Perfiditas Read online

  ‘So when are you going to give up all that mental stuff and join us, Captain?’ Galla, one of the senior NCOs was grinning at me. She’d helped rescue me in New York seven years ago when I’d been hunted by a government-sponsored killer.

  ‘I have so much else to do than run around on open moors, climb up sheer rocks, wade through mud firing a weapon and shrieking like a banshee.’

  ‘We don’t shriek like banshees, ma’am!’ said Galla. ‘We leave that to Daniel – I mean, Major Stern.’

  Laughter broke out with a lot of mock punching, elbowing and shouting. How anybody didn’t get a headache being around them, I didn’t know. But they had more honours, decorations and awed admiration than any other team.

  I preferred a silent approach. Daniel called it sneaky; I called it effective.

  ‘Carina?’ I looked up. Julia Sella, our training major – no, newly appointed Lieutenant Colonel Sella, no less. ‘Everything ready? Let me know if you need anything.’ Even her brown hair was soft and wavy, in tune with her personality. My mentor during my first confused days in the PGSF, and my friend now.

  ‘Thanks, ma’am,’ I said. ‘I think I’m set. If it all falls apart, I’ll just wing it.’

  She smiled back ruefully. ‘Yes, I know you probably will, but don’t try it too often. Both you and the unit have a lot riding on this.’

  II

  Three hours later, after the last guard had left, I perched on the front row of seats in the empty hall. The zoned hall lighting that ruthlessly excluded any pooling or dark corners had been switched off except for an overhead spotlight above the rostrum. No longer shimmering under the light, the cherrywood panelling shaped to give maximum acoustics was inert.

  I shut my eyes and breathed deeply. The adrenalin flow that had surged through me half an hour ago was still pulsing around my body. I could have gone out and climbed both peaks of the Gemina, without mountain gear. I’d won my new job as head of the strategy section against ferocious competition. Sure, I’d been nervous before my first presentation today as strategos. Who wouldn’t be? It had brought back the anxiety of that first advertising pitch I’d done in New York when I was still Karen Brown – the catalyst that brought me here seven years ago.

  Now I was in the place I had yearned for, where I could share my passion for strategy, play games and have fun. Hours of thinking, challenging, arguing, teaching, learning. I saw models, 3-D imaging, live intranet games, holographic battlefields, not forgetting the traditional sandbox…

  So why the tape running in my head, its hum getting louder like some damn mosquito? Mossia! What was wrong there? I decided to pass by Aidan’s later and check it out. More than likely, he had some new lover or was tied up in a poker marathon. But why that vicious letter?

  The shadow of a tall figure fell over the seats beside me.

  The legate. Our new chief. He’d radiated confidence that afternoon in front of four hundred alert, cocky and critical pairs of eyes. But I’d seen how he rubbed his fingers along the hairline by his temple more times than usual – his signature tell.

  The previous legate, Valeria Vara, had been a political appointee, some said due to horizontal influence. She’d appointed her family clients to several positions, with really bad results – one had tried to kill me. But the troops had listened carefully today to the new legate; he commanded respect, and not a little fear. When he was deputy, he’d been frustrated under the treacherous fog of Vara’s rule, but he’d succeeded in protecting and inspiring troops despite that. Some murmuring had run around the hall after he finished, but it had sounded both surprised and positive to me.

  ‘Ready to go home?’ he said. ‘Do you want a lift?’ He didn’t need to move his lips to smile; it was in his eyes. Hazel with unfairly generous lashes, set in an angular, sculpted face. Sure, he looked good: tall, dark blond hair, the fit build of a professional soldier, but that wasn’t it. Fortuna had blessed him with the gift of charm. When he smiled, every man wanted to be his friend, to have his respect and companionship; every woman wanted him in her bed.

  But when he was angry, his face shrank back onto its bones, the tilting eyes tilted more, and his lips almost disappeared. When I saw that expression, I was sure there had to be a Norseman or Hun in his gene pool.

  But now he was smiling. Now he wasn’t the legate. He was my husband, Conradus Mitelus. Conrad. I still used the English form. That’s what I’d called him when I’d met him in New York. That’s how he lived in my head. And heart.

