Dark Horse (35 page)

Motive. That was the thing. Nobody kills without motive.

Nanai’ was a strange and unlikeable woman with the narrowest of vision, who would have no qualms in killing to protect Snowdrop and the others, but Nanai's blood ran hot.

With a longed-for baby on the way and a man who adored her, Lydia had no reason to kill her ex-husband, Magnus even less! His skills as a sculptor had made him wealthy, far richer than the debt-ridden Leo, and to suggest Magnus would go to the trouble of staging two other murderous attempts to cover up his crime was risible in the extreme.

The Ice Queen? She had motive enough, Claudia supposed. Disgraced from society and with Leo squandering what little money she had left, Silvia had tried to blackmail him into marriage and had been soundly thrashed. Who knows what steps a scorned and bitter woman might take? But if Silvia killed Leo, who tried to strangle her in her sleep?

Volcar couldn't run a fork into Leo, much less a spear, and surely Qus would have contrived for his master to meet with an accident when they were alone on the estate, if the issue over the crystal had become non-negotiable.

Like snowflakes in a blizzard, problems kept swirling around in Claudia's head. Passions ran high at the Villa Arcadia, higher than most, and in an isolated island community they were bound to be hotter, wilder, more likely to run out of control. Was that what happened? Had Little Things become Big Things until eventually they became Insurmountable Things? Could something which started out as nothing more than a slight 
really
mutate into a grievance which could only be assuaged by full-blown tragedy?

Was the sad truth of it that Leo had died for the simple lack of a release valve?

Nowhere else in the world would Corinth's most famous son pick a fight with his patron over a dolphin. Then again, nowhere else would a crystal be considered capable of scaring a woman into miscarriage! But those were hardly motives for murder.

Yes, Nikias was Corinthian and Corinthians worship Apollo in the form of a dolphin and, yes, Leo intended to spear the poor devil because the locals churned up his land. But for gods' sake, no one commits murder over a dolphin! Yet how adamant Nikias had been, she reflected, that Leo should not destroy the creature, which brought such healing and happiness to the island. How far would the taciturn artist go to protect his god? Claudia looked at him, engaged in debate with Saunio over whether the best celadonite to

create pale green came from the hills of northern Italy or from the island of Cyprus, and realized that if he had killed Leo, then Bulis's death must have also been deliberate. (The young apprentice would hardly have allowed the Empire's finest portrait painter to tie him up and half kill him and then fail to mention it.) Dolphins might be divine, but dammit, even the most devoted of Apollo's followers would not sacrifice two innocent lives along the way!

In any case, there was no point to killing Leo. He hadn't had a chance to spear the wretched dolphin; Claudia had sabotaged the 
Medea
to make sure of that. Which reminded her. In Leo's office when he was talking to Qus, hadn't he mentioned renaming his ship? What were the odds that she had previously been called the
Lydia,
but that wasn't the point. Leo said that someone had talked him into calling her the
Medea,
but why
Medea? 
Medea was a murderess without conscience or compassion, who planned her crimes to the last meticulous detail, even down to the dismembering of her own brother and children. Who in their right mind would suggest naming a ship after that treacherous bitch?

'Would someone mind giving me a hand getting this old buzzard to bed?' Magnus asked, indicating Volcar, who had fallen asleep on his shoulder.

'Here, I'll take him.' When Jason scooped the frail old frame into his arms, Volcar didn't even stir.

Sipping her fine, vintage red, Claudia watched Jason convey his burden along the marble portico. No directions required. The crafty sonofabitch knew exactly which was Volcar's bedroom. 
Just like he 'd known which was Claudia's on the night of the fire. 
It had been too dark and too smoky to identify the tussling figures on the granary steps, but it was Geta who had locked her in the bear hug, and Jason who had carried her back to bed. Cinnamon. She had smelled it just before Geta knocked her senseless.
Not you again,
Jason had said when he found her locked and tied in the shepherd's hut.
Not you again.

