Sailing to Sarantium (7 page)

Three doors burst open on the instant.

A score of people sprang into the room and flung themselves prostrate
on the floor in obeisance. He saw Gesius and Adrastus, then the
Quaestor of the Sacred Palace, the Urban Prefect, the Count of the
Imperial Bed-chamber-Hilarinus, whom he didn't trust-the Quaestor of
Imperial Revenue. All the highest officers of the Empire. Flattened
before him on a green and blue mosaic floor of sea creatures and sea
flowers.

In the ensuing stillness, one of the mechanical birds began to sing.
Valerius the Emperor laughed aloud.

 

Very late that same night, the sea wind having long since died to a
breath, most of the City asleep, but some not so. Among these, the
Holy Order of the Sleepless Ones in their austere chapels, who
believed-with fierce and final devotion-that all but a handful of
them had to be constantly awake and at prayer through the whole of
the night while Jad in his solar chariot negotiated his perilous
journey through blackness and bitter ice beneath the world.

The bakers, too, were awake and at work, preparing the bread that was
the gift of the Empire to all who dwelt in glorious Sarantium. In
winter the glowing ovens would draw people from the darkness seeking
warmth-beggars, cripples, streetwalkers, those evicted from their
homes and those too new to the Holy City to have found shelter yet.
They would move on to the glassmakers and the metalsmiths when the
grey, cold day came.

In broiling summer now, the nearly naked bakers worked and swore at
their ovens, slick with sweat, quaffing watery beer all night, no
attendants at their doors save the rats, scurrying from cast light
into shadow.

Torches burning on the better streets proclaimed the houses of the
wealthy, and the tread and cry of the Urban Prefect's men warned the
illicit to take a certain care elsewhere in the night city. The
roaming bands of wilder partisans-Green and Blue each had their
violent cadres-tended to ignore the patrols, or, more properly, a
lone patrol was inclined to be prudently discreet when the
flamboyantly garbed and barbered partisans careened into sight from
one tavern or another.

Women, save for the ones who sold themselves or patricians in litters
with armed escorts, were not abroad after dark.

This night, however, all the taverns-even the filthiest cauponae
where sailors and slaves drank-were closed in response to an Imperial
death and an Emperor acclaimed. The shocking events of the day seemed
to have subdued even the partisans. No shouting, drunken youths in
the loose, eastern clothing of Bassania and the hair-styling of
western barbarians could be seen-or heard-slewing through empty
streets.

A horse neighed in one of the faction stables by the Hippodrome, and
a woman's voice could be heard through an open window over a
colonnade nearby, singing the refrain of a song that was not at all
devout. A man laughed, and then the woman did, and then there was
silence there, too. The high screech of a cat in a laneway. A child
cried. Children always cried in the darkness, somewhere. The world
was what it was.

The god's sun passed in its chariot through ice and past howling
daemons under the world. The two moons worshipped-perversely-as
goddesses by the Kindath had both set, over west into the wide sea.
Only the stars, which no one claimed as holy, shone like strewn
diamonds over the city Saranios had founded to be the New Rhodias,
and to be more than Rhodias had ever been.

'Oh City, City, ornament of the earth, eye of the world, glory of
Jad's creation, will I die before I see you again?'

So, Lysurgos Matanias, posted as ambassador to the Bassanid court two
hundred years past, longing in his heart for Sarantium even amid the
luxurious eastern splendours of Kabadh. Oh City, City.

In all the lands ruled by that City, with its domes and its bronze
and golden doors, its palaces and gardens and statues, forums and
theatres and colonnades, bathhouses and shops and guildhalls, taverns
and whorehouses and sanctuaries and the great Hippodrome, its triple
landward walls that had never yet been breached, and its deep,
sheltered harbour and the guarded and guarding seas, there was a
timeworn phrase that had the same meaning in every tongue and every
dialect.

To say of a man that he was sailing to Sarantium was to say that his
life was on the cusp of change: poised for emergent greatness,
brilliance, fortune-or else at the very precipice of a final and
absolute fall as he met something too vast for his capacity.

