Dark Horse

Forty-Five

You're not seriously inviting him to stay here?'

Was Silvia out of her mind? Offering those same seafaring hands which had squeezed her windpipe like a grape the luxury of a guest bedroom?

'What were we supposed to do?' Silvia retorted. Two high spots of colour stood out on her perfect cheeks. 'He returns you safe and sound, we can hardly throw him out, can we? Anyway.' She tossed her head in a haze of golden ringlets. 'He has nowhere to go.'

Only to hell, Claudia reflected, and there was no great rush to send Jason there. With a contented sigh, she sank below the warm, scented waters of her sunken, tiled bath and recalled how easy it would have been to slip her stiletto into the heart of the blue bull as he slept last night. Too easy! She exhaled in a series of satisfied bubbles. If the murdering bastard expected to escape that lightly, he had another think coming. It was a parade through the streets of Rome in chains for him. Followed by a slow, painful and humiliating death in the arena. She surfaced among the heliotrope and hibiscus petals bobbing on the bathwater and felt better already.

She would have felt a whole lot better, of course, had the Security Police been around to do the job they were trained for. Namely, clapping psychopaths in irons. But, as Silvia was particularly quick to point out, Orbilio wasn't here.

'So conscientious in his official duties,' she'd gushed, perching daintily on a footstool as Claudia was enveloped in coils of fragrant steam. 'He'll make a splendid Senator, don't you think? So handsome, too, in full insignia.'

The big blue eyes took on a misty glaze.

'I can see us now — feted by the cream of society, invited to the very best dinner parties. And if his career in law shines like his military career in the past, maybe we shall even attend imperial banquets one day!'

'Remind me again how long I've been gone?' Claudia murmured. 'Only when I left, I could have sworn he was an investigator in the Security Police.'

Silvia dismissed Orbilio's position with a wrinkling of her pretty nose. 'Sordid, sordid, can't have that. Best to play up his stint as a young tribune, concentrate on that, because really, Claudia, and apart from the ignominy of it all, a family man can't afford to risk his neck on the mean streets at night. Advocacy is Marcus's future, trust me.'

Claudia thought about the chestnut gelding which Jason had procured from that village in the wilds of Illyria and which had been her transport home, and saw the same gelding knife glistening in Silvia's hand.

'Does Marcus know he's about to become a lawyer any minute?' she asked sweetly.

'All in good time.' Immaculate lips parted in a slight smile, which widened and became more catlike, as her gaze fixed on a point in the middle distance. 'With a husband serving in the Senate, society won't dare to cut me. It will,' she sighed, 'be just like the old days.'

Then, as fast as a tallow being snuffed, Silvia's expression returned to glacial normality.

'You will come and visit us one afternoon, won't you, dear? I'm sure my husband wouldn't want us to abandon his old friend's quirky widow, simply because she's not patrician.'

But when those big blue eyes refocused on the warm, fragrant waters, all that remained of Claudia Seferius was a trail of wet footprints fading their way out of the bath house.

'Claudia.' The whisper echoed like a kiss along the gallery which enclosed the gymnasium yard and she wondered how long the Persian had been waiting. How much naked flesh he had been hoping to see. 'I am glad to see you returned safely.'

'I'd have expected your entrails and livers to have seen that, Shamshi. Not your eyes.'

The only object to emerge from the shadow was one shoe, tied in a bow and partially covered by the hem of his kaftan. 'Dear child, I am but the guardian of the prophecies, not their originator.'

'Well, considering the sun rose above our heads far more than thrice and no woman died, I suggest you stick your prophecies where it doesn't rise and fall, and guard that.'

'Ah, but a woman did die. On the very morning I predicted, the cobbler's mother commenced her long and arduous journey across the River Styx.' Enough oil came from his smile to drain a whole olive tree. 'The gods never lie to me, Claudia.'

'I could ask you nicely to get out of my way, Shamshi. Then again, I could just kick you in the balls.'

The Persian twisted his thin hands together and stood his ground. 'I fetched a clay beaker as commanded last night in my dream. I filled it with milk mixed with honey, then added the blood of a jet-black ram and drank it down as the gods instructed.'

'You might try prunes for breakfast next time.'

