Dark Horse (23 page)

The melee in the yard drowned her cursing, but in any case the woman swinging languidly back and forth in the hammock would have missed a meteor falling. She was crooning to a tiny bundle wrapped in her arms.

'My dear, I'm so sorry,' Nanai’ said, turning a radiant smile upon Claudia. 'Snowdrop said we had a visitor, but as you can see, the baby's asleep and I really did not want to wake her.'

You take Leo's handouts, live here rent free, the children are in rags, the house is a shack and you steal his grapes to sell on, so where's the money been going?

'What do you think I should call my little sweetheart?' Nanai asked.

'How about Adoor?'

'What kind of a name is that?'

'The kind that's short for Another Drain On Overstretched Resources.'

Nanai's laugh was fresh, like a mountain stream over rocks. 'The boys I've named after birds,' she said. 'There's Raven, Jay, Merlin. Young Sparrowhawk up the tree there.'

'Don't forget the Little Bustard,' Claudia muttered, rubbing her bruises. Across the yard, the grey-eyed monster whipped his chariot into the chickens.

Nanai' brushed back wisps of white baby hair with her little finger. 'Mostly they're girls who are abandoned, and to them I bestow flower names. Tulip. Angelica. Lupin. Camomile There's usually a trait I can home in on.'

'What was the inspiration for Snowdrop?' Claudia asked settling herself on a fallen log.

'As her namesake blossoms through the snow, so my little Snowdrop blooms.' Nanai smiled. 'To look at her, scrawny little mite, you'd think she'd keel over in a strong wind wouldn't you? But don't be fooled. She's a survivor, my Snowdrop. I found her on my doorstep, three years old and almost dead of pneumonia, covered in ulcers, poor love. To be truthful, I didn't think she'd survive that first night.'

A fat tear of remembrance dribbled down Nanai's cheek and splashed unnoticed on to the baby in her arms.

'I don't know why the gods chose me to care for her,' she said, 'but I do know I nursed that child for six weeks and that if her natural mother had come back to claim her after the journey we'd made together, Snowdrop and I, I truly don't know what I would have done.'

Claudia felt a cold hand pass over her skin. There it was again. Bubbling under the surface, the raw passion which drove Nanai to protect children who weren't even hers like a tigress would protect her cubs.
To the death.

'But praise Cunina, who watches over babes in the cradle, the occasion didn't arise,' Nanai said cheerfully. 'Once news spread that I'd taken on a child no one else wanted, other women started to sneak up in the dead of night to leave their babes on my doorstep.'

Just like the burbling little bundle in her arms now, Claudia thought, moved by the tenderness with which Nanai wiped her fallen tears from the baby's cheek with her thumb. (The same thumb on which her own ring of Gaulish silver now glistened!)

A stone marten scampered home across the clearing as the baby suckled on Nanai's finger. Was its colouring the reason her mother gave it away? Better to pretend the child was stillborn and give it to someone who would love and take care of her, than let her olive-skinned islander husband discover

the fair-haired creature was not his? Claudia put herself in the distraught mother's shoes and knew that, in her place, the husband would have to go before the child.

'With hair that blonde, it's unlikely the baby's eyes will change colour,' she said. 'How about calling her Flax?'

'Flax!' Nanai's green eyes closed in rapture. 'Yes, of course.
Flax-'
She began to croon softly to the bundle, a lullaby about sweet dreams and candied cherries, no doubt the same song she sang when she sat at her loom inside the tumbledown cottage.

'What will happen to you all now Leo's dead?' Claudia asked.

Even if the eviction order still stood, she didn't see Qus thundering up here with his band of henchmen, razing the old forge to the ground and ploughing up the soil while the children remained in residence. This had been another bone of contention between him and his master, but why? Because Qus found the prospect of making children homeless distasteful? Or because one of those ebony-skinned children was his?

Nanai's malt-brown hair shone with red and copper streaks in the sunset. 'Don't worry about our future, my dear. The gods have blessed us and I know we shall be provided for. Already they have punished Leo for his wickedness, as I told him they would.'

