The Sarantine Mosaic

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Rustem, furious with himself for an obvious oversight, took refuge in ignorance and earnest apologies … he was from a small town only, had no idea of the complexities of things in a great city, had had no intention at all to offend or transgress. Patients had gathered outside without his having put forth any word at all. The steward would confirm that. His oath—just like their own in the tradition of the west’s great Galinus—required him to try to be of aid. He would be honoured to attend upon the guild. Immediately, if permitted. Would cease seeing patients, of course, if they requested it. Was entirely in their hands. And, in passing, might his distinguished visitors wish to join him in dining with the Master of the Senate tonight?

  They registered that last remark, more than anything else. Declined the offer, of course, but noted it, along with where he was staying. Whose house it was. Access to corridors of power. The possibility he might be someone not to be offended.

  One could be amused, really. Men were the same all over the world.

  Rustem escorted the two Sarantine doctors to the door, promised to be at the guild rooms by mid-morning tomorrow. Begged their expert assistance in all matters there. Bowed. Expressed, again, his contrition and the degree to which he was gratified by their visit and looked forward to sharing their knowledge. Bowed again.

  The steward, expressionless, closed the door. Rustem, an eccentric mood coming upon him, actually winked at the man.

  Then he went up to attend to the streaking of his beard again (it needed regular care) and change for dinner at the Senator’s house. Bonosus had been asked by the patient to come here. He probably would. By now Rustem had a pretty good idea of the importance of the wounded man asleep in the next room. Charioteers and holy men. He wondered if he’d be able to turn tonight’s dinner talk to the possibility of war. Too soon, he decided. He had just arrived, spring was only beginning. Nothing could or would happen at speed, surely. Except the racing, he thought.

  Everyone in Sarantium—even the dying—seemed to be thinking about chariots. A frivolous people? He shook his head: too hasty an assessment, likely wrong. But in his new role as an observer of the Sarantines for the King of Kings he would have to attend the Hippodrome, he decided, like a physician visiting a patient.

  It came into his mind abruptly to wonder if Shaski liked horses. He realized that he didn’t know, and that since he was so far from home he couldn’t ask.

  It changed the feel of the afternoon, for a time.

  WHEN THE SENATOR CAME, late in the day, his manner was grave and brisk. He noted the changed downstairs rooms without comment, heard Rustem’s account of the night before (with, as promised, no mention of the boy), and then entered the room of Scortius and firmly closed the door behind himself.

  Rustem had urged him to keep the visit brief and Bonosus did so, coming out a short while later. He said nothing, of course, about the conversation that had taken place within. They were carried by litter to his principal residence. He remained singularly distracted during the dinner that followed.

  It was an immensely civilized evening, nonetheless. The guests were served wine as they entered by the Senator’s charming daughters: clearly the children of an earlier wife, the one here was much too young to be their mother. The two girls withdrew before the party was led to the dining couches.

  Rustem’s experience of such things owed more to his time in Ispahani lands than to any encounters at home, of course. Kerakek was not a place where invisible music played softly through the evening and impeccable servants hovered behind each couch, attentive to the least hint of a need. Under the polished guidance of the Senator’s wife Rustem was made welcome with the other guests, a Bassanid silk merchant (a courteous touch, that) and two Sarantine patricians and their wives. The Senator’s wife and the other two women, all elegant, poised and at ease, were much more conversational than those in Ispahani ever tended to be at such gatherings. They asked him a great many questions about his training, his family, drew him out on the subject of adventures in Ispahani lands. The mysteries of the far east, rumours of magics and fabled creatures, held an obvious fascination here. There was a discreet avoidance of Rustem’s dramatic arrival in Sarantium the morning before; the drama, after all, had been occasioned by the Senator’s son—who was nowhere to be seen.

  It became clear that no one knew about the equally dramatic late-night events involving the charioteer. Bonosus said nothing. Rustem wasn’t about to bring it up.

  A physician owed a duty to his patient.

