Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2)
Page 26
‘Yes,’ said the stranger in a cultivated, I-was-not-born-speaking-English kind of accent. ‘I suppose that I am. Are we near Nova Ostia? I lost my way.’
Tourists always came to the city by train or by coach, but were asked to walk the ten minute hike up the sloped road so that they entered the city without the ease of modern transport. Clea recognised the factory-produced tourist toga and tunic as one from Roman Road Tours. This man must have wandered away from his group. ‘You shouldn’t wander off-road,’ she said accusingly. ‘This is Australia, the bush can be dangerous.’ She should tell him about drop bears. That would serve him right. She was resentful of losing the last fifteen minutes of her lunch hour. ‘Come on, I’ll take you.’
He wore a hat, at least. Many tourists refused, wanting the full ‘authenticity’ of the Roman experience, only to appear at the city gates bright red like crayfish. The city was built with shaded streets to keep the Australian sun away from bare arms and bald pates, but that ten minute walk could do a lot of damage.
The visitor wore a broad-brimmed woven straw hat, not a design Clea recognised from Roman Road Tours. His hands were blistered from their moments in the sun, but the rest of him was a paler, European colour.
Clea dropped into the usual tourist spiel, about how a replica Roman city had come to be built in New South Wales, though it wasn’t really a replica, but a combination of several Roman towns. She added the part about real stone from Ostia and Herculaneum having been shipped over as part of the building process.
‘Yes,’ said the visitor with a sigh. ’I wish you hadn’t done that.’
Still, he seemed interested enough, and stopped to peer at the triumphal arch which served as the city’s gateway. The soccer boys were gone, probably yelled at by one of the merchants. The worst crime in Nova Ostia was to be inauthentic where the punters might see.
‘Would you like to wait for your tour group?’ Clea asked politely. ‘Or some refreshment, perhaps?’ She would be late getting back to the thermopolium at this rate, and it would look better if she brought a customer with her.
The stranger’s eyes were fixed upon the wall of the Temple of Vesta, and it was as if he had already forgotten she existed. ‘Thank you,’ he said absently. ‘But I travel alone.’
Clea dreamed of snakes, of women with bright silver eyes. She awoke to a flickering light outside her window, which was all wrong. It wasn’t like Nova Ostia had street lights. She knew even before she made it out of bed that there had to be a fire somewhere.
The Temple of Vesta was aflame. The white marble walls had turned black, at the heart of the blaze. Clea watched as various citizens ran to help, rolling out emergency hoses that had been carefully hidden in gutters and hatches. There was shouting, and urgency, and the acrid taste of smoke in the back of her throat.
A man leaped out of the flames and ran across the roof. As Clea watched, he jumped from wall to roof again, and ran along gutters, holding something the size and shape of a Roman short sword. She knew him, from his height and gait. The visitor.
Not quite knowing why, she opened her window and leaned out. He turned, his head flicking once in her direction, and then leaped — this time, arcing over the nearest wall, and vanishing from her sight.
Obviously this was the sort of thing you mentioned to people. But when the Governor’s secretary went from house to house the next day, searching for any witness reports concerning the fire, Clea said nothing.
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Copyright
First published in Australia in October 2014
by Deadlines
www.twelfthplanetpress.com
This novel © 2014 Livia Day
Design and layout by Amanda Rainey
eBook layout by Charles A. Tan
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Day, Livia, author.
Title: Drowned Vanilla / Livia Day ; edited by Alisa Krasnostein ; managing editor Helen Merrick.
ISBN: 9781922101020 (eBook)
Series: Cafe La Femme series; 2.
Subjects: Detective and mystery stories.
Other Authors/Contributors: Krasnostein, Alisa, editor. Merrick, Helen, editor
Dewey Number: A823.4
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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The Blackmail Blend by Livia Day
About The Author
A Trifle Dead
Love and Romanpunk
About Twelfth Planet Press
Copyright