Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

'… our grandchild will have nothing but the best, Kazan, and you must start looking around for a nurse, too. When I'm back on my feet, naturally I will take over the-'

It was difficult to know how far to indulge her, in view of so recent an injury, but high priests must have some in-built knowledge of these things, because, with a flourish of his long robes, Drilo stepped forward and bowed deeply before the mother-to-be.

'Congratulations, my dear, may the gods bless you and keep your child free from harm.'

He laid a gentle kiss on the back of her hand.

'I will draw up the baby's horoscope and pronounce the auspices at once, if you can let me know the midwife's calculation for the birth.'

'Three days after the autumn equinox, My Lord.'

'Perfect.' His oiled braids nodded solemnly. 'A season of bounty and plenty, my dear, of fruitfulness and thanksgiving. You and your husband must be truly overjoyed.'

But when they looked round, the boys had already gone.

'Orbilio, this is no time to be writing love letters,' Claudia announced, marching into his room. 'I have a job for you. Come.'

'Actually, I was writing up my dispatches,' he said, tapping the parchment. And frankly, if you think your ridiculous wild goose chase takes precedence over His Imperial Majesty's business — and the case I am working on threatens to affect our entire economy and undermine the very foundations of the Empire — then you are absolutely, one hundred per cent right.'

Look at him, she thought. Funny, solicitous, charming, urbane. Anyone would think we were friends.

'I presume this is the same bee buzzing round in your bonnet about a coup to destabilize Histria?' he asked cheerfully, lengthening his stride to keep up. 'Because, if so, I ought to tell you now, before you go making a complete and utter fool of yourself-'

'Marcus, please.' Claudia stopped and held up her hands. 'When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you.'

'I feared as much.'

All I require tonight is a witness.'

'Whatever you say, Your Royal Highness.'

'Snide doesn't suit you, Orbilio, any more than black fingers. No chance of it being gangrene, I suppose?'

'Sadly, Your Ladyship, ink isn't terminal, at least not as far as I'm aware, but who knows? It might yet prove to be the ultimate in untraceable murder weapons.'

'When poets tell you the pen is mightier than the sword, you really shouldn't take them literally, you know.'

'You don't think it would catch on in terms of warfare?'

'I didn't say that. Hurling rude letters at one another is what they do in the Senate, why not carry it one stage further and take them into battle? Scrolls are a lot lighter to wield than a sword, and they never need sharpening — ah, so that's where the quarry's been hiding.'

Mazares was, in fact, in the courtyard and was anything but in hiding. The garden was illuminated by scores of torches in cressets, and fragranced by aromatic resins burning in braziers, and Claudia paused in the archway on the pretext of adjusting her sandal. In practice, it was to watch as he scooped a bedraggled kitten out of the fountain into which it had fallen. She watched as he wiped its coat dry on his shirt and as he didn't even flinch when the tiny ingrate shot over his shoulder and down his back, using its little sharp claws to gain purchase. Ah, but there was something about him tonight. Something different. The crow's feet round his eyes were more pronounced, she noticed, his face unusually lined, and there was a stiffness about all of his movements.

A man, she thought, in the grip of emotion.

A man clinging to his temper by a mere thread.

Oh, Nosferatu. A smile twisted one side of her mouth. How the net is closing in on you…

'Well, if it isn't two of my favouritest friends,' he said, and she thought, dammit, that man could talk the Ferryman into rowing him to Atlantis instead of Hades and still not pay for the fare. 'Come and join me.'

Ushering them to a table spread with sweetmeats and cakes, he proceeded to pour wine as though it was someone else's sister-in-law who had been brained with a roof tile. Someone else's sister-in-law who had narrowly escaped death. Claudia sipped. The wine was full-bodied and rich, and could match any vintage of hers. Bugger.

'Mazares.'

She folded her hands on the table and noticed that pinpricks of red had begun to show through his white shirt. So Nosferatu bleeds, does he?

'Mazares, I was chatting to your brother in the cemetery earlier this morning. It appears he was releasing a flock of finches in your brother's memory.'

'He does that every year,' Mazares replied evenly.

'So I gather.'

She glanced at Orbilio, who was suddenly finding something of great interest on his boot. She kicked him on the ankle under the table, which gave him something else to think about, as well as gaining his attention.

'Well, the thing is, Mazares, it occurred to me, I suppose seeing those hideous masks above the black empty robes flapping against the tree trunks, that you do seem to have a history of tragedy in your family.'

His skin had a strange pallor tonight, too. That row with Salome had cut deep — oh, and right on top of his victim escaping, the poor little moustachioed lamb…

'Yes,' he agreed. 'Death does tend to shadow me.'

Actually, chum, it's the other way round. But this was not the time to mention Raspor, Rosmerta, the royal physician, the King, the King's son, his daughter, his brother, his wife and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Confine it to his immediate family for now. God knows, there was still enough to go round!

'Tragic,' she simpered. 'I mean, your wife dies, then your brother-'

'To be pedantic, My Lady, the order is reversed.' His smoky green eyes locked with hers. 'My older brother indeed lies in the cemetery, but his bones have lain there for many long years.'

'I hate to rake over old wounds, but would you mind telling me — us — ' she slanted a glance at Orbilio and thought, this'll damn well make the Security Police sit up — 'how your brother came to meet his untimely end?'

'How?'

Mazares leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs on the table and crossed his booted ankles.

'I thought you already knew,' he said slowly. 'It was three days before his twentieth birthday. Of a fever, if you recall.

And, since you seem to be taking such a close interest in my family, the name engraved on his amulet was Brac'

Aargh.

Orbilio unbuckled his belt, pulled off his soft deer-skin boots and groaned. Anyone else suddenly confronted by royalty would have dropped to her knees and apologized. Not this woman. Claudia Seferius stomps off along the colonnade without a backward glance, and before Marcus could apologize on her behalf, Mazares had also stalked off, but in the opposite direction.

He didn't know what hurt the most.

Seeing his friend wounded by her assumptions.

Or witnessing the passion with which their marriage bonds would be woven.

He dunked his head in a bowl of cold water until he could hold his breath no more, and when he came up for air, he couldn't be certain at first that it wasn't his imagination that picked up footsteps in the corridor. But they were real. They were light, fast, confident footsteps, the step, no less, of a dancer, and there was an ache inside as they passed by. Orbilio towelled his hair dry. He often forgot that was how Claudia used to scrape a living, performing in dingy, backstreet naval taverns, and a muscle tweaked at the side of his mouth. That was in a previous lifetime, of course! Before she'd forged a new identity for herself and enveigled her way into a prosperous marriage. The twitch gave way to a fully fledged grin.

Poor Claudia. When she took Gaius for better or worse, she never expected to face problems like… well, like having the man she had pegged as a murderer turn out to be a king, for one thing.