by Eric Flint
* * *
Slowly, he woke. Groggy, with head pounding, he went through the steps to remember the dream and to tie them to the working world. Fingers leaving…Fingerprints. He remembered now. One of the things about the investigation. Olympias’ fingerprints were not on the carafe. They had mentioned it again and again when they were explaining why they failed to arrest her for the poisoning.
After that, for a while, Calix was careful not to leave anything with his fingerprints anywhere they might be found. But as time passed and nothing happened, he got sloppy.
He remembered suddenly. The tray. The tray in the dining hall. And clear as day, Cleopatra’s lover…so careful to not watch him. That was what Cadmila was telling him. They would be coming. He had to get away, but he must follow Cadmila’s instructions. He would erase the traces. But how…?
Ah, he thought. A sacrifice using fire. Fire purifies. Fire gives to the gods. I will give my fingerprints to Cadmila.
It took several hours to prepare. Spreading the alcohol and wax and oil, setting the candle in a corner so that nothing would light until it burned down. Lighting the candle with the Bic lighter. Then taking the Do Not Disturb sign and wiping it down with a cloth. And holding it with the cloth, placing it on the door, wiping down the door. Then he picked up his backpack, and left.
It was no trouble getting off the ship. He just showed his ship ID and got on one of the boats taking sightseers to Tiz.
Queen of the Sea, Cleopatra’s suite
Gavin Piang gently tapped the mug with the horsehair barber brush dipped in fingerprint powder. He blew gently to expose the print and pulled his digital camera from the case. He photographed the print and went on to the next.
He took fifteen minutes dusting everything. The tray, the mug of milk, the plate, the flatware, even the toast. He didn’t get a print from the toast, but he tried.
“Okay, folks. I have four complete and nine partials mostly from the cup and the bottom edge of the plate.”
“What now?” Cleopatra asked.
“I upload them to the print database in the ship’s computer and compare them to known prints,” Gavin said, and he knew but didn’t say that this was the part that was at least nominally illegal. Gavin was from the Bahamas. He was working on the cruise ship to get enough money to finish his degree in criminal investigation. Then The Event, and everything changed. He knew about chain of evidence and illegal use of ship’s facilities. He found himself looking to Marie Easley for reassurance that what he was doing was all right. But he didn’t find it. Not really. Still, he knew Travis. Not well, but he was a ship person and even if that wasn’t supposed to make a difference, it did. Besides, no one was supposed to be murdered on the Queen.
He took the camera and his slate over to the ethernet connection and plugged them in. He called up the print database and transferred everything, then ran the prints through all the open cases.
He got a match. The partial on the middle finger of the left hand. Probably. The mug had the match, and from the fact that it also had an index finger again, probably, and their position on the cup, he figured the odds were eighty percent or better that it was the left middle on the carafe. It was also only an eight-point match, not a ten, but Gavin was convinced. “This is the guy all right. You got to tell Chief Lang.”
“Yes, quite right,” Doctor Easley said.
Queen of the Sea, chief of security’s office
Daniel Lang hung up the phone, not sure how he felt. He was pissed that they went behind his back, but at the same time he was happy that there was a new lead. He called Judge Phyllis Fall and, on the basis of the match, asked for a warrant to arrest one Calix on suspicion of murder. “He’s part of Arrhidaeus’ diplomatic cadre from Antigonus. It says here that he’s an assistant to the trade envoy, a guy named Cleon.”
“And you say you have his fingerprints, and they match the print on the carafe that was used to poison Dag Jakobsen and Travis Siegel?”
“That’s what my informant claims.”
“All right. I will issue the warrant on that basis, but be ready for some flack from Arrhidaeus.”
Queen of the Sea, Calix’s room
The candle burned, inching closer to the oil-soaked rag tied around its base.
Queen of the Sea, chief of security’s office
Daniel Lang, warrant in hand, gathered up two Silver Shields and headed for Deck 5. The elevator took them to the deck smoothly, and they exited crew country and entered passenger country. All the while, Daniel was thinking that this guy must not be very important to the delegation. Deck 5 was the lowest deck that had passenger rooms, and the rooms here didn’t have balconies, just portholes. And the interior rooms didn’t even have that, and now were mostly used as factories of one sort or another. They were the cheapest rooms that you could get on the Queen. The rooms used for slaves that were freed just so they could accompany their former masters on the Queen.
Just into passenger country, the fire alarm sounded. Daniel, through some instinct, knew without doubt what was going on, but they were near the bow of the ship and Calix’s room was halfway to the stern. He started running, but people were coming out of the rooms in a panic, and the fire alarms blared. Half of them were carrying, or trying to put on, life vests.
“Coming through!” Daniel shouted. “Make a hole!”
Some tried. Some didn’t seem to understand. But the overall effect was to keep him from getting to Calix’s stateroom for forty-five vital seconds.
