‘Tell me,’ said Styliane Daleina, as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘about the queen of the Antae. Did she offer her body in exchange for your service too? Are you jaded now because of that? Am I too late to be of any appeal? You reject me as lesser goods? Shall I weep?’
The dark waters swirled. This had to be a bluff, a guess. That late-night secret encounter could not be so widely known. A memory came to Crispin: another hand in his hair as he knelt to kiss an offered foot. A different woman, even younger than this one, as familiar with corridors of power and intrigue. Or perhaps . . . not so. West to the east. Could Varena ever be as subtle as Sarantium? Could any place on earth?
The smile again, assured, unsettling. She seemed able to move, he thought, from the intrigues of empires to those of bedrooms without a pause. ‘How nice,’ she said. ‘I like being unique. You do know it shames a lady, however, to offer herself and be refused? I told you, I lie where pleasure leads me, not need.’ She paused. ‘Or rather, where a different sort of need draws me.’
Crispin swallowed. He didn’t believe her, but her knee within the blue, simple robe lingered a hand’s-breadth from his own. He clung desperately to his anger, a sense of being used. ‘It shames a man of pride to be seen as a piece in a game.’
Her eyebrows arched swiftly and the tone changed—again. ‘But you are, you foolish man. Of course you are. Pride has nothing to do with it. Everyone at this court is proud, everyone is a piece in a game. In many games at once—some of murder and some of desire—though there is only one game that matters, in the end, and all the others are parts of it.’
Which was an answer to his thought, he supposed. Her knee touched his. Deliberately. There were no accidental things with this woman, he was sure of it. Some of desire.
‘Why should you imagine yourself to be different?’ Styliane Daleina added, quietly.
‘Because I will myself to be so,’ he said, surprising himself.
There was a silence. Then, ‘You grow interesting, Rhodian, I must concede, but this is almost certainly a self-deception. I suspect the actress has enchanted you already and you don’t even know it. I shall weep, I suppose.’ Her expression had changed, but was nowhere near to tears. She stood abruptly, crossed in three strides to the door, turned there.
Crispin also rose. Now that she’d withdrawn he felt a chaos of emotions: apprehension, regret, curiosity, an unnerving measure of desire. He’d been a stranger to that last for so long. As he watched, she drew up her hood again, hiding the spilled gold of her hair.
‘I also came to thank you for my gem, of course. It was ... an interesting gesture. I am not difficult to find, artisan, should you have any thoughts about your home and the prospects of a war. It will become clear to you soon, I believe, that the man who brought you here to make holy images for him also intends to wreak violence upon Batiara for no reason but his own glory.’
Crispin cleared his throat. ‘I am pleased to find my small gift deemed worthy of thanks.’ He paused. ‘I am an artisan only, my lady.’
She shook her head, the expression cool again. ‘That is a coward in you, hiding from truths of the world, Rhodian. All men—and women—are more than one thing. Or have you willed yourself to be limited in this way? Will you live on a scaffold above all the dying?’
Her intelligence was appalling. Just as the Empress’s had been. It crossed his mind that had he not met Alixana first he might indeed have had no defences against this woman. Styliane Daleina might not be wrong, after all. And then he wondered if the Empress had thought of that. If that was why he’d received so immediate a late-night invitation to the Traversite Palace. Could these women be that quick, that subtle? His head was aching.
‘I have been here two days only, my lady, and have not slept tonight. You are speaking subversion against the Emperor who invited me to Sarantium, and even against your husband, if I understand you. Am I to be bought with a woman’s hair on my pillow for a night, or a morning?’ He hesitated. ‘Even yours?’
The smile returned at that, enigmatic and provoking. ‘It happens,’ she murmured. ‘It is sometimes longer than a night, or the night is . . . longer than an ordinary one. Time moves strangely in some circumstances. Have you never found that, Caius Crispus?’
He dared make no reply. She didn’t seem to expect one. She said, ‘We may continue this another time.’ She paused. It seemed to him she was wrestling with something. Then she added, ‘About your images. The domes and walls? Do not grow . . . too attached to your work there, Rhodian. I say this with goodwill, and probably should not. It is weak of me.’
He took a step towards her. She lifted a hand. ‘No questions.’
He stopped. She was an incarnation of icy, remote beauty in his room. But she wasn’t remote. Her tongue had touched his, her hand, moving downwards . . .
And this woman, too, seemed able to read his very thoughts. The smile came again. ‘You are excited now? Intrigued? You like your women to show weakness, Rhodian? Shall I remember that, and the pillow?’
He flushed, but met her ironic gaze. ‘I like the people in my life to show some . . . of themselves. The uncalculated. Movements outside the games of which you spoke. That would draw me, yes.’
Her turn now to be silent, standing very still by the door. Sunlight, sliding through the shutters, fell in bands of pale morning gold across the wall and floor and the blue of her robe.
‘That,’ she said, finally, ‘might be too much to expect in Sarantium, I fear.’ She looked as if she would add something, but then shook her head and murmured only, ‘Go to sleep, Rhodian.’
She opened the door, went out, closed it, was gone, save for her scent and the mild disarray of his bed, and the greater disarrangement of his being.
