The Sarantine Mosaic (145 page)

A
n old man in a chapel doorway, not far from the walls of Varena. Once he would have been engaged in considering the present colour of those walls, somewhere between honey and ochre, pondering ways of using glass and stone and light to accomplish that hue as it appeared in this particular late-spring sunshine. Not any more. Now, he is content to simply enjoy the day, the afternoon. He is aware, in the way that sometimes creeps up on the aged, that there are no assurances of another spring.

He is virtually alone here, only a few other men about, somewhere in the yard or in the unused old chapel adjacent to the expanded sanctuary. The sanctuary is not in use now, either, though a king is buried here. Since an assassination attempt in the autumn, the clerics have refused to conduct services, or even remain in their dormitory, despite substantial pressure from those currently governing in the palace. The man in the doorway has views on this, but for the moment he simply enjoys the quiet as he waits for someone to arrive. He has been coming here for some days now, feeling more impatient than an old man really should, he tells himself, if the lessons of a long life had been properly absorbed.

He tilts the stool on which he sits, leans back against the wood of the doorway (an old habit), and slides forward the remarkably shapeless hat he wears. He is irrationally fond of the hat, enduring all jests and gibes
it provokes with perfect equanimity. For one thing, the headgear—absurd even when new—saved his life almost fifteen years ago when an apprentice, fearful in a darkened chapel at evening, thought he was a thief approaching without a light. The blow from a staff that the young fellow (broad-shouldered, even back then) had intended to bring crashing down on an intruder's head was averted at the last instant when the hat was seen and known.

Martinian of Varena, at his ease in the spring light, looks off down the road just before allowing himself to fall asleep.

HE SAW THAT SAME
apprentice coming. Or, more accurately, these long years later, he saw his one-time apprentice, now his colleague and partner and awaited friend, Caius Crispus, approaching along the path leading to the wide, low wooden gate that fenced in the sanctuary yard and its graves.

‘Rot you, Crispin,' he said mildly.
‘Just
as I was about to nap.' Then he considered the fact that he was quite alone, that no one was listening to him, and he allowed himself an honest response, quickly tilting the stool back forward, aware of the sudden hard beating of his heart.

He felt wonder, anticipation, very great happiness.

Watching, shadowed in the doorway, he saw Crispin—hair and beard shorter than when he'd left, but not otherwise discernibly altered—unhook the gate latch and enter the yard. Martinian lifted his voice and called to the other men waiting. They weren't apprentices or artisans: no work was being done here now. Two of those men came striding quickly around the corner of the building. Martinian pointed towards the gate.

‘There he is. Finally. I couldn't tell you if he's in a temper, but it is generally safer to assume as much.'

Both men swore, much as he had, though with more genuine feeling, and started forward. They had been in Varena nearly two weeks, waiting with increasing irritation. Martinian was the one who had suggested the odds were good that the traveller, when he did come, would stop at this chapel outside the walls. He is pleased to have been correct, though not happy about what the other man will find here.

In his doorway, he watched two strangers go forward, the first souls to greet a traveller on his return from far away. Both of them are easterners, ironically. One is an Imperial Courier, the other an officer in the army of Sarantium. The army that was supposed to have been invading this spring and wasn't, now.

That being the largest change of all.

SOME TIME LATER
, after the two Sarantines had formally conveyed whatever messages they had lingered to deliver and had gone away, along with the soldiers who had been here on guard with them, Martinian decided that Crispin had been sitting alone by the gate long enough, whatever the tidings had been. He rose slowly and walked forward, nursing the usual ache in his hip.

Crispin had his back to him, seemed immersed in the documents he'd been given. It was not good to surprise a man, Martinian had always felt, so he called the other's name while still a distance away.

‘I saw your hat,' Crispin said, not looking up. ‘I only came home to burn it, you understand.'

Martinian walked up to him.

Crispin, sitting on the large moss-covered boulder he'd always liked, looked over at him. His eyes were bright, remembered. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘I didn't think to find you here.'

Martinian had also intended some kind of jest, but found himself incapable of one, just then. Instead, he bent forward, wordlessly, and kissed the younger man on the forehead, in benediction. Crispin stood up, and put his arms around him and they embraced.

‘My mother?' the younger man asked, when they stepped back. His voice was gruff.

‘Is well. Awaiting you.'

‘How did you all … ? Oh. The courier. So you knew I was on the way?'

Martinian nodded. ‘They arrived some time ago.'

‘I had a slower boat. Walked from Mylasia.'

‘Still hate horses?'

Crispin hesitated. ‘Riding them.' He looked at Martinian. His eyebrows met when he frowned; Martinian remembered that. The older man was trying to sort out what else he was seeing in the traveller's face. Differences, but hard to pin down.

Crispin said, ‘They brought the tidings from Sarantium? About the changes?'

Martinian nodded. ‘You'll tell me more?'

‘What I know.'

‘You are … all right?' A ridiculous question, but in some ways the only one that mattered.

Crispin hesitated again. ‘Mostly. A great deal happened.'

‘Of course. Your work … it went well?'

Another pause. As if they were fumbling their way back towards easiness. ‘It went very well, but …' Crispin sat down on the rock again. ‘It is coming down. Along with others, everywhere.'

‘What?'

‘The new Emperor has … beliefs about renderings of Jad.'

‘Impossible. You must be wrong. That—'

Martinian stopped.

Crispin said, ‘I wish I was. Our work will be coming down here, too, I suspect. We'll be subject to Sarantine edicts, if all goes as the Empress intends.'