Leo might not have been Mr Popular when he died, but it takes a certain mentality to kill so barbarically. Hatred on an unimaginable scale, for instance.
Or the warrior son of an Amazon, for whom human suffering has a different meaning?

As the Scythian returned and topped up his goblet, she

thought, why the Odyssey? Why hadn't the killer recreated scenes from Jason and the Argonauts, which Magnus had also depicted in graphic detail on the frieze? Jason. The single thread running through.

Jason and the
Argo.

Jason and the
Moth.

Jason and his lover, Medea.

Medea. Like a pall of smoke above a forest fire, Medea's legacy clung to this island. Stifling, claustrophobic, malignant, it impregnated every stone and rock face. There was no other word for it, she thought. Pure, unadulterated evil. And maybe that was the connection? Both Odysseus and Jason called in at Cressia. The Argonaut had simply been passing through with his treacherous lover, but Odysseus made this paradise island his home. For seven summers he shared the bed of Circe the enchantress, and nuts to the idea that he got lost on his way home from the Trojan War. Circe had supplied him with a navigational chart, for gods' sake! No, no, no. Homer might be happy to portray him as a swashbuckling adventurer, but popular opinion had always had Odysseus pegged as a pirate.

All of which leads back to this Jason.

The chive bread in Claudia's mouth turned to bile. Leo didn't die for the simple lack of a release valve, any more than Bulis's death was an accident and Silvia's narrow escape had been planned. The Odyssey had been recreated, because someone - someone here now - believes ancient heroic blood runs in their veins. Odysseus sired several sons with Circe, but let's not forget that Medea was Circe's niece. Medea. That was the key.

Jason, goddammit, hadn't collected his war scalp for one simple reason. In his twisted recreation of his ancestor's adventures, there was no room for Scythian customs. The Jason who killed Bulis, Leo and then tried for Silvia was living an Odyssean fantasy. What Claudia needed to establish, and fast, was Jason's connection with the Villa Arcadia.

Before the sonofabitch struck again.

Lying on his blanket in the alcove of his master's bedroom, Ajax snored. His ancient, callused paws twitched with pleasure as he raced once more across the open plains of his youth in pursuit of bristly boar and panting stags, bounding over streams and hurdling obstacles, leading the pack by a mile.

In his dreams, his keen nose scented spoor, but in Volcar's bedroom, he didn't even pick up the draught when the door swung quietly open on its hinges. Deaf old ears failed to catch the sound of conversation and laughter out on the terrace, much less soft footfalls on the newly laid mosaic.

Ears flapping in the wind of his dreams, Ajax closed the distance on his quarry, unaware of the pillow being slid from underneath his master's head. So close, so close, Ajax could smell the stag's fear now and, whimpering with pleasure in his sleep, knew nothing of the pillow pressed down on the wizened walnut face.

Of the moment when the thin chest ceased to heave.

Of the pillow replaced under the lolling head.

Of the door closing quietly once again.

The demon rubbed its hands. How exciting, how thrilling, to be in a position where it could exert this amazing power over human life. To slip away in full view of everyone. To stand over someone while they sleep. To then decide whether that person should rise to greet another dawn - or be sent to meet his ancestors in the Kingdom of Decay. Inspirational. Truly .inspirational. Resuming its place at the dinner table, the demon rejoiced. Who among these people had even the faintest inkling that one old man had begun his watery journey across the River 
of Lamentation ? Hell, it wouldn't mind betting that even old Volcar wasn't yet aware of what had happened to him!

Oh, yes, truly inspirational, this power to decide who should live and who should die. But Volcar had been merely a diversion. A small sport taken on the spur of the moment, one which could be repeated, admittedly, but then forgotten. For memories that lingered, however, the demon had planned an entertainment which would make Leo's torment look as quick as a throat being slit. As the candied fruits were brought out, along with nuts and sweet honey cakes laced with wine, the demon set its mind to imagining the torture and agony to be faced by its next victim. Genius. Sheer bloody genius! Medea and her aunt would be so proud of the way their skills had been honed. Indeed, as a celebration of its illustrious female ancestry, the demon decided there and then to bring its schedule forward.

