The Sarantine Mosaic

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  ‘Clever of you, love,’ Alixana murmured, ‘to have anticipated this.’

  Valerius shrugged. ‘Not really. Our Rhodian shamed her with a generous gift after publicly exposing an error of presumption. She ought not to have worn jewellery exceeding the Empress’s and she knew it.’

  ‘Of course she knew. But who was going to say so, in that company?’

  Both turned, as if cueing each other, to look at Crispin. Both smiled this time.

  Crispin cleared his throat. ‘An ignorant mosaicist from Varena, it seems, who now wishes to ask if he is likely to die for his transgressions.’

  ‘Oh, certainly you are. One of these days,’ said Alixana, still smiling. ‘We all do. Thank you, though. I owe you for an unexpected gift, and I do extravagantly admire a pearl like this. A weakness. Crysomallo?’

  The lady-in-waiting, smiling with pleasure herself, walked over with the box. She withdrew the necklace again, undid the clasp, and moved behind the Empress.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Valerius, touching the woman’s shoulder. ‘I’d like Gesius to have it looked at before you put it on.’

  The Empress looked surprised. ‘What? Really? Petrus, you think … ?’

  ‘No, I don’t, in fact. But let it be examined. A detail.’

  ‘Poison is scarcely a detail, my heart.’

  Crispin saw Crysomallo blink at that and hurriedly replace the necklace in its box. She wiped her fingers nervously against the fabric of her robe. The Empress seemed more intrigued than anything else, not alarmed at all—so far as he could tell.

  ‘We live with these things,’ Alixana of Sarantium said quietly. ‘Do not trouble yourself, Rhodian. As for your own safety … you did discomfit a number of people this evening. I would think a guard might be appropriate, Petrus?’

  She had turned as she spoke, to the Emperor. Valerius said simply, ‘It is already in place. I spoke with Gesius before coming here.’

  Crispin cleared his throat. Things happened swiftly around these two, he was beginning to realize. ‘I should feel … awkward with a guard following me about. Is it permissible to make a suggestion?’

  The Emperor inclined his head. Crispin said, ‘I mentioned the soldier who brought me here. His name is—’

  ‘—Carullus, of the Fourth Sauradian, here to speak with Leontes. Probably about the soldiers’ payment. You did mention him. I have named him and his men as your guards.’

  Crispin swallowed. By rights, the Emperor should not have even recalled the existence let alone the name of an officer mentioned once, in passing. But it was said of this man that he forgot nothing, that he never slept, that— indeed—he held converse, took counsel, with spirits of the half-world, dead predecessors, walking the palace corridors by night.

  ‘I am grateful, my lord,’ Crispin said, and bowed. ‘Carullus is by way of being a friend now. His company is a comfort here in the City. I will walk easier for his presence.’

  ‘Which is to my advantage, of course,’ said the Emperor, with a slight smile. ‘I want your attention on your labours. Would you like to see the new Sanctuary?’

  ‘I am eager to do so, my lord. The first morning when it is possible to be allowed—’

  ‘Why wait? We’ll go now.’

  It was long past the middle of the night. Even the Dykania revels would be ended by now. The bakers at their ovens, the Sleepless Ones at their vigils, street cleaners, city guards, prostitutes of either sex and their clients, these would be the people still awake and abroad. But this was an Emperor who never slept. So the tale ran.

  ‘I ought to have expected this,’ Alixana said, her tone affronted. ‘I bring a clever man to my rooms for such … skills as he may offer me, and you spirit him away.’ She sniffed elaborately. ‘I shall take refuge in my bath and my bed, then, my lord.’

  Valerius grinned suddenly, the boyish look returning. ‘You lost a wager, my love. Do not fall asleep.’

  With real astonishment, Crispin saw the Empress of Sarantium’s colour heighten. She sketched a brief, mocking homage, though. ‘My lord the Emperor commands his subjects in all possible things.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Valerius.

  ‘I shall leave you,’ said his Empress, turning. Crysomallo preceded her through the inner door. Crispin caught a glimpse of another fireplace and a wide bed beyond, frescoes and many-coloured fabric hangings on the walls. He realized in that moment that he was about to be alone with the Emperor, after all. His mouth grew dry again with the implications of that.

