Marilyn Todd - Scorpion Rising

'I'm here,' she shouted over the storm. 'Orbilio, can you hear me, it's over!'

Now she'd seen the true picture, Beth could raise no objection to him leaving the Pit. Nothing stood in his way.

'It's just a question of finding a rope long enough, and it may be tomorrow, it may be the next day, but I'll send down some food and… Marcus?'

'C–Claudia?'

The voice was faint. She could hardly hear it. More a rasp, a rattle Oh, god.

'Marcus, are you all right?'

A low groan was all that came back. Sweet Janus, no. No. Not after all this…

'Marcus, hold on.' She tried not to let panic affect her voice. 'I'm going to fetch help.'

'Too… late,' he wheezed.

'No, no, Gurdo has herbs, he'll be able to treat you, we'll have you out of there in a jiffy.'

'Can't,' he rasped. 'Compli — ah — cations.'

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to die.

She would follow him even to Hades.

And around the abyss, the storm crackled and howled, and trees bent in the wind.

'Marcus! Marcus, you can't leave me now, do you hear? I won't let you go, I love you too much.'

'Say… say again. Let me hear it before I… before I…'

No, you can't bloody die. I won't let you.

'I said I love you, you fool, I've always loved you.' Rain mixed with the tears. 'Manion was right, I wouldn't let you in, because everyone close to me left and the hurt of rejection was too much to go through again. But I understand now. Clytie's death showed me that. Oh, darling, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but hold on! You must! I'll go and fetch help-'

'Don't go! P-please." The pause was agonizing. 'What… what did Clytie's death tell you?' he wheezed.

'Everything,' she cried, and suddenly it all came tumbling out. A twelve-year-old girl dies on the spring equinox from wrists that had been slashed on the very rock where she played with her friends…

'You were right about motive being the key,' she sobbed.

First, one had to get inside the skin of the victim. A selfrighteous little prig, Gurdo had called her, adding that she was a pain in the arse. Even Sarra, as gentle and sweet as she was, felt that Clytie put her in a difficult position.

Because she didn't share her friends 'desire to climb rocks, swing from ropes or go poking around in caves and things, she ^y d come to me ostensibly to get thread to sew up a tear in Aridella's robe or a new ribbon because Lin had lost hers, but basically Clytie was lonely and wanted someone to talk to, she said.

The clue lay in the word ostensibly.

At some point in the conversation it would slip out why she wanted these things — and once that happened, I was duty bound to put the girls on report.

Clytie was lonely, indeed she was…

At the Disciplinary, she would rush forward and speak up for her friends, apologizing for landing them in it, but the trouble was, the damage was already done and Beth was left with no choice. She had to punish the girls.

Clytie was the neatest, the tidiest, the cleanest, the cleverest of the four novices, but none of this seemed to matter. It was the flaxen-haired tomboys who were the priestesses' darlings. They would happily turn a blind eye to their scrapes and beside them, Clytie was invisible.

'It wasn't accidental that she "let drop" their escapades.'

She deliberately told tales on her friends, knowing they'd be reported to Beth, but hey presto, this was her chance to shine. She would vouch for her friends! Throw herself at their mercy! Clytie the Heroine would ride to the rescue!

Except there was no rescue. Nothing changed. The flaxenhaired trio did not alter their ways, they were too full of life to cow down. Instead, they resented her tittle-tattling. Perhaps they argued? Perhaps they pretended to shun her, to teach her a lesson? Whatever happened between them, it came to a head on the spring equinox.

Just because we deliver a baby, it doesn't follow that we bond differently with that child than we do from any other.

Unless, of course, you are that child 'Unloved, unwanted, Clytie must have been consumed by grief,' Claudia sobbed.

The last straw would have been the letter. The draft Claudia had found in the urn. The scribbled evidence that would finally convict Ailm.

Clever enough to tell tales, but not clever enough to qualify, are we?

It was too much.

'On the night her mother took centre stage on the dais, Clytie went down to the river and slashed her wrists.'

Right from the start, Claudia was reminded of her own mother's death, was haunted by her suicide. And though she'd come to Gaul to lay the ghosts of her past, she still couldn't see beyond the pain of betrayal.

Clytie wasn't murdered. Not in that sense. But a young girl on the brink of womanhood had received one disappointment too many, and though Beth hadn't told her that she would not qualify for the Hundred-Handed, Ailm couldn't resist 'telling the truth'.

'She chose that particular rock because she wanted her friends to find her.'

Like her mother, Claudia realized too late, she wanted to be found by someone she loved. Someone who would understand…

'But the girls didn't know this.' How could they? It had taken her a lifetime herself. 'They panicked.'

They're children, not adults, and because Clytie had killed herself on their own special rock, they thought she'd done it to get them into trouble. Instead of running for help, they remembered hearing about women who were killed in Santonum and who had had their faces painted.

'They tried to disguise Clytie's suicide.'

Having applied the cosmetics, they pulled her off the rock and left her beside the river, her hair fanned out, her arms outstretched, knowing that either Pod or Gurdo would find her.

'I should have seen it,' Claudia sobbed. 'It was so bloody obvious,'

The peaceful death, just like her mother's…

'It's because I didn't think clearly that you're in this mess, and I'm sorry, but please don't die on me, Marcus.'

'I love you, too,' he croaked back. 'Oh, god, Claudia, I love you so much and if I… if I…'

'Will you stop bloody iffing!' she screamed. 'I've already killed two men tonight, so if you think I'm going to let you sit on that ferry to Hades alongside Ptian-'

'You killed Ptian?'

The voice came from behind, a deep baritone, and it smelled of sandalwood unguent.

'ORBILIO?'

She stared at him. Stared at the abyss. Stared at him once again. Not a ghost. Not a hallucination. The bastard was there in the flesh.

'You said you were dying!'

'I said it was too late.' His face twisted. 'I just omitted the part about getting me out of the Pit, I was already out.'

But 'You said there were complications. You said-'

He took a step forward. The rain had plastered his hair to his face, but his eyes were as dark as the storm. 'And you said you loved me,' he rasped.

'You bastard.'

'Claudia, I'm sorry.' A pulse beat at the side of his neck. 'But it was the only way I could get you to say it.'

'Say what? The first thing that came into my head, so a dying man wouldn't feel he was alone?'

He tricked her and so help her, she'd never forgive him.

'Do you really think I give this for you?' she hissed, snapping her fingers.

'Do not be too hard on him, Merchant Seferius.' A second figure stepped forward and rain or not, you could still kohl your eyes in the shine in his hair. 'Your policeman was only trying to bring my daughter's killer to book.'

'Gabali?'

Janus, Croesus, how many more people had heard her make a fool of herself? Had he hired a team of bloody claqueurs and sold tickets? Then she looked at the Spaniard's face, sunken with grief, at the stipples that stood out on his cheeks.

'Clytie was your daughter!'

Penetrating brown eyes bored through his thin pointed features. 'How could you doubt it?' he asked, and his voice was hoarse with emotion. 'And now you tell me that she killed herself because nobody loved her.'