Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 11/01/12 (5 page)

"To what?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "But how in the name of Zeus did he manage to drug
them?"

"That second family," Lysander said slowly. "He had to have drugged them out in
the courtyard; otherwise he would have strung them up from the beams in the
kitchen like the first three."

"You think the killer might have been a guest?"

Whoever he was, he was a coward who craved power. And could only get it when his
victims couldn't fight back.

"Our investigations haven't turned up any visitors, and don't forget the first
trio. Not many guests are entertained in the kitchen." Lysander clucked his
tongue. "Not at the general's level."

"What about woodcarvers?"

"What about them? There are hundreds inside the city alone, and none of them
sells flowers like the ones placed under the bodies. As a trade, it fits your
theory of precise, intelligent, and tidy. Then again, every man and boy who's
ever owned a knife—which is everyone—has had a go at carving at
some stage."

Needles and haystacks, needles and haystacks.

Would this monster ever be caught?

 
Two weeks later, when the new moon scratched her silver crescent in
the sky, Iliona found her answer. In a house deep in the artisan quarter, three
more women were found dangling, with the same flowers under their feet. The
daisy, the rose, and the lily. Now the terror was palpable. These were not
exalted citizens. Landowners and farmers. They were tradespeople. The family of
a humble harness-maker, who was away in Thrace, supporting the cavalry.

But that wasn't the worst of the matter. Three days before the moon was due to
rise, the women brought in supplies and barricaded themselves indoors. No one
had been allowed in, they wouldn't even open the shutters, and the alarm was
only raised when their neighbour, an Egyptian gem-cutter, could elicit no
response. He and the wheelwright broke down the door.

This, obviously, was the work of no human hand.

Sparta had angered the gods.

 
"Bullshit." Lysander paced the flagstones of Iliona's courtyard,
spiking his hands through his long warrior hair. "Complete and utter
bollocks."

While he prowled, Iliona sat on a white marble bench in the shade of a fig tree,
surrounded by scrolls of white parchment.

"I agree."

The gods controlled the weather, the seasons, human fate, and emotions. That was
why they needed to be propitiated. To ensure fruitfulness, justice, victory, and
truth, and offset famine, tempest, and drought. True, Deception wove her
celestial charms while men slept, as did Absent-mindedness, Panic, and Pain. But
so did the Muses, as well as Peace, Hope, and Passion, and the goddesses of
beauty, mirth, and good cheer.

"All the appropriate sacrifices have been made," she continued.

To Zeus, a ram purified with oak. To Poseidon, a bull, another to Apollo, honey
cakes to Artemis, and grain to Demeter. The gods had no reason to argue with
Sparta.

"Also, the Olympians might take life, but not in this way," she added. "They
kill, but they do not leave flowers."

"If we knew what it meant, this daisy, roses, and lily business— Are these
my files?" He picked up one of the scrolls littering her bench.

"Duplicates," she lied.

There had been too many for her scribes to copy, forcing Iliona to resort to the
one thing that always oils wheels in the palace. Bribery.

"These are reports from the initial investigation," he said, leafing through.
"Why are you going through them again—? Ah." He bowed. "You see through
the eyes of the blind and hear the voice of the dumb, and no, before you throw
another tantrum, I am not mocking you this time. You work your oracles with
trickery and mirrors. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye."

Iliona watched an early two-tailed pasha butterfly fluttering around the arbute.
Listened to the fountain splashing in the middle of the courtyard.

"Suppose," she said, "that the flowers are a smoke screen?"

"Like the precisely measured distance between the nooses?"

"Both suggest a ritualistic murder, but suppose that was the killer's
intention?"

"Hm." Lysander looked up at the cloudless blue sky and seconds dragged into
minutes. "We didn't question the family of the second victims to check for
alibis, therefore no leads were followed up, as we did for the general's
women."

Like a Parthian's bow, this was a long shot, Iliona thought. But suppose there
was a cold-blooded killer out there, covering his tracks with a series of
murders? If so, how in Hades would they pinpoint which of the nine women was the
real target?

