Sailing to Sarantium (16 page)

'You
really don't know anything, do you?'
Linon
replied. Crispin couldn't sort out the tone this time.
'You
think boredom stops with the meal? A stable boy understands women
better than you. Just keep playing with your little glass chips,
imbecile, and leave these judgements to me!'

Crispin spoke the silencing command with some satisfaction, blew out
his candle and went to bed, resigned to being night food for the
predatory insects he'd missed. It would be much worse, he knew, at
the common hostel the others in the party had been forced to continue
on towards for the night. An extremely small consolation. He didn't
like travelling.

He tossed, turned, scratched where he imagined things biting him,
then felt something doing so and swore. After a few moments,
surprised at his own irresolution, he got up again, walked quickly
across the cold floor, and slid home the bolt on the door. Then he
crawled back into the bed. He had not made love to a woman since
Ilandra died. He was still awake some time later, watching the shape
of the waning blue moon slide across the window, when he heard the
handle tried, then a very soft tapping at the door.

He didn't move, or speak. The tapping came again, twice more-light,
teasing. Then it stopped, and there was silence again in the autumn
night. Remembering many things, Crispin watched the moon leave the
window, trailing stars, and finally fell asleep.

He woke to morning noises in the yard below. In the moment he opened
his eyes, surfacing from some lost dream, he had a swift, sure
realization about Zoticus's bird, and some wonder that it had taken
him so long.

He was not greatly surprised to discover, when he went downstairs for
watered ale and a morning meal, that the Lady Massina Baladia of
Rhodias, the Senator's wife, and her mounted escorts and her servants
had already left, at first daybreak.

There was a mild, unexpected regret here, but it had been almost
intolerable to envisage his re-entry into this sphere of mortal life
as a coupling with a jaded Rhodian aristocrat playing bed games on a
country night-not even knowing his true name. In another way, it
might have been easier that way, but he wasn't. .. detached enough
for that.

On the road again in the chill early-morning breeze, he soon caught
up with the merchants and the cleric who had waited for him at the
inn up the road. Settling into the long day's striding, he remembered
his realization upon first awakening. He drew a breath, released
Linon from silence in the bag on the mule's back, and asked a
question.

'How
dazzlingly brilliant of you,'
the bird
snapped icily.
'She did come last night,
didn't she? I was right, wasn't I?'

White clouds were overhead, swift before the north wind. The sky was
a light, far blue. The sun, safe returned from its dark journey under
the icy cold rim of the world, was rising directly in front of them,
bright as a promise. Black crows dotted the stubble of the fields. A
pale frost glinted on the brown grass beside the road. Crispin looked
at it all in the early light, wondering how he'd achieve that rainbow
brilliance of colour and gleaming with glass and stone. Had anyone
ever done frost-tipped autumn grass on a dome?

He sighed, hesitated, then replied honestly,
'She did. You were
right. I locked the door.'

'Pah! Imbecile. Zoticus would have kept her busy all night long
and sent her back to her own room exhausted.'

'I'm not Zoticus.'

A feeble answer and he knew it. The bird only laughed sardonically.
But he wasn't really up to sparring this morning. Memories were too
much with him.

It was colder today, especially when the clouds passed in front of
the rising sun. His feet were cold in their sandals; boots tomorrow,
he thought. The fields and the vineyards on the north side of the
road were bare now, of course, and did nothing to stay the wind. He
could see the first dark smudge of forests in the far distance now,
north-east: the wild, legendary woods that led to the border and then
Sauradia. The road would fork today, south towards Mylasia, where he
could have caught a ship earlier in the year for a swift sailing to
Sarantium. His slow course overland would angle north, towards that
untamed forest, and then east again, the long Imperial road marching
along its southernmost edgings.

He slowed a little, opened one of his bags as the mule paced stolidly
along over the flawlessly fitted stone slabs of the road, and took
out his brown woollen cloak. After a moment, he reached into the bag
again and withdrew the bird on its leather thong, dropping it around
his neck again. An apology, of sorts.

