Fall of Empires

Chapter 49

Anna did not know how long she had laid there, pinned beneath the slumped body of Kavad as his blood flowed over her. She had lain gasping for breath, incredulous that she had survived. Stars had begun to dance before her eyes as Kavad had continued to choke her even after she had driven the blade into the side of his neck over and over. At last, mercifully, his hands had fallen away from her throat and with eyes glazed and staring he had fallen forward onto her. His face had been pressed against hers and his blood had poured out of him until she was soaked with it. The lamps had guttered out soon afterwards and she had laid there in darkness and silence, with only the sound of her own ragged breath and the dripping of Kavad’s blood onto the floor.

After what had seemed like an age with the blood turning cold and sticky on her skin she had pushed herself upright, rolling Kavad’s corpse off of her to thump onto the floor. Making her way across the room, slithering on the blood, she had reached the water bowl and washed away some of the blood from her face. As she had straightened, a sudden rattling sound from behind the tapestry-covered wall had made her jump and she had fallen to her knees on the floor and begun searching frantically for the dagger that she had let fall from her grasp once she had been certain that Kavad was dead at last. With a grunt and a creaking of wood, a hidden door had opened in the wall and a crack of lamp light had spilled into the room. A long, skinny arm had made its way through the gap and pushed aside the wall hanging and then the door had opened wider to reveal the bald and perspiring head of Bagoas. She had never thought to be so pleased to see the eunuch.

He had set down the lamp that he carried upon the table, looked down at the bloody scene on the floor and grinned.

‘You have done well, child. Now quickly, help me with this.’

Bagoas had turned back to the door and then to Anna’s surprise he had begun dragging another body into the room. It was the body of a young man, little more than a boy, skinny and underfed. His grubby tunic had been pulled up under his arms as he had been dragged along and underneath he was naked and his body bore the scars of injuries old and new. A dark bruise about his neck showed the manner of his death.
‘Who is this?’ Anna had demanded as Bagoas had dragged the boy towards the couch, avoiding the large pool of blood around Kavad’s body.

‘It does not matter who he is, a nameless boy from the streets, selling his body for a few scraps to eat. Such boys are easily obtained and Kavad has a taste for them and so his presence here will raise no questions that cannot be answered. Now he is, to all intents and purposes, Kavad’s murderer.’
‘You killed him?’ Anna had been aghast.
‘Do not pity him too much, child. Boys such as this never live long and he ate the best meal of his life right before he died, insensible with drink. Now, help me lift him.’

Anna had taken the boy’s feet and they had lifted him easily onto the couch. Bagoas had replaced the dagger on the floor to look as if it had fallen from the boy’s grasp, smearing Kavad’s blood over the boy’s arm and chest.
‘There,’ he had exclaimed with grim satisfaction. ‘Now follow me, child. You were never here.’

Anna had left the bloody room behind gladly and followed the flickering lamp of Bagoas on through narrow passages barely wide enough to walk through. At times she had been forced to stoop to avoid the low ceiling. At last after a bewildering series of twists and turns, sometimes descending steps, they had arrived in a small chamber with rough mud-brick walls. As Bagoas had set the lamp down in a niche in the wall, Anna had seen that a clean tunic and a basin of water had been left in one corner and that a rough mattress lay in another.

‘You will be safe here, Anna,’ Bagoas had told her. She had noted that he had used her name for the first time. ‘I apologise for the rather rough accommodation but it will be I hope only for a short while. Soon the palace will be in the hands of those we can trust.’