"Messiah!" the mendicants cried on their return from the woods, their arms up in the air.
Under the tallest stone pine where Anthony had asked them to look, they found three tilapias – all gutted with a gold nugget planted in each.
A sneer quirked Anthony's mouth as he awaited them, sitting on crossed legs before a bale of hay outside a barn next to a clear pond. He let his eyes roam his new followers. "Do you believe me now?" he croaked.
Dropping to their knees, they made a deep obeisance, their arched backs in dirt-streaked roughspun like small dunes in the veil of the dusk.
"Good," Anthony snorted. "Then, believe in this when I say more shall come! Women with the tenderest bosoms, fortune you haven't dared dream of, and properties that shall prosper your sons and theirs! All shall come if you follow my words! Do I have an aye?"
"Aye!" they cried in unison. "Show us the way, Saint Anthony!"
"Come forth and swear your allegiance to me!" He thrust an arm forward.
One by one, each of the mendicants rose. As they kneeled again before him they pressed their foreheads to the back of his hand. "Bless you, Messiah," they slurred.
Anthony coiled the other hand while a thrill buzzed through him, making his muscles spasm. He couldn't wait for tomorrow to see the look on Drusilla's face when she would see for herself the power that was his and his alone to command. Then, a scrowl wriggled his brows.
She probably would shrug it off – he realized – and remind him how he didn't conceive the plan. Oh yes, he thought bitterly now. She would pinch where it hurt the most as if his execution of the plan was no match in importance as its conception.
Wondering what he could do to blot out the disdain in those storm-gray eyes, Anthony harrumphed.
Drusilla slunk into a warren of Corinthian masonry.
She surveyed the Pethenian forum, deserted now by its diurnal bustle, from an inward corner behind a moss-covered wall. All trades had ended after dark, leaving only their wastes and remnants of sundries flattened along the ruts. In the center of the forum, a large mural fountain continued to gurgle, overlaid by the distant chatters from a clutter of hovels nearby. Hearth fires glimpsed from the gaps between the planks that barred windows, and through terracotta chimneys belched up the twirling threads of indigo smoke. Far behind them in the hub of the city, the solemn Ziggurat of Ra stood vis-à-vis with the Imperial Palazzo under the pale moon.
"What took you so long?" A familiar voice of a man rose behind her.
She whirled around with a gasp.
Anthony Heius emerged from the shadow of a wall. In under a week, he had transformed. His shriveled linen was gone, replaced by a styled toga of embellished silk. Even his shaggy hair no one was allowed to touch had been trimmed nicely, framing the downturned eyes and the cleft chin still recognizable.
"You look different," she frowned, teasing. "So fancy!"
"So do you," he replied, his voice mirthless. "Not fancy though, certainly different. Your hair, what bloody happened?"
"I dyed it. Why?"
"Looks awful."
Cocking her head, she hooted with three dry cackles. "Well, doesn't matter now."
"Does to me!" He winced. "I'm the one who has to put up with the eyesore! What did you dye your bloody hair for?"
"For a role, of course," she shrugged while stepping behind him. "I made my oath to the Scipios' today."
"You what?" Anthony spun to her, his hooded eyes flaring. Spooked were the birds perching along the eaves; wings flapped as they took flight. A few forlorn feathers strayed from the starry sky. "Gods blight, why?" he grunted, his voice much lower this time.
"Doesn't matter now. It's done. And I only came to tell you so Moon can adjust the next move."
"Funny you still remember him," Anthony spat. "And did you forget what he said, about not getting picked?"
"I can only have access to all the fine establishments if I rejoin the Scipios' as their employee," she said matter-of-factly.
"Then why didn't you just ask? I'll give you the amulet!"
Drusilla summoned all the patience known to her and found little. A chuckle shook her head. "Funny you remember what Moon said to me but not to you. What about how suspicious I'd look going in and out of places as a highborn lady but with no entourage?"
"I can take you with me! I've got the mendicants under control! And they can be our entourage!" he yelled, a guttural snarl.
