Sailing to Sarantium (54 page)

'Tell me,' said Styliane Daleina, as if he hadn't spoken, 'about the
queen of the Antae. Did she offer her body in exchange for your
service too? Are you jaded now because of that? Am I too late to be
of any appeal? You reject me as lesser goods? Shall I weep?'

The dark waters swirled. This had to be a bluff, a guess. That
late-night secret encounter could not be so widely known. A memory
came to Crispin: another hand in his hair as he knelt to kiss an
offered foot. A different woman, even younger than this one, as
familiar with corridors of power and intrigue. Or perhaps . . . not
so. West to the east. Could Varena ever be as subtle as Sarantium?
Could any place on earth?

He shook his head. 'I am not familiar with the thoughts or the . . .
favours of the ruling ones of our world. This encounter is unique in
my experience of life, my lady.' It was a lie, and yet, as he looked
at her through slatted interstices, the lines of shadow and light, it
wasn't, at all.

The smile again, assured, unsettling. She seemed able to move, he
thought, from the intrigues of empires to those of bedrooms without a
pause. 'How nice,' she said. 'I like being unique. You do know it
shames a lady, however, to offer herself and be refused? I told you,
I lie where pleasure leads me, not need. 'She paused. 'Or rather,
where a different sort of need draws me.'

Crispin swallowed. He didn't believe her, but her knee within the
blue, simple robe lingered a hand's-breadth from his own. He clung
desperately to his anger, a sense of being used. 'It shames a man of
pride to be seen as a piece in a game.'

Her eyebrows arched swiftly and the tone changed-again. 'But you are,
you foolish man. Of course you are. Pride has nothing to do with it.
Everyone at this court is proud, everyone is a piece in a game. In
many games at once-some of murder and some of desire-though there is
only one game that matters, in the end, and all the others are parts
of it.'

Which was an answer to his thought, he supposed. Her knee touched
his. Deliberately. There were no accidental things with this woman,
he was sure of it. Some of desire.

'Why should you imagine yourself to be different?' Styliane Daleina
added, quietly.

'Because I will myself to be so,' he said, surprising himself.

There was a silence. Then, 'You grow interesting, Rhodian, I must
concede, but this is almost certainly a self-deception. I suspect the
actress has enchanted you already and you don't even know it. I shall
weep, I suppose.' Her expression had changed, but was nowhere near to
tears. She stood abruptly, crossed in three strides to the door,
turned there.

Crispin also rose. Now that she'd withdrawn he felt a chaos of
emotions: apprehension, regret, curiosity, an unnerving measure of
desire. He'd been a stranger to that last for so long. As he watched,
she drew up her hood again, hiding the spilled gold of her hair.

'I also came to thank you for my gem, of course. It was ... an
interesting gesture. I am not difficult to find, artisan, should you
have any thoughts about your home and the prospects of a war. It will
become clear to you soon, I believe, that the man who brought you
here to make holy images for him also intends to wreak violence upon
Batiara for no reason but his own glory.'

Crispin cleared his throat. 'I am pleased to find my small gift
deemed worthy of thanks.' He paused. 'I am an artisan only, my lady.'

She shook her head, the expression cool again. 'That is a coward in
you, hiding from truths of the world, Rhodian. All men-and women-are
more than one thing. Or have you willed yourself to be limited in
this way? Will you live on a scaffold above all the dying?'

Her intelligence was appalling. Just as the Empress's had been. It
crossed his mind that had he not met Alixana first he might indeed
have had no defences against this woman. Styliane Daleina might not
be wrong, after all. And then he wondered if the Empress had thought
of that. If that was why he'd received so immediate a late-night
invitation to the Traversite Palace. Could these women be that quick,
that subtle? His head was aching.

'I have been here two days only, my lady, and have not slept tonight.
You are speaking subversion against the Emperor who invited me to
Sarantium, and even against your husband, if I understand you. Am I
to be bought with a woman's hair on my pillow for a night, or a
morning?' He hesitated. 'Even yours?'

