He knew what he was doing this time, as it happened.
It was dangerously rash, and he didn’t care. He didn’t like this tall, arrogant woman with the perfect features and yellow hair and cold eyes and that stinging tongue.
He heard a collective intake of breath, could not mistake the sudden burning of anger in the woman’s eyes, but it was the other woman he was really waiting on, and Crispin, turning to her, found what he was looking for: the briefest flicker of surprised, ironic understanding in the dark gaze of the Empress of Sarantium.
In the awkwardness that followed his making explicit something the lady Styliane Daleina would far rather not have had made so clear, the Empress said, with deceptive mildness, ‘We have many ornaments among us. It occurs to me now that another of them has promised us to lay to rest a wager proposed at the banquet. Scortius, before I retire for the night, if I am to sleep easily, I must know the answer to the Emperor’s question. No one has come forward to claim the offered gem. Will you tell us, charioteer?’
This time Crispin did turn to look, as the brilliant array of courtiers to his right parted in a shimmer of silk and a small, trim man moved, neat-footed and composed, to stand beside a candelabrum. Crispin moved a little to one side, to let Scortius of the Blues wait alone before the thrones. Unable to help himself, he stared at the man.
The Soriyyan driver he’d seen perform marvels that day had deep-set eyes in a dark face traced lightly—and in one or two cases less lightly—by scars. His easy manner suggested he was no stranger to the palace. He wore a knee-length linen tunic in a natural, off-white colour, stripes in a dark blue running down from each shoulder to the knee, gold thread bordering it. A soft blue cap covered his black hair. His belt was gold, simple, extremely expensive. About his throat was a single chain, and from it, on his chest, hung a golden horse with jewels for its eyes.
‘We all strive,’ the charioteer said gravely, ‘in all we do, to please the Empress.’ He paused deliberately, then white teeth flashed. ‘And then the Emperor, of course.’
Valerius laughed. ‘Sheathe that deadly charm, charioteer. Or save it for whomever you are seducing now.’
There was feminine laughter. Some of the men, Crispin noted, did not appear amused. Alixana, her own dark eyes flashing now, murmured, ‘But I like when he unsheathes it, my lord Emperor.’
Crispin, caught unawares, was unable to control his own sudden burst of laughter. It didn’t matter. Valerius and the court around him gave vent to amusement as the charioteer bowed low to the Empress, smiling, unruffled. This was, Crispin understood finally, a court with a nature at least partly defined by its women.
By the woman on the throne, certainly. The Emperor’s return to good humour was manifestly unfeigned. Crispin, looking at the two thrones, abruptly thought of Ilandra, with the queer inner twist, as of a blade, that still came whenever he did so. Had his wife made the same sort of openly provocative remark he, too, would have been relaxed enough to find it amusing, so sure had he been of her. Valerius was like that with his Empress. Crispin wondered—not for the first time—what it would have been like to be wed to a woman one could not trust. He glanced at the Strategos, Leontes. The tall man wasn’t laughing. Neither was his aristocratic bride. There might be many reasons for that, mind you.
‘The jewel,’ said the Emperor, ‘is still on offer, until Scortius reveals his secret. A pity our Rhodian didn’t see the event, he seems to have so many answers for us.’
‘The racing today, my lord? I did see it. A magnificent spectacle.’ It occurred to Crispin, a little too late, that he might be making another mistake.
Valerius made a wry face. Ah. You are a partisan of the track? We are surrounded by them, of course.’
Crispin shook his head. ‘Hardly a partisan, my lord. Today was the first time I was ever in a hippodrome. My escort, Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian, who is here to meet with the Supreme Strategos, was good enough to be my guide to the running of the chariots.’ It couldn’t hurt Carullus to have his name mentioned here, he thought.
‘Ah, well then. As a first-timer you wouldn’t be able to address the question in any case. Go ahead, Scortius. We await enlightenment.’
‘Oh, no. No, let us ask him, my lord,’ said Styliane Daleina. There really was malice in her cold beauty. ‘As our thrice-exalted Emperor says, the artisan seems to know so much. Why should the chariots be beyond his grasp?’
