Parthian Shot (Marcus Corvinus Book 9)

by David Wishart

  The temperature in the room suddenly dropped below freezing. Perilla set the tablets down carefully on the floor.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, very quietly.

  So I told her.

  . . .

  ‘At least there isn’t a body this time,’ I said when I’d finished and the spiders had come out of cover. ‘The guy survived.’

  ‘Corvinus, this is politics!’ You could’ve used the line of the lady’s lips to slice marble. ‘You know how dangerous politics are. I’d have thought you would’ve learned your lesson after Sejanus. Why on earth didn’t you tell them to find someone else?’

  ‘That wasn’t an option. In any case, this time’s different. It’s official, and I’m on the right side of the line.’

  ‘You think that matters?’

  ‘Perilla, the letter was signed by the Wart himself. I can’t buck that.’

  She turned away. ‘Why does it always have to be you?’

  ‘Maybe I’m just lucky.’ I saw her shoulders stiffen. ‘Joke.’

  ‘Was it really?’ She still wasn’t looking at me. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, that anyone who is capable of murdering or assassinating or otherwise disposing of another human being or attempting to do so might just have no compunction about adding to their score whoever is stupid enough to shove his nose into their business?’

  ‘’Course it has. Usually in the middle of the night after too much cheese last thing.’

  ‘Will you please, for one minute, be serious!’

  Pause; long pause. I got up, went over and put my arms round her. She was shaking. Uh-oh; this was a bad one.

  ‘I think,’ she said, softly, her forehead against my chest, ‘that one of these days I am going to be upstairs working on a poem, or sitting reading, or doing something equally innocent and inane, when Bathyllus will come in and tell me you’ve been found in an alleyway with your throat cut or your head pulped, and that will be that. It’s happened – or almost happened – once before, when it was a hole in the ribs. The next time it will be real, and it will be permanent. Now tell me I’m wrong.’

  Jupiter in tights! When Perilla’s in this mood – and it doesn’t happen often – then all you can do is sit it out.

  ‘You want me to put in for some government office, lady?’ I said quietly. ‘Spend our evenings discussing grain quotas and the latest contract proposals for manufacturing sediment traps in the public water supply?’

  ‘No, of course not. You’d hate that sort of life, I know that. But it still doesn’t mean you have to –’

  ‘Okay, then. How about business? I’m a narrow-striper; there’s nothing to stop me setting up a shipping company. You choose the product; Syrian glassware, for instance. You know the breakage and loss statistics on the Antioch/Puteoli run for Syrian glass and how that’d affect the mark-up? I could give you really fascinating bits of information like that over the fruit and nuts after dinner. Or there’s farming. Good solid purple-striper tradition, farming. I could set something up with Alexis the botanical whizz-kid, breed a new kind of super-radish –’

  She hit me. Not hard, just a gentle punch, but she meant it all the same. ‘Look, stop it. All right, point taken. You’ve got to do it, I know that. Get yourself involved. Still, knowing doesn’t make things any easier.’

  I kissed her. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, well...’

  Crisis over. I knew the signs. The thing is, if I ever did turn respectable – or what my father would’ve called respectable, anyway, which meant boring-conventional – it would hit Perilla bad. Whether she admitted it to me, or to herself, or not I was as sure of that as I was of anything. And that would be that.

  Not that she didn’t have a point, mind.

  ‘So.’ She pulled away and wiped her nose. ‘What are your plans? Besides talking to this Prince Phraates at the wretched dinner?’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought. Maybe pay Lippillus a visit.’ Decimus Lippillus was the local Watch head at Public Pond and an old friend. He was also smart as paint, and the Esquiline mightn’t be his own patch but he’d have contacts. ‘See if I can trace the knifemen responsible, work back from there to whoever set the attack up...’

  ‘Knifemen,’ Perilla said. I skidded to a mental halt. Bugger. Now that had been a mistake.

  ‘Uh...yeah. Not that I’m thinking of tracing the actual knifemen themselves, of course, no, no, perish the thought, but...’

  ‘Corvinus, you are so transparent that it is not true!’ She laughed; not altogether a happy laugh, but a laugh nevertheless. The laugh died and she was suddenly serious again. ‘Well, no doubt I’m being silly and I’ll get over it. Don’t forget, though, will you, that silly is not the same as stupid. Not the same at all.’

