Dark Horse

Twenty-Five

In a bedroom darkened to near blackness by closed shutters for privacy, Claudia sniffed back the tears. Leo had his faults — more than most — but no man deserved to die in such a manner. Whatever score Jason wanted to settle, that was simply too high a price.

You bastard! You cold-blooded, calculating, evil-minded bastard. She saw Jason standing in that rosy-pink dawn three days ago on the prow of his warship. That insolent bow. The slow mime of the handclap. The gold which had glinted at hi neck and his belt in the sun. You didn't even have the decency to kill Leo quickly, you callous son-of-a-bitch.

But he'd made a mistake, killing a high-ranking Roman Leo's barbaric murder would bring the whole damn Roma Navy up here — there would be no place for Jason to hide Informers would be richly rewarded, retribution on those who backed Azan would be grim, and reprisals for those who sheltered the Moth did not bear thinking about. There would be no port or cove left for the rebels to put in to, and Claudia had no pity for Jason once they'd been run to ground Captured alive (the Emperor would make sure of that), he'd be dragged back to Rome, paraded in chains round the street and sentenced to a humiliating, protracted death in the arena 'And I shall be in the front row, cheering for Leo,' she said aloud.

'Hrrrow,' Drusilla agreed.

It was so unfair. She scrubbed away the tears that streamed down her face with her sleeve. 'The only way Leo gets to see his beautifully refurbished atrium is with a coin under hi tongue for the ferryman.'

'Mrrrrr.' pity his family, too. He'd be in his urn long before the news reached halfway to Rome. His sisters and brothers, his cousins and nephews, friends and colleagues would gather instead in the Forum to hear a sombre ovation in his honour. Like the families of soldiers killed in war, they would have to hold the feast without holding the funeral. Grieving would be harder because of it.

Fumbling in the drear darkness, Claudia stuffed a protesting Drusilla into her cage.

'Meeee-out!'

'Sorry, poppet.' She rammed the latch home to make her point and hurriedly tossed underclothes into her trunk. 'We need to get clear of the risk zone. Pronto.'

'Worried Jason'll come back?' a voice asked from the doorway.

Thank Jupiter for bodyguards! Hardly his job, but with the maids poleaxed from shock, Junius would just have to pitch in with the packing. Claudia wedged a pair of sandals down the side of the chest and said,

'Not Jason, you clod. Orbilio.' Get in there, dammit. She pressed down on her gowns, stuffed the last two on top, but would the wretched lid close?

'Would that be so much of a problem?'

'Junius, I am not in the mood for stupid questions.' How the hell were her cosmetic jars supposed to fit into that tiny space? 'Supersnoop will win enough glory bringing Jason and the rebels to book, they'll erect a statue to him in the Forum.' May the pigeons have a field day with it. 'He doesn't need to add my little dodge to his heroic collection.'

'Which little dodge might that be exactly?'

How come I've got a blue slipper left over? 'Junius, come and sit on the lid of this trunk, will you?'

Damn. The doorway was devoid of bodyguards. Claudia sat on the lid herself and bounced up and down until it closed.

'No, really.' Now the voice came from the corner. 'Are we talking about the tax dodge on your wine exports to Spain? That spot of smuggling earlier this year? Or slipping narcotics to the hot favourites in provincial derbies?'

When she stood up, the lid sprang up too. 'For goodness' sake, Junius, stop buggering about and put your Gaulish butt where it matters. On this trunk.'

But Junius wasn't in the corner, either. Squinting in the blackness, she could just about make out his shadow by the windows, then suddenly she was blinded as the shutters were flung open and sunlight dazzled her eyes. And now, of course, she realized her mistake. The hair was too dark, far too wavy, and the figure wore a long patrician tunic.

'Sorry, Leo, I thought you were my bodygu-'

Leo? Oh. Shit. His ghost was still walking.

'Father Mars, protect me from the undead.'

Beans. I need beans. Beans are used to drive away ghosts. There was fruit in the silver bowl — cherries and apricots, peaches and figs — but what calibre of servants forget to include black beans in the arrangement?

'Deliver me from the vengeance of this poor wretched soul in torment.'

The words tumbled into one, but still the ferryman didn't row Leo away. Had someone forgotten to slip him the down payment?

'Mighty Pluto, god of the underworld, take this stubborn shade to his ancestors. Quickly, if you don't mind.'

What was this, another aristocratic perk, that noble spirits were allowed to remain earthbound longer than anyone else's? Exorcism! That's it, I'll exorcise the bloody thing. Claudia made the sign she'd seen a priest use during an exorcism in Rome, thumb and first two fingers raised stiff, the fourth and little finger turned down. Unfortunately, it had been a Phrygian priest making the blessing for a Phrygian ghost; clearly there was a language barrier here. She tried making the sign with both hands, which set the spirit's shoulders heaving, as though it found something amusing.

'Beans!' she told it.

'Beans yourself,' it said.

'Help me,' she implored Pluto. 'How do you drive ghosts back to Hades?'

'In a one-hearse chariot?' the apparition suggested.

One-hearse? Oh, terrific. Not a ghost. Ghosts you can deal with, of course. All you need is a handful of beans, the right words and pfft, off they trot. Hauntings by the Security Police, on the other hand, are much harder to exorcise. Far from being four hundred harmless miles away, Marcus Cornelius, that ace champion of the truth, was here on the island of Cressia.

'Just what the hell game are you playing, Orbilio?' it's lovely to see you again, too.' He helped himself to an apricot from the fruit bowl, 'I brought you a present.' He tossed across a cheap clay mug, the type sold by the hundred the day after the races, engraved with the names of the winners. The name on the mug was Calypso. Very droll.

