"Lord of Emperors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What straits?" Crispin asked, rising to her gesture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today's demands were evidently going to be otherwise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He thought of Jad, slowly crumbling on a dome in a Sauradian chapel bordering the Aldwood, tesserae falling in the filtered light.

She said, "The world can be… influenced in unexpected ways, Caius Crispus. The Emperor has been hoping that letters were being sent, actually. That's why I asked. He is of the belief that the native Rhodians might welcome our arrival, given the chaos in Varena. And since we are sailing in the name of your queen, there is some hope that many of the Antae themselves might not fight. He wants them to have time to consider possible… interventions."

It suddenly occurred to him that she was speaking as if he knew an invasion had been announced. It hadn't been. Crispin looked at her, his emotions roiling again. "I see. So even letters home to loved ones are a part of the design?"

Her gaze met his. "Why should they not be? He thinks in that way. If we are unable to do so, does that make him wrong? The Emperor is trying to change the world as we know it. Is it a transgression to bring all the elements one can to something as large as this?"

Crispin shook his head and looked away, at the sea again. "I told you half a year ago, Majesty, I am an artisan. I can't even guess at these things."

"I wasn't asking you to," she said, mildly enough. Crispin felt himself flush. She hesitated. Looked out at the waves as well. Said, a little stiffly, "It is to be formally proclaimed this afternoon. In the Hippodrome by the Mandator after the last race of the day. An invasion of Batiara in the name of Queen Gisel, to reclaim Rhodias and remake a sundered Empire. Does it not sound glorious?"

Crispin shivered in the mild sunlight of that day, then felt a burning sensation, as if something had touched him, like a brand. He closed his eyes on a sudden, vivid image: flames ravaging Varena, taking the wooden houses like so much kindling for a summer bonfire.

They had all known, but…

But there was a tone in the voice of the woman beside him, something to be read in her profile now, even within the dark hood. He swallowed again, and said, "Glorious? Why do I imagine you don't find it so?"

No visible response, though he was watching for it. She said, "Because I am allowing you to see that, Caius Crispus. Though, to be entirely truthful, I'm not certain why. I confess that you… Look!"

She never finished that thought for him.

Broke off, instead, pointing. He had time to recollect that she was an actress, above all things, and then he looked. Saw dolphins breach the sea, tearing it sharply, their bodies arcing like the perfect curve of a dome, racing the ship through the ruffled water. Half a dozen of them, surfacing in sequences, as if choreographed in a theatre, one, then two, then a pause, then again, the sleek, exultant leap and splash of it.

Playful as… children? Exquisite as dancers, as the dancer beside him. Carriers of the souls of the dead, bearers of drowned Heladikos when he fell burning into the sea with the chariot of the sun. The paradox and the mystery of them. Laughter and darkness. Grace and death. She wanted dolphins for her rooms.

They watched for a long time, then there came a point when the dolphins did not leap with them any more and the sea rolled beneath and beside the ship, untorn, hiding things, as it always did.

"They do not like to come too near the island," said the Empress Alixana, turning her head to look towards the bow.

Crispin turned as well. "Island?" he said.

He saw land, unexpectedly near, densely forested with evergreen trees. A stony beach, a wooden dock for mooring the boat, two men waiting in Imperial livery. No other signs of human life. Gulls crying all about them in the morning.

"I had another reason for coming out this morning," said the woman beside him, not smiling now. She had lowered her hood. "The Emperor doesn't like my doing this. He believes it is… wrong. But there is someone I want to see before the army sails. A… reassurance. You and the dolphins were my excuse today. I believed you could be trusted, Caius Crispus. Do you mind?"

She didn't wait for an answer, of course, was simply giving him as much as she thought he needed to know. Grains doled out from the guarded storehouse of their knowledge. Valerius and Alixana. He wanted to be angry, but there was something in her manner, and in the mood from which she'd claimed him. She'd thought he could be trusted but hadn't said why she wanted to trust him.

He wasn't about to ask. She had turned away in any case, walked across to the other side of the ship, where men were readying them for docking.

He followed, his heart beating too fast again, the inward image of a great burning in Varena cutting against the memories he had awakened this morning intending to try to shape. Two girls in their youth, a part of the world the god had made. Their youth and their dying. He had been going there. And now before him, instead, was this deceptive, mild placidity of blue sea and sky and dark green trees in morning light. You and the dolphins were my excuse today.

For what?

The mooring of the craft was flawless, nearly silent. The slap of waves and the calling birds in the sky. A ramp was lowered, a crimson carpet unrolled for the Empress's feet. Formalities: she was what she was. It was never to be forgotten. You were not to think of her as anything else.

They went down the landing ramp. Four soldiers followed at a little distance. They were armed, Crispin saw, looking over his shoulder.

The Empress, not looking back at all, led him from the sea along a path that went from the white, round stones into pine trees that soon hid the sun. Crispin drew his cloak around himself as the day's light failed.

There was no god here, no emblem, symbol, incarnation thereof. There was a single mortal woman, straight-backed, not tall, to be followed over pine needles and amid the scent of pine, and after a little time-it wasn't a large island-there was an ending to the path and the woods and Crispin saw a cluster of buildings. One house, three or four smaller huts, a tiny chapel with a sun disk carved above the door. The Empress stopped a little distance into that open space between the trees and the houses men had made and she turned to him as he came up beside her.

"I dislike speaking in this manner," she said, "but I must say that if you tell of what you see here now you will be killed."

Crispin's hands clenched. Anger again, despite everything. He, too, was what he was, what the god and loss had made of him.

"You contradict yourself, thrice-exalted."

"How so?" The voice brittle. He could see that there was some strain within her now that they had reached this place. He didn't understand it, or any of this, and he didn't care. Had thought to spend today on a scaffolding alone with his craft and memories of his girls.

