Parthian Shot

17

We stared at each other. The Parthian cleared his throat.

‘So, Corvinus.’

I glanced at Jarhades. He was standing like he’d been cemented up from the inside, and he didn’t look too friendly, either. Obviously I wasn’t the only one to be surprised.

‘What’s going on here?’ he said.

Erato got up quickly, crossed over to him and gripped his arm. No spangle and glitter now; she was wearing a respectable matron’s tunic, her hair was in a tight bun and without the makeup she’d had on at the dinner party she looked her age.

‘It’s all right,’ she said.

‘Is it fuck.’ Jarhades was still glaring at Peucestas. ‘Who’s he, and what’s he doing here?’

‘I came to see my son,’ Peucestas said quietly.

Everything went very still. Then Jarhades moved…

‘Dad, no!’ Batis might not be quick enough on his feet for an acrobat, but he was across the room in a second, between Jarhades and the Parthian, and the solid bulk of his shoulder slammed against Jarhades’s chest so hard I could hear the ribs grind. Jarhades gasped; it must’ve felt like hitting a stone wall, and the effect was just the same.

Oh, shit, I was definitely one too many here. Obviously a bad time to come calling. I remembered what Jarhades had said in the qef-shop, about Erato’s master getting her pregnant and her doing a runner to avoid being sold. And now you saw the two of them together — Batis and Peucestas — and knew who they were the resemblance was clear enough. Add twenty-five years to one, or take it off the other, and physically they’d be dead ringers. Apart from in one major respect, of course, and if Batis was the guy’s son then that was the one that didn’t make sense; no sense at all…

For a moment, the tableau held, like something out of the play they’d been putting on in the square. Jarhades stood clutching his ribs, half-leaning on the young man’s shoulder. Erato was white as a sheet, one hand over her mouth, and the daughter’s eyes were out like doorstops.

Peucestas might not have moved, but I had the impression from the look in his eyes that even if Batis hadn’t been there he could’ve handled the situation, no sweat.

‘Sit down,’ he said to Jarhades. ‘It isn’t the way you think.’

‘Do what he says, love,’ Erato said in the ghost of a voice. ‘Please.’

Batis moved aside. Jarhades stood swaying for a moment, his fists balled. Then he pulled up a stool and sat on it, glaring.

‘Batis is my son, yes,’ Peucestas said, ‘but Erato isn’t his mother.’

Whatever the guy had been expecting, it obviously wasn’t that. He stared at Erato, his head moving from side to side like a stunned bull’s.

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ Erato whispered. ‘First it was too dangerous, then it was too late. And by that time the truth didn’t matter.’ She glanced sideways at Peucestas.

‘She was my slave,’ he said. He was still speaking very quietly, and his eyes hadn’t left Jarhades’s face. ‘That part’s true enough. But she was only the boy’s nurse. And she ran because I told her to, taking the child with her. Up until the dinner I didn’t know that either of them were still alive.’

‘They would have killed him.’ Erato reached over to touch Jarhades, but her hand stopped short. ‘The way they killed the others.’

‘Batis’s mother was my chief wife,’ Peucestas said, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Artabanus ordered her and my children impaled.’

Oh, shit.

Jarhades grunted. Some of the stiffness went out of him. ‘So,’ he said to Erato, ‘there was no merchant in Ecbatana after all?’

‘No.’ Erato had got some of her colour back, and like Peucestas’s her tone was matter-of-fact. ‘The family had a house there, so I knew it well enough, but we lived most of the time in Rhagae. I had to lie to you about that, too. I’m sorry.’

‘The king’s men came before dawn one morning, when we weren’t expecting them,’ Peucestas said; his eyes still hadn’t wavered. ‘I’d no time to do anything but give Erato her orders and what little money I had by me and send her out the back way. I’d have saved the others if I could, but that wasn’t possible. A young girl with a baby she could pass off as her own had at least a chance, but I never thought I’d see either of them again in any case. I should have died with the others. Instead Artabanus was merciful. I was castrated, then carried into the courtyard to watch my wife and children die. As a lesson in obedience.’ His gaze shifted to me. ‘If you didn’t know my reasons before for supporting Phraates, Corvinus, you know them now. When that animal is captured my price is his skin, taken from him living.’

There was a long silence. Finally, Jarhades turned to Peucestas. ‘So,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Thank you for explaining, at least.’ Peucestas didn’t answer. ‘You’re taking the boy with you? Back to Parthia?’

I glanced at Batis. Neither he nor the girl had moved. He was frowning; she was still staring wide-eyed, like a kid at a puppet show.

‘Oh, no.’ Peucestas shook his head. ‘No. That would be stupid. If Phraates becomes king then yes, of course, in time: Batis is my heir, the only one I have or can ever have now. For the present he’s safer where he is.’ He looked at me again. ‘Corvinus, I’d be grateful if you didn’t pass the information on to your Palatine friends, as I have kept it secret from my colleagues. My family — what there is left of it — is still important in Parthia. If Rome knew that they held the heir then…’ He smiled briefly. ‘Well, you know how it is yourself. However this turns out, I’ve no desire to see him used as a bargaining token. You’ll do that for me? Please?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, sure. No problem.’ I swallowed. Jupiter!

