The Sarantine Mosaic (53 page)

It was a lie, as it happened.

He'd known what he wanted to do here before he was ever in this place. A dream, a gift, something carried out from the Aldwood on the Day of the Dead. He'd been granted an image of it today amid the screaming of the Hippodrome. Something of the half-world in that, too.

‘
Much
too soon,' came a new, querulous voice. Sound carried here. ‘Who
is
this person, and what happened to Siroes? My lord.'

The honorific was belated, perfunctory. A small, rumpled, middle-aged man in an equally rumpled tunic emerged from behind the massed bank of candles to their left. His straw-coloured hair stood up in random whorls of disarray. His feet were bare on the ice-cold marble of the floor, Crispin saw. He was carrying his sandals in one hand.

‘Artibasos,' said the Emperor. Crispin saw him smile. ‘I must say you look every bit the Master Architect of the Empire. Your hair emulates your dome in aspiring to the heavens.'

The other man ran a hand absent-mindedly through his hair, achieving further disorder. ‘I fell asleep,' he said. ‘Then I woke up. And I had a good idea.' He lifted his
sandals, as if the gesture were an explanation. ‘I have been walking around.'

‘Indeed?' said Valerius, with patience.

‘Well, yes,' said Artibasos. ‘Obviously. That's why I'm barefoot.'

There was a brief silence.

‘Obviously,' said the Emperor a little repressively. This was a man, Crispin already knew, who did not like being left in the dark. About anything.

‘Noting the rough marbles?' Crispin hazarded. ‘One way to tell them, I suppose. Easier done in a warmer season, I'd have said.'

‘I woke with the idea,' Artibasos said, with a sharp glance at Crispin. ‘Wanted to see if it worked. It does! I've marked a score of slabs for the masons to polish.'

‘You expect people to come in here barefoot?' the Emperor asked, his expression bemused.

‘Perhaps. Not everyone who wishes to worship will be shod. But that isn't it …
I
expect the marble to be perfect, whether anyone knows it or not. My lord.' The little architect gazed narrowly up at Crispin. His expression was owlish. ‘Who
is
this man?'

‘A mosaicist,' said the Emperor, still with a tolerance that surprised Crispin.

‘Obviously,' said the architect. ‘I heard that much.'

‘From Rhodias,' added Valerius.

‘Anyone can hear that much,' said Artibasos, still glaring up at Crispin.

The Emperor laughed. ‘Caius Crispus of Varena, this is Artibasos of Sarantium, a man of some minor talents and all the politeness of those born in the City. Why do I indulge you, architect?'

‘Because you like things done properly. Obviously.' It seemed to be the man's favourite word. ‘This person will be working with Siroes?'

‘He is working
instead
of Siroes. It appears Siroes misled us with regard to his reverse transfer ideas for the dome. Incidentally, had he discussed them with you, Artibasos?'

Mildly phrased, but the architect turned to look at his Emperor before answering and he hesitated, for the first time.

‘I am a designer and a builder, my lord. I am making you this Sanctuary. How it is garbed is the province of the Emperor's decorative artisans. I have little interest in that, and no time to attend to it. I do not like Siroes, if that matters, nor his patroness, but that hardly matters either, does it?' He looked at Crispin again. ‘I doubt I'll like this one. He's too tall and his hair's red.'

‘They shaved my beard this evening,' said Crispin, amused. ‘Else you'd have been in no doubt at all, I fear. Tell me, had you discussed how you were to prepare the surfaces for the mosaic work?'

The little man sniffed. ‘Why would I discuss a building detail with a decorator?'

Crispin's smile faded a little. ‘Perhaps,' he said gently, ‘we might share a flask of wine one day soon and consider another possible approach to that? I'd be grateful.'

Artibasos grimaced. ‘I suppose I ought to be polite. New arrival and suchlike. You are going to have requests about the plaster, aren't you? Obviously. I can tell. Are you the interfering sort who has opinions without knowledge?'

Crispin had worked with men like this before. ‘I have strong opinions about wine,' he said, ‘but no knowledge of where to find the best in Sarantium. I'll leave the latter issue to you, if you permit me some thoughts on plaster?'

The architect was still for a moment, then he allowed himself a small—a very small—smile. ‘You are clever at least.' He shifted back and forth from one foot to the
other on the cold marble floor, struggling to suppress a yawn.

Valerius said, still in his wry, tolerant tone, ‘Artibasos, I am about to command you. Pay attention. Put on your sandals—you do me no good if you die of a night chill. Find your cloak. Then go home to bed. Home. You do me no good half asleep and worn out, either. It is most of the way to morning. There is an escort waiting outside the doors for Caius Crispus, or there should be by now. They will take you home as well. Go to sleep. The dome will not fall.'

The little architect made a sudden, urgent sign against evil. He seemed about to protest, then appeared— belatedly—to recollect that he was speaking with his Emperor. He closed his mouth and pushed a hand through his hair again, to unfortunate effect.

‘A command,' repeated Valerius kindly.

‘Obviously,' said Artibasos of Sarantium.

He stood still, however, while his Emperor reached out and—very gently—smoothed down the sand-coloured chaos of his hair, much as a mother might bring some order to the appearance of her child.

Valerius walked them to the main doors—they were silver, and twice the height of a man, Crispin saw—and then out onto the portico in the wind. They both turned there and bowed to him, and Crispin noted that the little man beside him bowed as formally as he himself did. The Emperor went back inside, closed the massive door himself. They heard a heavy lock slide home.

The two men turned and stood together in the wind, looking out at the unlit square before the Sanctuary. The Emperor had assumed Carullus would be here. Crispin didn't see anyone. He was aware, suddenly, of exhaustion. He saw lights a long way across the square, by the Bronze Gates, where the Imperial Guard would be. Heavy clouds blanketed the sky. It was very quiet.

