Black Salamander (25 page)

‘Why?’ Titus said. ‘Because we were destined to reappear as ignominiously as we vanished?’

‘Bet that wasn’t in his
scientific
calculations,’ sneered the glass-blower.

‘Come on, a week late?’ Volso screeched. ‘You’d think they’d send some kind of committee.’

‘I need to make my report,’ Theo muttered.

‘I’ll take payment now,’ Arcas said.

Sluicing water over her body, Claudia smiled to herself.

Funny how they were never happier, this group, than when they were bickering! Drying herself on a towel, she pulled on a fresh cotton gown smelling of peach blossom and thyme and dabbed perfume liberally round her neck and wrists. Apollo’s celestial light flashed out her reflection in the mirror and while the new frock she’d picked up that afternoon hung well and accentuated all the right curves, there was no disguising the thousand curls which tumbled round her shoulders. Dammit, she ought to have hired a maid, a girl capable of dealing with a tangle like this, but time was too tight and thus Claudia delegated the task of defying gravity to a dozen ivory hairpins. Satisfied with the result, she slipped on a pair of gold earrings shaped like leaping dolphins and reached for the satchel which, no matter what these past few days, had never left her side.

‘Scuse me.’ The door creaked open and a dumpling of a girl shouldered her way into the room, a leather bucket in one hand, a sponge and a heather broom in the other.

‘Out!’ Claudia ordered. For what she was about to do, she needed to be entirely alone.

Water sloshed out of the leather bucket in the servant’s red, chapped hands. ‘Can’t,’ she said, kicking shut the door with a fat clog of a foot. ‘My orders are to scrub this chamber.’ She gave a combative sniff. ‘Thoroughly.’

Claudia followed the girl’s narrowed eyes to the newly delivered crate beside the bed. ‘And my orders are for you to skedaddle.’

‘Sorry.’ She wasn’t. Not a bit. ‘The landlord insists. No cats in this inn, he says.’ Her gaze settled on the counterpane, still warm and hollow and furry from Drusilla’s recent sleep. ‘They moult, bring in fleas and scratch up the
furniture, and the landlord says to tell you he’s very sorry’
—
he wasn’t; not a bit—‘but you can’t stay here. Not with cats.’

Claudia knew that if Drusilla was around, there’d be no question of any collision course with the management. One glance at that blue-eyed, cross-eyed Egyptian form advancing sideways across the floor, spitting like a cobra and yowling like a sphinx—dear me, not only mine host, but every member of his staff and distant family would be tumbling over themselves to extend the invitation. However, Drusilla
wasn’t
here. She had accepted without complaint the rigours of the journey, the company of strangers, even the smell of roses from the balcony. But the instant that carpenter delivered a new crate, she had made her feelings very plain indeed.

You can tame my spirit, her arched back screamed, but you can never cage it. And off she’d gone, no doubt stalking in the kitchens in a huff. A roasted quail here, a stuffed sardine there, she’d show them who was boss, and in fact any second Claudia half-expected to hear a terrified wail from the cook.

But that didn’t solve the problem of Miss Zealous Brush here.

In the street below, Arcas glanced left and right, then headed off towards the river like a man who knew his way around this town, but not, Claudia noted, like a man weighed down with several thousand silver coins.

‘Very well, you scrub the room. I’ll pack,’ she said cheerfully, waiting until the girl had set down her broom and bucket before adding, ‘only mind that satchel, won’t you?’ She timed her pause carefully. ‘Not that snakes are particularly active in the late afternoon.’

‘S-snakes?’ The servant eyed the satchel warily.

‘Only two,’ Claudia breezed. ‘And being pythons, they’re not very fast—oh, I say,’ she called after her, ‘you left your sponge behind!’

