The Sarantine Mosaic (108 page)

Glancing at the window ledge Rustem saw blood.

Looking more closely down on the small courtyard he observed a thin trail of it crossing the stones to the wall by the street. Suddenly angered, he looked up at the sky. Perun and the Lady knew, surely, that a physician could only do so much. He shook his head. It was a beautiful morning, he realized.

He decided that after seeing his patients he would attend at the Hippodrome that afternoon for the second
day's racing.
I owe you some amusement
. He sent a runner to the Master of the Senate, asking if Bonosus might assist him in obtaining admission.

He was being very naive, of course, though excusably, as a stranger in Sarantium.

Plautus Bonosus was already at the Hippodrome by then, in the kathisma, the Imperial Box, the servant reported when he returned. The Emperor himself was attending the morning's races, would retire at midday to deal with larger affairs in the palace. The Master of the Senate would remain all day, a representative of the state.

Larger affairs.
From the harbour the sound of shouts and hammering could be heard, even this far inland towards the walls.

Ships were being made ready to sail. It was said that there were ten thousand foot-soldiers and cavalry assembled here and in Deapolis across the straits. As many were reported to be gathering in Megarium to the west, Rustem had been told by a patient a few days ago. The Empire was clearly on the brink of war, an invasion, something indescribably dramatic and exciting, though nothing, as yet, had been announced.

Somewhere in the City a woman Rustem had been ordered to kill was going about the rhythm of her days.

Eighty thousand Sarantines were in the Hippodrome, watching chariots run. Rustem wondered if she would be there.

CHAPTER IX

C
rispin, in a mood he'd have been unwilling to define, was beginning work on the images of his daughters on the dome that same morning when the Empress of Sarantium came and took him away to see dolphins among the islands in the straits.

Looking a long way down from the scaffold when Pardos, working beside him, touched his arm and pointed, he registered the explicit demand of Alixana's presence. He looked back for a moment at Ilandra where he had placed her on the dome—a part of this holy place and its images—and then over at the surface nearby where his girls were awaiting their own incarnation out of memory and love. He would give his daughters form in a different guise, in light and glass, as Zoticus had given souls bodily form in the crafted birds of his alchemy.

What was this but a different kind of alchemy, or the attempt to make it so?

At the rail Pardos was anxiously glancing down and then back at Crispin and then down again. Less than two weeks in the City and his apprentice—his associate now— was obviously aware of what it meant to have an Empress waiting for you on the marble floor below.

Crispin, along with Artibasos the architect, had received invitations to two large banquets in the Attenine Palace over the winter, but had not spoken privately with Alixana since autumn. She had come here once before, had stood very nearly where she was standing now, to see what was
being done overhead. He remembered coming down to her, to all of them.

He was unable to deny the quickening beat of his heart now. He cleaned his hands of plaster and lime as best he could, wiped at a cut finger—bleeding slightly— with the cloth tucked in his belt. He discarded the cloth and even allowed Pardos to adjust and brush his tunic, though he swatted the younger man away when he gestured towards Crispin's hair.

On the way down, though, he paused long enough on the ladder to push a hand through the hair himself. Had no idea if that improved anything.

Evidently it didn't. The Empress of Sarantium, richly if soberly garbed in a long blue gold-belted tunic and a porphyry cloak that came to her knees, with only rings and earrings for jewellery, smiled with amusement at him. She reached down as he knelt before her and ordered his much-abused red hair more to her satisfaction.

‘Of course the wind in the straits will undo my efforts,' she murmured in the instantly memorable voice.

‘What straits?' Crispin asked, rising to her gesture.

And so he learned that the dolphins of which she'd spoken on his first night in the palace half a year ago remained on her mind. She turned and walked serenely past a score of still-kneeling artisans and labourers. Crispin followed, feeling excitement and the presence of danger—as he had from the very beginning with this woman.

