Sailing to Sarantium (51 page)

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.

Astorgus himself, in a grim, choleric mood, had gone off to meet with
the Urban Prefect's officers. Kyros would not have wanted to be the
man charged with dealing with the Blues' factionarius just now.

The faction's principal surgeon-a brisk, bearded Kindath-had been
roused to tend the wounded soldier, whose name was Carullus of the
Fourth Sauradian. His wounds turned out to be showy but not
dangerous. The man had endured their cleansing and bandaging without
expression, drinking wine with his free hand as the surgeon treated
his shoulder. He had fought a running battle alone against six men
along the dark laneway, allowing Scortius and the Rhodian to reach
the faction gates. Carullus was still angry that the attackers had
all been slain, Kyros gathered. No easy way to find out who'd hired
them now.

Released by the doctor to the dinner table, the tribune of the Fourth
Sauradian showed little sign of diminished appetite. Neither wounds
nor anger diverted his attention from the bowls and plates in front
of him. He had lost two of his soldiers tonight, had killed two men
himself, but Kyros guessed that a military man would have to get used
to that, and carry on, or he'd go mad. It was those at home who
sometimes went mad, as Kyros's mother's sister had three years ago,
when her son was killed in the Bassanid siege of Asen, near Eubulus.
Kyros's mother remained certain it was grief that had rendered her
vulnerable to the plague when it came the next year. His aunt had
been one of the first to die. Asen had been returned by the Bassanids
the following spring in the treaty that bought peace on the eastern
borders, making the siege and the deaths even more pointless. Cities
were always being taken and ceded back on both sides of the shifting
border.

People didn't come back to life, though, even if a city was returned.
You carried on, as this officer was, hungrily sponging up fish soup
with a thick crust of bread. What else could one do? Curse the god,
tear one's garments, retreat like a Holy Fool to some chapel or a
rock in the desert or mountains? That last was possible, Kyros
supposed, but he had discovered, since coming to this kitchen, that
he had a hunger-a taste, you might say-for the gifts and dangers of
the world. He might never be a charioteer, an animal trainer, a
soldier-he would drag a bad foot with him through all his days-but
there was a life to be lived, nonetheless. A life in the world.

And just now Scortius, First of the Blues, to whose glory a silver
statue had been promised tonight for the Hippodrome spina, was
glancing up, soup spoon in hand, and murmuring to Strumosus, 'What
can I say, my friend? The soup is worthy of the banquet hall of the
god.'

'It is,' echoed the red-haired Rhodian beside him. 'It is wonderful.'
His expression was rapt, as revealing as Strumosus had said faces
could be at such times.

Strumosus, entirely relaxed now, sitting at the head of the table
pouring wine for his three guests, had benignly tilted his head
sideways. He said: 'Young Kyros over there attended to it. He has the
makings of a cook.'

Two sentences. Simple words. Kyros feared he might weep for joy and
pride. He did not, of course. He wasn't a child, after all. He did
blush, unfortunately, and lower his head before all the approving
smiles. And then he began waiting ardently for the moment, released
to the privacy of his cot in the apprentices' room, when he could
reclaim-over and again-that miraculous sequence of words and the
expressions that had followed. Scortius had said. Then the Rhodian
had added. Then Strumosus had said ...

Kyros and Rasic were given the next day to themselves: an unexpected
holiday, a reward for working all night. Rasic went whistling off to
the harbour to buy a woman in a caupona. Kyros used the free time to
go to his parents' apartment down in the overcrowded, pungent warrens
of the Hippodrome where he'd grown up. He told them, shyly, about
what had been said the night before. His father, a man of few words,
had touched his son's shoulder with a scarred, bitten hand before
going off to feed his beasts. His mother, rather less reserved, had
screamed.

Then she had bustled out of their tiny apartment to tell all her
friends, before buying and lighting an entire row of thanksgiving
candles in the Hippodrome's own chapel. For once, Kyros didn't think
she was being excessive.

The makings of a cook.

Strumosus had said that!

They didn't end up going to bed that night. There was food fit for
the god's palaces behind the sun and wine to equal it in the
blessedly warm, firelit kitchen. They finished with an herbal tea,
just before sunrise, that reminded Crispin of the one Zoticus had
served him before his journey had begun-which reminded him of Linon,
and then home, which made him think, again, of how far away he was.
Among strangers, but less so after tonight, it felt. He sipped the
hot tea and allowed the faint dizziness of extreme fatigue to wash
over him, a sense of distance, of words and movements drifting
towards his awareness from far away.

Scortius had gone out to the stables to check on his best horse. Now
he came back, rubbing his hands together after the pre-dawn chill of
the air, and took the bench next to Crispin again. A calm man, alert
and unassuming, for all his wealth and renown. A generous spirit.
He'd run madly in the darkness to warn them of danger. That said
something.

Crispin looked at Carullus across the stone table. Not a truth to
call this man a stranger now, really. Among other things, he knew the
big soldier well enough to realize he was hiding discomfort. The
wounds weren't dangerous, they'd been assured by the surgeon, but
they had to be hurting now, and Carullus would carry new scars from
both of them. He had also lost men he'd known a long time tonight.
Might even be blaming himself for that; Crispin wasn't sure.