Queen of the Sea, Calix’s room
The fire blazed up and the sprinkler came on, but it was an oil fire and it takes a lot of water to fight such a fire. By the time Daniel got to the already hot door handle and opened the door, all he did was feed the fire more oxygen. It was only a few seconds later that a Silver Shield went to work with a fire extinguisher. It put out the fire all right, but any prints that the fire had failed to destroy were destroyed by the white foam from the fire extinguisher.
On the docks at Tiz
Calix looked around as he stepped onto the dock. Tiz’s dock was wood on stone pilings and the streets were cobblestones. The buildings were rock, brick, or adobe mixed together. There were five ships aside from the Queen’s ship’s boats, but the largest of them was little larger than one of those.
Calix walked quickly, but he walked and didn’t run. He slipped by the hawkers selling everything from fried fish to treasure maps and made his way into the town of Tiz. He needed to find a stable and a money changer, not necessarily in that order. He looked around.
The town proper was up a hill from the shore and as he climbed the hill the look and even the smell of the place changed. It took him a few minutes to find a stable.
Queen of the Sea, Tiz
Knowing it was too late, Daniel Lang called debarking and instructed security to detain Calix. As expected, he was informed that Calix was already off the ship. A moment later it was verified that he was off the ship’s boat and somewhere in Tiz. Daniel started to curse the idiots and amateurs who, in the glee to “help,” had managed to warn the murderer of Travis Siegel, giving the bastard time to escape.
Queen of the Sea, Briefing Room
Two hours later
They were all there. All the little helpers. Roxane, Marie Easley, Olympias, Cleopatra, Sean Newton, even Dag Jakobsen. As well as Captain Floden, Gavin Piang—who damn well should have known better—and Judge Phyllis Fall.
He listened to it as they explained what they did. But not why. So he asked.
There was a lot of looking back and forth, then Olympias laughed like the cawing of a crow. “Because you are a city guard, not an initiate of the mysteries. Not an initiate of Cabeiri, not an Illuminati, not what you people call a detective.” She pointed at her hips hidden by the table, and continued, “You got your nose into my scent and couldn’t smell anything else for it. They will not tell you because they are soft and you are their friend. But you are not the man to run a real police force that inves
tigates things done in the real world.”
Daniel looked at the psychobitch from hell and realized that she might well be at least a little right. Then he looked around at the rest of the people in the room. Roxane was looking him in the eye with sympathy, but not support. Cleopatra…He could tell she agreed with her mother. And so did Marie Easley, though she didn’t seem happy about it. He looked at Lars Floden, his captain and, he had thought, his friend. Lars was looking at him, but couldn’t quite hold his eye. “Do you agree with them, Captain?”
“Not exactly, Dan,” Lars said. “But you have been under a lot of stress lately, and…” He trailed off.
“Did you know about this?”
“Yes, I did. The concern was that you would approach Calix without enough for an arrest and, ah, spook him into making a run for it.”
“You mean like causing him to light his stateroom on fire and jump ship?”
Olympias laughed again. “Yes, precisely like that.” Then she sobered, and it was Olympias who looked him in the eye and said it. “And in spite of the way things turned out, they were right. Their error was that they thought they could do it. They should have given me his name. He wouldn’t have run then. He would have died in agony.”
“Maybe.” Daniel looked her in the eye and finished, “But then we would be no better than you.”
Olympias surprised Daniel at that point—and probably everyone else in the room—because she laughed again and Daniel could tell it was a real laugh and not derisive. Almost open…probably as open as Olympias ever was.
Daniel looked around the room and realized that right at this moment he liked Olympias more than anyone else at the table. She might be a psychopath, but at least she wasn’t a hypocrite. He stood up slowly, very controlled because he was furious. “I am going to have to give this some thought,” he said. But the truth was in the back of his thoughts. He had already made up his mind. He had to get out. Get away from these people.
He turned and walked out of the room.
* * *
Daniel sat in his cabin on the Queen of the Sea and worked on the laptop computer that he was issued as the head of ship security, but he wasn’t working on ship’s business. He was writing out his résumé. He would send it out over the network to every government that had a radio. Maybe the locals would have a job for him. Someone had to have a use for a good cop.
Alexandria, Ptolemy’s new capital
August 11, 319 BCE
Ptolemy read the message and passed it over to Thaïs with a lifted eyebrow.
She read it and said, “Make him an offer. Meanwhile, I will send a letter to Roxane asking what happened.”
* * *
For the next several days the news that Daniel Lang was looking for a job was the talk of the radio network. Roxane, Cleopatra, Olympias and many other on-ship locals were asked what happened and why.
And the offers poured in. From the edge of India to Trinidad, from Egypt to northern Gaul. Most of those offers had nothing to do with police work. They wanted him because he was a ship person. They wanted him to build steam engines, iceboxes, and radios. A few, Ptolemy and—oddly enough—Cassander, offered him a job as a cop. Ptolemy’s offer was for chief of police for the city of Suez. It was a good offer. He would have equal rank to what amounted to the mayor of Suez.