The earth quaked, but no buildings fell. The temperature plummeted, but no icebergs appeared. Claudia swallowed the lump in her throat. 'Aren't you the tiniest bit sorry your benefactor is dead?'

'Nemesis is the goddess of retribution, dear. Once her powers have been invoked, they cannot be stopped.'

Claudia stood up. The sun had disappeared behind the hills to the west. But that was not why she had to leave. Whether Nanai believed that crap about Nemesis she neither knew nor cared. All she knew was that Leo had indulged this woman for seven years - yet the minute she can't get her own way, she turns and woe betide anyone who stands in her way. 'I make a dangerous enemy,' she had said.

Now Claudia understood Nanai had meant every word. As she felt her way along the track in the dark, stubbing her toes

on the boulders, snagging her robe on the prickles, she wished she could find something to like about the woman who cared for her orphans so deeply. Thank Jupiter for rowing boats No royal barge was ever more sumptuous, no imperial chariot ever more splendid!

Not that everyone would be keen to leave paradise. Drusilla for one, would be howling her head off down there in the cove' calling Junius all sorts of names that no cat of her aristocratic pedigree should know, much less use, and his arms would be scratched to ribbons. But then Drusilla had no qualms about reminding people that being crammed in a crate wasn't top of her list of pleasures. Tough. In the eight years they'd been together, Claudia and the cat, bitter pills had become part of their joint daily diet. This was simply one more in a long line that she'd have to swallow where the end results outweighed discomfort.

With a pang of affection, Claudia's mind cast back to the days when they were both skinny bags of bones starving in the gutter of a rough northern dockyard. Young and alone, robbed and raped, Claudia would not have cared if she died. Then a small mewing sound pricked at her awareness, and from then on, neither she nor the cat had looked back. Now look at her. From the days of dancing for sailors in boisterous taverns, she was mistress of a town house in Rome, a sprawl of Etruscan vineyards, had slaves at her beck and call, food in her belly. She was answerable to no one and nothing.

Squinting as she picked her way along the stony path in the dark, Claudia smiled. Of the three problems hanging over her head, one at least was secure. Thanks to Leo's revolutionary techniques, Seferius vineyards were set to make their first decent profit since her husband had died. (Listen, she never said she was good at the business. Only that she was not prepared to let it go cheap.)

Which only left Hylas the Greek to contend with, and the Security Police who had compiled such a persuasive case for the prosecution. Goddammit, if she couldn't kill these two birds with one stone, then her name wasn't Claudia Seferius! There had to be some way she could win Hylas over that didn't entail two broken legs, and once she'd found it - bribes,

blackmail, she wasn't proud - Orbilio would have no case to present. Now then. Let's start with the bribes. What kind of present would appeal to a successful Greek horse breeder?

The hand that clamped round her waist came out of nowhere.

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

As she opened her mouth to scream for her bodyguard, a gag was stuffed into her mouth.

'Mmmf! Mm-mm-mmf.' (LET ME GO, YOU BASTARD.)

She kicked backwards, wriggled, squirmed in a bear hug that was terrifyingly familiar.

Before the sun stands thrice more over our heads, a woman shall die - and the sun had risen two times already.

'Mm-mmf! Mm-mm-mmf.' (LET ME GO, YOU FAT BASTARD.) 'Mm-mm-mmf!'

The bear hug relaxed. Strong arms released her. Claudia started to run. But her attacker hadn't intended to let his victim go free. Just long enough to throw a cloak over her head. A cloak which smelled of cinnamon.

Control.

Power lay in control, and power was absolute.

To have a creature helpless and at your mercy, to toy wit it, play with it, hold its life in your hands, the knowledge that you have its destiny in your dominion - this was the ultimate validation of power.

Human souls.

Not blood. Not death. Not destruction. Not even authority over life.

