Before I could do more than swing around to face the men that loomed up out of a dark doorway Octavia and I were passing, one of them grabbed me in a choke hold, and pressed a cloth across my face. Two others held my arms as the sickly-sweet scent of something I knew must be an anesthetic seeped into my lungs. I fought as best I could, but the men were expert in close combat and avoided most of my attempts at stopping them. “No!” Octavia cried, throwing herself on one of the men. They were all swarthy in color, clad in brown-and-gold outfits with white turbans, the ends of which covered their lower faces, just like those worn by the Moghul attackers in Rome. . . . “Moghuls!” I yelled through the cloth as a synapse sparked. “Run, Octavia!” “Leave him be!” she cried, pulling at the man’s arm that held the anesthetic to my face. Her voice seemed to be rather distant, her beloved face growing fuzzy. I was being drugged, knocked out, but there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.