  ‘Yes, that would be great,’ I said, coming back to the real world.

  ‘I thought they were going to eat you when you threw that challenge at them,’ he teased. ‘You don’t hear stunned silence like that every day. But you had them like cats lapping milk out of your hand at the end.’

  ‘Well, I hope I can live up to their expectations.’ I glanced at him. ‘And yours.’

  He smiled again but said nothing.

  At the door, we passed through the biometric scanner, collected our side arms, and stepped into the fresh air. Despite state-of-the-art environmental systems in the headquarter building, I preferred natural warmth and the breeze on my skin. Even rain was good. I turned towards the parking lot, but Conrad’s faint touch on my arm stopped me. He nodded at the car approaching us. Of course, now he was the legate, he was chauffeured around. A guard stepped out from nowhere and, as the driver opened the back door for Conrad, slipped ito the front passenger seat. Being a mere captain, I had to walk around the other side of the car. This was too formal. I was riding in on my Ducati tomorrow.

  The early evening rush hour was hardly starting so we made good speed along the Decumanus Maximus – Main Street. In earlier times, it had been two-way, which had to have been a nightmare.

  As we crossed over the Cardo Max by the forum, Conrad touched my arm. ‘You look preoccupied. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing, really,’ I said. ‘Well, it should be nothing. A contact sent in an emergency token today, for something trivial. Not trivial to the players’ personal lives, I suppose, but definitely not justifying a token.’

  ‘Want to run it past me?’

  ‘No, I’ll work on it for a bit first. I’m not seeing something I should,’ I almost growled in frustration.

  ‘Do I know the person or people concerned?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I sighed. ‘Sorry, I’m being grumpy. I don’t mean to, especially today.’

  I studied his face: brown shadows around eyes that had drooped back into their sockets, deep lines each side of his mouth. Away from his audience, he finally relaxed and the fatigue of the past weeks showed. I brought my hand up to his cheek. He smiled back.

  Just for a second, he glanced into the rear-view mirror.

  Hades. The driver and guard. I whipped my hand back down.

  Conrad chuckled and whispered into my ear, ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  I shot a sour look at him and sat back like a prim librarian.

  As we approached the house, he laughed softly, like he was determined to be in a good mood. At the entrance in the high wall, I rolled my window down and held my hand against the bioscanner. We swept under the golden stone arch into the wide courtyard, tall gates closing behind us. We were home.

  III

  Domus Mitelarum was an imposing house, occupying the whole block and beyond. The golden stone glowed in the late afternoon sun. Conrad directed the driver to manoeuvre the car to place my side to the house entrance. The guard and driver exchanged a quick glance. As heir to the most senior of the Twelve Families, I outranked Conrad in civil life by several steps. So far, we’d been able to keep the work and civil contexts separate, each of us studying to stay in the correct bounds. Some days it was more of a strain than others.

  Although my door was opened by her teenage son, Junia, the steward, greeted us herself.

  ‘Good evening, Carina Mitela,’ she said, face impassive as usual. ‘Legate’, she added, nodding to Conrad. ‘Countess Aurelia would like yo
u both to join her in the atrium.’

  ‘Thank you, Junia. Straightaway?’

  ‘Yes, lady, she was clear on that.’

  Conrad started giving the driver and guard instructions for the morning.

  ‘Um, Junia, could you put the legate’s driver on the bioentry system, please? Some sort of limited access?’

  Junia rescued me. ‘Of course, lady, I’ll arrange it immediately.’ Without seeming to hurry, she was beside the car, had the driver out and was escorting her and the guard into the domestic hall door by the time Conrad and I had a foot on the first shallow step to the main entrance.

