Marilyn Todd - Dark Horse

'Whatever,' Margarita murmured, entwining her other arm round his neck. 'But I know this girl, she's my niece-'

'Hold it right there.' He laughed. 'You, of all people, know I'll be buggered if I'll kow-tow to family convention with a second bloody marriage of convenience. Not when the first one caused such grief.' Past tense? Orbilio could tell Margarita as many lies as he liked, but the bottom line was, that marriage was causing grief still. 'When — if- I remarry,' he said, 'social class won't come into it. Love's all that matters. Without it, there are no foundations to build on.'

'Love!' she scoffed gently. 'When your foolish plebeian infatuation wears off, what will you be left with? I can tell you in one short word, Marcus. Isolation. Your peers won't respect you, the lower orders will see it as weakness, you'll be despised and ostracized on all sides. Duty, darling. Duty is what counts, because at the end of the day, duty is all there is.'

'Bullshit. I joined the Security Police because that's one place where I can make a difference. By rooting out vermin who undermine our society, I help make Rome a safer city to sleep in, which in turn stabilizes the whole Empire.'

'And this business you're engaged in at the moment? How exactly does investigating common burglary buttress the Empire, darling?'

'You're incorrigible,' he said, disentangling his curls. 'I'd have thought you, of all people, would be pleased that I'm assigned to this case, considering many of the targets are your own relatives.'

'Our own relatives,' she corrected. 'And I am, darling. If anyone can catch the culprit, it will be you. The Senator and I are well aware of your record. One hundred per cent success rate, so I'm told.'

'Ninety-nine,' he corrected, thinking of a certain young widow with vineyards in Etruria and principles nowhere to be seen.

'Your trouble,' Margarita breathed, 'is that you need a woman, Marcus.'

Goddammit, she was right, he did need a woman, but it was not Margarita he longed for. Whenever his loins stirred, it was at the thought of a girl with thick, dark curls streaked with the colours of an autumnal sunset which tumbled over her shoulders. A wild, unpredictable creature, who raged like a forest fire out of control, scorching everything within range. He pictured her long legs scissoring up the Forum, her laugh filling the whole room, her eyes blazing with passion, her magnificent breasts heaving like the ocean in winter. And there was only one woman like that. Claudia Seferius.

But he needed a wife, too.

Not, as Margarita suggested, as a good career move. It was true that the Senate would not accept him without one, but his reasons for wanting a wife was more for a soft, warm embrace to come home to at night than for ambition. He longed for someone to laugh with, to share his triumphs and his tribulations, as well as his bed. He wanted a wife, a best friend, a lover, someone to grow old and wrinkly with. But, most of all, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio longed to hear his house ring with the laughter of children. His children. And therein lay the problem.

For all his passionate arguments, he was a patrician whose family traced their ancestors back to Apollo himself. Could he really, when all was said and done, deny his children their birthright by marrying a woman from a lower social order?

Sadly, he knew the answer to his own question.

And the knowledge made him feel sick.

Outside, seagulls screamed as he ripped off the gold shoulder brooch. A tumble of embroidered linen cascaded on to the floor, and suddenly Orbilio was glad Margarita wore nothing but perfume under her gown.

Two people fight. Now one man is dead. Was Bulis one of the tussling pair? He couldn't have been, Claudia thought. No one could have entered that inferno to tie someone up without succumbing themselves.

Besides, Bulis wasn't just tied. He was chained.

Was that what the fight was about? One person trying to prevent another from entering? Was Bulis alive while they struggled? Sweet Juno, was he screaming? Begging for help as Claudia ran across the path in the early hours? She hadn't been able to hear anything over the crackle of timbers. But no one on the steps could have missed his cries of agony…

A grim-faced working party mounted the stone steps and disappeared inside. Knowing the grisly task they had to undertake, the sound of sawing put her teeth on edge, and her mouth was drier than the Sahara as they carried the body out on a stretcher. Impossible to believe those charred remains had once been a living, laughing human being. What terror filled your heart, Bulis, as the first of the flames began to take hold? Which gods did you pray to for mercy? Which gods closed their ears to your prayers?

In silence, the stretcher-bearers manoeuvred the body down the steps. A path cleaved through the horrified crowd. By the bakehouse, several of Bulis's beautiful colleagues were sobbing openly.

'How could this have happened?' one of them spluttered through his tears. 'How could this have happened to Bulis?'

And Claudia thought, how indeed? How did a young apprentice come to be chained up like a hay rake? Did the arsonist know the boy was inside? Or, god forbid, had burning Bulis alive been his objective? The nightwatchmen had been drugged, the grain store flooded with oil and set alight, but who was fighting on the steps while the inferno raged, and who had clamped her tight in a bear hug then knocked her out? She could understand it if he'd left her where she had fallen, but instead he'd taken the trouble of carrying her back to bed. Later, she thought, she would go through a few rooms, see who scented their clothes with sweet cinnamon. Because someone A woman's scream cut through her conjecture.

So jarring was the sound, so utterly obscene in this moment of reverence as Bulis's remains were carried indoors, that at first no one understood what was happening. Then people saw where the woman was pointing.

And more screams filled the air.

Sails brailed, oars shipped, a galley lay at anchor in the calm, rose-red waters. Slim and symmetrical with her high carved posts fore and aft and her single bank of oars, there was no mistaking her for a merchantman. But the galley formed no part of the Imperial Navy. The colours she flew were of Mars, God of War. And the painted eyes were right at the front, on her bow. All the better to see her prey.

So much for the threat of piracy not being substantive.

'Jason!' Leo hissed through his teeth. 'Qus, arm the men! Everyone, man your stations! Prepare to defend to the death.'

Out on her prow, its bronze ram glinting in the rising sun, one man stood alone. His arms were folded over his chest. Like the Dacian tribes over the hills to the east, he was tall and wore black pantaloons tucked into red leather boots. He wasn't a Dacian, though. Dacian warriors wore a beard as their badge of identity. This man was clean shaven. And unlike the Dacians, his swordbelt tied under the crotch. Other tribes did that, of course, including Shamshi's fellow Persians. What gave him away were the blue tattoos on his forearms. Those tattoos pronounced the captain a Scythian. That savage race of warriors who sacrificed horses — and occasionally humans — to the sun god they worshipped.

Suddenly a lot of things fell into place.

'Bastards!' Leo ran to the cliff edge and waved his fists. 'Murdering bloody bastards,' he yelled.

The lone figure performed a long, insolent bow before resuming his original pose. Gold glittered in the sunlight when he leaned forward. At his neck and also at his belt.

'Qus!' Leo roared. 'Is the Medea ready?'

'Naturally,' the bailiff replied. 'You gave strict orders to keep her primed to sail at a moment's notice.'

'Well, this is the moment, Qus! Muster the crew. I'm going after that murdering bastard.'