They had no idea who'd paid for the assault. Soldiers on leave were
not particularly expensive to hire in the City, it seemed. It
required only some determination to arrange an abduction or even a
killing. A runner had been sent with a message from Carullus to his
surviving men-the ones who had taken the architect home would be
expecting them at the inn. It would be a hard message for them to
hear, Crispin thought. Carullus, a commander, had lost two men in his
charge, but the soldiers would have lost companions. There was a
difference.

The Urban Prefect's officer had been polite and formal with Crispin
when he'd arrived with the factionarius. They'd spoken privately in
the large room where the banquet had taken place. The man had not
probed deeply, and Crispin had realized that the officer wasn't
certain he wanted to know too much about this murder attempt.
Intuitively, Crispin had said nothing about the mosaicist dismissed
by the Emperor or the aristocratic lady who might have felt herself
diminished by this-or embarrassed by a reference to a necklace she
wore. Both things had happened in public: the man would learn of them
if he wanted to.

Would someone kill for such things?

The Emperor had refused to let his wife put on the necklace when it
came.

There were threads to be untangled and examined here, but they were
not about to reveal themselves when his brain was weary and vague
with wine and an overwhelming night.

When the grey rumour of dawn showed in the east, they left the
kitchen and went across the courtyard to join the administration and
employees of the Blues in chapel for the faction's early-morning
invocation. Crispin discovered a genuine gratitude, almost a feeling
of piety within himself as he chanted the antiphonal responses: for
his life preserved, again; for the dome given to him tonight; for the
friend Carullus was, and the friend the charioteer might become; for
having survived an entry into court, questions in an Empress's rooms,
and swords in the night.

And finally-because the small graces of life really did matter to
him-for the taste of a shrimp-stuffed whitefish in a sauce like a
waking dream.

Scortius didn't bother going home. He bade them good day outside the
chapel and then went off to sleep in a room they reserved for him in
the compound. The sun was just coming up. A small party of Blues
escorted Crispin and Carullus to their inn as the bells summoning
Sarantines to later morning prayers in other chapels began all around
them.

The clouds were gone, swept away south; the day promised to be cold
and bright. The City was stirring as they walked, rousing itself to
the resumption of the mundane at the end of a festival. There was
debris in the streets but less than he'd expected: workers had been
busy in the night. Crispin saw men and women walking to chapels,
apprentices running errands, a food market noisily opening up, shops
and stalls displaying their wares under colonnades. Slaves and
children hurried past carrying water and loaves of bread. There were
lines of people already outside food stands, snatching the first meal
of the day. A grey-bearded Holy Fool in a tattered and stained yellow
robe was shuffling barefoot towards what was probably his usual
station to harangue those who were not at prayer.

They reached the inn. Their escorts doubled back to the compound.
Crispin and Carullus walked in. The common room was open, a fire
going, a handful of people eating inside. The two men passed by that
doorway and went up the stairs, moving slowly now.

'Speak later?' Carullus mumbled.

'Of course. You're all right?' Crispin asked.

The soldier grunted wearily and unlocked the door to his room.

Crispin nodded his head, though the other man had already closed the
door. He took out his key and headed for his own room farther down
the hall. It seemed to take an oddly long time to get there. Noises
from the street drifted up. Bells still ringing. It was morning,
after all. He tried to remember the last time he'd stayed awake an
entire night. He fumbled at the lock. It took some concentration but
he managed to open the door. The shutters were blessedly closed
against the morning, though bands of sunlight penetrated through the
slats, stippling the darkness.

He dropped the key on the small table by the door and stumbled
towards his bed, half asleep already. Then he realized-too late to
check his motion-that there was someone in the room, on the bed,
watching him. And then, in the bands of muted light, he saw the naked
blade come up.

 

Some time earlier, still in the beclouded dark of night, a waiting
soldier has handed the Emperor of Sarantium a fur-lined cloak as he
emerges into the windy cold from the small chapel and the stone
tunnel that leads through the Imperial Precinct walls.

The Emperor, who can remember-though only with an effort now-walking
in only a short tunic and torn, sodden boots through a winter the
first time he came south from Trakesia, at his uncle's behest, is
grateful for the warmth. It is a short enough walk back to the
Traversite Palace, but his personal immunity is to fatigue, not cold.

I am growing old, he thinks, not for the first time. He has no heir.
Not for want of effort, or medical advice, or invocations of aid from
the god and the half-world, both. It would be good to have a son, he
thinks, but has been reconciled for some time now to not having one.
His uncle passed the throne to him: there is some precedent in the
family, at any rate. Unfortunately, his sisters' sons are feckless
nonentities and all four of them remain in Trakesia, at his very firm
instruction.

Not that they would stir any sort of insurrection. To do such a thing
requires courage and initiative and none of them has either. They
might serve as figureheads, though, for someone else's ambition-and
the god knows there is enough hunger for power in Sarantium. He could
have them killed, but he has judged that unnecessary.