The Sarantine Mosaic (58 page)

The Urban Prefect's men had already begun nosing about the district, Vargos gathered. He began to suspect, after someone deliberately knocked over his ale in one sailor's bar, that they'd learn as little as he was. He wasn't afraid of getting into a fight, but it certainly wouldn't achieve anything if he did. He'd said nothing, paid for the spilled ale and continued on, out into the early-afternoon sunshine.

He was halfway along another narrowing, twisty lane, heading towards the noise of the waterfront, where the masts of ships were leaning in the crisp breeze, when he received an idea, along with a memory from Carullus's army camp.

He would describe it that way, afterwards, to himself and to the others.
Receiving
the thought. As if it had been handed to him from without, startling in its suddenness. He would attribute it to the god, and keep to himself a recollection of a grove in the Aldwood.

He asked directions of two apprentices, endured their smirks at his accent, and duly turned towards the landward walls. It was a long walk through a large city, but the boys had been honest with him and not mischievous,
and in due course Vargos saw the sign of The Courier's Rest. It made sense that it was near the triple walls: the Imperial riders came in that way.

He'd heard about this inn for years. Had been invited by various couriers to come by if ever he was in the City, to share a flask or three with them. When he'd been younger, he'd understood that a drink with certain of the riders would likely be followed by a trip upstairs for some privacy, which never did hold any appeal for him. As he grew older the invitations lost that nuance and suggested only that he was a useful and easygoing companion to those enduring the steady hardship of the road.

He paused on the threshold before going in, his eyes slowly adjusting to the closed shutters and the loss of light. The first part of his new thought hadn't been especially complicated: after the experiences of the morning it was obvious he had a better chance of learning something from someone who knew him than by continuing to ask questions of sullen strangers near the harbour. Vargos had to admit that he wouldn't have answered any such questions himself. Not from the Urban Prefect's men, not from an inquisitive Inici new to the City.

The deeper idea—the thing given to him on the street—was that he was now looking for someone in particular, and thought he might find him here, or receive word of him.

The Courier's Rest was a good-sized inn, but it wasn't crowded at this hour. Some men were having their midday meal late, scattered among the tables, singly and in pairs. The man behind the stone counter looked up at Vargos and nodded politely. This wasn't a caupona; he was nowhere near the harbour. Civility might be cautiously assumed here.

‘Fuck that barbarian up the backside,' said someone in the shadows. ‘What's he think he's doing in here?'

Vargos shivered then, unable to stop himself. Fear, undeniably, but something else as well. He felt in that moment as if the half-world had brushed close to him, forbidden magic, a primitive darkness in the midst of the City, in the crisp, clear day. He would have to pray again, he thought, when this was over.

He knew the voice, remembered it.

‘Buying a drink or a meal if he likes, you drunken shit. What are
you
doing here someone might ask?' The man serving drinks and food glared across the counter top at the shadowed figure.

‘What am
I
doing here? Thish's been my inn ever since I
joined
the Post!'

‘And now you aren't
in
the Post. Notice I haven't booted you out? I've more than half a mind to. So watch your fucking tongue, Tilliticus.'

Vargos had never claimed his thoughts proceeded at any speed. He needed to … work things through. Even after he heard the known voice and then the confirming name, he walked to the counter, ordered a cup of wine, watered it, paid for it, took his first sip, before anything coalesced properly in his mind, the recognized voice merging with the summoned recollection from the army camp. He turned. Offered another silent prayer of thanks, before he spoke.

He was quite sure of himself now, as it happened.

‘Pronobius Tilliticus?' he said quietly.

‘Fuck you, yesh,' said the shadowy figure at the corner table.

Some men turned to glance at the other man, distaste in their expressions.

‘I remember you,' said Vargos. ‘From Sauradia. You're an Imperial Courier. I used to work the road there.'

The other man laughed, too loudly. He was clearly not sober. ‘You 'n me both, then. I used to work the road,
too. On a horse, on a woman. Riding on the road.' He laughed again.

Vargos nodded. He could see more clearly now in the muted light. Tilliticus was alone at his table, two flasks in front of him, no food. ‘You aren't a courier any more?'

He pretty much knew the answer to this already, with a few other things. Holy Jad had sent him here. Or, he
hoped
it was Jad.

‘Dishmished,' said Tilliticus. ‘Five days ago. Last pay, no notice. Dishmished. Like that. Want a drink, barbarian?'

‘I have one,' Vargos said. He felt something cold in himself now: anger, but a different sort than he was accustomed to. ‘Why were you dismissed?' He needed to be sure.

‘Late with a post, though it's none of anyone's fucking business.'

‘Everyone fucking
knows
,' another man said grimly. ‘You might mention fraud at the hospice, throwing away posted letters, and spreading disease while you're at it.'

‘Bugger you,' said Pronobius Tilliticus. ‘As if you never slept with a poxed whore? None of that would've mattered if the Rhodian catamite …' He fell silent.

‘If the Rhodian hadn't what?' Vargos said quietly.

And now he
was
afraid, because it truly was very difficult to understand why the god might have helped him in this way, and try as he might not to do so he kept thinking and thinking now of the Aldwood and the
zubir
and that leather and metal bird Crispin had carried in around his neck and left behind.

