He saw tears startle like diamonds on her cheekbones and he knew—knew—that even consumed like a burning taper by desire she was raging within against the revealed weakness of that, the dimensions of longing betrayed. She could kill him now, he thought, as easily as kiss him again. Not a haven, this woman, this room, not a shelter of any kind at all, but a destination he’d needed overwhelmingly to reach and could not, by any means, deny: these bitter, furious complexities of human need, down here beneath the perfect dome and the stars.
‘YOU HAVE NO DREAD of high places, I may assume?’
Lying beside each other. Some of her golden hair across his face, tickling a little. One of her hands on his thigh. Her face was averted, he could see only a profile as she stared at the ceiling. There was a mosaic there, he now saw, and abruptly remembered Siroes who had made it, whose hands had been broken by this woman for his failings.
‘A fear of heights? It would be an impediment in my work. Why?’
‘You’ll leave through the window. He may be home soon, with his own servants. Go down the wall and across the courtyard to the far end by the street. There is a tree to climb. It will take you to the top of the outer wall.’
‘Am I leaving now?’
She turned her head then. He saw her mouth quirk a little. ‘I hope not,’ she murmured. ‘Though you may have to depart in haste if we delay too long.’
‘Would he . . . come in?’
She shook her head. ‘Unlikely.’
‘People die because of unlikely things.’
She laughed at that. ‘True enough. And he would feel compelled to kill you, I suppose.’
This surprised him a little. He’d somehow concluded that these two—the Strategos and his aristocratic prize— had their shared understandings in matters of fidelity. That servant with her candle, visible to the street in the open doorway . . .
He was silent.
‘Do I frighten you?’ She was looking at him now.
Crispin shifted to face her. There seemed no reason to dissemble. He nodded his head. ‘But in yourself, not because of your husband.’ She held his glance a moment and then, unexpectedly, looked away. He said, after a pause, ‘I wish I liked you more.’
‘Liking? A trivial feeling,’ she said, too quickly. ‘It has little to do with this.’
He shook his head. ‘Friendship begins with it, if desire doesn’t.’
Styliane turned back to him. ‘I have been a better friend than you know,’ she said. ‘From the outset. I did tell you not to become attached to any work on that dome.’
She had said that, without explaining it. He opened his mouth but she held up a finger and laid it against his lips. ‘No questions. But remember.’
‘An impossibility,’ he said. ‘Not to be attached.’
She shrugged. ‘Ah. Well. I am helpless against impossibilities, of course.’
She shivered suddenly, exposed to the cold air, her skin still damp from lovemaking. He glanced across the room. Rose from the bed and tended to the guttering fire, adding logs, shifting them. It took him a few moments, building it up again. When he stood, naked and warmed, he saw that she was propped on one elbow, watching him with a frank, appraising gaze. He felt abruptly self-conscious, saw her smile, seeing that.
He crossed back towards the bed and stood beside it, looking down at her. Without shame or evasion she lay, unclothed and uncovered, and let him track with his gaze the curves and lines of her body, arc of hip, of breast, the fine bones of her face. He felt the stirrings of desire again, irresistible as tides.
Her smile deepened as her glance flicked downwards. Her voice, when she spoke, was husky again. ‘I did hope you weren’t in haste to find the courtyard and the tree.’ And she reached out with one hand and stroked his sex, drawing him to the bed and back to her that way.
And this time, in a slower, more intricate dance, she did eventually show him—as she’d offered half a year ago—how Leontes liked to use a pillow, and he discovered something new about himself, then, and illusions of civility. At one point, later, he found himself doing something to her he’d only ever done for Ilandra, and it came to him, feeling her hands tightening in his hair, hearing her whispering a stream of incoherent words as if unwilling, compelled, that one might feel the sadness of loss, of absence, love and shelter gone, but not be endlessly consumed and destroyed as by an ongoing lightning bolt of tragedy. Living was not, in and of itself, a betrayal.
Some had tried to tell him this before, he knew.
