‘Fuck you. Say that to plague sores,’ Crispin snarled. He felt nauseated, struggling for control.
‘Oh dear. You can’t talk to me like that,’ the Strategos said with surprising gentleness. ‘You know who I am. Besides, I have invited you to my house . . . you shouldn’t talk to me like that.’ He made it sound like a social failing, a lapse of civilized protocol. It might have been comical, Crispin thought, had he not been so near to vomiting in the now-stifling wet heat, with a stranger’s dark blood continuing to soak into the white sheet at his feet.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ Crispin rasped through clenched teeth. ‘Kill me with a hidden blade? Send your wife to poison me?’
Leontes chuckled benignly. ‘I have no reason to kill you. And Styliane’s reputation is far worse than her nature. You’ll see, when you join us for dinner. In the meantime, you’d best come out of the heat, and take some pride in knowing that this man will quite certainly reveal who it was who hired him. My men will take him to the Urban Prefect’s offices. They are extremely good at interrogation there. You have solved last night’s mystery yourself, artisan. At the small price of a bruised hand. You ought to be a satisfied man.’
Fuck you, Crispin almost said again, but didn’t. Last night’s mystery. It seemed everyone knew about the attack by now. He looked over at the tall commander of all the Sarantine armies. Leontes’s blue gaze met his through the eddying of the steam.
‘This,’ said Crispin bitterly, ‘is the ambit of satisfaction for you? Clubbing someone senseless, killing him? This is what a man does to justify his place in Jad’s creation?’
Leontes was silent a moment. ‘You haven’t killed him. Jad’s creation is a dangerous, tenuous place for mortal men, artisan. Tell me, how lasting have the glories of Rhodias been, since they could not be defended against the Antae?’
They were rubble, of course. Crispin knew it. He had seen the fire-charred ruin of mosaics the world had once journeyed to honour and exalt.
Leontes added, still gently, ‘I would be a poor creature were I to see value only in bloodshed and war. It is my chosen world, yes, and I would like to leave a proud name behind me, but I would say a man finds honour in serving his city and Emperor and his god, in raising his children and guiding his lady wife towards those same duties.’
Crispin thought of Styliane Daleina. I lie where pleasure leads me, not need. He pushed the thought away. He said, ‘And the things of beauty? The things that mark us off from the Inicii with their sacrifices, or the Karchites drinking bear blood and scarring their faces? Or is it just better weapons and tactics that mark us off?’ He was too limp, in fact, to summon real anger any more. It occurred to him that mosaicists—all artisans, really—seemed never to leave behind their names, proud or otherwise. That was for those who swung swords, or axes that could send a man’s head flying from his body. He wanted to say that, but didn’t.
‘Beauty is a luxury, Rhodian. It needs walls, and . . . yes, better weapons and tactics. What you do depends on what I do.’ Leontes paused. ‘Or on what you just did here with this man who would have killed you. What mosaics would you achieve if dead on a steam room floor? What works here would last if Robazes, commander of the Bassanid armies, conquered us for his King of Kings? Or if the northerners did, made fierce by that bear blood? Or some other force, other faith, some enemy we don’t even know of yet?’ Leontes wiped sweat from his eyes again. ‘What we build—even the Emperor’s Sanctuary—we hold precariously and must defend.’
Crispin looked at him. He didn’t really want to hear this. ‘And the soldiers have been waiting too long for their pay? Because of the Sanctuary? However will the whores of the Empire make a living?’ he said bitterly.
Leontes frowned. He returned Crispin’s gaze through the mist for a moment. ‘I should go. My guards will deal with this fellow. I am sorry,’ he added, ‘if the plague took people from you. A man moves on from his losses, eventually.’
He opened the door and went out before Crispin could offer a reply—to any of what he’d said.
CRISPIN EMERGED from the baths some time later. The attendants in the cold room had winced and clucked over his swollen hand and insisted he immerse it while a doctor was summoned. The physician murmured reassuringly, sucked at his teeth as he manipulated the hand, ascertained that nothing was broken inside. He prescribed some bloodletting from the right thigh to prevent the accumulation of bad blood around the injury, which Crispin declined. The doctor, shaking his head at the ignorance of some patients, left an herbal concoction to be mixed with wine for the pain. Crispin paid him for that.
