Lord of Emperors (25 page)

He climbed the tree, crossed to the top of the wall. The white moon was up now, halfway to full. He sat on a stone wall above the dark, empty street, and he was remembering Zoticus, and the boy he'd once been himself, crossing from wall to tree. The boy, and then the man. He thought of Linon, could almost
hear
her commenting on what had just passed. Or perhaps he was wrong: perhaps she would have understood that there were elements here more complex than simple desire.

Then he laughed a little, under his breath, ruefully. For that was wrong, too: there was nothing the least simple about desire. He looked up and saw a figure silhouetted in the window he'd just left. Leontes. The window was pulled shut, the curtains drawn in Styliane's bedroom. Crispin sat motionless, hidden upon a wall.

He looked across the street and saw the dome rising above the houses. Artibasos's dome, the Emperor's, Jad's. Crispin's own? Below-a flicker at the corner of his eye-one of those utterly inexplicable eruptions of flame that defined Sarantium at night appeared in the street and vanished, like dreams or human lives and their memory. What, Crispin wondered, was ever left behind?

He didn't go home. Home was very far away. He jumped down from the wall, went across the street, cutting up a long dark lane. A prostitute called to him from shadow, her voice a kind of song in the night. He kept going, following an angling of the laneway, and eventually came to where it opened onto the square across from the Imperial Precinct gates, with the front of the Sanctuary on his right. There were guards on the portico, all night long. They knew him as he approached, nodded, opened one of the massive doors. There was light inside. Enough to let him work.

Same hour of night, same wind, four men walking elsewhere in the City, under that risen moon.

It was never entirely safe in Sarantium after nightfall, but a party of four could feel reasonably secure. Two of them carried heavy sticks. They walked briskly enough in the cold, slowed somewhat, as the road sloped downwards and then back up, by wine consumed and the bad foot one of them dragged. The oldest, small and portly, was wrapped in a heavy cloak to his chin but swore whenever the wind gusted and sent debris tumbling down the dark street.

The were women abroad, too, in doorways for shelter, for they wore too little clothing in the nature of their profession. A number of them could be seen lingering with the unhoused beggars by the heat of the bakers" ovens.

One of the younger men showed an inclination to slow down here, but the one in the cloak rasped an oath and they kept moving. A woman-a girl, really-followed them a little way and then stopped, standing alone in the street before retreating to the warmth. As she did, she saw an enormous litter carried by eight bearers-not the usual four or six-come around a corner and then move down the street, following the four men. She knew better than to call out after this aristocrat. If such as these wanted a woman, they made their own choices. If they did call one over to the curtained litter, it wasn't necessarily safe for the girl. The wealthy had their own rules here, as elsewhere.

None of the men walking were sober. They had been given wine at the end of a wedding feast by the hostess, and had only just emerged from a noisy tavern where the oldest one had bought several more flasks for all of them to share.

It was a long walk now, but Kyros didn't mind. Strumosus had been astonishingly genial in the tavern, discoursing volubly upon eel and venison, and the proper marriage of sauce and principal dish as recorded by Aspalius four hundred years ago. Kyros and the others had been aware that their master was pleased with how the day had unfolded.

Or he had been until they'd stepped back outside and realized just how cold it was now, and how late, with a long way yet through the windy streets to the Blues" compound.

Kyros, reasonably immune to the chill, as it happened, was too exhilarated to care: the combination of a successful banquet, too much wine, intense images of their hostess-her scent, smile, words about his own work in the kitchen-and then Strumosus's affable, expansive mood in the tavern. This was one of the
very
good days, Kyros decided. He wished he were a poet, that he could put some of these tumbling-about feelings into words.

There was a clatter of noise ahead. Half a dozen young men spilled from the low door of a tavern. It was too dark to see them clearly: if they were Greens this could be dangerous, with the season soon to start and anticipation rising. If they had to run, Kyros knew he would be the problem. The four men bunched themselves more closely together.

