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yet he acted as if he'd been born to olive groves and vineyards.
'Fuck your instructions,' Ecodes said, mildly enough. 'I haven't time tonight.
What man?'
The steward grew pale. One of the women brought a hand to her mouth.
Ecodes thought (couldn't be sure) she might be hiding a giggle.
Probably had to hump the thin-blooded bastard to keep her job.
Wouldn't be unhappy to see him caught up a bit, Ecodes would wager.
'It is understood that you have ordered me to tell you?' the steward said.
Lump of dung, Ecodes thought. Covering himself here.
'Fucking right it's understood. Tell.'
'The patient was Scortius of Soriyya,' said the steward. 'Rustem of
Kerakek had been treating him in secrecy here. Until this morning.'
'Holy Jad!' gasped Ecodes. 'You aren't spinning a tale?'
The steward's expression made it clear, if any doubt had hitherto existed,
that he wasn't the tale-spinning sort.
Ecodes licked his lips nervously and tried to absorb this information. It had
nothing to do with anything, but these were tidings! Scortius was by a long
bowshot the most famous son of
Soriyya today. The hero of every boy and man in that desert-bordered land,
including Ecodes. Enough soldiers on leave had attended the racing today for
the story of the Blues' champion's unexpected reappearance in the Hippodrome-
and what had followed-to be known to everyone searching tonight. There were
rumours he might die of his wounds: the Emperor and the greatest charioteer on
the very same day.
And what would that do to the superstitious in the army, on the eve of what
was supposed to be the grand war of reconquest?
And here was Ecodes, standing in the very house where Scortius had been
recovering, treated in secret by a Bassanid! What a tale it would make! He
could hardly wait to get back to the barracks.
For the moment, he simply nodded his head to the steward, his expression
gravely sober. 'I can see why this was secret. Be easy-it will never be
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revealed by us. Anyone else in the house?'
'Only the physician himself.'
'The Bassanid? And right now he is . . .?'
'Upstairs. In his room.'
Ecodes looked over at Priscus, who had come back along the hall-way.
'I ll do that room myself. We don't want complaints here.' He glanced an
inquiry at the steward.
'First room on the left from the top of the stairs.' A helpful man, if you let
him know the rules of the game.
Ecodes went up. Scortius! Had been here! And the man who'd saved his life . ..
He knocked briskly on the first door but didn't wait for an invitation. This
was a search. The man might have done a good turn here, but he was still a
fucking Bassanid, wasn't he?
He was, it appeared.
The naked woman riding the man in the bed turned as Ecodes opened the door and
let out a muffled shriek and then a torrent of what was obviously foul abuse.
Ecodes could only get the gist of it: she was swearing in Bassanid.
She dismounted from the man beneath her, swinging around to face the door,
covering her nakedness hastily with a sheet as the man sat upright. He had-not
unreasonably under the circumstances-an outraged expression on his face.
'How dare you!' he hissed, keeping his voice down. 'Is this Sarantine
civility?'
Ecodes actually did feel just a little bit intrusive. The eastern whore -there
were always some of them here from all over the known world- was spitting and
swearing, as if she'd never shown her naked backside to a soldier before. She
had switched to Sarantine now, heavily accented but intelligible, and made a
number of pungent, explicit assertions about Ecodes's mother and alleys behind
cauponae and his own provenance.
'Shut up!' The physician slapped her hard on the side of the head.
She shut up, whimpering. Women needed that sometimes, Ecodes thought
approvingly . . . obviously a truth in Bassania as much as anywhere else and
why shouldn't it be?
'What are you doing here?' The grey-bearded doctor struggled to assume a
measure of dignity. Ecodes was privately amused: dignity was not easy when
surprised beneath the pumping body of a whore.
Bassanids. Not even men enough to get their women under them where they
belonged.
'Ecodes, Second Amorian Foot. Orders to search all houses in the
City. We're looking for a fugitive woman.' [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]