The Emperor reads no mystic certainties of any kind in the late-night flames, sitting at the woman’s feet, one hand touching her instep and the jewelled slipper. He says, ‘Never leave me.’
‘Wherever would I go?’ she murmurs after a moment, trying to keep the tone light and just failing.
He looks up. ‘Never leave me,’ he says again, the grey eyes on hers this time.
He can do this to her, take breath from chest and throat. A constriction of great need. After all these years.
‘Not in life,’ she replies.
CHAPTER IX
Kasia awakened from a dream at dawn. She lay in bed, confused, half asleep, and only gradually became aware that there were bells pealing outside. There had been no Jaddite bells at home where the gods were found in the black forest or by rivers or in the grainfields, assuaged by blood. These sanctuary bells were a part of city life. She was in Sarantium. Half a million people, Carullus had said. He’d said she’d get used to the crowds, learn to sleep through the bells if she chose.
The dream had been of her waterfall at home, in summer. She’d been sitting on a bank of the pool below the falls, shaded by leafy trees that bent low over the water. There had been a man with her, which had never been so at home, in life.
She couldn’t see his face in the dream.
The bells continued, summoning Sarantium to prayer. Jad of the Sun was riding up in his chariot. All who sought the god’s protection in life and his intercession after death should be rising with him, making their way, even now, to the chapels and sanctuaries.
Kasia lay very still, thinking about her dream. She felt strange, unsettled; something nagged at her awareness. Then she remembered: the men had not come home last night, or not before she’d fallen asleep. And there had been that disquieting visit from the court mosaicist. An edgy man, afraid. She’d not been able to warn Crispin about him before he was taken off to the court. Carullus had assured her it didn’t matter, that the Rhodian could handle himself in the Imperial Precinct, that he’d have protectors there.
Kasia knew that the very idea of a protector meant that there might be someone you needed to be protected from, but she hadn’t said that. She and Carullus and Vargos had had their dinner together and then come back here through the very wild streets for a quiet glass of wine. Kasia knew the tribune would have greatly enjoyed strolling through the last night of the Dykania with a flask of ale in his hand, that he was staying inside for her. She was grateful for his kindness, his easy way with a story. Several stories. He made her smile and grinned when he did. He had knocked Crispin unconscious with an iron helmet the first moment they met. Vargos had been beaten very badly by his men. Much had changed in a short time.
Later, from the festive chaos outside, a brisk messenger had entered looking for the soldiers: they were to go to the Imperial Precinct, wait by the Bronze Gates—or wherever they were ordered when they got there—and escort the Rhodian mosaicist, Caius Crispus of Varena, home when he was dismissed. It was a command, from the Chancellor.
Carullus had smiled at Kasia across the table. ‘Told you,’ he’d said. ‘Protectors. And he got away with using his own name, too. This is good news, girl.’ He and five of his men had armed themselves and gone.
Vargos, used to early nights and early mornings, had already gone to bed. Kasia had been alone again. She didn’t really have any fears for herself. Or, that wasn’t quite true. She had no idea what was to become of her life. That would turn into a fear if she stopped to dwell upon it.
She had left the last of the wine on the table and had gone up to her room, locked the door, undressed, eventually fallen asleep. Had had dreams on and off through the night, awakening at random noises from the streets below, listening for returning footsteps down the hall.
She hadn’t heard them.
She rose now, washed her face and upper body at the basin in the room, dressed herself in what she’d worn on the road and since arriving. Crispin had spoken of buying her clothing. The comment had raised in her mind again the uneasy question of her future.
The bells seemed to have stopped. She tugged fingers through her tangled hair and went out into the hall. She hesitated there, then decided it was permissible to look in on him, tell of the other mosaicist who had come, find out what had happened in the night. If it was not permitted, best she learn that now, Kasia thought. She was free. A citizen of the Sarantine Empire. Had been a slave less than a year. It did not define your life, she told herself.
His door was closed, of course. She lifted a hand to knock and heard voices inside.
