Burdens of the Dead: Chapter Sixteen

PART II

October, 1540 A.D.
Constantinople

    The dogs of Hekate lived, as she did, in a place between, where time has little meaning. She walked the world at the crossroads, her dogs at her side. There were many crossroads and she could choose to walk any of the roads away from them. She only ever took one way — to the place between, which is not below but is down. The place between there is neither life nor death. The place where everything and nothing is possible, the place of shadows. The place where there is nothing to long for. No want.

    Or hunger.

    But…although they were not moral dogs, hers partook somewhat of the nature of all dogs, and dogs are by nature hungry. A cat will turn up its nose at food unless it is what it wants, but a dog is always willing to eat. But in that half-world of shadow and nothing that she had kept to, they had, perhaps forgotten that part of themselves, as she had forgotten so much but grief. It had been many years since her faithful hounds had eaten, until the mortal at the gate had fed Ravener. It had been many years too since Hekate herself had noticed food; perhaps that was why. Her power was, in a way, a reflection of her dogs’ devotion; their care was all for her, single-minded, and when she forgot things…so did they.

    Yes, there were cults that worshipped her name, in darkness and secret. But that was not the lady of the gateways and crossroads, of the three faces. Such cults worshipped her because she was believed to be powerful in magic. This was true, but they misunderstood her power. And their homage added nothing to her. But the love of her dogs did, and she gave back to them, in full measure. Her needs were theirs; theirs were hers. And now…

    They were hungry. She was too. And she was stirred to give back to them what they wanted, even though they did not, precisely, need it.

    So she went back to the cross-roads. To the gate that failed. To the great city that even though it was a long way from its former glory, never quite slept. It never occurred to her that she might not get from the mortals here what she wanted. True, she might be forgotten, but when they saw her, they would know her, and remember her. They would know what was owed to her. They would give her food — for her and the dogs. They had always given her sacrifices. It was her due.

    So she came to the gate, and passed through it into the world of mortals. And found that having exerted her power at walking unseen and untouched for many generations meant that it was very, very hard now to be seen or touched. A drunk lying in an alley saw her. But he cried in fear, and fervently hoped that she was an illusion. The face he saw was not a kindly one. No one else noticed her. She paused. This could present a problem. She could not take food; it had to be given, sacrificed by a willing mortal. Those were the rules, the ancient rules by which her kind lived. Mortal things for mortal creatures, unless they gave these things willingly.

    So Hekate went in search of the man who had fed Ravener, or at least she set her dogs to the task. There was nothing under heaven, or under the earth, that they could not nose out for her if she wanted them to. They sniffed the air and found the scent…their ears perked, and they quivered with eagerness to speed away. Ah, how they loved the chase. She’d forgotten that. Forgotten so much in her anger and bitterness. She had been queen of the hunt long before Diana, once. Now, as then, she loosed them, and followed, fleet of foot and unhindered by her robes.

    They ran him to earth, of course. They had the essence of the man, from the well-wishing he’d put on them, and that was far more pervasive than mere scent to Hekate’s dogs. She called them off, as soon as she saw him. They liked him, yes. But they were hunters, and they had been hunting, with him as the quarry. They needed to cool a moment so they might remember again he was a man that they liked, and not the prey to be pulled down.

    He was with two men in a rather noisome alleyway. They did not see the dogs, but he did. She stepped back around the corner — there was always a corner where she wanted one — and she called the dogs back to her. That was politeness. He had not insulted her, he had given her dogs respect and well-wishes. She could be polite. Besides, she was curious, and that was something she had not felt in a very long time.

    She was almost sure he hadn’t seen her. He’d been busy handing a small pouch to one of the two men. A small, heavy pouch, by the looks of it; that meant money in her experience of mortals and money in dark corners generally meant trouble. They looked like warriors. They carried swords of iron. She willed herself to hear what was being said. It would do little good to her dogs if the only man who seemed to see them was killed; they were hungry now.

    “That of course would be the initial payment. A token of our trust. You can check that the rest is held by Isak BenTelmar, at the Rialto bridge. He will give it to you when you present him with the whole amulet. And don’t even think it, Captain. I don’t have the other section of it. You’ll be given that when your side of the bargain is kept.”

    It didn’t sound like murder to Hekate. Murder was no stranger to her. Crossroads were a good place for murder, and one of her three faces looked often on death. But the man sounded cool, unperturbed. And she did have some idea of the power he wielded. The other two warriors probably did not. She thought, all in all, there was no cause to worry.

    A little later she wondered if she had been wrong about that. He bade the warriors farewell, and walked down the alley to where she stood, her cloak of darkness gathered around her. His hand was on his knife hilt, as if he expected trouble. Trouble — from the place where she stood. It was a steel knife, and her power was stronger over bone and stone. Her people had not had much bronze, and no iron when the Earth-Shaker had broken the gate and flooded her lands.

