The Sarantine Mosaic (111 page)

‘Are you dressed, Daleinus? She's here to see you.'

A snuffling sound, almost unintelligible, more an animal noise than speech, came from inside. The guard said nothing, entered the house behind the first one. He push opened the wooden shutters on two iron-barred windows, letting in air and more light. Both guards went out.

The Empress nodded at them. They bowed again and withdrew, back towards the huts. There was no one in hearing distance now, or no one that Crispin could see. Alixana met Crispin's eye briefly, then she straightened her shoulders like a performer going on stage and walked into that house.

Crispin followed, silently, out of the bright sun. There was a constriction in his chest. His heart was hammering. He couldn't have said why. This had so little do with him. But he was thinking of Styliane, the last night he'd seen her,
what
he'd seen in her. And trying to recall what he knew about the death of Flavius Daleinus on the day the first Valerius was acclaimed Emperor in Sarantium.

He stopped just inside the doorway. A fair-sized front room. Two doors opening off it, one at the back to a bedchamber, one on the right side, he couldn't see to where. A fireplace against the left-hand wall, two chairs, a couch at the back, a bench, a table, a closed and locked chest, nothing on the walls at all, not even a sun disk. The snuffling sound, he realized, was a man, breathing oddly.

Then Crispin's eyes slowly adjusted to the subdued light and he saw a shape move on the couch, sitting up from a reclining position, turning towards them. And so he saw the person who lived—who was imprisoned—within this house, on this island, in his own body, and he
did
remember something, as a sickening, convulsive horror overmastered him. He leaned back against the wall beside the door, a hand going up to shield his face, involuntarily.

Sarantine Fire did bad things to men, even when they survived it.

The father had been killed. A cousin too, Crispin seemed to recall. Lecanus Daleinus had lived. After a fashion. Looking at the blind man before him, at the burned-away ruin of what had been his face, the charred, maimed hands, imagining the burned body beneath the
non-descript brown tunic, Crispin wondered, truly, how this man was still alive, and
why
,
what purpose, desire, need could possibly have kept him from ending his own life long ago. He didn't think it was piety. There was no least hint of the god here. Of any god at all.

Then he remembered what Alixana had said, and he thought he knew. Hatred could be a purpose, vengeance a need. A deity, almost.

He was working hard not to be physically ill. He closed his eyes.

And in that moment he heard Styliane Daleina, icy-cool, patrician, utterly unmoved by her brother's appearance, murmur from beside him, ‘You smell, brother. The room smells. I know they give you water and a basin. Show some respect for yourself and use it.'

Crispin, his jaw dropping, opened his eyes and wheeled to look at her.

He saw the Empress of Sarantium, standing as straight as she could, to be nearer the height of the other woman. And he heard her speak again, the voice and tone and manner terrifyingly precise, unnervingly identical. ‘I have told you this before. You are a Daleinus. Even if no one sees or knows,
you
must know it or you shame our blood.'

The hideous, appalling face on the couch moved. It was impossible to decipher what expression that melted ruin was attempting. The eyes were hollow, blackened, gone. The nose was a smear, and made that whistling sound when the man breathed. Crispin kept silent, swallowing hard.

‘So … sorry … sister,' the blind man said. The words were slow, badly garbled, but intelligible. ‘I disappoint … you dear … sister. I will weep.'

‘You can't weep. But you can have this place cleaned and aired and I expect you to do so.' If Crispin had closed his eyes he'd have sworn to holy Jad and all the
Blessed Victims that Styliane was here, arrogant, contemptuous, fierce in her intelligence and pride.
The actress
she had named Alixana, among other things.

And now he knew why the Empress came here and why there was so much strain in her face.

There is someone I want to see before the army sails.

She was afraid of this man. Was coming only for Valerius, despite her fear, to see what he might be plotting here with the life they'd granted him. But this sightless, noseless figure was alone, isolated, not even his sister coming any more—only this flawless, chilling imitation of Styliane, seeking to draw a revelation from him. Was this a man to be feared in the present day, or just a guilt, a haunting in the soul from long ago?

There came a sound from the couch, from the almost unbearable figure. And a moment later Crispin realized he was hearing laughter. The sound made him think of something slithering over broken glass.

‘Come. Sister,' said Lecanus Daleinus, once heir to an extravagantly patrician lineage and an inconceivable fortune. ‘No … time! Undress! Let me … touch! Hurry!'

Crispin closed his eyes again.

‘Good, good!'
came a third voice, shockingly. In his head.
‘She hates that. Doesn't know what to believe. There's someone here with her. Red hair. No idea who. You're making him feel ill. You are so hideous! The whore's looking at him now.'

Crispin felt the world rock and sway like a ship hit hard by a wave. He pressed his hands hard against the wall behind him. Looked around wildly.

Saw the bird, almost immediately, on the window ledge.

‘I don't know why she's here today! How can I answer that? Keep calm. She may only be anxious. She may—'

Alixana laughed aloud. Again the illusion was frightening. It was another woman's laughter, not her own. Crispin remembered Styliane in her own bedchamber, the low, sardonic sound of her amusement, identical to this. ‘You are disgusting, by choice,' the Empress said. ‘A comic version of yourself, like some cheap pantomime figure. Have you nothing better to offer or ask than a grope in your darkness?'

‘What else could I …
possibly
… offer you, dear sister? Wife of the Supreme Strategos. Did he please … you last night? In your dark? Did someone else? Oh, tell me! Tell!' The voice, through the whistling sound, was laboured, broken, as if the sounds were crawling up from some labyrinthine half-blocked tunnel leading down to things below the earth.