What a thoroughly enjoyable party this was turning out to be!

With Qus keeping a watchful eye on Lydia, the mistress he'd never stopped serving in his heart, Claudia felt there was no better time to investigate the crystal which had been such a bone of contention between the big Ethiopian and his master.

'Curiosity killed the cat,' she whispered to Drusilla as she slipped behind the laurels, but the blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian feline had no interest in proverbs. Now that the mice had been driven from their nests beneath the grain store by the fire, Drusilla felt it incumbent upon her to make their short lives even more miserable. With one fluid movement, she slipped between Claudia's ankles to fuse with the shadows.

There was no sound from the slave quarters save that of creaking bedsteads, breaking wind and snoring. Hardly surprising. Those who weren't required in the kitchens tonight would be rising at the first hint of dawn. On the mainland, farmhands would be busy turning straw into haystacks and bringing in the end of the harvest. Cressian soil was too thin for wheat, but there were still thistles and goose grass to weed out of the vegetable crops, vines to be watered, animals tended and figs to be pollinated. Claudia tiptoed silently past the snoozing porter to the bailiff's quarters, plucking a torch from the wall along the way. I ask you. What could possibly be so sinister about a bit of glass that it's considered capable of bringing on a miscarriage in a healthy young worn—

'Janus bloody Croesus!'

The torch fell from her hand. Holy Mother of Mars, the Fiend must stand six feet eight! Black like Qus, the same five parallel tribal lines stood out bone-white on its forehead. The Fiend was leaning against the wall before a meal of apples,

wine and honey-roasted crispy duck. Its blue eyes bulged in delight at its glamorous midnight caller, and its teeth bared in a bloodcurdling smile.

'Don't move,' Claudia said. At least, she hoped she said. Her teeth seemed to have a mind of their own. 'You just stay where the hell you are. Don't come any closer.'

'Speak to him firmly enough,' an amused baritone suggested in her ear, 'and he does exactly what you tell him.'

Orbilio. Thank Jupiter! Because if Qus has been hiding this . . . this
thing
in his quarters, there had to be a bloody good reason. 'This must be the man who killed Leo,' she hissed under her breath.

'Who? Qus's brother?'

'I don't care if he's the bloody Emperor. He found out that Leo wanted him out and he killed him out of revenge. Now if I'm wrong,' she said, 'I'll be the first to make it up to the boy, I swear. But to be on the safe side, Orbilio, I suggest you clap him in irons.'

'You don't mind if I put the fire out first?' Orbilio picked up the fallen torch and proceeded to stamp out the flames, which were now licking their way up the cotton coverlet on the bed. And still the Fiend kept on grinning.

'Orbilio!'

'Don't worry. You're safe enough with Qus's brother,' he said, and it was impossible for him to contain his laughter any longer. 'He's dead.' He crossed the room and held up the torch. 'In fact, he's been that way for over three months.'

'D-dead?' She peered at the creature standing against the far wall.
'Dead?'

Under the light, she could see that the smile was a death rictus, drawing his lips back over his brilliant white teeth, and that the eyes, those bulging delighted eyes, were coloured glass inlaid in empty sockets.

'The rest of him, though.' I mean, those
hands.

'The muscular demeanour is down to padding inside his clothes,' Orbilio explained. 'And the lifelike appearance owes much to skilful body paint, but much of it's due to Ethiopian embalming techniques.'

The Egyptians didn't have the monopoly on corpse preservation, then. 'What about the meal?'

'I rather suspect that's Qus's supper,' he said, helping himself to a sliver of duck. 'The custom, you see, is for the next of kin to keep the body in their house for a year before it can be buried, head facing east.'

All right, all right, body paint, glass, and padding I understand. But - 'What's keeping him upright?'