The Sarantine Mosaic (43 page)

The eunuch smiled briefly. ‘Hardly as you are.' One of the others sniffed audibly, with amusement.

‘Then I must bathe and change my clothing. I have been in the Hippodrome all day.'

‘This is known. It is unlikely that any clothing you have brought will be adequate to a formal court appearance. You are here by virtue of the Chancellor's request. Gesius therefore assumes responsibility for you before the Emperor. We will attend to your appearance. Come.'

He went. It was why he was here.

Kasia watched from the window, biting her lip. The impulse to call after him was very strong, though she could not have said why. A premonition. Something from the half-world? Shadows. When Carullus and Vargos came upstairs she told them about the afternoon visitor, about that last, strangely specific question he'd asked. Carullus swore, deepening her fears.

‘Nothing for it,' he said, after a moment. ‘No way to tell him now. There's a trap of some kind, but there would have to be, at that court. He has quick wits, Jad knows it. Let us hope he keeps them about him.'

‘I must go,' Vargos said, after a silence. ‘Sundown.'

Carullus looked at him, gave Kasia a shrewd glance, and then led them both briskly out into the crowded, now-darkening streets to a good-sized sanctuary some distance back towards the triple walls. Among a great many people in the space before the altar and the sun disk on the wall behind it they heard the sundown rites chanted by a wiry, dark-bearded cleric. Kasia stood and knelt and stood and knelt between the two men and tried not to think about the
zubir
, or Caius Crispus, or about all the people packed so closely around her here, and in the City.

Afterwards, they dined at a tavern not far away. Crowds again. There were many soldiers. Carullus greeted and was saluted by a number of them when they entered, but then, still being solicitous, chose a booth at the very back, away
from the noise. He had her sit with her back to the tumult, so she wouldn't even have to look at anyone but Vargos or himself. He ordered food and wine for the three of them, jesting easily with the server. He had lost a great deal of money on one particular race in the afternoon, Kasia gathered. It didn't seem to have subdued him very much. He was not, she had come to realize, a man easily subdued.

He felt outraged beyond words, violated and assaulted, undermined in his very sense of who he was. He had shouted in profane rage, lashed out in wild fury, sending fountains of water splashing from the bath, soaking a number of them.

They had laughed. And given the wide swath already cut from him while he'd lain back at his ease, eyes innocently closed in the wonderfully warm, scented water, Crispin had had no real choice any more. When he'd finished snarling and swearing and vowing obscenely violent acts that appeared only to amuse them further, he'd had to let them complete what they'd begun—or look like a crazed madman.

They finished shaving off his beard.

It seemed that the fashion at the court of Valerius and Alixana was for smooth-cheeked men. Barbarians, hinterland soldiers, provincials who couldn't know better, wore facial hair, the eunuch wielding the scissors and then the gleaming razor said, making a moue of ineffable distaste. They looked like bears, goats, bison, other beasts, he opined.

‘What do you know about bison?' Crispin had rasped bitterly.

‘Nothing in the least! Thanks be to holy Jad in his mercy!' the eunuch with the razor had replied fervently, making the sign of the sun disk with the blade, eliciting laughter from his fellows.

Men at court, he explained patiently, manipulating the razor with precision as he spoke, had a duty to the god and the Emperor to appear as civilized as they could. For a red-headed man to wear a beard, he'd added firmly, was as much a provocation, a sign of ill-breeding, as … as breaking wind during the sunrise invocation in the Imperial Chapel.

Waiting, some time later, in an antechamber of the Attenine Palace, clad in silk for only the second time in his life, with soft, close-fitting leather shoes and a short, dark green cloak pinned to his shoulder over the long, dove grey tunic bordered in textured black, Crispin couldn't stop touching his own face. His hand kept wandering up of its own accord. They had held up a mirror for him in the bath: a splendid one, ivory-handled, a design of grapes and leaves etched on the silver back, the glass wonderfully true, next to no distortion.

A stranger had gazed back at him, wet and pale and angry-looking. Smooth-cheeked as a child. He'd had the beard since before he met Ilandra. Over a decade now. He hardly knew or remembered the oddly vulnerable, truculent, square-chinned person he encountered in the glass. His eyes showed very blue. His mouth—his entire face—felt unguarded and exposed. He'd essayed a brief, testing smile and stopped quickly. It did not look or feel like his own face. He'd been … altered. He wasn't
himself
. Not a secure feeling, as he prepared to be presented at the most intricate, dangerous court in the world, bearing a false name and a secret message.

Waiting, he was still angry, taking a kind of refuge from mounting anxiety in that. He knew the Chancellor's officials had been acting with undeniable goodwill and a good-humoured tolerance for his water-spraying fit of temper. The eunuchs
wanted
him to make a good impression. It reflected upon them, he'd been made to
understand. Gesius's signature had summoned him and smoothed his way here on the road. He stood now in this sumptuous, candlelit antechamber, hearing the sounds of the court beginning to enter the throne room through doors on the far side, and he was—in some complex way—a representative of the Chancellor, though he'd never even seen the man.

One arrived in the Imperial Precinct, Crispin belatedly realized, already aligned in some fashion, even before the first words or genuflections took place. They had told him about the genuflections. The instructions were precise and he'd been made to rehearse them. Against his will, he'd felt his heart beginning to pound, doing so, and that feeling resumed now as he heard the dignitaries of Valerius II's court on the other side of the magnificent silver doors. There was rising and falling laughter, a lightly murmurous flow of talk. They would be in a good humour after a festival day and a banquet.

He rubbed at his naked chin again. The smoothness was appalling, unsettling. As if a shaven, silk-clad, scented Sarantine courtier were standing in his body, half a world away from home. He felt dislodged from the idea of himself he'd built up over the years.

