"Sailing to Sarantium" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

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.

Kyros was pretty sure that wasn't true, but he had seen the rotund master chef bring a chopping knife down a finger's breadth away from the hand of an undercook who was cleaning leeks carelessly. The knife had stuck, quivering, in the table. The undercook had looked at it, at his own precariously adjacent fingers, and fainted. "Toss him in the horse trough," Strumosus had ordered. Kyros's bad foot had excused him from that duty, but four others had done it, carrying the unconscious undercook out the door and down the portico steps. It had been winter then, a bitterly cold, grey afternoon. The surface of the water in the trough across the courtyard was frozen. The undercook revived, spectacularly, when they dropped him in.

Working for a notoriously temperamental cook was not the easiest employment in the City.

Still, Kyros had surprised himself over the course of a year and a half by discovering that he enjoyed the kitchen. There were mysteries to preparing food, and Kyros had found himself thinking about them. It helped that this wasn't just any kitchen, or any chef. The short, hot-tempered, ample-stomached man who supervised the food here was a legend in the City. There were those who held the view that he was far too aware of the fact, but if a cook could be an artist, Strumosus was. And his kitchen was the Blues" banqueting hall in Sarantium, where feasts for two hundred people were known to take place some nights.

Tonight, in fact. Strumosus, in a fever of brilliance, controlled chaos, and skin-blistering invective, had co-ordinated the preparation of eight elaborate courses of culinary celebration, climaxing in a parade of fifty boys-they'd recruited and cleaned up the stablehands-carrying enormous silver platters of shrimp-stuffed whitefish in his celebrated sauce around the wildly cheering banquet room while trumpets sounded and blue banners were madly waved. An overly enthused Clarus-the Blues" principal male dancer-had leaped flamboyantly from his seat at the high table and hastened over to plant a kiss full on the lips of the cook in the doorway to the kitchens. Shouts and ribald laughter ensued as Strumosus pretended to swat the little dancer away and then acknowledged the applause and whistles.

It was the last night of Dykania, end of another racing season, and the Glorious Blues of Great Renown had once more thrashed the hapless whey-faced Greens, both during the long season and today. Scortius's astonishing victory in the first afternoon race already seemed destined to become one of those triumphs that were talked about forever.

The wine had flowed freely all night, and so had the toasts that came with it. The faction's poet, Khardelos, had stood up unsteadily, propped himself with one splayed hand on the table, and improvised a verse, flagon lifted:

Amid the thundering voices of the gathered throng

Scortius flies like an eagle across the sand beneath the eagle's nest of the kathisma!

All glory to the glorious Emperor!

Glory to the swift Soriyyan and his steeds!

All glory to the Blues of Great Renown!

Kyros had felt prickles of sheer delight running along his spine. Like an eagle across the sand. That was wonderful! His eyes misted with emotion. Strumosus, beside him at the kitchen door in the momentary lull of activity, had snorted softly. "A feeble wordsmith," he'd murmured, just loudly enough for Kyros to hear. He often did that. "Old phrases and butchered ones. Must talk to Astorgus. The charioteers are splendid, the kitchen is matchless, as we all know. The dancers are good enough. The poet, however, must go. Must go."

Kyros had looked over and blushed to see Strumosus's sharp, small eyes on him. Tart of your education, boy. Be not seduced by cheap sentiment any more than by a heavy hand with spices. There's a difference between the accolades of the masses and the approval of those who really know." He turned and went back into the heat of the kitchen. Kyros quickly followed.

Later, scarred, craggy-faced Astorgus, once the most celebrated charioteer in the City himself and now the Blues" factionarius, made a speech announcing a new statue to Scortius for the spina in the Hippodrome. There were already two of them, but both had been raised by the pustulent Greens. This one, Astorgus declared, would be made of silver not bronze, to the greater glory of the Blues and the charioteer, both. There was a deafening roar of approval. One of the younger serving boys in the kitchen, startled by the noise, dropped a dish of candied fruit he was carrying out. Strumosus buffeted him about the head and shoulders with a long-handled wooden spoon, breaking the spoon. The spoons broke easily, as it happened. Kyros had noticed that the cook seldom did much actual damage, for all the apparent force of his blows.

When he had a moment, Kyros paused in the doorway again, looking at Astorgus. The factionarius was drinking steadily but to little evident effect. He had an easy, smiling word for everyone who stopped by his seat at the table. A calm, immensely reassuring man. Strumosus said Astorgus was the principal reason for the Blues" current domination of the racing and many other matters. He had wooed Scortius, Strumosus himself, was said to be working on other clever schemes all the time. Kyros wondered, though: how would it feel to be known as a competent administrator when you had once been the object yourself of all the wild cheers, the statues raised, the enraptured speeches and poems comparing you to eagles and lions, or to the great Hippodrome figures of all the ages? Was it hard? It must be, he thought, but couldn't really know, not from looking at Astorgus.

The banquet meandered its way to a vague close, as such events tended to. A few quarrels, someone violently ill in a corner of the hall, too sick to make it as far as the room set aside for vomiting. Columella, the horse doctor, slumped in his seat morosely, chanting verses from Trakesia long ago in a monotone. He was always like that late at night. He knew more old poetry than Khardelos did. Those on either side of him were fast asleep with their heads among the platters on the table. One of the younger female dancers was doing a sequence of movements by herself, over and over, face intent, hands fluttering up like paired birds, then falling to rest at her sides as she spun. Kyros seemed to be the only one watching her. She was pretty, he thought. Another pair of dancers took her with them when they left. Then Astorgus left, helping Columella along, and soon no one was left in the hall. That had been a while ago.

As far as Kyros could judge, it had been a very successful banquet. Scortius hadn't been there, of course. He had been summoned to the Imperial Precinct, and so was forgiven his absence. An invitation from the Emperor brought glory to them all.

On the other hand, the brilliant charioteer was also the reason Strumosus-exhausted, dangerously irritable-and a handful of unfortunate boys and undercooks were still awake in the kitchen in the depths of an autumn night after even the most impassioned of the partisans had staggered to their homes and beds. The Blues" staff and administration were asleep by now across the courtyard in the dormitory or their private quarters, if rank had earned them such. The streets and squares beyond the gated compound were quiet at the end of the festival. Slaves under the supervision of the Urban Prefect's office would be out already, cleaning the streets. It was cold outside now; a north wind had come slicing down out of Trakesia, winter in it.

Ordinary life would resume with the sun. The parties were over.

But it seemed that Scortius had solemnly promised the master cook of the Blues that he would come to the kitchens after the Emperor's banquet and sample what had been offered tonight, comparing it to the fare in the Imperial Precinct. He was late. It was late. It was very late. No approaching footsteps could be heard outside.

They had all been enthused at the prospect of sharing the last of a glorious day and night with the charioteer, but that had been a long time ago. Kyros suppressed a yawn and eyed the low fire, stirring his fish soup, careful not to let it boil. He tasted it, and decided against adding any more sea salt. It was an extreme honour for one of the scullion boys to be entrusted with supervising a dish and there had been indignation when Kyros was given such tasks after barely a year in the kitchen. Kyros himself had been astonished; he hadn't known Strumosus was even aware of his presence.

He hadn't actually wanted to be here at the beginning. As a boy he'd planned to be a charioteer, of course: all of them did. Later, he'd expected to follow his father as an animal trainer for the Blues, but reality had descended upon that idea when Kyros was still very young. A trainer dragging a clubbed foot around with him was unlikely to survive even a season among the big cats and bears. Kyros's father had appealed to the faction administration to find another place for his son when Kyros was of age. The Blues tended to look after their own. Administrative wheels had turned, on a minor scale, and Kyros had been assigned to apprentice in the great kitchen with the newly recruited master cook. You didn't have to run, or dodge dangerous beasts there.

Other than the cook.

Strumosus reappeared in the doorway from the portico outside. Rasic, with his uncanny survival instinct, had already stopped his muttering, without turning around. The chef looked fevered and overwrought, but he often did, so that didn't signify greatly. Kyros's mother would have paled to see Strumosus walking to and from the hot kitchens and the cold courtyard at such an hour as this. If the noxious vapours didn't afflict you in the black depths of night then the spirits of the half-world would, she firmly believed.

Strumosus of Amoria had been hired by the Blues-at a cost rumoured to be outrageous-from the kitchens of the exiled Lysippus, once Quaestor of Imperial Revenue, banished in the wake of the Victory Riot. The two factions competed in the hippodromes with their chariots, in the theatres of the Empire, with their poets" declamations and group chants, and-not at all infrequently-in the streets and alleyways with cudgels and blades. Cunning Astorgus had decided to take the competition into the kitchens of the faction compounds, and recruiting Strumosus-though he was prickly as a Soriyyan desert plant-had been a brilliant stroke. The City had talked about nothing else for months; a number of patricians had discovered a hitherto unknown affiliation to the Blues and had happily fattened themselves in the faction's banquet hall while making contributions that went a long way towards fattening Astorgus's purse for the horse auctions or the wooing of dancers and charioteers. The Blues appeared to have found yet another way to fight-and defeat-the Greens.

Blues and Greens had fought side by side two years ago, in the Victory Riot, but that astonishing, almost unprecedented fact hadn't done anything to stop them from dying when the soldiers had come into the Hippodrome. Kyros remembered the riot, of course. One of his uncles had been killed by a sword in the Hippodrome Forum and his mother had taken to her bed for two weeks after that. The name of Lysippus the Calysian had been one to spit upon in Kyros's household, and in a great many others, of all ranks and classes.

The Emperor's taxation master had been ruthless, but they always were, taxation masters. It was more than that. The stories of what went on after darkfall in his city palace had been ugly and disturbing. Whenever young people of either sex went missing eyes were cast at those blank, windowless stone walls. Wayward children were threatened with the gross Calysian to frighten them into obedience.

