Dark Horse Page 25

  suddenly you're pregnant, it wouldn't take the rose-grower long to figure out that it was Leo who was sterile, not you.'

  'I was tempted not to tell the selfish bastard,' Lydia admitted. 'Let him find out after he'd wed the little bitch, but it wouldn't have been fair on the rose-grower's daughter. She's only a child herself, after all.' She rubbed her still-flat stomach. 'A baby was all I ever wanted,' she said, flashing a tender glance at the sculptor, 'and a husband who adores me will be the icing on the cake.'

  'You'll wait until you're asked, woman,' Magnus said, but their laughter was interrupted by a lilac tornado.

  'So it's true!' Silvia's eyes were bulging with horror. 'My own sister found fornicating in a fleapit with a - commoner!'

  'That's what she can't tolerate,' Lydia said to the ceiling. 'That I'm not coercing some poor patrician into marriage for social status.' Lydia shot a sharp glance at Orbilio. 'Like she can talk,' she added nastily.

  'How dare you,' Silvia hissed. 'I'm only concerned with your welfare, Lydia. I can't stand idly by while my older sister sacrifices the birthright of her unborn child for something she thinks is love but which we all know will wear off the minute her belly grows large.'

  'Is that what happened to you?' Lydia snapped. 'Did Loverboy tire of you once you lost your perfect figure?'

  'It was nothing of the sort and you know it,' Silvia snarled. 'I just don't want to see your life ruined the way mine has been.' She drew herself up to her full height and tilted her chin in the air. 'I'm young,' she said. 'I have time on my side.'

  'And I haven't?' The slap that rang out left a wheal on Silvia's cheek. 'You really are a spiteful bitch.'

  'Just because I'm giving you a taste of reality? Listen to me, you selfish cow, your child won't only be born a bastard, you're forfeiting its claim to the nobility and all the privileges that go with it. That's spiteful. Condemning a wean to that!' She pursed his lips until they were white. 'Look, it's not too late. Pretend this is Leo's child, and I promise you no one will contradict the story. We'll soon spread the rumours about a reconciliation—'

  'Fuck you, Silvia. I love Magnus, and the gods know why, but he loves me. This baby doesn't need nobility, when it has so much love.' Except the tears in her eyes betrayed her words. Her

  sister's caution had hit home. 'Marcus.' Lydia looked straight at her ex-husband's cousin. 'I've known you for so long, you're like a baby brother. What do you say? Should I follow my heart? Or—' She gulped back the tears. 'Or should I do right by my child?'

  The silence that followed was anything but golden.

  'Funny you should ask,' he said eventually, and his voice was barely audible. 'I bumped into an old friend recently. Margarita. That same issue arose then.' His face took on an expression bordering pain. 'With my ancestors tracing their lineage back to Apollo, the question was: could I honestly deny my children the inheritance they were entitled to by marrying a woman who wasn't patrician?'

  'And?'

  The question came from Lydia's lips, but it was strung tight across Claudia's brain. And. . . ? She couldn't breathe, and the silence stretched to infinity.

  'The answer, I'm very much ashamed to say,' he said, pausing to glance at Silvia's immaculate poise and couture, 'is yes. For the right woman, Lydia, I would sacrifice everything. For her,' and this time his eyes bored straight into Claudia's, 'for her, I would lay down my life.'

  You couldn't make this up, Claudia thought, you really couldn't. Darkness had enveloped the island and a constant procession of liveried slaves now ferried tray after tray of spiced delicacies across the outdoor dining terrace. Cooled by the portico, scented by garlands and soothed by the babble of a gentle fountain, this might have been any dinner party, anywhere. Relaxed, amusing conversation, music, juggling, dancers - you'd think murder, kidnap, arson and shipwreck were parts of other people's tragedies, not theirs.

  'I tell you, the way Claudia's horse was dragging its hooves home from Dalmatia,' Jason quipped, 'it would have been quicker for her to carry the gelding, not the other way round.'

