The Sarantine Mosaic (54 page)

Astorgus himself, in a grim, choleric mood, had gone off to meet with the Urban Prefect's officers. Kyros would not have wanted to be the man charged with dealing with the Blues' factionarius just now.

The faction's principal surgeon—a brisk, bearded Kindath—had been roused to tend the wounded soldier, whose name was Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian. His wounds turned out to be showy but not dangerous. The man had endured their cleansing and bandaging without expression, drinking wine with his free hand as the surgeon treated his shoulder. He had fought a running battle alone against six men along the dark laneway, allowing Scortius and the Rhodian to reach the faction gates.
Carullus was still angry that the attackers had all been slain, Kyros gathered. No easy way to find out who'd hired them now.

Released by the doctor to the dinner table, the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian showed little sign of diminished appetite. Neither wounds nor anger diverted his attention from the bowls and plates in front of him. He had lost two of his soldiers tonight, had killed two men himself, but Kyros guessed that a military man would have to get used to that, and carry on, or he'd go mad. It was those at home who sometimes went mad, as Kyros's mother's sister had three years ago, when her son was killed in the Bassanid siege of Asen, near Eubulus. Kyros's mother remained certain it was grief that had rendered her vulnerable to the plague when it came the next year. His aunt had been one of the first to die. Asen had been returned by the Bassanids the following spring in the treaty that bought peace on the eastern borders, making the siege and the deaths even more pointless. Cities were always being taken and ceded back on both sides of the shifting border.

People didn't come back to life, though, even if a city was returned. You carried on, as this officer was, hungrily sponging up fish soup with a thick crust of bread. What else could one do? Curse the god, tear one's garments, retreat like a Holy Fool to some chapel or a rock in the desert or mountains? That last was possible, Kyros supposed, but he had discovered, since coming to this kitchen, that he had a hunger—a taste, you might say— for the gifts and dangers of the world. He might never be a charioteer, an animal trainer, a soldier—he would drag a bad foot with him through all his days—but there was a life to be lived, nonetheless. A life in the world.

And just now Scortius, First of the Blues, to whose glory a silver statue had been promised tonight for the
Hippodrome spina, was glancing up, soup spoon in hand, and murmuring to Strumosus, ‘What can I say, my friend? The soup is worthy of the banquet hall of the god.'

‘It is,' echoed the red-haired Rhodian beside him. ‘It is wonderful.' His expression was rapt, as revealing as Strumosus had said faces could be at such times.

Strumosus, entirely relaxed now, sitting at the head of the table pouring wine for his three guests, had benignly tilted his head sideways. He said: ‘Young Kyros over there attended to it. He has the makings of a cook.'

Two sentences. Simple words. Kyros feared he might weep for joy and pride. He did not, of course. He wasn't a child, after all. He did blush, unfortunately, and lower his head before all the approving smiles. And then he began waiting ardently for the moment, released to the privacy of his cot in the apprentices' room, when he could reclaim—over and again—that miraculous sequence of words and the expressions that had followed. Scortius had said. Then the Rhodian had added. Then Strumosus had said …

Kyros and Rasic were given the next day to themselves: an unexpected holiday, a reward for working all night. Rasic went whistling off to the harbour to buy a woman in a caupona. Kyros used the free time to go to his parents' apartment down in the overcrowded, pungent warrens of the Hippodrome where he'd grown up. He told them, shyly, about what had been said the night before. His father, a man of few words, had touched his son's shoulder with a scarred, bitten hand before going off to feed his beasts. His mother, rather less reserved, had screamed.

Then she had bustled out of their tiny apartment to tell all her friends, before buying and lighting an entire row of thanksgiving candles in the Hippodrome's own
chapel. For once, Kyros didn't think she was being excessive.

The makings of a cook.

Strumosus
had said that!

They didn't end up going to bed that night. There was food fit for the god's palaces behind the sun and wine to equal it in the blessedly warm, firelit kitchen. They finished with an herbal tea, just before sunrise, that reminded Crispin of the one Zoticus had served him before his journey had begun—which reminded him of Linon, and then home, which made him think, again, of how far away he was. Among strangers, but less so after tonight, it felt. He sipped the hot tea and allowed the faint dizziness of extreme fatigue to wash over him, a sense of distance, of words and movements drifting towards his awareness from far away.

Scortius had gone out to the stables to check on his best horse. Now he came back, rubbing his hands together after the pre-dawn chill of the air, and took the bench next to Crispin again. A calm man, alert and unassuming, for all his wealth and renown. A generous spirit. He'd run madly in the darkness to warn them of danger. That said something.

Crispin looked at Carullus across the stone table. Not a truth to call this man a stranger now, really. Among other things, he knew the big soldier well enough to realize he was hiding discomfort. The wounds weren't dangerous, they'd been assured by the surgeon, but they had to be hurting now, and Carullus would carry new scars from both of them. He had also lost men he'd known a long time tonight. Might even be blaming himself for that; Crispin wasn't sure.