Strumosus hadn't added anything to the rumours, being uncharacteristically reticent on the subject of his former employer. He'd arrived in the Blues" kitchens and cellars, spent a day glaring at what he found, thrown out almost all of the implements, much of the wine, dismissed all but two of the undercooks, terrified the boys, and-within days-had begun producing meals that dazzled and amazed.

He was never happy, of course: complaining endlessly, verbally and physically abusing the staff he hired, hectoring Astorgus for a larger budget, offering opinions on everything from poets to the proper diet for the horses, moaning about the impossibility of subtle cooking when one had to feed so many uneducated chewers of food. Still, Kyros had noted, for all the flow of grievances, there never did seem to be an end to the changing dishes they prepared in the great kitchen, and Strumosus didn't seem at all financially constrained in his market purchases of a morning.

That was one of Kyros's favourite tasks: accompanying the cook to market just after the invocation in chapel, watching him appraise vegetables and fish and fruit, squeezing and smelling, sometimes even listening to food, devising the day's meals on the spot in the light of what he found.

In fact, it was most likely because of his obvious attention at such times, Kyros later decided, that the cook had elevated him from washing platters and flasks to supervising some of the soups and broths. Strumosus almost never addressed Kyros directly, but the fierce, fat little man seemed always to be talking to himself at the market as he moved swiftly from stall to stall, and Kyros, keeping up as best he could with his bad foot, heard a great deal and tried to remember. He had never imagined, for example, that the difference in taste between the same fish caught across the bay near Deapolis and one netted on this side, near the cliffs east of the City, could be so great.

The day Strumosus found sea bass from Spinadia in the market was the first time Kyros saw a man actually weep at the sight of food. Strumosus's fingers as he caressed the glistening fish reminded Kyros of a Holy Fool's clasp on his sun disk. He and the others in the kitchen were permitted to sample the dish-baked lightly in salt, flavoured with herbs-after the dinner party that night was over, and Kyros, tasting, began to comprehend a certain way of living life. He would sometimes date the beginning of his adulthood to that evening.

At other times he would consider that his youth properly ended at the conclusion of Dykania later that same year, waiting for Scortius the charioteer in the depths of a cold night, when they heard a sudden, urgent cry and then running feet in the courtyard.

Kyros wheeled around awkwardly to look at the outside door. Strumosus quickly set down his cup and the wine flask he was holding. Three men bulked in the entranceway, then they burst inside, making the space seem suddenly small. One was Scortius. His clothing was torn, he held a knife in his hand. One of the others gripped a drawn sword: a big man, an apparition, dripping blood, with blood on the sword.

Kyros, his jaw hanging open, heard the Glory of the Blues, their own beloved Scortius, rasp harshly, "We're being pursued! Get help. Quickly!" He said it in a gasp; they had been running.

It occurred to Kyros only later that if Scortius had been a different sort of man he might have shouted for aid himself. Instead, it was Rasic who sprang for the inner doorway and sprinted across the banquet room towards the exit nearest the dormitory, screaming in a blood-chilling voice, "Blues! Blues! We are attacked! To the kitchen! Up, Blues!"

Strumosus of Amoria had already seized his favourite chopping knife. There was a mad glint in his eye. Kyros looked around and grabbed for a broom, pointing the shaft towards the empty doorway. There were sounds outside now, in the darkness. Men moving, and the dogs were barking.

Scortius and his two companions came farther into the room. The wounded one with the sword waited calmly, nearest the door, first target of any rush.

Then the sounds of movement in the courtyard ceased. No one could be seen for a moment. There was a frozen interval, eerie after the explosion of action. Kyros saw that the two undercooks and the other boys had each grabbed some sort of weapon. One held an iron poker from the fire. Blood from the wounded man was dripping steadily onto the floor at his feet. The dogs were still barking.

A shadow moved in the darkness of the portico. Another big man.

Kyros saw the dark outline of his blade. The shadow spoke, with a northern accent: "We want only Rhodian. No quarrel with Blues or other two men. Lives be spared if you send him out to us."

Strumosus laughed aloud.

"Fool! Do you understand where you are, whoever you are? Ignorant louts! Not even the Emperor sends soldiers into this compound."

"We have no wish to be here. Send Rhodian and we go. I hold my men so you can-"

The man on the portico-whoever he was-never finished that sentence, or any other in his days under Jad's sun or the two moons or the stars.

"Come, Blues!" Kyros heard from outside. A wild, exultant cry from many throats. "On, Blues! We are attacked!"

A howling came from the north end of the courtyard. Not the dogs. Men. Kyros saw the big, shadowy figure with the sword break off and half turn to look. Then he staggered suddenly sideways. He fell with a sequence of clattering sounds. Other shadows sprang onto the portico. A heavy staff rose and fell, dark against the darkness, once and then again above the downed man. There was a crunching sound. Kyros turned away, swallowing hard.

"Ignorant men, whoever they are. Or were," said Strumosus in a matter-of-fact voice. He set his knife down on the table, utterly unruffled.

"Soldiers. On leave in the City. Hired for some money. It wouldn't have taken much, if they'd been drinking with borrowed money." It was the bleeding man. Looking at him, Kyros saw that his wounds were in shoulder and thigh, both. He was a soldier himself. His eyes were hard now, angry. Outside, the tumult grew. The other intruders were fighting to get out of the compound. Torches were being brought at a run; they made streams of orange and smoke in the courtyard beyond the open doorway.

"Ignorant, as I say," said Strumosus. "To have followed you in here."

"They killed two of my men, and your fellow at the gates," said the soldier. "He tried to stop them."

Kyros shuffled to a stool and sat down heavily, hearing that. He knew who had been on gate duty. Short straw on a banquet night. He was beginning to feel sick.

Strumosus showed no reaction at all. He looked at the third figure in the kitchen, a smooth-shaven, very well-dressed man with flaming red hair and a grim face.

"You are the Rhodian they wanted?"

The man nodded briefly.

"Of course you are. Do tell me, I pray you," said the master cook of the Blues, while men fought and died in the dark outside his kitchen, "have you ever tasted lamprey from the lake near Baiana?"

There followed a brief silence in the room. Kyros and the others were moderately familiar with this sort of thing; no one else could possibly be.

"I'm… ah, very sorry," said the red-haired man, eventually, with a composure that did him credit, "I cannot say I have."

Strumosus shook his head in regret. "A very great pity," he murmured. "Neither have I. A legendary dish, you must understand. Aspalius wrote of it four hundred years ago. He used a white sauce. I don't, myself, actually. Not with lamprey."

This produced a further, similar, silence. A number of torches were in the courtyard now as more and more of the Blues appeared in hastily thrown-on boots and clothing. The latecomers had missed the battle, it seemed. No one was resisting now. Someone had silenced the dogs. Kyros, peering through the doorway, saw Astorgus coming quickly across and then up the three steps to the portico. The factionarius paused there, looking down at the fallen man for a moment, then entered the kitchen.

"There are six dead intruders out there," he said, to no one in particular. His face showed anger but no fatigue.

"All dead?" It was the big soldier. "I'm sorry for that. I had questions."

"They entered our compound," Astorgus said flatly. "With swords. No one does that. Our horses are here." He stared at the wounded man a moment, assessing. Then looking back over his shoulder, he snapped, "Toss the bodies outside the gate and notify the Urban Prefect's officers. I'll deal with them when they arrive. Call me when they do. Someone get Columella in here, and send for the doctor." He turned to Scortius.

Kyros couldn't decipher his expression. The two men looked at each other for what seemed a long time. Fifteen years ago Astorgus had been exactly what Scortius was now: the most celebrated chariot-racer in!" the Empire.

"What happened?" the older man asked, finally. "Jealous husband? Again?"

In fact, he had assumed that to be the case, at first.

A measure of his success in the dark after the racing and the feasts had always been due to the fact that he was not a man who actively pursued women. Notwithstanding this, it would have been an inaccuracy to suggest that he didn't desire them acutely, or that his pulse did not quicken when certain invitations were waiting for him at his home when he returned from the Hippodrome or the stables.

That evening-end of the Dykania revels, end of the racing season- when he came home to change for the Imperial banquet, a brief, unsigned, unscented note had been among those waiting for him on the marble table inside the entranceway. He hadn't needed a signature, or scent. The laconic, entirely characteristic phrasing told him that he'd conquered more than Crescens of the Greens in the first race that afternoon.

"If you are equal to avoiding a different set of dangers," the neat, small handwriting read, "my maidservant will be waiting on the eastern side of the Traversite Palace after the Emperor's feast. You will know her. She is to be trusted. Are you?"

No more than that.

The remaining letters were set aside. He had wanted this woman for a long time. Wit drew him, of late, and her demeanour of serene, amused detachment, the aura of… difficulty about her. He was fairly certain that the withdrawn manner was only a public one. That there was a great deal beneath that formal austerity. That perhaps even her extremely powerful husband had never fathomed that.

He thought he might discover-or begin discovering-if this was so tonight. The prospect had enlivened the whole of the Emperor's banquet with an intense, private anticipation. The privacy of it was central, of course. Scortius was the most discreet of men: another reason the notes came; another reason, perhaps, he hadn't been killed before this.

Not that there hadn't been attempts-or warnings. He'd been beaten once: much younger, lacking the protections of celebrity and his own wealth. He had, in fact, long since reconciled himself to the notion that he was not a man likely to die in his bed, though someone else's bed was a possibility. The Ninth Driver would take him, or a sword in the night as he returned from a chamber where he ought not to have been.

He'd assumed, therefore, that this was the threat tonight, as he slipped out through a small, locked, rarely used gate in the Imperial Precinct wall in the cold autumn dark.