He fell onto the bed, still clothed. He lay with eyes open, thinking of nothing at first, then of high, majestic walls, with marble columns above marble columns, and the dwarfing, graceful immensity of the dome he’d been given, and then he thought for a long time about certain women, living and dead, and then he closed his eyes and slept.
When he dreamt, though, as the sun rose through the windy, clear autumn morning outside, it was of the zubir at first, obliterating time and the world in mist, and then of one woman only.
‘Let there be Light for us,’ Vargos chanted with the others in the small neighbourhood chapel as the services came to an end. The cleric in his pale yellow robe made the two-handed gesture of solar benediction they used in the City, and then people began talking again and milling briskly towards the doors and the morning street.
Vargos went out with them and stood a moment, blinking in the brightness. The night wind had swept away the clouds; it was a crisp, very clear day. A woman balancing a small boy on one hip and a pitcher of water on her shoulder smiled at him as she went by. A onehanded beggar approached through the crowd but veered off when Vargos shook his head. There were enough needy people in Sarantium, no need to give alms to someone who’d had a hand chopped for theft. Vargos felt strongly about such things. A northern sensibility.
He wasn’t poor, mind you. His accumulated savings and salary owing had been reluctantly released by the Imperial Postmaster before they left Sauradia, through Carullus’s centurion’s intervention. Vargos was in a position here to buy a meal, a winter cloak, a woman, a flask of ale or wine.
He was hungry, in fact. He hadn’t taken breakfast at the inn before prayers, and the smell from across the road of lamb roasting on skewers at an open-air stand reminded him of that. He crossed, pausing for a cart full of firewood and a giggling cluster of serving women heading for the well at the end of the lane, and he bought a skewer of meat with a copper coin. He ate it, standing there, observing the other customers of the small, wiry vendor—from Soriyya or Amoria, by his colouring—as they snatched a morning bite on their hurried way to wherever they were going. The little man was busy. People moved fast in the City, Vargos had concluded. He didn’t like the crowds and noise at all, but he was here by his own choice, and he
’d adjusted to more difficult things in his time.
He finished his meat, wiped his chin, dropped the skewer in a pile by the vendor’s grill. Then he squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and strode off towards the harbour to look for a murderer.
Word of the attack had come to the inn from the Blues’ compound in the night, while Vargos slept, oblivious. He actually felt guilty about that, though he knew there was no sense to such a feeling. He had learned of the night’s events from three of the soldiers when he came down at sunrise, responding to the bells: Crispin attacked, the tribune wounded. Ferix and Sigerus slain. The six attackers killed, by the tribune and by Blue partisans in the faction’s compound. No one knew who had ordered the assault. The Urban Prefect’s men were investigating, he was told. Men seldom talked freely to them, he was told. Soldiers were too easily hired for something like this. They might not find out anything more—until the next attack came. Carullus’s men had armed themselves, Vargos saw.
Crispin and the tribune hadn’t come in yet, they’d said. They were both with the Blues, however, and safe. Had spent the night there. The bells were ringing. Vargos had gone to the little chapel down the road—none of the soldiers came with him—and had concentrated on his god, praying for the souls of the two dead soldiers, that they might be sheltered in Light.
Now prayers were done, and Vargos of the Inicii, who had bound himself freely to a Rhodian artisan for an act of courage and compassion and had walked into the Aldwood with him and come out alive, went in search of someone who wanted that man dead. The Inicii made bad enemies, and whoever that someone was had an enemy now.
He had no way of knowing it—and would have been unhappy with the suggestion—but he looked very like his father just then as he strode down the middle of the street. People were quick to give him room as he went. Even a man on a donkey edged hastily out of the way. Vargos didn’t even notice. He was thinking.
He wouldn’t ever have said he was good at planning things. He tended to react to events, rather than anticipate or initiate them. There hadn’t been much need for forethought on the Imperial Road in Sauradia, going back and forth for years with a variety of travellers. One needed endurance, equanimity, strength, some skill with carts and animals, an ability to wield a stave, faith in Jad.
Of these, perhaps only the last would be of use in tracing whoever had hired those soldiers. Vargos, for want of a better idea, decided to head for the harbour and spend a few coins in some of the rougher cauponae. He might overhear something, or someone might offer information. The patrons there would be slaves, servants, apprentices, soldiers watching their copper folles. An offered drink or two might be welcome. It did occur to him there might be some danger. It didn’t occur to him to alter his plan because of that.
It took him only part of a morning to discover that Sarantium was much the same as the north or the Imperial Road in one thing, at least: men in taverns were disinclined to answer questions posed by strangers when the subject was violence and a request for information.
No one in this rough district wanted to be the one to point to someone else, and Vargos wasn’t skilled enough with words or subtle enough to steer anyone casually around to the topic of last night’s incident in the Blues’ compound. Everyone seemed to know about it—armed soldiers entering a faction’s quarters and being slaughtered there was an event of note even in a jaded city—but no one was willing to say more than the obvious, and Vargos received black looks and silence when he pushed. The six dead soldiers had been on leave from Calysium: duties along the Bassanid border. They’d been drinking around the City for some days, spending borrowed money. More or less what soldiers always did. That much was commonly known. The issue was who had bought them, and as to that no one knew, or would speak.
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.