"You just said you were of the belief I could be trusted. Obviously this is not so. Why not leave me on the ship? Empress, why am I here, to face such a threat? To be such a threat? What am I in this?"

She was silent, looking at him. Her face was very white. The Excubitors had halted, discreetly, some distance behind them at the edge of the trees. There were other soldiers, Crispin now saw, appearing at the doorways of the smaller houses. Four of them, wearing the livery of the Urban Prefecture. No one moved by the largest house. Smoke rose from chimneys, drifted.

"I don't know," said the Empress Alixana finally. She was staring up at him. "A fair question, but I do not know the answer. I know that I… do not like to come here any more. He frightens me, makes me dream. That's one reason Petrus… why the Emperor doesn't want me coming."

The stillness of the clearing, of that single larger house, had something uncanny about it. Crispin realized all the shutters were closed. There would be no sunlight there.

"In Jad's name, who is here?" he asked, too loudly. His voice seemed an abrasion in the waiting air.

Alixana's dark eyes were enormous. "Jad has little enough to do with him," she said. "Daleinus is here. Styliane's brother. The oldest child."

Rustem would have preferred to deny it, but both of his wives and all of his teachers had characterized him (sometimes with amusement) as a stubborn, willful man. An idea in his head was unlikely to be readily dislodged.

Accordingly, when the servant of Plautus Bonosus returned to the house near the walls and reported that the Senator was already among the crowd gathered at the Hippodrome and could not be of any assistance, Rustem shrugged his shoulders, turned to attend to a revision of the lecture he was soon to give, and-a short while after-put it aside and impatiently put on boots and a cloak to venture forth with two guards to attend at the house of Bonosus himself.

The streets were deserted, eerily so. Many shops were boarded up, the markets almost silent, taverns and cookshops empty. From a distance as they went Rustem heard a dull, punishing sound, a steady roar, rising at intervals into something more than that. It would be frightening if you didn't know what it was, he thought. In fact, it could be frightening even if you did know.

He wanted to see these races now. To know what his patient was doing. He even saw himself as having some responsibility to be present. And if this Jaddite charioteer was going to kill himself-and past a certain point no physician could do anything about that-Rustem felt a measure of curiosity as to the ways and means. He was in the west, after all, to try to understand these people. Or, that was why he had come here, what he had thought his role would be. His more recent task was one he tried to avoid considering. He had some vague hope that circumstances might make the whole thing… go away.

It was obviously impossible for a visiting Bassanid to simply walk up to the Hippodrome and gain admission. The physicians" guild might have helped, given notice, but Rustem had had no warning at all that his patient would leave his room via a window, a tree, and the courtyard wall, trailing blood behind him as he went.

In a case of this sort, one needed to invoke more powerful connections of a personal nature. Rustem was looking for Cleander.

He knew from the boy himself that Bonosus had forbidden his son to attend the first five meetings of the race season, as punishment for the incident that had killed Nishik. One might quarrel with equating the death of a man (even a foreigner, even a servant) with five lost days of amusement, but that wasn't Rustem's concern today.

Today he wanted to persuade Cleander's mother to override her husband's dictate. He was well aware, from glosses in the texts of the western physicians, that in ancient Rhodias a man's will was utterly binding, even to death, upon wives and children. A father had once been able to have his son executed by the state for simple disobedience.

There had been a brief time in the old days in the west when this had been seen as demonstrating virtue, the exemplary discipline and rectitude that could forge an empire. Rustem was of the view that in the modern Sarantium of Valerius and the Empress Alixana, women might have a greater degree of authority in the home. He had cause to know that the boy was an intensely partisan follower of the chariots. If someone knew how to get into the Hippodrome-for the afternoon at least, as the morning was well advanced by now-it would be Cleander. But he would need his stepmother's consent.

The Senators steward was swift to alert his mistress when Rustern presented himself at the door. Thenai's Sistina, quite unruffled, coolly elegant, greeted him in her morning room with a gracious smile, setting aside pen and paper. Rustem noted that she appeared to be literate.

He apologized, discussed the mild weather, explained that he wished to attend the races.

She did show surprise, the merest flicker and blink of her eyes. "Really?" she murmured. "I hadn't expected the games to appeal to you. They don't hold much allure for me, I confess. Noise and dirt, and there is often violence in the stands."

"None of which would draw me," Rustem agreed.

"But I suppose there is an element of spectacle. Well, I shall be certain to inform my husband that you'd like to accompany him to the next games day… it ought to be within a week or two if I understand the process rightly."

Rustem shook his head. Td really like to attend this afternoon."

Thenai's Sistina assumed a distressed expression. "I don't see any way to get a message to my husband in time. He's with the Imperial party, in the kathisma."

"I understand as much. I was wondering if Cleander might…? As a courtesy and great favour to me?"

The Senator's wife looked at him for a long moment. "Why today, so urgently, if I might ask?"

Which compelled an indiscretion. In light of the morning's open window and the fact that this was Bonosus's wife and Bonosus already knew, Rustem felt justified. The man's physician ought to be in attendance, in fact. No one else could possibly know the precise nature of his patient's injuries. It could be said he had duties and would be remiss in them did he not make his best effort to be present.

So he told the wife of Plautus Bonosus, in formal confidence, that his patient, Scortius of Soriyya, had violated medical advice and left his bed in the Senator's city home, where he had been recovering from wounds. Given the fact that there was racing today, it was not difficult to deduce why he had done so and where he would be.

The woman showed no reaction to learning this. The whole of Sarantium might be talking of this missing man, but either she'd already known where he was from her husband, or she was truly indifferent to the fate of these athletic sorts. She did, however, summon her stepson.

Cleander appeared sullenly in the doorway a short time later. It had occurred to Rustem that the boy might have breached this parental order already and been gone from the house, but it appeared that Bonosus's son had been sufficiently chastened by two violent incidents in one day and night to obey his father, for now.