'The warning that came through was as clear as the crystal Qus keeps in his room,' Shamshi persisted, and she didn't like the way he pushed his hooked nose into her face as he lowered his voice to a whisper. 'Beware, Claudia.' His breath was still as sweet as an overripe melon. 'Beware the Trojan horse.'

Which just goes to prove, she supposed, the dangers of mixing your drinks. Milk, blood and honey in the same bowl can seriously damage a man's mental health.

The boat carrying Orbilio back to Cressia needed no pilot to guide her into the harbour. Her captain was a local skipper from the Istrian mainland, who knew the rocks and the currents like the back of his hand, navigating his way through the channels with confidence. As terns wheeled and dived into the limpid sea and the plunging cliffs loomed closer, Orbilio could see brown and naked children splashing on the white rocks and squealing with pleasure. As the boat approached the shelter of the harbour, his gaze fixed on the quayside, quiet this time of day. Only a handful of fishermen braved the scorch of the midday sun, and they were engaged in a game of knucklebones with a young woman in a flame-coloured gown. Something inside constricted as he took in the dark, tumbling curls, the curve of her breasts as she pocketed her winnings and slipped the loaded dice back into the folds of her gown. As mooring ropes were thrown over the side, Orbilio rubbed a slow hand over his jaw, still swollen from where her bodyguard's fist had connected, and the vice tightened.

'Straightforward quid pro quo,' she announced, marching up the gangplank. 'I deliver you a pirate on a silver platter. In return, you drop the doping charge. What's so funny? Orbilio, would you please explain why you're laughing? I mean, for a start you might have been just a tad relieved to know I'm safe.'

Mother of Tarquin, she had no idea what he had experienced when he discovered she'd escaped the shipwreck. 'Once reports came in of your survival,' he said, 'I stopped worrying about you and began to worry for Jason.'

'Bastard.'

'But a self-made man.'

'Don't let the conceit go to your head, Orbilio. Just agree to my terms.' There was a splash, as a porter discharging sacks was knocked off the gangplank by an accidental female elbow.

Marcus licked the salt off his lips and knew he was going to enjoy himself here. She didn't know. Goddammit, Claudia Seferius and she still didn't realize! 'Azan's mistake,' he said, tipping the floundering porter a silver sesterces, 'wasn't mustering his three ships together. It was dallying far too long waiting for his men to bring Jason back. I imagine our trusty marines are blasting him out of the water even as we speak.'

'Bugger Azan. I'm talking about me. And cutting a deal.'

'Those Liburnian galleys are all very well in and around the islands, but once they're out in open water, they're no match for Roman triremes. Outmanned, outnumbered, outgunned, they'll be at the bottom of the ocean before the navy's within their range.'

'For gods' sake, Orbilio, insurrection isn't the issue here. Yes, yes, it's wonderful that you've scotched it; I'm sure they'll write you up in dispatches or whatever they write people up in, and the islanders will doubtless praise your name for ever for delivering them from Azan the Butcher. But there's a psychopath wandering around the Villa Arcadia who's in desperate need of locking up, and in return there's me, waiting for your word that you'll drop all charges against me.'

He kept his eyes on the top of the mast, where a seagull had perched and was preening its wings, and tried to compose his features. 'This may come as a shock to you, Mistress Seferius, but one of the first things we're taught at Security Police School is: catch the bad guys.'

'Then what are you waiting for?'

Marcus stuck out his lower lip as though deep in thought. 'Well..' He spread his hands. 'I guess it's the second thing they teach us at Security Police School.' He was enjoying this. 'Identify the bad guys first.'

'You don't think Jason's tattooed arms tied Bulis to the pillar in the grain store, stuffed a gag in his mouth, then set the granary alight?'

'No,' he said, keeping his gaze on the seagull, 'I don't.'

'Like those aren't the imprints of Jason's thumbs in Silvia's neck?'

'Oh, he's a lady-killer. Just not in the sense that you mean.'

'So it was pure coincidence that his war spear just happened to skewer Leo to the atrium door, leaving him to die in unspeakable agony?'