‘Good!'
Crispin heard again, in the silence of the half-world.
‘I think I'm right. She's just checking on you. The war coming. This is an accident. She's only worried. You'd be pleased—she looks wretched, used by slaves. Old!'

Fighting nausea, Crispin stayed where he was, his breathing carefully shallow, though there was no actual secret to his presence now. His mind was in a desperate whirl. Out of the chaos, a question spun free and he reached for it: how did this man and his creature know, here, about the war?

There was something ugly at work here. This bird was like none he had yet known or heard. The inner voice wasn't that of Zoticus's creations. This birdsoul spoke in a woman's voice, bitter and hard, from beyond Bassania: Ispahani or Ajbar or lands whose names he did not know. It was dark in hue, small as Linon, but not like Linon at all.

He remembered that the Daleinoi had made their fortune with a monopoly on the spice trade to the east. He looked at the man on the couch, burned so terribly,
turned into this horror, and again the thought came to him: how is he alive?

And again the same answer came and he was afraid.

‘I know
,
' said the bird abruptly, replying to something.
‘I know! I know! I know!'
And what Crispin heard now in the low, harsh voice was exultation, fierce as a blaze.

‘I take no delight,' the Empress said, all ice and edge like Styliane, ‘in any of this, and see no reason to attend to your pleasures. I prefer my own, brother. I'm here to ask if there's anything you need … immediately.' She left an emphasis on the last word. ‘You might recall, dear brother, that they leave us alone for only a little while.'

‘Of course I … recall. That is why you are cruel … to be dressed … still. Little sister, come closer … and tell me.
Tell
me … how did he … take you, last night?'

Stomach churning, Crispin saw the ruined man's hand, gnarled like a claw, reach under his own tunic to his groin. And he heard the inward laughter of the eastern bird.

‘Think of your father,' said Alixana. ‘And of your ancestors. If this is all you are now, brother, I shall not return. Consider it, Lecanus. I warned you last time. I'm going to take a walk now and a meal in sunlight on the island. I will come back before I sail. When I do, if this is what you are, still, I will have no more time for this journey and will not return.'

‘Oh! Oh!' wheezed the man on the couch. ‘I am desolate! I have … shamed my dear sister. Our innocent … fair child.'

Crispin saw Alixana bite her lip, staring at the figure before her as if her gaze could probe his depths. She couldn't know, Crispin thought. She couldn't know why her immaculate, brilliant deception was being so effortlessly defeated. But she sensed it was being foiled, somehow, that Lecanus
was
playing with her, and perhaps
that was why she feared this room so much. And why she still came.

She said nothing more, walked from the room and the house, head high, shoulders straight, as before. An actress, an Empress, proud as some goddess of the ancient pantheon, betraying nothing, unless you looked very, very closely.

Crispin followed, the laughter of the bird drilling in his head. Just as he came into the sunshine, closing his eyes, temporarily blind, he heard,
‘I want to be there! Lecanus, I want us to be there!'

He didn't hear the reply, of course.

‘Styliane never pleasured him, in the event you were wondering. She's corrupt in her own ways, but she never did that.'

Crispin was wondering how much was known about a certain recent night, and then decided not to think about it. They were on the southern side of the island, facing Deapolis across the water. Her Excubitors had accompanied them through the trees, past a second clearing with another set of huts and houses. These were empty. There had been other prisoners here once, evidently. Not now. Lecanus Daleinus had the isle to himself, with his handful of guards.

It was past midday now, by the sun. They would be racing again in the Hippodrome soon, if they hadn't started already, the day turning steadily towards an announcement of war. Crispin understood that the Empress was simply allowing an interval to pass before she went back to that house in the clearing to see if anything had changed.

It wouldn't have, he knew. What he didn't know was whether to say anything about it. There were so many betrayals embedded here: of Zoticus, of Shirin and
her bird, and of his own privacy, his gift, his secret. Linon. At the same time, those last silent words of the eastern creature were still with him, with the undeniable signal of danger in them.

He had little appetite when they sat down to their meal, picked in a desultory fashion at the fish-cakes and the olives. Drank his wine. Had asked for it to be well watered. The Empress was largely silent, had been from the time they'd left the clearing. She had walked off by herself, in fact, when they'd first reached this strand, becoming a small, purple-cloaked dot in the distance along the stony beachfront here, two of her soldiers following at a distance. Crispin had sat down on a grassy place between trees and stones, watching the changing light on the sea. Green, blue, blue-green, grey.

Eventually she had come back, gestured for him not to rise, and had taken her place, gracefully, on a square of silk unfolded for her. The food had been spread on another cloth in this quiet place that ought to have been soothing in its beauty, a benign embodiment of the quickening spring.

Crispin said, after a time, ‘You watched them together, I gather. Styliane and … her brother.'

The Empress wasn't eating either. She nodded. ‘Of course. I had to. How else would I have learned how and what to say, playing her?' She looked at him.

So obvious, seen in that way. An actress, learning her part. Crispin looked back out to sea. Deapolis showed clearly across the water. He could see more ships in the harbour there. A fleet for an army, sailing west, to his home. He had warned his mother, and Martinian and Carissa. It meant nothing. What could they do? There was a dull fear within him; the memory of the bird in that dark cabin a part of that now.

He said, ‘And you do this … you come here, because … '

‘Because Valerius won't let him be killed. I thought of doing it, despite that. Killing him. But it matters a great deal to the Emperor. The visible hand of mercy, since the family … suffered so much when those … unknown people burned Flavius. So I come here, and do this … performance, and learn nothing. If I am to believe him, Lecanus is broken and vile and purposeless.' She paused. ‘I can't stop coming.'