The Sarantine Mosaic (97 page)

Moving in a litter through darkness from the Imperial Precinct to her own city home, an unexpected escort
riding beside her, Gisel decided, long before they arrived, what she intended to do.

She thought that she might in time be able to reclaim some pride in that fact: it would be her choice, her decision made. That didn't mean that anything she did would necessarily succeed. With so many other plans and schemes now in place—here and back home—the odds were overwhelmingly against her. They always had been, from the time her father died and the Antae had reluctantly crowned his only living child. But at least she could think, act, not bob like a small boat on the great wave of events.

She had known, for example, exactly what she was doing when she sent an angry, bitter artisan halfway across the world with a proposal of marriage to the Emperor of Sarantium. She remembered standing before that man, Caius Crispus, alone at night in her palace, letting him look—demanding that he gaze his fill of her.

You may tell the Emperor you have seen the queen of the Antae very near …

She flushed, remembering that. After what she'd encountered in the palace tonight, the measure of her innocence was clear. It was past time to lose some of that innocence. But she couldn't even really say
what
plan tonight's decision—with the unworthy thread of fear still in it—might further. She only knew she was going to do it.

She lifted the curtain a little, could see the horse still keeping pace beside her litter. She recognized a chapel door. They were nearing her house. Gisel took a deep breath, tried to be amused at her fear, this primitive anxiety.

It was simply a question, she told herself, of putting something new into play, something that came from
her
,
to see what ripples it might create. In this tumble and rush of huge events, one used whatever came to hand or
mind—as always—and she had decided to treat her own body as a piece in the game. In play.

Queens lacked, really, the luxury to think of themselves otherwise. In an elegant room in a palace tonight, the Emperor of Sarantium had taken away from her any lingering illusions about consultation, negotiation, diplomacy, anything that might forestall for Batiara the iron-edged truth of war.

Seeing him in that exquisite small chamber with his Empress, seeing
her
, had also removed certain other illusions. In that astonishing room, with its fabrics and wall hangings and silver candlesticks, amid mahogany and sandalwood, and leather from Soriyya, and incense, with a golden sun disk on the wall above each door and a golden tree wherein sat a score of jewelled birds, Gisel had felt as if the souls in the room were at the very centre of the spinning world. Here was the heart of things. Sudden, violent images of the future had seemed to dance and whirl in the firelit air, hurtling past at a dizzying speed along the walls while the room itself remained, somehow, motionless as those birds on the golden branches of the Emperor's tree.

Valerius was going to war in Batiara.

It had been resolved in his mind long ago, Gisel finally understood. He was a man who made his own decisions, and his gaze was on generations yet to be born as much as on those he ruled today. She had met him now, she could see it.

She herself, her presence here, might be of assistance or might not. A tactical tool. It didn't matter, not in the larger scheme. Neither did anyone else's views. Not the Strategos's, the Chancellor's, not even Alixana's.

The Emperor of Sarantium, contemplative and courteous and very sure of himself, had a vision: of Rhodias reclaimed, the sundered Empire remade. Visions on this
scale could be dangerous; such ambition carried all before it sometimes.
He wants to leave a name
,
Gisel had thought, kneeling before him to hide her face, and then rising again, her composure intact.
He wants to be remembered for this.

Men were like that. Even the wise ones. Her father no exception. A dread of dying and being forgotten. Lost to the memory of the world as it went mercilessly on without them. Gisel searched within herself and found no such burning need. She didn't want to be hated or scorned when Jad called her to him behind the sun, but she felt no fierce passion to have her name sung down the echoing years or have her face and form preserved in mosaic or marble forever—or for however long stone and glass could endure.

What she liked, she realized wistfully, was the idea of rest at the end, when it came. Her body beside her father's in that modest sanctuary outside Varena's walls, her soul in grace with the god the Antae had adopted. Was such grace allowed? The possibility of it?

Earlier, in the palace, meeting the watchful eyes of the eunuch Chancellor Gesius for a moment, Gisel had thought she'd seen pity and understanding, both. A man who'd survived to serve three Emperors in his day would have some knowledge of the turnings of the world.

But Gisel was still inside these turnings, still young and alive, far from detached serenity or grace. Anger caught in her throat. She hated the very
idea
that someone might pity her. An Antae, a
queen
of the Antae? Hildric's daughter?
Pity?
It was enough to make one kill.

Killing was not, in the circumstances, a possibility tonight. Other things were, including the spill of her own blood. An irony? Of course it was.

The world was full of those.

The litter stopped. She lifted the curtain again, saw the door of her own home, night torches burning in their brackets on the wall to either side. She heard her escort swing down from his horse, saw his face appear beside her. His breath made a puff of smoke in the very cold night air.

‘We have arrived, gracious lady. I am sorry for the chill. May I help you alight?'

She smiled at him. Found that she could smile quite easily. ‘Come in to warm yourself. I'll have a mulled wine made before you ride back through the cold.' She looked straight into his eyes.

The pause was brief. ‘I am greatly honoured,' said golden Leontes, Supreme Strategos of the Sarantine armies. A tone that made one believe him. And why
not
believe him? She was a queen.

He handed her out of the litter. Her steward had already opened the front door. The wind was gusting and swirling. They went in. She had servants build the fires on the ground floor and upstairs and prepare spiced, heated wine. They sat near the larger fire in the reception room and spoke of necessarily trivial things. Chariots and dancers, the day's minor wedding at a dancer's home.

War was coming.

