The Curse-Maker

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Breakfast was ready by the time I got back home, something simple and quick because she knew I’d be in a hurry. She was watching me stuff my mouth with oats and honey. Our eyes met.

“I wanted to talk to you before you left. I don’t want what happened-I don’t want it to distract you.”

I swallowed hard, reaching for a gulp of cider. “I don’t trust Mumius to hold Faro for long. If I don’t show up early…”

“I know. I found out things yesterday I haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

Deep circles under her eyes this morning. She reached over and put her hand on mine.

“Two people murdered. There’s something evil here, and it frightens me. I can’t help it. Perhaps, Ardur … perhaps the gods sent you here to fight it.”

She took her hand back and put it away before it could distract me. Then she leaned into the basket chair, tucking her legs underneath her, and stared at her half-eaten breakfast.

I said: “I’ll fight, but they-whoever the hell ‘they’ are-don’t fight clean. They’ve targeted you. I don’t know if it’s connected to Bibax, and I don’t care. You’re my priority, goddamn it. Protecting you.”

She looked away, her voice low. “Of course you protect me. I can protect myself, too. I’ve been through the worst they can do.”

I swallowed my oatmeal and stood up to hold her, but she waved me back into the chair, face intent.

“About yesterday. Prunella told me the name of the man Secunda was in love with. I didn’t think it was important until now.”

“Who was it?”

“Faro.”

“Then why the hell-”

“Why was he at the party?” Her mouth formed a tight, bitter line. “I think Mama was saving him for herself.”

“You mean Materna-”

Gwyna shuddered. “Please, Ardur. Don’t mention her name. The sight of her face last night-after-”

“What makes you think Secundus would tolerate-even given the chance that Faro could make himself-”

“Secundus is totally dependent on her. He’s afraid of her. Surely you saw that last night. Although I don’t think it’s come to anything but fantasy on Materna’s part, she broke up their romance, hoping to hold on to Faro, and then threw a bone to her daughter.”

“In the form of Mumius. One better left buried.”

“He’s not that bad.”

“I’m reserving judgment until I see whether he’s still holding the bastard.”

“Faro is very good-looking, you know. It’s understandable.” She was looking at her fingernails.

I felt my lips pinch up against my teeth. “He reminds me of Philo.”

She sighed. “You wouldn’t say such things if you really knew him. Poor Philo.”

“ ‘Poor Philo?’ Why the hell is he so poor?”

“He was worried about me yesterday, but respectful. He spoke very highly of you, and said he’d heard about curse-deaths from patients, but never really paid attention. Thought it was part of the ghost-mine nonsense.”

“So why ‘poor Philo’?”

“Oh, nothing important. He’s from Hispania-Lusitania, I think. When he was a young man, he was a temple doctor for a healing god. Endo … Endovelicus or something. And he lost the only woman he ever truly loved.” She looked down at the table and blushed. “He said I reminded him of her.”

I looked around to see what was making the noise and realized it was my teeth grinding. So the bastard made the most out of his age. The smarmy bastard.

Gwyna looked up at me. “It’s just a story. Don’t be too hard on Philo.”

“Did you find out anything from anyone who didn’t want to sleep with you?”

The color in her cheeks increased. “Don’t be vulgar. I tried to talk to that boy’s grandmother-the one that died.”

“His name was Dewi.”

“She wouldn’t tell me anything. Gave me a baleful look, and kept making the sign against the evil eye.”

She shook her head, and a couple of stray blond tendrils tumbled down the side of her face. “The people … the women … they’re so afraid. Something needs to be done.”

I stood up, shoving the basket chair aside hard enough to make it squeak. “I’m going to do something right now.”

She looked down at her shaking hands. Behind the grief, anger. The Trinovantian woman I married.

“I hope you can find out who put the son of a bitch up to it. I’d gladly slit his throat myself.”

I took her by the shoulders. “Leave it to me. I’ll get back as soon as I can. We can separate ourselves from the Aquae Sulis social scene for one goddamn day.”

She grimaced. “I may as well let the talk spread before I start to wade in it.”

I walked out, leaving her to keep busy with the servants. Action was better for Gwyna. Normal. Not like the lethargy. Fury hit me full force, and my hands-my long, nimble doctor’s hands-were clenched and shaking.

My wife thought about killing herself last night. She’d been exposed and humiliated in front of people who weren’t fit to look at her. Someone had done it on purpose, had set her up to suffer. Now it was his turn.