She made a higher sound then, on a taken breath, as if in pain, or fighting something. She drew him up and into her again, her eyes tightly closed, hands pulling him, and then swiftly turned them both together so she rode upon him now, harder and harder, imperative, her body glistening in the firelight. He reached up and touched her breasts, spoke her name, once: resisting that but impelled, exactly as she had been. Then he gripped her hips and let her begin to drive them both, and at length he heard her cry aloud and opened his eyes to see that arcing of her body again, the skin taut across her ribs as she bent back above him like a bow. There were tears on her cheeks, as before, but this time he reached up and drew her slowly down and kissed them, and she allowed him to do so.
And it was then, lying upon him in an aftermath, her body shaking, and his, her hair covering them both, that Styliane whispered without warning, eerily gentle in his memory of the moment after, ‘They will invade your country later in the spring. No one knows yet. It was announced to some of us tonight in the palace. Certain events must happen now. I will not say I am sorry. A thing was done once, and all else follows. Remember this room, though, Rhodian. Whatever else. Whatever else I do.’
In his confusion, his mind not yet working properly, the sudden knife’s blade of fear, all he could say was, ‘Rhodian? Only that? Still?’
She lay upon him, not moving now. He could feel the beating of her heart. ‘Rhodian,’ she repeated, after a considering silence. ‘I am what I’ve been made to be. Don’t be deceived.’
Then why were you weeping? he wanted to ask, but didn’t. He would remember these words, too, all of them, and the straining backwards arcing of her body and those bitter tears at her own exposed need. But in the silence that came after she spoke what they both heard was the front door down below closing heavily, reverberating.
Styliane shifted a little. Somehow he knew she would be smiling, that wry, ironic smile. ‘A good husband. He always lets me know when he comes home.’
Crispin stared at her. She looked back, eyes wide, still amused. ‘Oh dear. Really. You think Leontes wants to spend his nights killing people? There’s a knife in here somewhere. You want to fight him for my honour?’
So there was an agreement between them. Of some kind. He really wasn’t understanding these two at all, was he? Crispin felt heavy-headed and tired now, and afraid: A thing was done once. But a door had slammed, down below, leaving no space for sorting matters through. He stumbled from the bed, began to dress. She watched him calmly, smoothing the sheets about her, her hair spread out on the pillows. He saw her drop her torn garment on the floor, not bothering to hide it further.
He adjusted his tunic and belt, knelt and quickly tied his sandals. When he stood again, he looked at her for a moment. The firelight was low again, the candles burnt out. Her naked body was chastely covered by the bed linens. She sat propped on pillows, motionless, receiving and returning his gaze. And Crispin abruptly realized then that there was a kind of defiance in this, as much as anything else, and understood that she was very young, and how easy it was to forget that.
‘Don’t deceive yourself,’ he said. ‘While trying so hard to control the rest of us. You are more than the sum of your plans.’ He wasn’t even sure what that meant.
She shook her head impatiently. ‘None of that matters. I am an instrument.’
His expression wry, he said, ‘A prize, you told me last time. An instrument tonight. What else should I know?’ But there was an odd, entirely une
xpected ache in him now, looking at her.
She opened her mouth and closed it. He saw that she’d been taken off guard, heard footsteps in the hallway outside.
‘Crispin,’ she said, pointing to the window. ‘Go. Please.’
It was only when he was crossing the courtyard, past the fountain, making for the indicated olive tree at the corner near the street, that he realized she’d spoken his name.
He climbed the tree, crossed to the top of the wall. The white moon was up now, halfway to full. He sat on a stone wall above the dark, empty street, and he was remembering Zoticus, and the boy he’d once been himself, crossing from wall to tree. The boy, and then the man. He thought of Linon, could almost hear her commenting on what had just passed. Or perhaps he was wrong: perhaps she would have understood that there were elements here more complex than simple desire.