‘There is much that lies beyond me, my lady,’ Crispin said, as mildly as he could. ‘But I shall endeavour to . . . satisfy you.’ He smiled in turn, briefly. He was paying a price for what he’d done inadvertently to her artisan, and for the deliberate reference to her pearl. He could only hope the price would stop at barbed innuendoes.
Alixana said, from her throne, ‘The question we debated at dinner, Rhodian, was this: how did Scortius know to surrender the inside track in the first race of the afternoon? He let the Green chariot come inside him, deliberately, and led poor Crescens straight into disaster.’
‘I recall it, my lady. It led the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian into a financial disaster, as well.’
A weak sally. The Empress did not smile. ‘How regrettable for him. But none of us has been able to offer an explanation that matches the answer our splendid charioteer is holding in reserve. He has promised to tell us. Do you wish to hazard a guess before he does?’
‘There is,’ Valerius added, ‘no shame attached to not knowing. Especially if this was your first time at the Hippodrome.’
It never really occurred to him not to answer. Perhaps it should have. Perhaps a more careful man, judging nuances, would have demurred. Martinian would have been such a man, almost certainly.
Crispin said, ‘I have a thought, my lord, my lady. I may be very wrong, of course. I probably am.’
The charioteer beside him glanced over. His eyebrows were raised a little, but his brown-eyed, observant gaze was intrigued and courteous.
Crispin looked back at him, and smiled. ‘It is one thing to sit above the track and ponder how a thing was done, it is another to do it at speed on the sands. Whether I am right or not, permit me to salute you. I did not expect to be moved today, and I was.’
‘You do me too much honour,’ Scortius murmured.
‘What is it, then?’ said the Emperor. ‘Your thought, Rhodian? There is an Ispahani ruby to be claimed.’
Crispin looked at him and swallowed. He hadn’t known, of course, what was on offer. This was no trivial prize; it was wealth, from the farthest east. He turned back to Scortius, clearing his throat. ‘Would it have to do with light and dark in the crowd?’
And from the immediate smile on the charioteer’s face, he knew that he had it. He did. A puzzle-solving mind. All his life.
In the waiting silence, Crispin said, with growing confidence, ‘I would say that the very experienced Scortius took his cue from the darkness of the crowd as he reached the turn below the Imperial Box, my lord Emperor. There must have been other things he knew that I cannot even imagine, but I’d hazard that was the most important thing.’
‘The darkness of the crowd,’ said the Master of Offices. Faustinus glared. ‘What nonsense is this?’
‘I hope it is not nonsense, my lord. I refer to their faces, of course.’ Crispin said no more. He was looking at the charioteer beside him. Everyone was, by now.
‘We seem,’ the Soriyyan said, at length, ‘to have a chariot-driver here.’ He laughed, showing white, even teeth. ‘I fear the Rhodian is no mosaicist at all. He is a dangerous deceiver, my lord.’
‘He is correct?’ said the Emperor sharply.
‘He is entirely so, thrice-exalted lord.’
‘Explain!’ It was a command, whiplike.
‘I am honoured to be asked,’ said the champion of the Blues, calmly.
‘You are not asked. Caius Crispus of Varena, explain what you mean.’
Scortius looked abashed, for the first time. Crispin realized that the Emperor was genuinely vexed,
and he guessed why: there was, clearly, another puzzle-solving mind in this room.
Crispin said cautiously, ‘Sometimes a man who sees a thing for the first time may observe that which others, more familiar, cannot truly see any more. I confess that I grew weary of the later races in the long day, and my gaze wandered. It went to the stands across the spina.’
‘And that taught you how to win a chariot race?’ Valerius’s brief pique had passed. He was engaged again, Crispin saw. Beside him, Alixana’s dark gaze was unreadable.
‘It taught me how a better man than I might do so. A mosaicist, as I told you, my lord, sees the changing colours and light of Jad’s world with some . . . precision. He must, or will fail at his own tasks. I spent a part of the afternoon watching what happened when the chariots went past the far stands and people turned to follow their passage.’
Valerius was leaning forward now, his brow furrowed in concentration. He held up a hand suddenly. ‘Wait! I’ll hazard this. Wait. Yes . . . the impression is brighter, paler when they look straight ahead—faces towards you—and darker when their heads turn away, when you see hair and head-coverings?’