His stepmother, with a few impressively precise questions, succeeded in unearthing from the flushed young man the fact that it was Cleander who had conveyed the charioteer to Rustem in the middle of the night, and from where and under what circumstances. Rustem hadn't expected this. She had made an impressive leap of reasoning.

He could not help but note the boy's discomfiture, but he also knew that he himself had betrayed no secret in this regard. He hadn't even known that the incident had taken place in front of the dancer's home. He hadn't asked, or cared.

The woman was disconcertingly clever, that was all. It came with her detachment and composure, he decided. Those able to modulate and control their inner passions, to view the world with a cold eye, were best equipped to think things through in this way. Of course that same coldness might also be a reason why the husband had a chest with certain implements and toys in another house in a distant part of town. On the whole, though, Rustem decided he approved of the Senator's wife. He had, in fact, attempted to structure his own professional demeanour in this same fashion.

It was unexpected to see it in a woman, mind you.

Also unexpected was the fact that she seemed to be coming with them to the Hippodrome.

Cleander's extreme discomfort changed-in the overheated manner of youth-to a stunned elation as he understood that his stepmother was undertaking to waive a part of his punishment in favour of the duties owed a guest and Rustem's own professed obligations as a physician.

She would accompany them, she said, to ensure Oleander's good behaviour and swift return home, and to assist the doctor if he needed any intervention. The Hippodrome could be a dangerous place for a foreigner, she said.

Cleander would go ahead of them, immediately, taking the steward and using his mother's name for any outlays required, employing whatever unsavoury contacts he undoubtedly had in and around the Hippodrome Forum to secure proper seating after the midday interval-not standing places, and most certainly not in any area containing faction partisans or anyone whose conduct might be disagreeable. And he would not, under any circumstances, wear green. Did Cleander understand?

Cleander did.

Would Rustem of Kerakek be pleased to take a modest midday meal with her while Cleander attended to these matters of seating and admission?

Rustem would.

They had ample time to dine, and then she would need more suitable clothing for a public appearance, she said, putting aside her writing and rising from her backless chair. Her manner was impeccably calm, precise, superbly efficient, her posture flawless. She put him in mind of those fabled matrons of Rhodias, in the days before it declined into Imperial decadence and then fell.

He wondered abruptly-startling himself, in fact-if either Katyun or Jarita could have grown into this poise and authority had they been raised in a different world. There were no women like this in Ispahani and certainly none in Bassania. Palace intrigues among the cloistered wives of the King of Kings were something else entirely. He thought, then, of his baby, his girl-and made himself stop doing that. Inissa was being taken from him, was gone, in the wake of his great good fortune.

Perun and Anahita guided the world, Azal needed to be kept constantly at bay. No man could say where his footsteps might lead him. Generosity needed to be embraced, even if there was a price to be paid.

Certain gifts were not offered twice. He could not let himself dwell upon Issa, or her mother.

He could think about Shaski and Katyun, for he would see them in Kabadh, soon enough. If the Lady wills it, he added hastily in his mind and turned quickly to face east, on the thought. He had been instructed to try to kill someone here. Generosity might now have conditions attached to it.

The wife of Plautus Bonosus was looking at him, eyebrows slightly arched. She was too well bred to say anything, however.

Hesitantly, Rustem murmured, "In my faith… the east… I was averting bad fortune. I had a reckless thought."

"Ah," said Thenais Sistina, nodding her head as if this were entirely clear to her. "We all have those, from time to time." She walked out of the room and he followed her.

In the kathisma, a very well-turned-out cluster of court figures was busily performing its assigned task. Gesius had been explicit and had ensured that many of the more decorative members of the Imperial Precinct were on hand this morning, dressed flamboyantly, glittering with jewellery and colour.

They managed-with polished ease-to both enjoy themselves and blur, with their highly visible and audible reactions to events below, the absence of the Empress, the Supreme Strategos, the Chancellor, and the Master of Offices. They also masked the steady, low-voiced dictation of the Emperor to the secretaries crouched against the front railing of the box, invisible to the stands.

Valerius had dropped the white handkerchief to start the program, had acknowledged his people's cheers with the ancient gesture of Emperors, and had taken his cushioned seat and immediately set to work, ignoring the chariots below and the noise all around. Whenever the Mandator, schooled to this, murmured discreetly at his elbow Valerius would stand up and salute whoever was currently doing a victory lap. For much of the morning it had been Crescens of the Greens. The Emperor didn't seem to notice, or care.

The mosaic image on the roof of the kathisma above them was of Saranios, who had founded this city and named it for himself, driving a quadriga and crowned not with gold but with a charioteer's victory laurel. The links in the symbolic chain were immensely powerful: Jad in his chariot, the Emperor as mortal servant and holy symbol of the god, the charioteers on the Hippodrome sands as the most dearly beloved of the people. But, thought Bonosus, this particular successor in the long chain of Emperors was… detached from the power of that association.

Or he tried to be. The people brought him back to it. He was here, after all, watching the chariots run, even today. Bonosus had a theory about the attraction of the racing, actually. He was prepared to bore people with it if asked, or even if not. In essence, he'd argue, the Hippodrome stood in perfectly balanced counterpoint to the rituals of the Imperial Precinct. Courtly life was entirely structured around ritual, predictable as anything on earth could be. An ordained practice for everything from the Emperor's first greeting when awakened (and by whom and in what order), to the sequence of lighting the lamps in the Audience Chamber, to the procession for presenting gifts to him on the first of the New Year. Words and gestures, set and recorded, known and rehearsed, never varying.

The Hippodrome, by contrast, Bonosus would say, and shrug… as though the rest of the thought ought to be transparently clear to anyone. The Hippodrome was all uncertainty. The unknown was… the very essence of it, he would say.

Bonosus, chattering and cheering this morning with the others in the Imperial Box, prided himself on detached perspectives of this sort. But jaded as he might be, he was unable to entirely control the excitement he was feeling today, and it had nothing to do with the uncertainty of horses, or even the younger riders down below.

