Perfiditas (21 page)

‘May I come in?’

I burst into laughter, maybe a little hysterically. He was dressed as a house servant and carried a tray. I smelled the ginger and malt and groaned.

‘Don’t overreact. You love the stuff.’

‘But how?’

‘Philippus blabbed about your shot arm, and the cook made it up for you.’

‘So Philippus is talking to you again?’

‘Well, he thawed out a bit when Apollodorus lost it. He wanted to know what you’d done to him to make him react like that.’

I said nothing.

‘Fine,’ he said, and paused for a few moments. ‘Well, we had a couple of beers and talked about this and that. Even Justus came and sat in. We packed up after an hour or so, and they found me a room but confiscated all my kit. So, I pinched this tunic from the laundry room this morning, then went and saw the cook.’

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down.

‘I don’t know what happens next. If we come out of this alive, it’s the final break, isn’t it?’

He’d grown up with Philippus. They’d worked together for Apollo since they were teenagers, before I’d nudged Flavius into the PGSF. I knew he’d seen Philippus from time to time, but I’d never dreamed of reporting him.

I laid my hand on his.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘total rupture.’

A knock at the interconnecting door broke the silence. Then Apollo came through, also dressed in a kimono and smiling. Flavius’s eyes didn’t quite come out on stalks. He looked at me briefly, murmured an excuse and left. As the door shut behind him, I turned to Apollo.

‘Thanks, Apollo. That was really helpful.’

‘You didn’t think you’d escape without paying a price of some kind, did you?’

I threw him a cold look.

‘Actually, I came to see if you would join me for breakfast.’ He held his hand out.

We sat alone in the small
triclinium
by the garden. Open in the summer, large glazed panels were inserted in the cooler seasons. We talked of old times, people we both knew, his roses. The barrier had dissolved between us; we no longer needed to be guarded with each other. Our link was about to break, and I realised I’d never see him again.

He leaned forward and wiped a tear off my cheek. ‘I won’t see you leave. I want to remember you as you are now, here, sitting with me in the garden.’

‘Apollo, I—’

‘Shh.’ He laid a finger on my lips.

Eventually, he turned to me and said almost casually, ‘I’ve always loved you. From the first moment I saw you.’

I searched his face. His eyes were warm and liquid, but his face was composed.

‘I’ve always known, Apollo,’ I replied.

He smiled, took my hand, kissed it and left.

Our uniforms were returned to our rooms, clean and pressed, boots shining. Flavius and I kitted up and made our way down to the atrium in silence. The reception committee was waiting for us. No Cassia – that was a relief.

Hermina spoke first. ‘I don’t know what to say to you. Pulcheria was my friend. I see her in you, but you are not her.’ Her eyes were full of resentment and doubt.

‘I’m sorry, Hermi, I—’

‘Don’t call me that! That’s her name for me.’ She looked away.

‘I apologise, Hermina. I would not wish to cause you distress,’ I said formally. ‘I valued your friendship, and I thank you for the good things we did together. But we have to part now.’ I held my good hand out. The way she looked at it, I thought she’d refuse to take it, but she did, and then embraced me briefly. Albinus nodded to both of us, and walked away with Hermina.

Justus. He just looked pissed with himself and resentful of us. ‘I’ll say this, Mitela, you’re one hell of an operator. I never imagined you were the law. Far too maverick. I bet they love you – you’re probably on a charge most of the time.’ He sneered at me. Flavius took a step towards him, but I signalled him back.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Justus. Actually, I’m considered very good at what I do, very imaginative.’ I grinned and added, ‘Only in the cooler from time to time!’

‘Ha!’ He relented and half-smiled. ‘So I suppose we’ll now all have massive files on your system?’

‘Well, you might have a mention here and there…’ None of them knew it, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell them, but I’d set up a personal alert seven years ago that, if they ever registered on any law enforcement radar, a report would automatically be sent to me as their contact. I wouldn’t necessarily be able to get them off, but I’d ensure they had good representation and a fair hearing. I wouldn’t be adding Cassia to that list.

Philippus had been talking quietly to Flavius but, seeing Justus had done, he approached me.

‘I feel privileged to have known you, Captain. You always were an exemplary leader and good soldier. I can see why you’re such an asset to them. I shall miss you.’ He held his arm out and we grasped forearms in the old Roman way. To my utter surprise, Justus followed suit.

