Death of an Eye
Page 20
A firm hand grasped her arm and insisted she stop. “Sheri. Tetisheri. Look at me.”
She fixed her gaze on the dark green of his tunic.
He sighed again and put a hand beneath her chin, raising her face until their eyes met, hers angry and uncertain, his steady and unflinching. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t that difficult.”
“Skatos, I hope not,” he said.
She couldn’t help smiling at his dismay. “And that was how I knew for sure.”
“What is how you knew what?”
“You swear in Greek.” He looked taken aback, and she elaborated. “Had you really been Sicilian, you would swear in Sicilian. A Roman soldier, retired, in Latin. And these.” She tapped his wrist guards. “The two-headed eagle is the symbol of Thrace. And—”
He watched the rich color flood into her face. “And?”
She glanced away. “You make love in Greek, too,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Agape mou.
He kissed the tip of her nose and led her by the hand back into the warm, dark evening. The stars above seemed somehow brighter than they had been before. They began to walk slowly eastward.
“Isidorus told us the story, which was much the same for all our fathers. He was eleven and large for his age,” he said. “The Romans came, conscripting for their army. They would have killed his family did he not join. And then one of their officers saw him in the training yard. He had some aptitude at arms. He decided my father would show to advantage in the arena and sold him to Lentulus.” His lips tightened.
“So young?” She slid her hand into his. It closed convulsively around hers. In the distance waves lapped at the shore. “How was he defeated?”
He sighed. “There were so many of them, from so many different places. Everyone had their own idea of how and when to fight. You can’t fight a war that way. Well.” He shook his head. “As Isidorus says, you can’t fight a war that way and win.”
“There were rumors that he meant to escape, that he had hired the pirates of Brundisium.”
He nodded. “But they betrayed him. It’s what killed them all in the end. All except we five.”
“How did you escape?”
“Isidorus was fifteen and my father’s aide. On the eve of the battle of Silarus, he put us into Is’s care and sent the five of us to Rhegium, where we boarded a ship for Sicily.”
“Bast above. A fifteen-year-old boy and four babies. I would like to have seen that.”
He laughed. “To hear Isidorus tell it he would rather have died at my father’s side. He settled us in Syrakousai, hired a wet nurse and a maid and found work as an instructor at a small ludus nearby.”
“No one suspected?”
“If they did, they valued Isidorus too highly to inform on him. He is very good, you know.”
“I know.”
“We grew up on the sands of the arena there. I don’t even remember the first time I held a gladius in my hand. When we were old enough, we joined the Roman Army. Eventually, we found ourselves here.” He was silent for a moment. “It was said to be a good place to start over. A place where it didn’t matter who you were or where you came from, it only mattered if you had something of value to contribute. Isidorus bought us out and we founded the Five Soldiers. Auletes—” He sighed. “Well, Auletes was never a strong man, but he was far from a stupid one. He came to the gymnasium and watched us work. The court followed him, as courts do.” He laughed a little. “You could say he brought us into fashion. A little while later, he summoned me to the Palace.” He shrugged. “The rest you know.”
“You have not lived an uneventful life, Apollodorus.”
He laughed again, but this time it was free of bitterness. “In spite of my profession, in spite of the work I do for the queen, my time in Alexandria has been the most peaceful of my existence.” He looked at her. “It seems possible I may have a life as other men have lives. Marriage, perhaps. Even children.”
She swallowed hard and looked away from those penetrating green eyes. “I have had no success at either.”
He slid an arm around her waist and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “I won’t rush you, Tetisheri. But it is only fair that you know what I want.”
“It is almost too much,” she said. “The theft. The murders. The Eye.” She sighed. “You. It is a great deal to take in all at once. I thought I was born to be a trader, that I would remain one all my life.”
“You still are a trader, Tetisheri. It’s just that now you are something more. As Khemit was something more.” He looked down at her. “Our queen chose well when she chose you.”
She looked away, still unwilling to accept or believe it herself. “Was this, us, was this truly not part of her plan?”
