‘Fausta! Here.’
She glanced back; then sidled up to the end where I stood.
‘Look, thanks for telling me. I’ll protect you if I can, but you have to go back to your desk and act like nothing happened. And don’t, for the love of Juno, say anything to Drusus.’
I had no appetite for lunch, but couldn’t sit still. I went for a run on the indoor track and back to my room. I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. And this was only day one.
I woke with a start as my commset peeped. It had been silent since last night which for a few hours was a novelty, then spooky. Apart from alerts throughout the day, I must have gotten upward of ten operational or command messages on a normal day. I grabbed my el-pad which synched with my commset and wiped the screen to access the alert. I stared at the images. Philippus and Hermina had been entered on the watch net.
I almost ran down the corridor of the sleeping areas, through the admin and domestic zones, and reached the guard area where I was stopped by a flashing red light and an alarm.
Crap. I couldn’t pass through. I slammed the wall with my palm. I had walked through the automatic barrier each day for seven years without thinking. I was taking deep breaths to calm myself, trying to convert the anger into energy, when Lucius appeared.
‘What the hell are you doing? Trying to wreck the place?’
‘Sorry. Sorry, I can’t do this.’ I folded my arms across my chest, bent forward slightly, and jammed my mouth shut.
‘I knew you’d find it hard, but I didn’t expect you to crack so soon.’ He snorted. ‘Come with me.’
He stalked back along the corridor, studded sandals clacking and echoing. I deeply envied him the sound: I wanted my own back on. He opened the door to his office and gestured me to a chair.
‘One, don’t fight it. Two, don’t destroy my building. Three, stop bleating sorry. Now, what’s the problem that has you behaving like a barbarian?’
I swallowed. ‘Two personal alerts have come up for me.’ I showed him my el-pad.
‘Hmph.’ He tapped on his keyboard, and I saw the edge of the joint watch screen load. I jumped off my chair and went to stand behind him as he scrolled down.
‘There!’ I jabbed the screen. When he opened the first, Philippus’s face and profile stared out at me. The next showed Hermina.
‘Arrested this morning after raid on a riverside house out on the Brancadorum road. Detained under conspiracy to treason for standard twenty-eight days,’ he read out. ‘Friends of yours?’
‘Yes,’ I said sullenly. I walked over to his bookcase, then back again and once again. ‘I have to help them. It’s a question of obligation. Normally, I’d pick up the phone and have some smart-ass lawyer in here for them before Somna could open her dossier.’ I sat down. ‘Now I can’t even make that simple call, can I?’
‘No.’
‘They gave me loyal service; they helped save Conradus’s life. They were crucial to throwing Petronax out of this building and you won’t even help them have the legal representation they’re entitled to?’
He was silent.
‘One call home. My grandmother or the steward can do it from there.’
He looked out at me from under a frown. ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. This is your one call. If you squander it on these criminals, you won’t get another.’ He flung himself out of his chair and waved me to his desk. Ten seconds later, I had Junia on screen. And five after that, Aurelia.
‘Salve, Nonna. I only have time for a short call, but could you do something for me?’
I went early for my food so people wouldn’t feel obliged to sit with me or be embarrassed about avoiding me. My spoon overflowed with a large scoop of my favourite dessert, honey island, when two guards with security badges entered the mess hall and found me.
‘You’ll have to wait.’ The honeycomb foam dissolved in my mouth.
‘The legate says you are to come immediately.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ and I stuffed another mouthful in.
I got to my feet, one hand holding the dish and the other the spoon with the last mouthful. I gulped it down, smiled sweetly and went with them.
‘What in Hades did you think you were doing? I should throw you in the cells!’ His face was livid, the skin tight. His eyes were like agates.
‘I didn’t know arranging a lawyer was a disciplinary offence,’ I said, ‘or a criminal one.’
‘Don’t split hairs. You’ve just made our job twice as difficult.’
‘Well, too bad.’
