Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 11/01/12 (6 page)

"I suppose you were hoping it was the general behind the killings?"

The guards had long since dragged Tibios off to the dungeons, but Lysander showed
no inclination to accompany them. Instead, he'd taken the chair vacated by the
killer, folded his hands behind his neck, and closed his eyes. It was too much
for Iliona to hope he'd nodded off. As she'd said before, the
Krypteia
don't sleep. Even in a cocoon of their own velvet wings.

"I can't tell you the satisfaction that clapping him in irons would have given me
after the things he wrote to the Council." A rumble sounded in the back of his
throat. It was, she realized, the first time she'd heard Lysander laugh.
"Unfortunately, as much as the general wants my job, I wasn't convinced he'd go
to those lengths."

"But you checked anyway."

One eye opened. "I checked."

Iliona poured herself a goblet of dark, fruity wine. Somehow, she thought she
would need it. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to what looked like a squishy
cushion wrapped in blue cotton under her desk.

"Oh, didn't I say?" The eye closed. "It's a present."

She drank her wine, all of it, before unwrapping the bundle.
"A hunting
net?"

"I find it quite remarkable, don't you, how so many women who were previously
considered barren have been blessed with a much-wanted child over the last four
or five years?"

Sickness rolled in the pit of her stomach.

"Spartan justice is famed throughout the world," he continued levelly.
"Not
only done, it is also seen to be done,
to quote the poet Terpander. But
then—" Lysander stood up. Stretched. Rubbed the stiffness out of the back
of his neck. "Terpander was an inexhaustible composer of drinking songs, who
died choking on a fig during a musical performance."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying it's not a hunting net. It's a bird snare. If you look closely,
you'll see the mesh is finer than the fishing net in which you currently catch
your flying babies, yet strong." He didn't even pause. "It will dramatically
reduce the time you spend on maintenance."

"You're—not arresting me?"

"Whilst a boy with a twisted leg might not make a good warrior, Iliona, I'm sure
he can weave a fine cloak or engrave a good seal." He leaned over the desk and
poured himself a goblet of wine from the bowl. "The same way that not every man
can be a cold-blooded killing machine. Some need to break free."

Iliona's legs were so weak with relief that she had to sit down. "Helping
deserters is treachery in the eyes of the law."

"The law can't afford to have men on the front line who cannot be relied on." He
grinned. "And on a more personal level, the law prefers devoting its precious
time and resources to rooting out real traitors, rather than track down
weaklings who will only let their country down in battle." He refilled his
goblet. "Of course, that's only my opinion, and I would prefer you didn't bandy
it around."

"Your secret's safe with me," she said, and for heaven's sake, was she actually
laughing?

Iliona opened the door and lifted her face to the constellations. The Lion, the
Crab, and the Heavenly Twins. Far above the mulberries and vines, the paddocks
and the barley fields, Night watched the High Priestess in the doorway. Guided
by the stars and aided by the Fates, who measured, spun, and cut the thread of
life, Night had long since dried the tears of the bereaved and wrapped them in
the softness of her arms. Having called on her children, Pain, Misery, Nemesis,
and Derision, to plague Tibios the acolyte, she was now ready to pass the baton
of responsibility to her good friend, the Dawn.

And when the sun rose over the jagged peaks of Mount Parnon, some still capped
with snow, Iliona smelled the scent of daisies, roses, and, of course, white
lilies. This time, their perfume was sweet.

Copyright © 2012 by Marilyn Todd

 
Dana Cameron has had an extraordinary string of successes with
her short stories over the past couple of years, earning, most recently, the
Agatha Award for her Anna Hoyt story "Disarming"
(EQMM
6/11). Her
previous Hoyt story, "Femme Sole," received nominations for the Edgar, Agatha,
Anthony, and Macavity awards. The Massachusetts author rejoins us with an entry
in her Emma Fielding archeology series. The lastest novel in that series is the
Anthony Award-winning
Ashes and Bones.
 