He'd expected Linon's brittle, waspish tone after the inflicted
silence and blindness. He was already growing used to that. What he
needed to do now, Crispin thought, closing and retying the bag and
then wrapping himself in the cloak, was come to terms with a few
other aspects of this journey east under an assumed name, bearing a
message from the queen of the Antae for the Emperor in his head, and
a creature of the half-world around his neck. And among the things
now to be dealt with was the newly apprehended fact that the Grafted
bird he was carrying with him was undeniably and emphatically female.

Towards midday, they came to a tiny roadside chapel. In Memory of
Clodius Paresis, an inscription over the arched doorway said. With
Jad now, in Light.

The merchants and the cleric wanted to pray. Crispin, surprising
himself, went in with them while the servants watched the mules and
goods outside. No mosaics here. Mosaic was expensive, a luxury. He
made the sign of the sun disk before the peeling, nondescript fresco
of fair-haired, smooth-cheeked Jad on the wall behind the altar
stone, and knelt behind the cleric on the stone floor joining the
others in the sunrise rites.

It was rather late in the day, perhaps, but there were those who
believed the god was tolerant.

 

Kasia took the pitcher of beer, only slightly watered because the
four merchants at the large table were regular patrons, and headed
back from the kitchen towards the common room.

'Kitten, when you've done with that, you can attend to our old friend
in the room above. Deana will finish your tables tonight.' Morax
gestured straight overhead, smiling meaningfully. She hated when he
smiled, when he was so obviously being pleasant. It usually meant
trouble.

This time it almost certainly meant something worse.

The room overhead, directly above the warmth of the kitchen, was
reserved for the most reliable-or generous-patrons of the inn.
Tonight it held an Imperial Courier from Sarnica named Zagnes, many
years on the road, decent in his manner and known to be easy on the
girls, sometimes just wanting a warm body in his bed of an autumn or
winter night.

Kasia, newest and youngest of the serving girls at the inn, endlessly
slated for the abusive patrons, had never been sent to him before.
Deana, Gyrene, Khafa-they all took turns when he was staying here,
even fought for the chance of a calm night with Zagnes of Sarnica.

Kasia got the rough ones. Fair skinned, as were most of the Inicii,
she bruised easily, and Morax was routinely able to extract
additional payment from her men for damage done to her. This was an
Imperial Posting Inn; their travellers had money, or positions to
protect. No one really worried about injuries to a bought serving
girl, but most patrons-other than the genuine aristocrats, who didn't
care in the least-were unwilling to appear crude or untutored in the
eyes of their fellows. Morax was skilled at threatening outraged
indignation on behalf of the entire Imperial Posting Service.

If she was being allowed a night with Zagnes in the best room it was
because Morax was feeling a disquiet about something concerning her.
Or-a new thought-because they didn't want her bruised just now.

For some days, she had seen small gatherings break up and whispering
stop suddenly as she entered a room, had been aware of eyes following
her as she did her work. Even Deana had stopped tormenting her. It
had been ten days, at least, since pig swill had been dumped on the
straw of her pallet. And Morax himself had been far too kind-ever
since a visit late one night from some of the villagers, walking up
the road to the inn under carried torches and the cold stars.

Kasia wiped sweat from her forehead, pushed her yellow hair back from
her eyes, and carried the beer out to the merchants. Two of them
grabbed at her, front and rear, pushing her tunic up as she poured
for them, but she was used to that and made them laugh by pretending
to stamp on the nearest one's boot. These were regulars, who paid
Morax a tidy private sum for the privilege of staying here without a
Permit, and they wouldn't be trouble unless they had much more beer
than this.

She finished pouring, slapped away the hand still squeezing her
breast-making sure she never stopped smiling-and turned to go. The
evening was young, there were dishes and flasks to be served and
cleared and cleaned, fires to be kept up. She was being set free of
the drudgery, sent up to an easy man in a warm bedroom. Uncertainly,
Kasia walked out from the common room into the darker, colder
hallway.

A sudden, nauseating fear gripped her as she began climbing the
stairs in the guttering candlelight. She had to stop, leaning
sideways against the rail to control it. It was quiet here, the noise
from the common room muted. Sweat felt cold on her forehead and neck.
A trickle ran down her side. She swallowed. A stale, sour taste in
her mouth and throat. Her heart was very fast, her breathing shallow;
the blurred shadows of trees beyond the unshuttered, smudged window
held terrors without name or shape.

