The Sarantine Mosaic (127 page)

In time, they came to a dwelling, not far from the triple walls. Shirin ordered the bearers to stop. In the litter there was a silence.

‘Thank you,' Crispin said, at length. She stared at him. Danis was silent, on the chain about her throat.

He got out. Looked at the closed doorway in front of him, and then up at the night stars. Then he turned back to her. She still hadn't spoken. He leaned into the litter and kissed her gently on the lips. He remembered the first day they'd met, that passionate embrace in the doorway, Danis protesting urgently, Pertennius of Eubulus appearing behind her.

There
was a man who would be happy tonight, Crispin thought suddenly, with bitterness.

Then he turned away and knocked—one more knocking in Sarantium that night—on the door of the person who had summoned him. A servant opened instantly; had been waiting, he realized. He went in.

The servant gestured nervously. Crispin stepped forward.

The queen of the Antae was waiting in the first room on the right, branching off the hallway.

He saw her standing before the fire, glittering, jewellery at ears and throat and on her fingers and in her hair, garbed in a silken robe of porphyry and gold. Purple, for royalty tonight. Tall and fair and … entirely, dazzlingly regal. There was a fierce brilliance to her, a kind of shining like the jewels she wore. It caught at your breath to look at her. Crispin bowed, and then, a little bit overwhelmed, he knelt on the wooden floor.

‘No flour sack this time, artisan. I'm using gentler methods, you see.'

‘I am grateful, my lady.' He could think of nothing else to say. She had seemed able to read his thoughts back then, too.

‘They say the Emperor is dead.' Direct, as always. Antae, not Sarantine. A different world. West for east, forest and field by origin, not these triple walls and gates of bronze and golden trees in the palaces. ‘Is it true? Valerius is dead?'

This was his own queen asking. ‘I believe he is,' he said, clearing his throat. ‘I have no actual—'

‘Murdered?'

Crispin swallowed. Nodded.

‘The Daleinoi?'

He nodded again. Kneeling, looking at her where she stood before the fire, he thought he had never seen her like this. Had never seen
anyone
look as Gisel did just now. A creature almost alight, like the flames behind her, not entirely human.

She gazed at him, the famously wide-set blue eyes. Crispin's mouth was dry. She said, ‘In that case, Caius Crispus, you must get us into the Imperial Precinct. Tonight.'

‘Me?' said Crispin, eloquently.

Gisel smiled thinly. ‘There is no one else I could think of,' she said. ‘Or trust. I am a helpless woman and alone, far from my home.'

He swallowed again, painfully, could find nothing to say. He was thinking suddenly that he might die tonight, and that he had erred, earlier, seeing this terrible day and night as a clash of two women. He'd been wrong. Saw it now. There were three, not two.

IN FACT, THEY HAD ALL
forgotten about her. The sort of overlooking that could matter greatly, change many things about the world—although perhaps not in any immediate, obvious way for some, such as the family on its farm in the northern grainlands, the one whose best labourer had just died, suddenly and too young, with the seeds all to be sown.

CHAPTER XIII

T
here was a level of fear in the Blues' compound that Kyros had never known before. It was as if they were all horses, not yet broken, sweating with apprehension, trembling with it.

Scortius wasn't the only wounded man. Members of the faction had been coming into the compound with injuries ranging from minor to hideously mortal all afternoon. There was considerable chaos. The wounded were receiving attention from Ampliarus, the new, pale-featured physician of the faction, and from Columella, who was properly their horse doctor but inspired more confidence in most of them than Ampliarus did. There was also a grey-bearded Bassanid doctor no one knew, but who had apparently been treating Scortius somewhere during the time of his absence. A mystery, but no time to consider it.

Beyond the gates at sunset there still came the sounds of running and shouting men, the tread of marching soldiers, clash of metal, horses' hooves, screaming sometimes. Those inside were under ferociously strict orders not to go out.

Adding to the anxiety was the fact that even so late in the day—the sky crimson now in the west above a line of clouds—Astorgus had not returned.

He'd been seized by the Urban Prefect's men as the rioting began, borne off by them for questioning. And they all knew what could happen to men interrogated in
that windowless building on the far side of the Hippodrome.

In the absence of the factionarius, control of the compound normally fell to Columella, but he was entirely engaged in treating the wounded. Instead it was the small, rotund cook, Strumosus, who asserted himself, giving calm, brisk instructions, arranging for a steady supply of clean linen and bedding for the injured, assigning anyone healthy—grooms, servants, jugglers, dancers, stableboys—to give assistance to the three doctors, posting additional guards at the compound gates. He was listened to. There was real need for a sense of control.

Strumosus had his own people—the undercooks and kitchen boys and servers—furiously busy preparing soups and grilled meats and cooked vegetables, carrying well-watered wine to the injured and the frantic. Men and women needed food at such a time, the cook told them in the kitchen, astonishingly composed for a man notoriously volatile. Both the nourishment and the illusion of ordinariness had roles to play, he'd observed, as if delivering a lecture on a quiet afternoon.

That last was true, Kyros thought. The act of preparing food had a calming effect. He felt his own fear receding in the mundane, unthinking routine of selecting and chopping and dicing vegetables for his soup, adding spices and salt, tasting and adjusting, aware of the others at their own tasks all around him in the kitchen.

One might almost imagine it was a banquet day, all of them caught up in the usual bustle of preparation.

Almost, but not quite. They could hear men crying in anger and pain as they were helped into the courtyard from the frenzied streets beyond the gates. Kyros had already heard the names of a dozen men he knew who had died today in the Hippodrome or the fighting outside it.

