Scorpion Rising

Five

Craning her neck upwards from the bridge over the spring, Claudia was unable to glimpse any activity up on the plateau. For a secretive sect this was hardly surprising, but somehow she was disappointed not to be seeing dozens of women in white, floaty robes swanning about bearing lustral bowls here, pouring libations there and singing paeans to Mother Nature. Perhaps the birdsong was paean enough. 'Can I help you?'

Claudia turned, but once again there was nobody there. Just the river that danced through the flower filled meadows, the cliff, the caves and the woods. It was a trick of the wind, of course. Or the valley's acoustics 'Down here,' the voice said, with a tug on her robe. 'I'm Gurdo,' he added cheerfully. 'I have healing powers, you know.'

She looked at the dwarf, clad in green plaid pantaloons and matching shirt, and decided that wasn't so much a twinkle in his equally green eye as mischief.

'What? You don't think little people can cure you?' He tutted. 'This here's the Cave of Miracles, lady. Cross my palm with gold, tell me what ails you, and between me and the healing springs, we can fix it.'

He beckoned her into the cool of the cavern decked with roses and honeysuckle, where, rather than gushing out of the rock, water trickled through a fissure in the soft white limestone into a basin hewn out of stone before being channelled to a place where the oil lamps that twinkled in niches carved out of the rock didn't penetrate.

'How much gold?'

The cave smelled of comfrey, rosehips, yarrow and hore-hound. All of which had acclaimed healing properties.

'I might have small hands, but together they make a large cup. See? Fill that to the brim and in exchange I'll give you a grail of this water. Your ailment will be gone by the dawn.'

'Probably not as fast as my gold.'

'Oh, so you're a cynic as well as an invalid? Lucky me.' He crossed militant arms over his chest. 'Now do you want to be cured, or don't you?'

'Yes,' she said, 'I want to be cured.' According to Gabali, it was the only way into the College. 'But I thought physicians were supposed to exercise charm and have a good bedside manner.'

She'd seen lions in the arena less hostile than Gurdo.

'Listen, lady, I'm the guardian of these springs, not a physician, and frankly, what I do with my charisma's my business. Besides. I told you. Dwarves possess curative powers.'

'Since when?'

'Since you Romans started putting us to death for being malformed.'

Claudia laughed. 'You and I, Gurdo, are going to get along very nicely, but pull that extortion-and-menaces act one more time and I shall hold your money-grubbing head under the water for forty-five minutes and see whether you possess lung power as well.'

'I suppose you don't care that you've hurt my feelings?'

'Oh, so you're sensitive as well as a bully? Lucky me.' She crossed militant arms over her chest. 'Now are you going to cure me or not?'

Gurdo tipped his head back and roared. 'You know, Lofty Legs, you could be right. We might be friends yet.' He wiped the tears from his eyes with the hem of his sleeve. 'What's wrong with you, anyway?'

Claudia hadn't thought that far ahead, but whatever made people flock to this cave, it wasn't going to be cured by a mug of water, that was for sure. Still. Faith can move mountains, so the saying goes. In this case, faith drizzled out of the mountain like tears but the principle, she supposed, was no different.

'You don't look ill,' he added, peering at her unblemished skin, bright eyes and shiny hair.

She peered back at the little dandy, rocking on his heels and with his long hair tied back in a queue. 'I have a pain in the neck.'

'Now that I can believe.'

It was true. It came in the form of the Security Police, who didn't view her battle for financial survival in quite the same light as herself. Something to do with fraud and forgery not being all it was cracked up to be when it came to legal technicalities, she believed. And, unless she missed her guess, arrest warrants, handcuffs and trials figured in their equation as well.

'Joint problems comes under the category of laying on of hands — nah, don't look so worried. Not mine.' A stubby finger pointed directly upwards. 'Mavor's the woman for that. Now you wait here, Lofty Legs. Make yourself comfortable, help yourself from the fountain, do whatever you want — only don't go in there, right?'

He pointed to where the channel of water disappeared into darkness.

'Out of bounds,' he warned, 'and that's why this is the Cave of Miracles, lady. Not just this spring. This is the only cave in Aquitania with two mouths, one for us humans, one for the spirits. You keep away from that part.'

'I wouldn't dream of coming between you and your charisma,' she said sweetly, but he'd already stumped off.

'Don't mind him,' a youthful voice chuckled.

A spiky dark haircut popped itself round the cave mouth and Claudia thought, First dwarves, now elves.

'Dad works on the theory that if he was so wicked in his last incarnation to be reborn as a dwarf, he might as well enjoy being nasty.'

'It's one of the few pleasures that cost nothing,' she agreed.

That was another thing about these Gauls. Reincarnation. If life was so tough, why keep repeating it? But then theology was never Claudia's strong point.