Daniel considered it. Seriously. He also considered Rome’s offer and the offer from the Samnites, both of which offered him considerable rank and money. Three days later he was still considering his options.
Queen of the Sea, Daniel Lang’s stateroom
August 14, 319 BCE
Daniel got up when the knock sounded and opened the door to see Olympias standing before him. He remembered her honesty in the meeting room and waved her into his stateroom.
“Thank you,” Olympias said, which surprised him. “I have come to ask you a favor.”
“Ask?” Daniel asked. “I thought you didn’t ask even Alexander the Great or King Philip.”
She laughed and if there was a certain amount of bitterness in it, there was a self-awareness that still came as something of a shock. “I am not a fool. You ship people have changed the world and, at least for now, you have changed the rules.”
Daniel felt himself grinning. “So I shouldn’t count on more requests? Instead, I should look forward to demands?”
Olympias shrugged.
Daniel waved her to a chair and asked, “What’s the favor?”
“You have received a job offer from Cassander?” She lifted an eyebrow.
“I’m not going to assassinate him for you,” Daniel said, and laughed.
“That’s not the favor. You should listen before you speak,” Olympias commanded.
Somehow, that made Daniel more comfortable. A polite Olympias was altogether too much like a vegetarian lion for him to find it believable. He gave her a little seated bow and, grinning, waved for her to continue.
“My protégé…that is the word, yes?”
“Depends. Who are you talking about?”
“Thessalonike.”
“Yep. Protégé sounds right. What about her?”
“She is in danger!” Olympias said harshly, and Daniel, with years of interrogation room experience, and even more time talking to victims of crime, knew that the harshness hid real fear.
Gently, he said, “Tell me about it. All of it. Leave nothing out.”
Then he listened as she gave her take on the political situation. Thessalonike’s reasons for marrying Cassander and her assessment of Cassander’s character. “I think he will kill her if it looks like she is considering escape. Possibly even if he’s not sure. He knows that Thessalonike is my student and will realize that I want him dead very badly. That makes her a threat to him. That by itself might not be enough to make him kill her, but if it looks like she has reason to escape, he will kill her because her death will hurt his cause less than her escaping. Especially if she leaves poison in his cup on her way out the door.” Olympias smiled as she finished, clearly liking that idea.
Daniel nodded. That sort of balancing of risks was pretty common in organized crime, whether it was a street gang selling drugs to soldiers or the real mob bosses having informers murdered. Cassander sounded like every thug boss he had ever investigated in twenty years as a military police officer.
“I want Thessalonike protected.” It came out like a demand, but by now Daniel knew that it was a plea—and a rather desperate one at that.
“You want me to take Cassander’s offer and once I get there you want me to make sure Thessalonike is safe?” He nodded. “What’s in it for me? Understand, if I take Cassander’s offer, I’ll keep her safe. But why should I take Cassander’s offer instead of Ptolemy’s? Suez is going to turn into a huge port. It’s going to have lots of crime and just the sort of crime I am trained to fight.”
“What do you want?”
“I want the Cabeiri. Its leadership. Who’s in it, what they do. Why whoever it is went after Travis Siegel and killed him on my watch.”
“You think it was Travis, not Dag?”
“The same logic that you insist proves you didn’t do it applies. If they were after Dag, why use the cocoamat?” Daniel grimaced. “You were right. I was too fixated on you to see it.”
“I don’t know why it was done. Probably Calix was paid to kill your Travis Siegel.” She shrugged.
“But who paid him? And why?”
“How should I know? It could be one of your ship people, for all I know.”
“No. We didn’t know he was Cabeiri, so none of us would have known who to hire. That’s part of the reason I want to know about the Cabeiri. I want to know who would have known that Calix was an assassin for hire.”
“Antigonus might well know. There are others. The Cabeiri have tendrils everywhere.” Suddenly Olympias stiffened. She just sat there for several seconds while Daniel waited. “Yes, Daniel Lang.” She hissed like a really angry cat. “I will help you bring down the Cabeiri. I wil
l help you find them and grind their bones into dust.”
“Ah…Why?”
“It was them! They gave Cassander the poison. They killed my son, Alexander the Great.”
Daniel didn’t know if Olympias was right or not and, honestly, he didn’t much care. He had his way in now.
For the next several hours Daniel Lang and Olympias talked and plotted.
124–126 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad
August 15, 319 BCE
Carthalo used the tongs to open the door into the kiln and Stella Matthews shaded her eyes from the glare of the white-hot glass in the kiln.
Carthalo was dressed in wet overalls and a bronze faceplate with the eyes made of darkened glass. It was the equivalent of a shaded visor. He dipped the long spoon into the molten glass and lifted a spoonful while Stella waited with the knives at the worktable made of polished granite.
He turned away from the kiln, his overalls steaming, and popped the spoon up and down, flipping the glowing—and very dangerous—gelatinous mass into the air as he moved. He got to the table and dumped it in front of Stella.
