Terra Incognita (30 page)

The aide exhaled very slowly, as if he was taking the time to think what to say. “The girl you know as Tilla,” he said, “is going under an assumed name.”

“I know that. The other one’s too bloody difficult to pronounce.”

“I didn’t realize who she was until you brought her in this afternoon. She wouldn’t remember me, but her family lived about an hour’s walk northeast of here. Known troublemakers and notorious cattle thieves. The raid she told you about did happen, but it was a retaliation from the Votadini tribe after a great deal of provocation.”

Evidently there were some details Tilla had chosen not to pass on.

Metellus said, “Has she mentioned Rianorix before?”

“Not till he turned up and caused a stir at my clinic,” said Ruso. “He tried to flirt with her so I sent her out.”

Metellus frowned. “Why not send him out instead?”

“He was a patient. It was a clinic, not a classroom.”

“What did they talk about?”

Ruso shrugged. “I don’t know. They were speaking their own language.”

“Interesting.”

“Not really,” insisted Ruso. “If I could speak the language I wouldn’t have her as a translator, would I? And if he’s an old friend they would have things to talk about. Just because she happens to be Brigante—”

“Corionotatae, actually.”

“Who?”

“Not exactly Brigante. There’s a difference.”

“Well, whatever she is, it doesn’t make her a traitor,” said Ruso, beginning to wonder what else Tilla had not fully explained to him.

Metellus nodded. “True enough. So you didn’t know they’d spent the night together?”

“What?”

Metellus smiled. “No, I can see you didn’t. Sorry.”

“She was staying with her uncle!”

“When we went to arrest Rianorix last night, we found them curled up together like kittens.”

Metellus’s mouth was opening and closing and words were coming out, but Ruso’s mind was too busy repeating,
So you didn’t know they’d spent the night together?
to take them in. “She was with her uncle,” he insisted. “It must have been somebody else,” but even as he said it, he was aware that Tilla’s use of Latin tenses was loose to the point where
I am staying with my uncle
could mean
I have stayed with my uncle
,
I will stay with my uncle,
or indeed,
I want you to think I am staying with my uncle but in fact I am doing exactly as I please.

Metellus had stopped talking and was looking at him as if waiting for a response.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I said, she had regular access to military information—”

Ruso began to object, but Metellus continued, “She was on the loose in the yard when the sabotage took place, and she was heard talking to someone.”

“We’ve been through this already,” retorted Ruso. “Never mind what her family were. Tilla’s a midwife, for heaven’s sake. Midwives don’t go around causing traffic accidents.”

“Midwives are able to enter the houses of strangers, move about at all hours, and disappear at short notice with no questions asked.”

“That’s ridiculous. And whatever she saw in the yard, it took her by surprise.”

“Perhaps.”

“I was there,” insisted Ruso, beginning to wonder if he had been as blind to reality in the yard as he had been to the real nature of the exchange in the clinic. “She told me she was praying to her gods.” It sounded less convincing the more he said it. “Rianorix is an old friend of her family.”

“Oh, he is,” agreed Metellus. “And much more to her, from what I hear. Which makes her an unreliable witness and a dubious companion for a legionary officer.”

“This is ridiculous!”

“Please don’t shout, Doctor. My men are discreet but you never know who else is listening.”

Ruso ran one hand through his hair and wished Tilla were here to tell him none of this was true. That Metellus had been misinformed. Instead, all he could hear her saying was,
You are mistaken about this. I am not a friend of the army.
“I still think she was telling the truth when she said she couldn’t identify anyone,” he said.

“Perhaps,” agreed Metellus, “But frankly, I wasn’t convinced we had many likely candidates in the lineup this time. That was why I didn’t bother pressing her.”

“Are you saying you knew it was a waste of time anyway?”

“Not at all,” said Metellus. “You never know what witnesses will let slip while you’ve got them concentrating on something else. But your Tilla is a clever girl. If she knows about the head, she’s keeping it very quiet.”

“That’s because she doesn’t know.”

“I would have thought Rianorix would have told her. They like to boast. But perhaps he’s cleverer than he looks too.”