  ‘No.’ I kissed her again. ‘No, I won’t forget.’

  ‘Good.’ She kissed me back. ‘Now perhaps you’d better have that word with Meton. Before he decides on what sauce to serve with the lampreys.’

  Oh, hell. Still, there was no point in putting it off. Bite on the shield-strap, get it over. ‘Right,’ I said.

  I turned round and yelled for Bathyllus.

  The little bald-head soft-shoed in within ten seconds flat. He hadn’t been eavesdropping, I knew that: Bathyllus, like all the best major-domos, has the uncanny ability of materialising where he’s wanted, when he’s wanted, from whatever part of the property he’s been in before. Me, I’ve given up wondering how he does it. It’s a mystery, like how vultures conceive or how senators manage to tie their sandal-straps.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Fetch Meton in, would you, pal?’ There was no way – no way – that I was going to beard that surly bugger in his own kitchen. Even if he’d let me over the threshold.

  I’d tried to sound offhand, and Bathyllus’s expression didn’t change, but I noticed his Adam’s-apple went up and then down briefly, the way someone’s might if you said to them: ‘I have grave news concerning your grandmother and a patch of spilled oil at the top of the stairs.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and exited in the direction of the kitchen.

  I went back to my own couch, lay down and took a large, nerve-steadying swig from my winecup. Shit! This wasn’t how it was supposed to go between the master and the bought help. Technically as the warped, evil-minded, misanthropic bugger’s owner I had literal power of life or death over him. I could sell him to a male brothel, have him flogged, sent to the mines or the quarries, thrown to his own bloody lampreys as a special dinner course himself, recycled for cat-meat. I could –

  ‘Yeah, what is it? Only I got a stock simmering that has to be skimmed every five minutes.’

  I refocused. Not that Meton was a pretty sight to focus on. ‘Right. No problem, pal. None at all. I just wanted to talk to you about dinner tonight.’

  The proto-human that was probably one of the best chefs in the city glowered, which for Meton passes as a beam. ‘The mistress told you about the lampreys, then?’ He glanced at Perilla, who’d picked up her tablets again and was studying them like Trebius Niger was the greatest thing since Aristotle. Traitor.

  ‘Yeah. Incidentally, where did you get them from?’

  ‘Special cut-price deal, bankrupt goods. A friend’s master died sudden and the old bugger had a cash-flow problem. He let me in on the ground floor.’

  Oh, shit; a horrible thought struck me: lampreys were notoriously unfussy feeders. ‘This, er, master, Meton. He didn’t happen to die by drowning and/or being digested, did he?’

  ‘Nah. Hit by a lump of tenement down the Subura.’

  ‘Fine. Fine. Just checking.’

  ‘They’re prime fish. Practically full-grown. Real beauties.’ Meton’s eyes under their solid eyebrow matting gleamed. ‘I reckon slow-stewed in Pramnian with bay, peppercorns and a touch of lovage, then reduce the stock as a gravy. Or I might do some of them –’

  ‘Meton...’

  ‘– sliced and pickled in juniper-berry vinegar, then set in a fenne
l jelly with capers. I picked up a few crayfish in the market this morning. Crayfish’d go nice on the side split and grilled au naturel with –’

  ‘Meton...’

  ‘– a basting of cold-pressed extra-virgin oil, some rosemary and a touch of good fish-sauce. Valentian, not Tarraconian, that bloody stuff’s overrated. Then there’s –’

  ‘Meton, pal, I’ll be eating out tonight.’

  He stopped like he’d run into a brick wall. He didn’t say anything, he just...looked. The effect plus the hair was unnerving.

  ‘It’s an unexpected dinner party. I didn’t know anything about it until this morning.’

  Silence. Dead silence. The colour had drained from Meton’s face. What I could see of it, anyway. Then it began to spread back up, starting from the neck and working its way north to the eyebrows. The huge hands began to twitch like matted spiders...

  ‘Tomorrow’s okay, though,’ I said quickly. ‘Tomorrow would be fine. Lampreys’ll keep for a day easy, right?’

  The fingers were beginning to curl. The guy still hadn’t spoken, but everything visible and non-hirsute above the tunic-top was an interesting puce.

