The zubir had made no sound at all in the wood. There had been silence, under and over leaves, shrouded and gathered in fog. The world closing down to the smallest thing, to the one thing. Something terrible or wonderful, and her own existence given back to her, leading her from the Aldwood to Sarantium which had never even been a dream. And to freedom, which had been, every night of that year.
There were eighty thousand people over in the Hippodrome right now. Carullus had said so. It wasn’t a number she could even get her mind around. Nearly five hundred thousand in the City, he’d said. Even after the riot two years ago and the plague. How did they all not tremble?
She’d spent the morning in this small room. Had thought to have her meal sent up, reflecting on the change that embodied, wondering what girl, beaten and afraid, would appear with a tray for the lady.
The lady with the soldiers. With the man who was going to the palace. She was that lady. Carullus had made certain they knew it downstairs. Service was a function of status here, as everywhere, and the Bronze Gates opening were the doorway to the world in Sarantium.
Martinian was going there. Or, rather, Caius Crispus was. He’d said they should call him Crispin in private. His name was Crispin. He’d been married to a woman named Ilandra. She was dead and his two daughters were. He had cried her name aloud in the country dark.
He hadn’t touched Kasia since that night after the Aldwood. Even then, he’d had her sleep in his cloak on the floor again at the beginning. She’d come to the bed herself, when he cried out. Only then had he turned to her. And only that one time. After, he’d made certain she had her own room as they travelled with the soldiers through the autumn winds and blowing leaves, Sauradia’s swift rivers and silver mines becoming Trakesia’s harvested grainlands, and then that first appalling sight of the City’s triple walls.
Five hundred thousand souls.
Kasia, her world spinning and changing too quickly for even a clever one to deal with, had no idea how to sort through what she was feeling. She was too caught in the movement of things. She could make herself blush—right now—if she remembered some of what she had felt, unexpectedly, towards dawn at the end of that one night.
She was in her room, hearing the Hippodrome, mending her cloak—his cloak—with needle and thread. She wasn’t skilled with a needle, but it was a thing to do. She’d gone down to the common room for the midday meal, after all. She was erimitsu, the clever one, and she did know that if she allowed herself to become enclosed within walls and locked doors here she might never get out. Hard as it was, she’d made herself go down. They had served her with casual efficiency, though not with deference. All a woman could ask for, perhaps, especially in the City.
She’d had half a roasted fowl with leeks and good bread and a glass of wine she’d watered more than halfway. It occurred to her, eating at a corner table, that she’d never done this in her life: taken a meal at an inn, as a patron, drinking a glass of wine. Alone.
No one troubled her. The room was almost empty. Everyone was in the Hippodrome, or celebrating the last day of Dykania in the streets, snatching food and too much drink from vendors’ stalls, waving noisemakers and banners of guild or racing faction. She could hear them outside, in the sunlight. She forced herself to eat slowly, to drink the wine, even pour a second glass. She was a free citizen of the Sarantine Empire in the reign of Valerius II. It was a public holiday, a festival. She made herself accede when the serving woman asked if she wanted melon.
The woman’s hair was the same colour as her own. She was older, though. There was a faded scar on her forehead. Kasia smiled at her when she brought the melon but the woman didn’t smile back. A little later, however, she brought over a two-handled cup filled with hot spiced wine.
‘I didn’t order this,’ Kasia said, worriedly.
‘I know. You should have. Cold day. This’ll calm you. Your men’ll be back soon enough and they’ll be excited. They always are, after the chariots. You’ll have to get busy again, dear.’
She walked away, still without a smile, before Kasia could correct her. It had been a kindness, though. Dear. She had meant to be kind. That could still happen then, in cities.
The spiced wine was good. It smelled of harvests and warmth. Kasia sat quietly and finished it. She watched the open doorway to the street outside. A flow of people, back and forth, unending. From all over the world. She found herself thinking of her mother, and home, and then of where she was, right now. This moment. The place in the god’s world where she was. And then she thought about the night she had lain with Martinian—Crispin—and that made her flush again and feel extremely strange.
