"No." The Duchess reached over to the wall and took a stiff brush from its hook on the wall. She handed it to Thyatis, though the young woman let it go in the water and watched it float. "I sent them with Betia to the circus- there was a wild animal show- and then they wanted to see an octopus and a sea serpent and all sorts of things. So I packed them off to my beach house at Baiae for a couple of weeks in the sun. We'll go see them soon."

"How much did they grow?" Thyatis was sad, thinking of Shirin all mewed up on Thira while her children frolicked in the surf on the bay. The Princess would doubtless have a few words to say about the soft life that her children had been living in her absence. "Are they completely spoiled?"

"Yes," the Duchess said, smiling. "I fear so. They are precious. I understand that their mother is quite beautiful."

Thyatis raised her head out of the water, steam curling from her forehead. Water sluiced down her neck, and her hair clung to the shape of her head like a pelt of fur. She raised herself a little out of the water, putting her arm on the lip of the tub.

"Who told you that? Surely not Jusuf- he blushes when anyone talks about her having children. It must be that wretch Nikos."

"It was, but I could see her face in them, too," Anastasia said, laughing. She smiled down at Thyatis, her hands folded on her lap. "He told me a great deal about it- you've set his Roman standards on edge, I think."

Tension stole across Thyatis' face, and she met the calm, quiet eyes of the Duchess evenly. "Do you think I did the wrong thing?"

Anastasia considered her for a moment, gauging the depths in the younger woman's eyes. She marked the planes of the face and the hard muscle that girded her shoulders and arms. The Duchess nodded, seeing that she had sent away a brash youth, still incompletely formed, and had received back- safe by the gods! — the full measure of an adult woman. The Duchess picked at the hem of her gown, thinking. "Thyatis: "She stopped, suddenly unsure of what to say. That is a wonder, she scolded herself. "My dear, once we discussed the day that I purchased you and brought you into my family. I told you then that I bought you because there was something unbroken in your eyes, standing there in the slave coffle in that hot dusty market. That was true, but once you had left for the east, I found that I missed you. I have realized that I purchased you because you reminded me of: me."

Thyatis canted her head and turned, putting her arms on the edge of the tub and her chin on her interleaved fingers. "How so? I was a dirty peasant girl in a torn tunic, barefoot, and only moments from a brand."

"True," the Duchess said in a sad voice. "And so was I, on just such a day, many years ago. I was an orphan- myparents murdered by pirates off of the coast of Sicilia. They were Vandal raiders, I believe, who still held some strongholds on the coast of Africa in those days. I was very lucky to leave their hands- but among them, odd-colored eyes are considered a mark of bad luck. I was sold in the great market on Delos." The Duchess' face seemed shadowed by the old memory. Then she smiled and it passed. "Agents of the Matron purchased me in a job lot with six other girls. It was the eyes again. I was to be had"- her voice held an edge of bitterness- "at a discount. But I do not regret it."

"They took you to the island?"

Anastasia shook her head. "No, things were in too much confusion then. No one was admitted onto or off of the island until Imperial order had been restored. I do not know if it still exists, but at that time there was another sanctuary in the mountains of Epirus. We were taken there and trained in secret. Oh, those were a cruel six years!"

"Six?" Thyatis touched Anastasia's foot, gently squeezing the older woman's big toe. "How you must look down upon the younger generations who must only suffer for five:"

Anastasia touched Thyatis' hair and bent down, kissing the crown of the younger woman's head. "Ah, but we did not have the benefit of the Lady Mikele's ministrations then:."

"Oh!" Thyatis stood up and made a face. "That was a soft life, then!"

Anastasia laughed and held up a robe of soft cotton. Thyatis bowed and slipped the garment over her broad shoulders.

"Perhaps it was, but I think that you followed your heart and I could not- will not- gainsaythat. You matter too much to me."

Thyatis smiled and embraced the older woman and knew that she was home.

Damascus

A spinning wheel of fire drifted over the arches of a stone bridge. The span had three courses, rising almost sixty feet above the bed of the Baradas River, and it was wide enough to allow a cohort of men to march abreast. The wheel blazed in the air, spinning faster, and slammed into a barrier of overturned wagons at the northern end of the bridge. There was a hissing sound like a hot blade plunged into a quenching bucket and the line of wagons exploded in smoke and flame. One wagon was catapulted into the air, wheels flying off as it disintegrated. The Syrian militiamen behind the barricade scattered, running pellmell for the safety of the walls of the city. The remaining wagons burned fiercely, sending up a billowing column of pitchy black smoke.

Odenathus and his cavalrygalloped across the bridge. Some of the Palmyrenes were armed with bows and sent a ragged flight of arrows after the fleeing Syrians. Odenathus pulled up as he reached the smashed barricade. While his men trotted past, he concentrated and reached deep into the earth, touching the flickering fluid glow of the river. Power came to his hand, and the remaining wagons, still burning, toppled away from the road, clearing it.

A hundred yards away, across a leveled field that usually served as a farmer's market for the city, the other Palmyrene horsemen had turned as well and were exchanging arrows with the city. Two huge brick towers rose at either side of the Jerash gate. Covered walkways crowned them and were filled with militia. An arrow, its flight almost spent, wobbled through the air past Odenathus and clattered on the roadway. He turned his horse and urged it up the road. Behind him, the rest of Zoe's little army was trotting across the bridge.

The gates of the city, set well back within an overhanging archway, were already closed. From previous visits to the metropolis, Odenathus knew that a long tunnel led through the walls, guarded by three heavy gates of iron and wood. All three would be closed now, though the young Palmyrene almost laughed aloud at the thought of the city cowering before his pitiful band. More arrows whickered past him and he raised a hand, sketching a glowing sign. A flutter grew in the air between him and the city ramparts. Arrows staggered in flight and dropped from the sky, sticking up in the dirt like a bed of new saplings.

"How strong is the gate?" Zoe rode up, her long hair tucked up into a braid and coiled behind her head. Like Odenathus, she wore an openfaced Legion helmet and a shirt of linked mail under a tan robe. A horse-bow jutted from her forward saddle holder, and a sheaf of arrows matched it on the other side of the four-cornered saddle. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were dark with anger.

Odenathus sighed and gestured toward the huge square towers. "Look," he said, keeping an eye out on the flanks of the three hundred-odd riders who were now regrouping at the head of the bridge. "Look and see the labor of a thousand years of the art."

Zoe glared at him, her eyes flashing. They had gone over this matter for days while they had sat in the hills above the city, watching the comings and goings of the citizens. She tossed her head and turned away, guiding her glossy black stallion with her knees. Bending her head for a moment, she leaned toward the massive gate, seemingly listening.

"Tiris, Gadama!" he shouted, his voice well used to the carrying volume that being the war leader of this band of ruffians required. " Take ten men each and circle the walls. Stayalert- they may sortie from another gate. If they do, don't forget to come back and tell me!"