 
I sat across from a row of decapitated kings, gods, and heroes
waiting for them to speak to me. I didn't know a word of their language, and
they'd been dead—their monuments erected, sanctified, and
decaying—long before anyone speaking my language was born. Still, I
waited, if not as patiently as they did.

In the end, it wasn't the statues but my husband Brian who spoke first:

"Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown/ And wrinkled lip and sneer
of cold command/ . . .
and then something, something, something, then
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and
despair!"

Brian was standing on the stone platform next to me, in what I assumed was meant
to be a dramatic, declamatory posture, feet apart, arms raised. Several of the
other members of our tour started clapping, and he bowed, then sat down,
carefully holding his new, heavy, and very expensive camera to his chest as he
did so.

"Moved to poetry?" I said, a little surprised.

"Nah." He shrugged, looking away, pretending disdain. "My tenth-grade English
teacher always said memorizing poetry would be useful in later life. Now I can
finally check it off the list." He turned back, smiling, and nudged my shoulder
with his. "Worth the climb, huh?"

"Amazing."

We'd hiked the half-mile from the parking lot up to near the summit of Mount
Nemrut. Two thousand meters above sea level is a lot when you live about a mile
from the ocean, and the heat, exertion, and altitude had made the trek
surprisingly tiring, given all the time we'd spent training at the dojo
together. But when we reached the top, and saw the line of stone statues, their
massive heads removed and placed in a row in front of them in an act of genuine
iconoclasm, it was worth it. In fact, I realized the effort of climbing was
probably something intended by the original builders, to leave the viewer of the
tomb site breathless and stunned on arrival. After thirty minutes of huffing and
puffing with your head down, trying not to slip on loose, sharp stones or the
weeds growing around smoothed stone steps, sweating in the hundred-degree heat
and avoiding evil-minded donkeys with no objection to kicking, the first view of
the Eastern Terrace was an incredible moment. Positively sublime.

"Who's that, Ozymandias?" Randy Ashmore asked. His pink face was almost
beet-colored from the hike; his khaki hat was so large, it made him look like a
mushroom with a bulbous nose and small eyes. "Was Ozymandias the king who built
this?"

Lale Mehmet, our Turkish guide, had just finished explaining that the tomb and
statues had been erected by Antiochus I in 62 BCE. I bit my tongue, refusing to
take the bait Randy had proffered. The didactic habits of a professor were not
easily put aside, but sometimes I learned faster than others.

Randy pushed past to get a better look. He stepped on Jack Boyle's foot.

"Oww!" Jack limped a few steps. "No, it's another name for Ramses II, Nineteenth
Dynasty in Egypt. A whole other time and place, my friend."

"My friend" sounded more like "you jerk."

"Well, you'd think whoever it was would have put a toilet up here too. I'm on the
run with the Tehran trots."

Once, I had, out of that professorial habit, pointed out that Tehran was in Iran,
while we were in southeast Turkey. Undismayed by mere fact, Randy had made a
series of attempts to find an alliterative expression that combined the local
place and his illness. Now I just kept as far away from him as I could.

The transcendent moment was now officially over. "There's one down at the base,
Randy," Lale, our guide, said hurriedly. "We'll be stopping there on our way
back, or you're welcome to start down now—"

We all held our breath, hoping Randy would leave us to enjoy the rest of the
site.

Remarkably, he nodded, and having borrowed a lira, which he would not pay back,
he left, calling loudly for his wife Rose to follow.

"Best money I ever spent," Jack said, putting his wallet away. He wiped the sweat
from his face and ran his hand through his dark hair before he replaced his
baseball cap. He was a Mets fan, so I, a member of Red Sox Nation, had no beef
with him. "But I'm grateful to Randy."

We were a very polite group. It was only now, on the tenth day of the tour, that
we had started tentatively expressing our true opinions about each other, to
selected comrades, very cautiously.

"Why on earth?" I whispered to Jack. "Grateful to Randy?"

"Because of the old saying—if you're in a group and you look around and
can't find the dickhead, you must be it. Randy reassures me."

