Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [69]
“That is not all she is,” Agrippa insisted, motioning to a soldier, who handed him a long package wrapped in a cloak. “She involves herself with the Fates. She’s chained for a reason.”
The woman’s eyes opened wider, a sudden strange light in them, and she made a purring sound of anticipation. With covered hands, Agrippa unwrapped the item, a slender wooden staff with a narrow, rounded top. The creature’s eyes began to shine in earnest. An unpleasant glow, to Augustus’s mind, like those of an animal sighted in the dark. Augustus pulled on his gloves, and his general passed the distaff to him. He could see nothing thrilling in its composition.
Agrippa brought forth a legionary who’d been standing at the back of the room.
“What is your name?” he asked the boy.
The legionary’s face crumpled in consternation. He thought for a moment, his fingers grasping and then releasing some invisible object.
Agrippa looked pained.
“She tapped the boy’s forehead with this distaff, and since then, he knows nothing of his own history, and little of anything else. He’s been riding since before he could walk, and yet we’ve had to tie him to his horse all the way here. I would have her pay for this.”
The old woman looked at the boy and said a few rough words in an unknown tongue.
The legionary spoke, blank-faced.
“She says that my fate was dark. She has changed it. Now I do not remember the man I was, and my path has shifted to one of less trouble.”
“He did not speak her language before she touched him,” Agrippa informed Augustus. “Now he functions as her translator.”
The woman spoke again.
“She says she is a seiðkona, a fate spinner,” the boy said. “She does not serve Rome but the Fates. There is trouble here and she seeks to understand it.”
Augustus was distracted. Her skills had sparked his hopes.
His own fate was dark, he knew. When he shut his eyes, the visions were there again, red waves rising over red waves, the roaring and tearing of beasts, serpents, that river of blood. His death at Cleopatra’s hands.
This woman, this seiðkona, might change his destiny.
“Rome welcomes you to her defense,” he said. “Take her to her bedchamber down the corridor, and bring me the rest.”
“You would have creatures such as these staying in your house?” Agrippa asked, his brow furrowing. “They would be better kept under guard in my quarters.”
“I need access to them at all hours. And I need their protection.”
“I ask you again, from what?”
Augustus had no answer. He tried to ignore Agrippa’s expression. His friend’s temper had always been slow to ignite but long to burn, and Augustus was slightly surprised to find it directed at him. He drank deeply until Agrippa returned with the second witch.
“The chieftain of the Psylli, Usem,” Agrippa said. “My men brought him from Libya.”
Augustus recognized the very man who’d incorrectly declared Cleopatra dead. He’d answer for that, in any case. Black as a burnt field, black as a crow’s plumage, his skin glinting with that same dark, bluish iridescence. His chest was decked in strands of stones the color of fresh blood, and over his shoulders, the spotted skin of a leopard was draped, fixed with golden clasps.
He placed a woven basket on the floor of the chamber, and Augustus instinctively raised his feet from off the stones.
“I bring my serpents to battle,” Usem said, removing the cover from the basket. Several snakes slithered from the basket as the Psylli moved his arm into the air. The snakes arced their bodies in mimicry of it, coiling themselves into a rippling design.
“These are my warriors,” the Psylli informed Augustus. “They can travel anywhere you desire. They can seek out the traitors who hide your enemy from you. They can find those who serve your enemy.”
Augustus let himself relax, slightly. “And what else do you have for me?”
“Is this not enough for you, emperor of Rome? I see you are an intelligent man. My tribe controls the Western Wind.”
“Like a slave? Does it always obey you, then?” Augustus asked.
“Just as we obey Rome,” Usem said,