Dark Horse (37 page)

Stall. Stall for time, while her feet located their deadly steel target. 'Kill me if you must, but for heaven's sake do it quickly, don't bore me to death.'

Yet even as he laughed in the darkness, a jolt of terror shot through her. This wasn't wine making her head thick. This wasn't shock making her limbs leaden and disorientating her co-ordination.
Sweet Jupiter, she had been drugged.
You bastard, Jason. You dirty, rotten conniving sonofabitch, I even took the goblet from your hand while you continued to charm the pants off us as we debated the Quest for the Golden Fleece. Nikias's opinion was that it would have been a raid along the Black Sea to break the Scythian monopoly on trade. Llagos, of course, being local born and bred insisted it

was a delegation of amber merchants. But you. You insisted, it was the stolen death cloak of a Scythian king, without which his soul was unable to rest. In other words, a quest to return the embodiment of the king's spirit, the way your own soul would be doomed without sons to carry the bull tattoo on their chests.

And I fell for it. Even though I had Junius standing closer than your own shadow, to ensure you could cause no more harm!

'Your knees are buckling, Claudia. You cannot stand up, no matter how hard you try.'

I can! I can stand up. And when I do, I'll kill you, you bastard.
If only I could find that bloody knife.

'Circe plied her victims with moly. It made them forget, but that is not what I have planned for you, Claudia. Your fate is to remember.'

'Go to hell,' she said, but her voice was slurred.

'I've been there,' he said. 'It's a grey place, without power, without control, without domination. Hell is a place to which I can no longer return.'

But Claudia could no longer hear the boasts of the demon. The drug had sucked her too deep into oblivion. Although in the moment before it claimed her totally, she recalled the doctored goblet of wine being passed to Jason by a thinner, much smaller hand.

Life for the demon had never been sweeter. For several days now, it had been hard at work constructing a box. Not personally constructing, of course. This was the product of a master carpenter's skill, but the design had been the demon's, and tell me, who could deny the box was beautiful?

It had been planed until it was silky soft to the touch and a glass panel had been set into the lid. The glass was so thick as to be almost obscure, but it was adequate for the purpose intended.

'Looks more like a blooming coffin,' the carpenter had joked when he and his boy had delivered it.

The demon had forced a smile, but the box was no laughing matter. The approximate height, depth and breadth of a woman, there were a few modifications to be made before it could be put into use. The demon hadn't completed them all, but, inspired by Clio and Volcar, it had decided to bring its schedule forward. This would be a day to remember, would it not!

'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
,'
the demon whispered.

As it closed the lid over Claudia.

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