'I told her, you'd come to rescue me,' Flavia gushed, trying unsuccessfully to link her arm in his. 'She said afterwards that she was sorry.'
Like hell, he thought, putting his foot on the rope ladder. Flea would be glad to get her own back. Dammit, he liked Flea. He imagined that was what Claudia had been like at that age, too. Feisty, spunky, sharp and streetwise. But with more intelligence!
'Where's Claudia?'
'Is she here, too?' Flavia spiralled into a sulk.
'So's Junius,' Marcus added happily.
'Is he mad at me?'
Orbilio heaved himself on to the gallery which ran around the grain store. 'What do you think?' he asked mildly. 'You left the poor sap to die.'
'But — ' Flavia's face was deep red, and he hoped it was not purely from the exertion of climbing the ladder. 'But he was only wearing a toga,' she said.
'For a slave, that incurs the death penalty,' Orbilio said, 'so you'd best be nice to him from now on. Now keep close and follow me. Uh, you don't need to keep that close.' He disengaged her arms from round his waist, and thought it doesn't take long, crush transference. One day she's in love with Ra, now it's me again. Now if it was the other Seferius woman snuggling up against me in the dark.
'What's so damned funny?' Junius, stepping from the shadows, did not let his harsh eyes so much as drop to Flavia.
'Where's Claudia?' Marcus fired back.
'She's not with you?'
Another time, Orbilio would have enjoyed watching his opponent squirm. But tonight the stakes were not coins, they were not even human emotions. The stake was flesh and blood and had long tumbling curls.
Quickly he explained to Junius how Flea had mistaken him for part of the commune security force, how she'd discovered Flavia's hiding place and, finally, how Flavia had sat with him until he came to consciousness. 'Why weren't you bloody guarding her?'
'She told me to stay put,' the Gaul growled back, and Marcus knew this was not the time to fight.
'That woman,' he said, spiking his fingers through his curls, 'is a law unto herself. Let's find her and move out.'
'She'll be with Flea,' Flavia suggested. 'And Flea won't leave without some puppy she's got herself attached to. Let's try the stables.'
Doodlebug went wild, but there was no trace of two spirited young women.
'Here.' Orbilio slipped a leash around its neck and handed the puppy over to Flavia. 'You stay here with him.' To Junius he said, 'We'll organise a search. You take from here northwards, I'll take the southern half. Meet you in an hour.'
The young Gaul also felt the stakes were too high to fight over. 'No point,' he said. 'I've covered every goddamned inch, they're not here,' he added solemnly, 'and I'm worried. Gut-wrenching worried, if the truth were told.'
Whey-faced, he outlined Claudia's theories about the missing girls and her suspicions about the overseers. He did not say that he feared his mistress and the street thief had also been abducted, but Marcus read it in his face and in his voice. Flavia had begun to weep, noisily and clumsily. Doodlebug moved to the end of his leash.
'She did,' Junius added, 'organise six henchmen to stay on red alert. They're stationed on the far side of the hills.'
'No point in hanging about, then,' Marcus said miserably. 'Let's call the cavalry. Do you know the signal?'
'Inspired by The Serving Women,' Junius fired a venomous glance at Flavia, 'it's a fire.'
'What about the guards?' wailed Flavia. 'No one can get in or out, we're all trapped. Doomed. Destined to die.'
'Leave the guards to me,' Marcus said, selecting a stout club from the rack on the stable wall. 'I'll open that double set of gates so wide, the cavalry will be able to drive in through the front door.' Someone must be hiding the two women! They can't just disappear! 'Junius. While I'm playing with the portals, you start the fire.'
'Fire, singular? Man, I'm going to burn every fucking building to the ground!'
'Then make sure you search them thoroughly beforehand,' Orbilio added dryly.
But it was only while he was sprinting towards the gate, armed with his club and scimitar, that it occurred to him that he might be able to take this thing one stage further. That there was a way to destroy this commune beyond simply its physical construction.
'What I need,' he said to himself, 'is access to that big bronze tortoise.'
Chapter Thirty-five
When Claudia came to, she was surprised to find that she was not on a ferry boat on that one-way trip across the River Styx. No three-headed dog barked, no ghosts walked up to welcome her, there was no slap-slap-slap of oars on dark, grey, oily water.
She wished there was.
Because this was worse than death. This was living hell. As thunder rumbled in the background, she tried to move and found she'd been trussed up and gagged and that the harder she struggled, the deeper the bonds bit into her flesh. Her naked flesh. She stopped struggling at once.
You fool. You silly, bloody fool. The minute you realised what you'd walked into here, you should also have realised that he'd have heard your scream. What was he going to do? Ignore it? But so shocked had Claudia been by this whole tableau, so sickened by the discovery beneath the jackal mask that she hadn't been able to control herself.
Now she was about to pay the ultimate price.
Claudia began to shudder uncontrollably. And what of Flea? What price did that poor bitch have to pay? You led her to this. Her death is your fault, you should not have brought her to this evil valley. You should not have interfered! She flashed a glance to the girl's body with the black jackal's head.
Sixteen and thinks she knows it all. Imagines she can handle every problem life dishes out, that she is tough. But, hell, she isn't — wasn't. Flea was young and vulnerable, she needed protecting and you failed her. When she needed you most, you bloody failed her.
But all I wanted was to save her from a life of misery and wretchedness living off the streets.
Well, you saved her that all right. You condemned her to a terrifying death…
Claudia felt a tidal wave of nausea wash over her. What would Flea have felt, when the noose tightened round her neck? Did she die cursing Claudia? Claudia gulped back the sobs. Knowing Flea, she'd have died cursing herself.
Oh, Flea. What have I done? I set a sparrow among the hawks, and I deserve to suffer for your death. All I ask, oh mighty Jupiter, is that you let me see the face behind the silver mask before I die that I may return to haunt it.
She closed her eyes and tried to push back time. To forget the present, disregard the future, to go back — back — where life was full of childhood innocence, to a place of long-forgotten memories, of adolescent pranks and children laughing… Except time refused to budge, and the present throbbed with pain and heat and horror… Which bastard set this hellish table? What demon was so sick that he was beyond being wicked — perhaps, even, beyond evil? Suddenly, the nausea threatened to engulf her. The mind behind this invidious tableau was quite insane.
A man can never have too much power, she thought. Was it Min? Second in command, but nevertheless still second. Reporting to a younger brother went against nature and the grain. 'Never underestimate my power,' he'd hissed. 'Never misjudge the influence I carry.' And don't forget that lightning switch of personality. 'I never force a woman,' he had boasted. Claudia thought of her leather bonds which tightened with the slightest exertion. The same knot which she'd noticed round Flea's neck! Sweet Janus, the killer didn't force his victims. As they struggled for breath, they slowly strangled themselves.
Her shoulders began to shake involuntarily, tightening the bonds. Blood drizzled down her wrists and dripped off her fingertips. The rabbit face of Penno flashed before her. Preoccupied with rites and rituals — and with Seth in particular — he re-enacted ceremonies in the privacy of his own room. Were they only fantasies? Whoever planned this tableau needed to work in hurried snatches, and Claudia's stomach lurched at Penno's twig-like fingers wrapping rolls and rolls of linen over these poor brutalised bodies.