He decided not to take the concoction, either, but found a seat in the bathhouse’s wine room, working his way through a flask of pale wine. He’d more or less decided he had not even a faint hope of sorting through what had just happened. The pain was dull and steady, but manageable. The man he’d pounded so ferociously had been removed, as promised, by the Strategos’s personal guard. Carullus’s two soldiers had gone ashenfaced when they learned what had occurred, but there was little they could have done unless they’d followed him from pool to pool and into the steam.
In fact, Crispin had to concede, he didn’t feel badly, on the whole. There was undeniable relief in having survived another attack, and in the likelihood that the perpetrator would reveal the source of the murderous assaults. It was even true—though this he didn’t like admitting—that having dealt with this himself brought a measure of satisfaction.
He rubbed at his chin absently and then did so again, coming to a morose realization. He asked an attendant for directions and, carrying his cup of wine, stoically betook himself to a nearby room. He waited on a bench while two other men were dealt with, then subsided glumly onto the barber’s stool for a shave.
The scented sheet tied around his throat felt much like an assassin’s cord. He was going to have to do this every day. It was highly probable, Crispin decided, that some barber somewhere in the City was going to slit his throat by accident while regaling the waiting patrons with a choice anecdote. Whoever was paying assassins was simply wasting his money; the deed would be done for him. He did wish this man wouldn’t accentuate his flow of wit with a waving blade. Crispin closed his eyes.
He emerged only mildly scathed, however, and having been just quick enough to decline the offered perfume. He felt surprisingly energized, alert, ready to begin addressing the matter of his dome in the Sanctuary. It was already his dome in his own thoughts, he realized with some wryness. Styliane Daleina had voiced a warning about that, he remembered, but what artisan worth anything at all could heed such a caution?
He needed to see the Sanctuary again. He decided to head that way before returning to the inn. He wondered if Artibasos would be there, suspected he would. The man practically lived in his building, the Emperor had said. Crispin suspected he might end up doing the same. He wanted to speak with the architect about the setting beds for his mosaics. He’d need to find the Sarantine glassworks, as well, and then see about assessing—and probably reshaping—whatever team of craftsmen and apprentices Siroes had assembled. There would be guild protocols to learn—and work around. And he’d have to start sketching. There was no point having ideas in his head if no one else could see them. Approvals would be needed. Some things he had already decided to leave out of the drawings. No one needed to know every idea he had.
There was a great deal to be done. He was here for a reason, after all. He flexed his hand. It was puffy, but that would be all right. He thanked Jad for the instinct that had led him to use his left fist. A mosaicist’s good hand was his life.
On the way out he paused by the marble counter in the foyer. On sheerest impulse he asked the attendant there about an address he’d been given a long time ago. It turned out to be close by. For some reason he’d thought it might be. This was a good neighbourhood.
Crispin elected to make a call. A duty visit. Get it done with, he told himself, before work began to consume him, the way it alw
ays did. Rubbing his smooth chin, he walked out of the baths into the late-afternoon sunshine.
Two grim soldiers striding purposefully behind him, Caius Crispus of Varena followed the given directions towards the house and street name he’d had handed to him on a torn-off piece of parchment in a farmhouse near Varena. Eventually, turning off a handsome square and then into a wide street with well-made stone houses on either side, he ascended the steps of a covered portico and knocked firmly at the door with his good hand.
He hadn’t decided what he would—or could—say here. There might be some awkwardness. Waiting for a servant to answer, Crispin looked about. On a marble plinth by the door stood a bust of the Blessed Victim Eladia, guardian of maidens. Given what he had heard before, he suspected it was meant ironically here. The street was quiet; he and the two soldiers were the only figures to be seen, save for a young boy grooming a mare tethered placidly nearby. The row houses here looked cared for and comfortably pros-perous. There were torches set in the front walls and on the porticos, promising the security of light after darkfall.
