Iliona watched an early two-tailed pasha butterfly fluttering around the arbute. Listened to the fountain splashing in the middle of the courtyard.
“Suppose,” she said, “that the flowers are a smoke screen?”
“Like the precisely measured distance between the nooses?”
“Both suggest a ritualistic murder, but suppose that was the killer’s intention?”
“Hm.” Lysander looked up at the cloudless blue sky and seconds dragged into minutes. “We didn’t question the family of the second victims to check for alibis, therefore no leads were followed up, as we did for the general’s women.”
Like a Parthian’s bow, this was a long shot, Iliona thought. But suppose there was a cold-blooded killer out there, covering his tracks with a series of murders? If so, how in Hades would they pinpoint which of the nine women was the real target?
Dusk was cloaking the temple precinct, softening the outlines of the treasuries, gymnasia, watercourses, and statues. Up in the forests, the wolves and the porcupines would be stirring. Badgers and foxes would slink from their lairs. Down by the river, bats darted round the willows and alders. Frogs croaked from the reed beds. As the darkness deepened, Iliona watched moths dance round the flickering sconces, while the scent of rosemary and mountain thyme mingled with incense from the shrine.
“You were right.”
She jumped. One of these days, she thought, and Lysander would slit the throat of his own bloody shadow.
“His name is Tibios, and he did indeed serve the temple of Selene. Well done.”
The moon was her starting point. In the old days, long before the Olympians were born, Selene used to be worshipped in her three phases of womanhood. Developing, mature, then declining. In these enlightened days of science and mathematics, only those initiated into the priesthood even remembered this ancient wisdom — suggesting the killer was familiar with the old ways. Whether the murders were ritualistic, or whether his elaborate methods were simply a smoke screen, was irrelevant. It was a base on which to start building.
From then on, logic prevailed. The new moon was synonymous with youth, implying the intended victim was one of the daughters. But unions between citizens are contracted when the children are still in the cradle, whereas artisan women are free to wed whom they please. At sixteen, the harness-maker’s daughter would have been casting around.
“With nothing else to go on,” Iliona said, “the theory was worth testing. I’m just relieved it panned out.”
“Which is why,” Lysander said, “my men are holding him in your office.”
Ah. “You have insufficient evidence to bring him to a trial, so you’re hoping I will draw a confession out of him.”
“The torture chamber is notoriously unreliable, and besides—” he shot her a sideways glance “—I always believe in finishing what I started. Don’t you?”
She made a quick calculation of what his thugs might find among her records. Surely the Krypteia didn’t think she was foolish enough to commit incriminating evidence to paper?
“The harness-maker’s daughter was called Phoebe,” he said, explaining on their way across the precinct how questioning friends and family had led to a young acolyte who had been courting her.
“For a while, it seemed promising. Tibios is handsome enough, and he soon proved himself courteous, attentive, and generous.”
The problems arose when he became too attentive. Too generous. Instead of one bottle of perfume, he would send her a dozen. It was the same with wine cakes and honeycombs. He would present her with several new bath sponges every week. And positively showered her with cheap jewels and trinkets.
“Phoebe found it overpowering, but endearing,” Lysander continued. “It was only when Tibios began to stipulate which tunics she should wear and who she could meet with, and got angry when she refused to comply, that she realized this was not the man she wanted to marry.”
Iliona was beginning to understand. Intelligent, shrewd, and obsessively tidy were the hallmarks of a controlling nature. Men like that don’t take kindly to rejection.
In fact, many don’t accept it, full stop.
“My lady, meet Tibios. Tibios, meet the lady who outsmarted you and secured justice for nine vulnerable women.”
Handsome, certainly. Cheekbones a tad sharp, eyes a little too narrow, but yes. She could see why Phoebe would be attracted to him. Even in shackles, he was cocky.
“I’m the one who needs justice.” The acolyte leaned so far back in the chair that its front legs were off the tiles. “Bearing false witness is a serious crime, but that’s what comes when you misinterpret entrails and cloud formations. Or was it rustling leaves and the warbling of doves?”
“You presume,” Iliona breezed, “that you were important enough to warrant consulting the river god, but as it happens, Eurotas doesn’t concern himself with parasites. You were just sloppy.”
“Sloppy?” The legs of the chair came crashing down. “From what I’ve heard, the killer left nothing to chance! Nothing!”
As though he hadn’t spoken, Iliona dripped essential oils into the burning lamps, driving out the smells of ink and dusty parchment and infusing the room with sandalwood, camphor, and myrrh. Behind the chair, the guards had merged into the shadows. Leaning against the wall in the corner, Lysander could have been carved out of marble.
“That last house was barricaded from the inside,” Tibios spat. “Tell me how getting past that isn’t smart.”
“Well, now, that’s exactly what I mean.” Iliona picked up an ostrich feather fan and swept it over the shelves as though it was a duster. “You didn’t need to bypass their security.”
“That’s because the killer’s a god. Passing through walls, or changing his shape to an insect and able to slip under doors.”
Tibios was too full of himself to question why a high priestess should be doing her own housework. Or notice that she was so unaccustomed to it that she was using the fan upside down.
“Alas, Tibios, the truth is more mundane.” Swish-swish-swish as though he was secondary to her task. “You were already inside.”
Another shot in the dark, although enquiries at the temple of Selene confirmed that Tibios had been off sick for the three days prior to the murder.
“You knew this family. You knew their habits and your way around, and so, having hidden yourself in their cellar, how simple to slip a tincture of poppy juice into their wine that night, and then pff! Next you’re stringing them up like hams over a fire.”
“There you go again. You keep saying me.”
“Only because of that little stash of carvings you thought you’d hidden away. Daisies, roses, and what was that other thing, Captain? Lilies? Not that it matters,” she continued airily. “Your attitude was that if you couldn’t have Phoebe, nobody would, so you killed the first two families as a smoke screen—”
“Like Hades I did!” Even now, believing the lie that the captain had actually found his cache of wooden flowers, Tibios was no less arrogant. “I wanted those bitches scared out of their skins. I wanted them to know they’d be next. To feel the fear in their veins and sit awake at night, worrying — and they were. Even though they’d barricaded themselves in, they couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. It wasn’t just Phoebe. They ganged up against me, the whole bloody tribe, so they needed to know that you can’t just toss me aside. That I had power over them, over you, over the whole bloody state.” A smug grin spread over his face. “The smoke screen was the fourth family I intended to kill.”