The laughter died from Orbilio's eyes, but he kept them fixed on the ratlines. 'Have I ever given the impression, even once, that I believed in coincidence?' he asked, meeting Claudia's eyes at long last. But as he opened his mouth to speak, a statuesque female came striding across the cobbled quayside, and suddenly all the noise and hubbub of the wharfside stopped. The crowd parted, their heads turned away and their hands rapidly making the sign of the horns.

'You must be Leo's cousin,' Clio said without preamble. Her voice was low and husky, with a hint of Liburnian brogue. 'I'm very pleased to meet you.'

He took in the cloak of black shining hair shimmering down to her waist when no respectable woman would dare be seen with her hair loose, much less that long. It wasn't the only area in which Clio defied convention, of course. He took the back of her hand and kissed it. 'The pleasure's all mine, I assure you.'

'Then I won't beat about the bush.' When she placed her hands on her hips, the action caused her breasts to thrust forward and for a moment he feared he'd lost his eyeballs down her cleavage for ever. There were worse places to spend eternity, he thought happily, ignoring the roll of Claudia's eyes. 'Your cousin owed me money, Marcus. A lot of money, in fact.'

'I know.'

Surprise widened her eyes, but she quickly recovered. 'I'm not asking you to cover his entire debt, that wouldn't be fair. But I need to get away from this island, so I'm prepared to settle for five thousand gold pieces.'

'That's very generous of you,' he said. Almost as generous as her bosom. 'But I have a better idea, Clio.' He opened the bronze purse round his wrist and emptied its contents into his hand. 'It's not five thousand. Less than forty, I should imagine, but it's all I have on me, and then you stay on this boat.'

'What kind of insult is that? Leo owed me fifteen thousand, you penny-pinching bastard-'

'It's this boat, Clio.' There was an edge to his voice that drained every drop of colour from her cheeks. 'Or court.'

Ten seconds passed in which her gaze locked with his, then long fingernails raked up the coins and she was striding up the gangplank in search of the captain.

Claudia's breath came out in a whistle. 'So that was the vampire.'

'No,' Marcus corrected. 'That was Leo's accomplice.'

That was what brought him to Cressia. Leo and his voluptuous partner in crime. Twenty-eight aristocrats had held banquets in the eight months since Saturnalia, only to find that they'd been relieved of their jewellery and fine arts in the process. Inexplicably, however, none of the articles had appeared on Rome's black market, suggesting the gems were being prised out and reset, the metals melted down and the ivory recarved. Such a sophisticated operation could only be run by an educated mind, and when Marcus heard about Leo's extensive restoration programme, far in excess of his income, he began to wonder. After all, if the robberies included several of his own relatives, it stood to reason they were Leo's relatives as well.

'The renovations worked out more costly than he planned,' Marcus said. His stomach rumbled and now he wished he had retained a few coppers to buy one of the juicy lamb pies whose tantalizing aroma wafted over the quayside. 'So he started on places closer to home.' Such as the Senator's summer house in Pula, where it looked as though Margarita wouldn't get her cameo back after all.'

'Where did Clio fit in?'

'By all accounts, she is an extremely talented harpist. Leo simply recommended her to his friends and relations.' Orbilio pictured Clio, scooping up coins and accolades after a virtuoso solo; leaving the hall to cool down, so she said, but instead gathering up jewellery and other precious items using the inside information passed on by her aristocratic accomplice.

'You travelled four hundred miles to arrest a bloody harpist?'

'In an ideal world, I'd have caught them red-handed, but I'd assembled enough of a case to at least prevent Leo's marriage to the rose-grower's daughter going ahead.' Life and death break contracts, as Lydia had taken such pains to point out. But so, too, do slave chains.

'No wonder your family want you out of the Security Police,' Claudia said. 'If you continue to arrest them at this rate, the line will die out in ten years.' She turned to look up at him and the laughter had died from her eyes. 'But of course, he didn't live long enough for you to arrest him, did he?'

A picture flashed up, gut-wrenchingly recurrent, of Leo slumped over the spear which had fastened him to the atrium door. If only he'd confronted his cousin when he arrived. 'No,' he said thickly. 'He didn't.'

'Then tell me why you don't believe Jason killed Bulis and Leo, then nearly made it a hat-trick with the human glacier.'

