Dark Horse

Fifty

Claudia's eyelids fluttered open. Everything was dark, pitch black, and she smelled wood. Croesus, where was she? Who was she? What was she doing? More importantly, how much had she drunk? She tried to think back, but memory was a blank, as dark as the void she was trapped in, and when she tried to move, it was as though Medusa had turned her body to stone. After a few minutes, she gave up the unequal struggle and listened. The only sound she could hear was the hammering inside her skull. Oh, lord. That much wine. Her mouth was dry, her tongue way too big, furred, and there was a tickle of sawdust at the back of her throat. She lay helpless, motionless, unable to swallow and too damn weary to care. Hangovers are hangovers. They wear off eventually. Go to sleep.

But as pictures and sounds had swirled through her brain as the narcotic had begun to take effect, so they did as the drug wore off. The illustrations were graphic. Shipwreck. Bodies in the water. Parts of bodies. Blood. She heard screaming, pleading, bubbles from the lips of drowning men, saw Geta's stiffening, discoloured corpse bloating up on Jason's broad shoulders, smelled decay…

When she came to the next time, the hangover was no less of a fog, but at least the visions were less of a nightmare. Through the mist, familiar shapes twisted and formed. Nanai’ appeared, barefoot in a threadbare cotton tunic, singing a lullaby to the latest addition to the clan. Then rags metamorphosed into red leather boots into which pantaloons had been tucked, and there was gold glittering at his waist and from the willow-leaf torque round his neck. Like a spectator at the arena, Claudia watched the replay of Jason's slow handclap on the prow of his warship, his long, low, insolent bow. Then pooof! Snowdrop's rabbit eyes took his place. Kids, who'd have 'em? Matted curls shook sadly, and in her grubby fist she clutched a bunch of wilting marigolds. Thirteen or fourteen, you lose count. But before Claudia could reach out to the knobby little scrap, the kaleidoscope turned and her thoughts cartwheeled helplessly with it. To rebel fires along the Liburnian coast, dolphins playing, children squealing, and Silvia's immaculate honey-coloured ringlets. You have heard about the pirate down in the cove? Of course the Ice Queen had heard. He's just taunting us. Goats clip-clopped through Claudia's confused brain, their bells tinkling on the dry, stony, thyme-scented hills, while white-headed vultures wheeled above cliffs which plunged hundreds of feet into a turquoise blue ocean. How she longed to swim in its warm, limpid waters, but the vision distorted again, and plunging cliffs became soaring columns in an atrium of marble and gold. The future lies in illusion. Illusion. Yes. Saunio had been talking about art and how he'd tried to hide his son's depravity. But just as Leo's atrium was an illusion of space, so was the man who had commissioned it. A face swam before her. It had a cleft in its chin and a spear in its gut, and it was calling out something she couldn't hear. A younger face pushed it aside. Same dark, wavy hair as his cousin, the face smelled of sandalwood, but before she could ask the new face why it mattered a damn to her who the hell Orbilio married, the kaleidoscope swirled again and she was swept with it. Trying to make sense of a mishmash of bronze wolf heads and bull tattoos, a cloak of long, black hair and voluptuous breasts. And in her hungover hell, Claudia thought, dammit, whichever way you look at it, there's no escaping the breasts.

When she awoke next time, much of the fog had cleared, although the night had turned hotter, because she was sweating and the air seemed a lot thinner. Where was she? But memory had become sludge in a ditch. When stirred, things you'd rather not see come to the surface. Things such as those fires along the Liburnian coast. Now she realized what was so odd. It's because that's all they were. Fires. A timber yard up in smoke here, a warehouse there, but where was the bloodfest when the Soskia came to town? When the little Moth fluttered off, how many homes had been ransacked and looted? How many women raped, how much livestock carried off, how many poor unfortunates rounded up to be sold on as slaves? All that had taken place further south — on the islands and around the coast of Dalmatia. Not up round the Liburnian Gulf.