"And who will I be as I stand by your side? Your mistress? Your whore?" She narrowed her eyes, trying not to sound as haughty as she felt. "When a single man of status shows up with a woman never seen, gossip flares. Who's the man, and who's she? People talk. They'd ask around in their gossip. And when no one, it seems, could claim to know either of us and start to investigate, what do you propose for our next move?"
He glowered, hunching over her, his hot breath on her face. "I get it," he scoffed. "You're still looking for your sister. That's why you came with me to the city. You knew you were going to betray us, did you?"
She coiled her hands to fists, nails scraping her palms; her eyes, however, didn't flinch. "No," she lied, "I told you before, I came because I have nowhere else to go." This, unfortunately, was not a lie.
While she couldn't wrap her head around Xeator's true intent with his plan, the upheaval he meant to stir through Anthony would provide a perfect smokescreen for her, and Anthony mustn't stray from it.
"I'm no fool," she continued. "I know what it means to rejoin the Scipios."
"Then why?" he bawled out, his head low. The night hollowed out his face around the eyes and cheeks, leaving only his anemic brow, the hump of his nose, and the cleft chin to the grace of the moon.
"If there is the slightest chance for you to find your family, would you risk it?" She kept her eyes riveted on the dark voids under his browbones.
Anthony raised his head into the light. His mouth opened, then closed, as though yes and no were tugging at either end of his tongue. A glimpse of qualm flashed across his eyes. Before he could reply, a falcon screeched over their heads, diving from the center of the city. Drusilla followed the raptor with her eyes, then glanced over her shoulder at the colossal shadow of the Ziggurat sloping against the pale moon. From the same direction approached the clumps of caligae on pebbles.
"Guards on patrol," she observed in a mumble.
A calloused hand clutched her wrist. Anthony took to his heels into a bending alley with her in tow. Through a viny archway uphill, he veered into a garden terrace boasting a different alabaster in many an alcove. They hid in one of those, their faces pressing close.
Tucking her chin to the shoulder, Drusilla strained her ears. The clumping came and went, passing the terrace while tapering into the west.
"We didn't have to run," she slurred. "You have an amulet, and I'm an employee."
"Then why are you shuddering?"
She snapped her eyes at him.
"What are you afraid of?"
If they were seen by the guards, they would have to pretend as strangers to avoid trouble, and it'd be the right thing to do. But once those guards realized she was a nobody, alone in the street after dark, they could take her under any excuse, ravish her, and leave her half dead in a squalid corner. Now the guards had left, her fear, however, did not lessen. Exactly of what or who was she more afraid?
She looked away, wrenching out of the alcove. He pressed a hand against the damp wall next to her head before she could.
"What d'you think you're doing?" She glared, curbing the fear in her voice. She couldn't scream for help as the help could be the other hell; nor could she run as he wouldn't allow it. Anthony chuckled, baring his teeth. A look of triumph crew without the need for words. He bit her lips.
She thrashed, reaching for the hairpin she could wield as a small dagger. But he was heavy on her, his large hands gripping her shoulders. She trod hard on his insteps but to little avail. Tears flooded out her closed eyes; her hands fumbled. Her eyes popped open. She tugged her amulet off her belt, one that Xeator had revamped, and ejected the karambit at Anthony's thigh.
A muffled cry of pain ricocheted inside of the alcove. Anthony crouched, reeling.
She sprung for the hills and made shortcuts. The wind whistled, tickling her nose, and the dirt felt hard on her soles like stones. Her legs grew heavy, shifting as fast as her heart pumped, yet she dared not pause for breath until she was back inside the Scipios' castle. Falling into her straw mattress in the rear corner of a tent, she huddled herself in a fetal position. In the one place spawned with perils and vice, she took refuge and sobbed. A soft hand patted her back. She jolted around.
Aida stood barefoot in a roughspun smock with her hair down. She didn't ask Drusilla if she were fine, as others would, but only hugged her.
It was all Drusilla needed.