“What’s the matter with you people? If you think he did it, what the hell did you let him out for? Surely you’re not really so frightened of the natives that you dare not arrest a murderer?”

“We have to tread softly at the moment, Doctor, since one of our own men is widely known to have confessed. But having Rianorix out there may work to our advantage. We may just catch a few bigger fish.”

“Tilla’s not a big fish! She’s not a—” Halfway through the sentence he realized how ridiculous it sounded, but he finished it anyway. “She’s not a fish at all.”

“No, it’s often surprising what you find when you pull the net in.”

“It’s ridiculous. Lock him up. His rebel cronies aren’t going to go near him anyway while you’re sniffing around.”

“That depends on how obvious we are. My informers are very discreet.”

“Well, so far they haven’t been much use, have they?”

Metellus shook his head. “Frankly, Doctor, I didn’t expect a man of your standing to be so attached to a native slave. Although she does have a certain rustic charm. I can see why you’re so disappointed.”

Ruso gritted his teeth.

“I’m afraid she’s let us both down.”

Ruso realized he was pacing up and down Metellus’s office floor. Part of him wanted to rush off and confront Tilla. Part of him wanted to stay and prove Metellus wrong. About everything.

“Well, Rianorix hasn’t led you to the Stag Man,” he said, “And Tilla doesn’t know who or what he is either. In the meantime, do you realize what effect seeing Rianorix free is having on the men—not to mention the rest of the natives?”

“It’s not an ideal situation, I agree. As soon as you clear the path for us with Thessalus, I’ll persuade the prefect to have him rearrested.”

“You don’t think he did it!” surmised Ruso suddenly. “You’d never have let him out if you thought he could tell you where that head was.”

Metellus smiled. “Well done, Doctor. You’re right: I’m not sure that he did it. He may well just be a loudmouth. But he’s a rebel sympathizer. And he was making public threats against one of our men. In fact, you’re quite right, we are considering the possibility that it was one of his cronies seizing a chance to cause trouble. For all we know there may have been several of them: We can’t really control who’s in the streets out there after dark. I’ll try and get some names from him when we pick him up again. But someone will have to be put before the governor in three days’ time. It won’t be a local god and it certainly won’t be Doctor Thessalus. Now. You need something to take your mind off all this. Are you sure you’re not interested in hunting? Rumor has it the governor might—”

“No,” said Ruso. “Definitely not.”

“Pity,” said Metellus.

50

R
USO BURST OUT
of Metellus’s office with an energy that made the sentries guarding the headquarters shrine grab at their weapons. He strode across the torchlit courtyard, then turned on his heel and scrunched down the graveled street in the direction of the infirmary. He was going to see Tilla. He just needed to collect a few things on the way.

The sword swung against his thigh as Ruso shrugged on his body armor. His fingers fumbled with the buckles and thongs that joined the iron plates together. He lowered the heavy helmet onto his head and tied the strips of leather beneath the cheek pieces. He was not going to put up with any nonsense from anyone out there tonight.

Valens wandered out of one of the wards just as he was leaving his room.

“Goodness, Ruso, where are you going looking like that?”

“Out,” said Ruso, without breaking his stride.

The guard on the east gate saw the medical case in his hand and opened up for him immediately.

The sound of his boot studs rang out in the quiet night, and he was conscious of the brass belt fittings jingling with every step. As he passed the shrine, a dog began to bark in one of the houses. It set off a yappy, irritating reply farther away. Ahead of him, a window squeaked open. It closed again as he approached.

A rat scuttled across the shuttered entrance to We Sell Everything. Ruso kept to the main thoroughfares and to the center of the street. Nobody, antlered or otherwise, was going to creep up on him and drag him into one of those dark gaps between the buildings. Not without a fight.

He approached the last house along the east road. He knew he was in the right place. The air was thick with the smell of the brewery next door.

By the third attempt, he was thumping on the door with the hilt of his sword. A muffled voice from somewhere down the street shouted, “Hey! Clear off!”

That was when he noticed that the shutter on the small window nearby had swung open. A woman with an accent like Tilla’s demanded to know what he wanted. As soon as he stepped left to address her, the shutter slapped back into the frame.