Valerius had told them tonight, changing the world. They talked of games in the Hippodrome, of how unseasonably windy it was outside with winter due to have ended by now. Leontes, easy and relaxed, told of a Holy Fool who had apparently just installed himself on a rock beside one of the landward gates—and had vowed he would not descend until all pagans and heretics and Kindath had been expelled from the Holy City. A devout man, he said, shaking his head, but one who did not understand the realities of the world.

It was important, she agreed, to understand the realities of the world.

The wine came, a silver tray, silver cups. He saluted her formally, speaking Rhodian. His courtesy was flawless. It would be, she knew, even as he led an army ravaging through her home, even if he burned Varena to the ground, unhousing her father's bones. He would
prefer
not to torch it, of course. Would do so if he had to. In the god's name.

Her heart was pounding but her hands, she saw, were steady, revealing nothing. She dismissed her women and then the steward. A few moments after they left she stood and set down her cup—her decision, her act—and crossed the room. She stopped before his chair, looking down at him. Bit her lower lip, and then smiled. She saw him smile in turn, and pause to drain his wine before he stood up, entirely at ease, accustomed to this. A golden man. She took him by the hand and up the stairs and to her bed.

He hurt her, being unprepared for innocence, but women from the beginning of time had known this particular pain and Gisel made herself welcome it. He was startled and then visibly pleased when he saw her blood on the sheets. Vanity. A royal fortress conquered, she thought.

He spoke generously of the honour, of his astonishment. A courtier, at least as much as a soldier. Silk over the corded muscle, devout faith behind the wielded sword and the fires. She smiled, said nothing at all. Made herself reach for him, that hard, scarred soldier's body, that it might happen again.

Knew what she was doing. Had no idea what it might achieve. Something in play, on the board, her body. Face to a pillow that second time, she cried out in the dark, in the night, for so many reasons.

He'd thought of going to the stables, but it seemed there were some conditions, some states of mind, that
not even standing with Servator in the mahogany stall the Blues had made for his horse would address.

There had been a time—long ago, not so long ago— when all he'd wanted was to be among horses, in their world. And now, still a young man by most measures, the finest stallion the world knew was his own and he was the most honoured charioteer on the god's created earth, and yet somehow tonight such dreams made real were not enough to assuage.

An appalling truth.

He had been to a wedding ceremony today, watched a soldier he knew and liked marry a woman clearly worthy of him. He'd had a little too much to drink among convivial people. And he had seen—first at the ceremony and then during the reception afterwards—the woman who troubled his own nights. She had been with her husband, of course.

He hadn't known Plautus Bonosus and his second wife would be among the guests. Almost a full day in her presence. It was … difficult.

And so it seemed the undeniable good fortune of his life was not sufficient to address what was afflicting him now. Was he hopelessly greedy? Covetous? Was that it? Spoiled like a sulky child, demanding far too much of the god and his son?

He had broken a rule of his own tonight, a rule of very long standing. He had gone to her home in the dark after the wedding party broke up. Had been absolutely certain Bonosus would be elsewhere, that after the raillery of the celebration and the bawdy mood it induced, the Senator's well-known, if discreetly managed, habits would assert themselves and he'd spend the night at the smaller home he maintained for his private use.

Not so. Inexplicably not so. Scortius had seen lights blazing in the iron-barred upper windows over the street
at the mansion of Senator Bonosus. A shivering servant relighting wind-snuffed torches in the walls had descended from his ladder and volunteered, for a small sum, the information that the master was indeed home, closeted with his wife and son.

Scortius had kept a shrouding cloak over his face until his footsteps had led him away into the narrow lanes of the City. A woman called from a recessed doorway as he passed: ‘Let me warm you, soldier! Come with me! It isn't a night to lie alone.'

It wasn't, Jad knew. He felt old. Partly the wind and cold: his left arm, broken years ago, one of so many injuries, ached when the wind was bitter. The humiliating infirmity of an aged man, he thought, hating it. Like one of those hobbling, crutch-wielding old soldiers allowed a stool by the fire in a military tavern, sitting there all night, boring the unwary with a ten-times-told story of some minor campaign of thirty years before, back when great and glorious Apius was Jad's dearly beloved Emperor and things hadn't descended to the sad state of today and could an old soldier not be given something to wet his throat?

He could become like that, Scortius thought sourly. Toothless and unshaven at a booth in The Spina telling about the magnificent race day once, long ago, during the reign of Valerius II, when he had …

He caught himself massaging the arm and stopped, swearing aloud. It ached, though, it really did. They didn't run the chariots in winter, or he'd have had a problem handling a quadriga in the turns. Crescens of the Greens hadn't looked this afternoon as if anything ached in him at all, though he must have had his injuries over the years. Every rider did. The Greens' principal driver was obviously ready for his second season in the Hippodrome. Confident, even arrogant—which was as it should be.

The Greens also had some new horses up from the south, courtesy of a high-ranking military partisan; Astorgus's sources said two or three were exceptional. Scortius knew they
did
have one outstanding new right-sider, a trace horse the Blues had dealt them in a transaction Scortius had encouraged Astorgus to make. You gave up some things to gain something else, in this case a driver. But if he was right about the horse and about Crescens, the Greens' standard-bearer would have quickly claimed the stallion for his own team and be that much more formidable.

Scortius wasn't worried. He even enjoyed the idea of someone thinking he could challenge him. It stirred fires within him, the ones that needed stoking after so many years in ascendancy. A formidable Crescens was
good
for him, good for the Hippodrome. It was easy enough to see that. But he wasn't easy tonight. Nothing to do with horses, or his arm, really.