It was possible, standing amid these smooth façades, to envisage an infinitely calmer life in Sarantium than the violent intricacies he had discovered so far. Crispin found himself picturing delicately hued frescoes within proportioned rooms, ivory, alabaster, well-turned wooden stools and chests and benches, good wine, candles in silver holders, perhaps a treasured manuscript of the Ancients to read by a fire in winter or in the peace of a courtyard among summer flowers and droning bees. The accoutrements of a civilized life in the city that was the centre of the world behind its triple walls and guarded by the sea. The black forests of Sauradia seemed infinitely far away.
The door opened.
He turned, preparing to give his name and have himself announced. He saw the slender figure of a woman dressed in crimson on the threshold, dark-haired, dark-eyed, small-boned. He had just enough time to note this much and realize this was not a servant before the woman cried out and hurled herself into his arms, kissing him with a hungry passion. Her hands clenched in his hair, pulling him down to her. Before he could react in any cogent way at all, while the two soldiers were gaping slack-jawed at them, her mouth moved to his ear. Crispin felt her tongue, then heard her whisper fiercely: ‘In Jad’s name, pretend we are lovers, I beg of you! You will not regret it, I promise!’
‘What are you doing?’ Crispin heard a stunningly familiar voice say from nowhere he could have placed. His heart lurched. He gasped in shock, then the woman’s mouth covered his own again. His good hand came up—obedient or involuntary, he couldn’t have said—and held her as she kissed him like a lost love regained.
‘Oh, no!’ he heard within: a terribly known voice, but a new, lugubrious tone. ‘No, no, no! This will never work! You’ll get him beaten or killed, whoever he is.’
At which point someone, standing in the front hallway of the house behind the woman in Crispin’s arms, cleared his throat.
The woman in the red, knee-length tunic detached herself as if with anguished reluctance, and as she did Crispin received another shock: he realized belatedly that he knew her scent. It was the perfume only one woman in the City was said to be allowed to use. And this woman was not, manifestly, the Empress Alixana.
This woman was—unless he had been led very greatly astray—Shirin of the Greens, their Principal Dancer, celebrated object of the anguished desire of at least one young aristocrat Crispin had met in a tavern yesterday, and very likely a great many other men, young or otherwise. She was also the daughter of Zoticus of Varena.
And the bewailing, anxious inner voice he’d just heard—twice—had been Linon’s.
Crispin’s head hurt again, suddenly. He found himself wishing he’d never left the baths, or the inn. Or home.
The woman stepped back, her hand trailing lingeringly along the front of his tunic, as if reluctant to let him go, as she turned to the person who had coughed.
And following her gaze, overwhelmed by too many things at once, Crispin found himself struggling suddenly not to laugh aloud like a child or a simple-witted fool.
‘Oh!’ said the woman, a hand coming up to cover her mouth in astonishment. ‘I didn’t hear you follow me! Dear friend, forgive me, but I could not restrain myself. You see, this is—’
‘You do seem to insinuate yourself, don’t you, Rhodian,’ said Pertennius of Eubulus, secretary to the Supreme Strategos, whom Crispin had just seen disappearing through steam. And this man he had last encountered delivering a pearl to the Empress the night before.
Pertennius was dressed extremely well today, in fine linen, blue and silver, embroidered, with a dark blue cloak and a matching soft hat. The secretary’s thin, long-nosed face was pale, and—not surprisingly in the current circumstances—the narrow, observant eyes were not noticeably cordial as they evaluated the tableau in the doorway.
‘You . . . know each other?’ the woman said, uncertainly. Crispin noted, still struggling to control his amusement, that she had also gone pale now.
‘The Rhodian artisan was presented at court last night,’ Pertennius said. ‘He has just arrived in the City,’ he added heavily.
The woman bit her lip.
‘I warned you! I warned you! You deserve everything that happens now,’ the patrician voice that had been Linon’s said. It sounded distant, but Crispin was hearing it within, as he had before.
It wasn’t addressing him.
He forced the implications of this away and, looking at the alchemist’s dark-haired daughter, took pity. There was, of course, no way they could pretend to be lovers or even intimate friends, but . . .
