The Sarantine Mosaic (126 page)

He managed a faint smile. ‘For a change, you mean?'

She shook her head fiercely. ‘No jesting. At all! If the Daleinoi have killed Valerius, they will be … ' He saw something else occur to her. ‘Where is Alixana? If they killed Valerius … '

She let the thought hang in the air and fade away. Men and women lived, died. Faded away. He didn't know what to say. What he could say. A robe discarded on a stony strand. They would find it. Might even have done so by now.
Shall the maiden never walk the bright fields again?

‘You had better stay here tonight,' he said, finally. ‘The streets will be dangerous. You shouldn't have come out, you know.'

She nodded. ‘I know.' And then, after a moment, ‘Have you any wine?'

A blessedly clever woman. He gave an order to the servant, for wine and water and for food. The eunuchs had staffed this house for him. His people were very good. In the late-afternoon streets outside there was fighting. Soldiers were assembling Senators, escorting them to the Senate Chamber and then returning to the streets to achieve order in a dangerous time.

Not long after darkfall they had done so, and had set about their other task.

WHEN THE HARD KNOCKING
came at his door Crispin was waiting for it. He had left Shirin for long enough to wash and change his clothing: he had still been wearing the nondescript tunic he'd donned for work, the one
he'd been wearing on the isle. He put on his best tunic and trousers now, with a leather belt, not at all certain why he was doing so. He went to answer the knocking himself, nodding for the servant to stand back. He swung the door open, was briefly blinded by torches.

‘Shall I hit you with my helmet?' Carullus asked, on the threshold.

Memory. Relief. And then swift sorrow: loyalties so hopelessly entangled here. He couldn't even sort out his own. He knew that Carullus must have specifically asked to lead this detail to his door. He wondered who had granted that approval. Where Styliane was, just now.

‘Your wife,' he said calmly, ‘would probably be upset if you did. She was the last time, remember?'

‘Believe me, I remember.' Carullus stepped inside. Spoke a word to his men and they waited on the threshold. ‘We're doing a search of the entire city. Every house, not just yours.'

‘Oh. Why would mine have been singled out?'

‘Because you were with the Emp … with Alixana this morning.'

Crispin looked at his friend. Saw worry in the big man's eyes, but also something else: an undeniable excitement. Dramatic times, the most dramatic imaginable, and he was one of Leontes's own guard now.

‘I was with the Empress.' Crispin emphasized the word, aware he was being perverse. ‘She took me to see dolphins, and then to the prison isle. We saw Lecanus Daleinus in the morning and when we came back, after a meal elsewhere, he was gone. Two of the guards on duty were dead. The Empress went away with one soldier alone. Didn't come back on the ship. They will know all that in the palace by now. What has happened, Carullus?'

‘Dolphins?' said other man, as if nothing else had registered.

‘Dolphins. For a mosaic.'

‘They're heresy. Forbidden.'

‘Will she be burned for it?' Crispin asked coldly. Couldn't help but ask.

He saw his friend's eyes flicker.

‘Don't be an idiot. What has happened?' Crispin said. ‘Tell me.'

Carullus stepped past him into the front room, saw Shirin there, by the fire. He blinked.

‘Good evening, soldier,' she murmured. ‘I haven't seen you since your wedding. Are you well? And Kasia?'

‘I … yes, um, yes, we are. Thank you.' Carullus stammered, for once at a loss for words.

‘I have been told that the Emperor was killed today,' she said, giving him no respite. ‘Is it true? Tell me it isn't.'

Carullus hesitated, then he shook his head. ‘I wish I could. He was burned in a tunnel between palaces. By Lecanus Daleinus, who did indeed escape the isle today. And by Lysippus, the Calysian, who was exiled, as you know, but slipped secretly back into the city.'

‘No one else?'

‘Two … Excubitors were also there.' Carullus looked uncomfortable.

‘A vast plot, then. Those four?' Shirin's expression was guileless. ‘Are we safe now? I heard the Senate was sitting.'

‘You are well informed, my lady. They were.'

