The Sarantine Mosaic (130 page)

Her reputation was not, he had come to see, what Gisel of the Antae was trying to protect. He could honour her for it, even while aware he was being used, toyed with. He remembered a hand lingering in his hair the very first night in her own palace. She was a queen, deploying resources. He was a tool for her, a subject to be given precise orders when he was needed.

He was needed now, it seemed.

You must get us into the Imperial Precinct. Tonight.

A night when the streets rang with the tread of soldiers looking for a missing Empress. A night after a day when flaming riot and murder defined Sarantium. When the Imperial Precinct would be in a fever and frenzy of tension: an Emperor dead, another to be proclaimed. An invasion from the north, on the day when war was to be proclaimed in Batiara.

He had heard Gisel's words almost without hearing them, so improbable did they seem. But he hadn't said to her, as he'd said so many times before to himself, to others,
I am an artisan, no more.

It would have been a lie, after what had happened this morning. He was irrevocably down from the scaffolding, had been brought down some time ago. And on this night of death and change, the queen of the Antae, as forgotten here by everyone as a trivial guest might be at a banquet, had asked to be taken to the palaces.

A journey through most of the City, and in the dark, in a litter that turned out to be gilded, sumptuously pillowed, scented with perfume, where two people could recline at opposite ends, bodies unsettlingly near to each other, one of them alight with purpose, the other aware of the degree of his own fear, but remembering—with a wryness that spoke to his nature—that less than a year ago he had had no desire for life at all, had been more than half inclined to seek his death.

Easy enough to find tonight, he'd thought in the litter. He'd dictated to the bearers the route to take and forbidden any torches at all. They had listened to him, the way his apprentices did. It wasn't the same, though: that was his craft, upon walls or domes or ceilings, something touching the world but apart from it. This was not.

They were borne swiftly, almost silently, through the streets, keeping to shadows, stopping when boots were heard or torches seen, crossing squares the long way, through the covered, shadowed colonnades. Once, they'd stopped in the doorway of a chapel as four armed horsemen galloped across the Mezaros Forum. Crispin had drawn back the curtain of the litter to watch, and did so again at intervals, looking out at stars and barred doors and shop fronts as they passed through the night city. He saw the strange fires of Sarantium flare and disappear as they went: a journey as much through a starlit half-world as it was through the world, a feeling that they were travelling endlessly, that Sarantium itself had somehow been carried out of time. He'd wondered
if anyone could even see them in the dark, if they were really here.

Gisel had been silent, nearly motionless throughout, adding to the sense of strangeness, never looking out when he pulled the curtains. Intense, coiled, waiting. The perfume in the litter was of sandalwood and something else he didn't recognize. It made him think of ivory, in the way that all things reminded him of colours. One of her ankles lay against his thigh. Unaware: he was almost certain she was unaware of that.

Then they had come, finally, to the door behind the Great Sanctuary and Crispin had put into motion—a movement into time again, as they left the enclosed world of the litter—the next part of what he supposed would have to be called a plan, though it was hardly that, in truth.

Some puzzles, even for one engaged by them, were intractible. Some could destroy you if you tried to solve them, like those intricate boxes the Ispahani were said to devise, where turning them the wrong way caused blades to spring out, killing or maiming the unwary.

Gisel of the Antae had handed him one of those. Or, seen another way, shifting the box a little differently in his hands, she
was
one of those tonight.

Crispin took a long breath, and realized that they weren't together any more. Gisel had stopped, was behind him, looking up. He turned back and followed her gaze to the dome that Artibasos had made, that Valerius had given to him—to Caius Crispus, widower, only son of Horius Crispus the mason, from Varena.

The lamps were burning, suspended from their silver and bronze chains and set into the brackets that ran with the windows all around. The light of the white moon, rising, was coming in from the east like a blessing of illumination upon the work he had achieved here in this place, in Sarantium after his sailing.

He would remember, he would always remember, that on the night when she herself was burning with directed intent like a beam of sunlight focused by glass onto one spot, the queen of the Antae had stopped beneath his mosaics upon a dome and looked up at them by lamplight and moonlight.