'Tell you what else he says.' The youth laid down the pile of kindling in his arms and mimicked Gurdo's voice and stance. 'Pod, boy, don't you never go to bed angry, you hear me? You bloody well stay up and fight like the rest of us!'

'Pod?'

'Dad said I was always full of beans as a nipper.' The elf grinned so widely that his cheeks dimpled up. 'The name kind of stuck.'

'And your mother?'

'Me mother?' He brushed his hands down his woodsman's tunic as though trying to brush off a memory. 'No more than wind at the door, that's what I reckon.' He pointed to where the stream disappeared round the bend. 'Gurdo found me wandering beside the reed beds over yonder, seven summers old, I was, there or abouts, and what with me having no memories of me own and no one coming forward to claim me, he raised me himself

That would make it ten years since Pod was adopted, but why no memories? Was it an injury that wiped them clean? A trauma? Or was this artless imp simply a congenital liar?

'So you think you can burn charcoals with your chattering now?' Gurdo's voice carried along the path even though the dwarf himself was out of sight.

'What he lacks for height, he makes up for in cunning,' Pod confided in a theatrical whisper. 'That crafty bugger can see round corners!' Aloud he shouted, 'Pod off!' as he gathered up his kindling, and was still beaming from ear to ear as he sprinted off with a litheness that would make a polecat jealous.

Gurdo hove into sight, accompanied by a creature whose hair blazed red and wild, whose breasts were full and thrusting, and whose hips swayed to a rhythm that was anything but virginal. Had Claudia been a man, she imagined her jaw would have dropped to her collarbones and stayed down there for a week. Well, well. She knew the priestesses kept men enslaved for sex, but even so. This was not how she'd imagined the Hundred-Handed!

'I hear you have a pain in the neck?' Mavor asked kindly.

'You have no idea.'

It stood six feet tall, boasted dark wavy hair and came complete with a baritone voice. Not that Claudia thought about the Security Police in that way, of course. If she ever thought about Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, it was in the official sense and had nothing to do with the way his hair flopped over his forehead in times of emotion or the little pulse that beat at the side of his neck. In fact, she could hardly recall what he looked like, much less remember that musky sandalwood unguent of his. With just a hint of the rosemary in which his patrician tunics were rinsed.

'Does it hurt here?'

'Ouch.'

For heaven's sake, do these aristocrats ration their principles? I mean, why was he the only patrician who didn't feel it beneath him to join the Security Police? And was Rome so starved of criminals that he needed to traipse halfway round the world just to catch defenceless young widows in the act of forgery and fraud? Surely it wasn't beyond Orbilio's talents to find a real felon to hound?

'What about here?' Mavor's fingertip gently probed the next vertebra down.

'Worse.'

Unfortunately, persecution had its rewards, and what supreme irony that was. It was because of Claudia's visit to Santonum last autumn that the Governor had offered him promotion in the first place, and talk about a vicious circle.

If she hadn't come here last September, she wouldn't have contracted her wine to the Scorpion. If she hadn't contracted her wine to the Scorpion, Gabali couldn't have blackmailed her into investigating Clytie's murder. And if Gabali had no leverage against her, she wouldn't have ended up next door to the only man in the Empire who could consign her to penniless exile at the snap of his finger.

This circle wasn't vicious, it was positively sadistic.

'And here?' Mavor asked.

'Ooh-ow.'

The redhead sucked in her breath. 'I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but yours is not a condition that can be cured overnight. Those backbones will need several days of massage and manipulation, so on behalf of the College of the Hundred-Handed,' she patted Claudia's hand as she linked her arm with hers, 'I offer you hospitality and the hope of a full and speedy recovery.'

Speedy, thought Claudia, was the word. The quicker she solved Clytie's murder, the less likely she'd be caught up in rebellion, the lower her likelihood of attracting the Scorpion's attention, the faster a child killer was brought to justice.

And if leaving Santonum also happened to put three hundred miles between her and that pain in the neck, then so much the bloody better.

Scribes were scurrying about the Governor's palace like ants as that pain in the neck strode down the colonnade. The bitch, he thought. The absolute bitch. Orbilio glowered at one of the marble busts, sending daggers to his ex-wife. How could she? She knew damn well the divorce was absolute. That she, who'd run off with a sea captain from Lusitania, had no further claim on his money. But ho ho, now Marcus Cornelius had been promoted to Head of the Security Police in Aquitania, guess who decided the settlement was unfair and was demanding a full half of his estate?

Committee rooms sped past. Voting halls. Archives.

You bitch, you leave a national scandal behind in your wake and because you know I don't want it resurrected — not here, not in Gaul — you use it as an excuse to squeeze me for every sesterce you can bloody well get. He nodded absently at one of the secretaries, red-faced and puffing, with a quill behind one ear and rolls of parchment stuffed under his arms. Well, you can go to hell, you damned bloodsucking vampire. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio isn't funding anybody's personal gravy train, and it had nothing to do with the money. Goddammit, it was the principle and by Croesus, he was buggered if she was going to make a fool of him twice.