    He was a creature with bone within him, of course. Steel knife or no, she could kill him without effort — but that would rather defeat her purpose. She allowed him to approach, and he peered into her corner, into her shadow.

    He seemed rather taken aback to see her there with her dogs. He plainly recognized those. “Lady. I…”

    If she’d been a man, by his posture, he would have had that knife out and thrusting. Well, if the bitch Ripper had not growled at him, which she did. But she was not what he had been anticipating, not at all, and the presence of the dogs he knew set him further aback.

    He gathered himself. The hand was still ready, but he had plainly decided to talk, or at least talk at first. “Your dogs, lady?”

    She nodded. It had been eons since she’d last spoken to anyone.

    “I’ve met them before. I thought they looked too cared for to be strays.”

    She was indignant. That startled her into speech and nearly into action. “Of course they are not stray animals! How dare you!”

    He seemed to have missed the threat, or at least the indignation, and was reaching out the back of his hand to them toward be sniffed, and Ravener, the faithless hound, was wagging his tail. “I’m glad. Dogs need people.”

    That was true, too, she had to agree, and she softened to him a little, a little. Well, she needed them and they needed her. “They are mine, and mine only. They may wander afar, but they always return to me and always will.”

    He looked at her, and then at them, his face inscrutable. Reaching a decision suddenly, he said: “This is not a good part of town, Lady, dogs or no dogs. There are people here that’d kill them for stew, let alone what they’d do to you. Let me escort you back to your home, or at least a better part of town. I mean no harm. Ask your dogs,” he said with a smile.

    “I am Hekate,” she said, putting him firmly in his place. Harm? Him or any other mortal? The Earth-Shaker Poseidon had not been able to harm her. He had destroyed all she loved. Taken her children, yes. But not harmed her.

    All that plainly meant nothing at all to him. And he was absent-mindedly petting her dog. “Where do you live?”

    It had been alarming enough to realize that he was being watched.

    Antimo had always known — a prickling at the back of his neck — when he was being spied on. He’d learned to act on those instincts. And paying off a captain of Alexis’s mercenaries was not a good time to be watched.

    He’d come back this way to kill the watcher.

    And found firstly that she was a woman. A very odd looking one. Antimo had an eye for detail. He had no interest in women’s fashions, but he could describe precisely what they were wearing.

    He’d never seen anything quite like her robes; they looked like something he’d have likely seen on an antique vase, and who wore that sort of thing, even in Byzantium? Well…the women did wear a sort of all-enveloping garment that wasn’t a cloak, sometimes, but not the fashionable ones. Nor did women wear what — in the moonlight anyway — looked like the gold and jet jewelry that she was wearing; heavy, simple, somewhat crude by the standards of Constantinople, where the goldsmiths prided themselves on the delicate granulated-gold work even the least-skilled could produce.

    Then, there were the dogs. A man might walk abroad with dogs to protect him; a woman, never.

    There might be whores working this alley. But they weren’t wearing gold, or being guarded by red-eared dogs. These dogs liked him…but he knew, instantly, by their posture that these ones would defend her, or die trying, even against someone they liked. But who was she, and what was she doing here, watching him? She seemed to think he’d know who she was.

    “We came to seek you out,” she said. “I am She of the Gateways and these are my hounds.”

    If that was a name for some particular district here, he didn’t recognize it. Could there be a Great House here known as The Gateways?

    Her hounds… They were hunting dogs of some kind, he was sure, looking at them again. Some breed of coursing hound that he just did not recognize. Strange looking animals. Hungry ones, too, by the way the one was sniffing at his bag. She looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes, plainly waiting for a response. Unfortunately, he had no idea what she expected. So he smiled and patted the sniffing dog again. The other had also come forward, stretching its head and nose towards him. Yes, he knew that one too, the female, more suspicious than her brother or mate, whichever he was. The fur on her back was still slightly raised, but that was almost a wag of her fur-feathered tail.

    “Who are you?” she asked, as the second dog came closer.

    She’d just said she’d been looking for him…how could she not know his name? But he spoke, without meaning to. “Antimo Bartelozzi, of the city of Ferrara.” As the words came from his mouth, he started. What was he doing? He never gave his name, his actual name, when he was out working, let alone where he came from. What had come over him?

    This was all something of a rude shock to the guardian of the crossroads. Firstly, the mortal did not know just who he was speaking to. She had been sure that once she spoke her name, he would know her for what she was! That even if he did not worship her, he would at least know to give her respect and her due!

    She had no grasp of how many eons she had been mourning. Time had not touched her, and as a goddess the changes of such things as language were of no consequence. She knew, vaguely, that she had no true, direct worshippers except the dogs now, that she only retained her power of that and because in between, nothing decayed, not even grief. And the loss of power given by worshippers had meant little to her in the face of her terrible grief.

    But to be forgotten, completely?

