The King's Gambit(76)
“Don’t patronize me!” she hissed. “You aren’t half as clever as you think, Decius.”
“I suppose not,” I admitted. I dreaded the next question. “Now, Claudia, tell me one last thing. I know that the point of all this conspiracy and murder is to secure Lucul-lus’s Eastern command for one of the men you plan to manipulate. It hardly matters which one. And that you intend to install young Tigranes on his father’s throne as puppet-king, and probably let him pretend to rule his grandfather’s kingdom of Pontus.”
She nodded. “Very good. And your question?”
I took a deep breath. “Was my father in any way involved in your conspiracy?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said scornfully. “Hortalus says old Cut-Nose is more upright than the Temple of Vesta.”
Relief washed over me like the cold plunge at the baths. “Well, the old man isn’t above taking a bribe now and then, but never over anything important. Certainly nothing touching on state security.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“He keeps bad company. Hortalus, for instance.” Now for the next unpleasant duty. “Claudia, it is my duty to arrest you and take you before the praetor, to answer charges of murder, arson and conspiracy. However, tradition allows you the honorable option to spare the family name.”
I reached inside my tunic and took out the sheathed dagger, tossing it grandly at her feet. She looked down at it, then up at me with secret amusement. “Whatever is this for?”
“I shall retire from the room for a few minutes to allow you to exercise your option.”
She smiled with open humor. “Don’t bother.”
It is a great mistake to make grand gestures at crucial moments such as that one. At that very moment something thin went around my neck and a weight landed on my back. And here, I thought, I’ve just gone and thrown away my dagger.
In my lifetime I have been cut, stabbed, speared, shot with arrows, clubbed and half-drowned in rivers, lakes and the sea. I can say with authority that nothing induces instant panic like having one’s respiration cut off in mid-breath and knowing that there won’t be any more coming from where you got that last one. Even drowning isn’t so bad, because then there is something to drag into your lungs, if only water.
My mind immediately took leave of me and went into transports of gibbering terror. My eyes swelled to the size of fists and my vision turned red. I tried to reach behind me, to claw the horrible weight from my back, but human shoulders are not articulated to make such a move easy. Legs coiled around my waist and I tried, with great futility, to get my fingers beneath the cord around my neck, but it was drawn too tight against the scarf I still wore to hide the marks left by my last throttling. This was the way Sinistrus had died. What was it I had wondered long ago? Oh, yes, I had wondered why Sinistrus hadn’t crushed the throttler against a wall. Because he was stupid. So was I.
With the last of my strength, I rushed at a wall, turning at the last second to smash my would-be murderer against a rather nice fresco depicting Ulysses and the Laestrygonians. I heard a grunt, felt a sudden expulsion of breath against my ear. The cord slipped, loosened slightly. It was not enough to allow a breath through my constricted windpipe, but it gave me the best of news: He was not using the slipknot! If I could just get the murderous little bastard off my back, I might yet live.
The room was too small to start a proper run. Drastic measures were called for. My vision was darkening and I could hear a great rushing sound in my ears. Crouching low, I bent my knees deeply. With all the strength I had left, I sprang up and forward. As my feet left the ground, I threw my body forward so that I hurtled into a forward somersault. Taking flight, I tried to will myself to weigh more, in order to come down harder.
I landed with a gratifying crash, shattering a small table in the process. The cord loosened and I dragged in a great, ragged breath of air more delicious than the finest Falernian. The legs had loosened from my waist and I twisted around, my hand going beneath my tunic and emerging with the caes-tus, which I was about to use for the second time that day. I raised my fist to my ear, then hesitated in amazement.
“Who’s this?” said Milo from the doorway. The noise had drawn him.
“This,” I said, looking down at my now-unconscious attacker, “is our strangler, our burglar, our ‘Asian boy.’ Her name is Chrysis and I daresay she’s the most multi-talented woman in Rome.”
Milo chuckled. “Won’t the boys in the Subura be furious when they find out it was a woman doing so well!”