He had never seen Valerius like this.

The Emperor was always intense when engaged by matters of state, and always irritably distracted when forced to attend at the Hippodrome, but this morning the ferocity of his concentration and the endless stream of notes and instructions aimed in a low voice at the secretaries-there were two, alternating, to keep up with him-had a rhythm, a compelling pace, that seemed, in the mind of the Master of the Senate, to be as poundingly urgent as the horses and quadrigas below.

On the sands the Greens were proving wildly triumphant, as they had been a week before. Scortius of the Blues was still absent, and Bonosus was one of the handful of people in the City who knew where he was and that it would be weeks before he reappeared in the Hippodrome. The man had insisted on secrecy and he had more than enough stature in Sarantium to have his wishes obeyed in this.

There was probably a woman involved, the Senator decided-with Scortius, never a difficult surmise. Bonosus didn't at all begrudge the charioteer the use of his own smaller city home while he recovered. He rather enjoyed being privy to cloaked affairs. It wasn't as if being Master of the Senate conferred any real significance, after all. His second home wasn't available for his own diversions in any case, with the bone-dry Bassanid physician staying there. That part of the current situation he owed to Cleander, who was a problem that would need attention soon. Barbarian hair-styling and outlandish garb in the cause of faction identity was one thing, murdering people in the street was… another.

The factions could become dangerous today, he realized. He wondered if Valerius was aware of it. The Greens in full rapture, the Blues seething with humiliation and anxiety. He decided he was going to have to speak with Scortius after all, this evening perhaps. Secrecy in one's own causes was something that might have to give way to order in the City, especially given what else was awesomely afoot. If both factions knew that the man was all right, would be returning at some named date, some of this tension could be dissipated.

As it was, Bonosus felt sorry for the youngster riding First for the Blues. The boy was clearly a charioteer, had instincts and courage, but he also had three problems that Bonosus could see-and the god knew he ought to be able to see things down there on the sands, given the number of years he'd been coming here.

First problem was Crescens of the Greens. The muscular fellow from Sarnica was superbly confident, had had a year to settle in to Sarantium now, and had his new team under perfect control. Nor was he the sort to show any mercy to the disorganized Blues.

That disorganization was the other part of the difficulty. Not only was the youngster-Taras was his name, a Sauradian apparently-unfamiliar with riding First chariot, he didn't even know the horses of the lead team. Magnificent as a stallion such as Servator was, any horse needed a hand on the reins that knew what it could do. And besides, young Taras, wearing the silver helmet for the Blues, wasn't getting any adequate back-up at all, because he was the one who'd been training to ride Second and knew those horses.

Given all this, the Blues" temporary leader had been doing well to come in second place, three times beating back aggressively coordinated attacks from both Green riders. Jad alone knew what the mood would be if the Greens succeeded in sweeping the board once or twice. Such sweeps of the first and second placings gave rise to the most exultant of faction celebrations-and sullen despair on the other side. It could yet happen before the day was out. The Blues" rider might have the stamina of youth, but they could wear him down. Bonosus thought they would, in the afternoon. On another day he might have considered some wagers.

There was, one might say in a literary mode, a grand slaughter building down below. Being the man he was, Bonosus was inclined to perceive it this way, to see it as an ironic foretaste of the Imperial announcement of war, still to come at the end of the day.

The mornings last race came to an end-as usual, a minor, chaotic endeavour among the Reds and Whites, driving two-horse bigas. The Whites" lead driver emerged triumphant in a typically sloppy affair, but the victory was treated by the Blues and Whites with an enthusiasm (more than slightly forced, to Bonosus's ear) that was almost certainly unique in the experience of the White charioteer. Surprised or not, he appeared to greatly enjoy his victory lap.

The Emperor stopped dictating and rose at the Mandator's murmured hint. He briskly saluted the fellow passing beneath him just then and turned to go. An Excubitor had already unbarred the door at the rear of the kathisma. Valerius would go back down the corridor to the Imperial Precinct for final consultations before the afternoon's proclamation: the Attenine Palace for the Chancellor, the Master of Offices, and the Quaestor of Revenue, then across through the old tunnel under the gardens to the Traversite to meet Leontes and the generals. Everyone knew his routines. Some people-Bonosus among them-believed they had by now discerned the thinking behind this separation of advisers. It was dangerous, however, to assume you understood what this Emperor was thinking. As everyone else rose and stood gracefully aside, Valerius paused by Bonosus.

"Do our honours for the afternoon, Senator. Barring the unforeseen, we shall return with the others before the last race." He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "And have the Urban Prefect find out where Scortius is. A bad time for this sort of thing, don't you think? We may have been remiss, ignoring it."

He didn't miss anything, Bonosus thought.

"I know where he is," he said quietly, breaking a promise without compunction. This was the Emperor.

Valerius didn't even raise an eyebrow. "Good. Inform the Urban Prefect, and tell us about it after."

And while eighty thousand of his people were still reacting in a variety of ways to the White rider's last lap, and just beginning to rise and stretch and think about a midday meal and wine, the Emperor left his kathisma and that thronged place where the announcements and events that defined the Empire had so often been witnessed.

Even before he passed through the opened door, Valerius had begun removing the ornate ceremonial garb he had to wear in public.

The servants began spreading a meal on large side tables and smaller round ones beside the seats. Some of those in the kathisma preferred to go back to the palaces to dine, while the younger ones might venture into the City itself, tasting the excitement of the taverns, but it was pleasant to linger here if the weather was fine, and today it was.

Bonosus discovered, to his surprise, that he had both an appetite and a thirst. He stretched his legs-there was room now-and held out his cup for wine.

It occurred to him that the next time he ate a meal he would be a Senator of an empire at war. And not just the usual skirmishing of springtime. This was a recon quest. Rhodias. Valerius's long dream.

