Dark Horse (17 page)

He hesitated. 'My wife says a lot of things she doesn't mean when she's drun— emotional.'

'I'm sure.'

'And Silvia jumps to conclusions, too.'

Never mind them. 'I didn't think you'd invited me here to seduce me,' she said. 'I was asking whether you brought me over to look at your wines . . . or,' she paused, 'to invest in them.'

Leo roared with laughter. 'My, you don't mince your words do you? Marcus told me you were one shrewd cookie. I didn't appreciate quite how shrewd.'

That's it. Spoil a perfectly good evening by bringing Mr Let's-hear-it-for-the-Security-Police into it.

'I have to come clean, Claudia, I did have something along those lines in mind, but not an investment as such. I was thinking more of a partnership. Proper contracts, drawn up in law, all legal and binding.'

'Do tell me more,' she said softly.

'Well, first off let me confess it wasn't actually my idea,' he said. 'My cousin suggested you might be amenable—'

'Marcus
suggested it?' The same Marcus Cornelius Orbilio who'd caught her fixing races by doping the hot favourite and knew she was broke?

'Smart lad, my cousin. He's going places, that boy. Of course, he needs a wife before he can think about a seat in the Senate, they wouldn't take him otherwise. Divorced man with no heirs? Jupiter would turn celibate first, especially after the scandal attached to his marriage.'

'Caused a rumpus, did it, the wife turning the household slaves into cash and using the money to run off with a sea captain from Lusitania?'

Leo shot her a strange look. 'I - er, didn't realize you knew.'

Know your enemy, Leo. And Orbilio, make no mistake, was a dangerous, dangerous adversary. 'Talking of our proposed partnership contract,' she said, 'what do you suppose Lydia meant about life and death breaking yours with the rose-grower's daughter?'

'Can't imagine.'

'Aren't you curious?'

'Not remotely.'

'Strange. Because half an hour ago I could have sworn I saw you talking to your ex-wife over by the cliff edge.' Felt sure I heard you telling her that this was only a temporary arrangement and asking her to bear with you, you'd see her right, on your mother's eyes, I think you swore. 'And didn't I also hear Lydia telling you to go fork yourself - that
was
the word, wasn't it?'

Leo found a sudden urge to adjust his belt buckle. 'No,' he said. 'Wasn't me.'

Claudia allowed the resulting silence to stretch. 'I met a woman called Clio while I was out walking today,' she said idly. Why should Leo have the monopoly on lies? 'She mentioned you.'

'Clio? Clio?' Leo stuck out his lower lip as though thinking. 'No. Doesn't ring any bells, I'm afraid. Look. Um.' He made a clumsy gesture towards his bladder. 'Need to empty the old wineskin, getting urgent. We'll, er, thrash out those partnership proposals tomorrow, when I show you the pressing house and the vats . . .'

'Can't wait,' Claudia said, as her host lurched off in the opposite direction to the latrines.

And it was turning into quite a night for dropping eaves, because another familiar figure hove into view. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and from time to time one trickled down his neck to nestle in the folds of fat. His eyes had been reduced to small black hollows all but lost in a face waxy in texture, grey in colour, and which still bore the porridgey etchings of grief. This man needs to lose weight, Claudia thought. He needs to take time out to sleep. But most of all, Saunio needs to mourn properly the death of his eighteen-year-old apprentice.

'Leo's gone to one helluva lot of trouble,' Saunio murmured, nodding towards the retreating figure, 'for a fourteen-year-old who'll be far too homesick to care.'

Interesting that it was the maestro, of all people, who should be concerned with the bride's welfare. Even Leo only saw the girl in terms of a vessel for siring sons.

'It's one of the reasons he wants the renovations complete before she gets here,' Claudia said. 'To minimize the disruption.'

Actually, it was to minimize the risk of miscarriage, which reminded her. She really
must
check out that mysterious crystal in Qus's quarters!

Saunio smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. 'At least one can't accuse Leo of not being driven by a strong sense of conviction.' He laced his fingers and stared at the waning three-quarter moon through the trees. 'Even if that sense of conviction is distorted.'

'I prefer to see him as a man driven by passion.'

'Saunio hates to contradict a beautiful woman, but that's a load of bollocks, my lovely. He's controlling, stubborn, blinkered, obsessive—'

'Are you always this loyal to those who commission you?'

Saunio let out a soft snort which might have been laughter, or then again might have been undiluted derision. 'Loyalty is worth socks to a man who won't listen.'

So that was it. Stags locking horns. The clash of two brawny egos. 'Leo's problem,' she said, 'is not that he won't listen. It's that he makes snap decisions without thinking things through, and once that course is set, failure isn't an option.'

He'd implemented a revolutionary new method for training his vines, and even though yield was a staggering twenty per cent down with this new method, reverting to traditional ways would smack of failure, so he steadfastly stuck to his guns. Likewise with Jason, Leo believed himself capable of beating the Scythian both in and out of the water, but that wasn't enough. Even though he knew damn well Jason would not set one red leather boot on Arcadia tonight, he'd armed the men in a public demonstration of his superiority over the pirates. Ditto Nanai’. He'd served her noticed to quit, and quit she would have to, once the cottage was demolished and the ground ploughed up afterwards. Leo had to be
seen
to be successful. The same with Silvia. He had taken so much, but once he'd made up his mind, that was it. The Ice Queen was history. Perhaps that was why Qus walked the fine line that he did? He knew just how far he could push an issue before his master became intractable.

'Do you also justify his obsession for heirs?' Saunio asked.

'The concept of wanting sons isn't new,' she said carefully-

'Don't you feel it's a rather dangerous concept, sidelining a wife of eighteen years then building her a house on the edge of the very estate where you've installed the new wife?'

