Scorpion Rising

Perhaps they know I sting back, a little voice echoed inside her head. Rubbish, she told it. Not everything has a subtext, sod off. Only dead men do nothing, the little voice wheedled…

'Have the Hundred-Handed branded you yet?' she asked cheerfully.

Orbilio wiped his sticky hands on the grass and when he looked up, the hardness in his expression was gone. 'They couldn't find an unbruised patch of skin, and with luck I'll be gone before they can.'

'Tut, tut, Marcus. The Governor is absolutely delighted that you and your ex-wife are about to become reconciled. He said take as much time to recuperate as you need, I quote his very words.'

'Yes. Well. As much as I find slave labour an excellent aid to marital counselling, there is the little matter of an uprising that ideally I'd like to prevent.'

Claudia popped the last corner of honeycomb into her mouth, confident that the Head of the Security Police wouldn't be playing Masters amp; Slaves if the whole of Aquitania was poised to explode. But why had he agreed to come here with her? Why so quickly, and with only a token protest? The smell of rat had slammed into her nostrils the instant he'd said yes. Rat, with a large helping of weasel.

'Then the quicker we solve Clytie's murder the better,' she breezed. 'Now then. Apart from the fact that tight pants are a bitch, what else have you discovered?'

Marcus hefted the bale onto the opposite shoulder. '(A) women are to be avoided, they're deadly and dangerous, (B) men have no brains or we'd steer clear of them and (C) that working with livestock,' he patted the bale, 'leaves indelible stains on a chap's kit.'

'It took you twenty-eight years to work that out?'

'I'm a slow starter.' His expression became serious again. 'You know, for three centuries, the Hundred-Handed have provided spiritual guidance for small, isolated communities in the surrounding countryside who rely on this forest for their very survival. In leading by example, the priestesses set high moral standards-'

'I hope that was a joke.'

'Far from it.' He spiked his fringe out of his eyes. 'Have you stopped to think what they give up?'

'Apart from their male babies at birth?'

'Including their male babies at birth. Claudia, I know you don't approve of their ways, but this is a far from easy life for these women.'

'Thus speaks the wisdom of a sex slave, Orbilio. I just knew you'd feel right at home here.'

'Mock all you want,' he said, 'because yes, I suppose every man does dream of being a sex slave — until that dream becomes a reality. But I'm serious. Times are changing, Claudia, Rome's seen to that. And thanks to us, the world has got smaller for the Gauls, and this world,' he indicated the College with a nod of his head, 'has to adapt. If it doesn't, quite frankly, it dies.'

'Are you saying the Hundred-Handed are under threat? Because if so, I really don't give a damn.'

He set down the bale then lay flat on the rock, resting his feet on the flat of the bale. 'Peace is a funny thing. You and I, we're part of the new generation who aren't content to sit back and put our trust in our elders and betters. We demand a say in our future and don't obey laws without satisfying ourselves first that those laws are fair.'

'That's the second time I've heard those arguments today.'

'Because independence is a hot topic in these parts at the moment,' he said, folding his arms behind his head and crossing his feet at the ankles. 'Hence my point about insurrection.'

This is not a good time to be a Roman.

'Nonsense. Those rumours have been rumbling for months.'

If the Scorpion intended to stage an uprising, he'd have started before midsummer, and no matter how well organized the rebel forces, they couldn't achieve much in the remaining three months of the campaigning season. The smell of rat doubled in strength.

'This business of challenging authority, questioning orders and not accepting what we're told without corroboration,' Marcus said, 'that's called democracy. And while you and I take it for granted, for the people of Aquitania, it's a whole new concept.'

'Then the quicker it comes the better.'

'Not necessarily.' He propped himself up on one elbow to face her. 'If change comes too fast, it's liable to have the opposite effect of what it's intended to do. It can destroy rather than build.' He paused. 'Why don't you give a damn?'

'Goddammit, Orbilio, if you'd been doing just a fraction of your job, you wouldn't be asking that question! It's monstrous! Barbaric! Utterly obscene-'

'What is?' he asked calmly.

'The Pit, Marcus! They throw the condemned down there alive, so they can reflect on their sins while they die slowly and painfully over a couple of weeks, and dear god, you say these women want peace, but I've never heard of anything so diabolical in my life!'

'I have.' His voice was still calm as he shifted position to sit on the hay bale, resting his chin in his hands. 'It was how the Spartans used to execute criminals. Only for the direst of offences, mind you. The punishment was intended as a deterrent.'

'Spartans?' Something about that rang a bell.

'The Greeks and the Gauls share an interesting history,' he said. 'The Greeks came to Gaul, the Gauls went to Greece, and not necessarily for the purpose of cultural exchange. However!' He grinned. 'Not all their legacies involved funerals, blood and smouldering ruins. You know what nereids are?'

'Sea nymphs who serve Neptune.'

The grin deepened. 'The Greeks believed these nymphs served the sea goddess, Thetis, and they founded colleges of priestesses in their honour. Fifty of them, to be precise. Moon priestesses, dedicated to a gentle goddess who could nevertheless assume, guess what? A hundred different shapes.'

Of course. The Dining Hall. Claudia had never visited Greece, but the structure of three sides round a courtyard was typical for mass catering at sanctuary sites.

'And we all know who the son of Thetis was,' Marcus murmured.

Achilles.

'If you're saying the Pit of Reflection is their Achilles heel, I still don't care about these bloody women.'

'In Sparta, the prisoner would be dragged in chains through the streets, where he'd be whipped and humiliated by a line of his peers. Shamed,' he said, 'anguished,' he paused, 'and degraded.'

'And if the moral of that tale is that the Hundred-Handed have evolved with a soft spot, you're still wasting your breath.'

'Strange how often this becomes the case when I'm talking to you.'

'Whoa, there! I paid my back taxes.'

That was the reason she was in this wretched mess, and damn those greedy bastards for taking advantage of a poor grieving widow struggling with a mountain of debts.

'So…'He scratched his chin. 'No outstanding frauds, then? An end to the forgeries? No more-'

'You were talking about the Pit,' she snapped.

'Indeed I was,' he said turning away, and from this angle, it looked like his shoulders were shaking. 'And I'm saying that the way the priestesses distance themselves from the physical act of execution suggests cowardice.'

'The word, Marcus, is callousness.'

He leaned across, plucked a blade of grass and chewed on the juicy end. 'Cruelty isn't quite so cruel if you don't witness it personally.'

'Closing eyes and closing minds. Yes, I'm starting to see how they're really nice people.'

'I didn't say I agreed with it, but the fact that Beth believes Clytie's killer is a copycat, Dora thinks it's an experiment and that only the souls of the truly evil are thrown to the three-headed dragon suggests a certain amount of optimism to me. That the Hundred-Handed always think the best of people and need to be convinced beyond doubt of their dark side.'

So he had been doing more than just a fraction of his job, then.