Taking the marble stairs two at a time, he knew they'd married too young, of course, and that was the heart of the trouble. Like most patrician marriages, it was a contract drawn up when both parties were toddlers, politics being everything to the aristocracy these days. Even so. If only she'd talked to him, for gods' sake. It wasn't as though either of them had ever made the other happy, and he'd have willingly given her an annulment or whatever, had she discussed it. Instead she elopes, her family disown her and yours truly becomes the butt of all jokes.

'You could neutralize that in an instant,' his brother had cautioned, in a rare moment of fraternal affection. 'Quit that ridiculous job in the Security Police and take up law like the rest of us, Marcus. It's what Father wanted, for his sons to continue the noble family tradition, and you'd make a bloody fine advocate, too.'

'Maybe so,' he'd told his brother, 'but don't you think it's more noble to be catching murderers and rapists than trying to get them acquitted? Or doesn't their guilt bother you?'

His brother's reply had been something along the lines that there was no place for vocation among the patrician class, that the notion of job satisfaction was idealistic and selfish, and sucking up here and making the right noises there went with the territory, if a chap ever hoped to take a seat in the Senate. To which Orbilio's reply had been something along the lines that blood might be thicker than water, but if his brother genuinely believed that he must be thicker than both, at which point family relations deteriorated to the extent that even his divorce seemed cordial in comparison.

At the top of the stairs he turned right, past painted battles in which horses reared, their eyes rolling sideways as their riders shielded themselves from a shower of spears while the dead and the wounded were trampled beneath their hooves. And to think he'd hoped life would get better! Dammit, Rome still gossiped about his ex-wife's infidelity. His family still sneered at his chosen career. And the only woman he'd ever loved wanted nothing to do with him!

He'd taken this job in Gaul to wash Claudia out of his system, and that had turned into a joke, too. Within days he realized he could no more put her out of his mind than he could turn back the tide or make the sun rise in the north, and lately he'd even stopped trying. He would go to sleep with her image engraved on his eyelids, and when he woke up those dark flashing eyes and wild tangle of curls were still all he ever wanted to see. She radiated that heady combination of beauty, independence and self-centredness that set her apart from every other woman he'd known. Claudia Seferius knew what she wanted then set about getting it without even paying lip service to the word compromise.

She broke every single rule in the book — not to mention a good many laws. She lied and she stole, she fiddled and forged.

And he'd marry her today, if she'd have him.

Taking a salute from a legionary beside a statue of an impossibly youthful Augustus, his attention was caught by a movement from the corner of his eye. Among the bustle of bean-counters and pen-pushers, three more shouldn't have attracted anyone's notice. So why his? As the legionary marched off, Marcus bent to adjust his bootlace and now he realized what it was about this particular trio. Whilst there was nothing furtive about their movements, there was nothing purposeful, either. And whilst the Governor's palace also served as the administrative seat for the province's capital, no one ever sauntered around as though they were on a picnic. There was communication between the three, too. A nod here, a raised eyebrow there. Together it added up to an uncomfortable feeling, but he was wary of calling the guard. For one thing, they were embroiled in a skirmish in the main hall, where some drunken fanatic was shouting anti-Roman insults whilst brandishing a very rusty bent sword. And for another, suppose they were the Governor's guests mooching about? Members of a trade delegation from Burdigala on the Gironde, for example? Or official messengers awaiting orders?

Nevertheless, it could do no harm to watch them, he supposed. And once again, his gut served him well. Hidden behind the statue, he saw the three men stop outside the Governor's office, glance round then draw daggers from inside their tunics. Marcus turned to summon the guard, but even as he spun round, he realized the drunk downstairs was a deliberate diversion. The guard was nowhere in sight. While his own dagger was lying on the top of his desk…

Surprise was his only weapon.

Charging into the room, yelling and screaming at the top of his voice, he managed to at least kick the knife out of the first one's hand. As it spun harmlessly into a corner, the Governor's thirty years of army training kicked in. He overturned his desk in the path of the second assassin, while his scribes scrambled to disarm the third. But having been thwarted of their original purpose, now the men's priority turned to escape — and the only thing standing between them and their freedom was a patrician with high ideals.

As fists collided with flesh, Orbilio heard the clatter of hobnailed boots up the stairs and the reassuring jangle of breastplates and greaves. All they had to do was hold out for another few seconds, and as one iron hand tried to snap his collarbone in half and another squeezed his testicles to a pulp, he took comfort that one of the scribes was swinging a stool by a leg and was aiming straight for Orbilio's attacker.

Unfortunately, his attacker chose that moment to slip in a pool of his own blood.

And as the stool crashed down on Orbilio's skull, his last thought before unconsciousness claimed him was, There has to be a better way of making a living.