'Answer the question.'

'My cousin's been murdered, remember?'

'You could not possibly have known that when you left Rome.'

'True.' With the toe of his boot, he flipped open the latch of Drusilla's cage. A dark blur shot out of the room without so much as a thank you. 'But it doesn't alter the fact that Leo was killed. Slowly and very unpleasantly. Or that, if I'd been at the villa instead of in town, I would have prevented his murder.'

Claudia doubted Jupiter himself could have prevented the killing. More likely Orbilio would have got himself butchered, too. Aloud, she said, 'You were in town?'

'Gossip,' he said, 'is best picked up locally.' He carefully deposited the apricot stone in the middle of the window still then flicked it with his thumb and forefinger as hard as he could. There was a ping as it connected with a flowerpot in the yard. 'You'd be surprised what I picked up in that tavern.'

'The clap?'

He laughed. 'For the life of me, I don't know why you don't marry me and be done with, Claudia Seferius.'

'You think so little of me that you'd have me chained to a pompous, self-opinionated bore?'

'A pompous, self-opinionated, good-looking bore.' He let the wall take his weight. She'd almost forgotten those green flecks that danced in his eyes.

'When did you land?' she asked, because a nasty feeling was starting to congeal in the pit of her stomach.

'Day before yesterday.'

The feeling solidified into a ball. Before a new light is born in the sky, bad news will come over the water. Of course Shamshi had been looking at her — her! — when he made his pronouncement at dinner. He'd been as surprised as the rest of them when he saw that pirate ship in the bay.

'Then you'll know about Jason?'

'Oh, yes.' Orbilio prodded Claudia's mattress. 'I know all about our strapping son of an Amazon.'

'Son of a something, anyway.'

As he bounced up and down testing the feathers, she caught a whiff of sandalwood, with just the faintest hint of a rosemary rinse in his clothes. She recognized the combination. It was the indisputable scent of the trapper. But he smelled, too, of rough tavern wine, of salt spray from the air, and there were smuts on his fine linen tunic. Make no mistake. The death of his cousin had hit Orbilio hard. Grief was etched deep in the lines of his face, his eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. But even through his raw emotional state, danger pulsed through him.

He leaned across and extracted the stopper of her alabaster perfume pot on the table next to the bed. 'Nice,' he said, sniffing.

She snatched the phial out of his hand and replaced the bung. In her haste to pack, she'd almost left it behind. Now she stuffed it in her leather travelling bag, already full to overflowing, and thought about the ship making ready to sail in the harbour. This was the freighter Leo had intended to put his sister-in-law on. Only a puny fifty-footer, but the point was, it had a vacancy for a female passenger, plus luggage.

Marcus flopped back on the mattress, stretched out his long legs and folded his hands under his head. 'Don't you think it's odd, these fires along the Liburnian coast?'

What is odd, my friend, is thinking about burned-out warehouses when Leo's just been skewered like a scallop. Odd is staying in a tavern incognito, instead of announcing your arrival to your cousin. Odd is appearing on the scene within a few hours of the tragedy. And odd is not seeing the Roman Navy lined up in the Gulf when you obviously know all about Azan's rebellion.

'Define odd,' she said.

His eyes traced the painted rose garlands which scrambled over the cornice. 'Leo's domestic situation, for a start,' he replied. 'Wife shoved out, sister moves in, husband set to marry a girl who's little more than a child. A little on the unusual side, don't you think?'

'Isn't that par for the course for your lot?'

Whether, engrossed as he was in testing the softness of the pillows, Orbilio missed the jibe against his class or whether he deliberately chose to ignore it Claudia wasn't sure. His eyes closed, and for a count of thirty his chest rose and fell. She did not fall into the trap of believing he'd fallen asleep.

Her hand closed over the strap of her trunk.

'What do you make of the fair Silvia?' he asked.

Damn. 'Charming girl. Love her to bits.'

A muscle twitched at the side of his mouth. 'And Nikias?'

Safer ground here. 'Nikias does with portraits what a Greek musician can do with a lyre.' Makes you weep with the depth of emotion.

'What about the dolphin?'

'Sorry, never met it. Can't give an objective opinion.'

'So you wouldn't know how the Medea came to be listing in the water?'

'Woodworm?'

The twitch broadened to reveal a row of white, even teeth. 'The trouble with casting Nikias in the role as saboteur,' he said, eyes still closed, 'is that the Corinthian can't swim. Whereas your bodyguard, apparently, cleaves the sea like an otter.'

'Good heavens. All this time, and I never knew.'

'Well, maybe you knew he was hanging round the saws in the carpenters' shed the night before the Medea was holed?'

'His spare time is his own business, Orbilio. I don't like to pry.'

'Good,' he said, opening one lazy eye. 'Glad we cleared that one up.'

All right, so with hindsight she wouldn't have sabotaged the ship and thus eliminated in a stroke any chance of mass rescue, should Jason raid Arcadia tonight. But — 'We don't all have crystal balls, Orbilio.'

'You've been peeking.'

His eyes shut, so he missed the volley of fireballs which bombarded the bed. What did he mean about those fires along the Liburnian coast being odd? Then she looked at his face understood the performance he was putting on, the act of forced joviality over what must have come as a thunderbolt from the blue: the discovery that even the Security Police aren't exempt from the effects of grief! Here, she realized was a man juggling anger with guilt, anguish with sorrow' while trying to retain a grip on reality by doing his job. Behind those closed eyelids Orbilio was battling to control a whole host of undisciplined emotions — so was there ever a better time to sneak away and catch that fifty-foot freighter to Rome?

Unfortunately, Claudia would never know.

The scream four doors down made sure of that.