The ability to manipulate a person's soul. Subdue it. Tame it. Force it to bow before the almighty presence. The more souls it could vanquish, the more it could subjugate and make quiescent, the faster omnipotence was attained.

The demon licked its lips and relished the slow hours ahead of it.

Marcus!' Even through her badly bruised tonsils, Silvia's censorious tones echoed across the library. 'Marcus, good heavens, man, you're drunk!'

'Thassa coincidence.' He grinned up at all three of her. 'So am I.'

He lifted the jug to his lips and drank deeply. Under a footstool upholstered in scarlet, a long-stemmed glass lay on its side where he'd rolled it away long ago. Too small. Too bloody small. Needed to do the job faster.

'Absholutely bloody steaming.'

All this time. All this time, he and Claudia . . .

He upended the jug and finished off even the dregs. That easy familiarity. The jokes. The looks. The
passion . . .

'Poor darling.' The triple haze that was Silvia glided across the floor towards him, her rigidity softening with each dainty step. 'We had no idea you were so deeply attached to your cousin.'

'Snot Leo.' When he shook his head there were six of her. 'Snot why I'm drunk.' He tried to stand up, but his foot kept slipping on the polished mosaic. 'Class, Silvia. Issa problem, see, being patrician. Can't just run away. Patricians have - whassa word? Obligations. That's what patricians have. Obli-sodding-gations.'

'Marcus, please.' Tragic blue eyes turned downwards. 'I've been totally honest with you about my past mistakes and it's terribly unfair of you to drag them up in this way.'

'Wasn't,' he said, belching softly. 'Never crossed his mind, frankly.'

'Then what on earth has driven you to drink your brains out, you poor love?'

'Marriage.'

'Ah.' She crouched down beside him and, as she wiped his fringe out of his eyes, a drift of honey-coloured hair floated gently in and out of focus in front of him. The drift smelled of white lavender. 'I do understand, you know, darling. It's an awfully big step—'

'Can't take steps,' he said sadly. 'Can't even stand up.'

She smiled. 'With me by your side, you can do anything.' Silvia drew a deep breath and ran a crisp pleat slowly up and down between her fingers. 'You were badly burned last time, but you won't regret marrying me—'

'Birthright,' he pronounced grandly. 'Denying children their birthright issanother big problem.'

'Don't let's go into that now. It's late. Let's get you to bed instead.'

'You, Silvia, are a very beautiful woman.' In fact, all three of them were exquisite. Wasp waist, pert breasts, a carnality that belied her glacial exterior. 'But sex is outta the question.' He held the wine jug to his left eye, closed the right and stared into the blackness. 'Seferius,' he announced.

'Sadly, dear, it's only that cheap stuff from over the water in Istria that you've been knocking back. Not Seferius vintage.'

'Want her.'

'I really don't think you should drink any more tonight.' Silvia prised his fingers away from the jug's handles.

'Can't have her.'

'Absolutely not, darling. More wine will only make you throw up, and then you'll be in no condition to conduct Leo's funeral tomorrow.'

'Funeral. Hell. I forgot.' Orbilio rolled on to all fours. 'How's Lydia coping?'

Silvia sniffed. 'We would prefer it if you didn't mention that bitch, if you don't mind. Now let's call for a slave to help you to bed.'

'Claudia.'

'Common she might be, but Claudia isn't a slave, you silly goose. Can you manage there?' she asked, as his hands closed over a cypress-wood chest filled with the works of Homer and Plato.

'Need to talk to her,' he said, testing the grip before hauling himself upright. 'Have to explain.'

'Well, it will have to wait, I'm afraid.'

He lurched from chest to chest round the library until he reached the door. 'Morning will do, I susuppose.'

'It'll have to wait a lot longer than that,' Silvia said. 'She's gone. Cat, luggage, the lot, just like that,' she added, snapping her fingers. 'Didn't even have the courtesy to kiss us goodbye.'

'Uh-uh.' The room started spinning. 'She wouldn't leave without the Gaul.'