Crispin said nothing. Only bowed. Beside him, Scortius of the Blues wordlessly did the same.
‘You have earned your own ruby, my lord,’ said the charioteer.
‘I have not. I still don’t . . . You now, Scortius. Explain!’
The Soriyyan said, ‘When I reached the kathisma turn, my lord Emperor, the stands to my right were many-hued, quite dark as I drove past Crescens to the inside. They ought not to have been, with the Firsts of the Greens and Blues right beneath them. Their faces ought to have been turned directly to us as we went by, offering a brightness in the sunlight. There is never time to see actual faces in a race, only an impression—as the Rhodian said—of light or dark. The stands before the turn were dark. Which meant the watchers were turned away from us. Why would they turn away from us?’
‘A collision behind you,’ said the Emperor of Sarantium, nodding his head slowly, his fingers steepled together now, arms on the arms of his throne. ‘Something more compelling, even more dramatic than the two champions in their duel.’
‘A violent collision, my lord. Only that would divert them, turn their heads away. You will recall that the original accident happened before Crescens and I moved up. It appeared a minor one, we both saw it and avoided it. The crowd would have seen it as well. For the Hippodrome to be turned away from the two of us, something violent had to have happened since that first collision. And if a third—or a fourth—chariot had smashed into the first pair, then the Hippodrome crews were not going to be able to clear the track.’
‘And the original accident was on the inside,’ said the Emperor, nodding again. He was smiling with satisfaction now, the grey eyes keen. ‘Rhodian, you understood all of this?’
Crispin shook his head quickly. ‘Not so, my lord. I guessed only the simplest part of it. I am . . . humbled to have been correct. What Scortius says he deduced, in the midst of a race, while controlling four horses at speed, fighting off a rival, is almost beyond my capacity to comprehend.’
‘I actually realized it too late,’ Scortius said, looking rueful. ‘If I had truly been alert, I’d not have been going by Crescens on the inside at all. I’d have stayed outside him around the turn and down the far straight. That would have been the proper way to do it. Sometimes,’ he murmured, ‘we succeed by good fortune and the god’s grace as much as anything else.’
No one said anything to this, but Crispin saw the Supreme Strategos, Leontes, make a sign of the sun disk. After a moment, Valerius looked over and nodded to his Chancellor. Gesius, in turn, gestured to another man who walked forward from the single door behind the throne. He was carrying a black silk pillow. There was a ruby on it in a golden band. He came towards Crispin. Even at a distance Crispin saw that this shining prize for an Emperor’s idle amusement at a banquet would be worth more money than he’d ever possessed in his life. The attendant stopped before him. Scortius, on Crispin’s right, was smiling broadly. Good fortune and the god’s grace.
Crispin said, ‘No man is less worthy of this gift, though I hope to please the Emperor in other ways as I serve him.’
‘Not a gift, Rhodian. A prize. Any man—or woman—here might have won it. They all had a chance before you, earlier tonight.’
Crispin bowed his head. A sudden thought came to him, and before he could resist it, he heard himself speaking again. ‘Might I . . . might I be permitted to make of this a gift, then, my lord?’ He stumbled over the words. He was successful but not wealthy. Neither was his mother, aging, nor Martinian and his wife.
‘It is yours,’ said the Emperor, after a brief, repressive silence. ‘What one owns one may give.’
It was true, of course. But what did one own if life, if love, could be taken away to darkness? Was it all not just . . . a loan, a leasehold, transitory as candles?
Not the time, or the place, for that.
Crispin took a deep breath, forcing himself towards clarity, away from shadows. He said, knowing this might be another mistake, ‘I should be honoured if the Lady Styliane would accept this from me, then. I would not have even had the chance to speak to this challenge had she not thought so kindly of my worth. And I fear my own impolitic words earlier might have distressed a fellow artisan she values. May this serve to make my amends?’ He was aware of the charioteer beside him, the man’s drop-jawed gaze, a flurry of incredulous sound among the courtiers.
‘Nobly said!’ cried Faustinus from by the two thrones.