Jason had been merely playing at pirate. As a means of providing himself with a ship and a crew, he'd convinced Azan of his devotion to the cause, losing no sleep when the Moth was dashed to a pulp. Rapists, butchers, slave-traders, looters, her crew got what they deserved. But why should Jason have needed a ship in the first place? Come along now, pay attention! How else would a seafaring captain pass the time until he got back what was his?

'He's just taunting us,' Silvia had said. Us. Us. As in that pretentious royal "we" and Claudia would have smiled, if only her body would have allowed it. The breasts gave it away, of course. Tiny, perfect breasts that would be an ideal fit inside a crisp, white, cotton shirt tucked into black pantaloons. No wonder Jason had roared with laughter at the idea of the Immaculate One being labelled a pirate's moll. Ice might turn to fire then freeze again, but Silvia's sense of humour would never stretch that far! Not you again. It was Silvia he'd been wanting. Both times. Give back what is mine.

Beads of sweat trickled down Claudia's neck and pooled in the hollow of her collarbones, and she found herself almost gasping for air in the darkness. But her thoughts were stuck on the treadmill. Give back what is mine. Silvia didn't know, of course. She wouldn't have had a clue that Jason had even made his demands, much less at the point of a war spear. That was Leo's secret weapon in his search for glory. He knew Jason was no more a pirate than he was! Same as he knew that, sooner or later, Jason would stop buggering around with notes impaled on pieces of parchment and tackle Silvia direct. In the meantime, however, he would milk the situation for all it was worth by creating the illusion that Jason was a dangerous adversary.

Was Jason really the type to piss about with coded warnings creeping closer every time, or (and Claudia would bet money on this) were there three splintered gouges in the atrium door where he'd delivered his message for everybody to see? It was Leo who'd planted the spears, first in the boat shed, then in the stables and finally in the bath-house door. Leo who set fire to his own grain store then despatched his trusted lieutenant for water in the sure and certain knowledge that Qus would find the evidence to bolster his master's claim that Jason was the arsonist.

Quite what went through Leo's mind when he discovered Bulis's body chained to the pillar, Claudia had no idea. That it came as a shock showed clearly, and maybe he had seen Jason at the villa that night and suspected that he was indeed responsible for the boy's murder. That would explain why he was so keen to get shot of Silvia. Her blowing the gaff on his felonious dealings with Clio would undoubtedly have helped book her passage on that merchantman, but Leo was more than capable of swatting problems like that aside. But by forcing his sister-in-law to leave, then Jason, by default, would have to follow. Pirate, murderer, marauder, call him what you will, but Leo was the chap who'd seen the dog off. The glory was his for the taking.

If he could, of course, Leo would have removed Jason's impaled message. Only since Silvia would have found out eventually, he'd probably planned to cover himself by telling her, with Qus as his witness, that he had only been trying to protect her. At the time of the fire, Claudia had thought it suspicious that he'd appeared on the scene fully dressed. The whole operation had smacked of a badly rehearsed theatrical drama, which is precisely what it had been. A cheap melodrama, staged for an audience of one.

His ex-wife.

With sisterly communication thin on the ground, why should Lydia question the character of the man Silvia had run off? All she'd know was the evidence laid before her… so: cue the hero. Chasing after the Soskia in a blatantly unequal battle, what woman could fail to be impressed? Unfortunately, Leo had been too engrossed in his own self-importance and locked too deeply in his spiral of plans to notice that Lydia had slipped away from him. Even as he was drugging his own nightwatchmen and sacrificing the estate corn supply, he was creating an illusion out of another illusion. For had he but looked, he would have realized that Lydia didn't give an Arcadian fig for his safety. Her sole concern lay in the health and well-being of the treasure inside her womb.

How much of his grand scheme had Leo been about to confide that day in his office when Silvia walked in and interrupted what she thought was a kiss? How much history would have been rewritten, with Claudia in on the secret? Would she have allowed Leo to continue using Jason's children as pawns? Would she have allowed Silvia, for that matter, to persist in the same spiteful game? Would it have made one iota of difference?

