Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 11/01/12 (4 page)

Meanwhile, life at the Temple of Eurotas continued on its daily course of setting
riddles, interpreting dreams, and committing enough treasonable offences to
tempt Iliona to blind herself with pitch and save the authorities the trouble.
Out across the valley, the buds on the vines uncoiled into leaf. Willows were
cut to be woven into baskets, the olive trees were pruned back, oxen were
gelded, and thousands of baby birds hatched. But as the spring progressed and
the nestlings left home, the killings continued to dance at the back of her
mind.

As did the shadow of the
Krypteia
.

 
A month to the day after Lysander's visit, Iliona was at the house
of her cousin, Lydia. Now in most city-states, the decision to expose weak or
deformed babies was the preserve of the father, thus leaving a certain amount of
room for manoeuvre. In Sparta, however, where virtually every male citizen was a
warrior of one kind or another, this decision was down to the state. And the
state liked to decide very early on whether his little limbs looked like they
would grow straight enough to grow up and march thousands of miles in full
battle dress. Or whether he had a good, loud bawl, indicating that he would
eventually be strong enough to throw spears and go hand-to-hand with the enemy.
Those who failed the test were taken to the Valley of Rejection up in the
mountains and thrown into the abyss.

Little room for manoeuvre in that.

Unless, of course, someone happened to have a fishing net rigged up and ready to
catch them. Someone who, when the little mite was hurled into space, was also on
hand to heave a blanket-covered stone into the gorge. One that made the right
kind of thud when it landed.

The state called it treason. Iliona called it giving childless artisans the
family they craved.

Aware that, one of these days, her luck would run out.

But for now, the sun shone on the jagged peaks of Taygetus, still capped in snow,
and the Hoeing Song drifted on the breeze from the men working the fields.
Lydia's husband, like the rest of the army, was off fighting someone else's
battles, an annual exodus which, with spectacular regularity, sparked a glut of
babies nine months after their return. Another reason why the fathers did not
make that all-important decision. They weren't here.

"Who's a bonny boy, then?"

Iliona cradled the infant in her arms, while Lydia sat in the corner, grey-faced
and shaking with fear. Her son was not deformed, but, arriving eighteen days
before his due date, he was certainly a weak little baby. Now, five days after
the birth and in accordance with the law, the elders had gathered at the family
shrine in the courtyard to pass judgment on the strength of his bawl.

"They're going to take him." Lydia had no doubts. "My baby, my only child, and
they're going to reject him." Tears trickled down her face. "Suppose I'm unable
to bear more children? Suppose—"

"Dry your tears," Iliona said softly. "I have cast the runes, read the portents,
and heard the voice of the river god dancing over the pebbles. Eurotas does not
lie, Lydia. You will watch your son grow into a man."

Runes and pebbles be damned. What didn't lie was the vial of willow-bark infusion
secreted in the folds of her robes.

"Gentlemen."

Making ritualistic gestures to disguise the bitter liquid that she dripped on his
tongue, Iliona handed the baby over for inspection.

"By Hera," gasped the astonished elders. "They will hear this little man in
Athens!"

Consequently, the celebrations were especially fierce, with flutes and trumpets,
singing and laughter, and wine flowing freer than midwinter rain.

Which made the herald's announcement all the more shocking.

"On the road to Messenia, just beyond the fork," he said, "the bodies of three
women have been found, hanging from the beams of their farmhouse."

Daughter, mother, grandmother. Exactly as before.

 
Surrounded by olive groves on one side and paddocks on the other,
the farm's main output was barley, where field after field of feathered stalks
rippled in the warm, sticky breeze. Another week, two at the most, thought
Iliona, spurring her stallion up the dusty track, and the crop would be ready
for harvesting. Making it all the more poignant that the women would not see
it.