He had a key to that gate, courtesy of an encounter years ago with the black-haired daughter of one of the chiliarchs of the Excubitors. The lady was married now, mother of three children, impressively proper. She'd had an enchanting smile once, and a way of crying out and then biting her lower lip, as if surprised by herself in the dark.

He didn't often use the key, but it was extremely late and there had been more need than usual for caution earlier. He'd spent an unexpectedly intense time in the room the servant had led him to: not the lady's bedroom after all, though there was a divan, and wine, and scented candles burning while he waited. He'd wondered if he'd find passion and intimacy beneath the court mask of cool civility. When she arrived- still dressed as she had been at the banquet and in the throne room after — he'd discovered both, but had then apprehended, through a lingering time together as the images of day were made to recede, rather too deep an awareness of the same things in himself for comfort.

That posed its own particular sort of danger. In his life-the life he had chosen to live-the need for lovemaking, the touch and scent and urgency of a woman in his arms, was central and compelling, but the desire for any sort of ongoing intimacy was a threat.

He was a toy for these ladies of the Imperial Precinct and the patrician houses of the City, and he knew it. They addressed a need of his, and he assuaged desires some of them hadn't known they harboured. A transaction, of a sort. He'd been engaged in it for fifteen years.

In fact, tonight's unexpected vulnerability, his reluctance to leave her and go back out into the cold, offered a first suggestion-like a distant trumpet blowing-that he might be getting old. It was unsettling.

Scortius relocked the small gate quietly behind him and turned to scan the darkness before proceeding. It was an hour he had known before; not a safe one in the streets of Sarantium.

The Blues" compound-his destination, honouring a promise to Strumosus of Amoria-wasn't far away: across the debris-filled, cluttered construction space before the new Sanctuary, along the northern side of the Hippodrome Forum, and then up from the far end, with its pillar and statue of the first Valerius, to the compound gates. Beyond them he expected to find the kitchen fires burning and a fierce, indignant master chef awaiting his declaration that nothing he'd tasted in the Attenine Palace could compare to what he was offered in the prosaic warmth of the Blues" kitchen in an interlude before dawn.

It was likely to be the truth. Strumosus, in his own way, was a genius. The charioteer even had some genuine anticipation of this late meal, for all his fatigue and the disquieting emotions he was dealing with. He could sleep all day tomorrow. He probably would.

If he lived. Following a habit long entrenched, he remained motionless for a time, screened by bushes and the low trees near the wall, and carefully eyed the open spaces he would have to cross, looking from left to right and then slowly back again.

He saw no daemons or spirits or flickers of flame on the paving stones, but there were men under the marble roof of the almost-finished portico of the Great Sanctuary.

There ought not to have been. Not at this time of night, and not spread out so precisely, like soldiers. He would not have been surprised to find drunken revellers outstaying the end of Dykania, wending their way in the cold through the construction materials in the square before the Bronze Gates, but this motionless cluster who thought they were concealed by pillar and cloak and darkness sent a different sort of message. From where they waited on the portico, these men-whoever they were-could see the gates clearly, and the first movement he made from his own position would bring him into the open, even if they didn't know this small doorway was here.

He wasn't tired any more.

Danger and a challenge were the heady, unmixed wine of life to

Scortius of Soriyya: another reason he lived for the speed and blood of the track and for these illicit trysts in the Precinct or beyond it. He knew this, in fact, had known it for many years.

He breathed a quick, forbidden invocation to Heladikos and began considering his options. Those shadowed men would be armed, of course. They were here for a purpose. He had only a knife. He could sprint across the open space towards the Hippodrome Forum, catching them by surprise, but they had an angle on him. If any of them could run he'd be cut off. And a footrace lacked… any sort of dignity.

He reluctantly decided the only intelligent course, now that he'd spotted them, was to slip back into the Precinct. He could find a bed among the Excubitors in their barracks-they'd be proud to have him and would ask no questions. Or he could go to the Bronze Gates openly from inside, inviting unfortunate speculation at this hour, and request that a message be carried to the Blues" compound. He'd have an escort party in very little time.

Either way, more people would discover how late he'd been here than he really cared to have know. It wasn't as if his nocturnal habits were so very secret, but he did pride himself on doing as little as possible to draw attention to individual episodes. Dignity, again, and a respect for the women who trusted him. He lived much of his life in the eye of the world. He preferred some details to be his own and not the property of every envious or titillated rumourmonger in the bathhouses and barracks and cauponae of Sarantium.

Not much choice here, alas. It was sprint through the street like an apprentice dodging his master's cudgel, or slip back in and put a wry face on things with the Excubitors or at the gates.

He really wasn't about to run.

He'd already taken the key back out of his leather purse when he saw a flare of light on the Sanctuary portico as one of the massive doors swung open. Three men stepped out, vividly outlined against the brightness behind them. It was very late; this was odd in the extreme. The Great Sanctuary was not yet open to the public; only the workers and architects had been inside. Watching, unseen, Scortius saw the waiting group of men on the portico shift silently and begin to spread out, in immediate response. He was too far away to hear anything, or recognize anyone, but he saw two of the three men before the doors turn and bow to the third, who withdrew inside. And that sent another sort of warning to him.

A blade of light narrowed and disappeared as the heavy door was closed. The two men turned to stand alone and exposed on the porch amid the debris of construction in windy darkness. One of the two turned and said something to the other. They were manifestly unaware of swordsmen spreading out around them.

Men died at night in the City all the time.

People went to the graves of the violently dead with cheiromancers" curse-tablets, ignoring the imprecations of the clergy as they invoked death or dismemberment for the charioteers and their horses, fierce passion from a longed-for woman, sickness to a hated neighbour's child or mule, storm winds for an enemy's merchant vessel. Blood and magic, flames flitting along the night streets. Heladikos's fires. He had seen them.

There were swords across the square, real men carrying them, whatever might be said about the half-world spirits all around. Scortius stood in darkness with the moons set and the stars furtive behind swift clouds. A cold wind blew from the north-where Death was said to dwell in the old tales of Soriyya, the tales told before Jad had come to the people of the south, along with the legend of his son.

What was happening on that portico was none of his business, and he had his own dangers to negotiate through the streets. He was unarmed, save for the trivial knife, could hardly help two defenceless men against sword-wielding attackers.

Some situations required a sense of self-preservation.

He was, alas, deficient in this regard.

"Watch out!" he roared at the top of his voice, bursting out from behind the screening trees.

He drew his little knife as he emerged. Having calmly decided just a moment ago that he was not going to run he seemed to be running after all, and the wrong way entirely. It did occur to him-a small, belated sign of functioning intelligence-that he was being unwise.

"Assassins!" he cried. "Get inside!"

The two men on the portico turned towards him as he sprinted across the square. He saw a low, covered pile of bricks just in time and leaped it, clipping his ankle, almost falling when he landed. He swore like a sailor in a dockside caupona, at himself, at their slowness. Watching as he ran-for enemies, for movement, for more of the accursed bricks-he saw the nearest soldier turn and draw his sword along the western side of the portico. He was close enough to hear the sound as blade slid free of scabbard.

His fervent hope-and inadequate plan-was that the third man had not bolted the door to the Sanctuary, that they could get inside before the assassins closed in. It struck him-rather late-that he could have shouted the same warning and not come charging like a schoolboy into the midst of things himself. He was the toast of Sarantium, the Emperor's dinner companion, Glory of the Blues, wealthy beyond all youthful dreams.

Pretty much the same person he'd been fifteen years ago, it seemed. Unfortunately, perhaps.

He bounded up onto the porch, wincing as he landed on the bruised ankle, went straight past the two men and grabbed at the handle of the massive door. Gripped, turned.

Locked. He rattled and jerked the handle uselessly, pounded once on the door, then wheeled around. Saw the two men clearly for the first time. Knew them both. Neither had made any intelligently responsive move. Paralysed with fear, both of them. Scortius swore again.

The soldiers had encircled them. Predictably. The leader, a big, rangy man, stood directly in front of the portico steps between cloth-covered mounds of something or other and looked up at the three of them. His eyes were dark in the darkness. He held his heavy sword lightly, as if it weighed nothing at all.

"Scortius of the Blues!" he said, his voice odd.

There was a silence. Scortius said nothing, thinking fast.

The soldier went on, still in that bemused tone, "You cost me a fortune this afternoon, you know." A Trakesian voice. He'd guessed this might be it: soldiers on city leave, hired in a caupona to kill and disappear.

"These men are both under the protection of the Emperor," Scortius snapped icily. "You touch either of them, or me, at absolute cost of your lives. No one will be able to protect you. Anywhere in the Empire or beyond. Do you understand me?"

The man's sword did not move. His voice did, however, shifting upwards in surprise. "What? You thought we were here to harm them?"

Scortius swallowed. His knife hand fell to his side. The other two men on the portico were looking at him with curiosity. So were the soldiers below. The wind blew, stirring the coverings on the mounds of bricks and tools. Leaves skittered across the square. Scortius opened his mouth, then closed it, finding nothing to say.

He had made several different, very swift assumptions since emerging from the Imperial Precinct and seeing men waiting in the dark. None of them appeared to have been correct.

"Um, charioteer, may I present to you Carullus, tribune of the Fourth Sauradian cavalry," said the red-headed mosaicist-for it was he who stood on the portico. "My escort on the last part of the journey here, and my guardian in the City. He did lose a lot of money on the first race this afternoon, as it happens."

"I am sorry to hear it," said Scortius, reflexively. He looked at Caius Crispus of Varena, and then at the celebrated architect, Artibasos, standing beside him, rumpled and observant. The builder of this new Sanctuary.