The smile returned at that, enigmatic and provoking. 'It happens,'
she murmured. 'It is sometimes longer than a night, or the night
is... longer than an ordinary one. Time moves strangely in some
circumstances. Have you never found that, Caius Crispus?'

He dared make no reply. She didn't seem to expect one. She said, 'We
may continue this another time.' She paused. It seemed to him she was
wrestling with something. Then she added, 'About your images. The
domes and walls? Do not grow ... too attached to your work there,
Rhodian. I say this with goodwill, and probably should not. It is
weak of me.'

He took a step towards her. She lifted a hand. 'No questions.'

He stopped. She was an incarnation of icy, remote beauty in his room.

But she wasn't remote. Her tongue had touched his, her hand, moving
downwards . . .

And this woman, too, seemed able to read his very thoughts. The smile
came again. 'You are excited now? Intrigued? You like your women to
show weakness, Rhodian? Shall I remember that, and the pillow?'

He flushed, but met her ironic gaze. 'I like the people in my life to
show some ... of themselves. The uncalculated. Movements outside the
games of which you spoke. That would draw me, yes.'

Her turn now to be silent, standing very still by the door. Sunlight,
sliding through the shutters, fell in bands of pale morning gold
across the wall and floor and the blue of her robe.

'That,' she said, finally, 'might be too much to expect in Sarantium,
I fear.' She looked as if she would add something, but then shook her
head and murmured only, 'Go to sleep, Rhodian.'

She opened the door, went out, closed it, was gone, save for her
scent and the mild disarray of his bed, and the greater
disarrangement of his being.

He fell onto the bed, still clothed. He lay with eyes open, thinking
of nothing at first, then of high, majestic walls, with marble
columns above marble columns, and the dwarfing, graceful immensity of
the dome he'd been given, and then he thought for a long time about
certain women, living and dead, and then he closed his eyes and
slept.

When he dreamt, though, as the sun rose through the windy, clear
autumn morning outside, it was of the zubir at first, obliterating
time and the world in mist, and then of one woman only.

 

'Let there be Light for us,' Vargos chanted with the others in the
small neighbourhood chapel as the services came to an end. The cleric
in his pale yellow robe made the two-handed gesture of solar
benediction they used in the City, and then people began talking
again and milling briskly towards the doors and the morning street.

Vargos went out with them and stood a moment, blinking in the
brightness. The night wind had swept away the clouds; it was a crisp,
very clear day. A woman balancing a small boy on one hip and a
pitcher of water on her shoulder smiled at him as she went by. A
one-handed beggar approached through the crowd but veered off when
Vargos shook his head. There were enough needy people in Sarantium,
no need to give alms to someone who'd had a hand chopped for theft.
Vargos felt strongly about such things. A northern sensibility.

He wasn't poor, mind you. His accumulated savings and salary owing
had been reluctantly released by the Imperial Postmaster before they
left Sauradia, through Carullus's centurion's intervention. Vargos
was in a position here to buy a meal, a winter cloak, a woman, a
flask of ale or wine.

He was hungry, in fact. He hadn't taken breakfast at the inn before
prayers, and the smell from across the road of lamb roasting on
skewers at an open-air stand reminded him of that. He crossed,
pausing for a cart full of firewood and a giggling cluster of serving
women heading for the well at the end of the lane, and he bought a
skewer of meat with a copper coin. He ate it, standing there,
observing the other customers of the small, wiry vendor-from Soriyya
or Amoria, by his colouring-as they snatched a morning bite on their
hurried way to wherever they were going. The little man was busy.
People moved fast in the City, Vargos had concluded. He didn't like
the crowds and noise at all, but he was here by his own choice, and
he'd adjusted to more difficult things in his time.

He finished his meat, wiped his chin, dropped the skewer in a pile by
the vendor's grill. Then he squared his shoulders, took a deep
breath, and strode off towards the harbour to look for a murderer.

