'Schedules cannot mourn,' he'd pronounced, refusing his crew so much as one hour off. 'Timetables cannot grieve and neither can we until the contract is finished.'
Grief and shock, he added, tolerated no margins of error, it was business as usual on the frescoes. So, with Saunio standing over them, the labourers laboured to ensure the plaster was mixed to the exact level of dampness required to take a brush. The apprentices ground pigments to the exact mix of colour. An exact amount of outline was drawn for the artists to fill in.
'… the future,' he was saying, 'lies in illusionistic art, my lovely. Art is truth and truth is art, but therein the question lies. What constitutes truth?'
'What indeed.'
'Take the meander in the banqueting hall. At first glance, it looks like a maze, but follow any of the lines with your eye — any one of them, Claudia — and you realize it is nothing but illusion. Misinformation. Created by shadows and spaces and geometrical trickery.'
His hollow gaze fixed itself on the pool, where he stared through the sparkling water to the green veined marble which lined it. So deep was his gaze, that he might have been staring straight into Hades itself.
'If the eye can be led, so can the mind,' he said slowly. 'For we can all be made to believe things which are not there.'
It was probably the light from the oil lamps flickering on the water, but Saunio's reflection made him appear even more squat and reptilian than usual tonight. Almost an allegory of depravity to fit the rumours.
'Illusion,' he said. 'That is the path for the artist to follow.'
'Wrong.' With a jerk of her thumb, Claudia indicated the exit. 'That is the path for the artist to follow. Goodbye.'
Shamshi was waiting, hands folded, outside the entrance to the dining hall. He was no longer wearing his baggy green trousers, but an ankle-length kaftan with a deep and richly embroidered hem. The brilliant artificial lights glinted off the thick hoops in his ears.
'Claudia.'
'Well, if it isn't Uncle Happy, the kiddies' pet.'
His mouth stretched a fraction sideways, the closest it came to a smile. 'Dear child, I need to speak with you,' he began, but at that point, Nikias turned the corner.
'Imparting your latest prediction?' he asked, and Claudia wondered whether she'd caught a flash of mischief in his eyes, or whether it was a trick of the flickering lamplight.
'I tried to tell her, Nik,' Shamshi said, his sibilant voice treacly with smugness. 'Earlier this afternoon, I tried to tell Claudia what I'd read in the entrails of my goat.'
The portrait painter grimaced. 'Stick to books, old man. Not so messy.' To Claudia, he said, 'Coming?'
'We will join you in a minute,' Shamshi said, indicating in no uncertain terms that the conversation was private. Nikias responded with an as-you-wish nod, but Claudia had a different idea on how to spend her evening. It did not include Persian gut-gazers. But as she swept past, a bony hand clamped over her shoulder and stopped her dead in her tracks.
'Listen,' he whispered, and his mouth was so close that his breath wafted her hair and the scent of it was as sweet as an overripe melon. 'I bring you a warning.'
Even though she shook his grip free, the memory of his fingers lingered on her skin like a burn. And he still didn't smell of cinnamon, dammit.
'This morning at dawn,' he said, 'I cast the bones, inspected the entrails, searched the skies for the signs until finally the gods spoke.'
'Until finally the goats spoke, you mean.'
'Do not mock what you do not understand,' he snapped. 'Heed my warning. Before the sun stands thrice more over our heads, a woman shall die.'
Did her heart miss a beat there? 'I thought your omens couldn't foretell death? Only "disaster"?' Funny how the rules change to suit the occasion.
'Vivid portents can never be ignored,' Shamshi said. 'The signs are as clear as though they were written in stone. Before the sun stands thrice more over our heads, it is decreed that a woman shall die.' He leaned towards her, his dark eyes searching her face. 'Take care, Claudia. Take very good care. Danger lurks among us tonight.'
Seventeen
Tall as a Dacian, lean as an athlete, bronzed as Apollo himself, Jason stood on the deck of his warship the Soskia, gazing up at the stars. Overhead was Draco, the Dragon, snaking its way between the Great Bear and the Little Bear in the way dragons do, its fiery mouth snarling at Vega, brilliantly defiant in the zenith above. Draco was the hundred-headed serpent who had guarded the golden apples in the Gardens of the Hesperides. It was said that each mouth of the dragon spoke a different tongue.
Jason turned his gaze past the black brailed sails towards the eastern horizon, but the heat haze prevented even a glimpse of Pegasus galloping through the night sky. There would be no rumble of celestial hooves tonight, Jason thought. No thunder, no lightning, the weather was settled. No rain would fall in these parts for some weeks.
The fires which flared along the Liburnian waterfront would have to be doused with seawater.
The Soskia, Greek for 'moth', was anchored too far out to discern any of the frantic activity or hear the shouts and the screams.
Moths do well to keep clear of flames.
'Ale?' rumbled a gruff voice in his ear.
Jason turned to see Geta, his stocky, red-headed helmsman, holding out a horn beaker of foaming black beer. Until the first swig hit his tongue, he hadn't realized he'd been thirsty. Raucous laughter bellowed up from the closed deck below, the clink of mugs, the tang of fermented grain. Guards patrolled the upper deck and sentries kept watch from the wales.
As Jason gulped down his ale, the helmsman studied his captain.
Unlike other Scythians, Geta included, there was no Asiatic slant to Jason's eye. Aye, but then Jason were warrior caste, Geta thought, an expert swordsman, at home with scimitar, lance and battleaxe. Depending on who you listened to, he were either the by-blow of a prince or the bastard of a Trebizond merchant. Jason never let on, but then he wouldn't. Men from the Caucasus don't talk much.
But Jason's history were common knowledge on account of his ma being a priestess, like. One of fifty who served the moon goddess Acca. Foreigners called 'em Amazons, since Acca's priestesses bore arms for certain rituals, and that were how Jason came to be a warrior. Through the temple.
Like Geta's, the captain's body was also covered top to toe in tattoos. They were Scythians. Weren't given no choice. But every man's brands were unique. Up Jason's arms flew Tahiti's sacred crane and Acca's sacred wryneck bird. On his thighs galloped the horse sacred to Targitaos the sun god, while his totem clan, the bull, shielded Jason's chest from evil. Dzoulemes, the sharp-sighted lynx, kept watch on his back.
Geta were from the Danube delta, so it were natural that his totem were the water serpent. His father were a boatman, aye, and his father before him, and Geta had absorbed the complexities of the Danube's watery labyrinth with his mother's milk. Before he were ten, he could navigate its tortuous channels. At fifteen he'd progressed to working the trade ships round the Black, Aegean and Ionian seas. By eighteen, he could read clouds and the behaviour of seabirds, were able to predict when storms would whip up, and where, and knew the best refuges to run to.
Piracy were the obvious step. Blindfold, he could circumnavigate them blue ice floes cast adrift from Russian rivers — what some called the clashing rocks. Likewise, that strange cluster of islands in the Sea of Marmora, round whose cliffs the winds turned without warning. Geta had had many a rich picking off the wrecks around them! Only then that bloody Roman Emperor started interfering, didn't he? Aye, and buggered up a smashing little earner. Armed bloody escorts to protect the merchant fleet. What kind of life's that, when a man's not even given chance to plunder the wrecks? When Geta heard the Soskia was recruiting, he jumped. Plunder, he reckoned, might not be so hard to come by under a fellow Scythian!