I couldn't smother a laugh, but when I caught Lale's eye, I clammed up. Despite
years of habit, I'd tried very hard not to answer questions asked by the other
tourists, and tried to be respectful of the tour leader when she lectured. She
smiled and continued her talk. No harm done.

As we carefully picked our way down the steep, scree-covered slope, the sun
burning and glaring so the buff stone was nearly white, I asked, "How is Steve
Osborne feeling? Has anyone seen him today?"

Randy hadn't been the only one suffering from a change in water and diet.

Jack shrugged. "I heard he was definitely happier after he decided to stay at the
hotel today. I think he'll be okay by tomorrow. Shame he's missing all this." He
held out a hand to indicate the vista, the brightly caparisoned donkeys, the
sheer scale of it all.

"But he's been on this tour before? I seem to recall he said so."

"No, but he'd been on another tour with Lale, and they visited this region too.
That's why he wanted to come back. She was a good guide, he fell in love with
the country." He shrugged. "The country's pretty enough, and the sites too, but
the food!" He raised his fingers to his lips and kissed them. "That's what
brought me: cuisine."

We walked over to the Western Terrace and viewed the rest of the statues, which
seemed like a jumbled afterthought. When you've already carved a tomb out of a
mountain, then covered it with a fifty-meter-high mound of buff-colored stone
chips from sculpting a row of thirty-foot-tall sculptures, a collection of heads
and reliefs lying around had to seem a bit of a letdown.

It was hotter than body temperature. I was covered in sweat and a brand of
ancient dust I'd never encountered in New England. I pretended all I could smell
was sunblock, baking rock chips, and camel and donkey dung, instead of me.

"So what do you think those big stone heads would go for?" Eugene Tollund asked
me as we began our descent. "I mean, on the open market?" Eugene was the oldest
member of our group, and I'd been impressed by his energy and enthusiasm.
Eventually, however, I realized he seemed only to care about the monetary value
of things, instead of their intellectual or artistic importance.

"I honestly have no idea. Probably a lot, because it would have to be on the
black market. You couldn't sell something like that legally."

"I thought you said you were an archaeologist?" he said.

"I am." I ignored the derisive tone of his words. "Doesn't mean I know how much
everything I dig up is worth. Mostly it's small fragments of pottery and bone. I
don't do a lot of work studying the antiquities trade, so—"

But Eugene was already on to his next victim, posing questions no one knew the
answers to, so he could prove his astuteness in asking.

An hour later, we were visiting the caves and inscriptions at a nearby site. It
was on our way back down yet another steep slope that I saw Rose Ashmore,
Randy's wife, moving off the trail.

I held my breath. It wasn't for me to say anything. I wasn't her teacher, I
wasn't her mommy. But when she bent over, moved a rock aside, and picked
something up, something that shone in the sunlight, I couldn't
not
speak up.

"Um, Rose?"

She waved at me as she clambered up the hill. A few dark, fly-away curls blew in
the warm wind, and she brushed them from her face. If her husband was like a
short, stubby mushroom, she was more like a stalk of asparagus, thin, tall,
awkward. "I'm fine."

I tried to find a nice way to put it, then finally didn't bother. "You found
something? Picked it up?"

"No." She shook her head, her brown eyes wide. She licked her lips.

She was lying.

"Well, I'm sure you know you should leave anything you see on the ground. These
are protected sites."

"Uh-huh."

It was all I could do. I didn't have any authority, just the
obligation—and that self-imposed—of speaking up.

But maybe my seeing her had nudged her conscience, or she was afraid I'd tell on
her, because I saw Rose huddled with our guide Lale at the next rest stop. I
sidled up, quite unabashedly, to observe while sipping my tea. Eugene and Jack
were nearby too; Eugene's bald head was like a speckled brown egg and both he
and Jack feigned inattention. But nothing goes with tea like scandal.

Harold Campbell was smoking one of his innumerable cigars, though politely away
from the main part of the group. A perennial loner, for once he was interacting
with someone else on the tour: I was surprised to notice he made two of the
younger tour members, Nicole Powell and Tiffany More, laugh. He'd made his
lighter disappear with a practiced and elegant flourish.