Her heart lurched, surprising her greatly, though afterwards she would find it less surprising. The words she heard spoken were a shock, however, and so was what Crispin said in reply. Kasia felt herself flush, listening; her lifted hand trembled in the air.
She didn’t knock. Turned, in great confusion, to go down.
On the stairs she met two of Carullus’s men coming up. They told her about the attack in the night.
Kasia found herself leaning against the wall as she listened. Her legs felt oddly weak. Two of the soldiers had died, the little Soriyyan and Ferix from Amoria: men she had come to know. All six of the attackers had been killed, whoever they had been. Crispin was all right. Carullus had been wounded. The two of them had only just come in, at dawn. They had been seen going up the stairs, hadn’t stopped to talk.
No, the soldiers said, there had been no one else with them.
She hadn’t heard them in the hallway. Or perhaps she had, and that—not the bells—had drawn her from dream, or had shaped her dream. A faceless man beside a waterfall. Carullus’s men, grim and scowling, went past her to their shared room to get their weapons. They would carry them everywhere now, she understood. Deaths altered things.
Kasia paused on the stairway, shaken and uncertain. Vargos would be at chapel by now; there was no one to be with downstairs. It came to her that an enemy might already be upstairs, but Crispin had not sounded . . . alarmed. It occurred to her that she ought to tell someone, or check on him herself, risking embarrassment. Someone had tried to kill him last night. Had killed two men. She took a deep breath. The stone of the wall was rough against her shoulder. He had not sounded alarmed. And the other voice had been a woman’s.
She turned back and went to Carullus’s room. They’d said he’d been wounded. Resolutely, she knocked there. He called out, tiredly. She spoke her name. The door opened.
Small things change a life. Change lives.
Crispin twisted violently to one side, away from the levelled knife. He jammed a hand hard against the post at the foot of the bed to stay upright.
Ah,’ said the woman in the shuttered half-light of his bedroom. ‘It is you, Rhodian. Good. I feared for my virtue.’
She laid down the knife. After, he would remember thinking it was not the weapon she needed to wield. At the time he was speechless.
‘So,’ said Styliane Daleina, sitting at ease upon his bed, ‘I am told the little actress let down her hair for you in her chambers. Did she go to her knees the way they say she used to on stage, and take you in her mouth?’
She smiled, utterly composed.
Crispin felt himself go white as he stared at her. It took him a moment to find his voice. ‘You appear to have been misinformed. There were no actresses in the Blues’ compound when I arrived there,’ he said very carefully. He knew what she’d meant. He was not going to acknowledge it. ‘And I was in the kitchen only, no one’s private chambers. What are you doing in mine?’ He ought to have called her ‘my lady.’
She had changed her clothing. The court garb was gone. She was wearing a dark blue robe with a hood, thrown back now to frame her golden hair, which was still pinned, though without ornament now. She would have had the hood up, he imagined, to pass unknown through the streets, to enter here. Had she bribed someone? She would have had to. Wouldn’t she?
She didn’t answer his spoken question. Not with words, at any rate. She l
ooked up at him for a long moment from the bed, then stood. A very tall woman, blue-eyed, fair-haired, a scent about her: Crispin thought of flowers, a mountain meadow, an undercurrent of intoxication, poppies. His heart was racing: danger and—rising swiftly and against his will—desire. The expression on her face was thoughtful, appraising. Without hurrying, she lifted one hand and traced a finger along his shaven jaw. She touched his ear, circled it. Then she rose up on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth.
He didn’t move. He could have withdrawn, he thought afterwards, could have stepped back. He was no innocent, had known—fatigued as he was—that measuring look in her eyes as she stood up in the shadow and light of the room. He hadn’t stepped back. He did refrain from responding, though, as best he could, even when her tongue . . .
She didn’t seem to care. Appeared to find it amusing, in fact, that he withheld himself, standing rigid before her. She took her time, quite deliberately, body fitted close against his, tongue brushing his lips, pushing between them, then moving down to his throat. He heard her soft laughter, the breath warm against his skin.