  Crossing the vestibule, past the entry to our wing, the only sound came from our leather boots as they creased and relaxed with our foot movements across the marble floor. Eyeless imagines looked down on us from both sides of the hallway, some coloured marble, some painted. I still found them spooky, like running the gauntlet. Conrad didn’t give it a second thought, but I’d been raised in the Eastern United States. The average Eastern American home didn’t have rows of ancestor statues in the hallway, especially one of your mother at the end. The sculptor had caught an air of wistfulness in her face; drooping eyes, tendrils escaping from the thin ribbons around her head and curling down around the hollows of her neck, emphasising the hesitant expression – an other-worldliness. She’d run away to Eastern America at twenty, married my father, and produced me within the year. I found it hard to imagine how this descendant of a hundred generations of warriors had become the model Eastern American housewife in the few photos I had. Maybe this conflict was why she’d driven herself off a cliff into oblivion when I was three.

  ‘Any idea what Aurelia wants?’ Conrad asked me, breaking into my thoughts.

  ‘Not a clue. Somebody’s birthday?’

  ‘Whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t take long.’ He ran his fingertips down the side of my upper arm onto the back of my waist. As they ran over my rear, he smiled. I returned it, holding his warm look with my own.

  A burst of laughter from the atrium broke our mood and Conrad dropped his hand.

  The atrium rose up for three storeys. Light from the late summer sun shone through the central glass roof onto luxuriant green planting at the centre of the room like rays from an intense spotlight. A dozen or so people were scattered around a table covered with white linen, glasses, fruit and honey cakes, olives, nuts and cheese. At the centre stood the tall, spare figure of my grandmother, Aurelia Mitela. Now over seventy, she looked twenty years younger and carried herself like the soldier she’d been thirty years before. My cousin Helena, standing next to her, had the same angular look as Aurelia, but her bones were overlaid with softer, immaculately groomed skin. How Helena balanced in those designer shoes was a mystery to me. She was talking to Conrad’s uncle Quintus Tellus and his two teenage sons who hovered close by their father. Conrad groaned softly before we approached the group.

  ‘Salve, Nonna.’ I kissed my grandmother’s cheek. Her blue eyes gleamed.

  ‘Good evening, Aurelia,’ Conrad added, lifting her hand and passing his lips over the back of her fingers. He winked at Helena who winked back, turned to his uncle with genuine pleasure, grasped arms and then remembered to nod to his two cousins.

  ‘What’s going on, Nonna?’

  ‘We’re having a drink to mark Conradus’s appointment. It’s over a hundred years since a Mitela has been appointed legate in the PGSF,’ she said. ‘A good excuse!’ she added, with a mischievous smile. She’d ambushed us after a hard day, and knew it, but I forgave her easily and grinned back.

  Junia’s son, Macro, offered glasses of champagne around, his face serious with concentration in his anxiety to get it right. He was only sixteen, barely an adult.

  We duly drank Conrad’s health. I reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips. He encircled my waist with his arm and turned to the group.

  ‘Thank you. It’s been a heady few days. When I was called to the palace on Monday, I was genuinely surprised to be named legate.’ His face became solemn. ‘I need to ask for your patience and forbearance. Without a doubt, the work in front of me means strange hours and domestic disruption. And, yet, it’s a great honour that brings credit to both families.’ And he raised his glass to include his uncle.

  I loved Quintus as if he were my own uncle; well, a great deal better if I compared him to Uncle Brown whose family I’d been fostered with in Nebraska after my father’s death. Quintus had raised Conrad in the hard school of rural poverty after the rebellion had been defeated. Thirty years ago, Conrad’s stepfather, Quintus’s half-brother, Caius Tellus, had launched a coup and imposed a brutal regime that lasted barely eighteen months. But, starting years before, he’d destroyed Conrad’s innocence.

  I watched Conrad as he circulated, talking to Aurelia, Helena and the other guests. ‘You must be so proud of him,’ I said to Quintus.

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled at me. ‘He’s worked hard to overcome his poor start.’

  ‘You’ve not done too badly yourself, Uncle Quintus.’ I laughed.

  In the aftermath, Quintus was lucky to have escaped with his life, exiled to the east as a country magistrate. He’d fought his way back, gaining a compassionate patron – some say lover – who’d brought him back into the circles of power. He’d sent his tough little nephew into the legions. Conrad had thrived, risen meteorically, was invited to join the PGSF as a young officer, and had now reached the top.

