Dark Horse (19 page)

'Isn't that par for the course for your lot?'

Whether, engrossed as he was in testing the softness of the pillows, Orbilio missed the jibe against his class or whether he deliberately chose to ignore it Claudia wasn't sure. His eyes closed, and for a count of thirty his chest rose and fell. She did not fall into the trap of believing he'd fallen asleep.

Her hand closed over the strap of her trunk.

'What do you make of the fair Silvia?' he asked.

Damn. 'Charming girl. Love her to bits.'

A muscle twitched at the side of his mouth. 'And Nikias?'

Safer ground here. 'Nikias does with portraits what a Greek musician can do with a lyre.' Makes you weep with the depth of emotion.

'What about the dolphin?'

'Sorry, never met it. Can't give an objective opinion.'

'So you wouldn't know how the
Medea
came to be listing in the water?'

'Woodworm?'

The twitch broadened to reveal a row of white, even teeth. 'The trouble with casting Nikias in the role as saboteur,' he said, eyes still closed, 'is that the Corinthian can't swim. Whereas your bodyguard, apparently, cleaves the sea like an otter.'

'Good heavens. All this time, and I never knew.'

'Well, maybe you knew he was hanging round the saws in the carpenters' shed the night before the
Medea
was holed?'

'His spare time is his own business, Orbilio. I don't like to pry.'

'Good,' he said, opening one lazy eye. 'Glad we cleared that one up.'

All right, so with hindsight she wouldn't have sabotaged the ship and thus eliminated in a stroke any chance of mass rescue, should Jason raid Arcadia tonight. But - 'We don't all have crystal balls, Orbilio.'

'You've been peeking.'

His eyes shut, so he missed the volley of fireballs which bombarded the bed. What
did
he mean about those fires along the Liburnian coast being odd? Then she looked at his face understood the performance he was putting on, the act of forced joviality over what must have come as a thunderbolt from the blue: the discovery that even the Security Police aren't exempt from the effects of grief! Here, she realized was a man juggling anger with guilt, anguish with sorrow' while trying to retain a grip on reality by doing his job. Behind those closed eyelids Orbilio was battling to control a whole host of undisciplined emotions - so was there ever a better time to sneak away and catch that fifty-foot freighter to Rome?

Unfortunately, Claudia would never know.

The scream four doors down made sure of that.

Short but shrill, surprise mixed with panic. Marcus sprang.

In three paces he was off the bed, through the door and racing along the portico. In Silvia's doorway, the little oriental pedicurist slammed into him, her eyes bulging with panic. Her breath was drawn, ready to scream a second time, but at the sight of Orbilio, leadership personified, she gulped it back. 'Sir, sir, it's the mistress—'

He had already pushed the girl to one side. 'Fetch the physician,' he ordered.

A fine example of patrician tact, Claudia thought, racing behind. Anyone else would have called for the undertaker. Shamshi's soft, girlie voice floated somewhere above her.

Before the sun rises thrice more over our heads, a woman shall die.

Silvia lay on the bed, arms by her side, as though she was sleeping and had thrown back the covers in the night. She wore a nightshift of the palest buttermilk linen, so fine it was transparent, emphasizing the swell of her tiny breasts. Her head was turned sideways, facing the wall, and her honey-coloured hair streamed across the bolster, soft and shining and longer than one might imagine from seeing it curled. Around her throat, like some hideous necklace, hung a string of purple bruises.

'Pass me a mirror,' Marcus said, leaning over. 'Quickly.' Claudia grabbed a polished bronze mirror from Silvia's table and thrust it into his hand. She watched as he turned Silvia's head towards him and held the mirror close to her lips.

So young, she thought. Death had stripped ten years from the Ice Queen. Impossible to believe Silvia had borne three small children. Who, she wondered, would break the news

that their mother was dead? Indeed, who would know where to find them?