And he was now fairly certain who it was they'd been bowing to while he watched from across the way. He was attaining understanding late here, it seemed. The Bassanids had a philosophic phrase about that, in their own tongue; he'd heard it often from their traders in Soriyya in the seasons when there hadn't been a war. He didn't much feel like being philosophic at the moment.

There was another silence. The north wind whistled through the pillars, flapping the covers over the brick and masonry again. No movement from by the Bronze Gates: they would have heard him shouting but hadn't bothered to do anything about it. Events outside the Imperial Precinct rarely disturbed the guards; their concern was in keeping those events outside. He had careened across the open square, roaring like a madman, waving a dagger, banging his ankle… to no effect whatsoever. Standing in darkness on the still-unfinished portico of the Great Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom, Scortius received a swift, unsettling image of the elegant woman he'd lately left. The scent and the touch of her.

He imagined her observing his conduct just now. He winced at the thought of her arched eyebrows, the quirked, amused mouth, and then- failing to see any obvious alternatives-he began to laugh.

Earlier that same night, walking with an escort from the Attenine towards the Traversite Palace, where the Empress of Sarantium had her favoured autumn and winter quarters, Crispin had found himself thinking of his wife.

This happened all the time, but the difference-and he was aware of it-was that in his mind the image of Ilandra appeared now as a shield, a defence, though he remained unsure what it was he feared. It was windy and cold crossing the gardens; he wrapped himself in the cloak they'd given him.

Guarded by the dead, hiding behind the memory of love, he was conducted to the smaller of the two main palaces under swiftly moving clouds and the westered, sunken moons and entered, and walked marble corridors with lanterns burning on the walls and paused before soldiers at the doorway of an Empress who had summoned him, so late at night, to her private quarters.

He was expected. The nearest soldier nodded, expressionless, and opened the door. Crispin passed into a space of firelight, candlelight, and gold. The eunuchs and soldiers remained outside. The door was closed behind him. Ilandra's image slowly faded as a lady-in-waiting approached, silk-clad, light on slippered feet, and offered him a silver cup of wine.

He accepted, with real gratitude. She took his cloak and laid it on a bench against the wall by the fire. Then she smiled at him sidelong and withdrew through an inner door. Crispin stood alone and looked around in the light of myriad candles. A room in sumptuous good taste; a little ornate to a western eye, but the Sarantines tended to be. Then he caught his breath.

There was a golden rose on a long table by the wall to his left. Slender as a living flower, seemingly as pliant, four buds on the long stem, thorns among the small, perfect leaves, all of gold, all four buds rendered in stages of unfolding, and a fifth, at the crown, fully opened, achieved, each thin, exquisite petal a marvel of the goldsmith's craft, with a ruby at the centre of it, red as a fire in the candlelight.

The beauty caught at his heart, and the terrible fragility. If one were merely to take that long stem between two fingers and twist it would bend, distort, fall awry. The flower seemed almost to sway in a breeze that wasn't there. So much perfection and so transient, so vulnerable. Crispin ached for the mastery of it-the time and care and craft brought to this accomplishment-and for the simultaneous perception that this artifice, this art, was as precarious as… as any joy in mortal life.

As a rose, perhaps, that died in a wind or at summer's end.

He thought suddenly of the young queen of the Antae then, and of the message he carried, and he was aware of pity and fear within himself, a very long way from home.

A silver branching of candles wavered on the table by the rose. There was no sound, but the flicker of movement made him turn.

She had been on the stage in her youth, knew very well-even now- how to move with silence and a dancer's grace. She was small, slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed, exquisite as the rose. She brought thorns to mind, the drawing of blood, the danger at the heart of beauty.

She had changed to a night robe of deep red, had had her women remove the spectacular headdress and the jewels at wrist and throat. Her hair was down now for the night, thick and long and dark, unsettling. There were diamonds still hanging at her ears, her only ornament, catching the light. Her scent was about her, drifting towards him through a space she defined, and surrounding her, also, was an aura: of power, and of amused intelligence, and of something else he could not name but knew he feared and was right to fear.

"How deeply acquainted might you be, Rhodian, with the private chambers of royalty?" Her voice was low, wry, shockingly intimate.

Careful, oh careful, he told himself, setting down his wine cup and bowing low, hiding a surging anxiety with the slowness of the movements. He straightened. Cleared his throat. "Not at all, my lady. I am honoured and out of my element."

"A Batiaran far from his peninsula? A fish netted from water? How would you taste, Caius Crispus of Varena?" She did not move. The firelight was caught in her dark eyes and in the diamonds beside them. It flashed from the diamonds, was drowned in her eyes. She smiled.

She was toying with him. He knew this, but his throat was still dry. He coughed again, and said, "I have no idea. I am at your service in all things, thrice-exalted."

"You did say that. They shaved your beard, I understand. Poor man." She laughed, came forward then, straight towards him and then past, as he caught his breath. She stood by the long table, looking at the rose. "You were admiring my flower?" Her voice was honey, or silk.

"Very much, my lady. A work of great beauty and sadness."

"Sadness?" She turned her head, looked at him.

He hesitated. "Roses die. An artifice so delicate reminds us of the.. impermanence of all things. All beautiful things."

Alixana said nothing for a time. Not a young woman any more. Her dark, accentuated eyes held his until he looked away and down. Her scent, this near, was intoxicating, eastern, it made him think of colours, many things did: this was near to the red of her robe, but deeper, darker, porphyry, in fact. The purple of royalty. He looked down and wondered: could that be intentional, or was it only him-turning scent, sound, taste into colour? There were hidden arts here in Sarantiurn of which he would know nothing. He was in the City of Cities, ornament of the world, eye of the universe. There were mysteries.

"The impermanence of the beautiful. Well said. That," the Empress murmured, looking at the rose, "is why it is here, of course. Clever man. Could you, Rhodian, make me something in mosaic that suggests the opposite: a hint of what endures beyond the transitory?"

She had asked him here for a reason, after all. He looked up. "What would suggest that for you, Empress?"

"Dolphins," she said, without any warning at all.

He felt himself go white.

She turned fully around and watched him, leaning against the ivory of the table, hands braced on either side of her, fingers spread. Her expression was thoughtful, evaluating; that disconcerted him more than irony would have done.

"Drink your wine," the Empress said. "It is very good." He did. It was.

It didn't help him. Not with this.

Dolphins were deadly at this point in the story of the world. Much more than simply marine creatures, leaping between water and air, graceful and decorative-the sort any woman might enjoy seeing on the walls of her rooms. Dolphins were entangled in paganism, or trammelled in the nets of Heladikian heresies, or both.

They carried souls from the mortal realm of the living through the echoing chambers of the sea to the realms of the Dead, and judgement. So the Ancients had believed in Trakesia long ago-and in Rhodias before Jad's teachings came. Dolphins had served the many-named god of the Afterworld, conduits of the spirits of the dead, traversing the blurred space between life and what came after.

And some of that old, enduring paganism had crossed-through a different sort of blurred space-into the faith of Jad, and his son Heladikos, who died in his chariot bringing fire to men. When Heladikos's chariot plunged, burning like a torch, into the sea-so the dark tale ran-it was the dolphins who came and bore his ruined beauty upon their backs. Making of themselves a living bier, they carried it to the ends of the uttermost sea of the world to meet his father, sinking low at dusk. And Jad had claimed the body of his child and taken it into his own chariot, and carried it down-as every night-into the dark. A deeper, colder dark that night, for Heladikos had died.

And so the dolphins were said to be the last creatures of the riving world to see and touch beloved Heladikos, and for their service to him they were holy in the teachings of those who believed in Jad's mortal son.

One might choose one's deadly sacrilege. The dolphins carried souls to the dark god of Death in the pagans" ancient pantheon, or they bore the body of the one god's only son in a now-forbidden heresy.

Either way, either meaning, an artisan who placed dolphins on a ceiling or wall was inviting mortal consequences from an increasingly vigilant clergy. There had been dolphins once in the Hippodrome, diving to number the laps run. They were gone, melted down. Sea-horses counted the running now.

It was this Emperor, Valerius II, who had urged the joint Pronouncement of Athan, the High Patriarch in Rhodias, and Zakarios, the Eastern one here in the City. Valerius had worked very hard to achieve that rare agreement. Two hundred years of bitter, deadly dispute in the schismatic faith of Jad had been papered over with that document, but the price for whatever gains an ambitious Emperor and superficially united clergy might enjoy had been the casting of all Heladikians into heresy: at risk of denunciation, ritual cursing in chapels and sanctuaries, fire. It was rare to be executed in Valerius's Empire for breaking the laws of man, but men were burned for heresy.

And it was Valerius's Empress who was asking him now, scented and gleaming in red and threaded gold by late-night candlelight, for dolphins in her rooms.

He felt much too drained by all that had happened tonight to properly sort through this. He temporized, carefully. "They are handsome creatures, indeed, especially when they leap from the waves."

Alixana smiled at him. "Of course they are." Her smile deepened. "They are also the bearers of Heladikos to the place where sea meets sky at twilight."

So much for temporizing. At least he knew which sin he might be burned for committing.

She was making it easier for him, however. He met her eyes, which had not left his face. "Both Patriarchs have banned such teachings, Empress. The Emperor swore an oath in the old Sanctuary of Jad's Wisdom to uphold their will in this."

"You heard of that? Even in Batiara? Under the Antae?"

"Of course we did. The High Patriarch is in Rhodias, my lady."

"And did the king of the Antae… or his daughter after. swear a similar oath to uphold?"

A stunningly dangerous woman. "You know they did not, my lady. The Antae came to Jad by way of the Heladikian teachings."

"And have not changed their doctrines, alas."

Crispin spun around.

The Empress merely turned her head and smiled at the man who had entered-as silently as she had-and had just spoken from the farthest door of the room.