She did as Carullus had instructed and had the serving woman set her meal to the room charges and then she went back upstairs. She had a room of her own. A closed door with a new lock. No one would come in and use her, or order her to do something. A luxury so intense it was frightening. She sat at the small window, needle to hand again, the cloak warm across her knees, but the spiced wine after the other two cups had made her sleepy and she must have drifted off in the slant of sunlight there.
The hard knocking at the door woke her with a start and set her heart to hammering. She stood up hastily, wrapped herself in the cloak—an involuntary, protective gesture—crossed to the locked door. She didn’t open it.
‘Who is that?’ she called. She heard her voice waver.
Ah. They said he brought a whore.’ A clipped, eastern voice, educated, sour. ‘I want to see the westerner, Martinian. Open the door.’
She was the erimitsu, Kasia reminded herself then. She was. She was free, had rights under law, the innkeeper and his people were below. It was full daylight here. And Martinian might need her to keep her wits just now. She’d heard Morax talk to merchants and patricians often enough. She could do this.
She took a breath. ‘Who seeks him, may I ask?’
There was a short, dry laugh. ‘I don’t talk to prostitutes through locked doors.’
Anger helped, actually. ‘And I don’t open doors to ill-bred strangers. We have a problem, it appears.’
A silence. She heard a floorboard creak in the hallway. The man coughed. ‘Presumptuous bitch. I am Siroes, Mosaicist to the Imperial Court. Open the door.’
She opened the door. It might be a mistake, but Marti—Crispin—had been summoned here to do mosaic work for the Emperor and this man . . .
This man was small, plump and balding. He was dressed in a rich, very dark blue, calf-length linen tunic worked expensively in gold thread, a crimson cloak over that with an intricate design running across it in a band, also in gold. He’d a round, complacent face, dark eyes, long fingers, at odds with the general impression of rotund softness. On his hands she saw the same network of cuts and scars that Crispin bore. He was alone save for a servant, a little distance behind him in the empty hallway.
Ah,’ said the man named Siroes. ‘He likes skinny women. I don’t mind them. What do you charge for an afternoon encounter?’
It was important to be calm. She was a free citizen. ‘Do you insult all the women you meet? Or have I offended you somehow? I was told the Imperial Precinct was known for its courtesies. I appear to have been wrongly informed. Shall I call for the innkeeper to have you thrown out, or shall I simply scream?’
Again the man hesitated, and this time, looking at him, Kasia thought she saw something. It was unexpected, but she was almost sure.
‘Thrown out?’ He gave that same short rasp of laughter. ‘You aren’t presumptuous, you are ignorant. Where is Martinian?’
Careful, she said to herself. This man was important, and Crispin might depend upon him, work with him, for him. She could not give way to panic or anger, either one.
She schooled her voice, cast her eyes downwards, thought of Morax, genuflecting to some fat-pursed merchant. ‘I am sorry, my lord. I may be a barbarian and unused to the City, but I am no one’s whore. Martinian of Varena is at the Hippodrome with the tribune of the Fourth Sauradi
an.’
Siroes swore under his breath. She caught it again, then, that hint of something unexpected.
He’s afraid, she thought.
‘When will he be back?’
‘My lord, I would imagine when the racing ends.’ They heard a roar from across the narrow streets and the expanse of the Hippodrome Forum. Someone had won a race, someone had lost it. ‘Will you wait for him? Or shall I leave him a message from you?’
‘Wait? Hardly. Amusing, I must say, that the Rhodian thinks he is at leisure to go to the games when he’s taken the god’s time arriving.’
‘Surely not a failing during Dykania, my lord? The Emperor and the Chancellor were both to be at the Hippodrome, we were told. No court presentations were scheduled.’
‘Ah. And who is informing you so comprehensively?’
‘The tribune of the Fourth Sauradian is very knowledgeable, my lord.’
‘Hah! The Sauradians? A country soldier.’
‘Yes, my lord. Of course, he is an officer and does have an appointment with the Supreme Strategos. I suppose that required that he make himself aware of doings in the Imperial Precinct. As best he could. Of course, as you say, he wouldn’t really know very much.’