The Empress. They knew about this. A miracle of the god, some had already named it. Martinian thought there might be more earthly explanations. ‘Gisel?'

‘Gisel. You heard?'

‘Word came from other couriers on the same ship.'

Martinian sat down himself now, on the facing rock. So many times, they'd sat here together, or on the tree stumps beyond the gate.

Crispin looked over his shoulder at the sanctuary. ‘We're going to lose this. What we did here.'

Martinian cleared his throat. Something needed to be said. ‘Some of it has been lost, already.'

‘So soon? I didn't think …'

‘Not for that reason. They … scraped down Heladikos in the spring.'

Crispin said nothing. Martinian remembered this expression, too, however.

‘Eudric was trying to earn support from the Patriarch in Rhodias, with the invasion looming. Backing away from the heresy of the Antae.'

Heladikos and his torch had been the very last thing Crispin had done before he'd gone away. The younger man sat very still. Martinian was trying to read him, see what had changed, what had not. It felt odd not to understand Crispin intuitively, after so many years. People went away and they changed; hard on those who remained behind.

More sorrow
and
more life, Martinian thought. Both things. The documents from the courier were still clutched between the other man's large hands.

Crispin said, ‘Did it work? The … backing away?'

Martinian shook his head. ‘No. They had shed blood in a chapel, with Patriarchal envoys present and at risk.
Eudric has a long way to go to win any kindness there. And he earned a good deal of outrage in Varena when our tesserae came down. The Antae saw it as disrespectful to Hildric. Sacking his chapel, in a way.'

Crispin laughed softly. Martinian tried to remember the last time he'd heard his friend laugh in the year before he'd gone away. ‘Poor Eudric. Full circle, that. The Antae protesting destruction in a holy place in Batiara.'

Martinian smiled a little. ‘I said that too.' His turn to hesitate. He had expected an angrier reaction. He changed the ground a little. ‘It does look as if there will be no attack now. Is that so?'

Crispin nodded. ‘Not this year, at least. The army is north and east, against Bassania. We'll become a province of Sarantium, if negotiations hold.'

Martinian shook his head slowly. He took off his hat, looked at it, put it back on his balding head. No attack.

Every man who could walk had been engaged in reinforcing the walls of Varena all winter. They'd been making weapons, drilling with them, storing food and water. There hadn't been much food to store, after a poor harvest.

He was afraid he might cry. ‘I didn't think to live so long.'

The other man looked at him. ‘How are you?'

An attempt at a shrug. ‘Well enough. My hands. My hip, sometimes. Mostly water in my wine, now.'

Crispin made a face. ‘Me too. Carissa?'

‘Is very well. Anxious to see you. Is probably with your mother now.'

‘We should go, then. I was only stopping to see … the finished work here. There's little point now.'

‘No,' said Martinian. He looked at the papers. ‘What … what did they bring you?'

Crispin hesitated again. He seemed to measure his words and thoughts more, Martinian thought. Did they teach that in the east?

Without speaking, the other man simply handed over the thick sheaf of documents. Martinian took them and read. He wouldn't have denied a consuming curiosity: some men had waited here a long time to deliver whatever these were.

He saw what these were. Colour left his face as he turned each signed and sealed deed and document of title. He went back and counted. Five of them, six, seven. Then the enumeration of other items and a listing of where they could be found and claimed. He found it difficult to breathe.

‘We seem to be wealthy,' Crispin said mildly.

Martinian looked up at him. Crispin was gazing off towards the forest, east. What he'd said was an understatement, prodigiously so. And the ‘we' was a great courtesy.

The papers delivered by the Imperial Courier attested, one by one by one, to lands all over Batiara, and moneys and moveable goods, now owned by or belonging to one Caius Crispus, artisan, of Varena.

The last page was a personal note. Martinian glanced up for permission. Crispin, looking back at him now, nodded. It was brief. Written in Sarantine. It read:

We did promise certain things if your journey bore fruit for us. Our beloved father taught us to keep royal promises and the god enjoins us to do so. Changes along the way do not change the truth of things. These are not gifts, but earned. There is another item, one we discussed in Varena as you will recall. It is not included among these, remaining yours to consider and choose for yourself—or not. The other conveyance sent herewith is, we trust, further evidence of our appreciation.

It was signed, ‘Gisel, Empress of Sarantium.'

‘Jad's blood and eyes and bones, what did you do there, Crispin?'

‘She thinks I made her Empress,' the other man said.

Martinian could only stare.

Crispin's tone was odd, eerily detached.

Martinian realized, suddenly, that it was going to take a great deal of time to understand what had happened to his friend in the east. There really were changes here. One didn't sail to Sarantium without that happening, he thought. He felt a chill.

‘What is the … unincluded item she mentions?'

‘A wife.' Crispin's voice was flat. A chill, bleak tone, remembered from the year before.

Martinian cleared his throat. ‘I see. And the “other conveyance”?'

Crispin looked up. Seemed to make an effort to bestir himself. ‘I don't know. There are a lot of keys in here.' He held up a heavy leather purse. ‘The soldier said they'd orders to be on guard until I came, then it was my own look-out.'

‘Oh. The trunks in the old chapel, then. There are at least twenty of them.'

They went to see.

Treasure? Martinian wondered. Gold coins and precious gems?

It wasn't that. As Crispin turned numbered keys in numbered locks, one after another, and opened trunk lids in the gentle light of the old, little-used chapel adjacent to the expanded sanctuary, Martinian of Varena, who had never travelled to Sarantium or even out of his own beloved peninsula, found himself beginning to weep, ashamed of the weakness of an old man.