No question, it was an exciting thought, stirring up all sorts of… feelings. Bonosus wished, suddenly, that he didn't have a Bassanid physician and a recuperating charioteer both staying at his little house near the walls tonight, after all. Guests could be, undeniably, a complication.

"He was allowed to retire to the Daleinus estate at first. He was only brought to this isle-it has been used as a prison for a long time-after trying to have the first Valerius assassinated in his bath."

Crispin looked at the Empress beside him. They stood alone in the clearing. Her Excubitors were behind them and four guards stood waiting before the doorways of the smaller huts. The larger house was dark, the door barred on the outside, all the windows shuttered against the mild light of the sun. Crispin had an odd difficulty even looking at it. There was an oppressiveness, a weight, something clinging here. There was little wind now, in the midst of the encircling pines.

He said, "I thought people were killed for doing that."

"He should have been," Alixana said.

He looked back at her. She never took her eyes off the house in front of them.

"Tetrus, who was his uncle's adviser then, wouldn't allow it. Said the Daleinoi and their followers needed to be handled carefully. The Emperor listened. He usually did. They brought Lecanus here. Punished but not executed. The youngest one, Tertius, was still a child. He was allowed to stay on the estate and eventually to manage the family affairs. Styliane was permitted to remain in the City, to come to court when she grew older, was even allowed to visit here, though the visits were observed. Lecanus continued plotting, even from this island, kept trying to persuade her. Eventually her visits were stopped." She paused, looked at him, then back at the cabin. "I did that, actually. I was the one having them secretly observed. Then I had the Emperor stop her from coming at all, a little before she was married."

"So no one comes here now?" Crispin saw hearth-smoke rising from the huts and the larger house, straight as the trees, going up then blowing away when it reached the height of the wind.

"I do," said Alixana. "After a fashion. You'll see."

"And I'll be killed if I tell anyone. I know."

She looked up at him then. He could still see the strain in her. "I have heard you on that. Leave it be, Crispin. You are trusted. You are with me here."

The first time she had ever used his name like that.

She went forward without giving him any chance to reply. He couldn't think of any response in any case.

One of the four guards bowed low, then approached the closed door of the house, unlocked it ahead of them. The door swung outward silently. It was almost completely dark inside. The guard went in, and a moment later there was light within as he lit a lamp, and then another. Another man followed the first. He coughed loudly on the threshold.

"Are you dressed, Daleinus? She's here to see you."

A snuffling sound, almost unintelligible, more an animal noise than speech, came from inside. The guard said nothing, entered the house behind the first one. He push opened the wooden shutters on two iron-barred windows, letting in air and more light. Both guards went out.

The Empress nodded at them. They bowed again and withdrew, back towards the huts. There was no one in hearing distance now, or no one that Crispin could see. Alixana met Crispin's eye briefly, then she straightened her shoulders like a performer going on stage and walked into that house.

Crispin followed, silently, out of the bright sun. There was a constriction in his chest. His heart was hammering. He couldn't have said why. This had so little do with him. But he was thinking of Styliane, the last night he'd seen her, what he'd seen in her. And trying to recall what he knew about the death of Flavius Daleinus on the day the first Valerius was acclaimed Emperor in Sarantium.

He stopped just inside the doorway. A fair-sized front room. Two doors opening off it, one at the back to a bedchamber, one on the right side, he couldn't see to where. A fireplace against the left-hand wall, two chairs, a couch at the back, a bench, a table, a closed and locked chest, nothing on the walls at all, not even a sun disk. The snuffling sound, he realized, was a man, breathing oddly.

Then Crispin's eyes slowly adjusted to the subdued light and he saw a shape move on the couch, sitting up from a reclining position, turning towards them. And so he saw the person who lived-who was imprisoned-within this house, on this island, in his own body, and he did remember something, as a sickening, convulsive horror overmastered him. He leaned back against the wall beside the door, a hand going up to shield his face, involuntarily.

Sarantine Fire did bad things to men, even when they survived it.

The father had been killed. A cousin too, Crispin seemed to recall. Lecanus Daleinus had lived. After a fashion. Looking at the blind man before him, at the burned-away ruin of what had been his face, the charred, maimed hands, imagining the burned body beneath the nondescript brown tunic, Crispin wondered, truly, how this man was still alive, and why, what purpose, desire, need could possibly have kept him from ending his own life long ago. He didn't think it was piety. There was no least hint of the god here. Of any god at all.

Then he remembered what Alixana had said, and he thought he knew. Hatred could be a purpose, vengeance a need. A deity, almost.

He was working hard not to be physically ill. He closed his eyes.

And in that moment he heard Styliane Daleina, icy-cool, patrician, utterly unmoved by her brother's appearance, murmur from beside him, "You smell, brother. The room smells. I know they give you water and a basin. Show some respect for yourself and use it."

Crispin, his jaw dropping, opened his eyes and wheeled to look at her.

He saw the Empress of Sarantium, standing as straight as she could, to be nearer the height of the other woman. And he heard her speak again, the voice and tone and manner terrifyingly precise, unnervingly identical. "I have told you this before. You are a Daleinus. Even if no one sees or knows, you must know it or you shame our blood."

The hideous, appalling face on the couch moved. It was impossible to decipher what expression that melted ruin was attempting. The eyes were hollow, blackened, gone. The nose was a smear, and made that whistling sound when the man breathed. Crispin kept silent, swallowing hard.

"So… sorry… sister," the blind man said. The words were slow, badly garbled, but intelligible. "I disappoint… you dear… sister. I will weep."

"You can't weep. But you can have this place cleaned and aired and I expect you to do so." If Crispin had closed his eyes he'd have sworn to holy jad and all the Blessed Victims that Styliane was here, arrogant, contemptuous, fierce in her intelligence and pride. The actress she had named Alixana, among other things.

And now he knew why the Empress came here and why there was so much strain in her face.