‘I do hope she left some life in you,’ murmured the aristocratic wife of the Supreme Strategos of the Empire, and proceeded to slip a hand down the front of his tunic to his waist—and past it—by way of inquiry.
This time Crispin did step back, breathing hard, but not before she’d touched him through the silk of his garment. He saw her smile, the small, even teeth. She was exquisite, was Styliane Daleina, like pale glass, pale ivory, like one of the knife blades made in the far west of the world, in Esperana, where they crafted such things to be works of beauty as well as agents of death.
‘Good,’ she said, again. She looked at him, assured, amused, daughter of wealth and power, wedded to it. He could taste her, feel where her mouth had been along his throat. She said, musingly, ‘I will disappoint you, I now fear. How can I compete with the actress in this? It was said in her youth that she lamented holy Jad had granted her an insufficiency of orifices for the acts of love.’
‘Stop it!’ Crispin rasped. ‘This is a game. Why are you playing it? Why are you here?’ She smiled again. White teeth, hands coming up into her hair, long, wide sleeves of the robe falling back to show bare, slender arms. He said, in anger, fighting desire, ‘Someone tried to kill me tonight.’
‘I know,’ said Styliane Daleina. ‘Does it excite you? I hope it does.’
‘You know? What else do you know about it?’ Crispin said. Even as he spoke, she began to unpin her golden hair.
She paused. Looked at him, a different expression in her eyes this time. ‘Rhodian, had I wished you dead, you would be. Why would a Daleinus hire drunks in a caupona? Why would I trouble to kill an artisan?’
‘Why would you trouble to come uninvited to his room?’ Crispin snapped.
She laughed again at that. Her hands were busy another moment, collecting pins; then she shook her head and the richness of her hair spilled down, falling about her shoulders, filling the hood of her robe.
‘Must the actress be allowed all the interesting men?’ she said.
Crispin shook his head, the familiar anger rising now. He sought refuge in it. ‘I’ll say it again: this is a game you are playing. You are not here because you want to be bedded by a foreign artisan.’ She hadn’t stepped back. There was very little space between them and her scent enveloped them both. A dark redness, heady as poppies, as unmixed wine. Very different from the Empress’s. It had to be. Carullus and then the eunuchs had told him that.
Deliberately, Crispin sat down on the wooden chest under the window. He took a deep breath. ‘I have asked some questions. They seem reasonable in the circumstances. I’m waiting,’ he said, and then added, ‘my lady.’
‘So am I,’ she murmured, one hand pushing her hair back. But the voice had changed again, responding to his tone. There was a silence in the room. Crispin heard a cart rumble past in the street below. Someone shouted. It was morning. Bands of light and dark fell across her body. The effect, he thought, was quite beautiful.
She said, ‘You may be inclined to underestimate yourself, Rhodian. You have little concept of what the patterns are at this court. No one is summoned as swiftly as you were. Ambassadors wait weeks, artisan. But the Emperor is infatuated with his Sanctuary. In one single night you have been invited to court, given control of the mosaics there, had private counsel with the Empress, and caused the dismissal of the man who was doing the work before you came.’
‘Your man,’ Crispin said.
‘After a fashion,’ she said carelessly. ‘He had done some work for us. I judged it of some use to have Valerius in our debt for finding him a craftsman. Leontes disagreed with that, but had his own reasons for preferring Siroes. He has . . . views on what you and the other artisans should be permitted to do in the sanctuaries.’
Crispin blinked. That might need thinking about. Later. ‘It was Siroes who hired those soldiers, then?’ he guessed. ‘I had no intention of ruining anyone’s career.’
‘You did, however,’ said the woman. The aristocratic coolness he remembered from before was in her voice again. ‘Quite completely. But no, I can attest that Siroes was not in a position to hire assassins tonight. Trust me in this.’
Crispin swallowed. There was nothing reassuring in her tone, but there was a note of truth. He decided he didn’t want to ask why she was so certain.
‘Who was it, then?’
Styliane Daleina raised her hands, palms out, an elegant, indifferent gesture. ‘I have no idea. Run down the table of your enemies. Pick a name. Did the actress like my necklace? Did she put it on?’