I wasn’t going to do anything lame, but I was moved by their words and actions. One of the guards brought our weapons and belts to us. After strapping them on in silence, Flavius and I nodded to Philippus and Justus, turned about and marched to the door.

Flavius, bless him, drove up to the heights over the town and stopped by the ruins of the old fortress. I sobbed my heart out. He just stared into the distance. Then we cleaned ourselves up and drove back to the barracks in silence.

Part III: Endgame

XXVIII

I walked through my office on automatic. There was a day-old terse message from Daniel about the interrogations and where in Hades was I? I sent an equally terse holding reply and then mailed the legate’s EO for an appointment. Five minutes later, I was instructed to report immediately.

As I walked along the corridor, I focused on keeping my head in professional mode. I doubted I could go near the personal for some time. I had my hand on the doorplate to go into the outer office leading to Conrad’s when Daniel came out of his own door.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been stuck in with Somna for the past day and a bit. Now they’re hassling me about you being AWOL.’

I couldn’t deal with this now.

‘I was tying up a loose end.’

He snorted. ‘What loose end?’

‘Need to know. And you don’t.’ I glanced up and down the corridor. Thankfully, it was empty.

‘Bullshit! Tell me.’ He grabbed my good arm.

His normally smooth olive face was contorted by harsh lines. He radiated anger and resentment. Like a kid who’d been left out of the gang. But I was late. I didn’t have time to massage his ego.

‘Get off my case, okay?’ I heard my voice growing shriller.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that – I outrank you,’ he bellowed at me.

‘You’re confusing me with somebody who gives a shit!’ I shouted back at him and pulled my arm out of his grip just as Conrad’s outer office door opened.

‘Enough!’ Conrad’s voice cut through the bedlam. ‘Is this a military office or the fish market? He glared at me. ‘Stop shrieking this instant! You’re not some sixteen-year-old tart whose punter ran off without paying. Find some dignity.’ He swung around to Daniel. ‘Go away and calm down, Daniel. If you can’t, go for a long run. I will not have you shouting like some barbarian.’

He held his inner office door open for me. ‘Sit there,’ he said, pointing to the chair the other side of his desk, ‘and take some deep breaths. Don’t speak for five minutes.’

He scribbled something on a paper report and tapped rapidly on his keyboard. The muted staccato rhythm on plastic was strangely calming.

‘I apologise for that scene,’ I said after two minutes. ‘I lost it when Daniel kept going on at me. I should know better.’

‘Yes, you should, but I understand the strain you are under.’ He shot a quick glance at me. ‘Do you want to tell me about it yet?’

‘No, but it’s all over.’

‘Very well. Now, you must go back to work. But first, I think you should go home and see Aurelia and the children for a few hours. They’re recovering well, but she’s worried about you. I’ll schedule you for the night watch so you don’t need to be back until 20.00.’

I waved my thanks to the driver as she dropped me off at the gate, passed the bioscan and trudged up the steps.

Junia’s son, Macro, greeted me. ‘Are you ill, lady? Let me fetch somebody for you. Would you like to lean on my arm?’

I shook my head and started through the vestibule towards the hallway. Unlike his mother, he didn’t know how I hated a fuss. Where
was
Junia? The
imagines
looked particularly disapproving tonight, but I ignored them. Two were missing; coloured ceramic and marble shards lay in neat piles to the side, underneath a torn wall tapestry. A lobby door hung off its hinges. I was diverted from the vandalism by a familiar figure trip-tripping down the hallway.

‘Juno! You look like Proserpina after her three months in the underworld!’ announced Helena. Her voice was high and tight, and a little too cheery. One of her elegant eyebrows, each hair normally plucked and arched into submission, now soared above a black eye. Below, her cheek was swollen with red and blue bruising which made her little smile lopsided.

I swallowed hard. ‘How bad is it?’

‘Everybody’s fine now, but Aunt Aurelia’s taking us all into the country next week, to the farm. She says we need to be away from the city. It’ll give the staff a chance to clean and refurbish the whole house.’

Her voice was brittle with false reassurance. She glanced around nervously, unable to let her eyes settle on my face.

‘Helena, tell me.’

She looked away.

‘Well?’

She shuddered. ‘It was the most frightening thing I’ve known. Aurelia was dignified and tough. I was scared stiff, but petrified for the children.’ She gulped.