He caught both her hands in his and forced her to meet his eyes. His own were serious and intent. “I have wanted you for so long I can’t remember a time when I didn’t. When Auletes first blackmailed me into becoming his daughter’s personal guard you were both only twelve and at that time I felt a hundred. As you grew up, I seemed to—I don’t know.” He looked away, considering. “Not grow younger, obviously, but at least grow into life again. To think that perhaps I wasn’t too old for you after all.” He looked back at her and smiled, a little grimly. “And then, just when it seemed to me that you were looking back at me the same way I was looking at you, your mother married you off to Hunefer.”
By unspoken mutual consent they turned and began to walk again.
“Did you—”
“No,” he said firmly. “No, Tetisheri, I did not kill your mother.” He looked up at the night sky. “I admit I would have liked to, especially when she sold you to that kólos. But there is already enough blood on my hands without admitting to more that I did not spill.”
“Do you know who did?”
He was silent for a moment. “Do you really want to know?”
She sighed. “No. No, I suppose not.”
He held her hand in his, warm and hard. “So,” he said, “do you have plans for tomorrow evening?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Remember the taverna that Renni the Egyptian is starting in front of the Five Soldiers? He opens tomorrow. The first glass of athiri is free—”
“I thought he wasn’t serving alcohol.”
She heard the smile in his voice. “We’re making an exception this one time. He is making enough dolmas to feed the entire Sixth Legion, if it were not off laying waste to Pontus. All of Alexandria has been invited.”
She found she could bear to look at him again, after all. If the night hid every wrinkle and scar, the close-cropped fair hair, the broad brow, the deep-set green eyes, the firm-lipped, smiling mouth, the determined chin, still she could see them in her mind’s eye, so very dear for so very long. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her, but whatever it was must have been pleasing enough to him for him to smile at her in just that way.
“Well,” she said. “One has to eat.”
We hope you enjoyed this book.
The next book from Dana Stabenow is coming in summer 2019
Acknowledgements
About Dana Stabenow
The Kate Shugak Series
Also by Dana Stabenow
An Invitation from the Publisher
Acknowledgments
As always, my thanks to Michael Catoggio for his swift responses to my cries for research help.
About Dana Stabenow
DANA STABENOW was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised on a 75-foot salmon fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska. Her mother was a deckhand and she and Dana spent nearly five years living on board. For the next three decades, Dana refused to eat salmon.
Dana received a BA in Journalism from the University of Alaska, toured the world with a backpack discovering English pubs, German beer and Irish men, before returning to Alaska to work for BP at Prudhoe Bay, inside the Arctic Circle. Knowing that there must be a warmer
job out there, she gave it all up to become a writer. In 1991, the first Kate Shugak Mystery, A Cold Day for Murder, won the Edgar Award for the Best Paperback Novel and her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list
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About the Kate Shugak Series
Kate Shugak is a native Aleut with a touch of Russian heritage working as a private investigator in Alaska. She’s 5 foot 1 inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat and owns a half-wolf, half-husky named Mutt. Orphaned at eight years old, Kate grew up to be resourceful, strong willed and defiant. She is tougher than your average heroine – and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her.
Kate used to work as an investigator for the Anchorage DA’s office but after her throat was slashed while saving a child, she resigned from her job, and returned to the log cabin her father built on her tribe’s native lands, deep in Alaska’s largest national park in the shadow of the Quilak Mountains.
For fourteen months Kate remained in the wilderness – her voice cut down to a raspy growl by the jagged scar stretched across her neck. Then, during the worst winter on record, a congressman’s son disappeared... Two weeks later, the DA’s investigator sent to find him was also reported missing. The FBI turned to the one person they knew had the skills to track down the missing men in the depths of an Alaskan winter. This is where you’ll meet Kate in book one, A Cold Day for Murder.
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Books 1–9 and 10–20 are also available in single omnibus editions:
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Also by Dana Stabenow
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Liam Campbell Mysteries
Fire and Ice
So Sure of Death
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Better to Rest
Star Svensdotter
Second Star
A Handful of Stars
Red Planet Run
Others
Blindfold Game
Prepared for Rage
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Dana Stabenow, 2018
The moral right of Dana Stabenow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781788549196
ISBN (XTPB) 9781788549202
ISBN (E) 9781788549189
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