Dark Horse (34 page)

built as a tribute to Lydia! The woman you continued to refer to as your
wife.
The woman you never stopped loving . . .

'Life and death break contracts,' Orbilio quoted.

'Don't they just.' Claudia didn't wait to see whether he followed her out of the temple compound. He caught up with her at the door of the tavern. 'You knew a man of Magnus's skill and stature wouldn't doss in cheap taverns without good reason, so you assumed he' was behind the robberies.'

'I didn't assume anything,' he murmured. 'I just
hoped
he might be.' His face took on a tight smile. 'How much simpler, if Magnus had been the mastermind and not Leo and I'd got it all wrong. Anyway.' His expression brightened. 'I'll have you know, Mistress Seferius, I'm not the type of chap to go upstairs with girls in strange taverns. If you want my favours, I insist you ply me with silver, like everyone else.'

'Stick to the Security Police, Orbilio. The pay might be poor, but if you tried earning your keep as a gigolo, you'd starve within a week.'

'I hate it when you couch your words. Why don't you just give it to me straight? And you might like to tell me what we're doing here,' he added as Claudia flounced along the narrow walkway, trying the rooms as she went.

No doors in this place. Just tatty woollen drapes for privacy and she didn't understand why her stomach should flip at picturing Orbilio in one of these rat holes. Not at the thought of him, a nobleman, roughing it with straw mattresses in place of swandown and enough fleas to make the bedstead rattle, more that, once Silvia got her claws into him, such adventures would be strictly off limits.

'Silvia knew, of course.' Sisters are still sisters no matter how sour the relationship, and the Immaculate One understood only too well why, after being dumped, diddled and seemingly dumped again, Lydia looked happy. More than happy, in fact. She looked bloody marvellous. 'Skin blooming, hair glossy, there's only one explanation,' Claudia said.

Turning in the hallway, her shoulder brushed with Orbilio's. Electricity jarred her bones as the heat from his body transferred itself to hers. Distracted by the scent of sandalwood, the pulse that beat at the side of his neck, the dark hairs

on the back of his wrist, she almost forgot the danger he posed.

'Leo could warn Magnus off all he liked,' she said, 'but you only have to look at his statues to understand the soul of their creator and know that it would be water off a duck's back if he had truly fallen in love.'

No way would Magnus sail off and leave Lydia. He had merely backed off and given her space. Space in which she could make her own mind up about her future, without outside influence or prompting.

'Explains a lot,' Orbilio said, making no move to back away in the narrow corridor. His pupils had darkened to pools of liquid jet, and his breath was warm on her face. 'The other day,' he said, 'I followed Magnus down to the point. Lydia was holding the tunics of two little girls, waving to the kids splashing around with the dolphin, and he stood there, perhaps for half an hour, just watching, before going down to speak with her.' He swallowed. 'I'm glad she's found true love,' he said. 'Everyone should have that.'

'Oh, she's found more than love,' Claudia said. Life and death break contracts, as Lydia took such pains to point out at that dinner party. Death certainly. But so, equally, does a new life. 'Lydia is pregnant.' She threw open a threadbare blue curtain. 'Aren't you, Lydia?'

Tact and diplomacy were a patrician's stock in trade, as Claudia well knew. But it was going to take every drop of Orbilio's blue blood to persuade Lydia to return to the Villa Arcadia.

'Comfort be buggered,' she snapped. 'My little house on the point is more than adequate.'

It was anything but, of course, but Marcus Cornelius was far too polite to mention the fact. Instead he turned to the subject of Leo's will, which he had deposited in the Treasury of the Temple of Neptune in the town. In it, Orbilio explained, Leo had left Lydia everything.

'Including his debts!' she snorted. 'I hope the dirty bastard rots in hell.'

Intractable pregnant widows would be no match for Orbilio's charm, but these things took time. Claudia took the shortcut. 'For gods' sake, Magnus, tell the silly bitch it's in her baby's interest.'

The sculptor laughed. 'I'm not sure whether to cast you as Venus or Medusa.'

'Not Medusa,' Orbilio pleaded. 'She'd frighten the snakes. Now Lydia, are you coming back voluntarily, or do I have to put you over my shoulder?'

Lydia grunted. 'Might as well enjoy my own bloody investments,' she muttered, but it was a different story when she saw just how sumptuous the renovations had been. 'Leo had taste, I'11 give him that,' she said, running her fingertip over the painted feathers of a dove in the master bedroom. 'Although I have to say Nikias doesn't seem to be much of a portrait painter. The rose-grower's daughter looks more like me at that age.'

'That's why you told Leo that his marriage contract was invalid,' Marcus cut in, before Claudia and Magnus burst out laughing. 'If no child had come along during eighteen years of trying and

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 living 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?