The Sarantine Mosaic (100 page)

The others backed away from the man, who was lying on the ground now, holding his torn side. Darius got to his knees, then moved away. They fell silent, a sense of awe, the power of the moment overtaking them. They were all looking at the sword. There were no torches burning on the walls; the wind had blown them out. No sight or sound of the night watch. Stars, wind, and a white moon westering.

‘I am reluctant to kill a man without knowing who he is,' said Cleander with really impressive gravity.

‘I am Heladikos, the son of Jad,' said the bastard lying on the road. He appeared—amazingly—to be struggling with hilarity as much as anything else. He was bleeding. They could see dark blood on the road. ‘All men must die. Stab away, child. Two in a day? A Bassanid servant and a god's son? Makes you a warrior, almost.' He'd kept the cloak about his face, somehow, even as he fell.

Someone gasped. Cleander made a startled movement.

‘How the fuck do you know about—?'

Cleander moved closer, knelt. Sword to the wounded man's breast, he twitched the cloak aside. The man on the ground made no movement at all. Cleander looked at him
for one instant—then let the cloak fall from his fingers as if it were burning to the touch. There was no light. The others couldn't see what he saw.

They heard Cleander, though, as the cloak fell once more over the downed man's face.

‘Oh, fuck!' said the only son of Plautus Bonosus, Master of the Sarantine Senate. He stood up. ‘Oh, no. Oh, fuck. Oh, holy Jad!'

‘My great father!' said the wounded man brightly. This was followed, unsurprisingly, by silence. Someone coughed nervously.

‘Does this mean we aren't singing?' Declanus asked plaintively.

‘Get out of here. All of you!' Cleander rasped hoarsely over his shoulder. ‘Go! Disappear! My father will fucking
kill
me.'

‘Who is it?' snapped Marcellus.

‘You don't know. You don't
want
to know. This never happened. Get home, go
anywhere
,
or we're all dead men! Holy Jad!'

‘What the—?'

‘Go!'

A light appeared in a window overhead. Someone began shouting for the watch—a woman's voice. They went.

THANKS BE TO JAD
, the boy had a brain and wasn't hopelessly drunk. He had quickly covered Scortius's face again after their eyes locked in the darkness. None of the others—he was sure of it—knew who it was they'd attacked.

There was a chance to get out of this.

If he lived. The knife had gone in on his left side, and ripped, and then the kick in the same side had broken ribs. He'd had breaks before. Knew what they felt like.

They felt very bad. It was, putting it mildly, not easy to breathe. He clutched his side and felt blood pouring from the wound through his fingers. The boy with the knife had jerked it upwards after stabbing him.

But they left. Thanks be to Jad, they left. Leaving only one behind. Someone at a window was calling for the watch.

‘Holy Jad,' whispered Bonosus's son. ‘Scortius. I swear … we had no idea … '

‘Know you didn't. Thought … were killing just anyone.' It was irresponsible to be feeling such hilarity, but the absurdity of this was so extreme. To die, like this?

‘No. We didn't! I mean … '

Not really the time to be ironic, actually.

‘Get me upright, before someone comes.'

‘Can you … can you walk?'

‘Of course I can walk.' Probably a lie.

‘I'll take you to my father's house,' the boy said. Bravely enough. The charioteer could guess what consequences would await Cleander after he appeared at the door with a wounded man.

Closeted with his wife and son.

Something became clear, suddenly.
That
was why they'd been together tonight. And then something else did, driving amusement entirely away.

‘Not
your
house. Holy Jad, no!'

He was
not
going to appear at Thenaïs's door at this hour of night, having been wounded by partisans after descending from the bedchamber of Shirin of the Greens. He winced at the image of her face, hearing this. Not at the outraged expression that would ensue: the
lack
of one. The detached, ironic coldness coming back.

‘But you need a physician. There's blood. And my father can keep this—'

‘Not your house.'

‘Then where? Oh! The Blues' compound! We can—'

A good thought, but …

‘Won't help. Our doctor was at the wedding today and will be drunk and unconscious. Too many people, too. We
must
keep this quiet. For … for the lady. Now be silent and let me—'

‘Wait! I know. The Bassanid!' exclaimed Cleander.

It was, in fact, a good thought.

And resulted in the two of them arriving, after a genuinely harrowing progress through the city, at the small house Bonosus kept for his own use near the triple walls. On the way they passed the enormous dark litter again. Scortius saw it stop, was aware of someone watching them from within, making no movement at all to help. Something made him shiver; he couldn't have said what.

He had lost a fair bit of blood by the time they reached their destination. Every step with his left foot seemed to drive the kicked ribs inward, shockingly. He'd refused to allow the boy to get help at any tavern. No one was to know of this. Cleander almost carried him the last part of the way. The lad was terrified, exhausted, but he got them there.

‘Thank you, boy,' he managed to say, as the house's steward, in a nightshirt, grey hair disconcertingly upright in the glow of the candle he held, opened the door to their pounding. ‘You did well. Tell your father.
No one else!'

