Scortius pushed himself back a little in his seat and his shoulders dropped wearily.
“It has been a sad day, my lady Sabianus.”
She smiled a horrible, cold smile.
“You have absolutely no idea, Scortius.”
Again, confusion passed briefly across the slightly intoxicated features of the Fourth’s chief surgeon. Catilina folded her arms.
“A sad day for many; not least for myself. Varro and I were very close; have been since I was an impressionable young girl, I would say. But a good day for the Empire, nonetheless; a traitor brought to light and executed; the army healed of its gangrene.”
She took a light breath.
“I just loathe murderers, don’t you?”
Scortius’ brow furrowed.
“Indeed I do, ma’am. More than you know.”
It was Catilina’s turn to frown. Could she be wrong? She cleared her throat.
“You knew Varro for many years, didn’t you?”
“Since our early days in the army, my lady. We were both there the day Darius was made Emperor. Both kneeled and took the oath the same day. We both signed up to follow Sabian and the new Emperor. And we’ve served together ever since. I’ve put him back together like a parent patches their child’s favourite toy time and time again.”
He sniffed back the emotion coursing through him.
“We travelled and fought from the Western Sea to the mountains and from the swamps in the far north to the cities of the central provinces. He’s been my commander all this time, but we only ever paid lip service to the difference. It feels strange. Losing Varro is like losing a limb. I…”
He whimpered slightly and refilled his goblet, taking another heavy slug of dark wine, most of which reached his mouth.
“And now they’re all gone. All the men I joined up with: Varro, Petrus and Corda. I’m the last of the old guard now.”
He sighed.
“I never realised losing him would hit me this hard.”
“You’re all compassion” stated Catilina flatly.
“Lady?”
She ran a finger along the edge of the table absently, her eyes never leaving the doctor’s.
“I believe I have pieced together the method you used, but it still leaves me wanting for a motive, and everything you say just obscures the motive all the more.”
Scortius started, that momentary panic that flashed across his face before his miserable expression set in once again all the confirmation Catilina needed.
“What are you talking about, young lady?”
He pushed himself back upright in his seat, his expression suddenly sobering.
She sighed.
“You must have been planning it for a while. To start with, I thought perhaps that it was an accident, or at least a momentary angry choice, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised you’d carefully planned the whole thing.”
Again, Scortius’ expression flickered between panic and innocence. She smiled that cold smile again.
“Ironroot is, according to everyone I speak to, almost impossible to lay hands on this far north. Certainly no barbarian would likely ever come across it. But even a doctor, who’s used to obtaining unusual substances, must have found it hard to get hold of here.”
She leaned forward and steepled her fingers.
“That was something that required some thought. Even though I knew it was you… I just knew it, I couldn’t see why you’d have a poison that was so hard to obtain. But then a thought struck me and I enquired with the cohort’s clerks as to the last time you were on leave for any length of time.”
She smiled at his frown.
“And I was not in the least surprised to find that you took a sojourn of a month to visit relatives down near Serfium on the Southern Sea. Plenty of exotic substances floating around in the dock front markets at Serfium, I’ll wager.”
She watched a tumult of emotions cross Scortius’ face and smiled her unpleasant smile again.
“And I wondered whether you could have a legitimate reason for keeping ironroot. Perhaps there was a sensible explanation? Perhaps ironroot in certain doses worked as a curative, or a paralytic, or some other medical aid. But no. I’ve done my research now. There’s no medical reason for any doctor to keep ironroot. In fact, since the only known use for the substance is to cause pain and death, there’s no legitimate cause for anyone to keep it.”
She gestured to the medical cabinet at the edge of the room.
“What drawer do you keep your deadly poisons in, doctor?”
Scortius waved his goblet to the side, some of the wine sloshing over the top.
“Pah!”
“Denials, Scortius?”
She laughed. ”It must have got to you, waiting for the right circumstances. Varro had to come to you with some wound or illness first. But he was a healthy man, my Varro. Didn’t get ill and, with no major wars on, you must have kept that little vial of yours hidden for a long time. Did you even consider making him ill or wounding him so that he had to come to you?”
She laughed. “Lucky there was that little uprising eh? Luckier still that Varro was wounded. You must have been dancing round your tent with joy.”
The innocent look on Scortius’ face had gradually slid away to be replaced by a mix of anger and sadness.
“You have no idea what you’re saying, girl!”
Catilina laughed mirthlessly again.
“Girl? Touched a nerve, have I, doctor?”
She leaned forwards and slammed the flats of her palms down on the table, angrily.
“Save yourself the trouble of denials and feigned innocence! I am in no doubt as to your guilt or the method you employed to kill the man I loved.”
Scortius’ eyes wobbled uncertainly. He opened his mouth to speak, but Catilina spat out her angry words at him.
“A stroke of genius, really” she barked, slapping her hands on the table. “To soak his medicines in ironroot. I presume that actual compounds were placebos with no real medicinal value? The irony being that he was actually completely healthy and would easily have recovered from his wound had you not administered your care. Every time he took his medication, it would kill him a little more.”
She waved a hand angrily.
“From what I understand, the amount he’s been ingesting in his medicines would just make him gradually sicker and sicker until he’d consumed enough to seal his fate.”
She stopped as a thought struck her.
“Good grief. You must even have carefully prepared the rest of the compounds. They had to keep him feeling ill enough to take them again, but well enough to feel that he was getting some effect from them? What kind of a mind must you have, doctor?”
She shook her head in disbelief.
“Oh, you must have laughed until you were sick over that one. To take away the pain that you were causing him, he effectively killed himself using your remedies for that same pain.”
“Shut up!”
Catilina started, surprised by the violent outburst. Throwing his goblet aside angrily, Scortius slammed his hands flat down on the table and half-raised himself from his seat to face her.
“You have no idea, girl. You have no idea. What I did was hard beyond imagining.”
“Ha!” she laughed back her retort. “I’m sure it was. All that planning…”
“It was hard!” he bellowed.
The doctor collapsed back into his seat again.
“It was hard on me. The worst thing I’ve ever had to do…”
Catilina sighed.
“Forget any pretence, Scortius, or any attempt to obfuscate the reality of it. I know all about ironroot now. Mercurias is not only one of the best doctors in the Empire, but he’s a very good friend of my family. It was he who confirmed the presence of the poison on the medicine wrappers I retrieved from Varro’s bag. So you can be sure that he knows about it too. It’s over.”
Scortius’ expression sagged, a look of hopeless despair filling him now.
“Still,” Catilina said crisply, “since you were under no suspicion until I dug around, I’m pleased to find you so unhappy. Could it be that killing your ‘good friend’ just wasn’t as easy as you’d hoped?”