The Sarantine Mosaic (121 page)

She could not have known, even self-conscious and aware of her own appearance as she had always been, how she appeared in that moment to the soldier in the boat with her, rowing to Sarantium.

They approached a mooring, far down the slip, manœuvring among the other jostling small boats. Obscenities and jests rang back and forth across the water. Mariscus was only just adequate to navigating his way in. They were loudly cursed, she swore back, crudely, in a voice she hadn't used for fifteen years, and made a caupona jest. Mariscus, sweating, looked quickly up at her and then bent back to his task. Someone in the other boat laughed aloud, back-oared and made way for them, then asked what she'd do in return.

Her reply made them whoop with laughter.

They docked. Mariscus leaped out, tied the boat. Aliana moved quickly, stepping out herself before he could offer a hand. She said, quickly and low, ‘If all is well you have earned more than you can dream of, and my thanks for a lifetime. If it is not well, I ask nothing more of you than what you have now done. Jad guard you, soldier.'

He was blinking rapidly. She realized—with surprise— that he was fighting back tears. ‘They will learn nothing from me, my lady. But is there nothing more … ?'

‘Nothing more,' she said briskly, and went away.

He meant what he said, and was a brave man, but of
course
they would learn what he knew if they were shrewd enough to find him and ask. Men had, sometimes, a touching belief in their ability to withstand professional questioning.

She walked up the long slip alone, barefoot, her adornments gone or hidden, her long robe torn into a short, stained tunic (still too fine for her station now, she would need another soon). One man stopped and stared at her and her heart lurched. Then he made a loud offer, and she relaxed.

‘Not enough money and not enough man,' said the Empress of Sarantium, looking the sailor up and down. She tossed her shorn, ragged hair, and turned away dismissively. ‘Find a donkey to hump for that price.' His outraged protest was drowned in laughter.

She walked on through the thronged, noisy harbour, a silence within her so deep it echoed. She trudged up a narrow street. She didn't know it. So much had changed in fifteen years. Her feet hurt already. She hadn't walked barefoot in a long time.

She saw a small chapel and stopped. Was about to go in to try to order her thoughts, to pray, when—in that moment—she heard from within a known voice speaking her name.

She remained where she was, didn't look around. This was a voice from nowhere and everywhere, someone who was hers alone. Had been hers alone.

She felt an emptiness invade her like an army. She stood very still in that small, steep city street and amid the crowds and bustle, with no privacy at all, she bade a last farewell, by birth name not Imperial one, to the loved soul that was leaving, that was already gone from her and from the world.

She had wanted forbidden dolphins for her room. Had taken the mosaicist, Crispin, to see them this morning. Only this same morning. Petrus had … found them first. Or been found by them, and not as a mosaic on a wall. Was perhaps being carried, his soul, to wherever they carried souls on the way to Jad. She hoped they were kind, that the way was easy, that there had not been too much pain.

No one saw her weep. There were no tears to see. She was a whore in the City, with people to kill before they found and killed her.

She had no idea where to go.

In the tunnel, the two guards made the remarkably foolish mistake of looking back over their shoulders when the Emperor fell. This entire circumstance, the horror of it, had undermined all their training, unmoored them like ships torn from their anchors in a storm. They burned for the error. Died screaming, as the blind man found and pulled the trigger on the nozzle that released the liquid fire. Lecanus Daleinus was cursing, crying, high-pitched and incomprehensible, wailing as if demented in his own mortal agony, but he aimed the nozzle with uncanny accuracy past his sister and brother straight at the soldiers.

They were underground, far from life and the world. No one heard them screaming or the bubble and sizzle of
melting flesh save for the three Daleinoi and the gross, avid man beside them, and the other one, standing behind the dead Emperor, sufficiently far away that he felt a wet surge of heat come down the tunnel and a bowel-gripping fear but was not even singed by that fire from long ago.

He became aware, as the heat died away and the screams and the wet moaning stopped, that they were looking at him. The Daleinoi, and the fat man he remembered very well and had not known was in the City. It … pained him that that could have happened without his knowing.

But there were greater sources of distress just now.

He cleared his throat, looked at the bloodied, sticky dagger in his hand. There had never been blood on it before, ever. He wore a blade for display, no more. He looked down at the dead man at his feet.

And Pertennius of Eubulus said then, feelingly, ‘This is terrible. So terrible. Everyone
agrees
it is wrong for an historian to intervene in the events he chronicles. He loses so much authority, you understand.'

They stared at him. No one said anything at all. It was possible they were overwhelmed by the truth of what he'd said.

The blind one, Lecanus, was crying, making strangled, ugly sounds in his throat. He was still on his knees. There was a smell of meat in the tunnel. The soldiers. Pertennius was afraid he would be ill.

‘How did you get in here?' It was Lysippus.

Styliane was looking at the Emperor. The dead man at Pertennius's feet. She had a hand on her weeping brother's shoulder, but she released him now, stepped past the two burned men and stopped, a little way down the tunnel, staring at her husband's secretary.

Pertennius wasn't at all sure he owed any answers to an exiled monster like the Calysian, but this did not
seem the right context in which to explore that thought. He said, looking at the woman, his employer's wife, ‘The Strategos sent me to discover what was detaining the … the Emperor. There have come … have just come, tidings … ' He
never
stammered like this. He took a breath. ‘Tidings had just come that he thought the Emperor should know.'

The Emperor was dead.

‘How did you get in?' Styliane this time, same question. Her expression was odd. Unfocused. Looking at him, but not really. She didn't like him. Pertennius knew that. She didn't like anyone, though, so it hadn't much mattered.

He cleared his throat again, smoothed the front of his tunic. ‘I have, happen to have some keys? That … open locks.'