  That's it. Laugh. Everyone forget they're sharing a meal with a pirate. The whole thing was beyond Claudia's comprehension: why Silvia had invited Jason to stay; why Orbilio hadn't locked him up; why everyone was so bloody polite. Even if he wasn't responsible for Leo's murder, he was a self-confessed killer with

  enough crimes to warrant arrest twelve times over. Yet he had the aristocracy eating out of his tattooed hand! Dammit, even Silvia seemed almost human under Jason's charm - but then the sand in that woman's timer was running out fast. To catch her prey, The Glacier had to move quickly and if that meant coping with the most perverse of social dilemmas to impress her future husband, so be it. How long she'd continue taking her cue from Orbilio, Claudia would not like to guess. Immaculate and unruffled on the outside, there was steel in Silvia's belly. (Maybe once, long ago, even fire). But that glance in Lydia's room had shaken her, as had the huskiness in Orbilio's voice.

  Claudia popped a stuffed date in her mouth. What the Ice Queen didn't know, of course, was the history between Claudia and the Security Police. That his emotional declaration was nothing more than an act. Another of his weasel ploys to win her trust - and, thus, her confession. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio marry out of his class? Ha! Rain would fall upwards first. Claudia raised her glass in a silent toast to him and smiled broadly. It was a smile he mistrusted with every fibre of his body. Good. Things were starting to perk up at long last.

  'They say you've sailed the whole world,' Nanai’ said gushingly, and Jason laughed as he drained his silver goblet of wine.

  'Hardly the whole world, Nanai, but there aren't many ports between Lusitania and the Black Sea that I haven't seen.'

  'Amazing,' Nanai sighed, 'and so dangerous, too.'

  'Jason or his voyages?' Claudia asked sweetly.

  She wasn't remotely surprised that Silvia had invited Nanai tonight. The Ice Queen saw this as full dress rehearsal for senatorial dinner parties of the future, juggling every conceivable political adversity. Oh, and she'd stepped up her game in the looks department, as well. No ringlet was ever tighter. No jewels gleamed brighter. No pleat could be sharper without drawing blood. Like a swan, she glided gracefully back and forth across the terrace to supervise the crab, the lobsters, the oysters, scallops and milk-fed snails, ensuring they were all washed down with the very finest vintage wines from Leo's cellar. Bitch.

  'Sorry I iss late, everyones.' Breathless, Llagos slipped out of

  his sandals and took a place beside Lydia and Magnus. 'My lit-tlest one would not let me leave until I rescues her kitten from top of tree.' He flapped the neck of his robe to cool himself. 'I do not minds, but by the time I iss halfway up ladder in dark, the kitten, she runs down by herself! Do I miss much gossip, please?'

  'Bugger all,' Volcar growled. 'Mistress High-and-Mighty's lording it over us like she'd inherited the bloody villa, instead of her sister. The Orphan Bitch has been boring us rigid about the progress of her bastard brood. And all art's twin leading lights can manage,' he snorted disdainfully at Nikias and the maestro, 'is a lecture on spatial recession and miniaturist precision, whatever the hell those might be.'

  'As long as everyones iss enjoying themselves.' Llagos laughed, and even Silvia's lips almost succumbed to a smile.

  Impossible to give credence to Orbilio's theory, Claudia mused, as the sound of banter filled the night air. Impossible to believe that one of these people is a vicious, cold-blooded killer. I mean who - who? - milling around helping themselves from this platter or that and drifting from couch to couch to follow the wit and conversation, could possibly be capable of running Leo through with a spear and leaving him to (maybe even watching him?) die.

  'Don't forget,' a voice whispered in her ear. The voice was soft and sibilant and made goosebumps rise on her skin. 'Beware the Trojan Horse.'

  All right, who apart from Shamshi?

  But come on. Shamshi might be many things. A fraud, who made a livi
ng from listening at keyholes and using whatever he picked up to utter prophecies which were then almost guaranteed to come true. A crank, who genuinely believed what some dead animal's dripping liver told him. Hell, he might even have a gift! Sure, it would be a gift, which he played for all it was worth with his creepy demeanour and obscenely glinting bands of gold at his ears. But what would have been the advantage in killing his meal ticket?

  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.

  Forty-Seven

  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 every
one. 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!

  Forty-Eight

  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.