I turned back to the real drama. Lale's lips were compressed almost to
invisibility as she asked precisely where Rose had found the object. I knew
Lale's job could be endangered by something like this, and Rose might be in a
great deal of trouble if the situation wasn't handled exactly correctly.

It started to drizzle, and we all huddled under the rest stop's shelter.

"The Storm God is upset now," Eugene announced. We'd been learning the Storm God
or Weather God was the chief god among the Hittites, a powerful king and warrior
in control of the elements.

I winced. It was exactly the wrong thing to say, especially since we were all
able to hear Lale rebuking Rose, however politely.

"It's a good thing we are seeing Dr. Boran Saatchi today," she said. "We'll give
it to him, with all the information you have about where you . . . found it. I
don't need to tell you this is very serious. I'm glad you spoke to me,
though."

She held out her hand, waiting.

Lale had been friendly and informative, all smiles the whole trip. Now her face
was grave, and she was clearly angry, though suppressing it. Rose had the
decency to look abashed as she handed over the object, which I could now see was
a small white clay disc, the size of a quarter, with concentric ridges. It might
have been a gaming piece. Whatever it was, it was culturally meaningful.

I got it, I really did. I understood that urge to want to hold onto the past, and
I almost felt sympathy for Rose. But I was on vacation from solving problems,
archaeological or criminal. I liked being done with work at the historical
archaeology conference in Istanbul, I liked being away from my part-time
consulting for the Massachusetts State Police. I liked
not
being an
expert. Now Rose had reminded me of all that, and I couldn't forgive her. As we
scurried through the raindrops onto the bus, I was glad the situation was dealt
with and out of my hands, but I was annoyed all the same.

"Okay, go ahead," Brian whispered, as he sat down next to me. The bus was abuzz
with what Rose had done. "I can see you're about to burst."

"On Mount Nemrut, there were signs in Turkish, English, French, and German,
telling us not to climb on the mound behind the statues," I whispered. "At every
stop, Lale reminded us not to go off the paths or move away from the group.
Hell, Brian, there were signs in the
airport
saying not to mess with
the antiquities. Rose knew what she was doing."

I looked away. "Why do people go on these tours, if they're not going to respect
the culture? I'm not even talking about the past. Randy only complains about the
toilets, Rose is practically a kleptomaniac. Eugene is asleep when he's not
asking how expensive something is. Jack seems to think it's just a moving
buffet, and Harold, Harold never says anything to anyone, just stalks around
like a great tall stick insect, puffing on his cigars and watching us like we're
acting in a play for him. What's the point?"

"Lots of things. People travel for all sorts of reasons. It's allowed."

"Well—no. It shouldn't be." I felt better for having let off steam, but
was still pouting.

"So only highly trained professionals and their spouses—who've been beaten
into submission with interminable lectures—should be allowed to travel
and see sights, maybe learn something? Even if it's only that they like home
more?"

The corners of my mouth twitched. "Yes. I've decided. Make it so."

"How about if I buy you an ice cream at the next stop, instead?" We'd become
addicted to the many varieties of gas-station freezer goodies we'd encountered
during our long drives across the country.

"Fine. I may jam it up Rose's butt, though."

"Your call. Waste of a good ice cream, you ask me."

 
A short drive took us out of the rain and back into the bright sun.
The weather was just as variable as the landscape in Turkey, which could change
two or three times a day, shifting from vast brown plains in the morning to
rolling green hills with red soil in the afternoon. I found myself thinking one
moment, "That plain looks like fields in the Midwest," and the next, "Those
cliffs remind me of Hawaii." Every once in a while, we'd go through a small city
that was a blend of modern shops, rows of tiny specialty stores, and
covered-over marketplaces selling everything from pots and pans to prayer beads
to cell phones. The clothing on the women changed too, as we headed north and
west, and while I always saw plenty of them dressed in traditional baggy
trousers, overshirts, and head scarves, as we neared the outskirts of Ankara,
the capital, I saw fashions I couldn't distinguish from home in New England.