‘Good. Thank you. Money is another matter. Of course my son will need — ’

‘We don’t want your money,’ Jarhades said.

Peucestas stood up. ‘I won’t quarrel,’ he said gently. ‘Especially today. I owe you and Erato too much for that. The money will be there whether you use it or not. I’ll make the necessary arrangements.’ He held out his hand. After a pause, Jarhades took it. ‘Now. We have a meeting scheduled for this afternoon, and I have to be getting back before I’m missed. Also’ — he smiled again — ‘no doubt you’ll have a lot to talk about after I’ve gone. We’ll meet again before I leave.’ He made a move towards Batis, then seemed to change his mind. Instead, he simply gave him a brief nod, walked past me towards the door, opened it and left without another word.

There was an awkward silence.

Gods alive!

‘Uh…maybe I should be going as well,’ I said.

‘No.’ Jarhades was still frowning. ‘Erato; wine for our guest.’ She got up without a word and disappeared into the next room.

Batis sat down on the bench. ‘Dad, I swear to you,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t know.’

Jarhades shook his head. ‘Forget it, lad, it’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault.’

‘Does that mean Batis is a prince?’ Calliste said.

I turned to look at her properly for the first time. The name fitted: she was a little stunner, even without the makeup and the skimpy costume. But thirteen or not, the question and the tone had been a four-year-old’s. The hairs rose on the back of my neck.

Jarhades’s frown had lifted. He reached over and stroked her hair. ‘More or less,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ That was all. The girl turned her big, vacant eyes on me. ‘You were at the dinner party, weren’t you?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I said. ‘Corvinus. Marcus Corvinus. You’re a very talented girl, Calliste.’

‘Yes, I know.’

It should’ve sounded arrogant, or precious, but it didn’t: it came out simply, in the same childish voice that was way too young for the body. I glanced at Jarhades.

‘Leave us to talk,’ he said gently. She got up and left the room. With a muttered excuse Batis followed her. Jarhades waited until they were gone and then said to me: ‘You can see now why I didn’t want that bastard touching her.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I can.’

‘It’s nothing serious.’ He was looking down at his hands. ‘She’s just a bit slow. But as a juggler and tumbler she’s first-rate.’

I didn’t answer. Just a bit slow. Yeah, sure. Well, they seemed happy enough. And he was right; she was good at what she did. That was all that mattered.

‘Batis worships her, and it’s mutual.’ He looked up. ‘Still, that’s a problem for the future, isn’t it?’ Erato came in with a tray: two cups of wine and a plate of cheese and olives. ‘Here’s the wine. It’s Syrian, as good as Mano’s or better.’

Erato was avoiding his eye. She set the tray on the table then sat down on the bench opposite.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’d have told you if I could.’

I got up quickly. ‘Look, you can do without me, right? You don’t need — ’

‘Sit down. It’s all right.’ Jarhades half-smiled and ducked his head. ‘Though I won’t say it hasn’t been a shock.’ He turned to Erato. ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, girl, quite the reverse. Now. We have a guest. I told him you’d want to thank him for what he did at the dinner. Was I wrong?’

‘No.’ Erato wiped her nose on her tunic-sleeve, her expression the stiffly-formal one you get sometimes with peasant women when they’re doing what they see as their duty. ‘You’re very welcome here, Marcus Corvinus. And I’m grateful, very grateful. We all are.’

I took a swallow of the wine. It was good stuff, and after that little scene with Peucestas I needed it. ‘All the guy really wanted was to make trouble,’ I said.

Jarhades nodded; he didn’t seem all that surprised. ‘Yes. That I’d believe. That’s him all over. You get people like Mithradates; they meddle for the sake of meddling, then sit back and watch the fun.’

‘And at least this time no one got hurt,’ Erato said.

‘“This time”?’ I said.

Jarhades scowled and pushed the plate of cheese and olives over towards me. ‘What these flash young society bastards do to each other at their parties, girl, is up to them,’ he said. ‘They deserve all they get, and you won’t catch me crying.’

The hairs on the back of my neck were lifting gently. I reached for a piece of cheese.

‘What specific flash young society bastards would we talking about here exactly?’ I said.

‘You’ll’ve seen one of them at the dinner.’ Jarhades sipped his wine. ‘Damon. Prince Phraates’s son.’

Something cold touched my spine. ‘Mithradates had a spat at a party with Damon?’

‘No. Not him; you said it yourself, he just stirs things up. The other lad went by the name of Nicanor. He — ’

‘Nicanor?’

‘That’s right.’ Jarhades shot me a sharp look ‘You know him? Father’s an Armenian merchant, very big in the spice trade.’ He turned to Erato. ‘What’s his name again? Aratus?’

