Lord of Emperors (63 page)

He went the rest of the way down to the ground floor and stood gravely before the boy, hands clasped in front of himself, very like the steward, in fact.

Shaski looked up at him, his face white as a flag of surrender, the small, thin body taut as a bowstring. (
We must bend, my little one, we must learn to bend or we break.)
He said, his voice quivering, "Hello, Papa. Papa, we can't go home."

"I know," said Rustem softly.

Shaski bit his lip. Stared at him. Huge eyes. Hadn't expected this. Had expected punishment, very likely.
(We must learn to be easier, little one.)
'Or… or to Kabadh? We can't go there."

"I know," said Rustem again.

He did know. He also understood, after what he'd learned in the night, that Perun and the Lady had intervened here beyond any possible measure of his worthiness. There was something constricting in his chest, a pressure needing release. He knelt down on the floor and he opened his arms.

"Come to me," he said. "It is all right, child. It will be all right."

Shaski made a sound-a wail, a heart's cry-and ran to his father then, a small bundle of spent force, to be gathered and held. He began to weep, desperately, like the child he still was, despite everything else he was and would be.

Clutching the boy to him, lifting him, not letting go, Rustem stood up and went forward and drew both his wives into that embrace and his infant daughter, as the morning came.

It seemed they had inquired of Bassanid mercantile agents on the other bank, and one of them had known where Rustem the physician was staying. Their escorts, the two soldiers who had crossed with them from Deapolis on a fishing boat before daylight (two others remaining behind), were waiting outside in front of the house.

Rustem had them admitted. Given what he now knew, it was not a time for Bassanids to be on the streets of Sarantium. One of them, he saw with astonishment (he had thought himself to have reached a place beyond surprise now), was Vinaszh, the garrison commander of Kerakek.

"Commander? How does this come to be?" It was strange to be speaking his own tongue again.

Vinaszh, wearing Sarantine trousers and a belted tunic and not a uniform, thank the Lady, smiled a little before answering: the weary but satisfied expression of a man who has achieved a difficult task.

"Your son," he said,'is a persuasive child."

Rustem was still holding Shaski. The boy's arms were around his neck, his head on his father's shoulder. He had stopped crying. Rustem looked over at the steward and said, in Sarantine, "Is it possible to offer a morning meal to my family, and to these men who have escorted them?"

"Of course it is," said Elita, before the steward could answer. She was smiling at Issa. "I will arrange it."

The steward looked briefly irritated by the woman's presumption. Rustem had a sudden, vivid image of Elita standing over the man's body in the night, a blade in her hand.

"I would also like a message taken to the Senator, as soon as possible. Conveying my respects and requesting an opportunity to attend upon him later this morning."

The steward's expression became grave. "There is a difficulty," he murmured.

"How so?"

"The Senator and his family will not be receiving visitors today, or for the next few days. They are in mourning. The lady Thenai's is dead."

'What?
I was with her yesterday!"

"I know that, doctor. It seems she went to the god in the afternoon, at home."

"How?" Rustem was genuinely shocked. He felt Shaski stiffen.

The steward hesitated. "I am given to understand there was… a self-inflicted injury."

Images again. From the day that yesterday had been. A shadowy, high-ceilinged interior space within the Hippodrome, motes of dust drifting where light fell, a woman more rigid than even he himself was, confronting a chariot-racer. Another drawn blade.

Rustem took a deep breath. He was thinking very hard, Bonosus could not be intruded upon, but the need for protection was real. Either the steward would have to make arrangements here himself for guards, or else…

It was an answer. It was an obvious answer.

He looked back at the man. "I am deeply saddened to hear of this. She was a woman of dignity and grace. I will need a different message sent now. Please have someone inform the acting leader of the Blue faction that I and my family and our two companions request admission into the compound. We will need an escort, of course."

"You are leaving us, doctor?"