Because had Orbilio come to the villa, instead of remaining in town, Leo would still be alive. It would just mean that, with his cousin under arrest, some other poor sod would have been skewered on the atrium door in his place — and who's to say one life is more important than another?

That was the enormity of the guilt Orbilio carried.

And the knowledge was like a vice round her heart.

But that was another time, another place. First, she must tackle this godawful hangover, and then she must find a way of extricating herself from that ridiculous doping fiasco. No wonder Orbilio scoffed at her offer of trading a pardon for a pirate! Since he knew exactly what Jason was about — wait. How did he know? How could Marcus Cornelius have had any idea about the man his cousin's sister-in-law had run off with? A couple of fires burning along the Liburnian coast was too much of a leap of faith to…

Well, I'll be damned. The answer had been staring her in the face all the time. With its big blue eyes and honey-coloured ringlets! Silvia had been ostracized from society because of a scandal, but who else had caused aristocratic sparks to fly when she eloped with a sea captain from Lusitania? From was the key. Marcus Cornelius never said he was born there. Just from Lusitania. The scandal would be seismic enough without adding a skull-guzzling, hide-stripping, scalp-mongering Scythian to the equation. Claudia realized there was something between Sylvia and Orbilio when he'd found her half-strangled on the bed: the tenderness with which he pulled up the sheet, the look on her face when it registered who had saved her. But calculation was Silvia's middle name. She might have been close to death, but she'd recognized the emotion in his face and stored it for later use. There was a child, you know. All other doors had closed in her face. She was desperate. A boy. Yes, indeed, Claudia thought. Except it wasn't Orbilio's.

For a moment, she felt again the crush of Jason's lips on hers beside the lake. Smelled cinnamon. I don't kiss killers. Oh, but he wasn't the only man who'd ever sent another soul to the land of his ancestors, was he? The Empire, especially Rome, was a dangerous place. Men were often required to kill in the course of their duties, so it wasn't that she didn't kiss killers. It was that Jason's weren't the right lips. The realization struck home like a slap. Because the right lips, she was certain, would taste, ever so faintly, of sandalwood — Shit! She really must give up the booze, if it put ideas like that in her head! It was making her sweat, too. You could wring this gown out, and the hot sultry air didn't help either. She could hardly breathe. O Bacchus, your servant quits.

Dreamlike, her thoughts drifted back to Jason. Give back what is mine. Bull tattoos. Spirits condemned to wander the earth for eternity, unless the clan emblem was carried forward on the chests of his heirs. How could she have been so blind, not to have put the pieces together before? What else would he have come all this way for — if not his sons? That was Jason's quest. To take the three boys he'd had by the Ice Queen to Scythia, where they could be raised in the place that was their spiritual home and receive guidance in their Scythian heritage. Wide awake now, Claudia struggled to sit up, but her muscles would still not obey her. Vaguely she remembered the party, the music, the dancing, with everyone coming and going, and vaguely she remembered the wine flowing freely. But come on, she'd drunk more than this in the past and not felt so ghastly. If only she could remember what had happened afterwards… where she was now.. Oh, lord, if only her head would stop throbbing!

But lethargy, however luxurious, would not acquaint Jason with what Silvia had done with his sons. Only Claudia could do that. And she must tell Orbilio that the child wasn't his. Because she had seen him. The Little Bustard, bruising her foot with his imaginary chariot. Right age, right colour hair, right colour grey eyes. A miniature version of his father. She'd seen the twins, too. In the one place no one would think of looking, among thirteen or fourteen others. You lose count. Don't you just! Nanai’ was no spectre at tonight's feast. No social outcast being given patronage by the self-appointed patrician hostess. Nanai had been invited so that Silvia might receive a progress report on her boys without arousing Jason's suspicion.