She looked up in time to catch an uneasy glance from the mosaicist. She cast her eyes quickly downwards again. She could do this. It was possible, after all.
Siroes swore again. ‘I cannot wait on an ignorant westerner. There is to be an Imperial Banquet after the chariots tonight. I have an honoured couch there.’ He paused. ‘Tell him that. Tell him . . . I came as a colleague to extend greetings before he was faced with the . . . strain of a court appearance.’
She kept her eyes down.
‘He will be honoured, I know it. My lord, he will be distressed to have missed your visit.’
The mosaicist twitched his cloak up on one shoulder, adjusting the golden brooch that pinned it. ‘Don’t fake proper manners or speech. It hardly suits a bony whore. I do have enough time to fuck you. Will a half solidus get your clothes off?’
She held back the biting retort. She wasn’t afraid any more, astonishingly. He was. She met his gaze. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It will not. I shall tell Martinian of Varena you were here and offered, though.’
She moved to close the door.
‘Wait!’ His eyes flickered. ‘A jest. I made a jest. Country folk never understand court wit. Do you . . . would you . . . by chance have any experience of Martinian’s work, or, ah, his views on . . . say, the transfer method of setting tesserae?’
A terrified man. They were dangerous sometimes. ‘I am neither his whore nor his apprentice, my lord. I shall tell him, when he returns, that this is what you came to learn.’
‘No! I mean . . . do not trouble yourself. I will discuss the matter with him myself, naturally. I shall have to, ah, ascertain his competence. Of course.’
‘Of course,’ Kasia said, and closed the door on the Mosaicist to the Imperial Court.
She locked it, leaned back against the wood, and then, unable not to, began to laugh silently, and then to weep, at the same time.
Had he arrived back at the inn after the racing, as he had intended, had he spoken with Kasia and learned of her encounter with a visitor—the details of which would have meant rather more to him than they did to her—Crispin would almost certainly have conducted himself differently in certain matters that followed.
This, in turn, might have occasioned a significant change in various affairs, both personal and of much wider import. It could, in fact, have changed his life and a number of other lives, and—arguably—the course of events in the Empire.
This happens, more often than is sometimes suspected. Lovers first meet at a dinner one almost failed to attend. A wine barrel falling from a wagon breaks the leg of someone who chose an impulsive route to his usual bathhouse. An assassin’s thrown dagger fails to kill only because the intended victim turns—randomly—and sees it coming. The tides of fortune and the lives of men and women in the god’s created world are shaped and altered in such fashion.
Crispin didn’t come back to the inn.
Or, rather, as he and Carullus and Vargos approached it at sundown through the roiling, tumultuous festival streets, half a dozen men detached themselves from where they were standing by the front wall of the inn and approached them. They were clad, he noted, in subtly patterned knee-length dark green tunics, with a vertical brown stripe on both sides, brown trousers, dark brown belts. Each wore an identical necklace with a medallion, a badge of office. They were grave, composed, entirely at odds with the chaos around them.
Carullus stopped when he saw them. He looked cautious, but not alarmed. Crispin, taking his cue from this, stood easily as the leader of the six men came up to him. He was admiring the taste and cut of the clothing, in fact. Just before the man spoke, he realized he was a eunuch.
‘You are the mosaicist? Martinian of Varena?’
Crispin nodded. ‘May I know who asks?’
Overhead at her window Kasia was watching. She had been looking out for the three men as soon as the cheering from the Hippodrome had stopped. She looked down and thought of calling out. Did not. Of course.
‘We are sent from the Chancellor’s Offices. Your presence is requested in the Imperial Precinct.’
‘So I understand. It is why I have journeyed to Sarantium.’
‘You do not understand. You are greatly honoured. You are to come tonight. Now. The Emperor will be hosting a banquet shortly. After this he will receive you in the Attenine Palace. Do you comprehend? Men of the highest rank wait weeks, months to be seen. Ambassadors sometimes leave the city without an audience at all. You will be presented tonight. The Emperor is greatly engaged by the progress of the new Sanctuary. We are to bring you back with us and prepare you.’
