Seven for a Secret

Poisoned Pen Press

Chapter One

"Why, Zoe?" John asked again.

Did her lips tighten?

No, it was only an effect of the unsteady light from the lamp that sputtered on the desk of his study.

Usually he could discern an answer to his questions, but not tonight.

He heard the creak of a footstep in the hall and glanced toward the doorway in time to see a retreating shadow.

Peter.

John's habit of talking to the mosaic girl distressed his elderly servant, though he did so often enough late at night.

But never before about an event like this.

Perhaps Peter had intended to refill the lamp or replenish the wine jug. Hearing his master's voice, he had discreetly returned to the kitchen.

John took a sip from his clay cup. "I overheard Peter discussing you with Cornelia. He called you a little demon, Zoe. Whoever you are, you aren't a demon, are you?"

If she were, it might explain what had happened that morning.

Zoe remained silent. She stared gravely from one corner of the busy bucolic scene on the study wall. She looked seven or eight. Her dark, polished eyes were older. They had seen much.

Had they seen into John's memories?

What she did not see—for her gaze never wavered—was the debauchery in the cut glass skies above her. The mosaic maker had angled the tesserae so that what appeared by daylight to be clouds were transformed by lamplight into riotous pagan deities.

John got up from his chair and carried his cup to the half opened window. From the barracks on the other side of the torch-lit square below came shouts and oaths, the greetings of military colleagues.

Familiar echoes from a former life.

John was a shade, a formless reflection in the diamond panes, looking out from a gray underworld at his own past.

Egyptian wine always brought the memories back for it was in Egypt he had first tasted its rawness. He swallowed another mouthful and felt the hot Alexandrian sun at the back of his throat.

He knew he should be cautious and recruit a few of those excubitors across the way to accompany him to his meeting.

He knew, also, he would not.

He sat down again in the uncomfortable wooden chair beside the simple desk. Nothing in the room's spartan furnishings marked it as a part of the dwelling of the Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian. The all but unfurnished room was large enough to house several working families and the cunning mosaic must have cost the former occupant of the place—a long since deposed tax collector—more than a laborer could earn in years.

"You say nothing now, Zoe," John muttered, "but I expect you will explain it all to me eventually. Perhaps even that strange tattoo on your wrist."

In truth, while conversing with the mosaic girl, John often managed to explain puzzles to himself.

He glanced at the bowl of the water clock beside the door. Dawn was hours away. Although the heat of late summer lingered in the air, the hours of this particular night seemed as long as those of midwinter.

Earlier that day he had risen before dawn as usual, before Cornelia had awakened.

"I walked to the Mese. The air was chilly. The seasons are changing."

John spoke softly. He did not want to disturb Peter again. He described to Zoe, or perhaps to himself, how he had continued across the expanse of the Augustaion, all but deserted at that hour except for scavenging seabirds and the occasional heap of rags marking a sleeping beggar, past the Great Church whose dome glowed faintly from within against the lightening sky, and through the forum of the Law Basilica where the sellers and copiers of books clustered their shops.

Laggard carts rattled toward the city gates. He was up with the dogs. The gaunt beasts loped through the long shadows, nosed whatever refuse they could find in gutters and corners. When the sun had risen and carts were forbidden, the dogs could safely lie on the warm cobbles in the middle of the streets.

The cries of gulls, muted by distance, accentuated the emptiness. Mist rose from the pavements as if from a gray sea.

He could smell the sea.

His morning walks were longer since Cornelia had come to stay. He had never imagined they could be reunited and had grown used to his solitude. He was ever aware of her presence in his house.

He turned aside into the area known as the Copper Market. In the early morning light, lavender plumes of smoke from unseen furnaces rose above low brick buildings. From doorways and alleys there came acrid smells, unidentifiable to one who worked in ceremony and diplomacy rather than metal or glass.

During the past few weeks he had extended his morning walk to an unnamed square no different than scores of others in the city. Grates were still pulled down in front of its shops. A Christian holy man kept his endless vigil from a broad platform atop a pillar at one end of the open space.

The stylite stood motionless, gazing over flat rooftops in the direction of Mithra's rising sun. There was no one to observe the man, except for John and the gulls and the stray dogs. After a while a hooded acolyte emerged from the doorway in the base of the column and left the square, giving only a passing glance to the tall, thin man waiting nearby. No doubt it was not unusual for pilgrims to take up vigils near the pillar.

When the square was empty again John looked up toward the stylite but movement drew his gaze back to earth. His years as a mercenary were far in the past, but he retained the keen alertness of a guard on watch at the border of the empire.

A figure emerged from a doorway among the shops. Not the acolyte. The figure moved in John's direction.

It was no accident, John realized.

Although the Lord Chamberlain's plain indigo cloak, by its cut and fabric, marked him as a man who should not be on the street without a bodyguard, he had never been attacked. There was something in his bearing which convinced predators to wait for easier prey.

Or maybe, as his young friend Anatolius warned, it was only that Fortuna had smiled on him up until now, or else he had been spared by his old servant's God, as Peter insisted. He knew he did not have Mithra to thank, because Mithra was not the sort of deity who looked out for those who wouldn't look out for themselves.

His short blade was in his hand by the time he saw that the attacker was merely a woman. A street whore. Or so he thought, until she drew near enough for him to make out the shabby but once elegant robes and the purple shadow of the veil obscuring her face.

She spoke in a breathless, hasty whisper. "Come here tomorrow at the same hour. I have information. There's no time now."

She had looked around, as if panic stricken, and turned to leave.

John lifted the cup again. Not as far as his lips.

The lamp on the desk guttered and went out.

He could still see the mosaic girl. Her eyes glittered in the dim light from the window.

"Normally, I wouldn't have taken the encounter seriously, Zoe," he told her. "It was obviously some sort of mistake or a trick. But as she turned, I asked the woman who she was. She paused and pushed her veil aside just for an instant, long enough for me to confirm that what she said was the truth.

"Don't you recognize me, Lord...