‘I admit I did not anticipate so generous a welcome,’ he said easily. ‘You must love your dear father very much, Shirin.’ He continued, smiling, giving her time to absorb this. ‘Good day to you, secretary. We do seem to frequent the same doorways. Curious. I should have looked for you in the baths just now, to share a cup of wine. I did speak with the Strategos, who was good enough to honour me with his company. Are you well, after your late errand last night?’
The secretary’s mouth fell open. He looked very like a fish, so. He was courting this woman, of course. It would have been obvious, even if the young Green partisans in The Spina had not said as much yesterday.
‘The Strategos?’ Pertennius said. ‘Her father?’ he said.
‘My father!’ Shirin repeated in a usefully indeterminate tone.
‘Her father,’ Crispin confirmed agreeably. ‘Zoticus of Varena, from whom I bring tidings and counsel, as promised by my message earlier.’ He smiled at the secretary with affable blandness and turned to the woman, who was gazing at him now with unfeigned astonishment. ‘I do hope I am not intruding upon an appointment?’
‘No, no!’ she said hastily, colouring a little. ‘Oh, no. Pertennius simply happened to be in this quarter, he said. He . . . elected to honour me with a visit. He said.’ She was quick-witted, Crispin realized. ‘I was about to explain to him . . . when we heard your knock, and in my excitement . . .’
Crispin’s smile was all benign understanding. ‘. . . you offered me an unforgettable greeting. For another such, I’ll return all the way back to Varena and come again with further word from Zoticus.’
She coloured even more. She deserved a little embarrassment, he thought, still amused.
‘You do not deserve so much good fortune,’ he heard inwardly, and then, after a pause, ‘No, I will not cook myself in a pot for dinner. I told you not to try such an obviously ridiculous—’
There was an abrupt silence, as the inward voice was cut off.
Crispin had a good idea what had caused that, having done it himself many times on the road. He had no idea what was happening here, however. He should not be able to hear this voice.
‘You are a Rhodian?’ Pertennius’s expression, eyeing the slender girl, revealed an avid curiosity. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Partly Rhodian,’ Shirin agreed, regaining her composure. Crispin rec
alled that it was always easier with the bird silenced. ‘My father is from Batiara.’
‘And your mother?’ the secretary asked.
Shirin smiled and tossed her head. ‘Come, scribe, would you plumb all of a woman’s mysteries?’ Her sidelong look was bewitching. Pertennius swallowed and cleared his throat again. The answer, of course, was ‘yes,’ but he could hardly say as much, Crispin thought. He himself kept silent, glancing quickly around the entranceway There was no bird to be seen.
Zoticus’s daughter took him by the elbow—a much more formal grip this time, he noted—and walked him into the house a few steps. ‘Pertennius, dear friend, will you allow me the comfort of a visit with this man? It has been so long since I’ve spoken with anyone who’s seen my beloved father.’
She released Crispin and, turning, took the secretary’s arm in the same firm, friendly grip, steering him smoothly the other way towards the still-open doorway. ‘It was so kind of you to come by just to see if the strains of the Dykania had not wearied me too greatly. You are such a solicitous friend. I am very fortunate to have powerful men like you taking a protective interest in my health.’
‘Not so powerful,’ the secretary said with an awkward little deprecating movement of his free hand, ‘but yes, yes, very much, very much indeed interested in your wellbeing. Dear girl.’ She released his arm. He looked as if he would linger, gazing at her and then past, at Crispin, who stood with hands clasped loosely together, smiling earnestly back.
‘We, ah, must dine together, Rhodian,’ Pertennius said, after a moment.
‘We must,’ Crispin agreed enthusiastically. ‘Leontes spoke so highly of you!’
Leontes’s secretary hesitated another moment, his high forehead furrowing. He looked as if there were a great many questions he had a mind to ask, but then he bowed to Shirin and stepped out onto the portico. She closed the door carefully behind him and stood there, resting her head against it, her back to Crispin. Neither of them spoke. They heard a jingle of harness from the street and the muted sound of Pertennius riding off.