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It was as numbing as winter sea spray, despite the thousands of citizens crowded around her.
It was—
“Gods girl, clean your face! We have work to do!” came an unemotive hiss at her back.
She clenched her fists as the figure pushed past, grabbing Teigra firmly by the arm and dragging her through the press. She didn’t dare look up from the polished marble of the Pentheon floor, glimpsed through the rushing gaps between togas and stolas and sandals.
She didn’t dare, because she knew what was coming. And her blood pulsed hot at the shame of it all.
The ceremony had only just ended. The former herald’s burned skin had only just been anointed with the fragrant oils that would hasten her journey to the fields of Evdonia. Her hands had only just been closed around the golden axia coin, currency to pay Vakaris, ferryman of the dark river Telikos. The other women of her extended family, including Aunty Sabina, the archon herself, were still holding vigil over the body!
And Mother was already working the floor.
“Senator Viturin?” said Senator Beeta Cosmin, pulling up in front of a proud man with a receding hairline. His white toga was edged with two stripes as yellow as fennel flower—the mark of the patrician class, the pinnacle of Mestibian society. One with the high honor of having two members of his house in the senate.
Of course, Mother would speak to him. She wouldn’t waste her time on anyone dressed like themselves, in the single-striped garments of the mercator class. Or worse, to one of the plebeians at the back, too far down the rope to have any stripes at all.
Normally, a man like Gius Viturin could have just waved her away. He was consul of the senate, after all. Second in charge of the citizen’s chamber after the censor.
But he can’t do that today, can he? Not at the funeral of her own sister.
The patrician gave Mother a weary look. “Yes, Senator Cosmin?”
“I do not believe you have met my son, Jaronas?”
On cue, a boy of sixteen stepped forward, gripping the patrician’s hand before he could extend it. “Rejoice, Patrician!”
Viturin grimaced. “Rejoice, Mercator. My condolences.”
The tart insincerity of the consul’s voice clenched Teigra’s jaw even tighter. He wasn’t sorry to see the archon’s personal messenger killed, and everyone knew it. Teigra had heard the muffled whispers and barely hidden opinions. Viturin would rather that the position of herald didn’t exist. That the archon didn’t exist. That the senate ran the city on its own!
Even here, at Urosina’s funeral, the consul couldn’t bring himself to put aside petty politics.
Her thoughts were broken by Jaronas thumping a fist to his well-built chest. “Gratitude! But the men of House Cosmin are as strong as our steeds! Neither we, nor the beasts we break, dwell on such things as loss!”
The patrician weighed him. “You are too young to recall, young mercator, but I had my own racing team managed by House Cosmin for many years. Before the incident, of course.”
Teigra gasped involuntarily, caught unprepared.
The incident...
Her heart felt at once like it would burst and yet never beat again. The room dulled around her—sound muffled. Her forehead prickled hot, and her stomach felt heavy and rotted, like it was full of rusted iron.
She clenched her eyes shut as the dizziness overtook her, trying to drown out the nightmares never far from reemergence.
No! Not here! Not in front of the consul! Don’t you dare disgrace the family!
Not again...
After long and hideous moments, she forced the heat from across her ears, forced the incident from her mind, and the sound of the room returned.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the consul was in high spirits, midstory.
“...with my hippocamp churning through the water at such speed the others could never hope to catch us!”
Jaronas laughed. “But that shows your cunning, wise consul. Even though there are three stallions in each relay team, far too many people waste their coin on the most famous centaurs for the first lap. Housing them in luxury. Catering to their every extravagant whim. Or, they’ll invest all their time in the spectacle of the pegasus for the final lap. But a good hippocamp can gain more time through the water of the second lap than a centaur through sand or a pegasus through air!”
Her brother leaned forward. But not before passing a glance to the dais. Teigra’s stomach twisted once more. The sight of their fallen aunt didn’t bring a look of sorrow to her brother’s face.