Men were waiting outside in the livery of the Imperial Guard. There was even a cloak for him in the litter he entered with the Empress of Sarantium. This was all happening very quickly. Her manner, as they were lifted and began to move, was matter-of-fact, entirely pragmatic: if he was to render dolphins leaping from the sea for her, he ought to see them first. She smiled sweetly from across
the curtained litter. Crispin tried and failed to return the smile. Her scent was inescapable in the cushioned warmth.

A short time later Crispin found himself in a long, sleek Imperial craft cutting through the crowded harbour, past a cacophony of construction and the loading and unloading of barrels and crates of goods, out to where the noise receded and a clean wind was there to be caught by the white and purple sails.

On the deck, at the railing, Alixana was looking back at the harbour. Sarantium rose beyond it, brilliant in sunlight, domes and towers and the piled houses of wood and stone. They could hear another sound now: the chariots were in the Hippodrome today. Crispin looked up at the sun. They were probably up to the sixth or seventh race by now, the midday break to come, then the afternoon's running. Scortius of the Blues had still been missing as of last night. The City spoke of that as much as it talked of war.

He stood uncertainly a little behind the Empress. He didn't like boats, but this one was moving easily through the sea, expertly handled, and the wind was not yet strong. They were the only passengers, he realized. He made a concerted effort to bring his mind, his thinking, back from the scaffolding and his daughters, what he had
expected
would be the nature of today's demands upon him.

Without turning her head, Alixana said, ‘Have you sent to Varena to advise them what is coming? Your friends, family?'

Today's demands were evidently going to be otherwise.

He remembered this from before: she used directness as a weapon when she chose. He swallowed. What use dissembling? ‘I wrote two letters, to my mother and my dearest friend … but there isn't much point. They all know there is a threat.'

‘Of course they do. That's why the lovely young queen sent you here with a message, and then followed herself. What does
she
have to say about all … this?' The Empress gestured at the ships massed behind them in the harbour. Gulls wheeled in the sky, cutting across the line of their own wake in the sea.

‘I have no idea,' Crispin said truthfully. ‘I would assume you'd know that far better than I, thrice-exalted.'

She looked over her shoulder at him then. Smiled a little. ‘You'll see better at the rail, unless it makes you unwell to look down at the waves. I ought to have asked before … '

He shook his head and came resolutely forward to stand beside her. White water streamed away from the sides of the ship. The sun was high, glinting on the spray, making rainbows as he watched. He heard a snapping sound and looked up to see a sail fill. They picked up speed. Crispin put both hands on the railing.

Alixana murmured, ‘You warned them, I assume? In the two letters?'

He said, not fighting the bitterness, ‘Why should it matter? Whether I've sent warnings? Empress, what could ordinary people do if an invasion came? These are not people with any power, any ability to influence the world. They are my mother and my dearest friend.'

She looked at him again for a moment, without speaking. She was hooded now, her dark hair bound up in a golden net. The severity of the look accented her features, the high cheekbones, perfect skin, enormous dark eyes. He thought suddenly of the slender, crafted rose he had seen in her room. She had asked him for something more permanent, the golden rose speaking to the fragility of beautiful things, a mosaic hinting at that which might last. A craft that aspired to endure.

He thought of Jad, slowly crumbling on a dome in a Sauradian chapel bordering the Aldwood, tesserae falling in the filtered light.

She said, ‘The world can be … influenced in unexpected ways, Caius Crispus. The Emperor has been hoping that letters were being sent, actually. That's why I asked. He is of the belief that the native Rhodians might welcome our arrival, given the chaos in Varena. And since we are sailing in the name of your queen, there is some hope that many of the Antae themselves might not fight. He wants them to have time to consider possible … interventions.'

It suddenly occurred to him that she was speaking as if he
knew
an invasion had been announced. It hadn't been. Crispin looked at her, his emotions roiling again. ‘I see. So even letters home to loved ones are a part of the design?'

Her gaze met his. ‘Why should they not be? He thinks in that way. If we are unable to do so, does that make him wrong? The Emperor is trying to change the world as we know it. Is it a transgression to bring all the elements one can to something as large as this?'