 
Dusk was cloaking the temple precinct, softening the outlines of the
treasuries, gymnasia, watercourses, and statues. Up in the forests, the wolves
and the porcupines would be stirring. Badgers and foxes would slink from their
lairs. Down by the river, bats darted round the willows and alders. Frogs
croaked from the reed beds. As the darkness deepened, Iliona watched moths dance
round the flickering sconces, while the scent of rosemary and mountain thyme
mingled with incense from the shrine.

"You were right."

She jumped. One of these days, she thought, and Lysander would slit the throat of
his own bloody shadow.

"His name is Tibios, and he did indeed serve the temple of Selene. Well
done."

The moon was her starting point. In the old days, long before the Olympians were
born, Selene used to be worshipped in her three phases of womanhood. Developing,
mature, then declining. In these enlightened days of science and mathematics,
only those initiated into the priesthood even remembered this ancient
wisdom—suggesting the killer was familiar with the old ways. Whether the
murders were ritualistic, or whether his elaborate methods were simply a smoke
screen, was irrelevant. It was a base on which to start building.

From then on, logic prevailed. The new moon was synonymous with youth, implying
the intended victim was one of the daughters. But unions between citizens are
contracted when the children are still in the cradle, whereas artisan women are
free to wed whom they please. At sixteen, the harness-maker's daughter would
have been casting around.

"With nothing else to go on," Iliona said, "the theory was worth testing. I'm
just relieved it panned out."

"Which is why," Lysander said, "my men are holding him in your office."

Ah. "You have insufficient evidence to bring him to a trial, so you're hoping I
will draw a confession out of him."

"The torture chamber is notoriously unreliable, and besides—" he shot her
a sideways glance "—I always believe in finishing what I started. Don't
you?"

She made a quick calculation of what his thugs might find among her records.
Surely the
Krypteia
didn't think she was foolish enough to commit
incriminating evidence to paper?

"The harness-maker's daughter was called Phoebe," he said, explaining on their
way across the precinct how questioning friends and family had led to a young
acolyte who had been courting her.

"For a while, it seemed promising. Tibios is handsome enough, and he soon proved
himself courteous, attentive, and generous."

The problems arose when he became too attentive. Too generous. Instead of one
bottle of perfume, he would send her a dozen. It was the same with wine cakes
and honeycombs. He would present her with several new bath sponges every week.
And positively showered her with cheap jewels and trinkets.

"Phoebe found it overpowering, but endearing," Lysander continued. "It was only
when Tibios began to stipulate which tunics she should wear and who she could
meet with, and got angry when she refused to comply, that she realized this was
not the man she wanted to marry."

Iliona was beginning to understand. Intelligent, shrewd, and obsessively tidy
were the hallmarks of a controlling nature. Men like that don't take kindly to
rejection.

In fact, many don't accept it, full stop.

"My lady, meet Tibios. Tibios, meet the lady who outsmarted you and secured
justice for nine vulnerable women."

Handsome, certainly. Cheekbones a tad sharp, eyes a little too narrow, but yes.
She could see why Phoebe would be attracted to him. Even in shackles, he was
cocky.

"I'm the one who needs justice." The acolyte leaned so far back in the chair that
its front legs were off the tiles. "Bearing false witness is a serious crime,
but that's what comes when you misinterpret entrails and cloud formations. Or
was it rustling leaves and the warbling of doves?"

"You presume," Iliona breezed, "that you were important enough to warrant
consulting the river god, but as it happens, Eurotas doesn't concern himself
with parasites. You were just sloppy."

"Sloppy?" The legs of the chair came crashing down. "From what I've heard, the
killer left nothing to chance!
Nothing!"

As though he hadn't spoken, Iliona dripped essential oils into the burning lamps,
driving out the smells of ink and dusty parchment and infusing the room with
sandalwood, camphor, and myrrh. Behind the chair, the guards had merged into the
shadows. Leaning against the wall in the corner, Lysander could have been carved
out of marble.

"That last house was barricaded from the inside," Tibios spat. "Tell me how
getting past that isn't smart."