At length she said, ‘You complained to me, I remember, about deficient materials in my father's chapel. Now I understand.'

He said nothing. Inclined his head. She looked up again, at his image of Jad over this City, at his forests and fields (green with spring in one place, red and gold and brown as autumn in another), at his
zubir
at the edge of a dark wood, his seas and sailing ships, his people (Ilandra there now, and he had been about to begin the girls this morning, filtering memory and love through craft and art), his flying and swimming creatures and running beasts and watchful ones, with a place (not yet done, not yet) where the western sunset flaming over ruined Rhodias would be the forbidden torch of falling Heladikos: his life, all lives under the god and in the world, as much as he could render, being mortal himself, entangled in his limitations.

Much of it done now, some yet to do, with the labour of others—Pardos, Silano and Sosio, the apprentices, Vargos working among them now—taking form under his direction on walls and semi-domes. But the
shape
of it, the overarching design, was here to be seen now, and Gisel paused, and looked.

As her gaze came to him again, he saw that she seemed about to say something else, but did not. There was an entirely unexpected expression on her face, and long afterwards he thought he understood it, what she had almost said.

‘
CRISPIN
!
HOLY JAD
, you are all right! We feared—'

He held up a hand, imperious as an Emperor in this place, urgent with apprehension. Pardos, rushing up, stopped in his tracks, fell silent. Vargos stood behind him. Crispin felt a flicker of relief himself: they had obviously elected to remain in here all day and night, were safe. He was sure Artibasos was somewhere about as well.

‘You haven't seen me,' he murmured. ‘You are asleep. Go now. Be asleep. Tell Artibasos the same if he's wandering here. No one saw me.' They were both looking at the hooded figure beside him. ‘Or anyone else,' he added. She was unrecognizable, he devoutly hoped.

Pardos opened his mouth and closed it.

‘Go,' said Crispin. ‘If I have a chance to explain after, I will.'

Vargos had come quietly up beside Pardos: burly, capable, reassuring, a man with whom he had seen a
zubir.
Who had led them out of the Aldwood on the Day of the Dead. He said, quietly, ‘Is there no help we can offer? Whatever you are doing?'

He wished there were, Crispin realized. But he shook his head. ‘Not tonight. I am glad to see you safe.' He hesitated. ‘Pray for me.' He'd never said anything like that before. He grinned a little. ‘Even though you haven't seen me.'

Neither man smiled. Vargos moved first, taking Pardos by the elbow, leading him away into the shadows of the Sanctuary.

Gisel looked at him. Did not speak. He led her across the marble floor and the vast space under the dome into an ambulatory on the other side, and then to a low door set in the far wall. There he drew a deep breath and knocked—four times quickly, twice slowly—and then a moment later he did it again, remembering, remembering.

There was a stillness, a waiting time, as long as a night. He looked at the massed bank of candles at the altar to their right, thought of praying. Gisel stood motionless beside him. If this failed, he had nothing in reserve.

Then he heard the lock being turned on the other side. And the low door of the only plan he'd been able to devise swung open before them. He saw the white-robed cleric who had opened it, one of the Sleepless Ones, in the short stone tunnel behind the altar at the very back of the small chapel built into the wall of the Imperial Precinct, and he knew the man and gave thanks—with his whole heart—to the god, and he was remembering the first time he'd passed through this same door, with Valerius, who was dead.

The cleric knew him as well. The knock had been the Emperor's, taught to Artibasos and then to Crispin. Working by lamplight, they had opened for Valerius on more than one night through the winter as he came at the end of his own day's labours to look upon theirs. Much later than this, many times. He'd been named the Night's Emperor; it was said he never slept.

The cleric seemed blessedly unperturbed, only raised his eyebrows, without speaking. Crispin said, ‘I have come with one who wishes to join me in paying a last tribute to the Emperor. We would speak our prayers by his body and then here again, with you.'

‘He is in the Porphyry Room,' the cleric said. ‘It is a terrible time.'

‘It is,' said Crispin, feelingly.

The cleric had not moved aside. ‘Why is your companion hooded?' he asked.

‘That the common folk not see her,' Crispin murmured. ‘It would be unseemly.'