Reining her horse as she approached the buildings, she glanced along this green
and fertile valley. Enjoying a better climate than most of Greece, and with a
constant flow of water, Sparta was not only self-sufficient, but in a position
to export large quantities of grain and livestock. Add on a lively trade in
iron, porphyry, racehorses, and timber, and it was easy to see why the state had
grown so rich. Of course, like everywhere else, land ownership was only
available to citizens, and tax was deemed too degrading for men who put their
lives on the line every day. Instead, the state taxed the artisans who made
their armour and weaponry. And did so without ever seeing the irony of that
decision.

"I'm surprised the temple can spare you," Lysander drawled, coming out of the
house to meet her.

Iliona tethered her stallion beside the water trough, shook the red dust off her
robes, and thought that if he expected her to apologize, he was in for a long
wait. "May I see the murder scene?"

She expected him to make another sarcastic comment, possibly along the lines of
surely she, who could see through the eyes of the blind, had seen it in the
sacred bowl? Instead, he ushered her past the porter's lodge and through the
atrium in silence. Country villas were all pretty much the same in design, being
built around a central courtyard with a colonnade running round the sides. What
differentiated them was the lavishness of the frescoes, the quality of the
stone, the lushness of the couches, and the richness of the tapestries on the
walls. There was little of that here. A hoplite's family, not a lofty general's.
A family who were scraping to get by.

"Are you sure you want to go in?" Lysander paused at the entrance to the
storeroom to light an oil lamp. "We haven't cut them down yet."

We? As far as Iliona could tell, there was no one else here. In the hush, she
could smell vinegar, honey, and olive oil, and when he lifted the lamp to light
the way through the archway, she noticed that the air was hazy with flour.

"Yes." She nodded. "I'm sure."

She wasn't. Far from it. But if she'd gone with Lysander one month before, maybe
these women would still be alive. Facing them was the least she could do.

"Your frown tells me something strikes you," he said, setting the lamp on the
shelf.

"The distance between them." It was the first thing she'd noticed. After the
obvious. "The spacing between each noose is almost identical."

"Not almost." He held up both hands so that his thumb-tips met, then splayed his
fingers. "Exactly three spans between each rope, just like last time."

"You didn't tell me that at the temple."

"I believe you were busy."

Chip, chip, chip. He wasn't going to let her forget her refusal to help, and
frankly, she didn't blame him. "Still no witnesses?"

"The farm doesn't employ many labourers, and those they do live in huts in the
hills."

"But three women," Iliona said. "I mean, look at them. They're hardly pale, puny
creatures."

The grandmother had arms like a blacksmith's, the mother's legs were like tree
trunks, and even the girl, not yet fourteen, was a strapping young thing.

"They wouldn't be mistaken for Athenians, that's for sure." He almost smiled.
"However, one thing is certain." The smile hardened into a grimace. "I won't
bore you with detail, but if there's one thing I know, Iliona, it's death. These
poor bitches were alive when they were hanged."

Yet there were no scratched fingers, from where they'd clawed at the rope. No
dishevelled clothing. Just dolls hanging, three in a row. All evenly spaced. "He
drugged them," she said.

"That would be my guess." Lysander rubbed at his jaw. "After which he either
dragged or carried them here to the storeroom, but if you look around, the herbs
on the floor to deter vermin are intact."

"More likely they've been brushed back into place."

The killer was as she'd suspected. Tidy to the point of obsession. Worse, he was
cunning, careful, and intelligent with it. She cast her eyes over the various
sacks and amphorae lined up round the storeroom. That was what Lysander had been
doing when she arrived. Untying, unstoppering, sniffing, and testing. Hence the
fusion of smells in the air. He obviously hadn't found anything pertinent,
though. More a question of thoroughness than anything else.

"Aah." Her mouth pursed in compassion as she picked up a small wooden daisy among
the dried stalks of rosemary, tansy, and lemon balm beneath the daughter's feet.
"This was probably her lucky charm, which fell out of her clothing
when—"

"Let me see that!" Lysander snatched at the lantern for a closer look, and then
swore. A short, sharp, vicious expletive.

"What is it?" she asked, because suddenly he was scrabbling around beneath the
other two bodies, swearing harder than ever.