Valerius the Trakesian had become an Emperor.

Heladikos, whom some worshipped as the son of Jad and placed in
mosaic upon holy domes, had died in his chariot bringing fire back
from the sun.

Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or
handiwork .

 

The Imperial Post, along with most of the civil positions in the
Sarantine Empire after Valerius died and his nephew, having renamed
himself appropriately, took the Golden Throne, was under the hegemony
of the Master of Offices. The immensely complex running of the
mails-from the recently conquered Majriti deserts and Esperana in the
far west to the long, always-shifting Bassanid border in the east,
and from the northern wildernesses of Karch and Moskav to the deserts
of Soriyya and beyond-required a substantial investment of manpower
and resources, and no little requisitioning of labour and horses from
those rural communities dubiously honoured by having an Imperial
Posting Inn located in or near them.

The position of Imperial Courier, charged with the actual carrying of
the public mails and court documents, paid only modestly well and
involved an almost endless regimen of hard travelling, sometimes
through uncertain territory, depending on barbarian or Bassanid
activity in a given season. The fact that such positions were avidly
solicited, with all the associated bribes, was a reflection of where
the position might lead after a few years more than anything else.

The couriers of the Imperial Post were expected to be part-time spies
for the Quaestor of Imperial Intelligence, and diligent labour in
this unspoken part of the job-coupled with rather more of the
associated bribes-might see a man appointed to the intelligence
service directly, with more risks, less far-ranging travel, and
significantly higher recompense. Along with a chance to be on the
receiving end, at last, of some of the bribes changing hands.

As one's declining years approached, an appointment from Intelligence
back to, say, running a substantial Posting Inn could actually lead
to a respectable retirement-especially if one was clever, and the Inn
far enough from the City to permit rather more watering of wine and
an enhancing of revenues by accepting travellers without the required
Permits.

The position of courier was, in short, a legitimate career path for a
man with sufficient means to make a start but not enough to be
launched by his family in anything more promising.

This, as it happened, was a fair description of the competence and
background of Pronobius Tilliticus. Born with an unfortunately
amusing name (a frequently cursed legacy of his mother’s
grandfather and his mother's unfamiliarity with current army
vernacular), with limited skill at law or numbers, and only a modest
paternal niche in Sarantine hierarchies, Tilliticus had been told
over and again how fortunate he was to have had his mother's cousin's
aid in securing a courier's position. His obese cousin, soft rump
securely spread on a bench among the clerks in the Imperial Revenue
office, had been foremost of those to make this observation at family
gatherings.

Tilliticus had been obliged to smile and agree. Many times. He had a
gathering-prone family.

In such an oppressive context-his mother was now constantly demanding
he choose a useful wife-it was sometimes a relief to leave Sarantium.
And now he was on the roads again with a packet of letters, bound for
the barbarian Antae's capital city of Varena in Batiara and points en
route. He also carried one particular Imperial Packet that
came-unusually-directly from the Chancellor himself, with the
elaborate Seal of that office, and instructions from the eunuchs to
make this delivery with some ceremony.

An important artisan of some kind, he was given to understand. The
Emperor was rebuilding the Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom. Artisans
were being summoned to the City from all over the Empire and beyond.
It irked Tilliticus: barbarians and rustic provincials were receiving
formal invitations and remuneration on a level three or four times
his own to participate in this latest Imperial folly.

In early autumn on the good roads north and then west through
Trakesia it was hard to preserve an angry mien, however. Even
Tilliticus found the weather lifting his spirits. The sun shone
mildly overhead. The northern grain had been harvested, and on the
slopes as he turned west the vineyards were purple with ripening
grapes. Just looking at them gave him a thirst. The Posting Inns on
this road were well known to him and they seldom cheated couriers. He
lingered a few days at one of them (Let the damned paint-dauber wait
for his summons a little!) and feasted on spit-roasted fox, stuffed
fat with grapes. A girl he remembered seemed also to enthusiastically
remember him. The innkeeper did charge double the price for her
exclusive services, but Tilliticus knew he was doing it and saw that
as one of the perquisites of a position he dreamed of for himself.