  Alixana turned in the doorway. She paused, as if in thought. Then laid a finger against one cheek and shook her head, as if in self-reproach. ‘I nearly forgot,’ she said. ‘Silly of me. Too distracted by a pearl and the thought of dolphins. Do tell us, Rhodian, your message from the queen of the Antae. What does Gisel say?’

  The sensation, after the apprehension of expecting to be private with Valerius to convey exactly this, was very much as if a pit had gaped open beneath his feet, sprung by the lever of that exquisite voice. Crispin’s heart lurched; he felt as if he were falling into emptiness.

  ‘Message?’ he echoed, wittily.

  The Emperor murmured, ‘My love, you are capricious and cruel and terribly unfair. If Gisel gave Caius Crispus any message at all, it would have been for my ears alone.’

  Holy Jad, Crispin thought, helplessly. They were too quick. They knew too much. It was overwhelming.

  ‘Of course she gave him a message.’ Alixana’s tone was mild, but her eyes remained on Crispin’s face, attentive and thoughtful, and there was no amusement in them now, he saw.

  He took a steadying breath. He had seen a zubir in the Aldwood. He had walked into the forest expecting to die and had come out alive, having encountered something beyond the mortal. Every living moment that followed that time in the mist was a gift. He found he could master fear, remembering that.

  He said quietly, ‘Is that why you asked me here, my lady?’

  The Empress’s mouth twitched wryly. ‘That, and the dolphins. I do want them.’

  Valerius said matter-of-factly, ‘We have people in Varena, of course. A number of the queen’s own guard were killed one night this autumn. Murdered in their sleep. Quite extraordinary. Such a thing only happens when you need a secret kept. Our people in Varena addressed themselves to the matter. It was not difficult for them to learn about the much-talked-about arrival of the courier with our invitation. He conveyed its content publicly, it seems? And for reasons not immediately clear, it was an invitation you took upon yourself, by deception, instead of Martinian. That was of interest. Resources were deployed. You were evidently seen returning home that same night very late, with a royal escort. Meeting someone in the palace? Then came the deaths in the night. Conclusions were plausibly drawn from all of this and posted to us.’

  It was spoken as calmly, as precisely, as a dictated military report. Crispin thought of Queen Gisel: beset on all sides, struggling to find a path, a space for herself, survival. Brutally overmatched.

  If he had a choice, he didn’t know what it was. He looked from the Emperor to the Empress of Sarantium, met Alixana’s steady gaze this time, and said nothing at all.

  It seemed he didn’t need to. The Empress said calmly, ‘She asked you to tell the Emperor that instead of an invasion a wedding might deliver Batiara more surely to him, with less blood shed on all sides.’

  There seemed so little point, really, to resisting, but still he would not speak. He lowered his head, but before he did, he saw her sudden, brilliant smile. Heard Valerius cry,‘I am accursed! The one night I win a wager she wins a larger one!’

  The Empress said, ‘She did want it relayed only to the Emperor, didn’t she?’

  Crispin lifted his head, made no reply.

  He might die here now, he knew.

  ‘Of course she did. What else could she have done?’ Alixana’s tone was matter-of-fact, no emotion in it at all. ‘She would want to avoid an invasion at almost any cost.’

 
‘She would, I would,’ said Crispin finally, as calmly as he could. ‘Wouldn’t any man? Or woman?’ He took a breath. ‘I will say one thing, something I myself believe to be true: Batiara might possibly be taken in war, but it cannot be held. The days of one Empire, east and west, are over. The world is not what it was.’

  ‘I believe that,’ said Alixana, surprising him, again.

  ‘And I do not,’ said the Emperor flatly. ‘Else I would not be devising as I am. I will be dead one day and lying in my tomb, and I would have it said of Valerius II that he did two things in his days beneath Jad’s sun. Brought peace and splendour to the warring schisms and sanctuaries of the god’s faith, and restored Rhodias to the Empire and to glory. I will lie easy with Jad if these two things are so.’

  ‘And otherwise?’ The Empress had turned to her husband. Crispin had a sense he was party now to a long conversation, oft repeated.

