Valerius was going to war in Batiara.
It had been resolved in his mind long ago, Gisel finally understood. He was a man who made his own decisions, and his gaze was on generations yet to be born as much as on those he ruled today. She had met him now, she could see it.
She herself, her presence here, might be of assistance or might not. A tactical tool. It didn’t matter, not in the larger scheme. Neither did anyone else’s views. Not the Strategos’s, the Chancellor’s, not even Alixana’s.
The Emperor of Sarantium, contemplative and courteous and very sure of himself, had a vision: of Rhodias reclaimed, the sundered Empire remade. Visions on this scale could be dangerous; such ambition carried all before it sometimes. He wants to leave a name, Gisel had thought, kneeling before him to hide her face, and then rising again, her composure intact. He wants to be remembered for this.
Men were like that. Even the wise ones. Her father no exception. A dread of dying and being forgotten. Lost to the memory of the world as it went mercilessly on without them. Gisel searched within herself and found no such burning need. She didn’t want to be hated or scorned when Jad called her to him behind the sun, but she felt no fierce passion to have her name sung down the echoing years or have her face and form preserved in mosaic or marble forever—or for however long stone and glass could endure.
What she liked, she realized wistfully, was the idea of rest at the end, when it came. Her body beside her father’s in that modest sanctuary outside Varena’s walls, her soul in grace with the god the Antae had adopted. Was such grace allowed? The possibility of it?
Earlier, in the palace, meeting the watchful eyes of the eunuch Chancellor Gesius for a moment, Gisel had thought she’d seen pity and understanding, both. A man who’d survived to serve three Emperors in his day would have some knowledge of the turnings of the world.
But Gisel was still inside these turnings, still young and alive, far from detached serenity or grace. Anger caught in her throat. She hated the very idea that someone might pity her. An Antae, a queen of the Antae? Hildric’s daughter? Pity? It was enough to make one kill.
Killing was not, in the circumstances, a possibility tonight. Other things were, including the spill of her own blood. An irony? Of course it was.
The world was full of those.
The litter stopped. She lifted the curtain again, saw the door of her own home, night torches burning in their brackets on the wall to either side. She heard her escort swing down from his horse, saw his face appear beside her. His breath made a puff of smoke in the very cold night air.
‘We have arrived, gracious lady. I am sorry for the chill. May I help you alight?’
She smiled at him. Found that she could smile quite easily. ‘Come in to warm yourself. I’ll have a mulled wine made before you ride back through the cold.’ She looked straight into his eyes.
The pause was brief. ‘I am greatly honoured,’ said golden Leontes, Supreme Strategos of the Sarantine armies. A tone that made one believe him. And why not believe him? She was a queen.
He handed her out of the litter. Her steward had already opened the front door. The wind was gusting and swirling. They went in. She had servants build the fires on the ground floor and upstairs and prepare spiced, heated wine. They sat near the larger fire in the reception room and spoke of necessarily trivial things. Chariots and dancers, the day’s minor wedding at a dancer’s home.
War was coming.
Valerius had told them tonight, changing the world.
They talked of games in the Hippodrome, of how unseasonably windy it was outside with winter due to have ended by now. Leontes, easy and relaxed, told of a Holy Fool who had apparently just installed himself on a rock beside one of the landward gates—and had vowed he would not descend until all pagans and heretics and Kindath had been expelled from the Holy City. A devout man, he said, shaking his head, but one who did not understand the realities of the world.
It was important, she agreed, to understand the realities of the world.
The wine came, a silver tray, silver cups. He saluted her formally, speaking Rhodian. His courtesy was flawless. It would be, she knew, even as he led an army ravaging through her home, even if he burned Varena to the ground, unhousing her father’s bones. He would prefer not to torch it, of course. Would do so if he had to. In the god’s name.
