Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

'With this case bearing all the hallmarks of an organized gang, it was already under investigation by the Security Police.'

Slavery was the lynchpin of the imperial economy. Anything that threatened to undermine it was naturally classed as treason.

'Salome inherited her husband's slaves,' Claudia retorted. 'She was quite within her rights to give them their freedom.'

'This isn't about what she did six years ago, it's about what's been going on since, and I have to tell you, we're talking serious numbers here.'

'Pfft.' She dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. 'Show me a bureaucrat who doesn't exaggerate and I'll show you a day tripper in Hades.'

Orbilio spiked his hands through his hair.

'If only it was as simple as that,' he replied, and wondered whether he'd been adequately able to disguise the weariness in his voice. 'But, hell, even if it was only half the number being mooted in the corridors of power, can you imagine what would happen if word of these escapees got out?'

Right across the Empire, slaves would revolt. There would be anarchy and dissent, murder and chaos. Streets would run red with blood.

'I didn't tell my boss about my meeting with Mazares, I just convinced him to let me take over the case and-'

'Came to Histria to investigate. I see.'

'No,' he said quietly. 'No, Claudia, you don't see.'

He had a sudden urge to bury his face in her hair.

To close his eyes.

To forget…

'From what Mazares had told me about Salome, it seemed inconceivable that she could be running a racket for venal motives,' he said. 'She's a herbalist, a healer, a nurturer, a nurse, and he and I both felt that — well, if anything untoward was going on at the farm, then Salome had to be doing it out of misguided goodness.'

He swallowed the lump in his throat.

'To prove my point, I decided to send a girl undercover.'

'Sweet Janus, not a little Cretan girl with a squint?'

Hope leapt in his breast. 'You've seen her?'

The look of pity he received in reply dashed his hopes.

'They knew right from the outset that she was a spy,' Claudia replied hoarsely. 'I overheard Silas and the others talking. It was the night of the fire and they… they said — and god forgive me, I'll never forget it — Tobias said — ' she swallowed — 'he said, "That's one spy they won't be seeing again."'

Something congealed in Orbilio's stomach. Every night when he closed his eyes, he'd see the girl's wide trusting face in front of his, and every morning when he awoke it was still there. Now, he realized, it was her ghost looking at him…

'There's more,' Claudia said. 'I'm afraid Lora is part of this scam.'

'Yes, and tonight I come back to discover that Salome has been searching my room.'

She was on to him, but that didn't matter. He hadn't committed anything to paper that she wouldn't have suspected already. No. What mattered was how he was going to break the news to Mazares that the woman he looked upon as a trusted friend was a murderess — and the daughter-in-law whom he cherished was in it up to her neck.

Mazares.

The King who prided himself on justice and right.

A nestful of hornets was buzzing inside Claudia's head. She couldn't hear. She couldn't think. She didn't know which way was up.

One minute Mazares is the leader of the wolf pack, Nosferatu, a ghoul, the arch fiend, her jailer. His description fits what Broda saw to a tee. A lot of people around him have died. Who better placed to organize a conspiracy? Suddenly, though, the tables have turned. Mazares isn't the bad guy after all, he's the King. The King is a good man, everyone says so, and Claudia herself knows it to be true. Raspor gave his life to protect him and, for all his assumed arrogance, underneath he's just a big soppy dog, not a wolf. A deliverer of justice, not a fiend. Claudia's protector rather than jailer.

The clues were all there, of course. The way people looked at him on the quayside, the deference of the crew on board ship, the elaborately engraved gold torque. Then there was the passion with which he spoke of his people, his country, and the depth of his understanding. The way the islanders reacted at the Feast of Zeltane; the way he led his 'bride' through the Fire of Life; the way he'd responded to all of her questions. With hindsight, she ought to have asked herself why Mazares had been so astonished when she'd demanded to check his credentials on the dockside, and who could blame His Majesty for taking revenge by stringing the arrogant bitch along? (Dammit, to think she'd been worried about offending the King's general, as well!)

But recriminations were pointless. For his part, Mazares had taken great pains to ensure that no one in his circle gave the game away — hence the silly word games with the likes of Pavan and Salome, and the ridiculous farce that ensued — but in the end, the facts hadn't changed.

Only the perspective.

The King's father, his brother, his wife and his children had all met untimely deaths. Now the royal physician had been confirmed dead, Broda had seen her own uncle murdered, so…

So, if it wasn't Mazares, who the hell was Nosferatu?

Claudia paced her room, up and down, up and down, up and down, the exquisite frescoes on the wall no more than a blur. There was no way she could twist her mouth into a smile and sit through the victory banquet tonight. Rosmerta's brush with death had made sure of that, because the roof tile slipping was no accident, she was convinced. Had the attempt been made on Kazan, she could understand it, but how on earth did Rosmerta's death fit the plan? She pulled up short in her pacing. Plan? What bloody plan? If she was wrong about Mazares, surely she was wrong about the conspiracy, too? Kettledrums pounded behind her eyes, cymbals clashed inside her temples. Janus, if only she could think straight…

Could they really have been simple accidents? His father's weak chest, his daughter's drowning, his son's disembowelling by a mastiff while out hunting? Yes, yes, of course they could — but they weren't. Broda had been severely traumatized by the things that she'd witnessed, not by a childishly overactive imagination, and although Claudia hadn't been on top form herself after that fall down the steps, there was no mistaking what happened to Raspor. The cold sweats in the night testified to that; the nightmares about his heels drumming impotently…

No, dammit, Nosferatu was out there. The plan to eliminate the King and his bloodline was unmistakably real. The fog inside Claudia's head started to clear. Someone close to

Mazares was preparing a new order for this country, and they would stop at nothing to achieve it. Suggesting that Rosmerta had seen, or heard, something that linked the killer to these horrible crimes, the significance of which she probably didn't even realize — but the knowledge of which had almost cost her her life.

Claudia grabbed the nearest frock and stuffed her hair into pins. Suddenly she couldn't afford not to attend the victory banquet, but first, she had to make sure that Histria's answer to the Vestal Virgins had round-the-clock protection and then she needed to have a long, frank discussion with Mazares. The only question was, exactly how large a slice of humble pie was she prepared to swallow?

A mistake had been made.

The first, admittedly, but one that Nosferatu needed to rectify.

Fast.

'My dear Claudia, you don't have to apologize to me. It was a perfectly honest mistake.'

There had been no chance to talk in the dining hall, and quite right, too. The banquet was to honour the winners of today's games, and to deny them even one small moment of their hour of triumph would have been shallow and lacking in respect. So Claudia had sat at the top table alongside Mazares and, as garlands of violas and parsley, symbolizing victory and strength, were hung around the necks of each champion, she had smiled and applauded, and all the time reflected on the man sitting beside her.