Crispin shook his head and looked away, at the sea again. ‘I told you half a year ago, Majesty, I am an artisan. I can't even guess at these things.'

‘I wasn't asking you to,' she said, mildly enough. Crispin felt himself flush. She hesitated. Looked out at the waves as well. Said, a little stiffly, ‘It is to be formally proclaimed this afternoon. In the Hippodrome by the Mandator after the last race of the day. An invasion of Batiara in the name of Queen Gisel, to reclaim Rhodias and remake a sundered Empire. Does it not sound glorious?'

Crispin shivered in the mild sunlight of that day, then felt a burning sensation, as if something had touched him, like a brand. He closed his eyes on a sudden, vivid image: flames ravaging Varena, taking the wooden houses like so much kindling for a summer bonfire.

They had all
known
,
but …

But there was a tone in the voice of the woman beside him, something to be read in her profile now, even within the dark hood. He swallowed again, and said, ‘Glorious? Why do I imagine you don't find it so?'

No visible response, though he was watching for it. She said, ‘Because I am allowing you to see that, Caius Crispus. Though, to be entirely truthful, I'm not certain why. I confess that you … Look!'

She never finished that thought for him.

Broke off, instead, pointing. He had time to recollect that she was an actress, above all things, and then he looked. Saw dolphins breach the sea, tearing it sharply, their bodies arcing like the perfect curve of a dome, racing the ship through the ruffled water. Half a dozen of them, surfacing in sequences, as if choreographed in a theatre, one, then two, then a pause, then again, the sleek, exultant leap and splash of it.

Playful as … children? Exquisite as dancers, as the dancer beside him. Carriers of the souls of the dead, bearers of drowned Heladikos when he fell burning into the sea with the chariot of the sun. The paradox and the mystery of them. Laughter and darkness. Grace and death. She wanted dolphins for her rooms.

They watched for a long time, then there came a point when the dolphins did not leap with them any more and the sea rolled beneath and beside the ship, untorn, hiding things, as it always did.

‘They do not like to come too near the island,' said the Empress Alixana, turning her head to look towards the bow.

Crispin turned as well. ‘Island?' he said.

He saw land, unexpectedly near, densely forested with evergreen trees. A stony beach, a wooden dock for mooring the boat, two men waiting in Imperial livery.
No other signs of human life. Gulls crying all about them in the morning.

‘I had another reason for coming out this morning,' said the woman beside him, not smiling now. She had lowered her hood. ‘The Emperor doesn't like my doing this. He believes it is … wrong. But there is someone I want to see before the army sails. A … reassurance. You and the dolphins were my excuse today. I believed you could be trusted, Caius Crispus. Do you mind?'

She didn't wait for an answer, of course, was simply giving him as much as she thought he needed to know. Grains doled out from the guarded storehouse of their knowledge. Valerius and Alixana. He wanted to be angry, but there was something in her manner, and in the mood from which she'd claimed him. She'd thought he could be trusted but hadn't said
why
she wanted to trust him.

He wasn't about to ask. She had turned away in any case, walked across to the other side of the ship, where men were readying them for docking.

He followed, his heart beating too fast again, the inward image of a great burning in Varena cutting against the memories he had awakened this morning intending to try to shape. Two girls in their youth, a part of the world the god had made. Their youth and their dying. He had been going there. And now before him, instead, was this deceptive, mild placidity of blue sea and sky and dark green trees in morning light.
You and the dolphins were my excuse today.

For what?

The mooring of the craft was flawless, nearly silent. The slap of waves and the calling birds in the sky. A ramp was lowered, a crimson carpet unrolled for the Empress's feet. Formalities: she was what she was. It was never to be forgotten. You were not to think of her as anything else.

They went down the landing ramp. Four soldiers followed at a little distance. They were armed, Crispin saw, looking over his shoulder.

The Empress, not looking back at all, led him from the sea along a path that went from the white, round stones into pine trees that soon hid the sun. Crispin drew his cloak around himself as the day's light failed.