Carullus made a small, whistling sound. One of the eunuchs looked at him. Vargos was motionless, listening. Crispin said, ‘I am honoured, indeed. But now? I am to be presented as I am?’
The eunuch smiled briefly. ‘Hardly as you are.’ One of the others sniffed audibly, with amusement.
‘Then I must bathe and change my clothing. I have been in the Hippodrome all day.’
‘This is known. It is unlikely that any clothing you have brought will be adequate to a formal court appearance. You are here by virtue of the Chancellor’s request. Gesius therefore assumes responsibility for you before the Emperor. We will attend to your appearance. Come.’
He went. It was why he was here.
Kasia watched from the window, biting her lip. The impulse to call after him was very strong, though she could not have said why. A premonition. Something from the half-world? Shadows. When Carullus and Vargos came upstairs she told them about the afternoon visitor, about that last, strangely specific question he’d asked. Carullus swore, deepening her fears.
‘Nothing for it,’ he said, after a moment. ‘No way to tell him now. There’s a trap of some kind, but there would have to be, at that court. He has quick wits, Jad knows it. Let us hope he keeps them about him.’
‘I must go,’ Vargos said, after a silence. ‘Sundown.’
Carullus looked at him, gave Kasia a shrewd glance, and then led them both briskly out into the crowded, now-darkening streets to a good-sized sanctuary some distance back towards the triple walls. Among a great many people in the space before the altar and the sun disk on the wall behind it they heard the sundown rites chanted by a wiry, dark-bearded cleric. Kasia stood and knelt and stood and knelt between the two men and tried not to think about the zubir, or Caius Crispus, or about all the people packed so closely around her here, and in the City.
Afterwards, they dined at a tavern not far away. Crowds again. There were many soldiers. Carullus greeted and was saluted by a number of them when they entered, but then, still being solicitous, chose a booth at the very back, away from the noise. He had her sit with her back to the tumult, so she wouldn’t even have to look at anyone but Vargos or himself. He ordered fo
od and wine for the three of them, jesting easily with the server. He had lost a great deal of money on one particular race in the afternoon, Kasia gathered. It didn’t seem to have subdued him very much. He was not, she had come to realize, a man easily subdued.
He felt outraged beyond words, violated and assaulted, undermined in his very sense of who he was. He had shouted in profane rage, lashed out in wild fury, sending fountains of water splashing from the bath, soaking a number of them.
They had laughed. And given the wide swath already cut from him while he’d lain back at his ease, eyes innocently closed in the wonderfully warm, scented water, Crispin had had no real choice any more. When he’d finished snarling and swearing and vowing obscenely violent acts that appeared only to amuse them further, he’d had to let them complete what they’d begun—or look like a crazed madman.
They finished shaving off his beard.
It seemed that the fashion at the court of Valerius and Alixana was for smooth-cheeked men. Barbarians, hinterland soldiers, provincials who couldn’t know better, wore facial hair, the eunuch wielding the scissors and then the gleaming razor said, making a moue of ineffable distaste. They looked like bears, goats, bison, other beasts, he opined.
‘What do you know about bison?’ Crispin had rasped bitterly.
‘Nothing in the least! Thanks be to holy Jad in his mercy!’ the eunuch with the razor had replied fervently, making the sign of the sun disk with the blade, eliciting laughter from his fellows.
Men at court, he explained patiently, manipulating the razor with precision as he spoke, had a duty to the god and the Emperor to appear as civilized as they could. For a red-headed man to wear a beard, he’d added firmly, was as much a provocation, a sign of ill-breeding, as . . . as breaking wind during the sunrise invocation in the Imperial Chapel.
Waiting, some time later, in an antechamber of the Attenine Palace, clad in silk for only the second time in his life, with soft, close-fitting leather shoes and a short, dark green cloak pinned to his shoulder over the long, dove grey tunic bordered in textured black, Crispin couldn’t stop touching his own face. His hand kept wandering up of its own accord. They had held up a mirror for him in the bath: a splendid one, ivory-handled, a design of grapes and leaves etched on the silver back, the glass wonderfully true, next to no distortion.
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