Household Gods by Judith Tarr Harry Turtledove

Author:Judith Tarr, Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Judith Tarr, Harry]
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction, General, Fiction, Fantasy, Fantasy - General, Epic, Fantasy fiction, Fiction - Fantasy, Historical fiction, Historical, Time travel, History, Fantasy - Historical, Ancient, Women lawyers, Rome - History - Marcus Aurelius; 161-180, Rome
ISBN: 9780812564662
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Published: 2000-06-27T23:00:00+00:00

Calidius Severus was waiting, again, for her to answer. He always did that. She still wasn’t used to it - to having a man listen to her. God knew Frank never had. She hadn’t always listened to Frank, either, but then Frank was a bore.

She gave Calidius Severus an answer, though maybe not the answer he was looking for.

“No, I don’t know anything special,” she said. All at once, to her own amazement, she hugged him fiercely. “I just want us to come through all right.”

“So do I,” he said. He didn’t sound overly convinced. “That’s as the gods will - one way or the other. Nothing much we can do. Maybe Dexter was wrong. Physicians don’t know everything, even if they like to pretend they do. Or maybe he was right, but there’ll be only the one case. It won’t be an epidemic.”

“Maybe,” Nicole said. She grasped at the straw as eagerly as he had, and with as little conviction. Maybe saying it would make it true.

Or maybe not.

They left the amphitheater in silence that extended well beyond the two of them, and walked back toward the city. On the way in, everyone had been lively, cheerful, chatting and calling back and forth. Now only a few people spoke, and that in low voices. The rest slid sidewise glances at them, peering to see if they looked sick.

For the first time, Nicole wished Liber and Libera had brought her body here as well as her soul, spirit, self, whatever it was. Her body was a pasty, doughy, only moderately attractive thing, but it had had measles. Umma’s hadn’t. As long as Nicole lived in this body, she was as susceptible as anyone else in Carnuntum.

When she’d wished herself here, she’d given up more than she’d ever imagined. Would she have to give up her life, too?

Until now she’d been coasting, living a long, generally not very pleasant dream. She’d been too busy just surviving, and too tired out from it, to think much past the moment. And, to be honest, she’d been too stubborn to admit that she’d made a mistake; that she’d been dead bone ignorant about the past. Maybe not any past - but this one certainly wasn’t anything like what she’d expected.

She didn’t want out. Not yet. She was stubborn enough for that. But she was beginning to think that she might be healthier, if not happier, back in West Hills.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” she whispered, more to herself than to Titus Calidius Severus. He nodded, a little too vigorously. “Maybe it won’t,” he said. He reached to take her hand just as she reached to take his. They clung to each other as they made their way through the clamor and stinks, the flies and smoke of Carnuntum.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” she said again, in the street in front of the tavern. But she knew what crouched there in the dark, however loud she whistled. She gave it a name: “I’m scared.

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