Unnecessarily, as it turned out. The tavern party meandered untidily down the hill towards the waterfront, attempting a marching song of the day. Not Greens. Soldiers on leave in the City. Kyros drew a relieved breath. He glanced back over his shoulder-and so he was the one who saw the litter following behind them in the darkness.

He said nothing, walked on with the others. Laughed dutifully at Rasic's too-loud joke about the inebriated soldiers-one of them had stopped to be sick in a shop doorway. Kyros looked back again as they turned a corner, passing a sandal shop and a yogurt stand, both long since closed for the night: the litter came around the corner, keeping pace with them. It was very large. Eight men carried it. The curtains were drawn on both sides.

Kyros felt a queasy apprehension. Litters at night weren't at all unusual-the well-to-do tended to use them, especially when it was cold. But this one was moving too precisely at their own speed and going exactly where they went. When it followed them diagonally across a square, around the central fountain, and then up the steep street on the opposite side, Kyros cleared his throat and touched Strumosus on the arm.

"I think…" he began, as the chef looked at him. He swallowed. "It is possible we're being followed."

The other three stopped and looked back. The litter immediately halted, the dark-clad bearers motionless and silent. The street was empty around them. Closed doors, closed shop fronts, four men standing together, a patrician's curtained litter, silence, nothing else.

The white moon hung overhead above a small chapel's copper dome. From a distance there came the flaring sound of sudden, raucous laughter. Another inn, patrons leaving. Then that sound faded away.

In the stillness the three young men heard Strumosus of Amoria let out a long breath, then swear, quietly but with intense feeling.

"Stay where you are," he told them. And he walked back towards the litter.

"Fuck," whispered Rasic, for want of anything better to say. Kyros felt it too: a sense of menace, oppression.

They were silent, watching the little chef. Strumosus approached the litter. None of the bearers moved or spoke. The chef stopped by the drawn curtains on one side. He appeared to be speaking, but they couldn't hear him, or any reply from within. Then Kyros saw the curtain lifted and pulled back slightly. He had no idea who was inside, man or woman, or more than one person-the litter was easily large enough for that. He did know that he was afraid now.

"Fuck," said Rasic again, watching.

"Fuck," Mergius echoed.

"Shut up," Kyros said, uncharacteristically. "Both of you."

Strumosus appeared to be speaking again, then listening. Then he folded his arms across his chest and said something else. After a moment the curtain fell closed, and a moment later the litter was turned around and began to move the other way, back down towards the square. Strumosus stayed where he was, watching, until it disappeared beyond the fountain. He walked back to the three young men. Kyros could see that he was disturbed, but he didn't dare ask any questions.

"Who in the god's name was that?" Rasic said, not feeling the same compunction.

Strumosus ignored him, as if the young man hadn't even spoken. He started walking; they fell in stride with him. No one said anything more, not even Rasic. They came to the compound without further incident, were known by torchlight and admitted.

"Good night," Strumosus said to the three of them, at the entrance to the dormitory. Then he walked away without waiting for a response.

Rasic and Mergius went up the steps and in, but Kyros lingered on the porch. He saw that the chef did not go towards his private rooms. Instead, he walked across the courtyard to the kitchens. A moment later Kyros saw lamps being lit there. He wanted to go over but did not. Too much presumption. After another moment, he took a last breath of the cold air and stepped inside after the others. He went to bed. Didn't sleep for a long time. A very good day and night had been, obscurely, changed into something else.

In the kitchen, Strumosus of Amoria moved with precision to build up the fire, light the lamps, pour himself a cup of wine. He watered it judiciously, then took a knife, sharpened it, and rhythmically chopped vegetables. He cracked two eggs, added the vegetables, sea salt, a generous pinch of expensive eastern pepper. He beat the mixture in a small, chipped bowl he'd had for years and used only for himself. Heated a saucepan on a grate placed over the cooking fire, drizzled olive oil into it, and made himself a flat-bottomed egg dish, nipping it intuitively. He set the saucepan down on a stone surface and selected a white-and-blue patterned plate from a shelf. He transferred his swift creation to the plate, decorated the surface with flower petals and mint leaves and then paused briefly to evaluate the effect.
A chef who is careless about how he feeds himself,
he was fond of telling his assistants,
will become careless about feeding others.

