Sailing to Sarantium (62 page)

'You have wisdom, secret arts, and loyalty ... I still believe.'

'And are right to believe that last. I have as little desire as you,
my lady, to see Batiara plunged into war again.'

She pushed at a whipping strand of hair. The wind was raw on her
face. She ignored it. 'You understand that is why I am here? Not my
own escape? This is no ... escape.'

'I understand,' said Zoticus.

'It isn't simply a question of who rules in Varena among us, it is
Sarantium that matters. None of them in the palace has the least
understanding of that.'

'I know it,' said Zoticus. 'They will destroy each other and lie open
to the east.' He hesitated. 'May I ask what you hope to achieve in
Sarantium? You spoke of returning home . .. how would you, without an
army?'

A hard question. She didn't know the answer. She said, 'There are
armies and... armies. There are different levels of subjugation. You
know what Rhodias is now. You know what . . . we did to it when we
conquered. It is possible I can act so that Varena and the rest of
the peninsula is not ruined the same way.' She hesitated. 'I might
even stop them from coming. Somehow.'

He did not smile, or dismiss that. He said only, 'Somehow. But then
you would not return either, would you?'

She had thought of that, too. 'Perhaps. I would pay that price, I
suppose. Alchemist, if I knew all paths to what will be, I'd not have
asked for counsel. Stay by me. You know what I am trying to save.'

He bowed then, but ignored the renewed request. 'I do know, my lady.
I was honoured, and remain so, that you summoned me.'

Ten days ago, that had been. She'd had him brought to her on the easy
pretext that he was once more to offer his spells of the half-world
to help ease the souls of the dead in the plague mound-and her
father's spirit, too, with the memorial day approaching. He had first
come to the palace more than a year before, when the mound was
raised.

She remembered him from that time: a man not young but measured and
observant, a manner that reassured. No boasting, no promised
miracles. His paganism meant little to her. The Antae had been pagans
themselves, not so long ago, in the dark forests of Sauradia and the
blood-sown fields beside.

It was said that Zoticus spoke with the spirits of the dead. That was
why she had summoned him two summers ago. It had been a time of
universal fear and pain: plague, a savage Inici incursion in the wake
of it, a brief, bloody civil war when her father died. Healing had
been desperately needed, and comfort wherever it could be found.

Gisel had invoked every form of aid she could those first days on the
throne, to quiet the living and the dead. She had ordered this man to
add his voice to those that were to calm the spirits in the burial
mound behind the sanctuary. He had joined the cheiromancers, with
their tall, inscribed hats and chicken entrails, in the yard one
sundown after the clerics had spoken their prayers and had gone
piously within. She didn't know what he had done or said there, but
it had been reported that he was the last to leave the yard under the
risen moons.

She had thought of him again ten days ago, after Pharos had brought
her tidings that were terrifying but not, in truth, entirely
unexpected. The alchemist came, was admitted, bowed formally, stood
leaning on his staff. They had been alone, save for Pharos.

She had worn her crown, which she rarely did in private. It had
seemed important somehow. She was the queen. She was still the queen.
She could remember her own first words; imagined, on the deck of the
ship, that he could as well.

'They are to kill me in the sanctuary,' she had said, 'on the day
after Dykania, when we honour my father there. It is decided, by
Eudric and Agila and Kerdas, the snake. All of them together, after
all. I never thought they would join. They are to rule as a
triumvirate, I am told, once I am gone. They will say I have been
treating with the Inicii.'

'A poor lie,' Zoticus had said. He had been very calm, the blue eyes
mild and alert above the grey beard. It could surprise no one in
Varena, she knew, that there were threats on her life.

'It is meant to be weak. A pretext, no more. You understand what will
follow?'

'You want me to hazard a guess? I'd say Eudric will have the others
out of the way within a year.'

She shrugged. 'Possibly. Don't underestimate Kerdas, but it hardly
matters.'

'Ah,' he had said then, softly. A shrewd man. 'Valerius?'