Something was twisting the air here tonight. Stifling, oppressive, it braided the atmosphere, made things appear to move when they hadn't, cleverly concealed those things which did. And that hand that did the braiding was evil. A dark demon hypnotizing them with its spell. Claudia did not wish to be drawn into discussions about Leo and his ex-wife, and yet. . . and yet. . . The demon was sucking her in.

'Dangerous in what way?' she asked.

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

'Emotions are not an architect's plans on a page, my lovely, where a line can be rubbed out here, redrawn over there,' Saunio said. 'Trample hearts into pulp and the backlash is stormforce.'

Around them, bats squeaked, the watercourse babbled and emperor moths spun silent cocoons in the heather. The night air was pitchy from the spluttering torches and voles scuttled beneath a protective umbrella of cranesbills. There was something compelling about this fat little creature with the ring of curled hair round his chin. On the one hand, he was so earnest, so professional, every bit as obsessive as the patron he railed against, and yet every bit as blind. He could not fail to be aware of the rumours. Orgies, unnatural practices, bloodthirsty rituals - how could these have passed him by? Yet Saunio had never once refuted the gossip. Why?
Because it was not without foundation?

He'd excused himself from dinner tonight on the grounds that Helen of Troy took priority. He'd barely outlined madame, he'd announced pompously, merely sketched in the landscape, and apparently Paris was a blur, Agamemnon a cipher and the plaster poised at a particularly delicate juncture of dampness. He could not - nay, would not - compromise his art for the sake of his belly and when Claudia saw him later, he

was beavering away on Helen of Troy like there was no tomorrow.

Which, of course, for his apprentice there wasn't.

But that wasn't to say he needed to dig himself a grave next to Bulis. And why would a man who lived for his art fritter away precious spare time on the emotional issues of a chap he despised?

'You haven't answered the question, my lovely. Do you, as a woman, agree that a man is entitled to take whatever action he deems necessary, no matter how drastic, when it comes to the question of sons?'

'You're quite right, Saunio. I haven't answered the question.'

His thick Pan-like lips stretched themselves into something resembling a smile. Claudia leaned over and sniffed. No cinnamon. Only a weak metallic odour of malachite pigment.

The small boar-like eyes fixed on a point over her shoulder and for a moment he paused, as though debating within himself. Then the moment was gone. 'You must excuse me,' he said. 'The brushes call, and Saunio must not keep them waiting.'

Alone at last in the garden, Claudia had the strangest feeling the maestro had been trying to impart a coded message and, now she thought about it more carefully, she believed that had also been his intention in the atrium yesterday.

For the life of her, though, she didn't know what that message might be.

When Apollo reined his fiery chariot over the eastern horizon the following morning, the air over Cressia was calm and warm, heavy with the scent of the oregano which grew wild on the hillsides. Birds sang, but their arias were brief. Territories had long since been established and there was little energy to spare with fast-growing chicks demanding so much food.

In the hills, foxes slunk home to their dens, stone martens suckled their second litter and rabbits sniffed warily as they emerged from their burrows.

Out on the water, still pink from the dawn, fishermen dropped polished pebbles into the sea - offerings to Neptune, for protecting them from the pirate. Garlands of campion and storksbills bobbed from where their womenfolk had already cast their thanksgivings earlier.

Further out still, the cascades of water caused by a lone dolphin arcing in and out of the limpid sea were turned to silver in the burgeoning sunshine.

The fruit on the pomegranate trees which shaded the Villa Arcadia swelled and ripened in the summer heat. The figs grew luscious and sweet.

Wings warmed by the sun, brown argus butterflies, painted ladies, commas and graylings formed a mobile chequerboard as they danced over blooms in search of nectar. Bees droned. Lizards crawled out of their cracks in the wall.

After the celebrations which had lasted until the wee small hours, Leo's slaves had permission to sleep in. A cockerel crowed in the distance. Horses in the stable block shuffled and snickered, and one stamped its hooves. Scorpions scuttled beneath stones.

Floating on her mattress of swansdown beneath a counterpane scented with camomile as the eye of the day slowly opened, Claudia Seferius dreamed. She dreamed of epic sea voyages in search of adventure, of golden fleeces and giant one-eyed cannibals, encounters with sorceresses, sea monsters and the deadly song of the Sirens, and beside her, in the crook of her arm, the ribcage of her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat rose and fell in unison with her breathing.

Another hour passed, and no one and nothing in Arcadia stirred.

In fact, another hour would drift by before the first slave shuffled bleary-eyed along the portico and noticed the Scythian spear embedded in the aromatic cedarwood of the atrium door. But in that hour, fieldworkers and artisans, household slaves and children, even the dogs, slumbered on. In good time, they would wake, stretch, clean their teeth. Some would turn and make love to their wives. They knew nothing about the spate of messages which had been delivered, three times in total, courtesy of a Scythian spear, so they weren't afraid. The pirates had gone, and in any case what was the spear but a harmless piece of polished cypress with a few ribbons and rattles and barbaric carvings?

And since only Qus knew about the spears, they would not know that on previous occasions there had been a message attached, saying:
Give back what is mine.

There was no piece of lettered parchment on the lance when it was discovered on this beautiful, calm summer's morning.

What was impaled in its place was a body.

Shamshi the Persian had made a prediction. Before the sun stands thrice more over our heads, a woman shall die. Shamshi the Persian was wrong. It wasn't a woman who'd been speared through the gut and left to die on the atrium door.

It was Leo.

Words could not describe the effect on the island.

It was like the aftershock of an earthquake. So terrible, so devastating, that it could only find expression in silence. People were paralysed physically as well as emotionally. Incapable of moving. Of speaking. Even of thinking.

If Jason could sneak back under the noses of a score of armed guards and slaughter the most powerful man on a hundred and twenty square miles of island, what hope for the rest of them?