The man's expression was impeccable. He had been very nearly killed in his sleep last night. He'd never have awakened. Someone might have been knocking at the steward's bedroom door, finding his body even now, raising a terrible cry.

The world was a place beyond man's capacity to ever fully grasp. It had been made that way.

"I believe we must leave," he said. "It appears our countries might be at war again. Sarantium will be dangerous for Bassanids, however innocent we might be. If the Blues are willing, we might be better defended within the compound. "He looked at the man. "We pose a danger here to all of you now, of course."

The steward-not a subtle thinker-had not considered that. It showed in his face.

"I will have your message sent."

"Tell them," added Rustem, setting Shaski down beside him, a hand across the boy's shoulders, "that I will, of course, offer my professional assistance for the duration of any stay."

He looked over at Vinaszh, the man who had set all of this in motion one afternoon in winter when the wind had been blowing from the desert. The commander spoke Sarantine, it appeared: he had followed this. "I left two men on the other shore," he murmured.

"It might be unsafe for you to go back to them. Wait and see. I have asked for you to be admitted with us. This place is a guarded compound, and they have reason to be well disposed towards me."

"I heard. I understand."

"But I have no right to act for you, it occurs to me. You have brought me my family, unlocked for. For many reasons I want them with me now. I owe you more than I can ever repay, but I do not know your wishes. Will you return home? Does duty demand as much? Did you… I don't know if you have heard about a possible war in the north."

"There were rumours on the other bank last night. We obtained civilian clothing, as you see. "Vinaszh hesitated. He removed his rough cloth cap and scratched his head. "I… I told you your son was very persuasive."

The steward, hearing them speak in Bassanid, turned politely away and crooked a finger at one of the younger servants: a messenger.

Rustem stared at the commander. "He is an unusual child."

He was still holding the boy, not letting go. Katyun watched them, her head turning from one man to the other. Jarita had dried her tears, was making the baby be silent.

Vinaszh was still grappling with something. He cleared his throat, then did it again. "He said… Shaski said… told us that an ending was coming. To Kerakek. Even… Kabadh."

"We can't go home, Papa." Shaski's voice was calm now, a certainty in it that could chill you if you thought about it at all.
Penin defend you, Anahita guard us all. Azal never know your name.

Rustem looked at his son. "What kind of ending?"

"I don't know." The admission bothered the boy, it was obvious. "From… the desert."

From the desert. Rustem looked at Katyun. She shrugged, a small gesture, one he knew so well.

"Children have dreams," he said, but then he shook his head. That was dishonest. An evasion. They were only here with him because of Shaski's dreams, and last night Rustem had been told-quite explicitly and by someone who would know-that he was probably a dead man if he went to Kabadh now.

He had declined to try to assassinate someone. And the orders had come from the king.

Vinaszh, son of Vinaszh, the garrison commander of Kerakek, said, softly, "If your intention is to stay here, or go elsewhere, I humbly ask permission to journey with you for a time. Our paths may part later, but we will offer our assistance now. I believe… I accept what the child sees. It happens, in the desert, that some people have this… knowing."

Rustem swallowed. "We? You speak for the other three?"

"They share my thought about the boy. We have journeyed with him. Things may be seen."

As simple as that.

Rustem still had his hand across Shaski's too-thin shoulders. "You are deserting the army." Harsh word. Needed to be used, brought into the open here.

Vinaszh winced. Then straightened, his gaze direct. "I have promised to properly discharge my men, which is in my power as their commander. The formal letters will be sent back."

"And for yourself?"

There was no one who could write such a letter for the commander. The other man drew a breath. "I will not go back." He looked down at Shaski, and he smiled a little. Said nothing more.

A life changed, changed utterly.

Rustem looked around the room, at his wives, his infant daughter, the man who had just thrown in his lot with them, and in that very moment — he would say as much long afterwards, telling the tale-the thought came to him where they would go.

He had already been in the distant east, he'd tell guests, over wine in another land, why not journey as far to the west?