Then he laughed a little, under his breath, ruefully. For that was wrong, too: there was nothing the least simple about desire. He looked up and saw a figure silhouetted in the window he’d just left. Leontes. The window was pulled shut, the curtains drawn in Styliane’s bedroom. Crispin sat motionless, hidden upon a wall.
He looked across the street and saw the dome rising above the houses. Artibasos’s dome, the Emperor’s, Jad’s. Crispin’s own? Below—a flicker at the corner of his eye—one of those utterly inexplicable eruptions of flame that defined Sarantium at night appeared in the street and vanished, like dreams or human lives and their memory. What, Crispin wondered, was ever left behind?
They will invade your country later in the spring.
He didn’t go home. Home was very far away. He jumped down from the wall, went across the street, cutting up a long dark lane. A prostitute called to him from shadow, her voice a kind of song in the night. He kept going, following an angling of the laneway, and eventually came to where it opened onto the square across from the Imperial Precinct gates, with the front of the Sanctuary on his right. There were guards on the portico, all night long. They knew him as he approached, nodded, opened one of the massive doors. There was light inside. Enough to let him work.
CHAPTER VI
Same hour of night, same wind, four men walking elsewhere in the City, under that risen moon. It was never entirely safe in Sarantium after nightfall, but a party of four could feel reasonably secure. Two of them carried heavy sticks. They walked briskly enough in the cold, slowed somewhat, as the road sloped downwards and then back up, by wine consumed and the bad foot one of them dragged. The oldest, small and portly, was wrapped in a heavy cloak to his chin but swore whenever the wind gusted and sent debris tumbling down the dark street.
The were women abroad, too, in doorways for shelter, for they wore too little clothing in the nature of their profession. A number of them could be seen lingering with the unhoused beggars by the heat of the bakers’ ovens.
One of the younger men showed an inclination to slow down here, but the one in the cloak rasped an oath and they kept moving. A woman—a girl, really— followed them a little way and then stopped, standing alone in the street before retreating to the warmth. As she did, she saw an enormous litter carried by eight bearers—not the usual four or six—come around a corner and then move down the street, following the four men. She knew better than to call out after this aristocrat. If such as these wanted a woman, they made their own choices. If they did call one over to the curtained litter, it wasn’t necessarily safe for the girl. The wealthy had their own rules here, as elsewhere.
None of the men walking were sober. They had been given wine at the end of a wedding feast by the hostess, and had only just emerged from a noisy tavern where the oldest one had bought several more flasks for all of them to share.
It was a long walk now, but Kyros didn’t mind. Strumosus had been astonishingly genial in the tavern, discoursing volubly upon eel and venison, and the proper marriage of sauce and principal dish as recorded by Aspalius four hundred years ago. Kyros and the others had been aware that their master was pleased with how the day had unfolded.
Or he had been until they’d stepped back outside and realized just how cold it was now, and how late, with a long way yet through the windy streets to the Blues’ compound.
Kyros, reasonably immune to the chill, as it happened, was too exhilarated to care: the combination of a successful banquet, too much wine, intense images of their hostess—her scent, smile, words about his own work in the kitchen—and then Strumosus’s affable, expansive mood in the tavern. This was one of the very good days, Kyros decided. He wished he were a poet, that he could put some of these tumbling-about feelings into words.
There was a clatter of noise ahead. Half a dozen young men spilled from the low door of a tavern. It was too dark to see them clearly: if they were Greens this could be dangerous, with the season soon to start and anticipation rising. If they had to run, Kyros knew he would be the problem. The four men bunched themselves more closely together.
Unnecessarily, as it turned out. The tavern party meandered untidily down the hill towards the waterfront, attempting a marching song of the day. Not Greens. Soldiers on leave in the City. Kyros drew a relieved breath. He glanced back over his shoulder—and so he was the one who saw the litter following behind them in the darkness.