Three murders on top of an uprising and piracy, Orbilio would have enough on his plate here. Right about now, the freighter would be weighing anchor, hoisting her red and white striped mainsail as she set off back for Rome, but no matter. There was still Plan B in reserve. Namely, Junius rowing his mistress across to the mainland just as quickly as she could give Supersnoop here the slip.

'Mother of Tarquin,' Marcus breathed. 'She's alive!'

The mirror clattered to the floor as he pressed his mouth to Silvia's, forcing life from his lips into hers. Claudia wondered why the sight of it should bring such a sharp pain to her chest. Five, six, seven times the needle jabbed before Silvia's eyelids fluttered open.

'M-Marcus!'

'Don't try to speak,' he said, trickling water a few drops at a time down Silvia's throat.

A colourless hand closed over his wrist. 'You - saved my life.'

'I can't take the credit for that,' he said gently. 'I merely speeded up the recovery process.' He pulled up the bedsheet to cover the transparent nightshift, smoothed the crumples on the counterpane, brushed a strand of hair from her eyes.

'Thank you.'

'Hey!' He wagged a finger in mock anger. 'Doctor Orbilio expressly ordered his patient not to talk, remember? And when she does, he confidently expects her first words to be the name of the man who did this.'

With trembling fingers, Silvia explored the bruising on her throat. 'Don't - know,' she rasped. 'Dark. I was asleep.' Tears filled her big blue eyes. 'Thought I was - going to - die.'

Orbilio said nothing, but then what could he say?

That was what her attacker had expected, too.

The demon did not need to look in any polished bronze mirror to know that its reflection was perfect. In any case, it had transcended the physical plane, the body was merely a vessel. One to be cherished and admired, admittedly. But a vessel nonetheless. A receptacle for the knowledge which had been handed down through the centuries and which had travelled the world as Medea had travelled the world, and Circe's sons by Odysseus had travelled the world, spreading their seed across all the lands and the islands.

And now the knowledge had come home. Back to where it belonged, in Illyria, on this magnificent Island of the Dawn.

The demon sighed with contentment. Its ancestors had been two beautiful, clever, manipulative women whose power lay in their ability to make people trust them. Only too late did their victims realize Medea and her aunt were capable of treachery, betrayal, murder - and much worse.

The demon toasted their memory with wine.

With thiss libation, I pray and beseech thee that thou mayest look propitiously upon thiss house.'

Dressed in flowing white robes, Llagos dribbled wine over the threshold to appease the gods who guarded the entrance. The whole estate staff, even the children, were congregated in the yard outside the atrium, but only Marcus, as chief mourner and next of kin, and Llagos stood on the portico.

'That thou preserveth those who enter here' - the priest sprinkled salt on the stone still darkly ingrained with Leo's blood - 'and those who leave.'

Claudia thought back to the moment when, in her haste and panic, she mistook Marcus for his cousin. Was it any wonder, seeing the place where Leo's life had oozed into oblivion, that she'd mistaken him for one of the
Lemures? 
Those lost, lonely spirits left wandering the earth unable to comprehend their untimely deaths? Now, as the priest wafted incense over the cedar-wood doors, a rock lodged in the base of her throat. Was any death more untimely than Leo's? To die young is bad enough. To die alone and in unspeakable agony - she swallowed, but the rock would not budge. Such hate, she thought. Such unimaginable spite. Standing on the spot where he died, she could feel its malevolence. The hairs prickled on the back of her scalp. Gooseflesh covered her skin. She shuddered, but the cold hand of evil could not be shrugged off.

'Ye gods of the threshold, accept thee thiss sacrifice for the outrage that hass been committed.' Llagos beckoned forward one of the temple acolytes holding a white sheep by one of its gilded and beribboned horns. 'Take the life of thiss animal -' he paused while the acolyte stunned it with a hammer '- let

its strength be thy strength' - a sharp knife slit its comatose throat - 'and mayest thou receive the power from the sacrifice to protect thiss house once again.'