‘Oh, come on, you were the one who suggested the Families’ Code interview to work round Superbus’s lawyer. Now you’ve put the same block up for these two.’
‘One big difference – Superbus was guilty as hell, a main actor in the conspiracy intent on destroying us, but Philippus and Hermina are innocent.’
‘Innocent,’ he snorted. ‘Hardly.’
‘Yes, of this, I’m sure.’
‘And since when did you become a judge?’
‘Fair point,’ I said, ‘but they deserve a chance.’
‘Your sense of right and wrong is too flexible for me.’
I shrugged.
He picked up a sheet with a DJ logo. ‘The scarabs want you to go to Apollodorus’s house to see if you can point out anything missing or different. You’ll be escorted the whole time, but I want your word you won’t violate the CB order again.’
‘I didn’t see it as a violation...’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘…but if it makes you happier, you have my word.’
XXXVII
We approached the entrance of Apollodorus’s house with its graceful stone arch, the tall gates now wide open with custodes porting machine guns each side. We parked on the gravel area alongside a truck and two patrol cars. I jumped out the rear door of our wheelbase. The wind was rising this evening. I stopped for a moment to zip up my fleece. The inner metal barred gates with their Venetian scrollwork and graceful finials hung off their hinges, their lockwork smashed and distorted.
Another armed custos checked our ID as we stopped under the portico. He grunted and signalled us to proceed. The atrium was cluttered with figures in white suits running hand-held scanners everywhere, cartons being packed with papers, blue figures speaking their reports into el-pads. Two custodes were carrying computers out, cables trailing. I looked up at the large glazed bull’s eye in the roof but saw only dark sky.
A custos pointed us to the large recess where Apollodorus used to sit. Now it was occupied by Lurio. He made me wait by the table he was working at.
‘Captain.’
‘Commander.’
‘Your monkeys can leave.’ He waved my two guards away.
‘No disrespect, sir, but we are under the legate’s instructions to stay in close contact,’ said the optio.
‘Two choices: with or without force.’ He fixed them with a genial smile. ‘You choose.’ The custos who had been sitting with Lurio stood up and approached my guards. Another two joined her. She tilted her chin at the two PGSF and they conceded. We watched as they retreated to the other side of the atrium and sat opposite, but kept their eyes fixed on me.
‘What happened to you? You look like a piece of street trash.’
‘Don’t be a smart-ass, Lurio. You know I’ve been CB’d.’
‘Mitelus throw his pens off his desk?’
I said nothing.
‘Come on then, let’s go for a viewing tour.’
For some reason, the disorder left in every room by the custodes’ search saddened me. Even in my bedroom, the closet had been emptied and clothes thrown in a heap on the floor.
I knelt down and picked through a few things. ‘I’ll take these back, if that’s okay.’
‘Nothing doing. Everything’s going to be examined. You can buy them back in the public auction when it’s all finished.’
‘You’re all heart.’
&nbs
p; ‘C’mon, you know the rules of evidence as well as I do, or has your brain dissolved?’
On the table, the little blue vase still had the half-dozen blooms I’d picked in the garden, but they were all brown, desiccated and weary. I dropped the clothes back on the floor and reached into the top of the closet. On the inside of the door frame, between the moulding and the frame, was a cell chip with a blue logo and miniscule parts number.
‘Yours, I think.’ I handed it over to Lurio.
‘Mars! That’s from seven years ago.’ He turned it over, squinting at the number. ‘But you never used it.’
‘I didn’t need to.’
Apollo was a powerful, dangerous man. No question. But I’d rarely felt in danger from him. Not enough to use the emergency chip Lurio had given me. Maybe I should have been more frightened. A heavy lump settled in my heart. My legs turned to rubber and I sank down on the bed. I braced myself with my arms to stay upright. But I bowed my head as tears trickled down over my face.
Apollodorus, why did you do this? Why did you double-cross us?