‘And?' Crispin asked.

‘They have adjourned for the night. Leontes was named by them and is being anointed Emperor tonight. It will be announced tomorrow morning, with his coronation and that of the new Empress in the kathisma.'

That note again, an excitement the man could not suppress. Carullus loved Leontes, and Crispin knew it. The Strategos had even come to his wedding, promoted
him there in person, and had then appointed him to his personal guard.

‘Meanwhile,' said Crispin, not fighting the bitterness, ‘all the soldiers in Sarantium are hunting for the old Empress.'

Carullus looked at him. ‘Please tell me you don't know where she is, my friend.'

There was something painful lodged in Crispin's breast, like a stone.

‘I don't know where she is, my friend.'

They stared at each other in silence.

‘She says to be careful. And to be fair.'

Crispin wanted to snarl an oath. He did not. Danis was right, or Shirin was. He gestured with one hand. ‘Search the house, have them search.'

Carullus cleared his throat and nodded. Crispin looked at him, then added, ‘And thank you for doing this yourself. Do you need me to come somewhere for questioning?'

‘Not that fair!'
Danis exclaimed sharply.

Carullus hesitated another moment, then shook his head. He returned to the hallway and opened the outside door. They heard him giving orders. Six men came in. Two went upstairs, the others went towards the back, on the ground floor.

Carullus came back into the front room. ‘You might be questioned later. I have no orders about that now. You went to the isle with her, saw Lecanus, then he was gone, and then she left. How?'

‘I told you. With one Excubitor. I don't know his name. I don't even know that she left. She may still be on the isle, Carullus. They will kill her when they find her, won't they?'

His friend swallowed. Looked quite miserable.

‘I have no idea,' he said.

‘Of course you do,' Shirin snapped. ‘It just isn't your
fault
,
you want to say. Or Leontes's, of course. Nothing's his fault.'

‘I don't … I truly don't think he had anything to do with this,' the big soldier said.

Crispin looked at the other man. His closest friend here. Kasia's husband. As honest and decent a person as he knew. ‘No, I don't think he knew anything about it.'

‘Poor helpless man. It must have been Styliane, then,' said Shirin, still furious. ‘She is the Daleinoi in our day. One brother blind and imprisoned, the other a complete fool.'

Crispin looked at her. So did Carullus. The two men exchanged glances. Crispin said, ‘My dear, please leave that thought in this room. You told me not to be stupid, earlier. Let me say the same to you.'

‘He's right,' Carullus said soberly.

‘Jad rot you both!'
Danis said in silence, and Crispin heard the pain in the bird that could not be spoken by the woman.

‘We are all unhappy tonight,' Carullus added. ‘These are not easy times.'

‘Unhappy? I could laugh! The man is in his glory!'
Danis said, with a savagery unknown for her.

It wasn't true, or not entirely true, but Crispin had no way to say so aloud. He looked at Shirin, and belatedly, in the lamplight, he realized that she was weeping.

‘You will hunt her down like some beast,' she said bitterly. ‘All of you. An army of soldiers after one woman whose husband has just been killed, whose life died with him. And then what? Send her back to a hovel in the Hippodrome? Make her dance naked for their amusement? Or are you to quietly kill her when you find her? Spare poor, virtuous Leontes the details?'

It was a woman speaking, and a performer, Crispin understood finally. Fear and this unexpected depth of rage, thinking of the other dancer who had defined, for all of them, the City and the world.

But even here there were layers, because if Leontes was oblivious to what had happened, Styliane was not. It wasn't just about men pursuing a helpless woman. It was also about two women at war, and only one of them could live now.

‘I don't
know
what they will do,' said Carullus, and even Shirin, lifting her face, not hiding her tears, had to have heard the distress in his voice.

There were footsteps. A soldier at the arched entrance to the room. He reported no one hiding in the house or the courtyard within. The others filed past him and outside again.

Carullus looked at Crispin. Seemed about to say something more but did not. He turned to Shirin. ‘May we escort you home, my lady?'

‘No,' she said.