  Quintus let his hand rest on Conrad’s shoulder. Conrad half-smiled back at him. Quintus’s own two sons were young and, although legally belonging to their mother’s family, were often in their father’s company. To me, they looked cosseted, vulnerable, softer somehow – part of Quintus Tellus’s later more prosperous years.

  ‘Will you eat with us or do you have other plans?’ Aurelia asked me.

  ‘We’d love to, but I must change,’ I insisted. ‘I want to see the children.’

  ‘That’s cool, cuz,’ Helena chirped in. I laughed at her using the English word. She made a face back, a contrast with her poise and Vogue-like smoothness. Although she’d been a successful teacher, she’d given it up, escaped, she claimed, and now cared for my children. ‘They’re all ready for you,’ she added. ‘But Allegra will eat with us downstairs as a special treat.’ My eldest was only six, but she loved to be included with the grown-ups.

  ‘I have to step out later and run an errand,’ I murmured to my grandmother, ‘but I don’t need to go until after dinner. It’s work.’

  She shrugged, somehow making it an elegant gesture. ‘I understand. I’m just grateful we can all come together like this now and again.’ She indicated the others with a light wave of her hand, but her gaze lingered on them. Although head of an extended tribe, Aurelia Mitela had been without close family for years. I knew she relished having one now.

  Conrad and I went up to the nursery, to see the twins and bring Allegra back down with us. She walked confidently, with a secret little smile on her face as she took her place at the table. Dinner was light-hearted, even mildly boisterous, conversation pleasantly superficial. The older generation went off to the library afterwards to let my grandmother fleece them at cards and the younger one to the pool tables downstairs. Allegra pouted as Helena grasped her hand to take her up to bed but, at the door, she turned, pulled away from Helena, raised her free hand, shook it sideways in a cartoon wave, and sent us a smile that squeezed my heart.

  I left Conrad and Daniel at the table, arguing some point about field tactics, and hurried across the hallway into our apartment. Rummaging in my closet, I found some old running sweats and worn sneakers. I released my hair from its plait; it was red-gold but not frizzy. Pulled back in a ponytail and secured with an elastic band, I could hide most of it at the back of my head so the colour wasn’t too obvious. Shoulders slumped forwards to look younger and poorer, I checked myself in the long mirror. I slipped a thin nylon rope into my hoodie pocket along with a set of miniature tools on a ring, and a scanner, then grabb
ed a special packet of small cards from a drawer and stowed them in my pocket.

  Down the back stairs and into the domestic hall. I tapped on the door. I could go anywhere in the house at any time but I wouldn’t dream of barging into the domestic hall without some form of preliminary. Even after seven years.

  My father must have had help when we lived in New Hampshire before he died. Aunt and Uncle Brown had no time for anything like that, thinking it was “pure vanity”.

  Macro opened the door. I passed through the spacious hall, painted in pale blue with racks of hooks, open shelving on one wall and two shallow but long wooden tables, one with two terminals. Two of the younger female house servants, giggling and pushing against each other, exited their dining room. One cast her knowing eyes at Macro who blushed but as soon as they caught sight of me, they looked down and hurried off toward the sleeping areas. I glanced up at the large control panel for the domestic system, seeing a cluster of biosignatures in the small drawing room and a smaller group in the games area.

  The panel bleeped as I downloaded the entry code for after midnight into my ID. Down the basement stairs and out the service exit in the garage door. It was dry now, cool, but not yet chilly. You could see snow on the mountains in the distance, but only on the peaks, like in jigsaw puzzle pictures.

  After twenty minutes, I crossed the Dec Max making my way to where Aidan lived. His end of the Via Nova was less busy, less well lit, mildly louche, to be honest.

  At his building, I bent down as if to retie my sneaker. As I stood up, I passed my reader over the scanlock, captured the code and was in. On his floor, I fished in my pocket for the packet of cards. I glanced up and down the brick-faced corridor. No signs of company. I kept it simple and knocked at Aidan’s door.

  The spyhole darkened. I smiled and waved. The door opened a few centimetres. Aidan’s face filled the gap. Hair mussed, his face was pale with a green-grey tinge; a line of sweat had formed above his lips; his pupils were dilated in red-rimmed eyes. He was completely still. No, rigid.