Marcus's thoughts spun back to the moment, just minutes ago, when a certain young widow had marched up the gangplank wanting to trade a pirate for criminal immunity. He had been set to enjoy himself teasing her, but there was no sport to be found now. 'Why wasn't it Jason?' He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'Show me one self-respecting Scythian who'd leave without taking a war scalp,' he replied, 'and I'll show you Hades admitting day-trippers.' Not a hair on Leo's head had been touched.

The demon smiled to itself.

Sometimes human beings could be such fools.

There is a moment when you're rattling along at full speed and the wheel of your chariot comes off. You know what's happened because you can see the bloody thing rolling into the gutter. But the thing is, you don't actually believe it. That's because, for one brief fraction of a second, nothing changes. Momentum keeps the chariot on course. Momentum keeps it upright. And momentum means the horses haven't skipped a beat. Claudia was suddenly propelled into that same frozen momentary limbo. She understood the logic of what Orbilio was saying. She just couldn't accept it. 'If it wasn't Jason, then who?' Had he been drinking?

'Consider Homer's Odyssey,' Marcus said, steering her through the tangle of hawsers and rings littering the quayside. 'The Cyclops, for one. That one-eyed giant, who'd dined off several of Odysseus's crew before our hero blinded him with a spear and made good his escape.'

Strange. He didn't smell of booze. 'Odysseus battled the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis. He navigated the Clashing Rocks and survived. He also met his ancestors in the Underworld. But you should see a doctor.'

Sunstroke is a terrible thing.

'Then there was his yearning to hear the song of the Sirens,' Orbilio persisted. 'Voices so haunting that anyone who heard them was drawn to their doom, their flesh devoured by the virgins who made their homes of the bones of their victims. No man had ever listened to their song and lived, but Odysseus, determined to be the first, plugged the ears of his crew with wax that they might not hear — '

'And ordered them to bind him fast to the mast that he might not yield to temptation. Yes, I know, and the physician's house is there, on the left.'

'Odysseus's travels took him to lots of places, as you pointed out. He came to Cressia, of course, just as he visited the island where the world's winds were kept.'

STOP PRESS. ICEBERGS INVADE LIBURNIAN GULF.

Claudia felt the full blast of the chill as her mind jerked back. To Llagos conducting the purification ceremony at the atrium door the morning after Leo's murder. Orbilio had been standing alone in the portico, staring up at the frieze of the Sirens. Not to admire Magnus's skill, as she'd imagined. He had been putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and the puzzle was there for all to see. Homer's epic. Of course!

Odysseus tied to the mast: Bulis tied to the pillar. The Cyclops blinded in his single eye by a war spear: Leo impaled on the same weapon. Odysseus struggling to contain the escaping winds by clutching the neck of the sack which contained them: Just like someone had squeezed Silvia's throat.

Everything that had happened, every killing, every attempted killing, had been a bizarre recreation of Odysseus's adventures. There was a strange rattle on the quayside, which could have been a wagon rumbling over the cobbles. Then again it might be the chattering of her own teeth. 'You think there's a lunatic out there who believes he's Odysseus reborn?'

'If only,' Marcus said quietly. 'I think we're dealing with an even grimmer possibility.' He led her into the cool shade of Neptune's temple, where the sea god's grove of sacred rowan trees cast their feathery reflections in his hallowed pool and small birds twittered in the branches. 'I believe Bulis and Silvia were a smokescreen.'

The chill went into her marrow. 'You are joking?'

'Am I? Suppose Bulis was tied up and gagged and the grain store set alight with the intention of the alarm being raised before tragedy struck?'

'But it wasn't.'

'No. But suppose that had been the plan? Just like Silvia was never meant to die, either?'

'And Leo was?'

'Exactly.' Marcus buried his face in his hands. 'Leo made a lot of enemies before he died. How better to cover up revenge than to make it appear that Bulis and Silvia were victims of a deranged mind, whereas the real motive was to kill Leo.'

Claudia watched the frogs in the margins of the pool. Dammit, this was the grief talking. Orbilio believed he had failed his cousin by spending the night in the tavern instead of heading straight for the villa. Now, that guilt was set to haunt him for the rest of his life if he cocked up on bringing his killer to justice. But the reasoning was utterly irrational. Wasn't it?