He swallowed. ‘There are orders, everyone to remain inside. There are many soldiers in the streets … some of them … unused to the city. It will be safer if—'

‘No,' she said.

Carullus stopped. After another moment he bowed to her and left the room.

Crispin walked him to the door. Carullus stopped there. ‘They are … anxious to find her tonight, as you say. There will be some unpleasantness, I suspect, as they search.'

Crispin nodded.
Unpleasantness
. A courtier's masking word. Changes were taking place, even as the night passed, the moons rose. But none of this was Carullus's fault. ‘I … understand. I am grateful that it was you at my door. Jad guard you.'

‘And you, my friend. Stay inside.'

‘I will.'

HE HAD TRULY INTENDED
to. Who can know what will come, however, overtaking a life?

Last autumn, at home, it had been an Imperial Courier bearing a summons to Sarantium. Tonight it was something else, but still a summons, for there came another knocking, a quieter one, not long after the soldiers left.

Crispin answered it himself again. No flaring of torches this time, no sight of armed men. This was someone cloaked and hooded, and alone. A woman, breathless with running and fear. She asked his name. He gave it, without thinking, stepped aside, she entered, hurriedly, a glance over her shoulder into the night. He closed the door. In the entrance to his home, she wordlessly extended a written note, and then fumbled in her cloak and produced a ring.

He took both. Her hands were trembling. He recognized the ring, and felt his heart thump once, very hard.

He had forgotten someone.

The sealed note, when torn open, contained a command, not a request, and from someone whom—as he stood there, and felt his heart begin to beat properly again—Crispin realized he did have a duty to obey, however bitter the confusions and torn loyalties shaping a terrible day and night.

It also meant going out into the streets again.

Shirin appeared in the arched doorway.

‘What is it?'

He told her. He wasn't sure why, but he told her.

‘I'm taking you,' she said.

He tried to say no. A waste of time.

She had a litter and guards, she pointed out. Was known, had the protection that came with that. Could
plausibly be heading home with a friend, even with the streets forbidden. He didn't have the force to refuse her. What was she going to do? Stay in his house while he went out?

Shirin had a two-person litter. Crispin ordered the messenger to be attended to, given food, a bed for the night if she wanted. The woman's eyes betrayed her relief: she'd clearly been terrified she'd have to go back out. Crispin put on his own cloak and then, Shirin beside him, opened the door, waiting for a moment when the street was quiet before they stepped out. The darkness was laden with aura and menace, clear as the stars, heavy as the weight of earth on the dead. Valerius had died in a tunnel, Carullus had said.

Her litter-bearers came for them from the shadows at the end of the portico. Shirin gave them instructions to take her home. They started down the street. Peering through the drawn curtains as they moved, they both saw the strange, small flames flitting at corners, unlit by any visible source, darting and vanishing. Souls, spirits, echoes of Heladikos's fire, inexplicable.

But one always saw those flames in Sarantium at night.

What was new were the noises, and the torches everywhere, smoking, casting orange, erratic light. From all around came the sound of booted feet. Running, not marching. A sense of speed, urgency, the night spinning with it. A banging upon doors, shouted commands to open. Searchers. For one woman. They heard two horses gallop past, orders barked, curses. It occurred to Crispin suddenly that most of these soldiers wouldn't have the least idea what Alixana looked like. He thought again of the Imperial robe, discarded on the island. She wasn't about to be adorned and garbed like an Empress. It wouldn't be so easy to find her: unless she was betrayed. That, of course, was a possibility.

They made no attempt at concealment as they went, were stopped twice. The Urban Prefect's men both times, which was fortunate, for these troops knew the Principal Dancer of the Greens immediately, and they were allowed to continue on their way to her house.

They didn't go to her house. As they neared her street, Shirin leaned out and changed her orders, instructing her bearers to continue east, towards the walls. From here on the danger grew, was real, for she couldn't claim to be going home now, but they were not stopped again. The search hadn't come this far yet, it seemed; it was fanning out from the Imperial Precinct and up from the harbour, house to house, street to street in the dark.