“Is this the house of Catavignus the brewer?” he asked the shutter, hoping that she was still listening behind it.

“The brewery is closed,” came the reply. “Come back in the morning.”

“I’m looking for a girl called Tilla.”

“Well, look somewhere else.”

He tried, “I’m a doctor.”

“Nobody is ill.”

Were all the women of Tilla’s tribe—whatever it was called—this difficult? Why couldn’t she at least open the shutter to talk to him?

He was not going to bawl his name down the quiet street. He leaned closer and said in a hoarse whisper, “I’m an officer with the Twentieth Legion. Ruso. Catavignus invited me here. Tilla is my . . . Tilla knows who I am. I have to talk to her.”

There was a pause, then a reply of, “There is no girl called Tilla here.”

“Darlughdacha,” he corrected himself, trying to remember how Tilla had taught him to pronounce it. “I’m a friend.”

“I thought you said you were the doctor?”

“I am,” he said, adding, “she has two names,” lest the woman should wonder why someone claiming to be a friend had got it wrong the first time.

“No Darlughdacha either.”

“She told me she would be here,” he insisted. “She will be expecting me.” This was not strictly true, but he felt it would lend weight to his case.

Silence.

“This
is
the house of Catavignus the brewer?”

The voice confirmed that it was. Then it wished him good night. After that, he might as well have been speaking to a wall. As indeed he was.

Curled up together like kittens.
Metellus’s words seemed to echo around the empty streets as Ruso strode back past the deserted bathhouse, the shrine with a lamp flame wavering on it, We Sell Everything, and the alleyway where most of Felix had been found. The murder was something Ruso felt he should care rather more about than he did at the moment. And the fact that he did not care was
Tilla’s fault
. He had behaved perfectly reasonably. More than reasonably: generously. He had traveled to the very edge of the civilized world out of consideration for her: something most men would not do for their wives or mothers, let alone for a slave. He had even tried to
help
that arrogant bastard Rianorix with the black eye and the gappy tooth and the silly horsetail hair. What a naïve fool he had been.

Unless Metellus was lying. But why would he do that?

He would give Tilla a chance to tell her side of the story. He was a reasonable man. He would ask her, calmly, to explain where she had been last night. Where she was
now.
That was the point. She had expressly said she was going to her uncle’s house tonight. He had hinted that he might visit. So why wasn’t she there?

Perhaps there was an innocent explanation. Perhaps Tilla had been called to . . . no. The woman behind the shutter had not said, “She has gone out.” She had said they
did not have
a girl with either of Tilla’s names.

He should have let Ingenuus cut Rianorix’s throat at the clinic. It was too late for that now. Instead, he was going to leave him to Metellus.

Back at the infirmary, he found his bed already occupied by Valens. He woke him for a brief altercation, which revealed that Valens had assumed this to be the on-duty bed, while Ruso’s proper quarters were somewhere else. “I did say I’d cover night duty for you,” Valens reminded him. “Why
are
you dressed like that?”

“Never mind,” said Ruso, shedding his armor and kicking it under the bed. “Just go back to sleep.”

51

T
HESSALUS’S GUARD MIGHT
have thought it was an odd time for a doctor to be visiting a patient, but it was not his place to say so. Within minutes Ruso was wrapped in a blanket on Thessalus’s floor, staring up into the black space where the rafters would have been if he could see them. His mind refused to sleep.
All the words. Jumping around like frogs.
Ruso forced himself to listen for the breathing of his unsuspecting host over on the couch, and for a moment he understood the feeling Thessalus had been trying to describe.

Where was Tilla? Had she betrayed him? If she hadn’t, why would Metellus lie to him?

What would he say to her when he found her? Worse, what if he didn’t find her? She could have run off somewhere with Rianorix. She could have been planning it ever since they left Deva, and like a fool he hadn’t seen it coming. She could be mocking him to Rianorix right now, just as she had mocked Trenus.
The body of a bear, the brain of a frog, and he makes love like a dying donkey with the hiccups.