‘The Emperor wouldn’t let her,’ Crispin said, deliberately.
And saw that he’d surprised her. ‘Valerius was there?’
‘He was there. No one went down on her knees.’
She was amazingly self-possessed. A lifetime of dealing with intrigue and lesser mortals. She smiled a little. ‘Not yet,’ she said, the timbre of her voice lower, the glance direct. It was a game, and he knew it, but entirely against his will, Crispin felt the stirrings of desire again.
As carefully as he could, he said, ‘I am unused to being offered lovemaking on so little acquaintance, except by whores. My lady, I am generally disinclined to accept their offers as well.’
She gazed at him, and Crispin had a sense that—perhaps for the first time—she was taking the trouble to shape an evaluation of the man in the room with her. She had been standing. Now she sank down onto the end of the bed, not far from the chest where he sat. Her knee brushed his, then withdrew a little.
‘Would that please you?’ she murmured. ‘To treat me like a whore, Rhodian? Put my face hard to the pillow, take me from behind? Hold me by the hair as I cry out, as I say shocking, exciting things to you? Shall I tell you what Leontes likes to do? It will surprise you, perhaps. He rather enjoys—’
‘No!’ Crispin rasped, a little desperately. ‘What is this about? Does it amuse you to play the wanton? Do you wander the streets soliciting lovers? There are other bedrooms in this inn.’
Her expression was impossible to read. He hoped his tunic was concealing the evidence of his arousal. He dared not look down to check.
She said, ‘What is this about, he asks. I have assumed you to be intelligent, Rhodian. You gave some sign of it in the throne room. Are you stupid with exhaustion now? Can you not guess that there might be people in this city who think an invasion of Batiara a destructive folly? Who might assume that you—as a Rhodian—might share that belief and have some desire to save your family and your country the consequences of an invasion?’
The words were knives, sharp and precise, almost military in their directness. She added, in the same tone, ‘Before you became hopelessly enmeshed in the devices of the actress and her husband, it made some sense to assess you.’
Crispin rubbed a hand across his eyes and forehead. She’d given him a partial explanation, after all. A renewal of anger chased fatigue. ‘You bed al
l those you recruit?’ he said, staring coldly at her.
She shook her head. ‘You are not a courteous man, Rhodian. I bed where my pleasure leads me.’ Crispin was unmoved by the reproof. She spoke, he thought, with the untrammelled assurance of one never checked in her wishes. The actress and her husband.
‘And plot to undermine your Emperor’s designs?’
‘He killed my father,’ said Styliane Daleina bluntly, sitting on his bed, pale hair framing the exquisite, patrician face. ‘Burned him alive with Sarantine Fire.’
‘An old rumour,’ Crispin said, but he was shaken, and trying to hide it. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
She smiled, quite unexpectedly. ‘To arouse you?’
And he had to laugh. Try as he might to hold back, the effortless shift of tone, the irony of it, was too witty. ‘Immolation is unexciting for me, I fear. Do I take it the Supreme Strategos shares the view that no war ought to be waged in Batiara? He has sent you here?’
She blinked. ‘Take no such thing. Leontes will do whatever Valerius tells him. He will invade you as he invaded the Majriti deserts or the northern steppes, or laid siege to Bassanid cities east.’
‘And all the while his new, beloved bride will be acting to subvert him?’
She hesitated for the first time. ‘His new prize is the phrase you want, Rhodian. Open your eyes and ears, there are things you ought to learn before Petrus the Trakesian and his little dancer co-opt you to their service.’
Contempt lay undisguised in the aristocratic voice. She would have had no choice, Crispin imagined, in the matter of her wedding. The Strategos was young, though, triumphant, celebrated, an undeniably handsome man. Crispin looked at the woman in the room with him and had a sense of having entered black waters, with unimaginably complex currents trying to suck him down. He said, ‘I am only a mosaicist, my lady. I was brought here to assist with images on sanctuary walls and a dome.’