Ten for Dying

Chapter Sixteen

Felix picked himself up off the street, cursing rut-splintered axles, overturned carts, dead bodies, Fate, and skittish donkeys. He took a few tentative steps, making certain he hadn’t broken anything. Fat droplets of rain began beating down on his head, so he cursed the heavens too.

His cargo lay sprawled at the edge of the colonnade, clearly illuminated by the torch left burning in front of a shuttered butcher’s shop. The blanket had become slightly undone. One hand stuck out, signaling for help.

Felix looked up and down the street. At present it was deserted. The rain increased, stirring up a smell of dust where it hit. A gust of wind groaned through the colonnade. Lightning flashed repeatedly. The flickering light made the dead hand look as if it were waving frantically. The noise of the accident may have alerted someone. For all he knew the urban watch could be on the way.

Even if he could push the cart upright it wasn’t going anywhere with a broken axle.

Did he hear voices? The sound of rain drowned everything out.

He grasped the blanket-wrapped corpse and lifted it with a grunt, feeling a sharp twinge in his side. Perhaps he’d broken something after all. As he staggered over to the donkey the whole length of an arm freed itself and slapped against his leg.

He flung the horrid load over the donkey’s back, undid the traces leaving the bit and a length of rein in place, and urged the animal onward. Forget the cemeteries. He couldn’t be too far from the sea. Judging from the driving rain, blowing straight into his face, the sea was coming to him. He was moving downhill. Water rushed along the street, splashing around his ankles. All he needed to do was follow the gurgling rivulets.

Soon man, beast, and dead man were soaked. The corpse kept slipping and sliding further out of the blanket until both arms and an elegantly booted foot dangled in plain view. Luckily no sensible person would be abroad in such a torrent, and beggars sheltering in doorways or vacant shops had problems enough of their own without worrying about what others might be doing.

Thunder reverberated, the ground vibrated. Lightning flashes revealed a city devoid of color, a bas relief in pure white marble. The roar of the rain numbed the senses. Felix was hardly aware of his beard dripping or his saturated clothes. He might have been accompanying his lifeless companion into the land of the dead. The warm bedroom he had so recently shared with Anastasia existed in another world.

Then he saw an orange light in the thickening mist. A lantern, surely, to be shining in the midst of the downpour.

The urban watch sometimes carried lanterns.

Felix froze and pulled awkwardly at his reins, forcing the donkey to stop.

The light bobbed in the middle of the street. The rain and mist obscured whoever was holding it. A whole contingent of armed men might be staring at him, wondering what sort of madman would be leading a donkey along in weather like this. A madman whose actions required investigating.

The light moved, crossed the street, and vanished under the colonnade.

Felix began to breath again.

The donkey snorted uneasily.

A lightning bolt struck close enough to make Felix’s ears ring and shook his bones. The donkey let out a bray of terror and ran. Felix clamped his hand shut but there was nothing there but a raw welt where the reins had been. The donkey might have been ridden by Satan himself so quickly did it vanish into the storm.

There would have been plenty of room on its back for a rider because the courier’s body had returned to the street, one hand resting against the toe of Felix’s boot.

Felix kicked it off in revulsion.

“Mithra!”

Just his luck, the street here was brightly illuminated, this time by a torch in front of a perfumer’s shop. The light reflected from the opaque eyes of the ashen face which had been uncovered in its most recent fall.

Would he never be rid of the cursed corpse? It pursued him like one of the Furies.

As the thought crossed his mind, the corpse laughed rudely.

No, Felix told himself, just noxious gases escaping as the thing started to decay.

He felt a sudden impulse to simply run, leave the corpse where it was. But that would be like fleeing the battlefield. Felix refused to flee. He must finish what he had begun, somehow.

He wiped rain out of his own eyes with a shaking hand and looked around. His attention was drawn by the perfumer’s statue of Aphrodite, an exceptionally inept copy of a classical Greek work. The legs were too short. The breasts were almost those of a child’s, but even though the amateur sculptor had apparently whittled first one then the other, he had never got them anywhere near the same size.

Nevertheless, at that moment, she was the most beautiful woman Felix had ever seen thanks to the recess behind her, large enough to conceal a body.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He dragged the courier under the colonnade. The roaring rush of rain turned into a hollow thudding on the sheltering roof.

“Let’s get you ready for the goddess!” Felix began stripping off the dead man’s soaked garments. Beggars who died on the streets were invariably found naked, picked clean. And with no garments, the body would probably not be identified quickly, if at all. There was nothing remarkable about it that he could see. A well fed young man whose muscles had not been taxed with labor. The packages he had delivered had never been very heavy.

Just another man murdered in the street. How could anyone link the captain of the excubitors with a naked corpse discovered far away from the palace?

He carried the man’s garments back to the public lavatory he remembered passing. The foul weather had kept people off the streets and the long marble bench was deserted. A beggar jumped up from a corner and fled, perhaps mistaking Felix for the urban watch.

Felix stuffed the garments down a hole then relieved himself after them, thoughtfully.

John might have come up with a better plan. But he wasn’t here-for the time being.

Given Justinian’s whims, his friend would doubtless be returned to favor soon. It wasn’t as if John were dead.