‘Anacus,’ Erato said. ‘His wife’s from Antioch. They’ve got that fancy house near the Caelimontanan Gate, the one with the — ’

‘This party,’ I interrupted. ‘You care to tell me about it? The whole story, from the beginning?’

‘That was the one I was telling you about at Mano’s,’ Jarhades said. ‘When Mithradates made his pass at Calliste. Quite a big affair, a birthday bash. It’d be, what, two or three months ago now?’ He looked at Erato. She nodded. ‘The host had booked us along with another couple of acts. We weren’t there ourselves when the trouble started — we’d had the business over Calliste by then — but we got the story from one of the others. It was young Nicanor’s fault, sure, but Mithradates began it, setting Damon on at him.’

‘Damon was always needling the other boy,’ Erato said. ‘If you’ve met him you’ll know why. He’s soft as new-pressed goat’s-cheese.’

Yeah, well; that was a verdict on Nicanor I wouldn’t entirely agree with, but it didn’t really matter and I kept my mouth shut.

‘Anyway.’ Jarhades stoned an olive. ‘Then seemingly Nicanor shouts out something about Damon having fooled with his sister — Nicanor’s sister — and goes for him with a knife. When they pull the two apart Damon’s lost a finger.’

‘The sister had died,’ Erato put in. ‘Two or three months before that. I forget her name.’

There was something about her tone that set the prickles in my neck going again. ‘“Died”?’ I said.

‘Of a fever. That was the official version, anyway. Rumour was, though, they buried her hand separate. And with what her brother claimed you don’t have to look far for the reason.’

Right; a pregnancy and suicide. Oh, shit. Not that I thought the story had any relevance, apart from explaining how Damon had come by the wound that put him out of the running for the Great Kingship, even if he was only eligible by his own reckoning. ‘The girl killed herself because she was pregnant by Damon?’

‘So people said at the time. And there was no trouble later about the finger.’

I sat back. Yeah, gossip aside — and the lady was clearly a born gossiper — that last was pretty surprising. Damon might be illegitimate, sure, but he was still a Parthian prince’s son, and in Rome you don’t carve bits off sprigs of the nobility and get away with it unless you’ve got serious clout. Or, of course, for an equally good reason. Hushing up a pregnancy and a suicide — especially if the girl’s father was a big wheel in the city’s merchant community — was as good an explanation as any, even if Phraates was a prince of the blood. It explained why Nicanor hated Damon’s guts, for a start, and why he wanted nothing more to do with him or his cronies. Also why he’d been so touchy on the subject of his family. I tucked the little nugget away for future reference.

‘What’s your interest, anyway?’ Erato had picked up Jarhades’s wine-cup and was sipping at it. The distraction seemed to have done her good. If I hadn’t seen her onstage in a spangled bra and fringed panties I would’ve placed her as a Suburan housewife swapping scandal with a neighbour over the shelled peas. ‘In Damon and his friends, I mean?’

The born gossip’s question; I should’ve been expecting it. Erato was no fool, either.

‘Uh…’ I said.

‘Now, now, girl,’ Jarhades grunted. ‘That’s none of our business. Let the man drink his wine in peace.’

Well, she knew about the Parthian delegation anyway, or at least that the guys were in Rome and that they were Parthians, if not the whys and wherefores. Also, she and Jarhades had been pretty helpful, and maybe there was more where that came from. ‘No, that’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m looking into a murder. One of the people at the dinner, name of Zariadres.’

I hadn’t been expecting what happened next. The lady set the cup down sharply, and it caught the edge of Jarhades’s hand, tipped, and splashed wine onto the table-top.

‘Who?’ she whispered. The colour had left her face.

Jarhades and I were both staring at her. ‘Zariadres,’ I said. ‘You know him?’

She shook her head numbly. ‘No. I…at least, not that…no.’ She stood up. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get a cloth.’

I watched her go. Shit; she was lying, sure, that stood out clear as a pig in a swimming pool. The only question was what I was going to do about it.

‘What was that in aid of?’ Jarhades said. He looked as mystified as I felt.

‘You don’t know either?’

‘It seems there’s a lot of things I don’t know. What happened exactly, with this Zariadres?’

I told him. It took a while, even though I kept strictly to the facts, and I had one eye on the door all the time, but Erato didn’t reappear. Finally, when she did, she came straight over to the table, eyes lowered, and began to wipe up the spilled wine while Jarhades and I watched in silence.

When she’d finished, she put the cloth down and turned to me. ‘He was a Suren, wasn’t he?’ she said.

‘A what?’

‘This Zariadres. He’d be from the Suren family.’

‘Uh…yeah. Yeah, I think so,’ I said. I had a faint memory of Isidorus — or was it Vitellius? — telling me that.

‘How..?’ Jarhades began. I laid a hand on his wrist, and he stopped.

‘He must’ve been named after his father, then. Or maybe an uncle.’ Erato sat down, and her voice was as expressionless as her face. ‘The Surens and the Mihrans — Lord Peucestas is a Mihran — are enemies. They always have been. It was a Suren that Artabanus sent that day to castrate the master and execute his family. His name was Zariadres, too.’