For the second time, his heart racing, Crispin set down his wine and bowed to conceal a mounting unease. Valerius had changed neither his clothing nor his manner. He crossed to the wall himself and poured his own cup of wine. The three of them were alone, no servants in the room.

The Emperor sipped from his cup and looked at Crispin, waiting. An answer seemed to be expected.

It was very late; an utterly unanticipated mood seized Crispin, though it was one his mother and friends would all have claimed they knew. He murmured, "One of the Antae's most venerated clerics has written that heresies are not like clothing styles or beards, my lord, to go in and out of fashion by the season or the year."

Alixana laughed aloud. Valerius smiled a little, though the grey eyes remained attentive in the round, soft face. "I read that," he said. "Sybard of Varena. A Reply to a Pronouncement. An intelligent man. I wrote to him, saying as much, invited him here."

Crispin hadn't known that. Of course he hadn't known that.

What he did know-what everyone seemed to know-was that Valerius's manifest ambitions in the Batiaran peninsula derived much of their credibility from the religious schisms and the declared need to rescue the peninsula from "error." It was odd, and at the same time of a piece with what he was already learning about the man, that the Emperor might anchor a possible reconquest of Rhodias and the west in religion, and at the same time praise the Antae cleric whose work challenged, point by point, the document that gave him that anchor.

"He declined the invitation," said Alixana softly, "with some unkind words. Your partner Martinian also declined our invitation. Why, Rhodian, do none of you want to come to us?"

"Unfair, my heart. Caius Crispus has come, on cold autumn roads, braving a barber's razor and our court… only to find himself beset by a mischievous Empress with an impious request."

"Better my mischief than Styliane's malice," said Alixana crisply, still leaning back against the table. Her tone changed, slyly. It was interesting: Crispin knew the shadings of this voice, already. He felt as if he always had. "If heresies change by the season," she murmured, "may not the decorations of my walls, my lord Emperor? You have already conquered here, in any case."

She smiled sweetly, at both of them. There was a brief silence.

"What poor man," said the Emperor finally, shaking his head, his expression bemused, "may hope to be wise enough to have rejoinders for you?"

His Empress's smile deepened. "Good. I may do it, then? I do want dolphins here. I shall make arrangements for our Rhodian to-"

She stopped. An Imperial hand was uplifted across the room, straight as a judge's, halting her. "After," said Valerius sternly. "After the Sanctuary. The chooses to do so. It is a heresy, seasonal or otherwise, and the weight of it, discovered, would fall on the artisan not the Empress. Consider. And decide after."

"After," said Alixana, "is likely to be a long time from now. You have built a very large Sanctuary, my lord. My chambers here are lamentably small." She made a moue of displeasure.

Crispin had an emerging sense that this was both a normal byplay for the two of them and something contrived to divert him. Why the latter, he wasn't sure, but the thought produced an opposite effect: he remained uneasy and alert.

And there came, just then, a knocking at the outer door.

The Emperor of Sarantium looked over quickly, and then he smiled. He looked younger when he did, almost boyish. "Ah! Perhaps I am wise enough, after all. An encouraging thought. It appears," he murmured, "that I am about to win a wager. My lady, I shall look forward to your promised payment."

Alixana looked put out. "I cannot believe she would do this. It must be something else. Something…" She trailed off, biting at her lower lip. The lady-in-waiting had appeared at the inner doorway, eyebrows raised in inquiry. The Emperor set down his drink and silently withdrew past her, out of sight into the interior room. He was smiling as he went, Crispin saw.

Alixana nodded to her woman. The lady-in-waiting hesitated, and gestured towards her mistress and then at her own hair. "My lady..?"

The Empress shrugged, impatience flitting across her face. "People have seen more than my unbound hair, Crysomallo. Leave it be."

Crispin stepped reflexively back towards the table with the rose as the door opened. Alixana stood not far away, imperious, for all the intimacy of her appearance. It did occur to him that whoever this was it could hardly be an intruder, else they'd not have gained entry into this palace, let alone caused the guards to tap on the door so late at night.

The woman stepped back a little and a man entered the room behind her, though only a pace or two. He cradled a small ivory box in both hands. He handed it to Crysomallo, and then, turning towards the Empress, performed a full court obeisance, head touching the floor three times. Crispin wasn't certain, but he had a sense that such ceremony was excessive here, exaggerated. When the visitor finally straightened and then stood at Alixana's gesture, Crispin recognized him: the lean, narrow-faced man who'd been standing behind the Strategos Leontes in the audience chamber.

"You are a late visitor, secretary. Could this be a personal gift from you, or has Leontes something private he wishes said?" The Empress's tone was difficult to read: perfectly courteous, but no more than that.

"His lady wife does, thrice-exalted. I bring a small gift from Styliane Daleina to her thrice-revered and beloved Empress. She would be honoured beyond her worth should you deign to accept it." The man looked quickly around as he finished speaking, and Crispin had the distinct sense that the secretary was memorizing the room. He could not miss the Empress's unbound hair, or the privacy of this situation. Clearly, Alixana did not care in the least. Crispin wondered, again, what game he'd become a small piece in, how he was being deployed now and to what end.

The Empress nodded at Crysomallo, who unclasped a golden latch on the box and opened it. The woman was unable to hide her astonishment. She held up the object within. The small gift. There was a silence.

"Oh, dear," said the Empress of Sarantium softly. "I have lost a wager."

"My lady?" The secretary's brow furrowed. It was not what he'd expected to hear.

"Never mind. Tell the Lady Styliane we are pleased with her gesture and by the. celerity with which she chose to send it to us, keeping a hard-working scribe awake so late at night as a messenger. You may go."

That was all. Courtesy, crispness, a dismissal. Crispin was still trying to absorb the fact that the staggeringly opulent pearl necklace he'd seen on Styliane Daleina-the one he'd drawn unwanted attention to-had just been presented to the Empress. The worth of it was past his ability even to imagine. He had a certainty, though-an absolute conviction-that had he not spoken as he had, earlier, this would not have happened.

"Thank you, most gracious lady. I shall hasten to relay your kind words. Had I known I might be interrupting

"Come, Pertennius. She knew you would interrupt and so did you. You both heard me summon the Rhodian in the throne room."

The man fell silent, his eyes dropped to the floor. He swallowed awkwardly. It was oddly pleasant, Crispin realized, to see someone else being discomfited by Alixana of Sarantium.

"I thought… my lady. She thought.. you might"

"Pertennius, poor man. You'll do better going with Leontes to battlefields and writing about cavalry charges. Go to bed. Tell Styliane I am happy to accept her gift and that the Rhodian was indeed still with me, as she wished him to be, to see her make a gift that outstripped the one he offered her. You may also tell her," added the Empress, "that my hair still reaches the small of my back, unbound." She turned deliberately, as if to let the secretary see, and walked over to the table where the wine flask stood. She picked up the cup Valerius had set down.

Crysomallo opened the door. In the instant before the man named Pertennius-where had he heard that name today? — turned to leave, Crispin saw something flash in his eyes and as quickly disappear as the man repeated his full obeisance and then withdrew.

Alixana did not turn around until the door closed.

"Jad curse you with cataracts and baldness," she said furiously, in that low, utterly magnificent voice.

The Emperor of Sarantium, so addressed by his wife as he came back into the room, was laughing with delight. "I am balding," he said. "A wasted curse. And if I develop cataracts you'll have to surrender me to the physicians for treatment, or guide me through life with a tongue to my ear."

Alixana's expression, seen in profile, arrested Crispin for a moment. He was pretty certain it was an unguarded look, something disturbingly intimate. Something caught in his own heart, the past snagging on the present.

"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 Bassamds 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 holy 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 denned 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.

There would be light here by day and by night, changing and glorious. Whatever the mosaicists could conceive for the dome and semi-domes and arches and walls in this place would be lit as no other surfaces in the world were lit. There was grandeur here beyond description, an airiness, a defining of space that guided the massive pillars and the colossal arch supports into proportion and harmony. The Sanctuary branched off in each direction from the central well beneath the dome-a circle upon a square, Crispin realized, and his heart was stirred even as he tried and failed to grasp how this had been done-and there were recesses and niches and shadowed chapels for privacy and mystery and faith and calm.

One could believe here, he thought, in the holiness of Jad, and of the mortal creatures he had made.

The Emperor had not replied to his whispered words. Crispin wasn't even looking at him. His gaze was still reaching upwards-eyes like fingers of the yearning mind-past the suspended candelabras and the ring of round dark windows with night and wind beyond them, towards the flicker and gleam and promise of the dome itself, waiting for him.

At length, Valerius said, "There is more than an enduring name at stake, Rhodian, but I believe I know what you are saying, and I believe I understand. You are pleased with what is on offer here for a mosaicist? You are not sorry you came?"

Crispin rubbed at his bare chin. "I have never seen anything to touch it. There is nothing in Rhodias, nothing on earth, that can… I have no idea how the dome was achieved. How did he dare span so large a… who did this, my lord?" They were still standing near the small doorway that led back through the wall to the rough chapel and the Imperial Precinct.

"He'll wander by, I imagine, when he hears our voices. He's here most nights. That's why I've had the candles lit since summer. They say I do not sleep, you know. It isn't true, though it is useful to have it said. But I believe it is true of Artibasos: I think he walks about here examining things, or bends over his drawings, or makes new ones all night long." The Emperor's expression was difficult to read. "You are not.. afraid of this, Rhodian? It is not too large for you?"

Crispin hesitated, looking at Valerius. "Only a fool would be unafraid of something like this dome. When your architect comes by, ask him if he was afraid of his own design."