Her heart was pounding but her hands, she saw, were steady, revealing nothing. She dismissed her women and then the steward. A few moments after they left she stood and set down her cup—her decision, her act—and crossed the room. She stopped before his chair, looking down at him. Bit her lower lip, and then smiled. She saw him smile in turn, and pause to drain his wine before he stood up, entirely at ease, accustomed to this. A golden man. She took him by the hand and up the stairs and to her bed.
He hurt her, being unprepared for innocence, but women from the beginning of time had known this particular pain and Gisel made herself welcome it. He was star-tled and then visibly pleased when he saw her blood on the sheets. Vanity. A royal fortress conquered, she thought.
He spoke generously of the honour, of his astonishment. A courtier, at least as much as a soldier. Silk over the corded muscle, devout faith behind the wielded sword and the fires. She smiled, said nothing at all. Made herself reach for him, that hard, scarred soldier’s body, that it might happen again.
Knew what she was doing. Had no idea what it might achieve. Something in play, on the board, her body. Face to a pillow that second time, she cried out in the dark, in the night, for so many reasons.
He’d thought of going to the stables, but it seemed there were some conditions, some states of mind, that not even standing with Servator in the mahogany stall the Blues had made for his horse would address.
There had been a time—long ago, not so long ago— when all he’d wanted was to be among horses, in their world. And now, still a young man by most measures, the finest stallion the world knew was his own and he was the most honoured charioteer on the god’s created earth, and yet somehow tonight such dreams made real were not enough to assuage.
An appalling truth.
He had been to a wedding ceremony today, watched a soldier he knew and liked marry a woman clearly worthy of him. He’d had a little too much to drink among convivial people. And he had seen—first at the ceremony and then during the reception afterwards—the woman who troubled his own nights. She had been with her husband, of course.
He hadn’t known Plautus Bonosus and his second wife would be among the guests. Almost a full day in her presence. It was . . . difficult.
And so it seemed the undeniable good fortune of his life was not sufficient to address what was afflicting him now. Was he hopelessly greedy? Covetous? Was that it? Spoiled like a sulky child, demanding far too much of the god and his son?
He had broken a rule of his own tonight, a rule of very long standing. He had gone to her home in the dark after the wedding party broke up. Had been absolutely certain Bonosus would be elsewhere, that after the raillery of the celebration and the bawdy mood it induced, the Senator’s well-known, if discreetly managed, habits would assert themselves and he’d spend the night at the smaller home he maintained for his private use.
Not so. Inexplicably not so. Scortius had seen lights blazing in the iron-barred upper windows over the street at the mansion of Senator Bonosus. A shivering servant relighting wind-snuffed torches in the walls had descended from his ladder and volunteered, for a small sum, the information that the master was indeed home, closeted with his wife and son.
Scortius had kept a shrouding cloak over his face until his footsteps had led him away into the narrow lanes of the City. A woman called from a recessed doorway as he passed: ‘Let me warm you, soldier! Come with me! It isn’t a night to lie alone.’
It wasn’t, Jad knew. He felt old. Partly the wind and cold: his left arm, broken years ago, one of so many injuries, ached when the wind was bitter. The humiliating infirmity of an aged man, he thoug
ht, hating it. Like one of those hobbling, crutch-wielding old soldiers allowed a stool by the fire in a military tavern, sitting there all night, boring the unwary with a ten-times-told story of some minor campaign of thirty years before, back when great and glorious Apius was Jad’s dearly beloved Emperor and things hadn’t descended to the sad state of today and could an old soldier not be given something to wet his throat?
He could become like that, Scortius thought sourly. Toothless and unshaven at a booth in The Spina telling about the magnificent race day once, long ago, during the reign of Valerius II, when he had . . .
He caught himself massaging the arm and stopped, swearing aloud. It ached, though, it really did. They didn’t run the chariots in winter, or he’d have had a problem handling a quadriga in the turns. Crescens of the Greens hadn’t looked this afternoon as if anything ached in him at all, though he must have had his injuries over the years. Every rider did. The Greens’ principal driver was obviously ready for his second season in the Hippodrome. Confident, even arrogant—which was as it should be.
