The Queen's Handmaid by Tracy L. Higley Page B

days to follow, Varius seemed to frequent the house more than expected for a poet, and he often took a turn around the courtyard with Lydia in the evenings. On the night of their fifth day in Rome, he left her with a kiss on the hand and a warm good night.
    She walked slowly to the room she shared with the other female servants of Herod’s party.
    Near the door, she heard loud voices and slowed. Riva’s voice she recognized, but not the other—a man’s. Was Riva so bold as to entertain a man in the shared chamber? Should Lydia confront her or slink away to return later?
    “I have nothing, I tell you!” Riva’s words were edged with fear.
    Lydia drew closer to the door, leaned around the frame. A brawny man dressed in a dark tunic had his back to her, but Riva’s white face and wide eyes matched the fear in her voice. Was that a dagger in his hand?
    He reached for a bedding mat and slashed it open.
    A memory surfaced—Samuel’s rooms, torn apart by someone searching for the scrolls.
    The man had Riva pinned against the back wall.
    Lydia turned and fled to the front of the house, where a slave always guarded the door.
    “Please, come quickly!” She stumbled into the hall and grabbed at the arm of the bare-chested slave. “A servant girl is being attacked!”

Eleven
    T he brutish slave who always guarded the door, with his short sword strapped to his waist, shook off Lydia’s grasp as though she were an insect. “Servant girls—bah! What is that to me?”
    Lydia balled her fists. “He . . . he is stealing from the household. Searching through belongings for anything of value!”
    At this, the slave’s jaw tightened, bulging the veins in his neck. “Where?”
    Lydia turned and fled toward the shared room. Riva’s cries sounded through the hall as they approached.
    “Where are they?” The intruder was still firing questions at Riva. “Tell me and live. I know you brought them from Alexandria!”
    From behind her, the slave barreled past and into the room without pause. Lydia hovered at the door frame.
    The intruder spun, Riva in his grasp and the dagger at her throat. The girl’s eyes bulged like a fish in the market and her lips were drawn back over her teeth.
    The room was in chaos—belongings flung aside and bedding torn.
    Lydia’s glance darted to the corner where she’d secreted the scrolls. The urn looked undisturbed. For now.
    “I care not what you do with the girl.” The slave’s voice was the growl of a predator. “But you are not leaving this room alive.” The sword had found its way into the slave’s hand and he half crouched, his stance wide and ready.
    Riva’s attacker seemed to realize the pointlessness of his hold on the girl and cast her aside into the disarray of the room. Riva scrambled backward until she slammed against the side wall, and her hands worried at the plaster behind her as though she would push her way through. Her skin was plaster-pale already, her hair disheveled.
    The two men faced off, but the slave had been bred and trained to defend the household, and his sword was longer than the thief’s dagger. It was only a moment before the slave’s sword punctured the black tunic at gut level. The trespasser doubled over the sword and grabbed at the blade as if to pull it from his belly. The slave held the sword as the man fell, freeing it from his body.
    Riva launched herself from the wall and ran for the door. Pushing past Lydia, she shot her a look as black as death itself and kept running.
    It had happened so quickly. And the aftermath was quick as well. The slave hoisted the dead man over one shoulder and carried him out without a glance at Lydia, nor a concern for the blood on the floor or the contents of the room.
    She dared not check on the scrolls yet. Someone else could appear.
    But the words of Riva’s attacker burned through her mind. “I know you brought them from Alexandria.” What would anyone thinkRiva had brought? Something worth crossing the sea?