  ‘You could...ah...Perilla won’t be coming.’ I was babbling now, to fill the awful vacuum of silence. ‘She’d be happy with just the crayfish. Or maybe you could do just half the lampreys, the ones in wine, and we could have the cold ones in jelly tomorrow. How does that sound, pal? Nice, eh? That okay with you, Perilla?’

  Her nose was still buried in the tablets so all I could see was the top of her head.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ she murmured. ‘That would be lovely.’

  Oh, great, So much for conjugal support. Hell, I was beginning to sweat in earnest. ‘It’s a really important dinner, Meton. Really important. You see, there’re these Parthians, and...’

  The brows came down like feral caterpillars.

  ‘Parthians?’ he said. ‘You’re eating with fucking Parthians?’

  ‘Uh...yeah, as it happens. A delegation of Parthian aristos.’ Bugger; so much for confidentiality. Still, Meton was safe; you could tell Meton that the Wart had sneaked back into Rome disguised as a pork-butcher and he’d’ve asked what kind of sausages he’d brought with him. ‘They’re having a special dinner.’

  ‘A Parthian dinner? With Parthian food? Real Parthian food?’

  ‘Could be. Could be.’ I was watching him closely. The fingers had uncurled and he was almost smiling, or doing what for Meton amounted to smiling, which wasn’t scowling too hard. Maybe we were going to come through this yet. ‘I didn’t think to ask at the time.’

  He looked at me with total incredulity, then shook his head. Yeah, well; people have different priorities. If you can categorise Meton as people.

  ‘You think there might be guinea-fowl?’ He’d taken on a sort of inward look. ‘Parthians have this stuffing for guinea-fowl with dates and pine nuts, see. I’ve heard of it, sure, but I’ve never come across a recipe.’

  ‘Is that so, now?’ I hadn’t seen the bugger so animated since he’d got his hands on a giraffe left over from the Games. We had recognisable grammar and syntactical cohesion, for a start. I began to breathe again. ‘Great. Look, Meton, let’s do a deal, okay? We leave the lampreys for tomorrow and I have a word with the Parthian chef, see if he can help. How about that, eh, pal?’

  The simian brows knotted. ‘They’ve got this other thing, a dessert. It’s a compote of apples and pears with ginger, poppy seeds and mountain honey done in a pastry shell...’

  ‘Just leave it with me, pal,’ I said quickly. ‘Have we a deal or not?’

  ‘Dessert included?’

  ‘No problem.’

  He stuck out a massive hairy paw, and we shook

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘You’d best go and, uh, stock the skim.’

  ‘Skim the stock,’ Perilla murmured, eyes still fixed on Trebius Niger.

  ‘Crawl back under your stone, lady. Okay, Meton, that’ll be all.’

  He left, walking like the marble floor was blue empyrean, and I breathed a sigh of relief: first crisis of the case over. Second, counting Perilla.

  I just hoped the Parthians hadn’t gone native and we were eating Roman.

  4.

  Vitellius arrived prompt at sunset, as promised, in a very upmarket litter with more than the usual complement of escort, complete with enough torches to make for a decent-sized comet: evidently we were representing Rome here, and out to impress. Me, I’d rather have indulged my hatred of litters and hiked it; although the clouds were building up from the north, promising a seriously-wet night, it wasn’t actually raining, and the Palatine wasn’t all that far. However, as per instructions I was wearing my best party mantle and carrying my snazziest pair of party slippers under my arm, and if the heavens did actually open before I got there my contribution as half-drowned rat to Rome’s diplomatic brownie points would’ve been zilch.

  Not, it transpired, from the sour look Vitellius gave the mantle as I climbed in opposite him, that I was likely to figure among the high scorers anyway.

  ‘That the best you can do?’ he growled.

  ‘Yeah, that’s about it,’ I said equably. I cast an eye over his effort, which had dinky little designs picked out in seed-pearls. ‘You look as if you’ve mugged an oyster-bed.’

  His mouth opened, then shut in a tight, hard line. The bearers took the strain, which was nine-tenths Vitellius, and we were off.

  For the first part of the journey, Vitellius sat and sulked, which in a large, jowly man is not a beautiful sight. I gave it ten minutes, then I said: ‘Maybe you’d better fill me in about who we’re going to meet here.’

  He looked across at me like I’d made the most bloody inane suggestion in the universe. Finally, when I’d decided he wasn’t going to bother answering, he did.

