Widow's Pique Read Online Free PDF Page A

foreign aggressors. While
    the other half didn't feel he'd gone far enough in currying favour with the imperialists, not when there was so much trade at stake! Poor old duffer. He must feel like a bone being pulled at both ends by starving jackals.
    'Nothing new about that,' Mazares said dismissively. 'And yes, I suppose on the old maps, it would show the capital an hour from here. But Pula's the problem. Pula is new, and Pula is Roman, and many of our people found the proximity intimidating.'
    He made it clear that, as far as the Histri were concerned, when their supercilious overlords started laying the foundations of a brand new city within a bow's shot of their historic capital, it was the equivalent of putting a torch to raw naphtha.
    'The late King, that was Dol, by the way—'
    'He was the invincible one?'
    'No, it was Lijac the Invincible. Dol was the just one.' He sidled a glance out of the corner of his eye. 'I take it you find the royal family tree confusing?'
    'Let's just say it has more rings than a Persian concubine and leave it at that. What were you saying about the late King?'
    'Only that Dol sought permission from Rome to make Gora, in the interior, our new seat of justice.'
    And it was granted?'
    Rome was celebrated for keeping the closest of tabs on its conquered tribes. How else could they forestall rebellion? A task rendered damn near impossible, surely, if the capital was relocated to the heart of the Histrian interior?
    'Not capital. Seat of justice,' Mazares corrected mildly. 'You see, be they from the coastal communities or the interior, there isn't a single Histri who would pledge allegiance to anyone except their own king, and since Rome wishes to maintain order among us barbarians, what better way than to trust the natives to police themselves?'
    Provided they toed the imperial line and that taxes were paid in full and on time, foreign rulers were invariably left to their own devices as far as local government was concerned.
    The system tended to balance out both ways, since this way Rome steered well clear of the murky waters of local politics. Nevertheless, moving this so-called seat ofjustice inland showed an almost unprecedented level of faith in the late King Dol. It meant Dol was either exceptionally shrewd or—
    They're cunning, they're sneaky and they're all doubledealers, Orbilio had said, and who better placed to know these things than the Security Police . . . ?
    'The thing is, madam.' Mazares twirled his moustache in a comical gesture. 'Despite everything you Romans have taught us, we Histri remain a bunch of renegades at heart. The late King, Dol, knew that whatever he counselled, his people would still rise up against this encroachment, same as he knew that, if they rebelled, they'd pay heavily for their stupidity. More than most, our late King understood that, as much as one might wish it, even the gods can't make the sun go backwards.'
    Looking at Mazares, Claudia wasn't so certain. Handsome, affable, sure of himself, the King's envoy was as trustworthy as a hooded cobra.
    'So, Dol set up a new seat ofjustice in Gora, where - out of sight and out of mind - the Histri could pretend they were in control of their own destiny, and the King could pretend to let them be?'
    'It's wise to know your enemy,' Mazares retorted, grinning. 'But even wiser to know one's self.'
    He turned away, looping his thumbs in his gold chain-link belt.
    'Needless to say, Dol the Just died suitably young, but the point is, Gora was chosen because it's midway between the east and west shores and equidistant between our northern boundaries and the southernmost cape.'
    He ushered her on to the galley, where Claudia's blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat, Drusilla, was howling protests between the bars of her wooden crate in a manner that was reducing the crew to jelly, never mind the ship's rats.
    'We disembark at Rovin and spend the night, before
    travelling inland,' Mazares said, once the galley was clear