Dark Horse

Twenty-Two

When Apollo reined his fiery chariot over the eastern horizon the following morning, the air over Cressia was calm and warm, heavy with the scent of the oregano which grew wild on the hillsides. Birds sang, but their arias were brief. Territories had long since been established and there was little energy to spare with fast-growing chicks demanding so much food.

In the hills, foxes slunk home to their dens, stone martens suckled their second litter and rabbits sniffed warily as they emerged from their burrows.

Out on the water, still pink from the dawn, fishermen dropped polished pebbles into the sea — offerings to Neptune, for protecting them from the pirate. Garlands of campion and storksbills bobbed from where their womenfolk had already cast their thanksgivings earlier.

Further out still, the cascades of water caused by a lone dolphin arcing in and out of the limpid sea were turned to silver in the burgeoning sunshine.

The fruit on the pomegranate trees which shaded the Villa Arcadia swelled and ripened in the summer heat. The figs grew luscious and sweet.

Wings warmed by the sun, brown argus butterflies, painted ladies, commas and graylings formed a mobile chequerboard as they danced over blooms in search of nectar. Bees droned. Lizards crawled out of their cracks in the wall.

After the celebrations which had lasted until the wee small hours, Leo's slaves had permission to sleep in. A cockerel crowed in the distance. Horses in the stable block shuffled and snickered, and one stamped its hooves. Scorpions scuttled beneath stones.

Floating on her mattress of swansdown beneath a counterpane scented with camomile as the eye of the day slowly opened, Claudia Seferius dreamed. She dreamed of epic sea voyages in search of adventure, of golden fleeces and giant one-eyed cannibals, encounters with sorceresses, sea monsters and the deadly song of the Sirens, and beside her, in the crook of her arm, the ribcage of her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat rose and fell in unison with her breathing.

Another hour passed, and no one and nothing in Arcadia stirred.

In fact, another hour would drift by before the first slave shuffled bleary-eyed along the portico and noticed the Scythian spear embedded in the aromatic cedarwood of the atrium door. But in that hour, fieldworkers and artisans, household slaves and children, even the dogs, slumbered on. In good time, they would wake, stretch, clean their teeth. Some would turn and make love to their wives. They knew nothing about the spate of messages which had been delivered, three times in total, courtesy of a Scythian spear, so they weren't afraid. The pirates had gone, and in any case what was the spear but a harmless piece of polished cypress with a few ribbons and rattles and barbaric carvings?

And since only Qus knew about the spears, they would not know that on previous occasions there had been a message attached, saying: Give back what is mine.

There was no piece of lettered parchment on the lance when it was discovered on this beautiful, calm summer's morning.

What was impaled in its place was a body.

Shamshi the Persian had made a prediction. Before the sun stands thrice more over our heads, a woman shall die. Shamshi the Persian was wrong. It wasn't a woman who'd been speared through the gut and left to die on the atrium door.

It was Leo.