"I have. He said he was terrified, that he still is. He said he stays here nights because he has nightmares about it falling, if he sleeps at home." Valerius paused. "What will you make for me on my Sanctuary dome, Caius Crispus?"

Crispin's heart began pounding. He had almost been expecting the question. He shook his head. "You must forgive me. It is too soon, my lord."

It was a lie, as it happened.

He'd known what he wanted to do here before he was ever in this place. A dream, a gift, something carried out from the Aldwood on the Day of the Dead. He'd been granted an image of it today amid the screaming of the Hippodrome. Something of the half-world in that, too.

"Much too soon," came a new, querulous voice. Sound carried here. "Who is this person, and what happened to Siroes? My lord."

The honorific was belated, perfunctory. A small, rumpled, middle-aged man in an equally rumpled tunic emerged from behind the massed bank of candles to their left. His straw-coloured hair stood up in random whorls of disarray. His feet were bare on the ice-cold marble of the floor, Crispin saw. He was carrying his sandals in one hand.

"Artibasos," said the Emperor. Crispin saw him smile. "I must say you look every bit the Master Architect of the Empire. Your hair emulates your dome in aspiring to the heavens."

The other man ran a hand absent-mindedly through his hair, achieving further disorder. "I fell asleep," he said. "Then I woke up. And I had a good idea." He lifted his sandals, as if the gesture were an explanation. "I have been walking around."

"Indeed?" said Valerius, with patience.

"Well, yes," said Artibasos. "Obviously. That's why I'm barefoot."

There was a brief silence.

"Obviously," said the Emperor a little repressively. This was a man, Crispin already knew, who did not like being left in the dark. About anything.

"Noting the rough marbles?" Crispin hazarded. "One way to tell them, I suppose. Easier done in a warmer season, I'd have said."

"I woke with the idea," Artibasos said, with a sharp glance at Crispin. "Wanted to see if it worked. It does! I've marked a score of slabs for the masons to polish."

"You expect people to come in here barefoot?" the Emperor asked, his expression bemused.

"Perhaps. Not everyone who wishes to worship will be shod. But that isn't it… I expect the marble to be perfect, whether anyone knows it or not. My lord." The little architect gazed narrowly up at Crispin. His expression was owlish. "Who is this man?"

"A mosaicist," said the Emperor, still with a tolerance that surprised Crispin.

"Obviously," said the architect. "I heard that much."

"From Rhodias," added Valerius.

"Anyone can hear that much," said Artibasos, still glaring up at Crispin.

The Emperor laughed. "Caius Crispus of Varena, this is Artibasos of Sarantium, a man of some minor talents and all the politeness of those born in the City. Why do I indulge you, architect?"

"Because you like things done properly. Obviously." It seemed to be the man's favourite word. "This person will be working with Siroes?"

"He is working instead of Siroes. It appears Siroes misled us with regard to his reverse transfer ideas for the dome. Incidentally, had he discussed them with you, Artibasos?"

Mildly phrased, but the architect turned to look at his Emperor before answering and he hesitated, for the first time.

"I am a designer and a builder, my lord. I am making you this Sanctuary. How it is garbed is the province of the Emperor's decorative artisans. I have little interest in that, and no time to attend to it. I do not like Siroes, if that matters, nor his patroness, but that hardly matters either, does it?" He looked at Crispin again. "I doubt I'll like this one. He's too tall and his hair's red."

"They shaved my beard this evening," said Crispin, amused. "Else you'd have been in no doubt at all, I fear. Tell me, had you discussed how you were to prepare the surfaces for the mosaic work?"

The little man sniffed. "Why would I discuss a building detail with a decorator?"

Crispin's smile faded a little. "Perhaps," he said gently, "we might share a flask of wine one day soon and consider another possible approach to that? I'd be grateful."

Artibasos grimaced. "I suppose I ought to be polite. New arrival and suchlike. You are going to have requests about the plaster, aren't you? Obviously. I can tell. Are you the interfering sort who has opinions without knowledge?"

Crispin had worked with men like this before. "I have strong opinions about wine," he said, "but no knowledge of where to find the best in Sarantium. I'll leave the latter issue to you, if you permit me some thoughts on plaster?"

The architect was still for a moment, then he allowed himself a small- a very small-smile. "You are clever at least." He shifted back and forth from one foot to the other on the cold marble floor, struggling to suppress a yawn.

Valerius said, still in his wry, tolerant tone, "Artibasos, I am about to command you. Pay attention. Put on your sandals-you do me no good if you die of a night chill. Find your cloak. Then go home to bed. Home. You do me no good half asleep and worn out, either. It is most of the way to morning. There is an escort waiting outside the doors for Caius Crispus, or there should be by now. They will take you home as well. Go to sleep. The dome will not fall."

The little architect made a sudden, urgent sign against evil. He seemed about to protest, then appeared-belatedly-to recollect that he was speaking with his Emperor. He closed his mouth and pushed a hand through his hair again, to unfortunate effect.

"A command," repeated Valerius kindly.

"Obviously," said Artibasos of Sarantium.

He stood still, however, while his Emperor reached out and-very gently-smoothed down the sand-coloured chaos of his hair, much as a mother might bring some order to the appearance of her child.

Valerius walked them to the main doors-they were silver, and twice the height of a man, Crispin saw-and then out onto the portico in the wind. They both turned there and bowed to him, and Crispin noted that the little man beside him bowed as formally as he himself did. The Emperor went back inside, closed the massive door himself. They heard a heavy lock slide home.

The two men turned and stood together in the wind, looking out at the unlit square before the Sanctuary. The Emperor had assumed Carullus would be here. Crispin didn't see anyone. He was aware, suddenly, of exhaustion. He saw lights a long way across the square, by the Bronze Gates, where the Imperial Guard would be. Heavy clouds blanketed the sky. It was very quiet.

Until a scream tore through the night-a shouted warning-and a figure could then be seen dashing madly across the debris-strewn square straight towards the portico. Whoever it was bounded up, taking three steps as one, landed a bit awkwardly and went right past Artibasos to twist and pull at the bolted door.

The man turned, cursing savagely, a knife in his hand, and Crispin- struggling to comprehend-recognized him.

His jaw dropped. Too many surprises in one night. There were movements and sounds around them now. Turning quickly, Crispin drew a breath of relief to see the familiar figure of Carullus striding up to the steps, drawn sword in hand.

"Scortius of the Blues!" the soldier exclaimed after a moment. "You cost me a fortune this afternoon, you know."

The charioteer, coiled and fierce, snapped something confusing about the Emperor's protection applying to all three of them. Carullus blinked. "You thought we were here to harm them?" he asked. His sword was lowered.

The charioteer's dagger drifted down, more slowly. The nature of the misunderstanding finally came home to Crispin. He looked at the lithe figure beside him, then back at his broad-shouldered friend at the bottom of the steps. He performed some evidently necessary introductions.

A moment later, Scortius of Soriyya began to laugh.

Carullus joined him. Even Artibasos permitted himself a small grin. When the amusement subsided, an invitation was extended. It seemed that, notwithstanding the absurd hour, the Blues" champion was presently expected at the faction compound for a repast in the kitchen. He was, Scortius explained, far too cowardly to cross Strumosus the chef in this- and he happened to be, for no very good reason, hungry.

Artibasos pointed out that he'd had a direct command from the

Emperor who had lately left them. He'd been ordered to his bed. Carullus gaped at that, belatedly realizing who it was who had been on the portico while he and the soldiers watched in the shadows. Scortius protested. Crispin looked at the little architect.

"You think he'd hold you to that?" he asked. "Treat it as a genuine command?"

"He could," said Artibasos. "Valerius is not the most predictable of men, and this building is his legacy." One of them, Crispin thought.

He thought of his home then, and of the young queen whose message had been exposed tonight. He hadn't actually done that himself, he supposed. But alone with Valerius and Alixana he had been made to see that they were so far ahead of anyone else in this game of courts and intrigues that… it wasn't really a game at all. Which left him wondering what his place was here, his role. Could he hope to withdraw to his tesserae and this glorious dome? Would he be allowed? There were so many tangled elements in the tale of this night, he wondered if he'd ever unwind the skein, in darkness or at dawn.

Three of Carullus's men were detailed to take the architect home. Carullus and two soldiers stayed with Crispin and Scortius. They angled across the windy square, away from the Bronze Gates and equestrian statue, through the Hippodrome Forum and towards the street that led up to the Blues" compound. Crispin discovered, as they went, that he was drained and over stimulated, in approximately equal measure. He needed to sleep and knew he could not. The mental image of a dome alchemized into that of the Empress, eliding the memory of a queen's touch.

Dolphins, she wanted. He drew a breath, remembering the sallow secretary delivering a necklace, the man's face as he looked from Crispin- alone with the Empress, it would have seemed to him-to the woman herself, with her long dark hair unbound in her intimate rooms. There had been layers to that swiftly veiled expression, Crispin thought. These, too, were beyond him just now.

He thought of the Sanctuary again, and of the man who had taken him there along a low stone tunnel and through a door into glory. In the eye of his mind he still saw that dome and the semi-domes around it and the arches supporting them, marble set upon marble, and he saw his own work there, one day to come. The Sanctuary behind them was Artibasos's legacy, he thought, and it might end up being what the Emperor Valerius II was remembered for, and it could be-it could be-why the world might one day come to know that the Rhodian mosaicist Caius Crispus, only son of Horius Crispus of Varena and his wife Avita, had lived once, and done honourable work under Jad's sun and the two moons.

He was thinking that when they were attacked.

He had wondered, moments before, if he might be permitted to withdraw to his tesserae: glass and marble, gold and mother-of-pearl, stone and semi-precious stone, the shaping of a vision on scaffolding in the air, high above the intrigues and wars and desires of men and women.