I couldn’t see anything else remarkable or different. I wandered through, touching the furniture, fingering the cushions, stroking the velvet and linen drapes. A bowl of rotting fruit on the immaculate dining room table was drawing flies; the veranda was desecrated with recent cigarette butts. I was angry on Apollo’s behalf. He would have been coldly furious and snapped his fingers to have it remedied. But it would never have gotten to that state in the first place.
I led Lurio to the older part of the house behind the atrium where the floor turned to flagstones. Two custodes were packing up the contents of Apollo’s tablinum. The door to its left was ajar, outwards. My pulse rate rose as I remembered that last emotional evening with him. I opened the door wide, bracing myself to see the lovely room dissected and dismantled. All I saw was shelving, piled with dusty domestic plates and bowls, the kind you only use if extra people come to stay. The dust was undisturbed. I knocked on the back wall of the cupboard. A dull thunk. I tapped in several places but the same solid, reassuring noise came back.
‘What is it?’ said Lurio.
‘Help me take this stuff out.’
We worked methodically, setting the crockery to one side. I ran my fingers over the edges of the door frame, the back wall, everywhere. Nothing. I stood back and searched the surrounding stonework, scrutinising each ripple and curve, each mortared joint between.
‘Tell me what we’re doing here,’ he said. ‘I do have other things to get on with.’
‘Wait. I’m looking for the way in.’
‘What to? It’s a cupboard. Come on, we’ve got upstairs to look through yet.’
‘No, wait. There’s a room here.’
He lifted his arm and spoke into his commset. I was still feeling the stonework when another custos arrived with a woodsman’s axe.
‘Stand back,’ Lurio said to me and nodded to the axeman who hefted his axe back in both hands, ready to strike.
‘No, I’m sure the catch is here somewhere.’ Then I felt it – a too-smooth stone to the right of the door jamb. It slid down to reveal a number pad.
Lurio had one of the white-suited forensic drones run his scanner over to reveal the code. The shelves swung open noiselessly to the left and then backward into a recess. A velvet curtain slid across in front to camouflage the shelving. Lurio dismissed the others and followed me in. He aimed his flashlight into every corner, throwing the strong beam around the room. I bent down and switched on one of the exquisite Lalique lamps. The soft gold and crimson room glowed into life. I swallowed.
‘Jupiter’s balls!’ He whistled. He moved around the room, examining everything, captivated for a minute or so by the grandmother’s portrait.
‘I want this room sealed. I don’t want some soulless forensic cutting it all up. I’ll help pack it up and box it myself,’ I pleaded.
‘He really got to you, didn’t he?’
‘I…I owed him so much. He helped me grow up.’
‘But now?’
‘Now we have to find him. If he did backstab us, I promise you I’ll personally hunt him down.’
Lurio worked with me. We took down, boxed and crated everything within three hours. He helped me enclose the tall portrait between two large sheets of heavy duty plascard. I wasn’t sure why I felt this responsibility for keeping these things safe. Maybe they meant more to me than I would admit. I worked my hurt out pulling and taping the bubbled plastic and wrapping fleece.
I ran my hands over the inlaid top of the small table with curvaceous swan-neck legs. I saw the crystal glass half-full of pale yellow wine that Apollo had poured to steady my nerves after the shock of entering this room. I batted that memory away, grasped the table by the shallow carved skirt to lift it into a box, when my index finger found a tiny half-circle depression on the underside. I glanced over at Lurio. He was busy packing some lamps. I knew I’d found a concealed compartment. My dad had an old table with one in our New Hampshire house. When I was a kid, I’d loved making up stories about imaginary secret documents hidden there. I let my breath out. I pushed and it slid open. My fingers touched paper. Lurio had his back to me, so I carefully extracted a small bunch of sheets. I glanced at each one of around a dozen, but the most interesting were four stapled together and folded lengthways. As Lurio turned, I stuffed them into my fleece pocket.