There is someone I want to see before the army sails.

She was afraid of this man. Was coming only for Valerius, despite her fear, to see what he might be plotting here with the life they'd granted him. But this sightless, noseless figure was alone, isolated, not even his sister coming any more-only this flawless, chilling imitation of Styliane, seeking to draw a revelation from him. Was this a man to be feared in the present day, or just a guilt, a haunting in the soul from long ago?

There came a sound from the couch, from the almost unbearable figure. And a moment later Crispin realized he was hearing laughter. The sound made him think of something slithering over broken glass.

"Come. Sister," said Lecanus Daleinus, once heir to an extravagantly patrician lineage and an inconceivable fortune. "No… time! Undress! Let me… touch! Hurry!"

Crispin closed his eyes again.

'Good, good!" came a third voice, shockingly. In his head. 'She hates that. Doesn't know what to believe. There's someone here with her. Red hair. No idea who. You're making him feel ill. You are so hideous! The whore's looking at him now.

Crispin felt the world rock and sway like a ship hit hard by a wave. He pressed his hands hard against the wall behind him. Looked around wildly.

Saw the bird, almost immediately, on the window ledge.

I don't know why she's here today! How can I answer that? Keep calm. She may only be anxious. She may-

Alixana laughed aloud. Again the illusion was frightening. It was another woman's laughter, not her own. Crispin remembered Styliane in her own bedchamber, the low, sardonic sound of her amusement, identical to this. "You are disgusting, by choice," the Empress said. "A comic version of yourself, like some cheap pantomime figure. Have you nothing better to offer or ask than a grope in your darkness?"

"What else could I… possibly… offer you, dear sister? Wife of the Supreme Strategos. Did he please… you last night? In your dark? Did someone else? Oh, tell me! Tell!" The voice, through the whistling sound, was laboured, broken, as if the sounds were crawling up from some labyrinthine half-blocked tunnel leading down to things below the earth.

'Good!" Crispin heard again, in the silence of the half-world. "I think I'm right. She's just checking on you. The war coming. This is an accident. She's only worried. You'd be pleased-she looks wretched, used by slaves. Old!

Fighting nausea, Crispin stayed where he was, his breathing carefully shallow, though there was no actual secret to his presence now. His mind was in a desperate whirl. Out of the chaos, a question spun free and he reached for it: how did this man and his creature know, here, about the war?

There was something ugly at work here. This bird was like none he had yet known or heard. The inner voice wasn't that of Zoticus's creations. This bird soul spoke in a woman's voice, bitter and hard, from beyond Bassania: Ispahani or Ajbar or lands whose names he did not know. It was dark in hue, small as Linon, but not like Linon at all.

He remembered that the Daleinoi had made their fortune with a monopoly on the spice trade to the east. He looked at the man on the couch, burned so terribly, turned into this horror, and again the thought came to him: how is he alive?

And again the same answer came and he was afraid.

'I know," said the bird abruptly, replying to something. 'I know! I know! I know!" And what Crispin heard now in the low, harsh voice was exultation, fierce as a blaze.

"I take no delight," the Empress said, all ice and edge like Styliane, "in any of this, and see no reason to attend to your pleasures. I prefer my own, brother. I'm here to ask if there's anything you need… immediately." She left an emphasis on the last word. "You might recall, dear brother, that they leave us alone for only a little while."

"Of course I… recall. That is why you are cruel… to be dressed… still. Little sister, come closer… and tell me. Tell me… how did he… take you, last night?"

Stomach churning, Crispin saw the ruined man's hand, gnarled like a claw, reach under his own tunic to his groin. And he heard the inward laughter of the eastern bird.

Think of your father," said Alixana. "And of your ancestors. If this is all you are now, brother, I shall not return. Consider it, Lecanus. I warned you last time. I'm going to take a walk now and a meal in sunlight on the island. I will come back before I sail. When I do, if this is what you are, still, I will have no more time for this journey and will not return."

"Oh! Oh!" wheezed the man on the couch. "I am desolate! I have… shamed my dear sister. Our innocent… fair child."

Crispin saw Alixana bite her lip, staring at the figure before her as if her gaze could probe his depths. She couldn't know, Crispin thought. She couldn't know why her immaculate, brilliant deception was being so effortlessly defeated. But she sensed it was being foiled, somehow, that Lecanus was playing with her, and perhaps that was why she feared this room so much. And why she still came.

She said nothing more, walked from the room and the house, head high, shoulders straight, as before. An actress, an Empress, proud as some goddess of the ancient pantheon, betraying nothing, unless you looked very, very closely.

Crispin followed, the laughter of the bird drilling in his head. Just as he came into the sunshine, closing his eyes, temporarily blind, he heard, 'I want to be there! Lecanus, I want us to be there!

He didn't hear the reply, of course.

"Styliane never pleasured him, in the event you were wondering. She's corrupt in her own ways, but she never did that."

Crispin was wondering how much was known about a certain recent night, and then decided not to think about it. They were on the southern side of the island, facing Deapolis across the water. Her Excubitors had accompanied them through the trees, past a second clearing with another set of huts and houses. These were empty. There had been other prisoners here once, evidently. Not now. Lecanus Daleinus had the isle to himself, with his handful of guards.

It was past midday now, by the sun. They would be racing again in the Hippodrome soon, if they hadn't started already, the day turning steadily towards an announcement of war. Crispin understood that the Empress was simply allowing an interval to pass before she went back to that house in the clearing to see if anything had changed.

It wouldn't have, he knew. What he didn't know was whether to say anything about it. There were so many betrayals embedded here: of Zoticus, of Shirin and her bird, and of his own privacy, his gift, his secret. Linon. At the same time, those last silent words of the eastern creature were still with him, with the undeniable signal of danger in them.