I pulled her onto a couch and gently drew her to me. ‘Tell me from the beginning.’

‘They came first thing, before breakfast. A load of military police, they ran into the house and dragged us out into the back of a dirty truck. Conradus hadn’t come back the night before; I assumed he was still on duty. I called and called him. I tried your office phone in case anybody was monitoring it, but was diverted to voicemail. I kept trying to reach somebody, anybody, until they grabbed my phone. It had to be a horrible mistake.’ She glanced up. ‘I know now that was when they’d taken him off to the Transulium. One of them smacked my face when I tried to help Aurelia.’ She made a moue and briefly touched her damaged face. Her hand was shaking. ‘The twins cried, but we managed to calm them, but Allegra just stared at everything and didn’t make a sound.’

I felt a chill, and it wasn’t anything to do with the stone walls. My fists balled up. I would make sure I traced that MP detail. Their regret would be long and painful. ‘Anything else?’

‘Well, you saw Macro was on duty? Junia’s in hospital with a broken arm and concussion; Galienus has a dislocated jaw, cracked ribs and a fractured foot. They tried so hard to defend us. The rest of the household staff were held at gunpoint and then locked in a cellar. Macro came back from the early market and found his mother unconscious on the floor.’ Her voice rose, shaky and tighter. She grabbed my arm. ‘Carina, they had the access codes.’

‘That bastard, Superbus.’

‘Juno! Of course, we’d just sent the codes out for the Family Day,’ she said. She gulped, trying hard not to let tears escape.

I said nothing, but pulled her to me and let her shake her sobs out.

After a minute or so, Helena drew her head back from my shoulder, looked at me and blew her nose. ‘You’d better see Aurelia first – Allegra is having a nap.’

‘Allegra. She’s not – she’s wasn’t…hurt?’

‘No, apart from rough handling, they didn’t really injure us.’

I shut my eyes and breathed out.

‘Was it likely?’ she asked, doubt growing on her face as she realised what I was saying.

‘Unfortunately, yes. You’re a teacher, Helena. Think back to your Republican and early Imperial history,’ I said, roughly. ‘Remember exactly how they killed female children and relatives of political enemies? How they couldn’t kill virgins? What they did first?’

She stared at me, horrified.

I reached the atrium and found my grandmother on a couch by the glass wall giving onto the garden. The fall sunshine painted the walkway columns and gravels a delicate gold. Unlike Apollo’s cosseted roses, the flowers were looking overblown and turning brown, on their way to becoming corpses. The grasses waved around, their ears full of seeds, but looked stalwart among the failing summer plants.

Speaking of stalwart, Aurelia Mitela sat upright on the couch reading a newspaper, new gold-rimmed glasses perched halfway up her nose. She looked like an old-fashioned English headmistress, especially as her expression so evidently disapproved of what she was reading.

‘Tchah!’ She half threw the paper down on the oak table in front of her and, sensing me, looked up. She opened her arms and I fell into them.

We sat there, talking quietly together. She insisted I tell her everything, interrupting now and again to ask a pointed question or when my brain overran my mouth.

‘What about you, Nonna? Pretty terrifying for you.’ I scrutinised her face, but she looked exactly as usual.

‘Don’t be soppy. I’ve been through a great deal worse. I’m not a little old lady out of some genteel novel.’

No, she truly wasn’t. She’d been PGSF in her time, even led the attack to retake the city during the civil war. Although now in her mid-seventies, she definitely belonged to the “tough gals” league.

She gave me a close description of the arresting party. What a difference it made when the victim was a trained professional and could give you precise, detailed information. She’d printed off her statement and signed it already. They hadn’t been detained long – just locked in an interview room for a few hours. Unlike Helena, Aurelia had kept her cellphone in her inside pocket when they were arrested and, once locked up, she’d simply texted Silvia. From a detached professional viewpoint, that custody sergeant needed shooting – sloppy not to have searched them.

Silvia had been told by two of the renegade senators that the Mitelae were behind a coup. She couldn’t consult with her chancellor, Conrad’s uncle, Quintus Tellus, as he was away in Geneva and “there was a communications problem”, the PGSF signals office had claimed. Superbus, now lording over the PGSF – the treacherous bastard – had ordered the arrest of Conrad, Aurelia and the children.