The Greens also had some new horses up from the south, courtesy of a high-ranking military partisan; Astorgus’s sources said two or three were exceptional. Scortius knew they did have one outstanding new right-sider, a trace horse the Blues had dealt them in a transaction Scortius had encouraged Astorgus to make. You gave up some things to gain something else, in this case a driver. But if he was right about the horse and about Crescens, the Greens’ standard-bearer would have quickly claimed the stallion for his own team and be that much more formidable.
Scortius wasn’t worried. He even enjoyed the idea of someone thinking he could challenge him. It stirred fires within him, the ones that needed stoking after so many years in ascendancy. A formidable Crescens was good for him, good for the Hippodrome. It was easy enough to see that. But he wasn’t easy tonight. Nothing to do with horses, or his arm, really.
It isn’t a night to lie alone.
Of course it wasn’t, but sometimes lovemaking—bought in a doorway or otherwise—wasn’t the real need either. There were notes lying on a table in his home from women who would be exquisitely happy to relieve him of the burden of being by himself tonight, even now, even so late. That wasn’t what he wanted, though for a long time it had been.
The woman he’d gone trudging uphill in the cutting wind to see was . . . closeted with her husband, the servant had said. Whatever that meant.
He swore again, fiercely. Why wasn’t the accursed Master of the Senate off playing his night games with this season’s boy? What was wrong with Bonosus, in Jad’s name?
It was at this point, walking alone (a little reckless, but one didn’t normally bring companions when attending upon one’s mistress at night, intending to climb her wall), that he’d thought of going to the stables. He wasn’t far from the compound. They’d be warm; the smells and night sounds of horses would be those he’d known and loved all his life. He might even find someone awake in the kitchens to offer a last cup of wine and a quiet bite of food.
He didn’t want wine or food. Or even the presence of his beloved horses now. What he wanted was denied to him, and the degree of frustration he felt was what— perhaps more than anything—was disturbing him. It felt childish. His mouth twitched at the irony. Did he feel old or young or both? Past time to make up one’s mind, wasn’t it? He considered, decided: he wanted to be a boy again, simple as a boy, or failing that, he wanted to be in a room alone with Thenaïs.
He saw the white moon when it rose. Was passing a chapel of the Sleepless Ones just then, walking east, could hear the chanting inside. Could have gone in, a few moments out of the cold, praying among holy men, but the god and his son at this immediate moment didn’t offer any answers either.
Perhaps they would have, had he been a better, more pious man, but he wasn’t and they didn’t and that was that. He saw a quick blue flicker of flame further down the street—a reminder of the half-world’s presence among men, never far away in the City—and he came, in that moment, to a sudden, unexpected decision.
There was another wall he could climb.
If he was awake and abroad and this restless perhaps he could put the mood to use. On the thought, not allowing himself time to hesitate, he turned and set off along a lane angled to the street.
He walked briskly, kept to shadows, became motionless in a doorway when he saw a party of drunken, singing soldiers stumble out of a tavern. He remained where he was a moment and watched a massive litter appear from blackness at the other end of the street and then turn down the steep road they took, heading towards the harbour. He considered this for a moment, and then shrugged. There were always stories unfolding in the night. People died, were born, found love or grief.
He went the other way, uphill again, rubbing his arm at intervals, until he came again to the street and then the house where he’d spent much of the afternoon and evening in celebration of a wedding.
The house the Greens provided for their best dancer was handsome and well maintained, in an extremely good neighbourhood. It had a wide portico, and a wellproportioned solarium and balcony overlooking the street. He had been in this home before today, as it happened, and even upstairs—visiting earlier inhabitants. Sometimes those living here placed their own bedroom at the front, using the solarium as an extension, a place from which to watch the life below. Sometimes the front chamber was a sitting room, with the bedroom at the back, over the courtyard.