    Oh, she had said that to herself, made it all part of her litany of mourning, but deep down she had not believed that she could ever be forgotten. Not really. Certainly not here. To find that she really was…

    She needed to know more. She had exerted her will on him, and he had answered. But it meant little to her. Where was Ferrara? And he seemed to have no ideas of the worship or sacrifice that a god required. Was owed.

    Well then. She would make her demand more…forceful. Not so as to harm him, but to compel him to give that which he was not aware was his responsibility.

    Her command: “My dogs are hungry. Feed them,” was interrupted by the arrival of a group of men. They had a hint of the prowling pack, in the way they walked.

    Antimo took one look at them and said something half under his breath. She could feel his desire to be barely noticeable, to be small and ordinary, exerted.

    It was the wrong message for this pack. They liked that type of prey. They surged forward. Of course they did not see her.

    “You’d better gather your skirts, lady,” said Antimo, “and run. This is more than your dogs can deal with.” He brought a blade into his hand and turned to face them.

    She drew her cloak of darkness around herself and her dogs. And him. Her power might be lessened, but it was not gone. Oh, no. “I am still Hekate,” she said. “Let them dare to approach.”

    The moon had lit the alley, moments before. Now Antimo found himself in darkness so Stygian as to make him wonder if he’d just gone blind. He knew he wasn’t alone in it because of the cursing at the mouth of the alleyway.

    “Black as hell in there.” said someone. “I could see him a moment ago.”

    Then a second voice, tinged with uncertainty and the fear he himself had felt just a few moments before: “It’s a trap. Let’s get out of here, boys.”

    That was followed by the sound of their blundering departure.

    This was not what Antimo had expected. These gangs were something of a feature of the back streets of Constantinople, the blues, greens and reds — descended from the long ago supporters of various chariot-racers, he’d been told. Now they were a law unto themselves, each absolute in their own districts. The emperor was too weak and too disinterested to rein them in. So the merchants hired guards, and paid for protection, or paid the gangs to be the protection. Decent citizens locked their doors and tried to stop their sons from becoming involved.

    They were the sort of thing Antimo was normally good at avoiding. He’d have heard them coming, if it hadn’t been for this odd woman. Hekate? The name brought vague associations of witchcraft to mind. Antimo kept clear of magic and its practitioners as much as possible. Of course many were frauds, but he had reason to know that some weren’t.

    But this woman and her dogs must be the real thing, and, compared to what he had seen, powerful. He was not a superstitious man, or one who believed he had much chance of Christ’s favor, but he muttered a prayer anyway. Whether it was the prayer or the fact that the gang of greens — this was their territory — had gone hunting elsewhere, the darkness lightened.

    “I think we will take this way,” she said. There was a narrow, twisty path between the buildings he had not noticed earlier. She and the dogs led, and despite his first rational idea, which had been to run the other way, his instincts led to him to follow her along it, and into the wider thoroughfare beyond. A lamp set in a window-sconce to show its owner’s wealth and power shone out into the street, and he could see her clearly now. That was definitely gold she was wearing around her neck and in hoops from her ears. Heavy necklaces hung with black uncut stones, gleamed. And yet…he knew that she was probably a lot safer in the back alleys than he had been.

    He took a deep breath. “Lady, you said your dogs were hungry. As it happens I have the makings of my own supper here. I could give it to them.”

    She nodded, regally. So right there he took the piece of bacon and the bread and soft cheese out of his pouch, cut them up and fed them to the dogs. He kept the onion. It was a habit of his, when he carried money, to put humble food on top of it. Exploring fingers tended to recognize the shape of onions and feel of bread, and give up without finding the hidden section below that.

    The dogs — having wolfed down all that there was to be eaten — looked hopefully at him. The bitch, who had been more wary before, went as far as to lick his hand. “That’s all I have, red-ears.”

    “They are called Ravener and Ripper,” she said, and turning away, began walking. The dogs followed almost instantly, without being called…and then they were gone.

    He really wasn’t sure just where to.

    He couldn’t find the narrow gap between the houses she’d brought him out of, either.

    Antimo didn’t like being out of his depth, he didn’t like uncanny things, and he didn’t like things with the heavy smell of magic about them. But he liked her dogs. And he had come to no harm — in fact, thanks to this woman, he had avoided harm.

    “All’s well that ends without needing to clean your blade,” he muttered to himself, and decided to forget the woman for now. Whatever her business with him — well, it seemed mostly to have been done when he’d sacrificed his dinner for her hounds. He had done good work for Ferrara and his duke tonight. He would find something else to eat, to go with that onion.

    It had been a very long time since Hekate had last thought of anything but her sadness. A very, very long time. Much had changed, it seemed. She was unsure about it all; she did not like, in the least, that she had actually been forgotten. She did not like these streets where killers hunted with impunity. But her dogs liked the man…and he had given to her what she was due, a sacrifice, though he had not known why. All in all, this encounter had left her feeling…unsettled. But somewhat less deeply wrapped in her grief because of it.

    And more awake than she had for a very long time indeed.