‘Why so?'

Which meant there was no help for it. Even as Crispin turned to her, Gisel had pushed back her hood. The cleric held a lantern. Light fell upon her face, her golden hair.

‘I am the queen of the Antae,' she murmured. She was taut as a bowstring. Crispin had a sense she would vibrate like one if touched. ‘Good cleric, would you have a woman parade through the streets tonight?'

The man, visibly overawed—and looking at the queen, Crispin could understand why—shook his head and stammered, ‘No, of course … no, no! Dangerous. A terrible time!'

‘The Emperor Valerius brought me here. Saved my life. Purposed to restore my throne to me, as you may know. Is it not seemly in the eyes of Jad that I bid him farewell? I would not rest easy if I did not so.'

The small cleric in his white robe backed up before her, and then he bowed and he shifted to one side. He said, with great dignity, ‘It is seemly, my lady. Jad send Light to you, and to him.'

‘To all of us,' said Gisel, and walked forward, ahead of Crispin now, ducking at the arch of the low stone tunnel, and then through the small chapel and into the Imperial Precinct.

They were there.

WHEN CRISPIN HAD BEEN
younger, learning his craft, Martinian had often lectured about the virtues of directness, avoiding the overly subtle. Crispin, over the years, had made the same point many times to their various apprentices. ‘If a military hero comes to a sculptor and asks for a statue in his own honour, it would be foolish beyond words not to do the obvious. Put the man on a horse, give him a helmet and a sword.' Martinian used to pause, after saying this. So would Crispin, before going
on: ‘It may feel tired, overdone, but what is the
reason
for this commission, you must ask yourself. Has anything been achieved if the patron doesn't feel honoured by a work designed to honour him?'

Subtle concepts, brilliant innovation came with risks … sometimes the exercise of the moment would be entirely defeated by them. That was the point.

Crispin led the queen out of the chapel and back into the night, and he didn't ask her to draw up her hood again. They made no attempt to hide at all. They walked along tended paths, gravel crunching underfoot, past sculptures of Emperors and soldiers (suitably rendered) in the starlit, moonlit gardens, and they saw no one and were disturbed by no one as they went.

Such dangers as might be feared tonight by those who lived here were thought to be outside the Bronze Gates, in the labyrinths of the City.

They went past a fountain, not flowing yet so early in the spring, and then the long portico of the silk guild, and then, with the sound of the sea in his ears, Crispin led his queen up to the entrance of the Attenine Palace, which was alight with lamps tonight. There were guards here, but the double doors stood wide open. He walked straight up the steps to them, and there he saw a man standing just inside, beyond the guards, in the green and brown colours of the Chancellor's eunuchs.

He stopped in front of the guards, the queen beside him. They eyed him warily. He ignored them, pointed at the eunuch. ‘You!' he snapped. ‘We need an escort for the queen of the Antae.'

The eunuch turned, his training immaculate, betraying no surprise at all, and he stepped out onto the portico. The guards looked from Crispin to the queen. The Chancellor's man bowed to Gisel, and then, a moment later, so did they. Crispin drew a breath.

‘Rhodian!' said the eunuch as he straightened. He was smiling. ‘You need another shave.' And it was with a sense of being blessed, guarded, granted aid, that Crispin recognized the man who had barbered his beard the first time he'd come to this palace.

‘Probably,' Crispin admitted. ‘But at the moment the queen wishes to see the Chancellor and to pay her last respects to Valerius.'

‘She can do both at once, then. I am at your service, Majesty. The Chancellor is in the Porphyry Room with the body. Come. I will take you there.' The guards didn't even move as they went through, so regal was Gisel, so obviously confident the man escorting her.

It was not a long way, as it turned out. The Porphyry Room, where Empresses of Sarantium gave birth, where Emperors lay in state when they were summoned to the god, was on this level, halfway down a single straight corridor. There were lamps at intervals, shadows between them, no one at all seemed to be about. It was as if the Imperial Precinct, the palace, the hallway lay under some sort of alchemist's spell, so calm and still was it. Their footsteps echoed as they went. They were alone with their escort, walking to visit the dead.