Sailing to Sarantium (61 page)

There was screaming everywhere by then. The movement to the doors
became a frenzied press, near to madness. Pardos saw an apprentice he
knew stumble and fall and disappear. He saw Martinian gripping his
own wife and Crispin's mother tightly by the elbows as they entered
the frantic press, steering towards the exits with everyone else.
Couvry and Radulph were right behind them. Then Couvry moved up, even
as Pardos watched, and took Avita Crispina's other arm, shielding
her.

Pardos stayed where he was, on his feet but motionless.

He could never afterwards say exactly why, only that he was watching,
that someone had to watch.

And observing in this way-quite close, in fact, a still point amid
swirling chaos-Pardos saw the Chancellor, Eudric Goldenhair, step
forward from his place near the fallen woman and say in a voice that
resonated, 'Put up your sword, Agila, or it will be taken from you.
What you have done is unholy and it is treachery and you will not be
allowed to flee, or to live.'

His manner was amazingly calm, Pardos thought. He watched as Agila
wheeled swiftly towards the other man. A space had cleared, people
were fleeing the sanctuary.

'Fuck yourself with your dagger, Eudric! You horse-buggered offal! We
did this together and you will not disclaim it now. Only a dice roll
chose which of us would stand up here. Surrender my sword? Fool!
Shall I call in my soldiers to deal with you now?'

'Call them, liar,' said the other man. His tone was level, almost
grave. The two of them stood less than five paces apart. 'There will
be no reply when you do. My own men have dealt with yours already-in
the woods where you thought to post them secretly.'

'What? You treacherous bastard!'

'What an amusing thing for you to say, in the circumstances,' said
Eudric. Then he took a quick step backwards and added: 'Vincelas!'
extremely urgently, as Agila, eyes maddened, clove through the space
between them.

There was a walkway overhead, not especially high: a place for
musicians to play unseen, or for clerics' meditation and quiet pacing
on days when winter or autumn rains made the outdoors bitter. The
arrow that killed Agila, Master of the Antae Horse, came from there.
He toppled like a tree, sword clattering on the floor, at the feet of
Eudric.

Pardos looked up. There were half a dozen archers on the walkway. As
he watched, the four men with drawn swords-Agila's men-slowly lowered
and then dropped their weapons.

They died that way, surrendering, as six more arrows sang.

Pardos realized he was standing quite alone now, in the section
reserved for the artisans. He felt utterly exposed. He didn't leave,
but he did sit down. His palms were wet, his legs felt weak.

'I do apologize,' said Eudric smoothly, looking up from the dead men
to the three clerics still standing before the altar. Their faces
were the colour of buttermilk, Pardos thought. Eudric paused to
adjust the collar of his tunic and then the heavy golden necklace he
wore. 'We should be able to restore order quickly enough now, calm
the people, bring them back in. This is a political matter, a most
unfortunate one. Not your concern at all. You will carry on with the
ceremony, of course.'

'What? We will not!' said the court cleric, Sybard, his jaw set. 'The
very suggestion is an impious disgrace. Where is the queen? What has
been done to her?'

'I can assure you I am far more anxious to know the answer to that
than you are,' said Eudric Goldenhair. Pardos, watching intently, had
Agila's words still ringing in his head: We did this together.

'One ventures to guess,' added Eudric smoothly, to no one and to all
of them left in the sanctuary, 'that she must have had some word of
Agila's vile plot and elected to save herself rather than be present
at the holy rites for her father. Hard to blame a woman for that. It
does raise some . . . questions, naturally.' He smiled.

Pardos would remember that smile. Eudric went on, after a pause, 'I
propose to restore order here and then establish it in the palace-in
the queen's name, of course-while we ascertain exactly where she is.
Then,' said the yellow-haired Chancellor, 'we shall have to determine
how next to proceed here in Varena, and indeed in all of Batiara. In
the meantime,' he said, in a voice suddenly cold that did not admit
of contradiction, 'you are under a misapprehension of your own, good
cleric. Hear me: I did not ask you to do something, I told you to do
it. The three of you will proceed with the ceremony of consecration
and of mourning, or your own deaths will follow upon those you have
seen. Believe it, Sybard. I have no quarrel with you, but you can die
here, or live to achieve what goals you have set for yourself and our
people. Holy places have been sanctified with blood before today.'