It didn't appear that would be so, as the night became iron and blood.

Strumosus had told him once-or, in truth, had told a fishmonger in the market with Kyros standing by-that you could tell much about a man by watching when he first tasted extremely good or very bad food. Kyros had taken to observing Strumosus's occasional guests in the kitchen when he had the chance.

He did tonight. It was so very late and the earlier events had been so extraordinary that an unexpectedly intimate sense of aftermath-of events shared and survived-prevailed in the kitchen.

Outside, the bodies of the attackers had been tossed beyond the gates and the two soldiers of the Fourth Sauradian cavalry who had died defending Scortius and the mosaicist in the first street assault had been brought in with the dead gatekeeper to await proper burial. Nine bodies in all, violently dead. The cheiromancers of the City would be furiously busy today and tomorrow, shaping commissioned curse-tablets to be deposited at the graves. The newly dead had the power of emissaries to the half-world. Astorgus kept two cheiromancers on staff, salaried, preparing counterspells against those who wished the Blues" charioteers maimed or dead, or besought the same fate for the horses from malign spirits of darkness.

Kyros felt badly about the gatekeeper.

Niester had been playing games of Horse and Fox on one of the boards in the common room after the racing this afternoon. He was a body under a cloth now in the cold of the yard. He had two small children. Astorgus had detailed someone to go to his wife, but had told him to wait until after the dawn prayers. Let the woman sleep through the night. Time enough for grief to come knocking with a black fist.

Astorgus himself, in a grim, choleric mood, had gone off to meet with the Urban Prefect's officers. Kyros would not have wanted to be the man charged with dealing with the Blues" factionarius just now.

The faction's principal surgeon-a brisk, bearded Kindath-had been roused to tend the wounded soldier, whose name was Carullus of the Fourth Sauradian. His wounds turned out to be showy but not dangerous. The man had endured their cleansing and bandaging without expression, drinking wine with his free hand as the surgeon treated his shoulder. He had fought a running battle alone against six men along the dark laneway, allowing Scortius and the Rhodian to reach the faction gates. Carullus was still angry that the attackers had all been slain, Kyros gathered. No easy way to find out who'd hired them now.

Released by the doctor to the dinner table, the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian showed little sign of diminished appetite. Neither wounds nor anger diverted his attention from the bowls and plates in front of him. He had lost two of his soldiers tonight, had killed two men himself, but Kyros guessed that a military man would have to get used to that, and carry on, or he'd go mad. It was those at home who sometimes went mad, as Kyros's mother's sister had three years ago, when her son was killed in the Bassanid siege of Asen, near Eubulus. Kyros's mother remained certain it was grief that had rendered her vulnerable to the plague when it came the next year. His aunt had been one of the first to die. Asen had been returned by the Bassanids the following spring in the treaty that bought peace on the eastern borders, making the siege and the deaths even more pointless. Cities were always being taken and ceded back on both sides of the shifting border.

People didn't come back to life, though, even if a city was returned. You carried on, as this officer was, hungrily sponging up fish soup with a thick crust of bread. What else could one do? Curse the god, tear one's garments, retreat like a Holy Fool to some chapel or a rock in the desert or mountains? That last was possible, Kyros supposed, but he had discovered, since coming to this kitchen, that he had a hunger-a taste, you might say-for the gifts and dangers of the world. He might never be a charioteer, an animal trainer, a soldier-he would drag a bad foot with him through all his days-but there was a life to be lived, nonetheless. A life in the world.

And just now Scortius, First of the Blues, to whose glory a silver statue had been promised tonight for the Hippodrome spina, was glancing up, soup spoon in hand, and murmuring to Strumosus, "What can I say, my friend? The soup is worthy of the banquet hall of the god."

"It is," echoed the red-haired Rhodian beside him. "It is wonderful." His expression was rapt, as revealing as Strumosus had said faces could be at such times.

Strumosus, entirely relaxed now, sitting at the head of the table pouring wine for his three guests, had benignly tilted his head sideways. He said: "Young Kyros over there attended to it. He has the makings of a cook."

Two sentences. Simple words. Kyros feared he might weep for joy and pride. He did not, of course. He wasn't a child, after all. He did blush, unfortunately, and lower his head before all the approving smiles. And then he began waiting ardently for the moment, released to the privacy of his cot in the apprentices" room, when he could reclaim-over and again-that miraculous sequence of words and the expressions that had followed. Scortius had said. Then the Rhodian had added. Then Strumosus had said…

Kyros and Rasic were given the next day to themselves: an unexpected holiday, a reward for working all night. Rasic went whistling off to the harbour to buy a woman in a caupona. Kyros used the free time to go to his parents" apartment down in the overcrowded, pungent warrens of the Hippodrome where he'd grown up. He told them, shyly, about what had been said the night before. His father, a man of few words, had touched his son's shoulder with a scarred, bitten hand before going off to feed his beasts. His mother, rather less reserved, had screamed.

Then she had bustled out of their tiny apartment to tell all her friends, before buying and lighting an entire row of thanksgiving candles in the Hippodrome's own chapel. For once, Kyros didn't think she was being excessive.

The makings of a cook.

Strumosus had said that!

They didn't end up going to bed that night. There was food fit for the god's palaces behind the sun and wine to equal it in the blessedly warm, firelit kitchen. They finished with an herbal tea, just before sunrise, that reminded Crispin of the one Zoticus had served him before his journey had begun-which reminded him of Linon, and then home, which made him think, again, of how far away he was. Among strangers, but less so after tonight, it felt. He sipped the hot tea and allowed the faint dizziness of extreme fatigue to wash over him, a sense of distance, of words and movements drifting towards his awareness from far away.

Scortius had gone out to the stables to check on his best horse. Now he came back, rubbing his hands together after the pre-dawn chill of the air, and took the bench next to Crispin again. A calm man, alert and unassuming, for all his wealth and renown. A generous spirit. He'd run madly in the darkness to warn them of danger. That said something.

Crispin looked at Carullus across the stone table. Not a truth to call this man a stranger now, really. Among other things, he knew the big soldier well enough to realize he was hiding discomfort. The wounds weren't dangerous, they'd been assured by the surgeon, but they had to be hurting now, and Carullus would carry new scars from both of them. He had also lost men he'd known a long time tonight. Might even be blaming himself for that; Crispin wasn't sure.

They had no idea who'd paid for the assault. Soldiers on leave were not particularly expensive to hire in the City, it seemed. It required only some determination to arrange an abduction or even a killing. A runner had been sent with a message from Carullus to his surviving men-the ones who had taken the architect home would be expecting them at the inn. It would be a hard message for them to hear, Crispin thought. Carullus, a commander, had lost two men in his charge, but the soldiers would have lost companions. There was a difference.

The Urban Prefect's officer had been polite and formal with Crispin when he'd arrived with the factionarius. They'd spoken privately in the large room where the banquet had taken place. The man had not probed deeply, and Crispin had realized that the officer wasn't certain he wanted to know too much about this murder attempt. Intuitively, Crispin had said nothing about the mosaicist dismissed by the Emperor or the aristocratic lady who might have felt herself diminished by this-or embarrassed by a reference to a necklace she wore. Both things had happened in public: the man would learn of them if he wanted to.

Would someone kill for such things?

The Emperor had refused to let his wife put on the necklace when it came.

There were threads to be untangled and examined here, but they were not about to reveal themselves when his brain was weary and vague with wine and an overwhelming night.

When the grey rumour of dawn showed in the east, they left the kitchen and went across the courtyard to join the administration and employees of the Blues in chapel for the faction's early-morning invocation. Crispin discovered a genuine gratitude, almost a feeling of piety within himself as he chanted the antiphonal responses: for his life preserved, again; for the dome given to him tonight; for the friend Carullus was, and the friend the charioteer might become; for having survived an entry into court, questions in an Empress's rooms, and swords in the night.

And finally-because the small graces of life really did matter to him- for the taste of a shrimp-stuffed whitefish in a sauce like a waking dream.

Scortius didn't bother going home. He bade them good day outside the chapel and then went off to sleep in a room they reserved for him in the compound. The sun was just coming up. A small party of Blues escorted Crispin and Carullus to their inn as the bells summoning Sarantines to later morning prayers in other chapels began all around them.

The clouds were gone, swept away south; the day promised to be cold and bright. The City was stirring as they walked, rousing itself to the resumption of the mundane at the end of a festival. There was debris in the streets but less than he'd expected: workers had been busy in the night. Crispin saw men and women walking to chapels, apprentices running errands, a food market noisily opening up, shops and stalls displaying their wares under colonnades. Slaves and children hurried past carrying water and loaves of bread. There were lines of people already outside food stands, snatching the first meal of the day. A grey-bearded Holy Fool in a tattered and stained yellow robe was shuffling barefoot towards what was probably his usual station to harangue those who were not at prayer.

They reached the inn. Their escorts doubled back to the compound. Crispin and Carullus walked in. The common room was open, a fire going, a handful of people eating inside. The two men passed by that doorway and went up the stairs, moving slowly now.

"Speak later?" Carullus mumbled.

"Of course. You're all right?" Crispin asked.

The soldier grunted wearily and unlocked the door to his room.

Crispin nodded his head, though the other man had already closed the door. He took out his key and headed for his own room farther down the hall. It seemed to take an oddly long time to get there. Noises from the street drifted up. Bells still ringing. It was morning, after all. He tried to remember the last time he'd stayed awake an entire night. He fumbled at the lock. It took some concentration but he managed to open the door. The shutters were blessedly closed against the morning, though bands of sunlight penetrated through the slats, stippling the darkness.

He dropped the key on the small table by the door and stumbled towards his bed, half asleep already. Then he realized-too late to check his motion-that there was someone in the room, on the bed, watching him. And then, in the bands of muted light, he saw the naked blade come up.

