Kelli Stanley - The Curse-Maker

“Faro is very good-looking, you know. It’s understandable.” She was looking at her fingernails.

I felt my lips pinch up against my teeth. “He reminds me of Philo.”

She sighed. “You wouldn’t say such things if you really knew him. Poor Philo.”

“ ‘Poor Philo?’ Why the hell is he so poor?”

“He was worried about me yesterday, but respectful. He spoke very highly of you, and said he’d heard about curse-deaths from patients, but never really paid attention. Thought it was part of the ghost-mine nonsense.”

“So why ‘poor Philo’?”

“Oh, nothing important. He’s from Hispania-Lusitania, I think. When he was a young man, he was a temple doctor for a healing god. Endo … Endovelicus or something. And he lost the only woman he ever truly loved.” She looked down at the table and blushed. “He said I reminded him of her.”

I looked around to see what was making the noise and realized it was my teeth grinding. So the bastard made the most out of his age. The smarmy bastard.

Gwyna looked up at me. “It’s just a story. Don’t be too hard on Philo.”

“Did you find out anything from anyone who didn’t want to sleep with you?”

The color in her cheeks increased. “Don’t be vulgar. I tried to talk to that boy’s grandmother-the one that died.”

“His name was Dewi.”

“She wouldn’t tell me anything. Gave me a baleful look, and kept making the sign against the evil eye.”

She shook her head, and a couple of stray blond tendrils tumbled down the side of her face. “The people … the women … they’re so afraid. Something needs to be done.”

I stood up, shoving the basket chair aside hard enough to make it squeak. “I’m going to do something right now.”

She looked down at her shaking hands. Behind the grief, anger. The Trinovantian woman I married.

“I hope you can find out who put the son of a bitch up to it. I’d gladly slit his throat myself.”

I took her by the shoulders. “Leave it to me. I’ll get back as soon as I can. We can separate ourselves from the Aquae Sulis social scene for one goddamn day.”

She grimaced. “I may as well let the talk spread before I start to wade in it.”

I walked out, leaving her to keep busy with the servants. Action was better for Gwyna. Normal. Not like the lethargy. Fury hit me full force, and my hands-my long, nimble doctor’s hands-were clenched and shaking.

My wife thought about killing herself last night. She’d been exposed and humiliated in front of people who weren’t fit to look at her. Someone had done it on purpose, had set her up to suffer. Now it was his turn.

One of the slaves brought Nimbus out to me. I was in a hurry to meet Faro Magnus.

* * *

The house was shuttered. No sound, no bluster, no pestering me to breed my mare. I patted Nimbus on the neck and tied her to the branch of a nearby ash.

A slave opened the door a crack. Older woman, terrified, shrinking as if I were going to hit her.

“Where’s Mumius?”

“The-the gentleman who stayed?”

I nodded. “Soldier. The only ‘gentleman’ in the house.”

Her eyes got bigger, and she flattened herself against the wall. “I’ll show you to the mistress.”

I strode after the old lady, who led me into a dark room where thin gruel and gray-looking eggs lay unadorned on a table. Materna was squatting in a chair, looking like a tick torn off a particularly juicy vein.

“Oh? So you’ve come back, have you? Come to apologize?”

I didn’t want to get too close. She smelled. The dim light highlighted the beard she was growing, reflected the shine on her beetle eyes. The kind of beetle that likes to eat dead flesh.

“Actually, no. Although maybe I should, Materna. Maybe I should.”

The crack of a triumphant smile started to crease her lower lip. “Well, if you think-”

I was in a hurry. I got closer and held my nose.

“I do think. About a lot of things. Like why you like to sit back and watch other people suffer. Like why you get your kicks from pain-and watching Faro stoke it. Better get your kicks where and while you can, Materna … since he won’t be stoking you.”

The beetle eyes hid under the beetle brows. “You rude, miserable-”

“Before we start on what I am, let’s start on what I’m not. I’m not sorry for what I said, what I did, what I’m saying now, or what I’m likely to say or do to you in the future. The only thing I’m sorry for is not having the time to say it well. You’re a sick woman. The kind of sick no doctor could heal. I wouldn’t even try.”

Staring silence. Even her fingers quit tapping the chair.

“What do you want?” she said abruptly.

“Faro. Is Mumius still holding him?”

She turned her head slightly to the left, as if she couldn’t bear it. “My worthless husband is with him. In the study.”

“Where is it?”

“Second door on the right. Down the corridor.”

I turned to go. She murmured after me: “You worried it wasn’t yours?”

I breathed in, out, a little at a time. In and out. Got control of my lungs.

“See these hands, Materna? They deliver babies. They clamp arteries. They sew up the guts of men who don’t know they’re already dead. They’re strong hands. If you were a man, and I was less of one-I’d break your fucking neck.”

I don’t know whether it was my shaking fingers an inch away from her face or the rasp in my voice. She pushed her square head back as far as she could.

My arms dropped, stiff and sore with tension. “I wouldn’t poison myself by touching you.”

I walked down the corridor, catching a glimpse of Secunda, lurking in the shadows. I threw open the door without knocking. Secundus was asleep in a chair while Mumius groggily watched Faro, who was stretched out on a couch, staring at the ceiling.

“Secundus. Mumius.”

Secundus woke up with a start. “Eh? Arcturus! About time you got here. It’s-what, nearly the third hour?”

“I got here as soon as I could. There’s been another murder.”

Secundus blanched. Mumius blinked a few times. Faro kept his eyes fixed upward, but his breaths were coming faster.

“What-who-”

“A priest. Name of Calpurnius.”

The two men showed no recognition. Faro was still watching the ceiling rot.

“Secundus-whose idea was it to invite Faro last night?”

He lowered his eyes. “The wife’s. He’s a friend of the family. My daughter likes him a little too well, but the wife didn’t want to not see him on account of it.”

The necromancer was listening intently.

“When did you decide?”

“It’s been planned for weeks. She’s-she talked about nothing else. Not even been interested in the horses.”

“And whose idea was it to invite us-me and my wife?”

He scratched his head. “You know, I can’t remember. Seems like I thought it up, once I heard who you were.”

Most of Secundus’s ideas would seem like that, nearly all of them would come from Materna’s mouth.

“I’m going to interrogate Faro. Are you staying?”

Secundus turned red. “We-that is to say, I-I think I should. It happened in-in our-in my house … but-but Arcturus-”

“What is it?”

“Did he-did he-break the law?”

I massaged the back of my hand. “He broke my law, Secundus. He hurt my wife. While we were guests in your home. That means he also broke the laws of hospitality.” I stretched my fingers out and flexed them. “Don’t worry. I’m not taking him to court.”

Mumius and Secundus looked at each other. Mumius finally spoke. “I guess I’ll stay, too.”

“Whatever you like, but anything this maggot says about my wife doesn’t leave this room.”