Being forced into close contact with Hedia had given Alphena a different perspective. Alphena's ability to use a sword had been helpful and occasionally very helpful. Hedia wouldn't have considered gripping a sword hilt and wouldn't have known what to do with the weapon if she'd been forced to handle one.

But for all her ladylike disdain for swordsmanship and combat, Hedia had shocked her stepdaughter with her ruthless determination. Hedia had brought Alphena back to the world she had fallen out of, alive and uninjured except for some scratches and blisters.

Alphena blushed, remembering the way she had sneered at the older woman as a pampered weakling. Hedia certainly pampered herself, and if threatened she would bend like a young willow in a storm. When the storm passed, the willow would stand straight again; and it wouldn't break, not ever, no more than Hedia would.

The Nubians pranced the length of the long stage, giving every section of the theater a good opportunity to view the head. I wonder what my brother thinks of this? Alphena wondered.

She bent forward slightly, then remembered that her father's plump bulk concealed Varus-and Pandareus-unless she leaned out over the Tribunal railing. There was no need of that.

From the time Alphena had begun to be aware of the world around her, she had been mildly contemptuous of Varus. He wasn't crippled, but he was completely disinterested in the physical sports that were open to boys. He spent his time with books and his writing, the sort of thing that an old man or a weakling would do.

Varus wasn't a weakling. When the blazing demons of the Underworld began to climb into Carce, he had sat as calmly as a Stoic philosopher, chanting a poem. At the time, Alphena would have preferred Varus help her fight the fiery onslaught; but-candidly-he wouldn't have been much use as a warrior.