Leo had known, of course. That was why he'd been so desperate to throw Nanai out. Yes, he'd wanted to terminate his association. Handouts had been fine at the beginning, only Nanai abused his charity to the point where the forge had become dirty, unhygienic, in a bad state of repair and she blamed him for being a bad landlord. But then Nanai wanted everyone to do everything for her. She had no interest in maintenance, budgeting, management, abdicating responsibility for the older children to Snowdrop, because all she wanted was to wallow in the unconditional love of the babies. Let's face it, who else could love a woman who was waspish, self-centred and deeply embittered? True, her selfishness helped Snowdrop and her rag-tag siblings along the way, but what future did they have now that orphan numbers had passed the point where Nanai's budget could cope?

Even without knowing the reason for his shortfall in grapes, Leo was wise to be shot of her. The sooner she faced reality and stood on her own two feet, the better for all concerned, but there was no great hurry. Leo disapproved of Lydia's association with the woman, of course. The constant dripping of poison into her ear. And it wouldn't suit his new order, Leoville, to have a slum on his doorstep. But it was the arrival of Silvia's sons that had prompted drastic action. If Nanai knew who the father was, as she surely must, then it was only a question of time before she confided in Lydia. Exit the hero, before he'd even stepped on to the stage!

So it was only right that Jason should be told where to find his sons. He had been separated from them for long enough and god knows, so had his mother. Claudia struggled to sit up. It had to end, this game of using her children as pawns. Silvia could bloody well negotiate like everyone else! Except Claudia's body still wouldn't respond and dammit it was getting too bloody hot, her clothes were drenched, and she was sucking in air in bloody great gulps.

Then she realized.

Her arms and legs weren't prisoner to some terrible hangover. These were ropes binding her tight, and the reason it was so dark was terrifying simple. Claudia Seferius had been locked in a coffin and buried alive.

The air was running out fast.

The demon yawned. The hour was late and sufficient energy had been invested in witticisms and observations at this excellent party to substantiate an alibi.

Drugs were notoriously difficult to judge, of course, but the demon had calculated the dosage carefully and gauged at least an hour's worth of air inside the box. By its reckoning, the full effects of the soporific would have worn off around two quarters of the hour ago, leaving two quarters of unendurable torture.

Medea's blood ran strong in the demon's veins, and it had vowed to give her as much homage as it possibly could. Talking Leo into changing the name of his boat had been a good start. Which was why Leo had had to die before he could besmirch the memory of the demon's illustrious ancestor by changing it back.

The demon made its excuses and slipped silently into the night.

My, my. It rubbed its hands. With Volcar safely across the River Styx, Clio another three days in agonizing limbo and an occupant for the box, what a marvellous day this had been.

There was no air left. Only an immense pressure inside her lungs, bursting, heaving, choking, implacable. Darkness turned to red. It tore at her eyeballs. Ripped at her heart. Clawed her liver. Claudia prayed. She prayed to live, to die, no, to live. Please Jupiter, don't let it end like this, I'm not ready. Her throat arched backwards, gurgling frantically to catch the last few drops of air that remained in the coffin.

Not yet. Not yet. Dear Juno, I've hardly lived. Please, not yet.

But the pressure grew stronger, and in a relentless volley of blistering gasps, Claudia's lungs expelled her life force. You don't understand. I'm not ready to meet my mother. I don't want to see her. I don't want to know why she slit her wrists without leaving a note for her only child. I don't want to hear why she could not say goodbye, or that she was sorry. Or that she had never loved me.

The light told Claudia she had no choice in the matter. Give up the fight, said the light. Come with me. And the light was faint, a dull yellow glow, but then it grew brighter and brighter, until- Fresh air blasted her face. Thank you, thank you, you gods on Olympus. Thank you so much. The light was not that of the Ferryman rowing across, but that of a common or garden oil lamp. She was saved. Greedily, Claudia sucked in the clean, wholesome air. And with it the scent of the demon.