One of the slaves brought Nimbus out to me. I was in a hurry to meet Faro Magnus.

* * *

The house was shuttered. No sound, no bluster, no pestering me to breed my mare. I patted Nimbus on the neck and tied her to the branch of a nearby ash.

A slave opened the door a crack. Older woman, terrified, shrinking as if I were going to hit her.

“Where’s Mumius?”

“The-the gentleman who stayed?”

I nodded. “Soldier. The only ‘gentleman’ in the house.”

Her eyes got bigger, and she flattened herself against the wall. “I’ll show you to the mistress.”

I strode after the old lady, who led me into a dark room where thin gruel and gray-looking eggs lay unadorned on a table. Materna was squatting in a chair, looking like a tick torn off a particularly juicy vein.

“Oh? So you’ve come back, have you? Come to apologize?”

I didn’t want to get too close. She smelled. The dim light highlighted the beard she was growing, reflected the shine on her beetle eyes. The kind of beetle that likes to eat dead flesh.

“Actually, no. Although maybe I should, Materna. Maybe I should.”

The crack of a triumphant smile started to crease her lower lip. “Well, if you think-”

I was in a hurry. I got closer and held my nose.

“I do think. About a lot of things. Like why you like to sit back and watch other people suffer. Like why you get your kicks from pain-and watching Faro stoke it. Better get your kicks where and while you can, Materna … since he won’t be stoking you.”

The beetle eyes hid under the beetle brows. “You rude, miserable-”

“Before we start on what I am, let’s start on what I’m not. I’m not sorry for what I said, what I did, what I’m saying now, or what I’m likely to say or do to you in the future. The only thing I’m sorry for is not having the time to say it well. You’re a sick woman. The kind of sick no doctor could heal. I wouldn’t even try.”

Staring silence. Even her fingers quit tapping the chair.

“What do you want?” she said abruptly.

“Faro. Is Mumius still holding him?”

She turned her head slightly to the left, as if she couldn’t bear it. “My worthless husband is with him. In the study.”

“Where is it?”

“Second door on the right. Down the corridor.”

I turned to go. She murmured after me: “You worried it wasn’t yours?”

I breathed in, out, a little at a time. In and out. Got control of my lungs.

“See these hands, Materna? They deliver babies. They clamp arteries. They sew up the guts of men who don’t know they’re already dead. They’re strong hands. If you were a man, and I was less of one-I’d break your fucking neck.”

I don’t know whether it was my shaking fingers an inch away from her face or the rasp in my voice. She pushed her square head back as far as she could.

My arms dropped, stiff and sore with tension. “I wouldn’t poison myself by touching you.”

I walked down the corridor, catching a glimpse of Secunda, lurking in the shadows. I threw open the door without knocking. Secundus was asleep in a chair while Mumius groggily watched Faro, who was stretched out on a couch, staring at the ceiling.

“Secundus. Mumius.”

Secundus woke up with a start. “Eh? Arcturus! About time you got here. It’s-what, nearly the third hour?”

“I got here as soon as I could. There’s been another murder.”

Secundus blanched. Mumius blinked a few times. Faro kept his eyes fixed upward, but his breaths were coming faster.

“What-who-”

“A priest. Name of Calpurnius.”

The two men showed no recognition. Faro was still watching the ceiling rot.

“Secundus-whose idea was it to invite Faro last night?”

He lowered his eyes. “The wife’s. He’s a friend of the family. My daughter likes him a little too well, but the wife didn’t want to not see him on account of it.”

The necromancer was listening intently.

“When did you decide?”

“It’s been planned for weeks. She’s-she talked about nothing else. Not even been interested in the horses.”

“And whose idea was it to invite us-me and my wife?”

He scratched his head. “You know, I can’t remember. Seems like I thought it up, once I heard who you were.”

Most of Secundus’s ideas would seem like that, nearly all of them would come from Materna’s mouth.

“I’m going to interrogate Faro. Are you staying?”

Secundus turned red. “We-that is to say, I-I think I should. It happened in-in our-in my house … but-but Arcturus-”

“What is it?”

“Did he-did he-break the law?”

I massaged the back of my hand. “He broke my law, Secundus. He hurt my wife. While we were guests in your home. That means he also broke the laws of hospitality.” I stretched my fingers out and flexed them. “Don’t worry. I’m not taking him to court.”