  IN HIS BEST ROBE and carrying his walking staff, he attended at the guild the next morning, conducted by one of the household servants, bearing a note of introduction offered him by the Senator over the last wine of the evening.

  Rustem made all the necessary gestures and remarks, and found himself welcomed with courtesy. It was peacetime, and these were members of his own profession. He wasn’t about to stay long enough to represent a threat, and he might be useful to them. It was arranged that he would deliver a lecture in two weeks’ time here at the guild-hall. They sanctioned his treatment of a handful of patients a day in the rooms he’d set up, and he was given the names of two apothecary and herbalist shops where accurately mixed medicines could be obtained. The matter of students was deferred (a bit too much permanence implied?) but Rustem had already decided that would have to wait in any event, as long as the charioteer was in the house.

  And so he set in motion—more easily than he could have expected—a life, a pattern to his days, as springtime flowered in Sarantium. He paid a visit to a public bathhouse with the Bassanid merchant of the night before and established that the man had access to messengers going to Kabadh. Nothing was said explicitly, much exchanged by inference.

  A few days after that a message arrived from Kabadh, and a great deal was altered.

  It came by way of yet another Bassanid. At first, when the steward informed Rustem of the presence of one of his countrymen in the morning line of patients, Rustem had simply assumed that an eastern merchant had chosen to be treated for some ailment by a physician familiar with eastern regimens. The fellow was his third patient of the day.

  When the man entered, soberly garbed, neatly barbered, Rustem turned to him with an inquiring glance and asked after his health in their own tongue. The patient said nothing, merely withdrew a parchment from within his clothing and extended it.

  There was no formal seal that might have given warning.

  Rustem opened the parchment and read. He sat down as he did so, felt himself going pale, was aware that this ostensible patient was watching him closely. When he finished, he looked up at the other man.

  It was difficult to speak. He cleared his throat. ‘You … know what this says?’

  The man nodded. ‘Burn it now,’ he said. His voice was cultured.

  There was a brazier in the room; the mornings were still cold. Rustem went over to it and put the parchment in the flame, watching until it was consumed.

  He looked back at the man from Kabadh. ‘I was … I thought I was here as an observer.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Needs change,’ he said. He rose. ‘Thank you for your assistance, doctor. I am sure your help will address my … difficulty.’ He walked out.

  Rustem remained where he was for a long time, then remembered that the servants of Plautus Bonosus were almost certainly reporting on him and he forced himself to move, to reassume the movements of normality, though all had changed.

  A physician, by his oath, was to strive to heal the sick, to do battle with Azal when the Enemy laid siege to the bodies of mortal men and women.

  Instead, his king, the Brother to the Sun and Moons, had just asked him to kill someone.

  It was important to conceal the signs of his disquiet. He concentrated on his work. As the morning passed, he persuaded himself that his having any opportunity to do what had been asked of him was so remote that surely he could not be faulted for a failure. He could say as much when he went home.

  Or, more corr
ectly, he almost persuaded himself of that.

  He had seen the King of Kings, in Kerakek. It could not be said that Great Shirvan had conveyed any sense of indulgence towards those who might claim … difficulty in executing orders he conveyed to them.

  In the small house of Plautus Bonosus he finished with his morning patients and went upstairs. He decided it was time to stitch the charioteer’s wound. By now he had proper fibulae with clips for the ends. He performed that procedure. Routine, effortless. Requiring no thought at all, which was good.

  HE CONTINUED TO WATCH for and was relieved not to see the green oozing of pus. After a number of days had passed with the wound healing, he had just about decided it was time to bind the ribs more firmly. The patient had been entirely cooperative, if legitimately restless. Active, physical men took confinement badly, in Rustem’s experience, and this man wasn’t even able to have regular visitors, given the secrecy surrounding his presence here.

  Bonosus had come twice, on the pretence of seeing his houseguest from Bassania, and once, at night, a cloaked figure appeared who turned out to be a man named Astorgus, evidently of significance in the Blues’ group. It appeared that some unhappy results had transpired on the first day of the racing. Rustem didn’t ask for details, though he did mix a slightly stronger sedative for his patient that night, noting signs of agitation. He was prepared for such things.

