'Don't let the conceit go to your head, Orbilio. Just agree to my terms.' There was a splash, as a porter discharging sacks was knocked off the gangplank by an accidental female elbow.
Marcus licked the salt off his lips and knew he was going to enjoy himself here. She didn't know. Goddammit, Claudia Seferius and she still didn't realize! 'Azan's mistake,' he said, tipping the floundering porter a silver sesterces, 'wasn't mustering his three ships together. It was dallying far too long waiting for his men to bring Jason back. I imagine our trusty marines are blasting him out of the water even as we speak.'
'Bugger Azan. I'm talking about me. And cutting a deal.'
'Those Liburnian galleys are all very well in and around the islands, but once they're out in open water, they're no match for Roman triremes. Outmanned, outnumbered, outgunned, they'll be at the bottom of the ocean before the navy's within their range.'
'For gods' sake, Orbilio, insurrection isn't the issue here. Yes, yes, it's wonderful that you've scotched it; I'm sure they'll write you up in dispatches or whatever they write people up in, and the islanders will doubtless praise your name for ever for delivering them from Azan the Butcher. But there's a psychopath wandering around the Villa Arcadia who's in desperate need of locking up, and in return there's me, waiting for your word that you'll drop all charges against me.'
He kept his eyes on the top of the mast, where a seagull had perched and was preening its wings, and tried to compose his features. 'This may come as a shock to you, Mistress Seferius, but one of the first things we're taught at Security Police School is: catch the bad guys.'
'Then what are you waiting for?'
Marcus stuck out his lower lip as though deep in thought. 'Well..' He spread his hands. 'I guess it's the second thing they teach us at Security Police School.' He was enjoying this. 'Identify the bad guys first.'
'You don't think Jason's tattooed arms tied Bulis to the pillar in the grain store, stuffed a gag in his mouth, then set the granary alight?'
'No,' he said, keeping his gaze on the seagull, 'I don't.'
'Like those aren't the imprints of Jason's thumbs in Silvia's neck?'
'Oh, he's a lady-killer. Just not in the sense that you mean.'
'So it was pure coincidence that his war spear just happened to skewer Leo to the atrium door, leaving him to die in unspeakable agony?'
The laughter died from Orbilio's eyes, but he kept them fixed on the ratlines. 'Have I ever given the impression, even once, that I believed in coincidence?' he asked, meeting Claudia's eyes at long last. But as he opened his mouth to speak, a statuesque female came striding across the cobbled quayside, and suddenly all the noise and hubbub of the wharfside stopped. The crowd parted, their heads turned away and their hands rapidly making the sign of the horns.
'You must be Leo's cousin,' Clio said without preamble. Her voice was low and husky, with a hint of Liburnian brogue. 'I'm very pleased to meet you.'
He took in the cloak of black shining hair shimmering down to her waist when no respectable woman would dare be seen with her hair loose, much less that long. It wasn't the only area in which Clio defied convention, of course. He took the back of her hand and kissed it. 'The pleasure's all mine, I assure you.'
'Then I won't beat about the bush.' When she placed her hands on her hips, the action caused her breasts to thrust forward and for a moment he feared he'd lost his eyeballs down her cleavage for ever. There were worse places to spend eternity, he thought happily, ignoring the roll of Claudia's eyes. 'Your cousin owed me money, Marcus. A lot of money, in fact.'
'I know.'
Surprise widened her eyes, but she quickly recovered. 'I'm not asking you to cover his entire debt, that wouldn't be fair. But I need to get away from this island, so I'm prepared to settle for five thousand gold pieces.'
'That's very generous of you,' he said. Almost as generous as her bosom. 'But I have a better idea, Clio.' He opened the bronze purse round his wrist and emptied its contents into his hand. 'It's not five thousand. Less than forty, I should imagine, but it's all I have on me, and then you stay on this boat.'
'What kind of insult is that? Leo owed me fifteen thousand, you penny-pinching bastard-'
'It's this boat, Clio.' There was an edge to his voice that drained every drop of colour from her cheeks. 'Or court.'
Ten seconds passed in which her gaze locked with his, then long fingernails raked up the coins and she was striding up the gangplank in search of the captain.
Claudia's breath came out in a whistle. 'So that was the vampire.'
'No,' Marcus corrected. 'That was Leo's accomplice.'
That was what brought him to Cressia. Leo and his voluptuous partner in crime. Twenty-eight aristocrats had held banquets in the eight months since Saturnalia, only to find that they'd been relieved of their jewellery and fine arts in the process. Inexplicably, however, none of the articles had appeared on Rome's black market, suggesting the gems were being prised out and reset, the metals melted down and the ivory recarved. Such a sophisticated operation could only be run by an educated mind, and when Marcus heard about Leo's extensive restoration programme, far in excess of his income, he began to wonder. After all, if the robberies included several of his own relatives, it stood to reason they were Leo's relatives as well.
'The renovations worked out more costly than he planned,' Marcus said. His stomach rumbled and now he wished he had retained a few coppers to buy one of the juicy lamb pies whose tantalizing aroma wafted over the quayside. 'So he started on places closer to home.' Such as the Senator's summer house in Pula, where it looked as though Margarita wouldn't get her cameo back after all.'
'Where did Clio fit in?'
'By all accounts, she is an extremely talented harpist. Leo simply recommended her to his friends and relations.' Orbilio pictured Clio, scooping up coins and accolades after a virtuoso solo; leaving the hall to cool down, so she said, but instead gathering up jewellery and other precious items using the inside information passed on by her aristocratic accomplice.
'You travelled four hundred miles to arrest a bloody harpist?'
'In an ideal world, I'd have caught them red-handed, but I'd assembled enough of a case to at least prevent Leo's marriage to the rose-grower's daughter going ahead.' Life and death break contracts, as Lydia had taken such pains to point out. But so, too, do slave chains.
'No wonder your family want you out of the Security Police,' Claudia said. 'If you continue to arrest them at this rate, the line will die out in ten years.' She turned to look up at him and the laughter had died from her eyes. 'But of course, he didn't live long enough for you to arrest him, did he?'
A picture flashed up, gut-wrenchingly recurrent, of Leo slumped over the spear which had fastened him to the atrium door. If only he'd confronted his cousin when he arrived. 'No,' he said thickly. 'He didn't.'
'Then tell me why you don't believe Jason killed Bulis and Leo, then nearly made it a hat-trick with the human glacier.'
Marcus's thoughts spun back to the moment, just minutes ago, when a certain young widow had marched up the gangplank wanting to trade a pirate for criminal immunity. He had been set to enjoy himself teasing her, but there was no sport to be found now. 'Why wasn't it Jason?' He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'Show me one self-respecting Scythian who'd leave without taking a war scalp,' he replied, 'and I'll show you Hades admitting day-trippers.' Not a hair on Leo's head had been touched.
The demon smiled to itself.
Sometimes human beings could be such fools.
There is a moment when you're rattling along at full speed and the wheel of your chariot comes off. You know what's happened because you can see the bloody thing rolling into the gutter. But the thing is, you don't actually believe it. That's because, for one brief fraction of a second, nothing changes. Momentum keeps the chariot on course. Momentum keeps it upright. And momentum means the horses haven't skipped a beat. Claudia was suddenly propelled into that same frozen momentary limbo. She understood the logic of what Orbilio was saying. She just couldn't accept it. 'If it wasn't Jason, then who?' Had he been drinking?