He wasn't hungry at all, but he was disturbed and had needed to cook, and once a dish had been well made it was very much a crime in his interpretation of Jad's created world not to enjoy it. He sat on a high stool at the work island in the centre of the room and ate alone, drinking the wine, refilling his cup, watching the white moon's light falling on the courtyard outside. He'd thought Kyros might come over here and wouldn't entirely have minded company, but the boy lacked-as yet- confidence to go with his perceptiveness.

Strumosus realized that his wine cup was empty again. He hesitated, then refilled it, mixing less water than before. It was rare for him to drink this much, but he didn't often have an encounter like the one in the street just now.

He'd been offered a job and had refused. Two such proposals today, in fact. First from the young dancer, and then in the dark just now. Not a problem, those, in themselves. It happened often. People knew of him, desired his services, some had the money to pay him. He was happy here with the Blues, however. It wasn't an aristocratic kitchen but it was an important one, and he had a chance to play a role in changing perceptions about his own art and passion. It was said that the Greens were now searching for a master chef. Strumosus had been amused and pleased.

But the person who'd made him the offer from inside that sumptuous litter was different. Someone he knew very well, in fact, and memories-including those of his own deferential, complicitous silences on certain matters in times past-were with him now.
The past does not leave us until we die,
Protonias had written long ago,
and then we become someone rise's memories, until they die. For most men it is all that endures after them. The gods have made it so.

The old gods themselves were almost gone now, Strumosus thought, looking at his wine cup. And how many living souls remembered Protonias of Trakesia? How
did
a man leave a name?

He sighed, looking around his familiar kitchen, every corner of it thought out, allocated, an imposing of order in the world.
Something is about to happen,
the little chef thought suddenly, alone in a circle of lamps. He'd thought he knew what it was-hadn't been shy about offering his views. A war in the west: what thinking man could miss the signs?

But sometimes thought and observation were not the keys. Sometimes the locked doors were opened by something within the blood, in the soul, in dream.

He wasn't so sure any more of what it was that was approaching. But he did know that if Lysippus the Calysian was in Sarantium again, and moving about in his litter in the darkness, that blood and dream would be part of it.

He wasn't afraid for himself, but it did cross his mind to wonder if he should be.

It was time to go to bed. He didn't want to go to bed. He ended up dozing where he sat on his stool, bent forward, the plate and cup pushed away, his head pillowed on his folded arms as the lamps burned slowly down and the dark drew back in.

In the heart of that same night, the wind so keen outside it seemed the god was withholding spring from his world, a man and a woman were drinking spiced wine by a fire on their wedding night.

The woman sat on a backless, cushioned seat, the man on the floor by her feet, his head resting against her thigh. They watched the flames in a silence characteristic of her but unusual for him. It had been a very long day. One of her hands rested lightly on his shoulder. Both of them were remembering other flames, other rooms; a slight awkwardness inhabited the place, an awareness of the other chamber-and the bed- just beyond the beaded arch of a door.

He said, at length, "You haven't worn that scent before, have you? You don't wear any perfume usually. Do you?"

She shook her head, then realizing he couldn't see her, murmured, "No." And, after a hesitation, "It's Shirin's. She insisted I wear it tonight."

He turned his head then and looked up at her, his eyes wide. "Hers? Then… it's the Empress's perfume?"

Kasia nodded. "Shirin said I should feel like royalty tonight." She managed a smile. "I think it is safe. Unless you've invited guests."

Their guests had left them some time ago at the front door, departing with bawdy jests and a ragged soldiers" chorus of one particularly obscene song.