Sybard of Varena, long-shanked and long-necked, looked at him a
moment. 'There are no goals I could properly pursue,' he said, 'were
I to do as you say. I have offices to perform for those slain here
and comfort to offer their families. Kill me if you will.' And he
walked from the raised place before the altar and out the side door.
Eudric's eyes narrowed to slits, Pardos saw, but he said nothing. A
smaller Antae nobleman, smooth-chinned but with a long brown
moustache, stood beside him now, and Pardos saw this man lay a
steadying hand on the Chancellor's arm as Sybard passed right by
them.

Eudric stared straight ahead, breathing deeply. It was the smaller
man who now gave crisp commands. Guards began mopping with their own
cloaks at the blood where the woman and the mute had died. There was
a great deal. They carried their bodies out through the side exit,
and then those of Agila and his slain men.

Other soldiers went out into the yard, where frightened people could
still be heard milling about. They were instructed to order the crowd
back in. To report that the ceremony was to proceed.

It amazed Pardos, thinking of it after, but most of those who had
rushed out, trampling each other in terror, did come back. He didn't
know what that said about people, what it meant about the world in
which they lived. Couvry came back, Radulph did. Martinian and the
two women did not. Pardos realized that he was glad of that.

He stayed where he was. His gaze went back and forth from Eudric and
the man beside him to the two remaining clerics before the altar. One
of the clerics turned to look back at the sun disk, and then he
walked over to it and, using the corner of his own robe, wiped at the
blood there and then at the blood on the altar. When he turned around
and came back, Pardos saw the smeared blood dark on his yellow robe
and saw that the man was weeping.

Eudric and the one beside him took their seats, exactly as before.
The two clerics glanced nervously over at them and then raised their
hands once more, four palms outwards, and then they spoke, in perfect
ritual unison.

'Holy Jad,' they said, 'let there be Light for all your children
gathered here, now and in days to come.' And the people in the
sanctuary spoke the response, raggedly at first and then more
clearly. Then the clerics spoke again, and the response came again.

Pardos rose quietly then as the rites began, and he moved past Couvry
and Radulph and those sitting beyond them towards the eastern aisle
and then he walked past all the people gathered there beneath the
mosaic of Jad and Heladikos with his gift of fire, and he went out
the doors into the cold of the yard and down the path and through the
gate and away from there.

 

At the moment a man and a woman she had loved since childhood were
dying in her father's sanctuary, the queen of the Antae was standing
fur-cloaked and hooded at the stern railing of a ship sailing east
from Mylasia through choppy seas. She was gazing back west and north
to land, to where Varena would be, far beyond the intervening fields
and forests. There were no tears in her eyes. There had been earlier,
but she was not alone here and visible grief, for a queen, required
privacy.

Overhead, on the mainmast of the sleek, burnished ship, whipped by
the stiff breeze, flew a crimson lion and a sun disk on a blue field:
the banner of the Sarantine Empire.

The handful of Imperial passengers-couriers, military officers,
taxation officials, engineers-would disembark at Megarium, giving
thanks for a safe journey through wind and white waves. It was late
to be sailing, even for the short run across the bay.

Gisel would not be among those leaving the ship. She was going
farther. She was sailing to Sarantium.

Almost everyone else on board had been present as a screen, a mask,
to deceive the Antae port officials in Mylasia. If this ship had not
been in the harbour, the other passengers would have ridden the
Imperial road north and east to Sauradia and then back down south to
Megarium. Or they might have taken another, less trim craft than this
royal one, had the seas been judged safe for a fast trip across the
bay.

This ship, expertly manned, had been riding at anchor in Mylasia
waiting for one passenger only, should she decide to come.

