“I need to revisit the first scene,” he spat.
As it happened, the house had hardly been touched in the month since its occupants were ferried across the Styx to the land of the shades. In no time, he’d recovered two more wooden flowers among the strewing herbs on the floor.
A daisy, a rose, and a lily.
The moon was full, dulling the starlight, as Iliona stood in the clearing in the hills. Twinkling silver far below was the river whose god she served, and whose annual floods brought wealth and plenty. It took an hour to cross the valley by foot, but three days to travel its length on a horse. Through olive groves, barley fields, paddocks, and vineyards. A tranquillity that was now broken, thanks to one man. A monster.
In the two weeks since the second murders, the general had been pushing hard for Lysander to step down. His incompetence had led to a reign of terror, he’d stormed to the Council, and Iliona could only imagine the grief and despair that was churning inside him. With his family wiped out, anger was all he had left.
Which was better, though? For the secret police to be led by a man whose impulses were driven by blinding emotion? Or an honourable man, who would not baulk at blinding her with pitch before throwing her into the Torrent of Torment? She stared at the rugged tracks crisscrossing this red, stony land like white scars in the moonlight. Smelled the pungent moss under her feet. Listened to a stream frothing its way downhill, over the rocks. With their dark cliffs and secret caverns, these mountains were at once dangerous, beautiful, treacherous, and magnetic. No different from Lysander himself.
But how do you define beauty? The scent of dog rose had suddenly become cloying. The sight of daisies made her feel sick.
She listened to the music made by the squeaking of bats and the soft hiss of the wind in the oaks. If only she could unravel the significance of those flowers! Of the spacing between the nooses! Of choosing three women of the same family...
A twig snapped. She looked round. Knew that, if he wanted, he could have crept up and not made a sound. The smell of wood smoke and leather mingled with the aromas of moss and wild mountain sage, and in the moonlight his eyes were as hard as a wolf’s. She wondered how Lysander had found her hiding place. And whether he’d seen the deserter she’d just helped to escape...
“Would you believe my orders—” he leaned his back against a tree trunk and folded his arms over his chest “—are to identify and protect every household that fits the pattern for the killings.”
An impossible task. Sparta currently had three thousand warriors scattered all over Greece, every last one of them landowners, and given that they were all aged between eighteen and thirty, probably two thirds had widowed mothers and daughters living at home. Their sons, of course, would be in the barracks, while the older men, retired veterans, were either working their own farms or employed in auxiliary military work. Obviously people were keeping an eye on their neighbours, while remaining vigilant themselves. But spring was a busy time on the land. The helots who worked it needed close supervision, or they would rise up and rebel, or take off.
“The general hates you,” she said.
“He holds me responsible.”
“Either way, he’s engineered it so that you will either fail in your efforts to protect every woman in Sparta, or be forced to disobey orders.”
His lip twisted. “Providing I can put a stop to this murdering sonofabitch, the Council will forget that I challenged their authority.”
The deserter... Fifteen years old... Was he already lying in a gully with his throat slit?
“The moon,” Iliona said, wondering if Lysander’s dagger was still warm from the boy’s blood. “The moon has three phases. Waxing, full, and waning.”
“Three women!” He jerked upright. “Also waxing, full, and waning!”
“Exactly. And all killed at the new moon.” Iliona dragged her eyes away from his scabbard. Straightened her shoulders, and swallowed. “Suggesting the daughters might be the key.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But how in the name of Zeus did he manage to drug them?”
“That second family,” Lysander said slowly. “He had to have drugged them out in the courtyard; otherwise he would have strung them up from the beams in the kitchen like the first three.”
“You think the killer might have been a guest?”
Whoever he was, he was a coward who craved power. And could only get it when his victims couldn’t fight back.
“Our investigations haven’t turned up any visitors, and don’t forget the first trio. Not many guests are entertained in the kitchen.” Lysander clucked his tongue. “Not at the general’s level.”
“What about woodcarvers?”
“What about them? There are hundreds inside the city alone, and none of them sells flowers like the ones placed under the bodies. As a trade, it fits your theory of precise, intelligent, and tidy. Then again, every man and boy who’s ever owned a knife — which is everyone — has had a go at carving at some stage.”
Needles and haystacks, needles and haystacks.
Would this monster ever be caught?
Two weeks later, when the new moon scratched her silver crescent in the sky, Iliona found her answer. In a house deep in the artisan quarter, three more women were found dangling, with the same flowers under their feet. The daisy, the rose, and the lily. Now the terror was palpable. These were not exalted citizens. Landowners and farmers. They were tradespeople. The family of a humble harness-maker, who was away in Thrace, supporting the cavalry.
But that wasn’t the worst of the matter. Three days before the moon was due to rise, the women brought in supplies and barricaded themselves indoors. No one had been allowed in, they wouldn’t even open the shutters, and the alarm was only raised when their neighbour, an Egyptian gem-cutter, could elicit no response. He and the wheelwright broke down the door.
This, obviously, was the work of no human hand.
Sparta had angered the gods.
“Bullshit.” Lysander paced the flagstones of Iliona’s courtyard, spiking his hands through his long warrior hair. “Complete and utter bollocks.”
While he prowled, Iliona sat on a white marble bench in the shade of a fig tree, surrounded by scrolls of white parchment.
“I agree.”
The gods controlled the weather, the seasons, human fate, and emotions. That was why they needed to be propitiated. To ensure fruitfulness, justice, victory, and truth, and offset famine, tempest, and drought. True, Deception wove her celestial charms while men slept, as did Absent-mindedness, Panic, and Pain. But so did the Muses, as well as Peace, Hope, and Passion, and the goddesses of beauty, mirth, and good cheer.
“All the appropriate sacrifices have been made,” she continued.
To Zeus, a ram purified with oak. To Poseidon, a bull, another to Apollo, honey cakes to Artemis, and grain to Demeter. The gods had no reason to argue with Sparta.
“Also, the Olympians might take life, but not in this way,” she added. “They kill, but they do not leave flowers.”
“If we knew what it meant, this daisy, roses, and lily business— Are these my files?” He picked up one of the scrolls littering her bench.
“Duplicates,” she lied.
There had been too many for her scribes to copy, forcing Iliona to resort to the one thing that always oils wheels in the palace. Bribery.
“These are reports from the initial investigation,” he said, leafing through. “Why are you going through them again—? Ah.” He bowed. “You see through the eyes of the blind and hear the voice of the dumb, and no, before you throw another tantrum, I am not mocking you this time. You work your oracles with trickery and mirrors. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye.”