  He wasn’t prepared, at all, to go along the hall one morning, in the second week after the charioteer had arrived in the dead of night, and find the bedroom empty and the window open.

  There was a folded note, set beneath the urine flask. ‘Do come to the Hippodrome,’ it read. ‘I owe you some amusement.’

  Above the paper, the flask had been dutifully filled. His brow furrowed, Rustem noted with a quick glance that the colour was satisfactory. He walked over to the window, saw a tree quite close to hand, thick branches, not yet hidden by budding leaves. It wouldn’t have been hard for a fit man to get out and down. For someone with inadequately wrapped, badly broken ribs and a deep, still-healing stab wound …

  Glancing at the window ledge Rustem saw blood.

  Looking more closely down on the small courtyard he observed a thin trail of it crossing the stones to the wall by the street. Suddenly angered, he looked up at the sky. Perun and the Lady knew, surely, that a physician could only do so much. He shook his head. It was a beautiful morning, he realized.

  He decided that after seeing his patients he would attend at the Hippodrome that afternoon for the second day’s racing. I owe you some amusement. He sent a runner to the Master of the Senate, asking if Bonosus might assist him in obtaining admission.

  He was being very naive, of course, though excusably, as a stranger in Sarantium.

  Plautus Bonosus was already at the Hippodrome by then, in the kathisma, the Imperial Box, the servant reported when he returned. The Emperor himself was attending the morning’s races, would retire at midday to deal with larger affairs in the palace. The Master of the Senate would remain all day, a representative of the state.

  Larger affairs. From the harbour the sound of shouts and hammering could be heard, even this far inland towards the walls.

  Ships were being made ready to sail. It was said that there were ten thousand foot-soldiers and cavalry assembled here and in Deapolis across the straits. As many were reported to be gathering in Megarium to the west, Rustem had been told by a patient a few days ago. The Empire was clearly on the brink of war, an invasion, something indescribably dramatic and exciting, though nothing, as yet, had been announced.

  Somewhere in the City a woman Rustem had been ordered to kill was going about the rhythm of her days.

  Eighty thousand Sarantines were in the Hippodrome, watching chariots run. Rustem wondered if she would be there.

  CHAPTER IX

  Crispin, in a mood he’d have been unwilling to define, was beginning work on the images of his daughters on the dome that same morning when the Empress of Sarantium came and took him away to see dolphins among the islands in the straits.

  Looking a long way down from the scaffold when Pardos, working beside him, touched his arm and pointed, he registered the explicit demand of Alixana’s presence. He looked back for a moment at Ilandra where he had placed her on the dome—a part of this holy place and its images—and then over at the surface nearby where his girls were awaiting their own incarnation out of memory and love. He would give his daughters form in a different guise, in light and glass, as Zoticus had given souls bodily form in the crafted birds of his alchemy.

  What was this but a different kind of alchemy, or the attempt to make it so?

  At the rail Pardos was anxiously glancing down and then back at Crispin and then down again. Less than two weeks in the City and his apprentice—his associate now— was obviously aware of what it meant to have an Empress waiting for you on the marble floor below.

  Crispin, along with Artibasos the architect, had received invitations to two large banquets in the Attenine Palace over the winter, but had not spoken privately with Alixana since autumn. She had come here once before, had stood very nearly where she was standing now, to see what was being done overhead. He remembered coming down to her, to all of them.

  He was unable to deny the quickening beat of his heart now. He cleaned his hands of plaster and lime as best he could, wiped at a cut finger—bleeding slightly— with the cloth tucked in his belt. He discarded the cloth and even allowed Pardos to adjust and brush his tunic, though he swatted the younger man away when he gestured towards Crispin’s hair.

  On the way down, though, he paused long enough on the ladder to push a hand through the hair himself. Had no idea if that improved anything.

