Marilyn Todd - Wolf Whistle

He hadn’t so much as blinked. ‘Don’t you want to know about Magic?’ he asked, sweeping his arm to indicate the chair.

‘No.’ Claudia remained standing. ‘His tirade of filth has stopped.’ There had been nothing for two days. Perhaps she’d killed him, after all?

Kaeso straightened a marble bust which stood upon a podium by the wall. There was a Greekness about it, suggesting great antiquity.

‘I am here,’ she said, ‘to talk about Arbil, and why, when you were engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse involving Magic, and doubtless several other commissions besides, you felt obliged to look up a few old friends half a day’s ride out of town.’

‘And just what business might that be of yours?’ he asked, so quietly she had to strain to catch the words.

Well… now you ask. None actually.

‘Furthermore, what gives you the right to barge into my house then root me out like a truffle?’ He padded across the room and his grey eyes bored into hers, but he couldn’t quite hold back the amusement which danced in them. ‘But most importantly, Claudia Seferius, how the bloody hell did you find out about this room?’

He’d been washing, she decided, when she’d burst into the house. There were splashes of water round the bowl and on the floor, and the towel was soaking wet.

‘Your conjuring tricks.’ Against her will, she smiled back. And that was why Kaeso was dangerous. ‘I spent a long time waiting in your atrium-’ (was it really only eight days ago?) and I had a feeling then I was being watched.’ In fact, I suspect the peephole is behind the statue you’ve just straightened. ‘Also, that story you spun about Tucca, something didn’t quite ring true. Is she your mother?’

‘Commendably close.’ He adjusted the buckle on his belt, reinforcing the notion of recent and hasty dressing. ‘She worked as a nursemaid for Arbil, we grew close and as you’ve already guessed, it’s me and not some fictitious daughter who looks after her. But,’ he gave a twisted grin, ‘the part about her husband is the truth. His bones do lie in the garden, and I should know, because I buried him myself.’

Between the bay tree and the yew, if I recall…Claudia turned to examine a painting on the wall. It was a rustic scene, shepherds on some hills, the sea calm and blue beyond, but nowhere that she recognized.

‘A girl was killed in my garden.’ Straight to the point, atta girl. ‘Her name was Annia, she was raised by Arbil, and she’s the latest in a number of similar attacks.’ Why mention that the killer mistook Severina for his intended victim?

Kaeso’s brow furrowed only slightly, but his answer was a long time coming. Finally he sat down on the bed and leaned his weight back upon one elbow. ‘The Market Day Murders. I see.’

She did not appear to have rattled him, but then a man who hides within his own house has long learned to curb emotions.

‘Arbil knows certain of his girls are being picked off one by one,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘Since tracking was what he trained me for, I volunteered to help.’

The bed he lay across was a combination of Roman frame and Babylonian springing, though from the badly ruffled counterpane and sheets, it would appear Kaeso suffered badly from insomnia. Or else had company.

‘Plausible,’ Claudia smiled. ‘I’d give you seven out of ten for quick thinking.’

Kaeso laughed, and the sound was by no means unpleasant. ‘Then before you pull my toenails out to get the truth, I’d better come clean about the urgency-and incidentally the secrecy-for that visit.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘The thing is, Claudia, Sargon feels his father’s mental frailties are sufficient to warrant not only a takeover, but a huge expansion in the industry.’

The word industry was not lost on her. ‘Has he divulged his new policies?’ she asked innocently. A trail of drips led from the washbasin to a wall covered by a large tapestry, where a puddle was starting to form round brown protruding toes.

‘Only that the financial rewards will be huge and my skills will be required on a permanent basis. With Arbil’s rapid deterioration in health, he intends to move quickly and asked me up there because he wanted to know whether I was in or not.’

‘And are you?’ Before nightfall, Sargon will be marched into Rome charged with peddling children for sex. Will you be in chains alongside him, Kaeso? Will you?

‘I haven’t decided,’ he shrugged.

Claudia walked over to the shrine. The figurine was cast in silver and appeared, from above, to be sexually ambivalent. She resisted the urge to lean down and determine its gender. The libation jug had dried out, only a red ring remained at the bottom, but the posy of flowers beside it was fresh. They were fragrant white lilies and she held one to her nose to inhale its heady perfume. Suddenly her magenta gown seemed garish in this room of seascape colours.

Without a word, Claudia tossed the lily in his lap and swept out of Kaeso’s bedroom.

At the far side of the atrium, she paused to glance over her shoulder. The green and yellow blocks of colour on the walls revealed no trace of the concealed doors that had closed seamlessly behind her. It was as though they’d never been. And for an instant, Claudia, too, was tempted to believe it was pure imagination, a figment of the light and lack of sleep.

The house did that to you.

It was intended to.

*

The figure that stepped out from behind the tapestry in Kaeso’s room was frowning. ‘What did that meddling bitch want?’

The man’s tracker eyes were still fixed on the pair of double doors. ‘She’s having trouble with a stalker. He attacked her, and she wants him dealt with.’

‘She didn’t look very scared when she came barging through your front door, pushing Tucca to the ground.’

‘I never said she was frightened,’ Kaeso pointed out. The other person sighed away their irritation, slowly inching up their tunic, first above one knee and then the thigh, then the other knee and thigh. Only when the body was fully revealed in its exquisite beauty, bathed in gold from pools of sunlight, did Kaeso wrench the whole of his gaze away from the doors. Sinuous arms coiled around his neck.

‘You do love me, don’t-?’ But the lips were silenced by the placing of two gentle fingers over them.

‘Ssssh.’

Teeth made a playful grab for the admonishing fingertips. ‘What’s that you’re hiding in your hand?’

He unclenched his fist. ‘A lily,’ he replied. ‘Nothing but a lily.’

‘It smells better than that perfume she’s left in the room.’ Expert hands began to unbuckle Kaeso’s belt. ‘Do you think she suspects?’ a voice murmured in his ear. ‘About you and me, I mean?’

Grey eyes pierced the lily he still clutched in his fist. ‘Not a chance.’

His belt clattered to the floor, but when fingers gently tugged the tunic upwards, they were stilled by firm and downward pressure.

‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Not just for the moment.’

Hurt replaced lust in the eyes. ‘Why not?’

Kaeso smiled, but in his eyes there was no emotion to be read. None at all. ‘Because I have to go out for a while, that is why.’

*

The last person Orbilio expected to see when he returned to his own house was Annia, and several emotions hit him at once. Relief, of course, that she was safe. Anger, aimed at himself for not keeping proper tabs, and at her, for being irresponsible. And other, less rational feelings. Irritation, compassion and, it has to be said, pride. Watching her feeding the caged birds in the courtyard with seed from the palm of her hand, her long, fair hair tumbling down her back just like her mother’s, he felt a constriction in his breast, which he could not explain. So slight, he thought. So fragile. He followed the liquid pleats of her tunic down to the hem. How could Daphne have been so callous?