Mumius and Secundus looked at each other. Mumius finally spoke. “I guess I’ll stay, too.”

“Whatever you like, but anything this maggot says about my wife doesn’t leave this room.”

I looked up at them and they nodded, fear twisting their faces.

“Neither does anything about the murders. If he talks, you don’t. To anybody.”

They nodded again, fading into the background. The room was small, on the shabby side, with a desk and some rolls of papyrus stuck in cubbyholes. I walked toward the couch, slow and deliberate.

“Faro.”

He gracefully pulled himself to a sitting position in one movement.

“Yes? Oh-you.”

“You know I’ve been here for several minutes.”

He shook his head regretfully. “No, no, I didn’t. I was communing with the Beyond, until it was time for you to talk to me.”

Eyes large, brown, full of warmth. The easy smile of a man who’d always been able to talk his way into or out of anything. Looks helped. Small body, well shaped.

I pulled up a chair and sat in front of him. Leaned forward and stared until his phony quizzical look gave way to nervousness, then finally broke out into a sweaty question.

“What did you want to ask me?”

“How long have you been in Aquae Sulis?”

“Let me see-I’ve been here for a year, on this trip.”

“This trip? You were here before?”

“About four years ago. I travel the different spas. Usually in Gaul or Baiae. I’ve been most places at least once.”

“What brought you back here?”

He leaned back, started to relax a little. Thought maybe I wouldn’t disfigure him after all. “The spirits, of course. There are many spirits in Aquae Sulis, many people who are haunted by them.”

“And who are willing to pay you to talk to them.”

He shrugged. “A man must make his living-”

I moved so quickly he didn’t have time to uncross his legs. My hands were around his neck and his toes were barely brushing the floor.

“You make your living hurting people. Like you did last night.”

Dangled in front of me, still calm, still confident. Didn’t piss on himself. Not yet. Men like Faro thought everyone could be gotten to. Everybody nursed a weakness he could charm, hid a secret he could figure his way around. He reached up to pry my fingers off while his skin burned red and he coughed from the pressure on his windpipe.

“I wasn’t told-set me down, please, so I can talk-I wasn’t told you were unprepared. The world of the dead can be very disturbing.”

I lowered him back to the couch. “Tell me about the world of the dead, Faro. You seem to know a lot about it for a man who gets paid in cash.”

There was a jug of wine on the desk. Faro’s eyes strayed toward it like iron to a magnet. Then I noticed the broken veins around his cheeks and barked out an order to our host.

“Secundus! Get Faro some wine.”

He flinched. “No. No, I do not want any.”

Secundus was sloshing old vinegar into a dirty wooden cup, and handed it over. I held it out in front of me and swished it around. The flat slop odor of sour wine rose, teasing the bastard. He didn’t look the type. Such a pretty boy.

“You sure, Faro? You sure you don’t want some?”

He drew himself up on the couch. “I’m not a lush, if that’s what you’re thinking. I won’t drink slop.”

I smiled and set the cup on the table beside me. “Well, let’s just leave this here until we need it.”

We stared at each other for a few minutes. His eyes drifted toward the wine again.

“You say you weren’t told-that we were-what was it? ‘Unprepared.’ ”

“That’s right. I was paid, told that there would be two couples of particular interest, and-and that was all.”

“Who paid you?”

He nodded his head in the direction of Secundus.

“His wife.”

I smiled. “You must be nice and cozy with the family. You tried to seduce the daughter, isn’t that right?”

Secundus started to sputter from somewhere in the background.

Faro said: “She has a sensitive character.”

“Money under the mattress, too.”

The show face was back. Concerned warmth radiated from his fingertips. He reached out with it, trying to use the charm again.

“You must shed this anger-the spirits don’t like it. Let it go. I can help you.”

I leaned forward. “You know what? I think you can.”

The backhand took him by surprise. He fell against the couch, and I picked him up and threw him into the wall. The thud shook a dusty papyrus from one of the slots, and it rolled open, covered with mathematical figures.

Blood trickled from his lip and his nose. He raised a shaking hand to wipe it off.

I handed him the wine. “Drink it.”

He grabbed it with two hands and gulped. I pulled him up by the arm.

“Who told you about my wife?”

His breath was coming out ragged. I squeezed harder on his upper arm.

“Who?”

He glanced sideways at Secundus and shook his head. He was refusing to answer me. I didn’t mind.

