Furies (58 page)

“You? But …” A
sudden chill coursed through him like a river of ice
.
“You knew?”

“Yes, I knew.
Zeanthes and I have been together for a very long time,” she said. “He trained me since I was a child. As I’ve been training Idaia.”

“No,” he gasped. “No …”

Calisto gazed down at him
, her lovely violet eyes dark as midnight
, the scar along her jaw stark white against her face
. “When you first appeared asking about Neaera, claiming to be a friend of Iovinus’, I was terrified. It felt like all the other places we had to run from. I thought for certain we’d be discovered. I wanted to leave that very night. But Zeanthes wasn’t afraid at all. He wanted to meet with you. To understand why you were delivered into our lives. It was Zeanthes who saw you for what you truly are. Our Apollo.”

“Apollo?” Aculeo said.
His
head was pounding now, his chest on fire.
“This w
as all just some sick fantasy to you as well?”

“No, not a fantasy,” she said. “We needed to fall in love, and we did. You can’t tell me our love wasn’t real.”

“But what of Ralla? Was he even involved?”

“He played a role of course,” she said.

“A role? You make it sound like he was an actor in a fucking play! You let me think he was at the centre of it all. I tried to murder him!”

“My Apollo,” she said and tried to take his hand again. He pulled it from her grasp. He felt like he was going to vomit. She gave him a wounded look. “Oh Aculeo – what choice did we have? We could hardly have left Ralla alive knowing all that he did. He couldn’t possibly have understood – he would have made so much trouble. When he turned up just before the symposium began, he was completely unhinged from your attempt on his life. We had to deal with him or it would have ruined everything.”

Aculeo f
elt a numb sensation seeping through his body. He
clutched his stomach – it felt suddenly as though he’d swallowed a fistful of white-hot potshards. He tried to stand, fell to his knees, then dropped on
his hands, cold sweat pouring down his face. He looked up at her in anguish.

“Aculeo, my love, forgive me.
You would have realized the truth eventually.”

He tried to grab onto her, to take hold of something real, but his hands wouldn’t move. He tried to speak, but his tongue lay like a piece of dead meat stuck in his mouth. He lay there on the floor, unable to stand, his body started to convulse
.

Calisto stood there, looking down at him, watching him die. “I’ll always love you, Aculeo. That’s real, I promise you.” She bent over and kissed him then, a long slow kiss. Then all he could hear was the sound of her footsteps as she walked away.

Aculeo dreamed of Titiana, her lovely face, reaching out her hands to him. He dreamed of Atellus running down the hallway of their villa, laughing his beautiful laugh, always just out of reach. He dreamed of a crowded, bustling marketplace, of a mad, drunken symposium where the guests feasted on flesh, of dark, endless tunnels that wound through cisterns of blood. He dreamed of the sea. He dreamed of Sekhet standing over him, rolling him onto his back, her hands burning cold as she pressed her fingertips against the side of his neck, gazed intently into his eyes.

“Can you speak, Roman?” she asked, her voice echoing from an eternity ago. He just looked back at her, wondering why she was here. The vision of her slipped into darkness as she walked away.

Sekhet took a small pouch from her satchel, forced Aculeo’s mouth open and pressed a pinch of powdered medicine under his tongue. His tongue and lips were tinged with blue, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He had little time left. He lay there for a moment, not responding, then he groaned and writhed in pain before vomiting up a mouthful of pink-white froth.

“What are you doing?” a woman’s voice demanded from the edge of the courtyard.

Sekhet didn’t bother to look up. Aculeo’s breathing was rough and uneven, his pulse was thin as a thread being drawn out of a tapestry, beating far too fast to count. The poison had already worked its way into his system, so the lotus emetic had done little for him. “What did you give him? Rock flower?”

“How dare you! Get out of my house this instant! Kushu!”

The healer dug into her satchel again, searching. There, foxglove to slow his heart, she thought, putting a pinch of the dried flower under his tongue. Aculeo gagged, coughed half of it up, moaned and twisted on the ground, sweat running down his pallid grey face. It wasn’t looking good, not good at all.

“Idaia told me everything,” Sekhet said. “She even told me all about how you turned her into a little murderer as well, luring your victims to your depraved parties to serve as your osti. Your sacrifices.”

“She’s Phrygian. She understands sacrifice.”

“She’s a child!” the healer snapped. “Ah, it doesn’t matter anymore. I sent word to the Public Order officers. Everyone will finally know you for the murderous bitch you are.”