It occurred to Crispin that the Master of Offices, powerful in his control of the civil service, might not be an especially subtle man. It also occurred to him in that same moment—noting Gesius’s thoughtful expression and the Emperor’s suddenly wry, shrewd one—that this might not be accidental.
He nodded at the attendant—vividly clad in silver—and the man carried the pillow over to the golden-haired lady standing near the thrones. Crispin saw that the Strategos, beside her, was smiling but that Styliane Daleina herself had gone pale. This might indeed have been an error; he had no sure instincts here at all.
She reached forward, however, and took the ruby ring, held it in an open palm. She had no real choice. Exquisite as it was, beside the spectacular pearl about her throat it was almost a trifle. She was the daughter of the wealthiest family in the Empire. Even Crispin knew this. She needed this ruby about as much as Crispin needed . . . a cup of wine.
Bad analogy, he thought. He did need one, urgently.
The lady looked across the space of the room at him for a long moment, and then said, all icy, composed perfection, ‘You do me too much honour in your turn, and honour the memory of the Empire in Rhodias with such generosity. I thank you.’ She did not smile. She closed her long fingers, the ruby nestled in her palm.
Crispin bowed.
‘I must say,’ interjected the Empress of Sarantium, plaintively, ‘that I am desolate now beyond all words. Did I, too, not urge you to speak, Rhodian? Did I not stop our beloved Scortius to give you an opportunity to show your cleverness? What gift will you make to me, dare I ask?’
‘Ah, you are cruel, my love,’ said the Emperor beside her. He looked amused again.
‘I am cruelly scorned and overlooked,’ said his wife.
Crispin swallowed hard. ‘I am at the service of the Empress in all things I may possibly do for her.’
‘Good!’ said Alixana of Sarantium, her voice crisp, changing on the instant, as if this was exactly what she’d wanted to hear. ‘Very good. Gesius, have the Rhodian conducted to my rooms. I wish to discuss a mosaic there before I retire for the night.’
There was another rustle of sound and movement. Lanterns flickered. Crispin saw the sallow-faced man near the Strategos pinch his lips together suddenly. The Emperor, still amused, said only, ‘I have summoned him for the Sanctuary, beloved. All other diversions must follow our needs there.’
‘I am not,�
� said the Empress of Sarantium, arching her magnificent eyebrows, ‘a diversion.’
She smiled, though, as she spoke, and laughter followed in the throne room like a hound to her lead.
Valerius stood. ‘Rhodian, be welcome to Sarantium. You have not entered among us quietly.’ He lifted a hand. Alixana laid hers upon it, shimmering with rings, and she rose. Together, they waited for their court to perform obeisance. Then they turned and went from the room through the single door Crispin had seen behind the thrones.
Straightening, and then standing up once more, he closed his eyes briefly, unnerved by the speed of events. He felt like a man in a racing chariot, not at all in control of it.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to see the real charioteer, Scortius, gazing at him. ‘Be very careful,’ the Soriyyan murmured softly. ‘With all of them.’
‘How?’ Crispin managed to say, just before the gaunt old Chancellor swooped down upon him as upon a prize. Gesius laid thin, proprietary fingers on Crispin’s shoulder and smoothly guided him from the room, across the tesserae of the Imperial hunt, past the silver trees and the jewelled birds in the branches and the avidly watchful, silken figures of the Sarantine court.
As he walked through the silver doors into the antechamber again, someone behind him clapped their hands sharply three times and then, amid a resumption of talk and languid, late-night laughter, Crispin heard the mechanical birds of the Emperor begin to sing.
CHAPTER VIII
‘Jad boil the bastard in his own fish sauce!’ Rasic snarled under his breath as he scrubbed at a stained pot. ‘We might as well have joined the Sleepless Ones and gotten some holy credit for being up all fucking night!’
Kyros, stirring his soup over the fire with a long wooden spoon, pretended not to be listening. You didn’t boil things in the fish sauce, anyhow. Strumosus was known to have exceptionally good hearing, and there was a rumour that once, years ago, the eccentric cook had tossed a dozing kitchen boy into a huge iron pot when the soup in that pot came to a boil unattended.
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