The Sarantine Mosaic (138 page)

They will come down, here and elsewhere, in the lands we rule.

‘You are … changing our faith, my lord.'

It was, barely, possible to shape words.

‘An error, artisan. We change nothing. With the wisdom of the Eastern Patriarch and his advisers to guide
us—and we expect the Patriarch in Rhodias to agree—we will
restore
a proper understanding. We must worship Jad, not an image of the god. Otherwise we are no better than the pagans before us with their offerings to statues in the temples.'

‘No one … worships this image above us, my lord. They are only made mindful of the power and majesty of the god.'

‘You would instruct
us
in matters of faith, Rhodian?' It was the dark-bearded cleric this time. The Patriarch's assistant.

It was all without meaning, these words. One could argue against this as easily as one fought against plague. It was as final. The heart could cry. There was nothing at all to be done.

Or, almost nothing.

Martinian used to say that there was always
some
kind of choice. And here, now, one might yet try to do a single thing. Crispin drew a deep breath, for this would go against everything in his nature: pride and rage, the deep sense of himself as above all such pleading. But there was something too large at stake now.

He swallowed hard and said, ignoring the cleric, looking directly at Leontes, ‘My lord Emperor, you were good enough to say you … owed me greatly, for services?'

Leontes returned his gaze. His heightened colour was receding. ‘I did.'

‘Then I have a request, my lord.' The heart could cry. He kept his eyes on the man in front of him. If he looked overhead he was afraid he would shame himself and weep.

Leontes's expression was benign. A man accustomed to dealing with requests. He lifted a hand. ‘Artisan, do not ask for this to be saved … it cannot be.'

Crispin nodded. He knew. He knew. He would not look up above.

He shook his head. ‘It is … something else.'

‘Then ask,' the Emperor said, with an expansive gesture. ‘We are aware of your services to our beloved predecessor, and that you have performed honourably by your own understanding.'

By his own understanding.

Crispin said, speaking slowly, ‘There is a chapel of the Sleepless Ones, in Sauradia, on the Imperial Road. Not far from the eastern military camp.' He heard his own voice as if from far away. Carefully, carefully, he did not look overhead.

‘I know it,' said the man who had commanded armies there.

Crispin swallowed again. Control. It was necessary to keep one's control. ‘It is a small chapel, inhabited by holy men of great piety. There is …' He took a breath. ‘There is a … decoration there, on the dome, a rendering of Jad done long ago by artisans of a piety as … as they understood it … almost unimaginable.'

‘I believe I have seen it.' Leontes was frowning.

‘It is … it is falling down, my lord. They were gifted and devout beyond words, but their … understanding of … technique was imperfect, so long ago.'

‘And so?'

‘And so I … my request of you, thrice-exalted lord, is that this image of the god be allowed to fall down in its own time. That the holy men who live there in peace and offer their night-long prayers for all of us, and travellers on the road, not be forced to see their chapel dome stripped bare.'

The cleric quickly began to speak, but Leontes held up a hand. Pertennius of Eubulus had said nothing the entire time, Crispin realized. He seldom did. An observer, a chronicler of wars and buildings. Crispin knew what else the man chronicled. He wished he'd hit
him harder the night before. He wished he'd killed him, in fact.

‘It is falling, this … rendering?' The Emperor's voice was precise.

‘Piece by piece,' Crispin said. ‘They know it, the holy ones. It grieves them, but they see it as the will of the god. Perhaps … it is, my lord.' He could hate himself for saying that last, but he wanted this to happen. He
needed
it to happen. He did not speak of Pardos and a winter spent in restoration. It was not a lie, any of what he said.

‘Perhaps it is,' the Emperor agreed, nodding his head. ‘The will of Jad. A sign for all of us of the virtue of what we are doing now.' He looked back at the cleric, who dutifully nodded as well.

Crispin lowered his eyes. Looked at the floor. Waited.

‘This is your request of us?'

‘It is, my lord.'

‘Then it shall be so.' The soldier's voice, crisp with command. ‘Pertennius, you will have documents prepared and filed appropriately. One to be delivered above our own seal for the clerics there to keep in their possession. The decoration in that chapel shall be permitted to come down by itself, as a holy sign of the error of all such things. And you will record it as such in your chronicle of our reign.'

Crispin looked up.

He was gazing at the Emperor of Sarantium, golden and magnificent—looking very much the way the god of the sun was rendered in the west, in fact—but he was really seeing the image of Jad in that chapel by the road in the wilderness, the god pale and dark, suffering and maimed in the terrible defence of his children.

‘Thank you, my lord,' he said.

He looked upwards then, after all. Despite everything. Couldn't help himself. A death. Another death. She had
warned him. Styliane. He looked, but did not weep. He had wept for Ilandra. For the girls.

And thinking so, he realized that there was one last small thing—terribly small, a gesture, no more—that he could still do, after all.

He cleared his throat. ‘Have I leave to withdraw, my lord?'

Leontes nodded. ‘You have. You do understand we are very well disposed towards you, Caius Crispus?'

Using Crispin's name, even. Crispin nodded. ‘I am honoured, my lord.' He bowed formally.

And then he turned and walked to the scaffolding, which was not far away.

‘What are you doing?' It was Pertennius, as Crispin reached the ladder and placed a foot upon it.

Crispin didn't turn around.

‘I have work to do. Up there.' His daughters. Today's task, memory and craft and light.

‘They will only bring it down!' The secretary's voice was uncomprehending.

