Rosenna got it wrong. Because her brother hadn't mentioned Terrence by name, she'd assumed the 'he' had meant Hadrian when Lichas told her he intended to go public. She was wrong. Lichas wasn't bothered by some trifling gossip concerning sex between two consenting adults! Still only seventeen, yet smart enough to have started his own business, admit his own sexuality… and follow his conscience.
'The clever part came from playing down the commission,' she told Terrence. 'Telling Lichas that you wanted the mechanism installed for … what? Using the chamber for private pagan worship?'
Terrence nodded.
'But paying no more than the going rate.'
As he climbed out of bed, naked and tousled, she saw the knife by his pillow. 'Too much money would have aroused his suspicions.' Green eyes smiled ingenuously. 'Couldn't have that.'
There must have been a veiled threat as well, she realized. 'I'm sure you reminded him that we all have our little secrets?'
'I saw no harm in reinforcing the close friendship I enjoy with his boyfriend's father.'
'Except trading Lichas's silence with exposure of his relationship with Hadrian only held good so long as Lichas didn't suspect any ulterior motive.'
What happened, she wondered? Had one of the little moons let something slip? She doubted they'd ever know, because if Lichas hadn't confided Terrence's secret to the people he loved best — Rosenna and his lover — he certainly wouldn't betray the trust of a rape victim! But somehow the toy-maker had discovered the real purpose behind the installation of his pivot and told Terrence that he intended to tell Tarchis.
Tor a bright young artisan, you wouldn't credit the lad's naivety,' Terrence said. 'He actually suggested that out-of-the-way meeting place for my benefit. Discretion, can you believe that? I think he expected me to fall on my sword or something equally stupid.' His patrician smile was as cold as the Arctic. 'I guess he hadn't thought through the alternative.'
'And Tages witnessed the killing?'
'Dirty blackmailing creep. Came hurtling down the hill, saying if I gave him fifty gold pieces he'd keep his mouth shut. I ask you!' He sniffed in contempt. 'Another moron who didn't stop to use his brain.'
'But you obviously did, because you had the presence of mind to bury Tages, on the grounds that two corpses were bound to invite a murder enquiry.'
Claudia remembered her first meeting with Terrence and Thalia. 'Who'd want to stab him like that?' Thalia asked, to which Terrence replied, 'I don't suppose anyone wants to stab anyone.' Suddenly she saw a way to talk her way out.
'Look, Terrence, if it wasn't premeditated-'
'You know what I found most irritating? That bloody shirt-lifter washing up on my land. I thought he'd be miles away by the time he surfaced, but it just goes to show. Life's one long learning process, and really that's the beauty of it, don't you think?' There was just a fractional pause. 'Mistakes can be corrected.'
In an instant the knife was in his hand. Claudia turned and ran down the stairs.
'You're quite right. I should have taken you the long way out of the maze,' he called down quietly. 'But there's no way out of this labyrinth, Claudia.'
She heard the distinctive click of a lock behind him. Shit. She'd left the torch up there and now, as she plunged deeper into the darkness of the underground hall, she couldn't find the entrance to the tunnel. Terrence's feet echoed on the wooden stairs with inexorable slowness. With a knife in the one hand, the torch in the other, his expression made her blood run cold.
'Do you know what it's like to be a god, Claudia?'
She crouched as his flame made a sweep of the hall.
'When, you're Fufluns, you can have any woman you want, and in whatever way takes your fancy.'
'They're not women, they're children,' she hissed back, crunching her shin on the ancient stone stairs. 'And you're not a god, either. You're a pitiful specimen of sub-human scum.'
His laugh echoed round the cavern. An echo of the laughter painted on the walls. The very echo of Hell. 'I like women who fight.'
'Thalia doesn't fight.' And where was that bloody tunnel?
'Wrong. Thalia stopped fighting back on her twelfth birthday when I showed her what men are for.'
Oh, god. His own sister. How could she not have seen through this monster? Right from the start, she'd been repulsed by the way he'd bullied Thalia, and now she saw it was the product of a lifetime spent undermining and demeaning her for no other reason than that she was female. Eunice had read him all wrong. He wasn't over-protective of her. He'd intentionally married her off to a man too old to make her happy and impossible to live with, because he enjoyed watching her suffer. Once she was widowed, he sought others way to torture her, and through opiates, turned Thalia into a rambling neurotic, feeding off his peers' irritation whilst tormenting her further by rubbing her nose into her past and dangling future husbands under her nose.
'Then why drug the girls?' Where is it? Where is it? Where is the entrance? 'Why induce hallucinations with catnip and that other foul stuff?'
'A chap needs variety in his diet.' His voice was pure honey as he swept the blackness with his torch. 'With those quivering virgins, the pleasure comes from making them do anything I want, simply by asking them nicely.' He chuckled softly. 'And Claudia, I do mean anything.'
Come on, come on, it must be close now!
'Have you any idea how it feels? Knowing that any time I choose — any bloody time — I can slip down here and get those little tame pussycats to do things even the most hardened whore draws the line at. But you, you're a fighter. You and I will enjoy a different kind of party.'
There! At long last, her hand found thin air.
'The hell we will!'
She ran, but he'd caught her shadow in a sweep of his torch and was loping behind down the tunnel.
'The only way you'll take me is by necrophilia, you pervert
— or is that something you already enjoy?'
His only answer was laughter. It sounded unbearably confident, but that didn't matter. She was light, she was fast — but shit, he was faster. With the advantage of light and knowing his own territory, he was gaining. She'd never make the god's chamber in time! What now, what now? She ducked into a side chamber and flattened herself against the wall. Behind her, Terrence cursed as he lost sight of his quarry. She heard him slow down. Stop. Saw the patterns of light distort the paintings as he was forced to search each separate sepulchre. Claudia slid down on to her haunches and scrabbled around for a stone, an offering, anything that might serve as a weapon.
Nothing.
And she didn't even have a sandal to defend herself with, while he was armed with a knife, and there was no one to rescue her. Not down here. As far as Timi and Tarchis were concerned, Fufluns rested undisturbed on his plinth. Why would they open the door? They'd shut him away after the festival. It might be days before anyone entered. Orbilio had saved her neck in the past, but his own life swung in the balance. There was nobody left. Just her and her wits. And a desperate desire for justice…
Timing her move until he was inside a chamber, she slipped along the corridor one side room at a time. Three, four, five
— sweet Juno, how many people were buried down here? But impatience only invites disaster. She forced herself not to think beyond the next chamber, then waited for the light to recede. Six, seven…