Beyond Batiara, well beyond it, was a country still taking shape, defining itself, a frontier, open spaces, the sea on three sides, it was said. A place where they might begin anew, have a chance to see what Shaski was, among other things.

They would need physicians in Esperana, wouldn't they?

They were escorted down through the city, the streets quiet, unnaturally so, to the Blues" compound just before midday. On orders from the factionarius Astorgus-released only that morning from the Urban Prefecture-half a dozen men were sent across the straits with a note from Vinaszh to fetch his other two men from their inn in Deapolis.

On his arrival in the compound, after they were welcomed (respectfully) and given rooms, and just before he went to see his patients, Rustem learned from the small chef who had been in charge last night that the search for the missing Empress had been called off just before dawn.

It seemed that there had been further changes in the Imperial Precinct during the night.

Shaski liked the horses. So did little Issa. A smiling groom with straw in his hair carried her as he rode on one of them and they walked a slow circle around the open yard, the baby's whoops of laughter filling the compound, making people smile as they went about the tasks of a brightening day.

In the morning the eunuchs, almost invariably the first to hear tidings in the palaces, told Crispin what had happened in the night.

Their collective mood was entirely different from the subdued apprehension of the evening before. You could have called it exhilarated. A colour of sunrise, unlocked for, if one's mind worked that way. Crispin felt his dreams slipping away in the fierce, hard brightness of what they said, the sudden swirl of activity all around, like cloths unfurling.

He had one of them escort him back to the Porphyry Room. He didn't expect to be able to enter again, but the eunuch simply gestured and the guards opened the doors for them. There were changes here, too. Four of the Excubitors, garbed and helmed for ceremony, were stationed in the four corners of the room, rigidly at attention. Someone had laid flowers about the room, and the traditional plate of food for the dead soul's journey was in place on a side table. The plate was gold, with jewels set around the rim. Torches still burned near the raised bier that held the shrouded body.

It was very early still. No one else was here. The eunuch waited politely by the door. Crispin walked forward and knelt beside Valerius for a second time, making the sign of the sun disk. This time he spoke the Rites, offering a prayer for the journeying soul of the man who'd brought him here. He wished he had more to say, but his own thoughts were still tumbled and chaotic. He rose again and the eunuch took him outside and through the gardens to the Bronze Gates, and he was allowed to exit there into the Hippodrome Forum.

Signs of life here. A normal kind of life. He saw the Holy Fool, standing in his customary place, offering an entirely predictable litany of the follies of earthly wealth and power. Two food stalls were set up already, one selling grilled lamb on sticks, the other roasted chestnuts. People were buying from each of them. As Crispin watched, the yogurt vendor arrived and a juggler set up not far from the Holy Fool.

The beginnings of a new beginning. Slowly, almost hesitantly, as if the dance of the ordinary, the rhythm of it, had been forgotten in the violence of yesterday and needed to be learned again. There were no marching clusters of soldiers now, and Crispin knew that, men and women being what they were, the City would be itself again very soon, past events receding like the memory of a night when one has drunk too much and done things best forgotten.

He took a deep breath. The Bronze Gates were behind him, the equestrian statue of Valerius I rising to his right, the City itself unfurling before him like a banner. Everything possible, as if so often felt in the morning. The air was crisp, the sky bright. He smelled the roasting chestnuts, heard all those here being sternly admonished to forsake the pursuits of the world and turn to the holiness of Jad. Knew it would not happen. Could not. The world was what it was. He saw an apprentice approach two serving girls on their way to the well with pitchers and say something that made them laugh.

The hunt for Alixana had been called off. It was being proclaimed, the eunuchs had said. They still wanted to find her, but for a different reason, now. Leontes wished to honour her and honour the memory of Valerius. Newly anointed, a pious man, wishing to begin a reign in all proper ways. She hadn't reappeared, however. No one knew where she was. Crispin had a sudden memory from the night: that stony moonlit beach in his dream, silver and black the colours.