He had little appetite when they sat down to their meal, picked in a desultory fashion at the fish-cakes and the olives. Drank his wine. Had asked for it to be well watered. The Empress was largely silent, had been from the time they'd left the clearing. She had walked off by herself, in fact, when they'd first reached this strand, becoming a small, purple-cloaked dot in the distance along the stony beachfront here, two of her soldiers following at a distance. Crispin had sat down on a grassy place between trees and stones, watching the changing light on the sea. Green, blue, blue-green, grey.

Eventually she had come back, gestured for him not to rise, and had taken her place, gracefully, on a square of silk unfolded for her. The food had been spread on another cloth in this quiet place that ought to have been soothing in its beauty, a benign embodiment of the quickening spring.

Crispin said, after a time, "You watched them together, I gather. Styliane and… her brother."

The Empress wasn't eating either. She nodded. "Of course. I had to. How else would I have learned how and what to say, playing her?" She looked at him.

So obvious, seen in that way. An actress, learning her part. Crispin looked back out to sea. Deapolis showed clearly across the water. He could see more ships in the harbour there. A fleet for an army, sailing west, to his home. He had warned his mother, and Martinian and Carissa. It meant nothing. What could they do? There was a dull fear within him; the memory of the bird in that dark cabin a part of that now.

He said, "And you do this… you come here, because…"

"Because Valerius won't let him be killed. I thought of doing it, despite that. Killing him. But it matters a great deal to the Emperor. The visible hand of mercy, since the family… suffered so much when those… unknown people burned Flavius. So I come here, and do this… performance, and learn nothing. If I am to believe him, Lecanus is broken and vile and purposeless." She paused. "I can't stop coming."

"Why won't he kill him? There has to be so much hatred. I know they think the Emperor… ordered it. The burning." Not a question he'd ever imagined himself asking anyone, let alone the Empress of Sarantium. And not with this terrible inward sense that perhaps the killing of this man ought to have been done by now. Perhaps even in mercy. He thought, wistfully, of a scaffold in the air, shining pieces of glass and stone, memory, his girls.

Sorrow was easier than this. The thought came to him suddenly. A hard truth.

Alixana was silent for a long time. He waited. Caught the drift of her scent. That gave him pause for a moment, then he decided that Lecanus couldn't have known about the personal nature of that perfume. He'd been here too long. And then he realized that that wasn't it either: the man's nose was gone. The Empress would have realized that. Crispin shuddered. She saw it. Looked away.

She said, "You can have no idea what it was like here in the time when Apius was dying."

"I'm certain of that," Crispin said.

"He had his own nephews blinded and imprisoned here." Her voice was flat, lifeless. He had never heard her like this. "There was no heir. Flavius Daleinus was behaving, for months before Apius died, as an Emperor-in-waiting. Receiving courtiers at his estate and even his city home, on a chair in a receiving room on a crimson carpet. Some of them knelt before him."

Crispin said nothing.

"Petrus… believed Daleinus would be entirely, dangerously wrong as Emperor. For many reasons." She looked at him, the dark eyes searching his. And he understood what was unsettling him so: he had no idea how to react when she spoke, or looked, as a woman, a person, and not as an Imperial power beyond comprehension.

He said, "So he helped put his uncle on the throne instead. I know this. Everyone does."

She refused to look away. "Everyone does. And Flavius Daleinus died in Sarantine Fire on the street outside his house. He was… wearing porphyry. He was on his way to the Senate, Crispin."

The clothing had all burned away, Carullus had told him, but there had been rumours of the purple trim. Crispin, sitting on an island strand these long years after, had no doubt of the truth of what the Empress was saying.

He took a breath and said, "I am lost here, my lady. I don't understand what I am doing here, why I am hearing this. I am supposed to call you thrice-exalted, kneel in obeisance."

She smiled a little then, for the first time. "Indeed, artisan. I had almost forgotten. You haven't done either in a while, have you?"

"I have no idea how to… act here."

She shrugged, her expression still amused, something else in her voice, however. "Why should you know? I am being capricious and unfair, telling hidden things, enforcing the illusion of intimacy. But I can have you killed and buried here if I say but a word to the soldiers. Why should you assume you might know how to conduct yourself?"

She reached over and chose a pitted olive. "You can't know this, either, of course, but that ruined figure we just saw was the best of them all. Clever and brave, a splendid, handsome man. He went east himself, many times, with the spice caravans, past Bassania, to learn whatever he could. I regret what the fire did to him more than what happened to his father. He should have died, not lived to become-this thing."

Crispin swallowed again. "Why the fire? Why that way?"

Alixana’s gaze was steady. His awareness was of her courage… and simultaneously of the fact that she might be showing him courage, leading him to see it in her, for her own purposes. He was adrift and afraid, continuously aware of how many layers and contours of meaning there were with this woman. He shivered. Even before she answered, he was sorry he'd asked.

She said, "Empires need symbols. New Emperors need powerful ones. A moment when all changes, when the god speaks with a clear voice. On the day Valerius I was acclaimed in the Hippodrome, Flavius Daleinus wore purple in the street, walked out to claim the Golden Throne as if by right. He died appallingly, as if by a bolt from Jad, a striking down from above for such presumption, never to be forgotten." Her eyes never left his own. "It would not have been the same had he been stabbed by some soldier in an alleyway."

Crispin found that he could not look away from her. The exact, worldly intelligence within her beauty. He opened his mouth, found he could not speak. And seeing that, she smiled. "You are about to say again," said the Empress Alixana, "that you are only an artisan, that you want nothing to do with any of this. Am I right, Caius Crispus?"

He closed his mouth. Took a deep, unsteady breath. She could be wrong, and she was, this time. His heart pounding, an odd, roaring sound in his ears, Crispin heard himself say, "You cannot deceive the man in that house, my lady, even though he is blind. He has an unnatural creature with him that can see, and speaks to him silently. Something from the half-world. He knows it is you and not his sister, Empress."