Valerius II, Jad's Holy Emperor of Sarantium, had extended an
extremely private invitation to the queen of the Antae in Batiara,
suggesting she visit his great City, seat of Empire, glory of the
world, to be feted and honoured there, and perhaps hold converse upon
matters of moment for both Batiara and Sarantium in Jad's world as it
was in that year. The queen had had conveyed to the ship's captain in
Mylasia harbour-discreedy-her acceptance six days ago.

She had been about to be killed, otherwise.

She was likely to die in any case, Gisel thought, looking back over
the white-capped sea at the receding coastline of her home, wiping at
tears that were caused by the wind at the stern, but only by the
wind. Her heart ached as with a wound, and a grim, hard-eyed image of
her father was in her mind, for she knew what he would have thought
and said of this flight. It was a grief. It was a grief, among all
the others of her life.

Her hood blew back in a swirling of the salt wind, exposing her face
to the elements and men's eyes, sending her hair streaming. It didn't
matter. Those on board knew who she was. The need for uttermost care
had ended when the ship slipped anchor on the dawn tide carrying her
from her throne, her people, her life.

Was there a way to return? A course to sail between the rocks of
violent rebellion at home and those of the east, where an army was
almost certainly being readied to reclaim Rhodias? And if there was
such a course, if it existed in the god's world, was she wise enough
to find it? And would they let her live so long?

She heard a footfall on the deck behind her. Her women were below,
both of them violently unwell at sea. She had six of her own guards
here.

Only six to go so far, and not Pharos, the silent one she'd so dearly
wanted by her side-but he was always by her side, and the deception
would have failed had he not remained in the palace.

It wasn't one of the guards who approached now, nor the ship's
captain, who was being courteous and deferential in exactly proper
measure. It was the other man, the one she had summoned to the palace
to help her achieve this flight, the one who had said why Pharos
would have to remain in Varena. She remembered weeping then.

She turned her head and looked at him. Middling height, long
grey-white hair and beard, the rugged features and deep-set blue
eyes, the ash-wood staff he carried. He was a pagan. He would have to
be, she thought, to be what else he was.

'The breeze is a good one, they tell me,' said Zoticus the alchemist.
He had a deep, slow voice. 'It will carry us swiftly to Megarium, my
lady.'

'And you will leave me there?'

Blunt, but she had little choice. She had needs, desperate ones;
could not make traveller's talk just now. Everything, everyone who
might be a tool needed to be made a tool, if she could manage it.

The craggy-faced alchemist came to the rail, standing a diffident
distance apart from her. He shivered and wrapped himself in his cloak
before nodding his head. 'I am sorry, my lady. As I said at the
outset, I have matters that must be attended to in Sauradia. I am
grateful for this passage. Unless the wind gets wilder, in which case
my gratitude will be tempered by my stomach.' He smiled at her.

She did not return it. She could have her soldiers bind him, deny him
departure at Megarium; she doubted the Emperor's seamen would
interfere. But what was the point of doing that? She could bind the
man with ropes, but not his heart and mind to her, and that was what
she needed from him. From someone.

'Not so grateful as to stay by your queen who needs you?' She did not
veil her reproach. He had been a man inclined to women in his youth,
she remembered learning once. She wondered if she might think of
something yet, to keep him. Would her maidenhead be a lure? He might
have bedded virgins but would never have slept with a queen before,
she thought bitterly. There was a pain in her, watching the grey
coastline recede and merge into the grey sea. They would be in the
sanctuary by now, back home, beginning her father's rites under the
candles and the lanterns.

The alchemist did not avert his eyes, though her own gaze was icy
cold. Was this the first of the prices she was paying, and would
continue to pay, Gisel thought... that a queen adrift on another
ruler's boat, with only a handful of soldiers by her and her throne
left behind for others to claim, could not compel proper homage or
duty any more?

Or was it just the man? There was no disrespect in him, to be fair,
only a frank directness. He said gravely,'I have served you, Majesty,
in all ways I can here. I am an old man, Sarantium is very far. I
have no powers that would aid you there.'