"I found a carved rose on the floor of the first house," he said. "Right below
the mother, but—" more expletives "—didn't give it a thought."

He held out two more carved flowers, one from under each of the other bodies in
the storeroom. A daisy, a rose, and a lily. "How could I have been so
stupid?"

His anger pulsed through the windowless room as if it had substance and form.

"How could you have imagined it was anything other than trivial?" she replied. "I
also dismissed it."

But Iliona was not the
Krypteia
. The
Krypteia
don't make
mistakes . . .

"I need to revisit the first scene," he spat.

As it happened, the house had hardly been touched in the month since its
occupants were ferried across the Styx to the land of the shades. In no time,
he'd recovered two more wooden flowers among the strewing herbs on the
floor.

A daisy, a rose, and a lily.

 
The moon was full, dulling the starlight, as Iliona stood in the
clearing in the hills. Twinkling silver far below was the river whose god she
served, and whose annual floods brought wealth and plenty. It took an hour to
cross the valley by foot, but three days to travel its length on a horse.
Through olive groves, barley fields, paddocks, and vineyards. A tranquillity
that was now broken, thanks to one man. A monster.

In the two weeks since the second murders, the general had been pushing hard for
Lysander to step down. His incompetence had led to a reign of terror, he'd
stormed to the Council, and Iliona could only imagine the grief and despair that
was churning inside him. With his family wiped out, anger was all he had
left.

Which was better, though? For the secret police to be led by a man whose impulses
were driven by blinding emotion? Or an honourable man, who would not baulk at
blinding her with pitch before throwing her into the Torrent of Torment? She
stared at the rugged tracks crisscrossing this red, stony land like white scars
in the moonlight. Smelled the pungent moss under her feet. Listened to a stream
frothing its way downhill, over the rocks. With their dark cliffs and secret
caverns, these mountains were at once dangerous, beautiful, treacherous, and
magnetic. No different from Lysander himself.

But how do you define beauty? The scent of dog rose had suddenly become cloying.
The sight of daisies made her feel sick.

She listened to the music made by the squeaking of bats and the soft hiss of the
wind in the oaks. If only she could unravel the significance of those flowers!
Of the spacing between the nooses! Of choosing three women of the same family .
. .

A twig snapped. She looked round. Knew that, if he wanted, he could have crept up
and not made a sound. The smell of wood smoke and leather mingled with the
aromas of moss and wild mountain sage, and in the moonlight his eyes were as
hard as a wolf's. She wondered how Lysander had found her hiding place. And
whether he'd seen the deserter she'd just helped to escape . . .

"Would you believe my orders—" he leaned his back against a tree trunk and
folded his arms over his chest "—are to identify and protect every
household that fits the pattern for the killings."

An impossible task. Sparta currently had three thousand warriors scattered all
over Greece, every last one of them landowners, and given that they were all
aged between eighteen and thirty, probably two thirds had widowed mothers and
daughters living at home. Their sons, of course, would be in the barracks, while
the older men, retired veterans, were either working their own farms or employed
in auxiliary military work. Obviously people were keeping an eye on their
neighbours, while remaining vigilant themselves. But spring was a busy time on
the land. The
helots
who worked it needed close supervision, or they
would rise up and rebel, or take off.

"The general hates you," she said.

"He holds me responsible."

"Either way, he's engineered it so that you will either fail in your efforts to
protect every woman in Sparta, or be forced to disobey orders."

His lip twisted. "Providing I can put a stop to this murdering sonofabitch, the
Council will forget that I challenged their authority."

The deserter . . . Fifteen years old . . . Was he already lying in a gully with
his throat slit?

"The moon," Iliona said, wondering if Lysander's dagger was still warm from the
boy's blood. "The moon has three phases. Waxing, full, and waning."

"Three women!" He jerked upright. "Also waxing, full, and waning!"

"Exactly. And all killed at the new moon." Iliona dragged her eyes away from his
scabbard. Straightened her shoulders, and swallowed. "Suggesting the daughters
might be the key."