Silvia hadn’t believed a word, and ordered the women’s and children’s immediate release. She’d reluctantly agreed to Conrad’s detention, not dreaming what they’d do to him, but insisted on no more than house arrest for Aurelia and the children until the situation clarified. I guessed Superbus obeyed, thinking it didn’t matter as, within a few hours, Petronax would have launched the real coup and Silvia would be permanently out of play soon afterwards.

‘I was more worried about Helena,’ my grandmother said. ‘Oh, I think she’s been to some slightly risky parties and there was that kidnap business with Renschman six years ago…’

Jeffrey Renschman – my father’s first-born child who’d grown into a psychopath and hunted me down in retribution for the misery he thought my father had caused him. I shuddered at the memory of how he’d threatened to kill Helena. I remembered the sense of betrayal and, to be honest, anger at my father for never having mentioned I had a half-brother. That came later after I was recovering in hospital from my near-fatal fight with Jeffrey. He’d cracked his head as he’d dropped to the ground and went into a deep coma, dying not long after.

‘… but she’s never been touched by this kind of brutal political conflict,’ Nonna continued. ‘Like a lot of professional people, she hasn’t a clue about what I did and you do.’ She smiled at me, one soldier to another. ‘Shame they don’t still do compulsory service.’

I let that one go. I couldn’t really see Helena in a uniform.

I hadn’t analysed why I did what I did. It seemed so natural for me. Service to the state was a complex idea. Some clever political scientist could say it a lot better than an ex-advertising account handler. It wasn’t always desperately comfortable; we had to make some harsh decisions and slog on through impossible situations. Serving your team, building relationships that literally saved your life, submitting to discipline, going into situations no sane person would – this was all part of it. Anyway, the uniform was cool, and you were given a free drink now and then.

‘Do you feel better now you’ve told me?’ she said.

‘To be honest, I’m not sure. We still have all the clearing up to do – just think of the paperwork!’ I glanced away. ‘And I’m dreading the fallout amongst my colleagues when the whole story comes out.’

‘And Superbus?’

‘Oh, gods! What an embarrassment for the family. He’ll have some fancy lawyer who’ll spin it out and our name will be dragged through the courts. I’m so sorry about that, Nonna.’

‘It’s not your fault, darling. Unfortunate he wasn’t caught in crossfire, but never mind. However, I think the family may be able to help if he proves intractable. Do you know Dalina Mitela’s daughter?’

Nonna smiled like an Egyptian sphinx and outlined a possible idea…

Back in our wing, I changed into jeans and tee and went up to the children’s dayroom. Helena was clearing up the morning’s activities. She gave me a tight smile and nodded. Allegra was sitting at the table finishing some writing. She looked up and saw my face, smiled and walked over to me, far too calmly.

‘Hello, Mama,’ she said, her face serious.

‘Hello, darling.’ I gently folded my good arm around her.

‘What happened to your arm? Did those men hurt you as well?’

‘I’m fine. I’ll tell you over lunch.’

She just hugged me. As I pulled back, I saw two tiny tears roll down her face.

We ate our macaroni and cheese, Gil and Tonia being messy and showing off, Allegra giving them disapproving looks. I sympathised with her.

‘They are pretty disgusting, aren’t they?’ I whispered to her. ‘But they’ll get better, you know.’

She looked at me doubtfully.

Helena carted the twins off to clean them up before their nap and Allegra and I talked some more.

‘Have you killed all the bad guys?’

I swallowed hard. ‘One, but the rest are in jail, and will stay there for a long time. As well as punishing them, we have to teach them to change their minds and not go around being nasty to other people just for what they are.’

She absorbed that. ‘So they were thinking bad things?’

‘Well, everybody’s allowed to think anything they want. Most people have a lot of different thoughts, and that’s fine. But it’s not allowed to act on bad thoughts if it’s going to hurt other people. Sometimes, soldiers like Daddy and I have to stop and catch these people.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She glanced down and sideways as she twisted her fingers around each other. She brought her eyes back up and searched my face. ‘But they were unkind to hurt you. Is your arm very poorly?’

‘It’s a lot better than it was – better every day.’ I grinned at her. ‘They all keep making me take my medicine.’

She made a face in sympathy.

Right on cue, a knock at the door and a beaker of the damn restorative appeared. I couldn’t believe it. More than that, it was Marcella, Nonna’s assistant, carrying it.

‘The Countess’s compliments and you’re to take this after you’ve finished your lunch, which I believe is now.’ She looked pointedly at the empty plates.