On the last night, however, the girl asked him to take her away,
which was simply ridiculous.

Tilliticus refused indignantly and-abetted by a quantity of scarcely
watered wine-offered her a lecture about his mother's family's
lineage. He exaggerated only slightly; with a country prostitute it
was hardly required. She didn't seem to take the chiding with
particular good grace and in the morning, riding away, Tilliticus
considered whether his affections had been misplaced.

A few days later he was certain they had been. Urgent medical
circumstances dictated a short detour north and a further delay of
several days at a well-known Hospice of Galinus, where he was treated
for the genital infection she had given him.

They bled him, purged him with something that emptied his bowels and
stomach violently, made him ingest various unpleasant liquids, shaved
his groin, and daubed on a burning, foul-smelling black ointment
twice a day. He was instructed to eat only bland foods and to refrain
from sexual congress and wine for an unnatural length of time.

Hospices were expensive, and this one, being celebrated, was
particularly so. Tilliticus was forced to bribe the chief
administrator to record his stay as being for injuries incurred in
the course of duties-or else he'd have had to pay for the visit out
of his own pocket.

Well, a crab-infested chit in a Posting Inn was an injury incurred in
the Emperor's service, wasn't it? This way, the administrator could
bill the Imperial Post directly-and he would no doubt add to the
tally half a dozen treatments Tilliticus hadn't received and
designate those sums for his own purse.

Tilliticus left a stiff letter addressed to the innkeeper four days
ride back, to be delivered by the next eastbound courier. Let the
bitch hump for slaves and farmhands in an alley back of a caupona if
she wasn't going to keep herself clean. The Posting Inns on the roads
of the Empire were the finest in the world, and Pronobius Tilliticus
regarded it as a positive duty to make sure she was gone when next he
rode through.

He was in the service of the Sarantine Emperor. These things
reflected directly upon the majesty and prestige of Valerius II and
his glorious Empress Alixana. The fact that the Empress had been
bought and used in her youth in exactly the same way as the chit in
the inn was not a matter for open discussion at this stage in the
world's progression. A man was allowed his thoughts, however. They
couldn't kill you for thinking things.

He lasted a part of the prescribed period of abstinence, but a tavern
he knew too well in Megarium, the port city and administrative centre
of western Sauradia, proved predictably tempting. He didn't remember
any of the girls this time round but they were all lively enough, and
the wine was good. Megarium had a reputation for decent wine, however
barbaric the rest of Sauradia might be.

An unfortunate incident involving jests about his name-made one night
by a loutish apprentice and a trader in Heladikian icons-left him
with a gashed chin and a twisted shoulder that called for further
medical treatment and a longer stay than anticipated in the tavern.
The stay became less than pleasant after the first few days because
it appeared that two of the once-willing girls had contracted an
affliction unfortunately similar to the one he was to have been cured
of by now, and they made no secret about blaming Tilliticus.

They didn't throw him out, of course-he was an Imperial Courier, and
the girls were bodies-for-sale, one of them a slave-but his food
tended to arrive cold or overcooked after that, and no one rushed to
help a man with an awkward shoulder manage his plates and flasks.
Tilliticus was feeling seriously hard done by when he finally decided
he was well enough to resume his journey. The tavern-keeper, a
Rhodian by birth, gave him mail for relatives in Varena. Tilliticus
tossed it in a midden-heap by the harbour.

It was much later in the autumn than it should have been by then and
the rains had come. He caught one of the last of the small ships
tacking west across the bay to the Batiaran port of Mylasia and
docked in a cold, driving rain, having emptied his guts over the
ship's railing several times. Tilliticus had little love for the sea.

The city of Varena-where the barbaric, still half-pagan Antae who had
sacked Rhodias a hundred years ago and conquered all Batiara held
their wretched little court-was three days' ride farther west, two if
he hurried. He had not the least interest in hurrying. Tilliticus
waited out the rain, drinking morosely by the harbour. His injuries
allowed him to do that, he decided. This had been a very difficult
run. His shoulder still hurt.