He hoped that was clear enough. Saw the Bassanid coming to stand behind the steward, lifted one hand briefly in apologetic greeting. It occurred to him that if Plautus Bonosus had been in this house tonight instead
of the eastern doctor, none of this would have happened. Then he did, in fact, lose consciousness.

She is awake, in her room with the golden rose that was made for her long ago. Knows he will come to her tonight. Is looking at the rose, in fact, and thinking about frailty when she hears the door open, the familiar tread, the voice that is always with her.

‘You are angry with me, I know.'

She shakes her head. ‘Afraid of what will come, a little. Not angry, my lord.'

She pours his wine, waters it. Crosses to the seat he has taken by the fire. He takes the wine, and her hand, kisses the palm. His manner is quiet, easy, but she knows him better than she knows anyone alive and can read the signs of his excitement.

‘It was finally useful,' she says, ‘to have the queen watched all this time.'

He nods. ‘She's clever, isn't she? Knew we weren't surprised.'

‘I saw that. Will she be difficult, do you think?'

He looks up, smiles. ‘Probably.'

The implication being, of course, that it doesn't really matter. He knows what he wants to do, and to have others do. None of them will learn all the details, not even his Empress. Certainly not Leontes, who will lead the army of conquest. She wonders, suddenly, how many men her husband will send, and a thought crosses her mind. She dismisses it, then it slips back in: Valerius is, in fact, more than subtle enough to be careful, even with his trusted friends.

She does not tell him that she, too, had a warning that the Strategos was bringing Gisel to the palace today. Alixana believes, privately, that her husband
does know she's watching Leontes and his wife and has done so for some time, but it is one of the things they do not discuss. One of the ways in which theirs is a partnership.

Most of the time.

The signs have long been present—no one will be able to claim to have been taken entirely by surprise—but without warning or consultation, the Emperor has just declared an intention to go to war this spring. They have been at war for much of his reign, to the east, north, south-east, far off in the Majriti deserts. This is different. This is Batiara. Rhodias. Heartland of the Empire. Sundered, then lost beyond a wide sea.

‘You are sure of this?' she asks him.

He shakes his head. ‘Sure of the consequences? Of course not. No mortal can claim to know the unknown that might come,' her husband says softly, still holding her hand. ‘We live with that uncertainty.' He looks at her. ‘You
are
angry with me. For not telling you.'

She shakes her head again. ‘How could I be?' she asks, meaning what she says. ‘You have always wanted this, I have always said I did not think it could be done. You see it differently, and are wiser than any of us.'

He looks up, the grey eyes mild. ‘I make mistakes, love. This might be one. But I need to try, and this is the time to do it, with Bassania bribed to be quiet, and chaos in the west, and the young queen here with us. It makes too much … sense.'

His mind works that way. In part.

In part. She draws a breath, and murmurs, ‘Would you still need to do this if we had a son?'

Her heart is pounding. That almost never happens any more. She watches him. Sees the startled reaction, then what replaces it: his mind engaging, addressing, not flinching away.

After a long time, he says, ‘That is an unexpected question.'

‘I know,' she says. ‘It came to me while I was waiting here for you.' Not entirely true. It came to her first a long time ago.

He says, ‘You think, if we did, that because of the risk … ?'

She nods. ‘If you had an heir. Someone you were leaving this to.' She does not gesture. There is more than any gesture could compass.
This.
An empire. A legacy of centuries.

He sighs. Has still not released her hand. Says, softly, looking into the fire now, ‘Maybe so, love. I don't know.'

An admission. For him to say that much. No sons, no one to come after, to take the throne, light the candles on the anniversary of their deaths. There is an old pain in her.

He says, still quietly, ‘There are some things I have always wanted. I'd like to leave behind Rhodias reclaimed, the new Sanctuary and its dome, and … and perhaps some memory of what we were, you and I.'

‘Three things,' she says, not able to think, just then, of anything more clever. It occurs to her that she will weep if she does not take care. An Empress ought not to weep.

‘Three things,' he echoes. ‘Before it ends, as it always ends.'

Uncrown
,
a voice was said to say when it ended for one of Jad's holy, anointed ones.
The Lord of Emperors awaits you now.

No one could say if it was true, if those words were truly spoken and heard. The god's world was made in such a way that men and women lived in mist and fog, in a wavering light, never knowing with certainty what would come.

‘More wine?' she says.

He looks at her, nods his head, lets go of her hand. She takes his cup, fills it, brings it back. It is silver, worked in gold, rubies set around it.

‘I am sorry,' he says. ‘I'm sorry, love.'

He isn't even certain why he says this, but a feeling is with him now, something in her face, something hovering in the air of this exquisite room like a bird: not singing, enchanted into invisibility, but present nonetheless in the world.

Not far away from that palace room where no bird is singing, a man is as high in the air as birds might fly, working from a scaffold under a dome. The exterior of the dome is copper, gleaming under moon and stars. The interior is his.

There is light here in the Sanctuary; there always is, by order of the Emperor. The mosaicist has served tonight as his own apprentice, mixing lime for the setting bed, carrying it up the ladder himself. Not a great amount, he isn't covering a wide area tonight. He isn't doing very much at all. Only the face of his wife, dead now two years, very nearly.