Down in the street, the Silver Fox was nowhere to be seen. Three youths, still drunk from their lunchtime binge, wove a zigzag path, their arms clamped round one another’s shoulders as they sang a loud and vulgar song. All right for them, Claudia thought. Rich fathers, you could tell by the cut of their clothes, the rings and the boots they were wearing. Probably taking the scenic loop home from university in Massilia, their futures all mapped out for them, jobs, wives, the lot. But when you’re born to the slums and orphaned young, it’s a different game you play, requiring skills no teacher in Massilia can ever impart or pupils would be jammed in to the rafters. Claudia ran the deerskin pouch lightly between her fingers, felt its velvety softness in her hand, inhaled the rich, warm smell of leather.

Now she knew that it was part of a treasure map she held, it seemed so much heavier somehow. She rattled it again, listened to the familiar chink. He was one smart squeeze, the Salamander—

Rat-a-tat-tat.

‘Go away.’

She was in no mood for come-and-join-us. What she had to do next required total concentration and no small degree of privacy.

Rat-a-tat-tat, tat, tat, tat, tat.

Hardly Iliona’s style. It must be that bloody landlord! Try to evict Claudia Seferius from the premises, would he? Ha! Well, next time his wife sees him, he’ll be wearing ears where his kidneys once sat—

The latch lifted. ‘Room service,’ carolled a familiar baritone, the scent of sandalwood preceding him into the chamber. His firm grip held a silver tray containing two stem goblets and a decent-sized jug of wine, together with a heap of steaming pastries.

Shit! Claudia dropped the pouch, kicked it under the bed and leaned against the door frame, as though too busy enjoying the roses on the balcony to notice tavern slaves. ‘Leave it on the table,’ she said haughtily, flicking her wrist.

‘House rule,’ he said. ‘New guests have to take a drink with the staff. Here.’ A glass of fragrant vintage red appeared in front of her. Strange, she’d never noticed that little scar on the inside of his wrist, white and old,
but…
‘Now, now, don’t snatch,’ he chided. ‘Or I’ll suspect I have an alcoholic on my hands.’

‘Orbilio, I am about to go out for the evening. Kindly get the hell out of my bedroom.’

‘Anywhere special?’ He leaned his weight against the door frame opposite, their shoulders nearly touching.

‘Frankly,’ she said, ‘I don’t give a hoot where you go.’

‘I’—he focused on the building opposite, a warehouse, newly built and partly empty—‘was referring to you, actually.’

She didn’t need to look at him to know he was grinning. She took a sip of the wine, then another, then another. It was far too good a plonk to be sold in a smoky dive like this, and the pastries seemed somewhat superior, too. Especially that cinnamon bun…

‘Me?’ she replied. That bun had almonds in it, she could smell them, along with raisins and just a hint of apple. ‘Ooh, just out. See if I can’t find a decent place to eat.’ Since the better lodgings had been snatched up by the main body of the delegation days ago, he could hardly pick holes in
that
argument.

‘So how come you’ve taken two buns?’

Damn! ‘I dine late,’ she said, licking the honey from her top lip.

‘Then why are you going out early?’

Somewhere, Claudia could hear teeth grinding. Hers. ‘Orbilio, it’s a lovely summer’s evening, in case you hadn’t noticed. Who in their right mind
wouldn’t
want to explore this beautiful city?’

‘Mmm.’ He frowned in concentration. ‘Well—’

‘That was not a serious question.’

‘Maybe not,’ he said mildly, ‘but it deserves a serious answer. And I can think of at least one category of person whose thoughts wouldn’t be on exploring this particular town, where the Sequani tongue predominates, where the buildings are nothing to write home about, being mostly timber framed and thatched, and where organized entertainment is painfully thin on the ground. The person, for instance, who has an appointment to keep?’

‘Is blue blood a prerequisite for tunnel vision?’

‘An appointment, moreover, for trading certain packages?’

‘Marcus, Marcus, Marcus.’ Claudia fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Surely if you, as one of Rome’s leading investigative lights, believed a certain citizen was conveying treasonable information, you would do your utmost to ensure this was not passed to the enemy?’

‘I would.’

Still they stood side by side, leaning against opposite doorposts, sipping wine and not looking at each other.

‘Therefore you would be confident that said citizen was actually in possession of said document?’

‘I would.’