I slapped his face hard enough to put some color into it. Twice. Back and forth. Back and forth. A large welt rose on his cheek, and the blood kept streaming from his nose.

“I’m running out of patience, Faro. I could use my fist.”

“No-no more. I’ll talk.”

Mumius came forward with a dinner napkin from last night. Almost funny, if it weren’t so fucking ugly. Faro wiped his nose, and I shoved him into the couch. To remind him who owned him.

“Who told you about my wife?”

Quiet now, furtive. He’d tell as little as he could, then run somewhere else, hide, rebuild, do it all over again. Men like Faro worked in cycles-sometimes up, sometimes down, finally sinking low enough to die in rags, wine breath, broken body, shit and piss their only embraceable warmth. Pariahs. Outcasts. Not even remembered in hell.

I almost felt sorry. For him, for the men like him. Some of them with talent, looks, brains-even connections. But they started down the road tripping people. They couldn’t resist the fraud, the trick, putting one over on the gullible and stupid-or the vulnerable and hurt. It gave them a sense of power, and they needed power to keep living. Whatever it was they called life.

“Materna. Materna told me your wife-your wife had a miscarriage.”

I sat back in my chair. It was part of what I wanted. “What are you doing in Aquae Sulis?”

“I told you. I-I summon ghosts. Communicate with the dead.”

“I’ll ask you again. What are you doing in Aquae Sulis?”

He was hiding something. I was tired of hitting him. The satisfaction wore off after the first time. I knew how he would end up.

“I don’t know what you want from me!” He turned to Secundus and Mumius. “Make him stop! I don’t know what he wants!”

I punched him in the stomach in the middle of a whine, and he fell to the floor, the wind knocked out of him.

Mumius stepped forward. “Is he all right?”

“He’ll be fine. He’s just scared of something.”

I hauled him back up when he started to gasp. His nose bled some more, and I picked up the napkin from the couch and wiped his face with it.

“Faro. Tell me what you’re paid to do here. Not by the regular customers. You know what I mean.”

It depended on whether he was more afraid of me or whoever he was hiding. True to his kind, he tried to compromise.

“I can-I can tell you this much, and only this much-don’t bother to hit me any more, because you won’t get anything else. There are things-things worse than pain.”

I let go of his arm, and he fell back into the couch.

“What is it?”

He wiped his mouth with the dirty, bloodstained napkin. “I want to leave here. Leave this town. That’s part of the deal.”

“I don’t make deals, Faro. What makes you think I won’t hurt you so bad you can’t leave?”

He grimaced as he ran his tongue over the cut on his lip. “Because you’re not the type. You don’t like to hurt people. Not even when you’re angry.”

“I’ve enjoyed hurting you. I could stand a little more enjoyment.”

“No-no. I’m just asking to leave. Please-I-I can’t help you. I’ll tell you what I can, and then-just let me go.”

I stared at him and watched his eyes drift back over to the wine jug. “All right. Tell me.”

Relief poured out of him like sweat. “I’m-I’m here for the mine.”

I leaned forward. “The haunted mine?”

“I’m the one-the one who spread the rumors. I was here four years ago, when it-the death-happened. I make sure people still believe it.”

“Who pays you?”

He shook his head. “That’s all I can tell you. I mean it. Go ahead and ruin my face, if you’d like, but-but I can’t tell you anymore.” He tried to straighten his tunic.

“Where is it? The mine?”

“I can tell you that. Then-then you can see for yourself. It’s about fifteen miles from here. Right off the Sorviodunum to Iscalis road. There are a lot of mines in those hills. This one-this one is the farthest one north, about seven miles from Iscalis.”

I stood up and said softly: “Do you ever hear voices at night, Faro?”

He looked scared again. “What do you mean?”

“Not dead ones. Living voices, full of pain and misery. Pain you’ve put there. That’s the only thing you bring to life. And sometime soon it’s going to drown out the sound of anything else.”

He was already looking old. I turned to Secundus and Mumius. “Don’t repeat this to anyone. Especially your wife, Secundus.”

He started to sputter again. “My wife-my wife-you’re-you’re going to believe-”

“Yes, I believe him. Your wife takes a malicious pleasure in watching other people suffer. I’d-watch what you eat, Secundus. Just watch what you eat.”

Secundus and Mumius gaped at me. Faro was staring at the ground, trying to read his own future.