Wolf Whistle

But whatever her reasons for selling, the knife was back where it belonged. With a fond and loving owner, one who would cherish its sinister beauty and keep the blade sharper than any barber’s razor.

Had the weapon ears, it would have heard, as the Day of Luna faded, the flurry of activity which accompanies any household as it settles for the night. The splash of washbasins being emptied with iron ladles. The clatter of shutters opening and closing, as hopeful eyes once more wondered if the weather wasn’t changing for the better. Instead, the sumptuous weapon was left to reminisce, inside its wine-dark cotton shroud, on its fortunes and adventures. How its worth had varied from owner to owner, and how its owners, too, had varied-male to female, noble to criminal, light of touch to downright light-fingered. And yet, with the exception of the naval captain’s daughter, every owner from the date of its first and splendid forging had used the weapon to kill and to maim. Sometimes in anger, maybe in defence, all too often in war, that same thin blade had slipped between ribs or sliced through a windpipe, leaving scars and widows in its wake.

The household slid into a silence broken only by the occasional coo of a pigeon in the roofspace or the creak of a mattress as its occupant turned. When the air began to chill, the knife was removed from its hiding place and laid upon a bed, the cotton drawn back, fold by tender fold, until the cornelians glinted in the single flickering flame of a candle and the blade shone blue in the shadows.

‘Tomorrow the sun moves into Aries,’ a voice whispered as a finger traced the line of the blade. ‘Tomorrow, the temple of the goddess they call Fortune will be purified, and you know who worships Fortune, don’t you? Women.’

A cloth began to buff the blood-red gems.

‘Not rich bitches-that lot pray to Venus. We’re talking slaves and whores, Nemesis, which means…’

Warm breath misted the steel, prior to the blade being burnished.

‘We don’t have to wait until market day for our special girlies to be out.’

XIII

Fortune’s Day, and about time, too. I thought the night would never end! Tumbling out of bed, Claudia flung wide the shutters, to be greeted by another damp and misty morn, which barely dispelled the grisly images which had torn at her dreams, jolting her awake over and over again to lie, trembling in the darkness, as she re-lived the terror of twenty-seven savage cuts. What hatred, she wondered, peeling off her nightshift and trickling water from the jar into the washbasin, inspired a man not only to inflict immense pain upon a fellow human being, but deprive them of their dignity in the process? The mind that could abandon them, bound and naked, in a lake of congealed blood amid rotting turnips and spokeless wheels as though they, too, were the detritus of society, transcended comprehension.

Claudia drew deep breaths and waited for her stomach to stop churning. Thank Jupiter, her involvement in this wretched murder was finished. Slowly she reached for the pumice. She’d done her bit by helping to pinpoint the timing and by encouraging Supersleuth to air his worries in the tavern and, since he’d posted a soldier in the Argiletum, no doubt there’d be a clutch of reliable witnesses lined up already. One might even be able to identify the killer. She blotted her face with a towel. No, that chapter in her life (and the tall dark patrician that went with it) was well and truly closed. The Runaway Success saw to that. Right now, she was more concerned about Kaeso.

From the moment she knocked on Tucca’s door, he’d been playing with her. Why? Because she needed him more than he needed her? Who knows, but one thing was sure. The meeting in that mellow room of curios had ended in a stand-off. For a fraction of a second, as she rubbed the moisturing sap of aloes into her cheeks, Claudia thought she saw reflected in the washbasin the outline of the wolf man. The sharp grey eyes. The tawny mane. The loping tread. Thrusting a fist into the water, Kaeso disappeared in a thousand angry ripples.

Dammit, she’d asked him to kill the maniac who stalked her and his sole reaction was to arch one eyebrow slowly. Without so much as a word, he’d stacked more wood on the fire before coiling himself in the chair directly opposite. Throwing an arm casually over the back, he’d tipped his head to one side and said, ‘That’s a very unusual request.’

The fire leapt as the flames caught at the logs, billowing out waves of scented applewood, yet all she had smelled was Kaeso’s clove-like unguent.

‘But then,’ he had added, ‘you’re a very unusual woman.’

It was the roaring fire, surely, which turned her cheeks crimson. ‘But you will kill Magic?’ she asked.

Kaeso had an object, which he was rippling back and forth between his fingers. Not a coin, it was too well rounded, more like…Claudia’s hand flew to her earlobe. How the hell…?

‘ That’s magic,’ he laughed, tossing back her missing stud.