The Sarantine Mosaic (119 page)

The curiosity he feels might be considered a defining trait of the Emperor of Sarantium, whose mind is endlessly engaged by the challenges and enigmas of the world the god has made. The anger he experiences is less characteristic but equally intense just now, and the repeated pulsing of grief, like a heavy heartbeat, is very rare for him.

There were—there
are
—so many things he has intended to do.

What he does do after a moment, rather than continue to wait like one of the hares, frozen in the mosaic glade, is turn and walk back towards those behind him. One may sometimes control the moment and place of one's dying, thinks the man whose mother had named him Petrus, in Trakesia, almost half a century ago, and whose uncle—a soldier—had summoned him to Sarantium in early manhood.

He is not, however, reconciled to his death. Jad waits for every living man and woman, but can wait a little longer for an Emperor, surely. Surely.

He deems himself equal even to this, whatever it turns out to be. Has nothing with which to defend himself, unless one counts a simple, unsharpened blade at his belt used for breaking the seal on correspondence. It is not a weapon. He is not a warrior.

He is fairly certain he knows who is here, is rapidly deploying his thoughts (which
are
weapons) even as he goes back down the tunnel and comes around the curve and sees—with brief, trivial satisfaction—the startled reaction of those coming after him. They stop.

Four of them. Two soldiers, helmed to be unknown but he knows them, and they are the two who were on guard. There is another cloaked man—all these hidden assassins, even with no one to see—and there is one who walks in front, unshielded, eager, almost alight with what Valerius perceives to be desire. He does not see the man he has feared—quite intensely—might be here.

Some relief at that, though he may be among those in wait at the other end of the corridor. Anger, and grief.

‘Anxious for an ending?' asks the tall woman, stopping before him. Her surprise was brief, swiftly controlled. Her eyes are blue flames, uncanny. She is dressed in crimson, a gold belt, her hair bound in a net of black. The gold of it shows through in the torchlight.

Valerius smiles. ‘Not as anxious as you, I daresay. Why are you doing this, Styliane?'

She blinks, genuinely startled. She had been a child when it all happened. He has always been conscious of that, guided by it, much more so than Aliana.

He thinks of his wife. In his heart, in the pure silence of the heart, he is speaking to her now, wherever she might be under the sun overhead. She had always told him it was a mistake to bring this woman—this girl when the dance began—to court, even to let her live. Her father's daughter. Flavius. In silence the Emperor
of Sarantium is telling the dancer he married that she was right and he was wrong and he knows she will know, soon enough, even if his thoughts do not— cannot—travel through walls and space to where she is.

‘Why am I
doing
this? Why else am I alive?' the daughter of Flavius Daleinus says.

‘To live your life,' he says crisply. A philosopher of the Schools, admonishing a pupil. (He closed the Schools himself. A regret, but the Patriarch needed it done. Too many pagans.) ‘Your own life, with the gifts you have, and have been given. Easy enough, Styliane.' He looks past her as fury kindles in her eyes. Deliberately ignores that. Says to the two soldiers, ‘You are aware that they will kill you here?'

‘I told them you would say that,' Styliane says.

‘Did you also tell them it was true?'

She is clever, knows too much of hatred. The rage of the one who survived? He had thought—gambled—the intelligence might win out in the end, saw a genuine need, a place for her. Aliana said it would not, accused him of trying to control too much. A known flaw.

She is
still
so young, the Emperor thinks, looking again at the tall woman who has come to kill him here under the still-cold ground of spring. He doesn't want to die.

‘I told them what was—and is—more obviously true: any new court will need Excubitors in the highest ranks who have proven their loyalty.'

‘By betraying their oath and Emperor? You expect trained soldiers to believe that?'

‘They are here with us.'

‘And you will kill them. What does murder say about—'

‘Yes,' says the cloaked man, finally speaking, face still hooded, his voice thick with excitement. ‘Really. What
does
murder say? Even after years?'

He doesn't remove the hood. It doesn't matter. Valerius shakes his head.

