the Empire, I have carried out your most recent instructions and have examined the books and similar writings currently in the possession of my master the General Belisarius who is at present still in Italy. The volumes I have examined are in s the General's house here in Konstantinoupolis and are available to any who wishes to venture into the reading room. None of them are under lock and key and those few books that are remain so more for reasons of market value than content, as in the case of the copy of the Edicts of Constantine dating from the time when the capital was moved from Roma to this city. The texts are in Latin and as I am not familiar with that language, I can say little of the contents but that they appear to be complete and from what I can learn of Andros, the slave caring for the library, there is no reason to suspect that they contain anything other than what their titles indicate.