They had no idea who'd paid for the assault. Soldiers on leave were not particularly expensive to hire in the
City, it seemed. It required only some determination to arrange an abduction or even a killing. A runner had been sent with a message from Carullus to his surviving men—the ones who had taken the architect home would be expecting them at the inn. It would be a hard message for them to hear, Crispin thought. Carullus, a commander, had lost two men in his charge, but the soldiers would have lost companions. There was a difference.

The Urban Prefect's officer had been polite and formal with Crispin when he'd arrived with the factionarius. They'd spoken privately in the large room where the banquet had taken place. The man had not probed deeply, and Crispin had realized that the officer wasn't certain he
wanted
to know too much about this murder attempt. Intuitively, Crispin had said nothing about the mosaicist dismissed by the Emperor or the aristocratic lady who might have felt herself diminished by this—or embarrassed by a reference to a necklace she wore. Both things had happened in public: the man would learn of them if he wanted to.

Would someone
kill
for such things?

The Emperor had refused to let his wife put on the necklace when it came.

There were threads to be untangled and examined here, but they were not about to reveal themselves when his brain was weary and vague with wine and an overwhelming night.

When the grey rumour of dawn showed in the east, they left the kitchen and went across the courtyard to join the administration and employees of the Blues in chapel for the faction's early-morning invocation. Crispin discovered a genuine gratitude, almost a feeling of piety within himself as he chanted the antiphonal responses: for his life preserved, again; for the dome given to him
tonight; for the friend Carullus was, and the friend the charioteer might become; for having survived an entry into court, questions in an Empress's rooms, and swords in the night.

And finally—because the small graces of life really did matter to him—for the taste of a shrimp-stuffed whitefish in a sauce like a waking dream.

Scortius didn't bother going home. He bade them good day outside the chapel and then went off to sleep in a room they reserved for him in the compound. The sun was just coming up. A small party of Blues escorted Crispin and Carullus to their inn as the bells summoning Sarantines to later morning prayers in other chapels began all around them.

The clouds were gone, swept away south; the day promised to be cold and bright. The City was stirring as they walked, rousing itself to the resumption of the mundane at the end of a festival. There was debris in the streets but less than he'd expected: workers had been busy in the night. Crispin saw men and women walking to chapels, apprentices running errands, a food market noisily opening up, shops and stalls displaying their wares under colonnades. Slaves and children hurried past carrying water and loaves of bread. There were lines of people already outside food stands, snatching the first meal of the day. A grey-bearded Holy Fool in a tattered and stained yellow robe was shuffling barefoot towards what was probably his usual station to harangue those who were not at prayer.

They reached the inn. Their escorts doubled back to the compound. Crispin and Carullus walked in. The common room was open, a fire going, a handful of people eating inside. The two men passed by that doorway and went up the stairs, moving slowly now.

‘Speak later?' Carullus mumbled.

‘Of course. You're all right?' Crispin asked.

The soldier grunted wearily and unlocked the door to his room.

Crispin nodded his head, though the other man had already closed the door. He took out his key and headed for his own room farther down the hall. It seemed to take an oddly long time to get there. Noises from the street drifted up. Bells still ringing. It was morning, after all. He tried to remember the last time he'd stayed awake an entire night. He fumbled at the lock. It took some concentration but he managed to open the door. The shutters were blessedly closed against the morning, though bands of sunlight penetrated through the slats, stippling the darkness.

He dropped the key on the small table by the door and stumbled towards his bed, half asleep already. Then he realized—too late to check his motion—that there was someone in the room, on the bed, watching him. And then, in the bands of muted light, he saw the naked blade come up.

Some time earlier, still in the beclouded dark of night, a waiting soldier has handed the Emperor of Sarantium a fur-lined cloak as he emerges into the windy cold from the small chapel and the stone tunnel that leads through the Imperial Precinct walls.

The Emperor, who can remember—though only with an effort now—walking in only a short tunic and torn, sodden boots through a winter the first time he came south from Trakesia, at his uncle's behest, is grateful for the warmth. It is a short enough walk back to the Traversite Palace, but his personal immunity is to fatigue, not cold.

I am growing old
, he thinks, not for the first time. He has no heir. Not for want of effort, or medical advice, or
invocations of aid from the god and the half-world, both. It would be good to have a son, he thinks, but has been reconciled for some time now to not having one. His uncle passed the throne to him: there is some precedent in the family, at any rate. Unfortunately, his sisters' sons are feckless nonentities and all four of them remain in Trakesia, at his very firm instruction.

Not that they would stir any sort of insurrection. To do such a thing requires courage and initiative and none of them has either. They might serve as figureheads, though, for someone else's ambition—and the god knows there is enough hunger for power in Sarantium. He could have them killed, but he has judged that unnecessary.

The Emperor shivers, crossing the gardens in the night wind. It is only the chill and damp. He is not fearful, at all. He has only been afraid once in his adult life that he can remember: during the rioting two years ago, in the moment he learned that the Blues and Greens had joined together, side by side in the Hippodrome and in the burning streets. That had been too unexpected a development, too far outside the predictable, the
rational
. He was—and is—a man who relies on orderly conduct to ground his existence and his thinking. Something so unlikely as the factions joining with each other had rendered him vulnerable, unmoored, like a ship with an anchor ripped free in a storm.