‘Tertius Daleinus, you are forbidden the City and know it. Guards, arrest this man. He is banned from Sarantium as a traitor.' His voice crackles with vigour; they all know this tone of command in him.

It is Styliane, of course, who breaks the spell with her laughter.
I'm sorry
, the Emperor is thinking.
My love, you will never know how sorry
.

They hear footsteps approaching from the other end. He turns, apprehensive again. A pain in his heart, a premonition.

Then he sees who has come—and who has not—and that pain slips away. It
matters
to him that someone is not here. Odd, perhaps, but it does matter. And replacing fear, swiftly, is something else.

This time it is the Emperor of Sarantium, surrounded by his enemies and far as his own childhood from the surface world and the mild light of the god, who laughs aloud.

‘Jad's blood, you have grown fatter, Lysippus!' he says. ‘I'd have wagered it was impossible. You aren't supposed to be in Sarantium yet. I intended to call you back after the fleet had sailed.'

‘
What?
Even now you play games? Oh, stop being clever, Petrus,' says the gross, green-eyed man who had been his Quaestor of Revenue, exiled in the smouldering, bloody aftermath of riot two years and more ago.

Histories, thinks the Emperor. We all have our histories and they do not leave us. Only a handful of men and women in the world call him by his birth name. This hulking figure, the familiar, too-sweet scent surrounding him, his fleshy face round as a moon, is one of them. There is another figure behind him, mostly hidden by the spilling shape of Lysippus: it is not the one he feared, though, because this one, too, is hooded.

Leontes would not be.

‘You don't believe me?' the Emperor says to the vast, sweating bulk of the Calysian. He is genuinely indignant, no need to pretend. His back is now fully turned to the woman and her cloaked, craven brother and the renegade guards. They will not stab him. He knows that with certainty. Styliane means for this to be theatre, ceremony, not only murder. A lifetime's worth of … expiation? For history. There are steps yet to this dance. His dancer is somewhere else, up above, in the light.

They will not let her live.

For that as much as anything he will keep trying here underground, probing, subtle and quick as a salmon, which is holy in the north among the pagans his people once were before Jad came among them. And Heladikos, his son, who fell.

‘Believe that you were about to call me back?' Lysippus shakes his head, jowls quivering. His voice is still distinctive, memorable. Not a man, once met, who can ever be forgotten. His appetites are corrupt, unspeakable, but no man had ever managed the Imperial finances with such honesty or skill. A paradox never fully fathomed. ‘Must you, even now, assume all others are fools?'

Valerius gazes at him. He'd actually been a well-formed man once, when first met, handsome, educated, a patrician friend to the young, scholarly nephew of the Count of the Excubitors. Had played a role in the Hippodrome, and elsewhere, on that day when Apius died and the world changed. Rewarded for it with wealth and real power and with eyes averted from what he did in his city palace or in the litter that carried him at night through the streets. Then exiled, of necessity, to the countryside after the riot. Bored there, of a certainty. A man inextricably drawn to the City, to dark things, blood. The reason he is here.

The Emperor knows how to handle him, or did once. He says, ‘If they behave as fools, I do. Think, man. Did the country dull you entirely? Why did I have the rumours started that you were back in the City?'

‘You start them? I
am
back in the City, Petrus.'

‘And were you two months ago? I thought not. Go ask in the faction compounds, friend.' A deliberate word, that last. ‘And I will have Gesius give you names. Half a dozen. Ask when word first began to spread that you might be here. I was testing it, Lysippus! On the people and the clerics. Of
course
I want you back. We have a war to win—probably on two fronts.'

A bit of new information dropped there for them. A hint, a tease. To keep the dance going, in any way. Keep holding to life here. They will kill her after him.

He knows Lysippus very well. The torches are bright where they are standing and he sees the registering of a fact, then conjecture at the hint, then the watched-for doubt in the remarkable green eyes.

‘Why bother? No need to ask anyone,' says Styliane Daleina behind him, breaking the mood like a glass dropped on stone, shattering into shards.