Calisto gave a cutting laugh. “You actually believe anyone would arrest me? That my friends would permit it? Why? For you? For justice?”

“You forget that whatever patrons you had are dead,” Sekhet said.

“You’ve no idea of how Alexandria works,” Calisto said. “I’ve a hundred others in high places ready to help me at a moment’s notice.”

“And what of Aculeo? Who’ll help him?”

“He’s already dead.” With that, the hetaira turned to go.

Sekhet grabbed Calisto suddenly by the chiton. “You’re not leaving here tonight.”

Calisto spun around on her, slapping the healer across the face. “Know your place, fellahin witch!” she hissed.

Sekhet smiled grimly. “And what’s your place, Phrygian whore? On your back with your well-worked legs wrapped around whatever lovestruck fool that’s fallen for your poisonous charms?” Calisto’s face went pale with rage. She lashed out at her again but Sekhet caught her by the wrist this time and twisted it painfully behind her back.

“Let go of me!” Calisto squealed, but the healer held fast, pulling her back tight against her own chest. She pressed her mouth against Calisto’s cheek like a lover wanting to whisper in her delicate ear.

“It’s true, we’re quite different people, you and I,” Sekhet said. “No doubt the fools that run this city would sooner listen to your charming lies than hear the truth from the likes of me. But don’t forget, from commonest slave to Phrygian whore, we all have one thing in common.”

“What’s that?” Calisto hissed.

“We all bleed.” Sekhet put her hand to the shoulder of Calisto’s chiton and drew out her fibula pin, long and sharp as any dagger, then stabbed it beneath the hetaira’s left breast.

Calisto cried out, tried to pull away, but the healer locked her in a tight embrace, pulled her in closer, pushing the fibula in hard and deep until it would go no further, then gave a sharp twist. Calisto gasped, arching backwards in the healer’s arms. Sekhet released her and she fell to the floor, blood spilling on her fine silks, pooling beneath her on the marble floor, the heady smell of death filling the dark atrium. Calisto looked up at Sekhet, her face white, unable to speak.

“Do you hear them whispering to you?” Sekhet asked. “All your victims, they’re calling for you now, aren’t they? Ah, so many I can almost hear them myself. They’ve been looking forward to this day, I think. Lingering on the shores of Abydos all this time, ready to escort you to your tribunal.”

“Please …no … ”

“Save your pleas for the gods you murderous bitch. Our gods this time. Just remember that when Osiris weighs your twisted, black heart, it won’t matter how charming you are, how much money you have, how many important friends you’ve gathered. No, the only thing that will matter there will be the wicked deeds you’ve done.”

Sekhet watched as the last light faded from her lovely violet eyes, then went to Aculeo and knelt beside him. “How are you now Roman, ah?” she said, examining his pupils, checking his pulse, trying to smile. “A little better I think. Come on, stay with me. You don’t want to join that bitch anytime soon. I hope you’d be sick of her company by now.”

The children laughed in delight as they played in the rushes at the side of the canal, splashing in the warm, slow-moving water while Felix ran along at their feet, barking and chasing the seabirds into the amber-coloured evening sky. Even Gellius and old Xanthias appeared to be enjoying themselves as they sat on the bank of the canal, watching the children at play.

“They seem to be having fun,” Aculeo said, watching Tyche chase a delirious Idaia along the muddy bank.

“It’s good to see them being actual children for once,” Sekhet said. The smell and clatter of the evening meal being prepared filled the air.
Fine loaves of bread, jars of beer, platters of asparagus, lentils, eel, it all smelled quite delicious. “And what of you?”

“Me? I’m fine,” Aculeo said dismissively.

The healer cocked her head suspiciously, considering him. Over a month since the ordeal ended and he still looks ill, she thought. He continued to recover of course, and his wounds had healed with minimal infection, a miracle in itself. But the damage Calisto’s poison had done to his heart might well be permanent – the effects of rock flower tended to linger for years. And there was something in his eyes as well … as though he’d been dragged to the underworld and back again, leaving something important behind on the journey. “Are you?”

“Better than some others at least.” Ralla’s body had been found in a store room of his villa, his wrists cut open. His apparent suicide had engendered whispers around the corridors of power about some sexual imbroglio possibly involving Mysteries worship. Officials had found it most expedient to blame the murders of Gurculio, Zeanthes and Calisto on Ralla’s obvious madness and decadence. In the end, no one had the political will to conduct any investigation, official or otherwise, into the involvement the Prefect’s son and his friends might have had in the scandal. Least of all Magistrate Capito, after finally being released from his thankfully short-lived incarceration.