The man at the table in the corner made no reply. It didn't matter. Vargos pushed himself off from the bar and went back out the door. He looked around, squinting in the sunlight, and saw one of the Urban Prefect's men at
the end of the street in his brown and black uniform. He went over to him and reported that the person who had hired the soldiers who'd killed three men last night could be found at the table immediately to the right of the door in The Courier's Rest. Vargos identified himself and told the man where he could be found if needed. He watched as the young officer walked into the tavern, and then he headed back through the streets towards the inn.

On the way there he stopped at another chapel—a larger one, with marble and some painted decoration, including the remains of a wall fresco behind the altar of Heladikos aloft, almost entirely rubbed out—and in the dimness and the quiet between services he prayed before the disk and the altar for guidance through and out of the half-world into which he seemed to have walked.

He would not pray to the
zubir
, whatever ancient power of his own people it represented, but within himself Vargos sensed a terrible awareness of it, immense and dark as the forests on the borders of his childhood.

Carullus was still
IN
his room, evidently sleeping off wounds and treatment, when Crispin came downstairs just past midday. He felt muzzy-headed and disoriented himself, and not only from the wine he'd had last night. In fact, the wine was the least of his azictions. He tried to put his aching head around some of the things that had happened in the two palaces and the Sanctuary and in the street afterwards, and then to come to terms with who had been in his room—on his bed—when he'd stumbled back at dawn. The conjured image of Styliane Daleina, beautiful as an enamelled icon, only made him feel more unsettled.

He did what he'd always done at such times as this, back home. He went to the baths.

The innkeeper, eyeing Crispin's unshaven scowl with a knowing expression, was able to offer a suggestion. Crispin looked about for Vargos who was also— unaccountably—absent. He shrugged, ill-tempered and querulous, and went out alone, blinking and squinting, into the irritating brightness of the autumn day.

Or, not really alone. Two of Carullus's soldiers came with him, swords in scabbards. Imperial orders from the night before. He was to have a guard now. Someone wanted him dead. Not the other mosaicist, not the lady, if he could believe her. He
did
believe her, but was aware that he had no very good reason for doing so.

On the way, passing the windowless façade of a holy retreat for women, he thought of Kasia—and then backed away from that as well. Not today. He wasn't deciding anything significant today. She needed clothing, though, he knew that much. Considered sending one of the soldiers to the market to buy her some apparel while he bathed, and his first faint smile of the day came with the image of one of Carullus's men judiciously selecting among women's undergarments in the street market.

He did get a minor, useful idea, however, and at the baths he asked for paper and a stylus. He sent a messenger running to the Imperial Precinct with a note for the eunuchs of the Chancellor's office. The clever men who had shaved and attired him last night would be more than adequate to choosing clothing for a young woman newly arrived in the City. Crispin entreated their aid. On further reflection, he set a budget for the purchases.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON
, Kasia—dealing with some unexpected discoveries of her own—would find herself accosted at the inn by a swirling, scented coterie of eunuchs from the Imperial Precinct and spirited away by them for the surprisingly involved task of acquiring proper
garb for life in Sarantium. They were amusing and solicitous, clearly enjoying the exercise and their own wittily obscene disagreements over what was suitable for her. Kasia found herself flushed and even laughing during the escapade. None of them asked what her life in Sarantium was to
be
, which was a relief, because she didn't know.

IN THE BATHS
,
CRISPIN
had himself oiled, massaged, scraped down, and then subsided blissfully into the soothing, fragrant hot pool. There were others there, talking quietly. The familiar drone of murmurous voices almost lulled him back to sleep. He revived with a cool immersion in the adjacent pool, then made his way, wrapped in a white sheet like a spectral figure, towards the steam room, where half a dozen similarly shrouded men could be seen through the mist, lounging on marble benches, when he opened the door.

Someone shifted wordlessly to make room for him. Someone else gestured vaguely, and the naked attendant poured another ewer of water over the hot stones. With a sizzling sound, steam rose up to enclose the small chamber even more densely. Crispin mentally declined the associations with a fogbound morning in Sauradia and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes.

The conversation around him was sporadic and desultory. Men seldom spoke with much energy amid the enveloping heat of the steam. It was easier to drift, eyes closed, into reverie. He heard bodies shift and rise, others enter and subside as cooler air came briefly in with the opening door and then the heat returned. His body was slick with perspiration, languorous with an indolent calm. Bathhouses such as this, he decided, were among the defining achievements of modern civilization.

In fact, he thought dreamily, the mist here had
nothing
in common with the chill, half-worldly fog of
that distant wilderness in Sauradia. He heard the hiss of steam again as someone poured more water, and he smiled to himself. He was in Sarantium, eye of the world, and much had already begun.

‘I should be greatly interested to know your views on the indivisibility of the nature of Jad,' someone murmured. Crispin didn't even open his eyes. He'd been told about this sort of thing. The Sarantines were said to be passionate about three subjects: the chariots, dances and pantomimes, and an endless debating about religion. Fruit-sellers would harangue him, Carullus had cautioned, regarding the implications of a bearded or a beardless Jad; sandalmakers would propound firm and fierce opinions on the latest Patriarchal Pronouncement about Heladikos; a whore would want his views on the status of icons of the Blessed Victims before deigning to undress.

He wasn't surprised, therefore, to hear well-bred men in a steam room discoursing this way. What did surprise him was his ankle being nudged by a foot and the same voice adding, ‘It is unwise, actually, to fall asleep in the steam.'

Crispin opened his eyes.

He was alone in the swirling mist with one other person. The question about the god had been addressed to him.