  ‘I do not think in terms of otherwise,’ said Valerius. ‘You know that, love. I never have.’

  ‘Then marry her,’ said his wife, very softly.

  ‘I am married,’ said the Emperor, ‘and I do not think in terms of otherwise.’

  ‘Not even to lie easy with the god after you die?’ Dark eyes holding cool grey in a room of candles and gold. Crispin swallowed hard and wished he were elsewhere, anywhere that was not here. He had not spoken a word of Gisel’s message, but they seemed to know it all, as if his silence meant nothing. Except to himself.

  ‘Not even for that,’ said Valerius. ‘Can you truly doubt?’

  After a long moment, she shook her head. ‘Not truly,’ said the Empress Alixana. There was a silence. She went on. ‘In that case, however, we ought to consider inviting her here. If she can survive somehow and get away, her royalty becomes a tool against whoever usurps the Antae throne—and someone surely would—if she were gone.’

  Valerius smiled then, and Crispin—for reasons he did not immediately grasp—felt a chill, as if the fire had died. The Emperor didn’t look boyish now. ‘An invitation went west some time ago, love. I had Gesius send it to her.’

  Alixana went very still, then shook her head back and forth, her expression a little odd now. ‘We are all foolish if we try to stay apace with you, are we not, my lord? Whatever jests or wagers you might enjoy making. Do you weary of being cleverer than anyone?’

  Crispin, appalled at what he’d just heard, burst out, ‘She can’t possibly come! They’ll kill her if she even mentions it.’

  ‘Or let her come east and denounce her as a traitor, using that as an excuse to seize the throne without shedding royal blood. Useful in keeping you Rhodians quiescent, no?’ Valerius’s gaze was cool, detached, sorting through some gameboard problem late at night. ‘I wonder if the Antae nobles are clever enough to do it that way. I doubt it, actually.’ These were real lives, though, Crispin thought, horrified: a young queen, the people of a war-torn, plague-stricken land. His home.

  ‘Are they only pieces of a puzzle, my lord Emperor? All those living in Batiara, your army, your own people exposed in the east if the soldiers go west? What will the King of Kings in Bassania do when he sees your armies leave the border?’ Crispin heard his own reckless anger.

  Valerius was unruffled. He said, reflectively, ‘Shirvan and the Bassanids receive four hundred and forty thousand gold solidi a year from our treasury. He needs the money. He’s under pressure from the north and south and he’s building, too, in Kabadh. Maybe I’ll send him a mosaicist.’

  ‘Siroes?’ the Empress murmured drily.

  Valerius smiled a little. ‘I might.’

  ‘I rather suspect you won’t have the chance,’ Alixana said.

  The Emperor looked at her a moment. He turned back to Crispin. ‘I had an impression in the throne room earlier that you were of the same cast of mind as I am, solving Scortius’s challenge. Are your tesserae not … pieces of a puzzle, as you put it?’

  Crispin shook his head. ‘They are glass and stone, not mortal souls, my lord.’

  ‘True enough,’ agreed Valerius, ‘but then you aren’t an Emperor. The pieces change when you rule. Be grateful your craft spares you some decisions.’

  It was said—had been said quietly for years—that this man had arranged the murder by fire of Flavius Daleinus on the day his uncle was elevated to the Purple. In this moment Crispin could believe it.

  He looked at the woman. He was aware that they had played him like a musical instrument between them tonight, but he also sensed that there was no malice in it. There seemed to be a casual amusement even, and a measure of frankness that might reflect trust, or respect for Rhodian heritage … or perhaps simply an arrogant indifference to what he thought or felt.

  ‘I,’ said Alixana decisively, ‘am going to my bath and bed. Wagers seem to have cancelled each other, good my lord. If you return very late, speak with Crysomallo or whoever is awake to ascertain my … state.’ She smiled at her husband, catlike, controlled again, and turned to Crispin. ‘Fear me not, Rhodian. I owe you for a necklace and some diversion, and one day perhaps will have more of you.’

  ‘Dolphins, my lady?’ he asked.

  She didn’t answer. Went through the open inner door and Crysomallo closed it.