Her voice, continuing, is a knife now, precise as an executioner's edge. ‘This much is perfectly true. A good liar mixes truth in his poison. It was when I first heard those tales and realized what was happening that I saw the chance to invite you back to join us. An elegant solution. If the Trakesian and his whore heard tidings of you they would assume they were their own false rumours.'

Which is what, indeed, has happened. He hears that word
whore
, of course, understands what she so passionately wants from him. He will not give it to her, but is thinking how she is so much more than clever. He turns. The soldiers remain helmed, her brother hooded, Styliane is almost glowing in her intensity. He looks at
her, here under the earth where old powers dwell. He thinks that what she would like is to unbind her hair and claw his beating heart from his breast with her fingers and nails like the god-drunk wild women on hills of autumn long ago.

He says, calmly, ‘You use a foul tongue for someone of breeding. But it is an elegant solution, indeed. My congratulations on the cleverness. Was it Tertius who thought of it?' His tone is mildly acerbic, giving her nothing of what she wants. ‘The loathed, godless Calysian enticed to become a perfect scapegoat for the murder of a holy Emperor. Does he die here with me and these soldiers, or do you hunt him down and produce a confession after you and poor Leontes are crowned?' One of the helmed men behind her shifts uneasily. He is listening.

‘Poor Leontes?' She simulates her laughter this time, is not truly amused.

And so he gambles. ‘Of course. Leontes knows nothing of this. Is still waiting outside the far doors for me. This is the Daleinoi alone, and you think you'll control him after, don't you? What is the scheme? Tertius as Chancellor?' Her eyes flicker. He laughs aloud. ‘How very amusing. Or no, I
must
be wrong. Surely I am. This is all for the greater good of the Empire, of course.'

The craven brother, named twice, opens his mouth within the hood and then closes it. Valerius smiles. ‘Or no, no. Wait. Of course! You promised that position to Lysippus to get him here, didn't you? He'll never have it, will he?
Someone
must be named and executed for this.'

Styliane stares at him. ‘You imagine everyone treats people as disposable, in the way you do?'

His turn to blink, disconcerted for the first time. ‘This, coming from the girl I let live against all advice and brought into my court with honour?'

And it is then that Styliane finally says, with a glacial clarity, the words slow as time, inexorable as the movement of stars across the night sky, an indictment carrying the burden of years (so many nights awake?) behind it:
‘You burned my father alive. I was to be bought with a husband and a place on the dais behind a whore?'

There is a silence then. The Emperor feels the weight of all the earth and stone between them and the sun.

‘Who told you
that
absurd story?' Valerius says. His tone is light, but it costs him something this time.

Still, he moves, swiftly, when she swings a palm to strike him in the face. He catches her hand, holds, though she twists savagely, and he says, in turn, through gritted teeth, ‘Your father wore purple in the street on the day an Emperor died. He was on his way to the Senate. He could have been killed by any man in Sarantium with respect for tradition, and burning would have suited so much impiety.'

‘He did
not
wear purple,' says Styliane Daleina, as he lets her tear her hand free. Her skin is almost translucent; he sees the marks of his fingers red on her wrist. ‘It is a
lie
,
' she says.

And now the Emperor smiles. ‘In the god's most holy name, you astonish me. I had no idea. None at all. All these years? You honestly believe that?'

The woman is silent, breathing hard.

‘She does … believe it.'
Another voice, behind him. A new one. ‘She is wrong, but it … changes … nothing.'

But this mangled, whistling voice changes everything. And it is with a bone-chill now, as if a wind crossing from the half-world has blown into him, bringing death truly into this tunnel where walls and plaster and paint hide the roughness of earth underground, that the Emperor turns again and sees who has spoken, stepping out from behind the obscuring bulk of the Calysian.

There is something this man holds. It is actually tied to his wrists, for his hands are maimed. The tube-like implement, attached to something that rolls on a small cart behind him, is one the Emperor recognizes and remembers, and so it is with a struggle, a real one, that Valerius remains motionless now, betraying nothing.