Furies Read Free Page A

the gods knew what else. And the smell, a rank, musty odour that seemed to have penetrated the very walls. He’d hoped when he and Xanthias had moved here a month ago that the stench would eventually fade but it had only gotten worse over time, as though something had died, a prior resident even, and been plastered into the walls themselves.
    He closed his eyes again. Nights were the worst – long hours spent staring at the ceiling waiting for dawn to come. He’d fallen into a dull routine of late, drinking himself into a stupor every night as hope slipped through his fingertips like water. Never mind, it’s morning now. I only have to get through the oppressive weight of yet another day.
    His head throbbed, the taste of sour wine like paste on his tongue. I don’t even remember coming home last night, he muddled, though I suppose I must have. What day is it anyway? The twelfth? Thirteenth? I’m losing track. No, it’s the fifteenth, the Ides. Which makes it three-and-a-half months since Titiana and Atellus returned to Rome. Three-and-a-half months. Is that all it’s been? Still, it’s better they aren’t here to witness this. Or, even worse, be part of it.
    As the ripples of financial disaster had spread and the other investors began to experience the full effects of their own ruin, rumours had sparked and fanned – that perhaps it had all been a scam, with Corvinus and Aculeo themselves at the root of it. Aculeo must have hidden the money away somewhere and was even now preparing to flee the city! And like a beautiful, elaborate knot severed by a blunt sword, he’d run out of both willing hosts and most of his remaining funds. These simple lodgings, a two-room flat above a marble worker’s shop, had to suffice for now.
    A line of silverfish emerged from the window’s cracked edge, scuttled across the wall and slipped behind the wooden frame of his father’s funerary mask – which had apparently become their new nest. I should have sold you to the damned moneylender after all, Father, it would have given you a better view of the world at least.
    “Ah, there you are. I thought for certain you’d been murdered in an alley somewhere,” a bitter voice pronounced. Xanthias was standing in the doorway staring down at him, shaking his bald, freckled head.
    “You seem disappointed I wasn’t,” Aculeo grumbled.
    “Not at all, Master. My soul dances at the prospect of another day basking in your presence.”
    “Shut up and leave me be.”
    “Of course, Master,” Xanthias said with a deep, mocking bow. He snatched up the tunic Aculeo had dropped in a heap on the floor and held it up against the morning light, a sour look on his face. “Are these blood or wine stains?”
    “How should I know?”
    “As you wore it, Master, I had hoped you may have been able to shed some light upon the matter. It’s scraping the top off an empty measure, I know …”
    “Oh by the gods, just let me sleep in peace!” Aculeo snapped and tugged the woollen blanket back over his head, hoping the room would stop whirling about long enough to let sleep overtake him again. I’ll get back on my feet soon enough, he thought. And Corvinus will rise up from his scattered ashes, our broken fleets will lift from the bottom of the sea, the money will flow once again, my debts will disappear, Titiana and Atellus will return to my arms, she’ll beg for my forgiveness, as will our so-called friends, I’ll buy back our villa and then … then the world will be restored to sanity.
    A pleasant dream to cling to at least.
    Aculeo was just drifting back into the dark, subsuming tide of sleep when the silence of his bedroom was shattered by an ear-splitting din of hammering and chiselling, followed by laughter and a stream of fellahin chatter. It was the damned marble workers from the shop below, who’d just begun their day’s work. He could already taste the chalky marble dust on the back of his tongue.
    “Pluto’s stinking hole,” he