Word of the attack had come to the inn from the Blues' compound in
the night, while Vargos slept, oblivious. He actually felt guilty
about that, though he knew there was no sense to such a feeling. He
had learned of the night's events from three of the soldiers when he
came down at sunrise, responding to the bells: Crispin attacked, the
tribune wounded. Ferix and Sigerus slain. The six attackers killed,
by the tribune and by Blue partisans in the faction's compound. No
one knew who had ordered the assault. The Urban Prefect's men were
investigating, he was told. Men seldom talked freely to them, he was
told. Soldiers were too easily hired for something like this. They
might not find out anything more-until the next attack came.
Carullus's men had armed themselves, Vargos saw.

Crispin and the tribune hadn't come in yet, they'd said. They were
both with the Blues, however, and safe. Had spent the night there.
The bells were ringing. Vargos had gone to the little chapel down the
road-none of the soldiers came with him-and had concentrated on his
god, praying for the souls of the two dead soldiers, that they might
be sheltered in Light.

Now prayers were done, and Vargos of the Inicii, who had bound
himself freely to a Rhodian artisan for an act of courage and
compassion and had walked into the Aldwood with him and come out
alive, went in search of someone who wanted that man dead. The Inicii
made bad enemies, and whoever that someone was had an enemy now.

He had no way of knowing it-and would have been unhappy with the
suggestion-but he looked very like his father just then as he strode
down the middle of the street. People were quick to give him room as
he went. Even a man on a donkey edged hastily out of the way. Vargos
didn't even notice. He was thinking.

He wouldn't ever have said he was good at planning things. He tended
to react to events, rather than anticipate or initiate them. There
hadn't been much need for forethought on the Imperial Road in
Sauradia, going back and forth for years with a variety of
travellers. One needed endurance, equanimity, strength, some skill
with carts and animals, an ability to wield a stave, faith in Jad.

Of these, perhaps only the last would be of use in tracing whoever
had hired those soldiers. Vargos, for want of a better idea, decided
to head for the harbour and spend a few coins in some of the rougher
cauponae. He might overhear something, or someone might offer
information. The patrons there would be slaves, servants,
apprentices, soldiers watching their copper folles. An offered drink
or two might be welcome. It did occur to him there might be some
danger. It didn't occur to him to alter his plan because of that.

It took him only part of a morning to discover that Sarantium was
much the same as the north or the Imperial Road in one thing, at
least: men in taverns were disinclined to answer questions posed by
strangers when the subject was violence and a request for
information.

No one in this rough district wanted to be the one to point to
someone else, and Vargos wasn't skilled enough with words or subtle
enough to steer anyone casually around to the topic of last night's
incident in the Blues' compound. Everyone seemed to know about
it-armed soldiers entering a faction's quarters and being slaughtered
there was an event of note even in a jaded city-but no one was
willing to say more than the obvious, and Vargos received black looks
and silence when he pushed. The six dead soldiers had been on leave
from Calysium: duties along the Bassanid border. They'd been drinking
around the City for some days, spending borrowed money. More or less
what soldiers always did. That much was commonly known. The issue was
who had bought them, and as to that no one knew, or would speak.

The Urban Prefect's men had already begun nosing about the district,
Vargos gathered. He began to suspect, after someone deliberately
knocked over his ale in one sailor's bar, that they'd learn as little
as he was. He wasn't afraid of getting into a fight, but it certainly
wouldn't achieve anything if he did. He'd said nothing, paid for the
spilled ale and continued on, out into the early-afternoon sunshine.

He was halfway along another narrowing, twisty lane, heading towards
the noise of the waterfront, where the masts of ships were leaning in
the crisp breeze, when he received an idea, along with a memory from
Carullus's army camp.

He would describe it that way, afterwards, to himself and to the
others. Receiving the thought. As if it had been handed to him from
without, startling in its suddenness. He would attribute it to the
god, and keep to himself a recollection of a grove in the Aldwood.

He asked directions of two apprentices, endured their smirks at his
accent, and duly turned towards the landward walls. It was a long
walk through a large city, but the boys had been honest with him and
not mischievous, and in due course Vargos saw the sign of The
Courier's Rest. It made sense that it was near the triple walls: the
Imperial riders came in that way.