Crispin did turn then, to look back over his shoulder. They were staring at him, the three of them, so were the others in the Sanctuary.

He said, ‘I understand. But they will have to
do
that. Bring it down. I will make what I make, in this civilized, holy place. Others will have to give the orders to destroy. As barbarians destroyed Rhodias … since it could not defend itself.'

He was looking at the Emperor, who had spoken to him of exactly this in the wet, drifting steam half a year before.

He could see that Leontes, too, remembered. The Emperor, who was not Valerius, not at all Valerius, but who had his own intelligence, said quietly, ‘You will waste your labour?'

And Crispin said, as softly, ‘It is not waste,' and turned again and began to climb, as he had so many times, up to the scaffolding and the dome.

On the way up, before he reached the place where the setting bed for the tesserae had been smoothly laid and awaited him, he realized something else.

It wasn't a waste, there was meaning to this, as much as he could bring to bear on any single action in his life, but it
was
an ending.

Another journey lay ahead, home at the end of it.

It was time to leave.

Fotius the sandalmaker, in his very best blue tunic, was telling everyone who would listen about the events that had occurred in this same place all those years ago when Apius died and the first Valerius came to the Golden Throne.

There had been a murder then, too, he said sagely, and he, Fotius, had seen a ghost on his way to the Hippodrome that morning, presaging it. Just as he, Fotius, had seen another one three days ago, in broad daylight, crouched on top of a colonnade, on the
very
morning the Emperor had been so foully slain by the Daleinoi.

There was
more
,
he added, and he did have listeners, which was always gratifying. They were waiting for the Mandator to appear in the kathisma—the Patriarch would follow, and then the officials of the court and then those who were to be crowned today. It would be impossible to talk then, of course, with the noise of better than eighty thousand people.

In those days, Fotius expounded to some of the younger craftsmen in the Blues' section, there had been a corrupt, evil attempt to subvert the will of the people right here in the Hippodrome—and it had been
engineered by the Daleinoi back then, too! And what's more, one of those working to achieve that had been the very same Lysippus the Calysian who had just been part of the murder in the palace!

And it had been Fotius himself, the sandalmaker declared proudly, who had unmasked the slimy Calysian as an imposter when he'd tried to pretend he was a follower of the Blues and incite the faction to acclaim Flavius Daleinus down there on the sands.

He pointed to the exact spot. He remembered it well. Thirteen, fourteen years, and as yesterday. As yesterday.

Everything came around in circles, he said piously, making the sign of the disk. Just as the sun rose and then set and then rose again, so did the patterns and fates of mortal men. Evil would be found out. (He had heard his chapel's cleric say all this, just a week ago.) Flavius Daleinus had paid for his sins in fire that day long ago, and now his children and the Calysian had also paid.

But, someone objected, why did Valerius II die of the same fire, if it was all a matter of justice?

Fotius looked scornfully at the young man, a clothmaker. Would you, he said, seek to understand the ways of the god?

Not really, the clothmaker said. Only those of men here in the City. If the Calysian had been part of the Daleinus conspiracy to claim the throne back then, why did he end up as Quaestor of Revenue for Valerius I and then his nephew? For
both
of them? He wasn't exiled till
we
demanded it, the man said, as others turned to him. Remember? Less than three years ago.

A cheap debating trick, Fotius thought indignantly. It wasn't as if anyone
would
forget. Thirty thousand people had died.

Some people, Fotius retorted airily, had the most limited understanding of affairs in the court. He didn't have enough
time
today to educate the young. There
were weighty events unfolding. Didn't the clothmaker know that the Bassanids were across the border in the north?

Well, yes, the man said, everyone knew that. But what did that have to do with Lysippus the—

Trumpets blew.

WHAT FOLLOWED
was performed with rituals of ceremony and precedent laid down in the days of Saranios and revised only marginally in hundreds of years, for what were rituals if they changed?

An Emperor was crowned by a Patriarch, and then an Empress was crowned by the Emperor himself. The two crowns, and the Imperial sceptre and ring, were those of Saranios and his own Empress, brought east from Rhodias and used only on these occasions, guarded in the Attenine Palace at all other times.

The Patriarch blessed the two anointed ones with oil and incense and sea water, and then he gave his blessing to the multitude gathered to bear witness. The principal dignitaries of the court presented themselves—garbed in splendour—before the Emperor and Empress and made the triple obeisance in full view of the people. An aged representative of the Senate presented the new Emperor with the Seal of the City and golden keys to the triple walls. (The Master of the Senate had been graciously excused from appearing today. It seemed there had been a sudden death in his own family, and a burial only the day before.)

There were chants, religious and then secular, for the factions were very much a part of this, and their Accredited Musicians led the Blues and Greens in ritual acclamations, crying the names of Valerius III and the Empress Gisel in that thronged space where the names cried were most often those of horses and the men who rode in chariots
behind them. No dancing followed, no racing, no entertainment at all: an Emperor had been assassinated, his body would be laid to rest soon in the Great Sanctuary he'd ordered built after the last one had burned.

There was universal approval of the name Leontes had chosen for his own Imperial title, in homage to his patron and predecessor. A genuine sense of mystery and wonder attached to the fact that his new bride was already a queen. The women in the stands seemed to like that. A romance, and royalty.

Nothing was said (or if something
was
said, it was done very quietly) about the Emperor's put-aside wife or the speed of this remarriage. The Daleinoi had once more proven themselves treacherous beyond description. No Emperor would wish to ascend the Golden Throne of Saranios tainted before Jad and the people by the stain of a murderous spouse.