He said nothing, walked on with the others. Laughed dutifully at Rasic’s too-loud joke about the inebriated soldiers—one of them had stopped to be sick in a shop doorway. Kyros looked back again as they turned a corner, passing a sandal shop and a yogurt stand, both long since closed for the night: the litter came around the corner, keeping pace with them. It was very large. Eight men carried it. The curtains were drawn on both sides.
Kyros felt a queasy apprehension. Litters at night weren’t at all unusual—the well-to-do tended to use them, especially when it was cold. But this one was moving too precisely at their own speed and going exactly where they went. When it followed them diagonally across a square, around the central fountain, and then up the steep street on the opposite side, Kyros cleared his throat and touched Strumosus on the arm.
‘I think . . . ’ he began, as the chef looked at him. He swallowed. ‘It is possible we’re being followed.’
The other three stopped and looked back. The litter immediately halted, the dark-clad bearers motionless and silent. The street was empty around them. Closed doors, closed shop fronts, four men standing together, a patrician’s curtained litter, silence, nothing else.
The white moon hung overhead above a small chapel’s copper dome. From a distance there came the flaring sound of sudden, raucous laughter. Another inn, patrons leaving. Then that sound faded away.
In the stillness the three young men heard Strumosus of Amoria let out a long breath, then swear, quietly but with intense feeling.
‘Stay where you are,’ he told them. And he walked back towards the litter.
‘Fuck,’ whispered Rasic, for want of anything better to say. Kyros felt it too: a sense of menace, oppression.
They were silent, watching the little chef. Strumosus approached the litter. None of the bearers moved or spoke. The chef stopped by the drawn curtains on one side. He appeared to be speaking, but they couldn’t hear him, or any reply from within. Then Kyros saw the curtain lifted and pulled back slightly. He had no idea who was inside, man or woman, or more than one person—the litter was easily large enough for that. He did know that he was afraid now.
‘Fuck,’ said Rasic again, watching.
‘Fuck,’ Mergius echoed.
‘Shut up,’ Kyros said, uncharacteristically. ‘Both of you.’
Strumosus appeared to be speaking again, then listening. Then he folded his arms across his chest and said something else. After a moment the curtain fell closed, and a moment later the litter was turned around and began to move the other way, back down towards the square. Strumosus stayed where he was, watching, until it disappeared beyond the fountain. He walked back to the three young men. Kyros could see that he was disturbed, but he didn’t dare ask any que
stions.
‘Who in the god’s name was that?’ Rasic said, not feeling the same compunction.
Strumosus ignored him, as if the young man hadn’t even spoken. He started walking; they fell in stride with him. No one said anything more, not even Rasic. They came to the compound without further incident, were known by torchlight and admitted.
‘Good night,’ Strumosus said to the three of them, at the entrance to the dormitory. Then he walked away without waiting for a response.
Rasic and Mergius went up the steps and in, but Kyros lingered on the porch. He saw that the chef did not go towards his private rooms. Instead, he walked across the courtyard to the kitchens. A moment later Kyros saw lamps being lit there. He wanted to go over but did not. Too much presumption. After another moment, he took a last breath of the cold air and stepped inside after the others. He went to bed. Didn’t sleep for a long time. A very good day and night had been, obscurely, changed into something else.
IN THE KITCHEN, Strumosus of Amoria moved with precision to build up the fire, light the lamps, pour himself a cup of wine. He watered it judiciously, then took a knife, sharpened it, and rhythmically chopped vegetables. He cracked two eggs, added the vegetables, sea salt, a generous pinch of expensive eastern pepper. He beat the mixture in a small, chipped bowl he’d had for years and used only for himself. Heated a saucepan on a grate placed over the cooking fire, drizzled olive oil into it, and made himself a flat-bottomed egg dish, flipping it intuitively. He set the saucepan down on a stone surface and selected a white-and-blue patterned plate from a shelf. He transferred his swift creation to the plate, decorated the surface with flower petals and mint leaves and then paused briefly to evaluate the effect. A chef who is careless about how he feeds himself, he was fond of telling his assistants, will become careless about feeding others.