  ‘Drink your wine,’ said the Emperor, after a moment. ‘You look like you need it. Then I will show you a wonder of the world.’

  I have seen one, Crispin thought. Her scent lingered.

  It occurred to him that he could have safely said it aloud, but he did not. They both drank. Carullus had told him, at some point in their journey here, that there was a judicial edict in the City that no other woman could wear the Empress Alixana’s perfume. ‘What about the men?’ Crispin could remember saying carelessly, eliciting the soldier’s booming laugh. It seemed a long time ago.

  Now, so far enmeshed in intricacies he could not even properly grasp what was happening, Crispin took his cloak again and followed Valerius II of Sarantium out of the Empress’s private chambers and down corridors, where he was soon lost. They went outside—though not through the main entranceway—and the Emperor’s guards conducted them with torches across a dark garden space and along a stone path with statuary strewn about them, looming and receding in the windy, beclouded night. Crispin could hear the sea.

  They came to the wall of the Imperial Precinct and went along it on the path until they came to a chapel, and there they entered.

  There was a cleric awake among the burning candles—one of the Sleepless Ones, by his white robes. He showed no surprise at seeing the Emperor at this time of night. He made obeisance, and then—with no words spoken—unhooked a key from his belt and led them to a small, dark door at the back behind the altar of the god and the golden disk of the sun.

  The door opened into a short stone corridor, and Crispin, bending to protect his head, realized they were passing through the wall. There was another low door at the end of that brief passage; the cleric unlocked it, too, with the same key, and stood aside.

  The soldiers paused as well, and so Crispin followed the Emperor alone into the Sanctuary of Jad’s Holy Wisdom in the depths of night.

  He straightened up and looked around him. There were lights burning wherever he looked, thousands of them, it seemed, even though this space was not yet consecrated or complete. His gaze went upwards and then upwards and slowly he apprehended the stupendous, the transcendent majesty of the dome that had been achieved here. And standing very still where they had stopped, Crispin understood that here was the place where he might achieve his heart’s desire, and that this was why he had come to Sarantium.

  He had collapsed and fallen down in the small roadside chapel in Sauradia, his strength obliterated by the power of the god that had been achieved overhead, stern with judgement and the weight of war. He did not fall here, or feel inclined to do so. He wanted to soar, to be given the glory of flight—Heladikos’s fatal gift from his father—that he might fly up past all these burning lights and lay his fingers tenderly upon the vast and hol
y surface of this dome.

  Overmastered by so many things—past, present, swift bright images of what might be—Crispin stood gazing upwards as the small door was closed behind them. He felt as if he were being buffeted—a small craft in a storm—by waves of desire and awe. The Emperor remained silent beside him, watching his face in the rippled light of a thousand thousand candles burning beneath the largest dome ever built in all the world.

  At length, at great length, Crispin said the first thing that came to his lips among the many whirling thoughts, and he said it in a whisper, not to disturb the purity of that place: ‘You do not need to take Batiara back, my lord. You, and whoever it was built this for you, have your immortality.’

  The Sanctuary seemed to stretch forever, so high were the four arches on which the great dome rested, so vast the space defined beneath that dome and the semi-domes supporting it, so far did naves and bays recede into darkness and flickering light. Crispin saw green marble like the sea in one direction, defining a chapel, blue-veined white marble elsewhere, pale grey, crimson, black. Brought here from quarries all over the world. He couldn’t even conceive of the cost. Two of those towering arches rested on a double ascension of marble pillars with balconies dividing the two courses, and the intricacy of the masons’ work on those stone balustrades—even in this first glimpse of them—made Crispin want to weep for the sudden memory of his father and his father’s craft.

  Above the second tier of pillars the two arches east and west were pierced by a score of windows each, and Crispin could already envisage—standing here at night by candlelight—what the setting and rising sun might do to this Sanctuary, entering through those windows like a sword. And also, more softly, diffused, through the higher windows in the dome itself. For, suspended like an image of Jad’s heaven, the dome had at its base a continuous ring of small, delicately arched windows running all around. Crispin saw also that there were chains, descending from the dome into the space below it, holding iron candelabras aflame with their candles.