‘And to acquire said information, you’d have had to make a search of said citizen’s belongings?’ Breathe in. Deep breath. Cross fingers. ‘Therefore you must know by now I am not a courier.’

There was a beat of six. Had the bluff worked? ‘I haven’t searched your belongings,’ he growled.

Yes!

‘And you know damn well why.’

Don’t I just! Not because he couldn’t. Even though the satchel had been attached to Claudia tighter than a barnacle, a professional like Supersnoop had the nous to find a way, and neither was it because he feared Claudia would notice. His hands were far too deft for that. No, no. Marcus Upright Orbilio had not searched her satchel because it breached his code of ethics.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she said, topping up their glasses with a guileless smile.

Orbilio rubbed a weary hand over his face. ‘Time is running out for silly mind games,’ he said eventually. ‘So I shall spell it out.’

Although clearly the alphabet was not his strong point. Several minutes passed, in which Claudia could feel the heat from his body shimmering across the handspan which divided them. There were moments, she thought she could hear his heartbeat, even above the clamour of chariots rattling over the flagstones below, above the incomprehensible jabber of Sequani hucksters and the pleas of beggars, unmistakable in any language. Noises filtered up from the wine room below, the clink of plates, the chink of goblets, laughter, banter, and tantalizing aromas of roast boar and sucking pig, of garlic, leeks and fresh baked yeasty bread.

‘Jupiter alone is privy to what happened in your past,’ Orbilio said, so quietly she had to strain to catch the words. Then he cleared his throat, and his baritone was crisp and level once again. ‘I could have searched your bags,’ he said, turning for the first time to face her. ‘Any time I wanted, and you’d have never known. But I would.’ He would never know the strength of mind it took to keep on staring straight ahead, so he might only catch her profile. Unblinking and unconcerned.

‘And I am not prepared to live with that deception.’ His voice rasped. ‘On the other hand,’ and suddenly there was steel in his voice, ‘neither am I prepared to stand aside while you profit from Rome’s downfall.’

He could not see the hand at her side which clenched so tightly that her nails drew blood from the palm as they dug into the flesh.

‘Cheap shot, Marcus. Which, incidentally, has failed to hit its target’—my integrity—‘if only for the simple reason that, had you felt it prudent to remove and presumably destroy the various sections which comprise the map, you would have done so. Therefore your strategy must be to allow the rebellion to continue right on schedule.’

It was not enough that he nipped this plot in the bud. He wouldn’t rest until he’d brought the conspirators to book, and he could only do that by letting the couriers hand over their precious deerskin pouches and following the middleman, in the hope it would lead…where? The middleman was working for the rebels.

And then, as though snow had come blasting down from the Alps, Claudia understood why Orbilio was here, in her room this afternoon. It was his intention to be part of the plan. To relieve her of her portion of the map and hand it over in her place, to inveigle himself with the rebels. She wondered why that should make her sick to her stomach. After all, he ran risks every day, why should this be any different? Wasn’t he always putting himself in the firing line? It’s his job. He chooses to do it. She shouldn’t feel queasy with worry—

‘Assuming our conclusions are correct,’ he said, and Claudia was glad she remained in profile, because without intending to, one renegade eyebrow shot skywards when he said ‘our’. Something kicked inside her stomach, too. ‘The conspirators in Rome are out to double-cross the rebel chieftains.’

‘Who must keep on believing that payment for their role in the overthrow of the Empire is still coming, even when it isn’t, because the conspirators need that money to keep the Roman soldiers sweet.’ Don’t think I haven’t been paying attention, Marcus Cornelius! ‘However, if the bribe is so vast,’ she said, ‘why don’t you trace it from source?’ Why join forces with the rebels, why put yourself in so much danger?

A wry smile twisted his face. ‘Tried that—and guess what? No single individual has moved the bulk of his assets within recent weeks, and believe me, we’d know about financial shifts on that scale in the Security Police—oh, and before you say it, a whole group of them couldn’t have moved bits and pieces of their fortunes—you’d be talking about a hundred conspirators, and even if there was just a fraction of that number, we’d have heard a whisper through informants.’