Free The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora by Stephanie Thornton

profile, sans his one green and one blue eye. I’d be lucky to earn so much in two months at this rate. “I still have to give Hilarion his cut,” she said, “but Mother should find us better rooms today. I think this might be the one—a prefect in theEmperor’s court. He has a villa in Hieron—we could go there for the sea breezes in the summer—”
    I let my sister’s words go in one ear and out the other until she jabbed me in the ribs.
    “I asked Hilarion on my way out if he thought you could go onstage yet. He said to talk to him this afternoon.”
    I was a Judas. I deserved to hang and have my bowels burst asunder, just as he had.
    I opened my mouth to tell Comito of Karas, but she prattled on about her prefect and all the silks she was going to have embroidered, a new stola for every day of the month, with different wardrobes for each season. Perhaps things were better this way.
    Comito might have a patron, and I might have a place onstage. Things were starting to look up, instead of simply skimming the horizon.
    Never had a morning seemed so long. I scrubbed my skin until it shone at the baths and even let the slaves polish my nails, my heart skittering at the thought of my upcoming debut. Comito whined when I dragged her to rehearsal early, but Hilarion only laughed when I asked for my lines.
    “Dark as a sewer rat and still flat as a slab of marble.” He clapped me on the back. “At least you have a sense of humor. Come back and talk to me when you’ve grown breasts like your sister’s.”
    I spent the night drawing his face in the ashes of the hearth and poking his eyes out with a rather sharp stick.
    .   .   .
    Winter would close the theater in another month and with it any hope I had of avoiding being a common
pornai
for the rest of my life. Comito was no help. Her prefect hadn’t called on her, and she was desperate for some patron to claim her before the cool weather set in. She might be asked to entertain at a private villa during the dark months, but she would otherwise spend her winter huddled withMother and me in our new room above a silk shop. Our new home was almost the same size as the room at the Boar’s Eye, but it was clean. And quiet.
    It had taken me weeks to concoct tonight’s scheme. It was a huge gamble but worth the risk.
    I’d be an old crone if I waited around for Hilarion to decide to put me in the chorus. The dark face that looked back at me in the Kynêgion’s bronze prop mirror made me cringe, but I licked my lips and pinched my cheeks. The costume I’d borrowed was too big in the bust, but it was short enough to show most of my legs, my best feature. It would have to do.
    The oil torches of the subterranean corridor flickered as I passed, casting trembling webs of shadows on the rock walls. I traveled half the circle of the theater, my stomach twisting itself into a tighter knot with each step. An empty animal cage sat at the stage entrance, the same one that had most recently held a toothless lion slaughtered in a performance of Heracles and the Nemean Lion. My fate might not be much different.
    The audience roared, and pebbles fell from the ceiling from thousands of stomping feet. I took a deep breath to keep my stomach from revolting and stepped through the cluster of dancers onstage as Perseus pulled Medusa’s head out of a burlap sack, the final act of the play. He held the head midair as I strode to center stage. A hush fell over the amphitheater. This hadn’t been covered in rehearsals.
    Comito was supposed to hiss and spit at Perseus for slaying her mortal sister, but my sister looked like a red snapper freshly pulled from the Bosphorus, crimson faced and slack jawed. Antonina had managed to swindle her way into the role of Medusa for the night—Petronia was mysteriously absent—and was supposed to be dead, sprawled on the stage with her head hidden under a red wool blanket of blood, but she peeked from underneath and shot me such a glare it might