‘Of course you do,' said Styliane quietly. He knew her irony well, the bite of it, but there was something bloodless, perfunctory about her tone this time. She was looking down again, at the dead man. Untidily sprawled. Blood on the mosaic stones.

‘There were no guards,' explained Pertennius, though they hadn't asked. ‘No one in the corridor outside. There … should have been. I thought … '

‘You thought something might be happening and you wanted to see it.' Lysippus. The distinctive, clipped tones. He smiled, the folds of his face shifting. ‘Well, you did see, didn't you? What now, historian?'

Historian. There was blood on his blade. Mockery in the Calysian's tone. Smell of meat. The woman looked at him again, waiting.

And Pertennius of Eubulus, gazing back at her, not at Lysippus, did the simplest thing. He knelt, very near the body of the anointed Emperor he'd loathed and had killed, and, setting his dagger down, he said softly, ‘My lady, what is it you wish me to tell the Strategos?'

She let out a breath. To the secretary, watching her narrowly, she seemed to have become hollowed out, a figure without force or intensity. It … interested him.

She didn't even answer. Her brother did, lifting his hideous face. ‘I killed him,' Lecanus Daleinus said. ‘By myself. My younger brother and sister … came and … killed me for it. So virtuous! Report it so … secretary. Record it.' The whistle in his voice became more pronounced than ever. ‘Record it … during the reign … of the Emperor Leontes and his glorious Empress … and of the Daleinus … children … who will follow!'

A moment passed, another. And then Pertennius smiled. He understood, and it was all as it
should
be. At last. The Trakesian peasant was dead. The whore was or would be. The Empire was turning back—finally—to a proper place.

‘I shall,' he said. ‘Believe me, I shall.'

‘Lecanus?' It was Lysippus again. ‘You promised! You did promise me.' There was desire in his voice, unmistakable, the tone raw with need.

‘The Trakesian first, then me,' said Lecanus Daleinus.

‘Of course,' said Lysippus, eagerly. ‘Of course, Lecanus.' He was bowing and jerking, Pertennius saw, the gross body moving with urgency, hunger, like spasms of faith or desire.

‘Holy Jad! I'm leaving,' said Tertius, hastily. His sister moved aside as the youngest Daleinus went hurriedly back along the tunnel, almost running. She didn't follow, turning instead to look at her ruined brother, and at the Calysian, who was breathing rapidly, his mouth open. She bent down and said something then, softly, to Lecanus. Pertennius didn't hear what it was. He hated that. The brother made no reply.

Pertennius lingered long enough to see the blind man extend the nozzle and trigger and observe how the Calysian trembled as he untied Daleinus's maimed hands
from them. Then he felt a sickness coming. He reclaimed and sheathed his knife and then he, too, went quickly back towards the door he had unlocked. He didn't look back.

He wasn't going to record this, anyhow. It had never
happened
,
wasn't a part of history, he didn't need to watch, he told himself. Only the things written down mattered.

SOMEWHERE MEN WERE RACING HORSES
, ploughing fields, children were playing, or crying, or labouring at hard tasks in the world. Ships were sailing. It was raining, snowing, sand blew in a desert, food and drink were being taken, jests made, oaths uttered, in piety or rage. Money changed hands. A woman cried a name behind shutters. Prayers were spoken in chapels and forests and before sacred, guarded flames. A dolphin leaped in the blue sea. A man laid tesserae upon a wall. A pitcher broke on a well rim, a servant knew she would be beaten for it. Men were losing and winning at dice, at love, at war. Cheiromancers prepared tablets that besought yearning or fertility or extravagant wealth. Or death for someone desperately hated for longer than one could ever say.

PERTENNIUS OF EUBULUS
, leaving the tunnel, felt another rush of wet, distant heat, but heard no scream this time.

He came out into the lower part of the Attenine Palace again, below ground. A wide staircase led up, the corridor ran both ways to other hallways, other stairs. No guards. No one at all. Tertius Daleinus had already run upstairs. Somewhere. A trivial, meaningless man, Pertennius thought. Not a thought to be written now, of course, or not in any … public document.

He took a breath, smoothed his tunic, and prepared to go up, outside, and back across the gardens, and then down in the other palace to tell Leontes what had happened.

It proved unnecessary, that walk.

He heard a clatter of sound from above and looked up, just as, from behind him in the tunnel, there came a muffled, distant cry, and a last blast of heat came down, all the way to the hallway where he stood alone.

He didn't look back. He looked up. Leontes descended the stairs, moving briskly as he always did, soldiers behind him, as there always were.

‘Pertennius! What in the god's holy name is keeping you, man? Where's the Emperor? Why is the door …
where are the guards?
'

Pertennius swallowed hard. Smoothed his tunic. ‘My lord,' he said, ‘something terrible has happened.'

‘What? In there?' The Strategos stopped.

‘My lord, do not go in. It is … terrible.' Which was nothing but truth.

And generated the predictable response. Leontes glanced at his guards. ‘Wait here.' The golden-haired leader of the Sarantine armies went into the tunnel.

So, of course, Pertennius had to go back in. This might never be recorded, either, but it was impossible for a chronicler not to be present for what would happen now. He closed the door carefully behind him.

Leontes moved quickly. By the time Pertennius had retraced his steps down the tunnel and come to the curve again, the Strategos was on his knees beside the blackened body of his Emperor.

There was a span of time wherein no one moved. Then Leontes reached to the clasp at his throat, undid it, swept off his dark blue cloak and laid it gently over the body of the dead man. He looked up.

Pertennius was behind him, couldn't see his expression. The smell of burnt flesh was very bad. Ahead of them, motionless, stood the other two living people in this place. Pertennius stayed where he was, at the curve of the tunnel, half hidden against the wall.