"Well, now, that's exactly what I mean." Iliona picked up an ostrich feather fan
and swept it over the shelves as though it was a duster. "You didn't need to
bypass their security."

"That's because the killer's a god. Passing through walls, or changing his shape
to an insect and able to slip under doors."

Tibios was too full of himself to question why a high priestess should be doing
her own housework. Or notice that she was so unaccustomed to it that she was
using the fan upside down.

"Alas, Tibios, the truth is more mundane." Swish-swish-swish as though he was
secondary to her task. "You were already inside."

Another shot in the dark, although enquiries at the temple of Selene confirmed
that Tibios had been off sick for the three days prior to the murder.

"You knew this family. You knew their habits and your way around, and so, having
hidden yourself in their cellar, how simple to slip a tincture of poppy juice
into their wine that night, and then pff! Next you're stringing them up like
hams over a fire."

"There you go again. You keep saying
me."

"Only because of that little stash of carvings you thought you'd hidden away.
Daisies, roses, and what was that other thing, Captain? Lilies? Not that it
matters," she continued airily. "Your attitude was that if you couldn't have
Phoebe, nobody would, so you killed the first two families as a smoke
screen—"

"Like Hades I did!" Even now, believing the lie that the captain had actually
found his cache of wooden flowers, Tibios was no less arrogant. "I wanted those
bitches scared out of their skins. I wanted them to
know
they'd be
next. To feel the fear in their veins and sit awake at night,
worrying—and they were. Even though they'd barricaded themselves in, they
couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. It wasn't just Phoebe. They ganged up against me,
the whole bloody tribe, so they needed to know that you can't just toss me
aside. That I had power over them, over you, over the whole bloody state." A
smug grin spread over his face. "The smoke screen was the
fourth
family
I intended to kill."

He may have been motivated by vengeance at the beginning, but this boy enjoyed
his work. He would not have stopped at four.

"Exactly how did you get that message across to these women?" Iliona laid down
the fan, and now there was a contemptuous edge to her voice. "They were
unconscious when you crept out of the cellar. Unconscious when you slipped the
noose round their necks, and unconscious when you hauled on the rope. That
doesn't sound very powerful to me. In fact, it seems more like the hand of a
coward."

"No, no, I—"

"The trial will probably be halted for laughter once the jury hears how this big,
strong Champion of Vengeance spent three days hiding behind a sack and peeing in
an olive jar."

"It's no different from a hunter lying in wait," he protested. "Ouch!"

"Ooh, did that hurt?" Iliona jabbed the inside of his nostril a second time with
the sharpened quill of her pen. "That doesn't bode well, does it?" she asked the
head of the
Krypteia
. "Remind me again what the punishment is for
killing a citizen?"

"First the guilty party is paraded naked through the streets," Lysander rumbled.
"It draws a large crowd, so of course if someone should throw something nasty at
him, or take a shot with their fists, there's little my men can do to protect
him."

"That's not fair," Tibios whined. "I'm entitled to civility at my execution!"

"And you shall have it," Lysander assured him. "With great civility, you will be
thrown into the Ravine of Redemption, where you can—with even more
civility—contemplate your crimes as you lie bleeding."

"That's for traitors! You can't do that to me! I'm no traitor—"

"There will be no food, no drink, no comfort down there. Just you, your broken
bones, and the wolves that circle closer each day."

"Not forgetting the moon, so white and so bright overhead," Iliona said. "Which
will wane, and then wax again, before you eventually join the Land of the
Shades."

"Don't think you can aid your own death either," Lysander rumbled. "Your hands
will be tied behind your back when you're thrown. With the greatest civility, of
course."

 
Above the rugged peaks and fertile valleys, Night cast her web of
dreams to the music of crickets and the nightingale's haunting song. Tomorrow,
the countryside would ring with the drums and trumpets of the annual Corn
Festival, as the first ears of wheat were offered to the goddess Demeter. How
sad that the women who had worked so tirelessly to bring their crops to maturity
were not here to lay their gifts on the altar.