  ‘Fair enough. Pin your ears back. Phraates you know about. There’re four delegation members. The leader’s a noble from Ctesiphon – that’s the Parthian capital, Corvinus, if you didn’t know, inasmuch as these buggers have a capital – by the name of Zariadres. Oily chap, a courtier to his fingernails, don’t trust him an inch even for a Parthian. Then there’s Osroes. He’s a different kettle of fish entirely, not a courtier, one of those bloody Magians from the back country near the Caspian that’ve been pushing their way onto the Royal Council recently. He –’

  ‘What’re Magians?’

  Vitellius glared at me. ‘Jove’s balls, you’re hopeless! If I was as bloody ignorant as you are I’d slit my wrists.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  ‘They’re a religious sect, or maybe an elitist social group. Either or both, whatever you like to call the buggers, they’re trouble. We don’t have an equivalent at Rome, unless you think of a cross between an ultra-pukkah old-patrician family and the high-priesthood of Jupiter, and even that doesn’t go far enough. Sunny, open, tolerant personalities they aren’t, and Osroes is a fair representative sample. They’re narrow-minded as hell, they’ve got all sorts of bees in their bonnets, and they hate everything that comes from the wrong side of the Syrian-Parthian border. Plus a lot of what goes on inside Parthia, to boot. Currently, they’re trying to become a power at court whether Artabanus likes it or not, which by all accounts to give him his due he doesn’t. Osroes knows that and he takes considerable exception. Which explains Osroes.

  ‘Okay. So who else have we got?’

  ‘Peucestas. He’s a eunuch.’

  My face must’ve shown my feelings, because Vitellius grinned in the half-light of our flanking torch-bearers. ‘Get this through your skull now,’ he said. ‘There’s no stigma attached to having no balls in Parthia. Quite the reverse. Eunuchs have a special place, and it’s a highly respected one at that. You’d best get used to the idea.’

  ‘Fine. Fine.’

  ‘Peucestas is okay. At least he looks normal, and he isn’t effeminate. Like the other three he comes from a top aristocratic background. Family is – or was – big in Eastern Media. They chose the wrong si
de in a wrangle over the kingship twenty-odd years back when we were pushing another claimant. Artabanus broke them and Peucestas was one of the prime victims. He hates the Great King’s guts, which is one reason why he’s here.’

  ‘Who’s the fourth guy?’

  ‘That’s Callion.’

  I blinked. ‘He’s a Greek?’

  ‘One hundred percent pure-blooded, both sides. And don’t you forget it, boy, especially if you’re talking to him and the subject comes up in conversation because you won’t be popular if you do. Callion is not – I repeat not – a Parthian, not in his own view. There’ve been Greeks in Parthia since Alexander’s time, when it was still Persia and the Parthians were just a bunch of hooligans living in tents out in the sticks. Callion’s descended from a Macedonian cavalry commander who fought at Issus. His family’s the richest and most influential in Seleucia.’ He paused. ‘Seleucia. That’s a very big Greek city just across the Tigris from Ctesiphon, incidentally. In case you were wondering, which no doubt you were.’

  I ignored the sarcasm: yeah, I had been wondering, as a matter of fact, because the only Seleucia I knew was the port for Antioch. ‘Parthia has Greek cities?’ I said. ‘I mean real Greek cities?’

  ‘Juno’s bloody tits!’ Vitellius shifted irritably on his elbow, making the litter shake. I felt the bearers stagger. ‘Corvinus, don’t you dare come out with a half-assed remark like that in Callion’s hearing, okay? Ignorance is one thing but bloody stupidity’s another. Look. Parthia’s like us in one way: we’ve both got a lot of different peoples inside our borders and it saves hassle to allow them a certain amount of latitude in self-government. Right?’

  ‘Uh...right,’ I said.

  ‘Only there’s a difference between us and the Parthians where our provincials are concerned. We can draw a sharp line. If the buggers step across it they get hammered. We know it, they know it, there’s no argument and no beefing. So they generally stay quiet and do as they’re told. You’re with me?’ This time I didn’t answer. ‘Parthia can’t do that because the Great King doesn’t have the military clout. Seleucia may not be independent but she’s big enough to warrant respect and careful handling. The Seleucians’ve always been awkward bastards where the Parthians are concerned, and being so close to Ctesiphon doesn’t help matters because the king can’t ignore them. On the other hand, it means they can’t ignore the king either. Especially these days.’