Rasic, at his station beside Kyros, was swearing steadily, chopping with barely controlled fury, treating onions and potatoes as if they were members of the Greens or the military. He'd been at the races in the morning but not when violence exploded in the afternoon: the kitchen workers who drew the lucky straws and were allowed to go to the first races were under standing orders to return before the last morning running, to help prepare the midday meal.

Kyros tried to ignore his friend. His own heart was heavy and fearful, not angry. There was great violence outside. People were being badly hurt, killed. He was worried about his mother and father, about Scortius, Astorgus.

And the Emperor was dead.

The Emperor was dead. Kyros had been a child when Apius died, barely more than that when the first Valerius went to the god. And both of them had passed from the world in their beds, in peace. The talk today was of black murder, the assassination of Jad's anointed one, the god's regent upon earth.

It was the shadow over everything, Kyros thought, like a ghost half glimpsed out of the edge of one's eye, hovering above a colonnade or chapel dome, changing the fall of sunlight, defining the day, and the night to come.

At darkfall the torches and lamps were lit. The compound took on the altered look of a night camp by a battlefield. The barracks were filled by now with the wounded, and Strumosus had ordered the tables of the dining hall to be covered with sheets and used as makeshift beds for those who needed them. He himself was everywhere, moving quickly, concentrating, unruffled.

Passing through the kitchen, he stopped and looked around. He gestured at Kyros and Rasic and two of the
others. ‘Take a short rest,' he said. ‘Eat something yourselves, or lie down, or stretch your legs. Whatever you like.' Kyros wiped perspiration from his forehead. They had been working almost without pause since the midday meal and it was night now, full dark.

He didn't feel like eating or lying down. Neither did Rasic. They went out of the hot kitchen into the chilly, torchlit shadows of the courtyard. Kyros felt the cold, which was unusual for him. He wished he'd put on a cloak over his sweaty tunic. Rasic wanted to go down to the gates, so they went there, Kyros dragging his foot along, trying to keep up with his friend. Stars were visible overhead. Neither moon was up yet. There was a lull, a hushed feeling out here now. No one crying at this moment, no one being carried in or sprinting past on some errand for the doctors in the barracks or the dining hall.

They came to the gates, to the guards there. Kyros saw that these men were armed, swords and spears and chest-plates. They wore helmets, like soldiers. Weapons and armour were forbidden to citizens in the streets, but the faction compounds had been given their own laws and they were allowed to defend themselves.

It was quiet here, too. They looked through the iron gates down the dark lane. There were occasional movements in the street beyond: distant sounds, a single voice calling, a carried torch passing at the head of their laneway. Rasic asked for news. One of the guards said that the Senate had been summoned into session.

‘Why?' Rasic snapped. ‘Useless fat farts. Voting themselves another ration of wine and Karchite boys?'

‘Voting an Emperor,' the guard said. ‘If your brain's small, kitchen boy, keep your mouth shut to hide the fact.'

‘Fuck you,' Rasic snarled.

‘Shut up, Rasic,' Kyros said quickly. ‘He's upset,' he explained to the guards.

‘We all are,' the man said bluntly. Kyros didn't know him.

They heard footsteps approaching from behind them, turned. By the torches mounted on the walls by the gate Kyros recognized a charioteer.

‘Taras!' said another guard, and there was respect in his voice.

They'd heard, in the kitchens: Taras, their newest driver, had won the first afternoon race, working with the miraculously returned Scortius in some dazzling, amazing fashion. They'd come first, second, third and fourth, entirely obliterating the Green triumphs of the last session and the morning.

And then violence had exploded, during the victory laps.

The young driver nodded his head, came up to stand by Kyros before the gates. ‘What do we know about the factionarius?' he asked.

‘Nothing yet,' a third guard said. He spat somewhere into the dark beyond the lamplight. ‘Fuckers in the Urban Prefect's office won't say a thing, even when they come by here.'

‘They probably don't know,' Kyros said. A torch flared, showering sparks, and he looked away. It seemed to him he was always the one trying to be reasonable among men who didn't feel troubled by any need to be. He wondered what it would be like to sprint through the streets waving a blade in his hand, screaming in fury. Shook his head. A different person, a different life. Different foot, for that matter.

‘How's Scortius?' he asked, looking at the other charioteer. Taras had a cut on his forehead and an ugly bruise on his cheek.

Taras shook his head. ‘Sleeping now, they told me. They gave him something to make him sleep. There was a lot of pain, from where his ribs were broken, before.'

‘Will he die?' Rasic asked. Kyros quickly made the sign of the sun disk in the darkness, saw two of the guards do the same.

Taras shrugged. ‘They don't know, or they won't say. The Bassanid doctor is very angry.'

‘Fuck the Bassanid,' Rasic said, predictably. ‘Who is he, anyhow?'

There came a sudden clattering sound from beyond the gates and a sharp, rasped command. They turned quickly to peer down the laneway.

‘More of ours coming back,' the first guard said. ‘Open the gates.'

Kyros saw a group of men—perhaps a dozen—being herded roughly down the laneway by soldiers. One of the men couldn't walk; he was being supported between two others. The soldiers had their swords out, hustling the Blues along. He saw one of them sweep his blade and hit a stumbling man with the flat of it, swearing in a northern accent.

The gates swung open. Torches and lamps flickered with the movement. The man who'd been hit tripped and fell on the cobbled laneway. The soldier cursed again and prodded him hard with the point of his blade. ‘Get up, you lump of horsedung!'

The man pushed himself awkwardly to one knee as the others hurried through the gates. Kyros, without stopping to think, limped out and knelt by the fallen man.

He draped the man's right arm over his shoulder. There was a smell of sweat and blood and urine. Kyros staggered to his feet, swayed, supporting the other fellow. He'd no idea who it was, in the dark, but it was a Blue, they all were, and he was hurt.