It was gone two in the morning when we finished the rest of the house, but I’d lost my concentration. I didn’t tell Lurio I’d discovered where Apollodorus might be. If I’d guessed right, it had now become personal. Once I was free, I was going to bring him down myself.
XXXVIII
After a poor five hours’ sleep, I woke to a summons to report to the guard zone security gate at eight. The code was from Somna’s IS team. I guessed they were going to grill me further on the extent of my involvement with Apollodorus. I chose dark casuals and applied subdued make-up. Going into battle appropriately dressed and warpainted worked for me.
Longina greeted me formally and buzzed me through. Maybe I was paranoid, but nobody looked me in the eye as we walked along the corridors. At Somna’s office, Longina knocked, opened the door for me and left without saying another word.
Somna looked up from the file she was studying on her desk.
‘Good morning, Carina. Thank you for coming.’
Like I had a choice. Still, Somna had supported me all along, so I shouldn’t grump. Maybe all I was in for was a little chat.
‘I think you may be able to help us.’ She addressed me as if I was a civilian witness, not a member of the same unit. I felt uncomfortable, no, apprehensive.
‘Of course, ma’am, if you think I can,’ I said, far too cheerfully.
She stood up, picked a book off the shelf, but laid it on the desk without opening it. ‘On the facts, I think you’ve been misjudged. The difficulties and pressures of operating undercover are not always remembered by those who have attained higher rank.’
I hoped I wasn’t staring at her with my mouth open. Did she mean Conrad or the senior legate?
‘Well, let’s get on. I know you formed friendships with the Pulcheria Foundation associates. I presume this was why you are funding legal representation for the two we have in custody.’
‘I…’
She held her hand up. ‘It’s more demanding for us, but you were perfectly within the rules, and I applaud your sense of responsibility.’
Was she softening me up for something bitter? She was a psychologist, so had all the techniques.
‘I know from your report you found it awkward to deal with them when you went back there with Flavius. I think meeting the two detainees now would be even more trying.’ She fixed me with her more familiar grey lizard stare. ‘But I need you to do it.’
‘Why?’
‘They refuse to say anything. Even when their lawyers suggest they might compromise or answer simple things. It reminds me of somebody else just as stubborn.’ She smiled as s
he perched on the corner of her desk. ‘We could undoubtedly crack them within the twenty-eight days, but the legate says we need the answers urgently, preferably yesterday.’
‘I don’t think either of them will talk to me.’
‘You realise the seriousness of your own position, I presume?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Failure to cooperate could, of course, lead to formal arrest and detention.’ And she smiled.
I sent Somna a hate-filled look as the security detail pulled my hands behind my back and cuffed me. I was marched down to the cells, protesting all the way, but powerless to do anything. I refused to cooperate as they strip-searched me, prodding and pulling, and piled on the complaints louder and louder. The door to the open-barred cell block was ajar and the noise must have carried through. When the custody sergeant told me to can it, I spat at him. He slapped my face. I laid every curse I could think of on him. Two guards pushed me none too gently through the door to the cell block and shoved me in the end one. I cursed the Hades out of them. One turned around and gave me the finger.
I kicked the base plate on the front wall of the bars, but forgot my feet were bare. This time the swearing was genuine. I rattled the bars and shouted they couldn’t do this. I demanded release. I wanted a lawyer. After ten minutes, I gave up shouting, sat on the bench, my back to the other cells, and muttered about the injustice of it.
Half an hour later, I had my first visitors: Paula and Livius.
‘Are you trying to earn bonus stupid points?’ Livius shouted at me. He projected anger and concern in equal amounts.
‘You forget yourself, Optio.’
‘Don’t pull rank on me. Besides, you have none now. Mars help me, if you were a grunt in my squad, I’d run you around so hard you’d be too knackered to misbehave.’
‘Well, thanks for your visit. You can piss off now.’ I turned my shoulder on him.
‘Bruna, calm down,’ said Paula. She laid her hand on Livius’s arm and shook her head. ‘Tell me what happened.’
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