  Evidently it didn’t. The Empress of Sarantium, richly if soberly garbed in a long blue gold-belted tunic and a porphyry cloak that came to her knees, with only rings and earrings for jewellery, smiled with amusement at him. She reached down as he knelt before her and ordered his much-abused red hair more to her satisfaction.

  ‘Of course the wind in the straits will undo my efforts,’ she murmured in the instantly memorable voice.

  ‘What straits?’ Crispin asked, rising to her gesture.

  And so he learned that the dolphins of which she’d spoken on his first night in the palace half a year ago remained on her mind. She turned and walked serenely past a score of still-kneeling artisans and labourers. Crispin followed, feeling excitement and the presence of danger—as he had from the very beginning with this woman.

  Men were waiting outside in the livery of the Imperial Guard. There was even a cloak for him in the litter he entered with the Empress of Sarantium. This was all happening very quickly. Her manner, as they were lifted and began to move, was matter-of-fact, entirely pragmatic: if he was to render dolphins leaping from the sea for her, he ought to see them first. She smiled sweetly from across the curtained litter. Crispin tried and failed to return the smile. Her scent was inescapable in the cushioned warmth.

  A short time later Crispin found himself in a long, sleek Imperial craft cutting through the crowded harbour, past a cacophony of construction and the loading and unloading of barrels and crates of goods, out to where the noise receded and a clean wind was there to be caught by the white and purple sails.

  On the deck, at the railing, Alixana was looking back at the harbour. Sarantium rose beyond it, brilliant in sunlight, domes and towers and the piled houses of wood and stone. They could hear another sound now: the chariots were in the Hippodrome today. Crispin looked up at the sun. They were probably up to the sixth or seventh race by now, the midday break to come, then the afternoon’s running. Scortius of the Blues had still been missing as of last night. The City spoke of that as much as it talked of war.

  He stood uncertainly a little behind the Empress. He didn’t like boats, but this one was moving easily through the sea, expertly handled, and the wind was not yet strong. They were the only passengers, he realized. He made a concerted effort to bring his
mind, his thinking, back from the scaffolding and his daughters, what he had expected would be the nature of today’s demands upon him.

  Without turning her head, Alixana said, ‘Have you sent to Varena to advise them what is coming? Your friends, family?’

  Today’s demands were evidently going to be otherwise.

  He remembered this from before: she used directness as a weapon when she chose. He swallowed. What use dissembling? ‘I wrote two letters, to my mother and my dearest friend … but there isn’t much point. They all know there is a threat.’

  ‘Of course they do. That’s why the lovely young queen sent you here with a message, and then followed herself. What does she have to say about all … this?’ The Empress gestured at the ships massed behind them in the harbour. Gulls wheeled in the sky, cutting across the line of their own wake in the sea.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Crispin said truthfully. ‘I would assume you’d know that far better than I, thrice-exalted.’

  She looked over her shoulder at him then. Smiled a little. ‘You’ll see better at the rail, unless it makes you unwell to look down at the waves. I ought to have asked before … ’

  He shook his head and came resolutely forward to stand beside her. White water streamed away from the sides of the ship. The sun was high, glinting on the spray, making rainbows as he watched. He heard a snapping sound and looked up to see a sail fill. They picked up speed. Crispin put both hands on the railing.

  Alixana murmured, ‘You warned them, I assume? In the two letters?’

  He said, not fighting the bitterness, ‘Why should it matter? Whether I’ve sent warnings? Empress, what could ordinary people do if an invasion came? These are not people with any power, any ability to influence the world. They are my mother and my dearest friend.’

  She looked at him again for a moment, without speaking. She was hooded now, her dark hair bound up in a golden net. The severity of the look accented her features, the high cheekbones, perfect skin, enormous dark eyes. He thought suddenly of the slender, crafted rose he had seen in her room. She had asked him for something more permanent, the golden rose speaking to the fragility of beautiful things, a mosaic hinting at that which might last. A craft that aspired to endure.