Until a scream tore through the night—a shouted warning—and a figure could then be seen dashing madly across the debris-strewn square straight towards the portico. Whoever it was bounded up, taking three steps as one, landed a bit awkwardly and went right past Artibasos to twist and pull at the bolted door.

The man turned, cursing savagely, a knife in his hand, and Crispin—struggling to comprehend—recognized him.

His jaw dropped. Too many surprises in one night. There were movements and sounds around them now. Turning quickly, Crispin drew a breath of relief to see the familiar figure of Carullus striding up to the steps, drawn sword in hand.

‘Scortius of the Blues!' the soldier exclaimed after a moment. ‘You cost me a fortune this afternoon, you know.'

The charioteer, coiled and fierce, snapped something confusing about the Emperor's protection applying to all three of them. Carullus blinked. ‘You thought we were here to
harm
them?' he asked. His sword was lowered.

The charioteer's dagger drifted down, more slowly. The nature of the misunderstanding finally came home to Crispin. He looked at the lithe figure beside him, then back at his broad-shouldered friend at the bottom of the steps. He performed some evidently necessary introductions.

A moment later, Scortius of Soriyya began to laugh.

Carullus joined him. Even Artibasos permitted himself a small grin. When the amusement subsided, an invitation was extended. It seemed that, notwithstanding the absurd hour, the Blues' champion was presently expected at the faction compound for a repast in the kitchen. He was, Scortius explained, far too cowardly to cross Strumosus the chef in this—and he happened to be, for no very good reason, hungry.

Artibasos pointed out that he'd had a direct command from the Emperor who had lately left them. He'd been
ordered to his bed. Carullus gaped at that, belatedly realizing who it was who had been on the portico while he and the soldiers watched in the shadows. Scortius protested. Crispin looked at the little architect.

‘You think he'd hold you to that?' he asked. ‘Treat it as a genuine command?'

‘He could,' said Artibasos. ‘Valerius is not the most predictable of men, and this building is his legacy.'

One of them
, Crispin thought.

He thought of his home then, and of the young queen whose message had been exposed tonight. He hadn't actually done that himself, he supposed. But alone with Valerius and Alixana he had been made to see that they were so far ahead of anyone else in this game of courts and intrigues that … it wasn't really a game at all. Which left him wondering what his place was here, his role. Could he hope to withdraw to his tesserae and this glorious dome? Would he be allowed? There were so many tangled elements in the tale of this night, he wondered if he'd ever unwind the skein, in darkness or at dawn.

Three of Carullus's men were detailed to take the architect home. Carullus and two soldiers stayed with Crispin and Scortius. They angled across the windy square, away from the Bronze Gates and equestrian statue, through the Hippodrome Forum and towards the street that led up to the Blues' compound. Crispin discovered, as they went, that he was drained and overstimulated, in approximately equal measure. He needed to sleep and knew he could not. The mental image of a dome alchemized into that of the Empress, eliding the memory of a queen's touch.

Dolphins, she wanted. He drew a breath, remembering the sallow secretary delivering a necklace, the man's face as he looked from Crispin—alone with the Empress, it would have seemed to him—to the woman herself, with her long dark hair unbound in her intimate rooms.
There had been layers to that swiftly veiled expression, Crispin thought. These, too, were beyond him just now.

He thought of the Sanctuary again, and of the man who had taken him there along a low stone tunnel and through a door into glory. In the eye of his mind he still saw that dome and the semi-domes around it and the arches supporting them, marble set upon marble, and he saw his own work there, one day to come. The Sanctuary behind them was Artibasos's legacy, he thought, and it might end up being what the Emperor Valerius II was remembered for, and it could be—it
could
be—why the world might one day come to know that the Rhodian mosaicist Caius Crispus, only son of Horius Crispus of Varena and his wife Avita, had lived once, and done honourable work under Jad's sun and the two moons.

He was thinking that when they were attacked.

He had wondered, moments before, if he might be permitted to withdraw to his tesserae: glass and marble, gold and mother-of-pearl, stone and semi-precious stone, the shaping of a vision on scaffolding in the air, high above the intrigues and wars and desires of men and women.

It didn't appear that would be so, as the night became iron and blood.

Strumosus had told him once—or, in truth, had told a fishmonger in the market with Kyros standing by—that you could tell much about a man by watching when he first tasted extremely good or very bad food. Kyros had taken to observing Strumosus's occasional guests in the kitchen when he had the chance.

He did tonight. It was so very late and the earlier events had been so extraordinary that an unexpectedly intimate sense of aftermath—of events shared and survived—prevailed in the kitchen.

Outside, the bodies of the attackers had been tossed beyond the gates and the two soldiers of the Fourth Sauradian cavalry who had died defending Scortius and the mosaicist in the first street assault had been brought in with the dead gatekeeper to await proper burial. Nine bodies in all, violently dead. The cheiromancers of the City would be furiously busy today and tomorrow, shaping commissioned curse-tablets to be deposited at the graves. The newly dead had the power of emissaries to the half-world. Astorgus kept two cheiromancers on staff, salaried, preparing counterspells against those who wished the Blues' charioteers maimed or dead, or besought the same fate for the horses from malign spirits of darkness.

Kyros felt badly about the gatekeeper.

Niester had been playing games of Horse and Fox on one of the boards in the common room after the racing this afternoon. He was a body under a cloth now in the cold of the yard. He had two small children. Astorgus had detailed someone to go to his wife, but had told him to wait until after the dawn prayers. Let the woman sleep through the night. Time enough for grief to come knocking with a black fist.