'Of them all — Qus, Silvia, Volcar, Jason, Nanai’, Nikias, Clio-'

'Clio?'

'She had fifteen thousand good reasons to kill him, remember. But Lydia has the strongest motive. Archetypal wronged wife, dismissed like a housekeeper after eighteen years of marriage, cheated out of her divorce dowry then expected to live within sight of her own fabulously refurbished house while her husband impregnates his new and incidentally much younger bride. I'd call that a motive.'

When Claudia dabbled her fingers in the pool, several small fishes came to the surface. I'm not quite the bastard you think I am, Claudia. Leo's voice echoed in her memory and she smiled. No, Leo, you weren't. Despite your obsession for sons, you still retained some vestige of honour, even though your pride refused to let others see it. Would things have been different, I wonder, had Lydia been privy to your master plan? That you were merely using the rose-grower's daughter as a means to an end, because once she had given you your precious heirs, you intended to remarry her? Magnus is out of her class, Claudia, in more ways than one. Dammit, Leo, I should have guessed then how much you cared! That the renovations in which you sank so much of other people's money weren't intended to impress some stranger of a child bride. They weren't even a monument for your future sons. Leoville was built as a tribute to Lydia! The woman you continued to refer to as your wife. The woman you never stopped loving…

'Life and death break contracts,' Orbilio quoted.

'Don't they just.' Claudia didn't wait to see whether he followed her out of the temple compound. He caught up with her at the door of the tavern. 'You knew a man of Magnus's skill and stature wouldn't doss in cheap taverns without good reason, so you assumed he' was behind the robberies.'

'I didn't assume anything,' he murmured. 'I just hoped he might be.' His face took on a tight smile. 'How much simpler, if Magnus had been the mastermind and not Leo and I'd got it all wrong. Anyway.' His expression brightened. 'I'll have you know, Mistress Seferius, I'm not the type of chap to go upstairs with girls in strange taverns. If you want my favours, I insist you ply me with silver, like everyone else.'

'Stick to the Security Police, Orbilio. The pay might be poor, but if you tried earning your keep as a gigolo, you'd starve within a week.'

'I hate it when you couch your words. Why don't you just give it to me straight? And you might like to tell me what we're doing here,' he added as Claudia flounced along the narrow walkway, trying the rooms as she went.

No doors in this place. Just tatty woollen drapes for privacy and she didn't understand why her stomach should flip at picturing Orbilio in one of these rat holes. Not at the thought of him, a nobleman, roughing it with straw mattresses in place of swandown and enough fleas to make the bedstead rattle, more that, once Silvia got her claws into him, such adventures would be strictly off limits.

'Silvia knew, of course.' Sisters are still sisters no matter how sour the relationship, and the Immaculate One understood only too well why, after being dumped, diddled and seemingly dumped again, Lydia looked happy. More than happy, in fact. She looked bloody marvellous. 'Skin blooming, hair glossy, there's only one explanation,' Claudia said.

Turning in the hallway, her shoulder brushed with Orbilio's. Electricity jarred her bones as the heat from his body transferred itself to hers. Distracted by the scent of sandalwood, the pulse that beat at the side of his neck, the dark hairs on the back of his wrist, she almost forgot the danger he posed.

'Leo could warn Magnus off all he liked,' she said, 'but you only have to look at his statues to understand the soul of their creator and know that it would be water off a duck's back if he had truly fallen in love.'

No way would Magnus sail off and leave Lydia. He had merely backed off and given her space. Space in which she could make her own mind up about her future, without outside influence or prompting.

'Explains a lot,' Orbilio said, making no move to back away in the narrow corridor. His pupils had darkened to pools of liquid jet, and his breath was warm on her face. 'The other day,' he said, 'I followed Magnus down to the point. Lydia was holding the tunics of two little girls, waving to the kids splashing around with the dolphin, and he stood there, perhaps for half an hour, just watching, before going down to speak with her.' He swallowed. 'I'm glad she's found true love,' he said. 'Everyone should have that.'

'Oh, she's found more than love,' Claudia said. Life and death break contracts, as Lydia took such pains to point out at that dinner party. Death certainly. But so, equally, does a new life. 'Lydia is pregnant.' She threw open a threadbare blue curtain. 'Aren't you, Lydia?'