She felt like crying for her mother-a childlike panic, unthinking and
primitive-but her mother was in a village three weeks' journey north
around the vastness of the Aldwood, and it was her mother who had
sold her last autumn.

She couldn't pray. Certainly not to Jad, though she'd been brusquely
converted with the others in a roadside chapel at the orders of the
Karchite slaver who'd bought them and taken them south. And prayers
to Ludan of the Wood were hopelessly beside the point, given what was
to happen soon.

It was supposed to be a virgin, and it had been once, but the world
had changed. Sauradia was nominally Jaddite now, a tax-paying
province of the Sarantine Empire supporting two army camps and the
troops based in Megarium and though certain of the ancient tribal
rites were still quietly observed, and ignored by the Jaddite clerics
if they weren't forced to notice them, no one thought it necessary to
offer their maiden daughters any more.

Not when a whore from the Posting Inn would do.

It was certain, Kasia thought, gripping the railing, looking out the
small window at the night from halfway up the stairs. She felt
helpless, and enraged by that. She had a knife, hidden by the smith's
forge, but what possible good was a knife? She couldn't even try to
run. They were watching her now, and where could a female slave go in
any case? Into the woods? Along the road to be hunted with the dogs?

She couldn't see the forest through the streaky glass, but she was
aware of it, a presence in the blackness, very near. No deceiving
herself. The whispers, the watching, those inexplicable kindnesses, a
never-before-seen softness in the eyes of that bitch Deana, the moist
hunger in the face of Morax s fat wife, the mistress, looking too
quickly away whenever Kasia met her gaze in the kitchen.

They were going to kill her two mornings from now, on the Day of the
Dead.

 

Crispin had used his Permit to take a servant at the first Posting
Inn in Sauradia just past the marker stones at the border with
Batiara. He was in the Sarantine Empire now, for the first time in
his life. He considered taking a second mule for himself, but he
really didn't like riding, and his feet were bearing up surprisingly
well in the good boots he'd bought. He could lease a small
two-wheeled birota and a horse or mule to pull it, but that would
mean an outlay, over and above what the Permit allowed him, and they
were notoriously uncomfortable, in any case.

Vargos, the hired servant, was a big, silent man,
black-haired-unusual for an Inici-with a vivid cross-hatched scar
high on one cheek and a staff even heavier than the one Crispin
carried. The scar looked like a pagan symbol of some kind; Crispin
had no desire to know more about it.

Crispin had refused to bring any of the apprentices with him, despite
Martinian's urging. If he was doing this crazed journey under a name
not his own to try to remake his life or some such thing, he was not
going to do so in the company of a boy from home. He'd quite enough
to deal with without bearing the burden of a young life on a
dangerous road, to an even more uncertain destination.

On the other hand, he was not going to be an idiot-or an imbecile, as
Linon was altogether too fond of saying-about travelling alone. He
didn't like being outside the city walls, and this road through
western Sauradia, skirting the brooding forest with the wind-scoured
mountains; to the south, was not even remotely the same as it had
been in densely settled, heavily trafficked Batiara. He'd ascertained
that Vargos knew the road to the Trakesian border, sized up the man's
obvious strength and experience, and claimed him with the Permit. The
Chancellor's office would be debited by the Imperial Post. It was all
very efficient. He just' didn't like how black the forest was, north
of the road.

The merchants and their wine had forked south well before the border,
following the path of Massina Baladia, half a day ahead of them. The
decent, good-natured man-had only been going as far as a holy retreat
just inside Sauradia. They had prayed together and parted company
early of a morning before the cleric turned off the road. Crispin
might join up with other travellers heading east-there should be some
coming up from Megarium-and would certainly try to do so, but in the
meantime, a large, capable person walking with him represented
minimal good sense. It was one of the virtues of the Post system: he
could claim a man like Vargos and release him at any Posting Inn on
the road for travellers going on, or coming back the other way. The
Sarantine Empire today might not really be akin to Rhodias as it had
been at the apex of its glory, but it wasn't so very far from it,
either.