David Wishart - Parthian Shot

I watched her go. Shit; she was lying, sure, that stood out clear as a pig in a swimming pool. The only question was what I was going to do about it.

‘What was that in aid of?’ Jarhades said. He looked as mystified as I felt.

‘You don’t know either?’

‘It seems there’s a lot of things I don’t know. What happened exactly, with this Zariadres?’

I told him. It took a while, even though I kept strictly to the facts, and I had one eye on the door all the time, but Erato didn’t reappear. Finally, when she did, she came straight over to the table, eyes lowered, and began to wipe up the spilled wine while Jarhades and I watched in silence.

When she’d finished, she put the cloth down and turned to me. ‘He was a Suren, wasn’t he?’ she said.

‘A what?’

‘This Zariadres. He’d be from the Suren family.’

‘Uh…yeah. Yeah, I think so,’ I said. I had a faint memory of Isidorus — or was it Vitellius? — telling me that.

‘How..?’ Jarhades began. I laid a hand on his wrist, and he stopped.

‘He must’ve been named after his father, then. Or maybe an uncle.’ Erato sat down, and her voice was as expressionless as her face. ‘The Surens and the Mihrans — Lord Peucestas is a Mihran — are enemies. They always have been. It was a Suren that Artabanus sent that day to castrate the master and execute his family. His name was Zariadres, too.’

It was well past noon when they let me go. I was grateful to be out in the street again. The unexpected connection between Zariadres and Peucestas had come as a real facer, and I needed peace and quiet to think it over.

Peace and quiet and a wine-shop. Sure, I’d had the two cups of Syrian, but that was pleasure, not business. If I was going to think, I needed a wine-shop wall at my back, half a jug within easy reach and the soporific drone of bar-flies slagging off the city admin dole-queue clerks, analysing the last set of races in the Circus or explaining at alcoholic length to the barman how their wives-stroke-girlfriends didn’t understand them and what bastards their bosses were. The usual, in other words. I headed back in the direction of Iugarius and Renatius’s place.

So; Peucestas might come across as pretty straight, but he had motive in spades. Plus, of course, a prime opportunity: he’d been the one to find the body, and I only had his word for it that Zariadres had been dead before he got there. Sure, the real villain of the piece had been the other Zariadres, his father or uncle, and he was probably long gone — Erato had said, later, when I asked her, that he’d been pushing sixty when Peucestas’s wife and kids had been executed — but for easterners, like our backwoods Sicilians, guilt’s an inherited thing and revenge doesn’t stop with the guy immediately responsible. Having a close relative a corridor’s length away, practically unguarded, in a foreign city where the authorities would chew their own legs off before getting involved would be practically an open invitation to murder.

The question was, of course, how the situation had been allowed to arise in the first place. I might not know Parthians, or the diplomatic world in general, but common sense told me that sending two men on an embassy one of whom was related to someone who’d been responsible for lopping the bollocks off the other and sticking his family on pointed stakes wasn’t too bright an idea; especially if — as had to be the case — both parties were aware of the link. No doubt Isidorus would say that sort of thing happened all the time in diplomatic circles, but to me it made no sense at all. If Peucestas was the killer then it’d been a crime just waiting to happen.

Having the motive and the opportunity were one thing; being guilty of the actual murder was another. Besides, from what I’d seen of him I liked Peucestas, and if he’d slit Zariadres’s throat I couldn’t altogether blame him. This case was turning into a real bugger.

Then, naturally, there was the other important question that Erato’s little scrap of information had raised…

I was on Iugarius now. As usual this time of day it was packed to the gunnels, both sides and the middle. Not that Renatius’s would be crowded: most of the punters you see around the Market Square district are sharp city types, plain-mantles and above, and Renatius’s is definitely spit-and-sawdust tunic territory. He serves good honest wine, though, better than the overpriced stuff you get in the chichi places in this area that cater for the upwardly-mobile set. And give me droning barflies over pushy execs doing private deals and knifing their absent colleagues in the back over jugs of second-rate Alban any time.

I’d just passed one of the chichi-est wineshops — there’re quite a few on that stretch, which is another reason why Renatius’s isn’t heaving — when someone called my name. I turned. Nicanor was coming out of the door with two other youngsters of about the same age. All three were wearing party mantles and looking, among the respectable whites of the pedestrian traffic, like louche peacocks in a duck-run. One of his pals was carrying a wine-jug, the other had an arm round his shoulder, and all that was holding the two of them up was hope.

‘Hey, Corvinus! How are things?’ The words were slightly slurred: Nicanor mightn’t be as far-gone as his mates, or if he was he carried it a lot better, but he’d still’ve given a newt a close run for its money. ‘Still chasing Parthians, are you?’

The lad with the wine-jug whispered something into his pal’s ear and they giggled together.

‘Yeah, more or less,’ I said easily, ignoring the looks we were getting from disgruntled mantles forced to edge round the sudden pavement-jam. City-centre mantles are the starchiest in Rome. ‘You’re pretty late back from your night out, aren’t you, pal?’

Nicanor raised his shoulders. The garland slipped down over one eye, and he absently pushed it back. ‘A going-away party. Quintus here’s cousin’ — he nodded at the kid with the jug — ‘is off to join his legion this morning.’ He glanced up at the sun. ‘Oh, shit! Is that the time?’

A large narrow-striper clutching a precarious bundle of wax tablets in the fold of his mantle glared at us and stepped carefully round, muttering. Quintus blew a raspberry after him. I grinned: those kids weren’t all bad. ‘Yeah. I’m afraid so,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’d best get home.’

He shook his head, almost dislodging the garland again. ‘No hurry. And I owe you a cup of wine.’

‘You don’t think maybe you’ve had enough?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ He leaned against the wall and forced himself upright. ‘Not here, though. The bugger who runs the place threw us out. We’ll go further up the street.’

‘What about your friends?’

Both of them were out of things. Quintus — the guy with the wine-jug — had sat down and was grinning into space. The other one had his back to the bricks and looked like he was seriously considering throwing up.

‘They’ll be OK. They’re used to it.’ Nicanor took my arm. ‘Come on, Corvinus. I owe you a drink, and I pay my debts.’

Yeah, well; I couldn’t just leave him, that was sure. And after my conversation with Jarhades and Erato I had questions to ask. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just the one. But I choose the wineshop, right?’

‘Deal.’

We left Quintus and his pal — I’d bet the missing bits of their names figured pretty high on the social roll — communing with nature and carried on up Iugarius, drawing disapproving stares and tuts all the way from passing punters. At least Renatius’s would be safe: I could have a quiet word with Renatius himself to make sure that the one cup didn’t turn into five or six, and slip one of the regulars a silver piece or two to see him safe home at the end of it. I owed his parents that much.