'Of course, Valerius. Valerius and Sarantium. With our people divided
and brutalizing each other in civil war, what will stop him, think
you?'

'A few things might,' he'd said gravely, 'eventually. But not at
first, no. The Strategos, whatever his name is, would be here by
summer.'

'Leontes. Yes. By summer. I must live, must stop this. I do not want
Batiara to fall, I do not want it drenched in blood again.'

'No man or woman could want that last, Majesty.'

'Then you will help me,' she'd said. She was being dangerously frank,
had already decided she had next to no choice. 'There is no one in
this court I trust. I cannot arrest all three of them, they each walk
with a small army wherever they go. If I name any one of them my
betrothed, the others will be in open revolt the next day.'

'And you would be negated, rendered nothing at all, the moment you
declared it. They would kill each other in the streets of every city
and in the fields outside all walls.'

She had looked at him, heartsick and afraid, trying not to hope too
much. 'You understand this, then?'

'Of course I do,' he had said, and smiled at her. 'You should have
been a man, my lady, the king we need .. . though making us all the
poorer in another way, of course.'

It was flattery. A man with a woman. She had no time for it. 'How do
I get away?' she'd said bluntly. 'I must get away and survive the
leaving so I can return. Help me.'

He had bowed, again. 'I am honoured,' he'd said, had to say. And
then: 'Where, my lady?'

'Sarantium,' she had said baldly. 'There is a ship.'

And she'd seen that she'd surprised him after all. Had felt some
small pleasure then, amid the bone-deep anxiety that walked with her
and within her as a shadow or half-world spirit through all the
nights and days.

She'd asked if he could kill people for her. Had asked it once
before, when they had raised the plague mound. It had been a casual
question then, for information. It wasn't this time, but his answer
had been much the same.

'With a blade, of course, though I have little skill. With poisons,
but no more readily than many people you might summon. Alchemy
transmutes things, my lady, it does not pretend to the powers the
charlatans and false cheiromancers claim.'

'Death,' she had said, 'is a transmutation of life, is it not?'

She remembered his smile, the blue eyes resting on her face,
unexpectedly tender. He would have been a handsome man once, she
thought; indeed, he still was. It came to her that the alchemist was
troubled in his own right, bearing some burden. She could see it but
had no room to acknowledge the fact in any way. Who lived in Jad's
world without griefs?

He'd said, 'It may be seen that way, or otherwise, my lady. It may be
seen as the same journey in a different cloak. You need,' he had
murmured, changing tone, 'at least a day and a night away from these
walls before they discover you are gone, if you are to reach Mylasia
safely. My lady, that requires that someone you trust pretend to be
the queen on the day of the ceremony.'

He was clever. She needed him to be. He went on. She listened. She
would be able to leave the city in a disguise on the second night of
Dykania when the gates were open for the festival. The queen could
wear the heavily veiled white of full Rhodian mourning in the
sanctuary, which would allow someone to take her place. She could
declare an intention to withdraw from public view into her private
chambers the day before the consecration, to pray for her father's
soul. Her guards-a select, small number of them-could wait outside
the walls and meet her on the road. One or two of her women could
wait with them, he said. Indeed, she would need ladies-in-waiting
with her, would she not? Two other guards could, in festival guise
themselves, pass out through the walls with her amid the night chaos
of Dykania and join the others in the countryside. They could even
meet, he said, at his own farmhouse, if that was acceptable to her.
Then they would have to ride like fury for Mylasia. It could be done
in a night and a day and an evening. Half a dozen guards would keep
her safe on the road. Could she ride like that, he asked?

She could. She was Antae. Had been in the saddle since girlhood.

Not so long ago.

She made him repeat the plan, adding details, going step by step. She
changed some things, interpolated others. Had to, he couldn't know
the palace routines well enough. She added a female complaint as a
further excuse for her withdrawal before the consecration. There were
ancient fears about a woman's blood among the Antae. No one would
intrude.

