The Sarantine Mosaic (109 page)

There was no god here, no emblem, symbol, incarnation thereof. There was a single mortal woman, straight-backed, not tall, to be followed over pine needles and amid the scent of pine, and after a little time—it wasn't a large island— there was an ending to the path and the woods and Crispin saw a cluster of buildings. One house, three or four smaller huts, a tiny chapel with a sun disk carved above the door. The Empress stopped a little distance into that open space between the trees and the houses men had made and she turned to him as he came up beside her.

‘I dislike speaking in this manner,' she said, ‘but I must say that if you tell of what you see here now you will be killed.'

Crispin's hands clenched. Anger again, despite everything. He, too, was what he was, what the god and loss had made of him.

‘You contradict yourself, thrice-exalted.'

‘How so?' The voice brittle. He could see that there was some strain within her now that they had reached this place. He didn't understand it, or any of this, and he didn't care. Had thought to spend today on a scaffolding alone with his craft and memories of his girls.

‘You just said you were of the belief I could be trusted. Obviously this is not so. Why not leave me on the ship? Empress, why am I here, to face such a threat? To
be
such a threat? What am I in this?'

She was silent, looking at him. Her face was very white. The Excubitors had halted, discreetly, some distance behind
them at the edge of the trees. There were other soldiers, Crispin now saw, appearing at the doorways of the smaller houses. Four of them, wearing the livery of the Urban Prefecture. No one moved by the largest house. Smoke rose from chimneys, drifted.

‘I don't know,' said the Empress Alixana finally. She was staring up at him. ‘A fair question, but I do not know the answer. I know that I … do not like to come here any more. He frightens me, makes me dream. That's one reason Petrus … why the Emperor doesn't want me coming.'

The stillness of the clearing, of that single larger house, had something uncanny about it. Crispin realized all the shutters were closed. There would be no sunlight there.

‘In Jad's name, who is here?' he asked, too loudly. His voice seemed an abrasion in the waiting air.

Alixana's dark eyes were enormous. ‘Jad has little enough to do with him,' she said. ‘Daleinus is here. Styliane's brother. The oldest child.'

Rustem would have preferred to deny it, but both of his wives and all of his teachers had characterized him (sometimes with amusement) as a stubborn, willful man. An idea in his head was unlikely to be readily dislodged.

Accordingly, when the servant of Plautus Bonosus returned to the house near the walls and reported that the Senator was already among the crowd gathered at the Hippodrome and could not be of any assistance, Rustem shrugged his shoulders, turned to attend to a revision of the lecture he was soon to give, and—a short while after—put it aside and impatiently put on boots and a cloak to venture forth with two guards to attend at the house of Bonosus himself.

The streets were deserted, eerily so. Many shops were boarded up, the markets almost silent, taverns and
cookshops empty. From a distance as they went Rustem heard a dull, punishing sound, a steady roar, rising at intervals into something more than that. It would be frightening if you didn't know what it was, he thought. In fact, it could be frightening even if you did know.

He wanted to see these races now. To know what his patient was doing. He even saw himself as having some responsibility to be present. And if this Jaddite charioteer was going to kill himself—and past a certain point no physician could do anything about that—Rustem felt a measure of curiosity as to the ways and means. He was in the west, after all, to try to understand these people. Or, that was why he had
come
here, what he had thought his role would be. His more recent task was one he tried to avoid considering. He had some vague hope that circumstances might make the whole thing … go away.

It was obviously impossible for a visiting Bassanid to simply walk up to the Hippodrome and gain admission. The physicians' guild might have helped, given notice, but Rustem had had no warning at all that his patient would leave his room via a window, a tree, and the courtyard wall, trailing blood behind him as he went.

In a case of this sort, one needed to invoke more powerful connections of a personal nature. Rustem was looking for Cleander.

He knew from the boy himself that Bonosus had forbidden his son to attend the first five meetings of the race season, as punishment for the incident that had killed Nishik. One might quarrel with equating the death of a man (even a foreigner, even a servant) with five lost days of amusement, but that wasn't Rustem's concern today.

Today he wanted to persuade Cleander's mother to override her husband's dictate. He was well aware, from
glosses in the texts of the western physicians, that in ancient Rhodias a man's will was utterly binding, even to death, upon wives and children. A father had once been able to have his son executed by the state for simple disobedience.

There had been a brief time in the old days in the west when this had been seen as demonstrating virtue, the exemplary discipline and rectitude that could forge an empire. Rustem was of the view that in the modern Sarantium of Valerius and the Empress Alixana, women might have a greater degree of authority in the home. He had cause to know that the boy was an intensely partisan follower of the chariots. If someone knew how to get into the Hippodrome—for the afternoon at least, as the morning was well advanced by now—it would be Cleander. But he would need his stepmother's consent.

The Senator's steward was swift to alert his mistress when Rustem presented himself at the door. Thenaïs Sistina, quite unruffled, coolly elegant, greeted him in her morning room with a gracious smile, setting aside pen and paper. Rustem noted that she appeared to be literate.

He apologized, discussed the mild weather, explained that he wished to attend the races.

She did show surprise, the merest flicker and blink of her eyes. ‘Really?' she murmured. ‘I hadn't expected the games to appeal to you. They don't hold much allure for me, I confess. Noise and dirt, and there is often violence in the stands.'