And that sensation—this imposed change of appearance and identity—probably had much to do with what followed, he later decided.

None of it was planned. He knew that much. He was simply a reckless, contrary man. His mother had always said so, his wife, his friends. He'd given up trying to deny it long ago. They used to laugh at him when he did, so he'd stopped.

After the protracted wait, watching the blue moon rise across an interior courtyard window, events happened quickly when they did begin. The silver doors swung open. Crispin and the Chancellor's representatives
turned quickly. Two guardsmen—enormously tall, in gleaming silver tunics—stepped from within the throne room. Crispin caught a glimpse beyond them of movement and colour. There was a drifting fragrance of perfume: frankincense. He heard music, then that—and the shifting movements—stopped. A man appeared behind the guards, clad in crimson and white, carrying a ceremonial staff. One of the eunuchs nodded to this man, and then looked at Crispin. He smiled—a generous thing to do in that moment—and murmured, ‘You look entirely suitable. You are benevolently awaited. Jad be with you.'

Crispin stepped forward hesitantly to stand beside the heraldic figure in the doorway. The man looked over at him indifferently. ‘Martinian of Varena, is it?' he asked.

It really
wasn't
planned.

The thought was in his mind even as he spoke that he might die for this. He rubbed his too-smooth chin. ‘No,' he said, calmly enough. ‘My name is Caius Crispus. Of Varena, though, yes.'

The herald's startled expression might actually have been comical had the situation been even slightly different. One of the guards shifted slightly beside Crispin, but made no other movement, not even turning his head. ‘Fuck yourself with a sword!' the herald whispered in the elegant accents of the eastern aristocracy. ‘You think I'm announcing any name other than the one on the list? You do what you want in there.'

And, stepping forward into the room, he thumped once on the floor with his staff. The chattering of the courtiers had already stopped. They'd aligned themselves, waiting, creating a pathway into the room.

‘Martinian of Varena!'
the herald declared, his voice resonant and strong, the name ringing in the domed chamber.

Crispin stepped forward, his head whirling, aware of new scents and a myriad of colours but not really seeing clearly yet. He took the prescribed three steps, knelt, lowered his forehead to the floor. Waited, counting ten to himself. Rose. Three more steps towards the man sitting on the candlelit shimmer of gold that was a throne. Knelt again, lowered his head again to touch the cool stone mosaics of the floor. Counted, trying to slow his racing heart. Rose. Three more steps, and a third time he knelt and abased himself.

This last time he stayed that way, as instructed, about ten paces from the Imperial throne and the second throne beside it where a woman sat in a dazzle of jewellery. He didn't look up. He heard a mildly curious murmuring from the assembled courtiers, come from their feast to see a new Rhodian at court. Rhodians were of interest, still. There was a quip, a quicksilver ripple of feminine laughter, then silence.

Into which a papery thin, very clear voice spoke. ‘Be welcome to the Imperial Court of Sarantium, artisan. On behalf of the Glorious Emperor and the Empress Alixana I give you leave to rise, Martinian of Varena.'

This would be Gesius, Crispin knew. The Chancellor. His patron, if he had one. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. And remained utterly motionless, his forehead touching the floor.

There was a pause. Someone giggled.

‘You have been granted permission to rise,' the thin, dry voice repeated.

Crispin thought of the
zubir
in the wood. And then of Linon, the bird—the soul—who had spoken in his mind to him, if only for a little while. He had wanted to die, he remembered, when Ilandra died.

He said, not looking up, but as clearly as he could, ‘I dare not, my lord.'

A rustle, of voices, of clothing, like leaves across the floor. He was aware of the mingled scents, the coolness of the mosaic, no music now. His mouth was dry.

‘You propose to remain prostrate forever?' Gesius's voice betrayed a hint of asperity.

‘No, good my lord. Only until I am granted the privilege of standing before the Emperor in my own name. Else I am a deceiver and deserve to die.'

That stilled them.

The Chancellor appeared to be momentarily taken aback. The voice that next spoke was trained, exquisite, and a woman's. Afterwards, Crispin would remember that he shivered, hearing her for the first time. She said, ‘If all who deceived in this room were to die, there would be none left to advise or amuse us, I fear.'

It was remarkable, really, how a silence and a silence could be so different. The woman—and he knew this was Alixana and that this voice would be in his head now, forever—went on, after a gauged pause, ‘You would rather be named Caius Crispus, I take it? The artisan young enough to travel when your summoned colleague deemed himself too frail to make the journey to us?'

Crispin's breath went from him, as if he'd been hit in the stomach. They knew. They
knew
. How, he had no idea. There were implications to this, a frightening number of them, but he had no chance to work it through. He fought for control, forehead touching the floor.

‘The Emperor and Empress know the hearts and souls of men,' he managed, finally. ‘I have indeed come in my partner's stead, to offer what assistance my meagre skills might avail the Emperor. I will stand to my own name, as the Empress has honoured me by speaking it, or accept what punishment is due my presumption.'

‘Let us be extremely clear. You are
not
Martinian of Varena?' A new voice, patrician and sharp, from near the two thrones.

Carullus had spent some of the time on the last stages of their journey telling what he knew of this court. Crispin was almost certain this would be Faustinus, the Master of Offices. Gesius's rival, probably the most powerful man here—after the one on the throne.

The one on the throne had said nothing at all yet.

‘It seems one of your couriers failed to ensure proper delivery of an Imperial summons, Faustinus,' said Gesius in his bone-dry voice.

‘It rather seems,' said the other man, ‘that the Chancellor's eunuchs failed to ensure that a man being formally presented at court was who he purported to be. This is dangerous. Why did you have yourself announced as Martinian, artisan? That was a deception.'