She had Pharos pour wine for the alchemist and let him sit while she
considered, finally, who might pose as herself. A terrible question.
Who could do it? Who would? Neither she nor the grey-bearded man
sipping at his wine said so, but each of them knew it was almost
certain that woman would die.

There was only one name, really, in the end. Gisel had thought she
might weep, then, thinking of Anissa who had nursed her, but she did
not. Then Zoticus, looking at Pharos, had murmured, 'He, too, will
have to stay behind, to guard the woman disguised as you. Even I know
he never leaves you.'

It was Pharos who had reported the triple-headed plot to her. He
looked at the other man now from by the doorway, shook his head once,
decisively, and moved to stand next to Gisel. The shelter at her
side. Shield. All her life. She looked up at him, turned back to the
alchemist, opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it, as around
a pain, without speaking.

It was true, what the old man said. It was agonizingly true. Pharos
never left her, or the doorway to her chambers if she was within. He
had to be seen in the palace and then the sanctuary while she fled,
in order that she could flee. She lifted one hand then and laid it
upon the muscled forearm of the mute, shaven-haired giant who had
killed for her and would die for her, would let his soul be lost for
her, if need be. Tears did come then, but she turned her head aside,
wiped them away. A luxury, not allowed.

She had not been, it seemed, born into the world for peace or joy or
any sure power-or even to keep those very few who loved her by her
side.

And so it was that the queen of the Antae was nearly alone when she
walked forth in disguise on the second night of Dykania, out from the
palace and through her city, past bonfires in the squares and moving
torchlight and out the open gates amid a riotous, drunken crowd and
then, two mornings later, under grey skies with a threat of rain,
leaving behind the only land she had ever known for the seas of late
autumn and the world, sailing east.

The alchemist who had come to her summons and had devised her escape
had been waiting in Mylasia. Before leaving her chambers ten days ago
he had requested passage to Sauradia on the Imperial ship.
Transactions of his own, he had explained. Business left unfinished
long ago.

He doubted she would ever know how deeply she had touched him.

Child-queen, alone and preternaturally serious, mistrustful of
shadows, of words, of the very wind. And what man could blame her for
it? Besieged and threatened on all sides, wagers taken openly in her
city as to the season of her death. And yet wise enough-alone of all
in that palace, it seemed-to understand how the Antae's tribal feuds
had to be altered now in a greater world or they would revert to
being only a tribe again, driven from the peninsula they'd claimed,
hacking each other to pieces, scrabbling for forage space among the
other barbarian federations. He stood now on a slip in the harbour of
Megarium, cloaked against the slant, cold rain, and watched the
Sarantine ship move back out through the water, bearing the queen of
the Antae to a world that would-some truths were hard-almost
certainly prove too dangerous and duplicitous even for her own fierce
intelligence.

She would get there, he thought; he had taken the measure of that
ship and its captain. He had travelled in his day, knew roads and the
sea. A commercial ship, wide, clumsy, deep-bellied, would have been
at gravest risk this late in the year. A commercial ship would not
have sailed. But this was a craft sent especially for a queen.

She would reach Sarantium, he judged-see the City, as he himself
never had-but he could see no joy in her doing so. There had been
only death waiting at home, though, the certainty of it, and she was
young enough-she was terribly young enough-to cling to life, and
whatever hope it might offer in the face of the waiting dark, or the
light of her god that might follow.

His gods were different. He was so much older. The long darkness was
not always to be feared, he thought. Living on was not an absolute
good. There were balances, harmonies to be sought. Things had their
season. The same journey in a different cloak, he thought. It was
autumn now, in more ways than the one.

There had been a moment on board, watching Batiara disappear in
greyness off the stern, when he had seen her weighing whether or not
to try seducing him. It had wrung his heart. For Gisel in that
moment, for this young queen of a people not his own, he might even
have surmounted all the inward matters of his own, truths apprehended
in his soul, and sailed on to Sarantium.