Some time earlier, still in the beclouded dark of night, a waiting soldier has handed the Emperor of Sarantium a fur-lined cloak as he emerges into the windy cold from the small chapel and the stone tunnel that leads through the Imperial Precinct walls.

The Emperor, who can remember-though only with an effort now-walking in only a short tunic and torn, sodden boots through a winter the first time he came south from Trakesia, at his uncle's behest, is grateful for the warmth. It is a short enough walk back to the Traver-site Palace, but his personal immunity is to fatigue, not cold.

I am growing old, he thinks, not for the first time. He has no heir. Not for want of effort, or medical advice, or invocations of aid from the god and the half-world, both. It would be good to have a son, he thinks, but has been reconciled for some time now to not having one. His uncle passed the throne to him: there is some precedent in the family, at any rate. Unfortunately, his sisters" sons are feckless nonentities and all four of them remain in Trakesia, at his very firm instruction.

Not that they would stir any sort of insurrection. To do such a thing requires courage and initiative and none of them has either. They might serve as figureheads, though, for someone else's ambition-and the god knows there is enough hunger for power in Sarantium. He could have them killed, but he has judged that unnecessary.

The Emperor shivers, crossing the gardens in the night wind. It is only the chill and damp. He is not fearful, at all. He has only been afraid once in his adult life that he can remember: during the rioting two years ago, in the moment he learned that the Blues and Greens had joined together, side by side in the Hippodrome and in the burning streets. That had been too unexpected a development, too far outside the predictable, the rational. He was-and is-a man who relies on orderly conduct to ground his existence and his thinking. Something so unlikely as the factions joining with each other had rendered him vulnerable, unmoored, like a ship with an anchor ripped free in a storm.

He had been prepared to follow the advice of his most senior counsellors that day. To take a small craft from the little cove below the Precinct and flee the sack of his city. The foolish, illogical rioting over a small increase in taxes and some depravities alleged on the part of the Quaestor of Imperial Revenue had been on the very cusp of bringing down a lifetime's worth of planning and achievement. He had been frightened and enraged. This memory is much more vivid than the one from long ago, the winter trek down to the City.

He reaches the smaller of the two main palaces, ascends the wide steps. Doors are opened for him by the soldiers on duty there. He pauses on the threshold, looking up at the grey-black clouds west over the sea, then he walks into the palace to see if the woman whose words saved them all that day two years ago is still awake, or has-as threatened-gone to sleep.

Gisel-Hildric's daughter, queen of the Antae-is said to be young and even beautiful, though that last hardly matters in the scheme of things. It is distinctly probable she could offer him an heir, though less likely that she would really afford an alternative to the invasion of Batiara. Were she to come east to wed the Emperor of Sarantium it would be seen as an act of treachery by the Antae. A successor would be named, or emerge.

Successors among the Antae tend to follow each other rapidly in any case, he thinks, as swords and poison do their winnowing. It is true that Gisel would serve as excuse for Sarantine intervention, lending validity to his armies. Not a trivial thing. The endorsement of the High Patriarch might reasonably be expected in the name of the queen, and that would carry weight among the Rhodians-and many of the Antae- which could turn the balance in a war. The young queen, in other words, is not really wrong in her reading of what she might represent for him. No man who prided himself on his command of logic and capacity to analyse and anticipate could deny that this is so.

Marrying her-if she could be winkled out of Varena alive-would represent a truly dazzling opening up of avenues. And she is indeed young enough to bear, many times. Nor is he so old himself, though he might feel it at times.

The Emperor of Sarantium comes to his wife's chambers by way of the inner corridor he always uses. He sheds the cloak there. A soldier takes it from him. He knocks, himself. He is genuinely uncertain if Aliana will be awake. She values her sleep more than he does-most people do. He hopes she has waited. Tonight has been interesting in unexpected ways, and he is far from tired, keen to talk.

Crysomallo opens the door, admitting him to the innermost of the Empress's rooms. There are four doors here. The architects have made of this wing a maze of women's chambers. He himself doesn't even know where all the corridors lead and branch. The door closes on the soldiers. There are candles burning here, a clue. He turns to her longtime lady-in-waiting, eyebrows lifted in inquiry, but before Crysomallo can speak, the door to the bedchamber itself opens, and Aliana, the Empress Alixana, his life, appears.

He says, "You are awake. I am pleased."

She murmurs, mildly, "You look chilled. Go nearer the fire. I have been considering which items of my clothing to pack for the exile to which you are sending me."

Crysomallo smiles, lowering her head quickly in a vain attempt to hide it. She turns, without instruction, and withdraws to another part of the web of rooms. The Emperor waits for the door to close.

"And why," he says, austere and composed, to the woman who remains with him, "do you assume you'll be allowed any of them when you go?"

"Ah," she says, simulating relief, a hand fluttering to her bosom. "That means you don't intend to kill me."

He shakes his head. "Hardly necessary. I can let Styliane do it once you are discarded and powerless."

Her face sinks as she considers this new possibility. "Another necklace?"

"Or chains," he says agreeably. "Poisoned manacles for your cell in exile."

"At least the indignity would be shortened." She sighs. "A cold night?"

"Very cold," he agrees. "Windy for an old man's bones. The clouds will break by morning, though. We'll see the sun."

"Trakesians always know the weather. They just don't understand women. One can't have all gifts, I suppose. Which old man were you walking with?" She smiles. So does he. "You will take a cup of wine, my lord?"

He nods. "I'm quite certain there's nothing wrong with the necklace," he adds.

"I know. You wanted the artisan to take a warning about her." He smiles at that. "You know me too well."

She shakes her head, walking over with the cup. "No one knows you too well. I know some things you are inclined to do. He will be a prize, after tonight, and you wanted to give him some caution."

"He's a cautious man, I think."

"This is a seductive place."

He grins suddenly. He can still look boyish at times. "Very."

She laughs, hands him his wine. "Did he tell us too easily?" She walks over to take a cushioned seat. "About Gisel? Is he weak that way?"

The Emperor also crosses and sits easily-no sign of age in the movement-on the floor by her feet among the pillows. The fire near her low-backed chair has been attentively built up. The room is warm, the wine is very good and watered to his taste. The wind and the world are outside.

Valerius, who was Petrus when she met him and still is when they are private, shakes his head. "He's an intelligent fellow. Very much so, actually. I didn't expect that. He didn't really tell us anything, if you recall. Kept his silence. You were too precise in what you asked and said merely to be hazarding a guess. He drew that conclusion and acted on it. I'd call him observant, not weak. Besides, he'll be in love with you by now." He smiles up at her and sips his wine.

"A well-made man," she murmurs. "Though I'd have hated to see the red beard they say he came with." She shudders delicately. "But, alas, I like my men much younger than that one."

He laughs. "Why did you ask him here?"

"I wanted dolphins. You heard."

"I did. You'll get them when we're done with the Sanctuary. What other reasons?"

The Empress lifts one shoulder, a motion of hers he has always loved. Her dark hair ripples, catching the light. "As you say, he was a prize after discrediting Siroes and solving the charioteer's mystery."

"And the gift to Styliane. Leontes didn't much like that."

"That isn't what he didn't like, Petrus. And she will not have liked having to match his generosity, at all."

"He'll have a guard. At least for the first while. Styliane did sponsor the other artisan, after all."

She nods. "I have told you, more than once, that that marriage is a mistake."

The man frowns. Sips his wine. The woman watches him closely, though her manner appears relaxed. "He earned it, Aliana. Against the Bassanids and in the Majriti."

"He earned appropriate honours, yes. Styliane Daleina was not the way to reward him, my love. The Daleinoi hate you enough, as it is."

"I can't imagine why," he murmurs wryly, then adds, "Leontes was the marriage-dream of every woman in the Empire."

"Every woman but two," she says quietly. "The one here with you and the one forced to wed him."

"I can only leave it to him to change her mind, then."

"Or watch her change him?"

He shook his head. "I imagine Leontes knows how to lay a siege of this kind, as well. And he is proof against treachery. He is secure in himself and his image of Jad."

She opens her mouth to say something more, but does not. He notices though, and smiles. "I know," he murmurs. "Pay the soldiers, delay the Sanctuary."

She says, "Among other things. But what does a woman understand of these great affairs?"

"Exactly," he says emphatically. "Stick to your charities and dawn prayers."

They both laugh. The Empress is notorious for mornings abed. There is a silence. He drinks his wine, finishing it. She rises smoothly, takes the cup, fills it again and comes back, sitting as she hands it to him again. He lays a hand on her slippered foot where it rests on a pillow beside him. They watch the fire for a time.

"Gisel of the Antae might bear you children," she says softly.

He continues to gaze into the flames. He nods. "And be much less trouble, one has to assume."

"Shall I resume selecting a wardrobe for exile? May I take the necklace?"

The Emperor continues to look into the tongues of fire. Heladikos's gift, according to the schismatics he has agreed to suppress in the cause of harmony in the faith of Jad. Chieromancers claim they can read futures in flames, see shapes of destiny. They, too, are to be suppressed. All pagans are. He has even-with a reluctance few will know-closed the old pagan Schools. A thousand years of learning. Even Aliana's dolphins are a transgression. There are those who would burn or brand the artisan for Grafting them, if he ever does.

The Emperor reads no mystic certainties of any kind in the late-night flames, sitting at the woman's feet, one hand touching her instep and the jewelled slipper. He says, "Never leave me."

"Wherever would I go?" she murmurs after a moment, trying to keep the tone light and just failing.

He looks up. "Never leave me," he says again, the grey eyes on hers this time.

He can do this to her, take breath from chest and throat. A constriction of great need. After all these years.

"Not in life," she replies.