‘None of which would draw me,' Rustem agreed.

‘But I suppose there is an element of spectacle. Well, I shall be certain to inform my husband that you'd like to accompany him to the next games day … it ought to be within a week or two if I understand the process rightly.'

Rustem shook his head. ‘I'd really like to attend this afternoon.'

Thenaïs Sistina assumed a distressed expression. ‘I don't see any way to get a message to my husband in time. He's with the Imperial party, in the kathisma.'

‘I understand as much. I was wondering if Cleander might … ? As a courtesy and great favour to me?'

The Senator's wife looked at him for a long moment. ‘Why today, so urgently, if I might ask?'

Which compelled an indiscretion. In light of the morning's open window and the fact that this was Bonosus's wife and Bonosus already knew, Rustem felt justified. The man's physician
ought
to be in attendance, in fact. No one else could possibly know the precise nature of his patient's injuries. It could be said he had duties and would be remiss in them did he not make his best effort to be present.

So he told the wife of Plautus Bonosus, in formal confidence, that his patient, Scortius of Soriyya, had violated medical advice and left his bed in the Senator's city home, where he had been recovering from wounds. Given the fact that there was racing today, it was not difficult to deduce why he had done so and where he would be.

The woman showed no reaction to learning this. The whole of Sarantium might be talking of this missing man, but either she'd already known where he was from her husband, or she was truly indifferent to the fate of these athletic sorts. She did, however, summon her stepson.

Cleander appeared sullenly in the doorway a short time later. It had occurred to Rustem that the boy might have breached this parental order already and been gone from the house, but it appeared that Bonosus's son had been sufficiently chastened by two violent incidents in one day and night to obey his father, for now.

His stepmother, with a few impressively precise questions, succeeded in unearthing from the flushed
young man the fact that it was Cleander who had conveyed the charioteer to Rustem in the middle of the night, and from where and under what circumstances. Rustem hadn't expected this. She had made an impressive leap of reasoning.

He could not help but note the boy's discomfiture, but he also knew that he himself had betrayed no secret in this regard. He hadn't even
known
that the incident had taken place in front of the dancer's home. He hadn't asked, or cared.

The woman was disconcertingly clever, that was all. It came with her detachment and composure, he decided. Those able to modulate and control their inner passions, to view the world with a cold eye, were best equipped to think things through in this way. Of course that same coldness might also be a reason why the husband had a chest with certain implements and toys in another house in a distant part of town. On the whole, though, Rustem decided he approved of the Senator's wife. He had, in fact, attempted to structure his own professional demeanour in this same fashion.

It was unexpected to see it in a woman, mind you. Also unexpected was the fact that she seemed to be coming with them to the Hippodrome.

Cleander's extreme discomfort changed—in the overheated manner of youth—to a stunned elation as he understood that his stepmother was undertaking to waive a part of his punishment in favour of the duties owed a guest and Rustem's own professed obligations as a physician. She would accompany them, she said, to ensure Cleander's good behaviour and swift return home, and to assist the doctor if he needed any intervention. The Hippodrome could be a dangerous place for a foreigner, she said.

Cleander would go ahead of them, immediately, taking the steward and using his mother's name for any outlays
required, employing whatever unsavoury contacts he undoubtedly had in and around the Hippodrome Forum to secure proper seating after the midday interval—
not
standing places, and most certainly not in any area containing faction partisans or anyone whose conduct might be disagreeable. And he would not, under any circumstances, wear green. Did Cleander understand?

Cleander did.

Would Rustem of Kerakek be pleased to take a modest midday meal with her while Cleander attended to these matters of seating and admission?

Rustem would.

They had ample time to dine, and then she would need more suitable clothing for a public appearance, she said, putting aside her writing and rising from her backless chair. Her manner was impeccably calm, precise, superbly efficient, her posture flawless. She put him in mind of those fabled matrons of Rhodias, in the days before it declined into Imperial decadence and then fell.

He wondered abruptly—startling himself, in fact—if either Katyun or Jarita could have grown into this poise and authority had they been raised in a different world. There were no women like this in Ispahani and certainly none in Bassania. Palace intrigues among the cloistered wives of the King of Kings were something else entirely. He thought, then, of his baby, his girl—and made himself stop doing that. Inissa was being taken from him, was gone, in the wake of his great good fortune.

Perun and Anahita guided the world, Azal needed to be kept constantly at bay. No man could say where his footsteps might lead him. Generosity needed to be embraced, even if there was a price to be paid. Certain gifts were not offered twice. He could not let himself dwell upon Issa, or her mother.

He could think about Shaski and Katyun, for he would see them in Kabadh, soon enough.
If the Lady wills it
,
he added hastily in his mind and turned quickly to face east, on the thought. He had been instructed to try to kill someone here. Generosity might now have conditions attached to it.

The wife of Plautus Bonosus was looking at him, eyebrows slightly arched. She was too well bred to say anything, however.

Hesitantly, Rustem murmured, ‘In my faith … the east … I was averting bad fortune. I had a reckless thought.'

‘Ah,' said Thenaïs Sistina, nodding her head as if this were entirely clear to her. ‘We all have those, from time to time.' She walked out of the room and he followed her.