Without much to rely upon but instinct, he decided that Shirin of the Greens would not be the sort who placed herself over the street. She spent enough of her days and nights looking out on people from a stage. She’d be sleeping above the courtyard, he decided. Unfortunately the houses were set so closely together here that there was no way to get to the courtyards from the front.
He looked up and down the empty street. Torches burned fitfully on walls; some had been extinguished by the wind. He looked up, and sighed. In silence, having done this sort of thing many times before, he moved to the end of the portico, mounted the stone railing and, reaching above his head with both hands, gripped and then pulled himself straight upwards in one smooth motion onto the porch roof.
One became very strong in the upper body and legs after years of mastering four horses in a chariot.
One also developed injuries. He paused long enough to give vent under his breath to the pain in his arm. He really was becoming too old for this sort of thing.
From portico roof to solarium balcony involved a short vertical jump, another hard gripping, and then a steady pull upwards until one knee could get purchase. Life would have been easier if Shirin had chosen to make this her bedchamber, after all. She hadn’t, as he’d surmised. A glance inside—darkness, some benches, a fabric hanging on the wall above a sideboard. It was a reception room.
He swore again, and then stepped up on the balcony railing, balancing. The roof above was flat, as they all were in this neighbourhood, no edging at all, to let the rain run off. Made it hard to find a grip. This, too, he remembered from elsewhere. Other houses. He could fall here if his hands slipped. It was a long way down. He imagined some servant or slave finding him in the morning street, neck broken. A sudden hilarity entered into him. He was being indescribably reckless here and he knew it.
Thenaïs ought to have been alone. She hadn’t been. He was here, climbing to another woman’s roof in the wind.
Footsteps sounded in the street below. He remained motionless, both feet on the railing, a hand on a corner column for balance, until they went away. Then he let go of the column and jumped again. He got both hands flat on the roof—the only way to do this successfully— and, grunting, levered himself up and onto it. A hard movement, not without cost.
He remained lying where he was for a time, on his back, determinedly not rubbing at his arm, looking up at the stars and the white moon. The wind blew. Jad had made men to be foolish creatures, he decided. Women were wiser, on the whole. They slept at night. Or close
ted themselves with their husbands. Whatever that meant.
He laughed this time, softly to himself, at himself, and stood up. He walked, treading lightly, towards the place where the roof ended at a view of the interior courtyard below. He saw a small fountain, dry still at winter’s end, stone benches around it, bare trees. The white moon shone, and the stars. Windy night, brilliantly clear. He realized that he felt happy, suddenly. Very much alive.
He knew exactly where her bedroom would be, could see the narrow balcony below. He took another look at the pale moon. A sister of the god, the Kindath called it. A heresy, but one could—privately—understand it sometimes. He looked over the roof edge. Going down would be easier. He dropped to his stomach, swung his legs over the side, lowered himself as far as he could, hands stretched above him. Then he dropped neatly to the balcony, landing silently, like a lover or a thief. He straightened from a crouch, moved softly forward to peer through the two glasspanelled doors into the woman’s room. One door, oddly, was ajar in the cold night. He looked at the bed. No one there.
‘There is a bow trained on your heart. Stop where you are. My servant will kill you happily if you do not declare yourself,’ said Shirin of the Greens.
It seemed wise to stop where he was.
He had no idea how she’d known he was there, how she’d had time to summon a guard. It also occurred to him—very belatedly—to wonder why he’d assumed she would be sleeping alone.
Declare yourself, she’d ordered. He did have his self-respect.
‘I am Heladikos, son of Jad,’ he said gravely. ‘My father’s chariot is here. Will you come ride with me?’
There was a silence.
‘Oh, my!’ Shirin said, her voice changing. ‘You?’
Speaking quickly, in a low tone, she dismissed the guard. After he’d left, she swung open the door to the balcony herself and Scortius, pausing to bow, entered her chamber. There came a light tapping at the inner door. Shirin crossed, opened it only a crack, accepted a lit taper from the servant briefly revealed in the hallway and then closed the door again. She moved about the room lighting candles and lamps herself.