Without trumpets on hand to drive away evil spirits, Cressia's squint-eyed miller blew into a pair of pipes fashioned from ash wood, coaxing unearthly shrieks from a sheepskin bag as he pumped. A stranger could be forgiven for thinking the sheep wasn't dead and the miller was intent on strangling it slowly to death, but when it came to dispelling spirits, the bagpipes shred them to pieces. Good and bad.

As the screeching died away, the butchered joints were roasted upon the open fire in the courtyard. Shamshi had taken away the soft internal organs, muttering to himself in Persian as he pored over heart, lungs and liver while Saunio's BYMs hugged one another and wailed like cats in a mincer.

Claudia's gaze swivelled to her left. To Lydia and Silvia, standing together, one as fair and petite as the other was dark and tall. Neither had spoken. Neither had shed a tear. Silvia had pinned a scarf across her neck to hide the bruises and when, on the odd occasion, she glanced at her sister, it was to flash her a look straight from the Arctic. Watching the Ice Queen, fists clenched, shoulders rigid, one might almost think Silvia hated her sister.

Lydia's spine was equally determined, her fists equally tight, but not out of grief, and not out of animosity or spite either. Indeed, pride seemed to be the overriding impression. There was a bloom to her skin, a glow to her face and for a woman discarded by her husband, abandoned by her lover and then left widowed without a penny, Lydia looked pretty damn radiant.

'Let us eat,' Llagos said, descending the steps to hand round platters of crisp roasted lamb.

Leo's voice echoed back.
You must try our local mutton. The salty grass and diet of wild herbs gives it a magnificent flavour.
Maybe. But Claudia could not force a single mouthful of lamb past her lips.

'What's that?' she asked Llagos, pointing to a thick white slime on the doorpost. Already the salt was starting to bleach out the bloodstains on the white stone step below.

'Wolf's fat,' the priest said proudly. 'For Roman ways, iss

used in marriages, yess? But on Cressia, iss protection against sorcery. We hef no wolfs left on the island so iss very precious commodity, but iss much needed right now.'

in what way?'

'Because although there iss always much superstition on island, when things go bad, peoples revert to the old ways to see them through crisis.'

'To which the priest of Neptune turns a blind eye?'

'No, no,' he said, 'I
help
them. To ask peoples to change when they are suffering iss not good. So I work with them, alongside them, let them see we are brothers shouldering our burdens together. But at the same time I show them the new ways, let them decide for themselves which is best. Also,' he winked, 'thiss way, I always know what iss going on this island!'

Cunning old bugger.

'But now cerymony is finished, you muss please excuse me. There iss problem in town. Iss escalating, and though I am not sure how to deal with it yet, I muss go with the peoples this afternoon to the hills.' He pulled a face. 'The old ways hef a lot to answer for, sometimes!'

Orbilio was still standing on the portico, staring unblinkingly up at the frieze of Odysseus, deep furrows etched in his forehead. Saunio and Nikias were engrossed in discussing the merits of haematite crystals versus Spanish cinnabar, Volcar was whispering something into the ear of a kitchenmaid, making her blush to the roots of her hair, and she could be mistaken, but Claudia thought she caught sight of Magnus hovering at the edge of the crowd talking to Qus. Beside her, Silvia and Lydia remained stiff and unspeaking. A sisterly show of solidarity, but that's all. A show.

When she glanced back, the portico was deserted, and now Qus and whoever he'd been talking to had disappeared. She edged her way through the tremulous crowd, who were alternately sobbing and praying, scared of what might happen next. So far, though, Orbilio had made no move to address them and allay their fears.

What the hell was going on here?

Alone in her isolated cottage on the hilltop, Clio strained to listen.

'Come out, I know you're there.'

The heat throbbed like a pulse, creating mirages on the stone path and shimmering the far horizon. Cicadas rasped in the harsh, dry grass, vultures wheeled and a snake slithered under a boulder.

'You don't scare me,' she shouted.