Air and Darkness by David Drake

Drago’s missing left ear set him apart from his cousin.
    â€œYour Ladyship,” Rago muttered, grimacing. The bravado that had carried him through the house, ignoring rules and propriety, had deserted him in Alphena’s presence.
    Drago stepped forward. “Lady,” he grunted. “Minimus and mosta the others just come back. It all went to shit somehow up there with the mistress and your brother, only nobody’s got the balls to come tell you. So we come.”
    â€œWho is Minimus?” Alphena said, as much to give herself time to recover from shock as because she really cared. She felt her knees wobble, but staggering to a seat would give the wrong impression at this moment.
    â€œHe’s honcho on the mistress’ guard,” Rago said. “They went up to some bloody place two days back.”
    â€œThe big Galatian,” Alphena said, placing the man. Hedia chose good-looking men for her escort. Minimus was unscarred, but he had been trained as a gladiator and would give a good account of himself if anyone attacked Hedia.
    â€œI kilt plenty men as big as that ’un,” Drago said with satisfaction. “Plenty.”
    That was likely enough. Rago and Drago were former sailors—and doubtless pirates—who’d been bought to work one of Saxa’s farms in leg irons. Before they were transported, Agrippinus had diverted them to string awnings over the central garden when Hedia decided to give a summer fete for other senatorial wives. The pair had remained at the town house as much as anything because nobody had bothered to send them away.
    â€œA whole mob come out of the air, Minimus says,” Drago said. “Whoop! Right outa the air. And when things settled down, they, whoever they was, went back where they’d come, but the mistress and your brother was gone.”
    â€œOut of the air…?” Alphena repeated.
    She saw Charias standing at the stairhead, quivering with interest and concern. “You!” she said. “Get all the secretaries in the household to write down what the servants who’ve returned from Polymartium are saying. Everyone who can take dictation, I don’t care whose suite they belong to.”
    The understeward’s lips pursed in hesitation. “Now,” Alphena said. “If anyone makes a problem, tell him I’ll come down and deal with him at once.”
    â€œHey, send us , lady,” Rago said. He smiled so broadly that Alphena could see that half his teeth were missing. “You told him nice, so give us a turn.”
    â€œI doubt I’ll need to do that,” she said. “But a crowd of people out of the air? You mean magic?”
    â€œDunno,” said Drago. “Sure sounds like it, don’t it?”
    â€œAre we going up there to sort it out, lady?” his cousin asked.
    â€œThe first thing I plan to do,” said Alphena, “is to discuss the business with Master Corylus and Master Pandareus. Once we know what the business is, as best Mother’s escort can describe it.”
    She looked at the cousins. Both wore clean blue tunics, but apart from that they appeared to be dangerous roughs—which of course they were.
    Hedia had chosen the members of her escort. The servants who accompanied Varus when he went out had been picked for him, probably by the majordomo. They would be eminently suitable for the task of maintaining not only Varus’ physical safety—rarely a real concern in Carce, where he spent most of his time—but also his status as a member of the nobility.
    Alphena hadn’t chosen her escort: they had chosen her. On a night when Lady Hedia had vanished in the hands of demons and the household was in uproar, Alphena had held herself in the icy calm that she had learned from her stepmother.
    A few servants had grouped themselves around Alphena, simply because the young lady hadn’t lost her head. They were odds and ends, supernumeraries