She went white. He would always remember it. White as a shroud. As the winding sheet in which the dead were wrapped for burial. She stood up, too quickly, almost fell, the only graceless movement he had ever seen her make.

He scrambled to his feet as well, the roaring in his head like a surf or a storm. He said, "He was asking the bird-it is a bird-why you were here, today… of all days. They decided it was accident. That you were only worried. Then the bird said that… that it wanted to be present when… something happened."

"Oh, dearest Jad," said the Empress of Sarantium, and her flawless voice cracked like a plate on stone. And then, "Oh, my love."

She turned and began to move, almost running, back through the trees on the path. Crispin followed. The Excubitors, alert and attentive as soon as she had stood up, followed them both. One of them sprinted ahead, to guard the path.

No one spoke. They came back to the clearing. It was silent, as before. The smoke was still rising, as before. No movement could be seen.

But the door to the prison house of Lecanus Daleinus was unbarred and open and there were two dead guards lying on the ground.

Alixana stood frozen, rooted to the spot, like one of the pines in the windless air. Her face was riven with anguish, like a tree by a lightning bolt. There were legends, from long ago, of women, wood spirits, changed into trees. Crispin thought of them, seeing her now. There was an appalling, choking sensation in his own chest and the roaring sound had not stopped.

One of the Excubitors swore furiously, shattering the stillness. All four of them dashed across the open space, drawing their blades, to kneel in pairs by the two slain men. It was Crispin who walked over-he saw that each man had been cut down by a sword, from behind-and re-entered the silent, open house.

The lamps were gone. The front room was empty. He strode quickly to the back and to the kitchen room at the side. No one there. He came back to the main room, looked at the ledge of the window by the door. The bird, too, was gone.

Crispin walked out again, into the gentle, deceiving sunshine. The Empress stood, alone, still rooted to the earth, near the encircling trees. Dangerous, he had time to think, before one of the two Excubitors beside the nearest of the dead men stood up and moved behind his fellow soldier. His sword was still drawn. The other man was kneeling, examining the body of the guard. The drawn sword went up, a glinting of metal in the light.

'No!" Crispin screamed.

They were the Excubitors, the Imperial Guards, best soldiers in the Empire. The kneeling soldier didn't look up or back. He'd have died, had he done so. Instead, he hurtled straight to one side from his kneeling position, rolling hard as he did, over the flat of his own sword. The blade that had been sweeping down to take him from behind bit, instead, into the body of the already-slain guard. The attacker swore savagely, ripped his blade free, turned to face the other soldier-the leader of this quartet- who was up now, his own sword levelled.

There was still no one near the Empress, Crispin saw.

The two Excubitors faced each other in the sunlight, feet wide for balance, circling slowly. The other two soldiers were on their feet now, halfway across the clearing, but frozen as if in shock.

There was death here now. There was more than that.

Caius Crispus of Varena, in the world, of the world, said a quick silent prayer to the god of his fathers and took three hard running steps, hammering his shoulder with all the force he could command into the small of the back of the traitorous soldier in front of him. Crispin wasn't a fighter, but he was a big man. The man's breath was expelled with a rush, his head snapped back, his arms splayed helplessly out and wide with the impact, the sword spinning from nerveless fingers.

Crispin fell to the ground with him, on top of him, rolled quickly away. He pushed himself up. In time to see the man whose life he'd saved plunge his blade, without ceremony, straight into the back of the other soldier where he lay on the ground, killing him.

The Excubitor threw Crispin one swift, searching look, then wheeled and sprinted towards the Empress, bloodied sword in hand. Struggling up from his knees, heart in his throat, Crispin watched him go. Alixana stood motionless, a sacrifice in a glade, accepting her fate.

The soldier stopped in front of her and spun around to defend his Empress.

Crispin heard a strange sound in his own throat. There were two dead men next to him in this clearing. He ran, stumbling, over to Alixana himself. Her face, he saw, was still chalk white.

The other two Excubitors came quickly over now, their own blades out, horror written in both faces. The leader, standing in front the Empress, waited for them, his head and eyes darting about, scanning the clearing and the shadows of the pines.

"Sheathe!" he snapped. "Formation. Now."

They did, drew themselves up side by side. He stood before them, his gaze ferocious. Looked at one, and then the other.

Then he plunged his bloodied sword into the belly of the second man.

Crispin gasped, his fists clenched at his side.

The leader of the Excubitors watched his victim fall, then he turned again and looked at the Empress.

Alixana had not moved. She said, her voice entirely without inflection, almost inhuman, "He was bought as well, Mariscus?"

The man said, "My lady, I could not be sure. Of Nerius I am sure." He gestured with his head at the remaining soldier. He looked at Crispin searchingly. "You trust the Rhodian?" he asked.

"I trust the Rhodian," said Alixana of Sarantium. There was no life in her tone, in her face. "I believe he saved you."

The soldier showed no response to that. He said, "I do not understand what has happened here. But it is not safe for you, my lady."

Alixana laughed. Crispin would remember that sound, too.

"Oh, I know," she said. "I know. It is not safe for me. But it is too late now." She closed her eyes. Crispin saw that her hands were at her sides. His own were twisting and clenching, windows to the roiling he felt within. "It is so obvious now, much too late. Today will have been a day when they changed the Urban Prefect's guards here, I'll wager. I imagine they were already here, watching, when we sailed in at the end of the morning, waiting until we left this clearing."

Crispin and the two soldiers looked at her.

"Two dead here," said Alixana. "So two of the Prefect's men were bought. And the four new ones arriving on their little boat will have been, of course, or there'd have been no point. And you think two of the Excubitors, too." A spasm crossed her features, was gone. The mask reasserted itself. "He will have left as soon as we went away. They'll have reached the City by now. Some time ago, I imagine."

None of the three men with her said a word. Crispin's heart ached. These were not his people, Sarantium was not his place on Jad's earth, but he understood what she was saying. The world was changing. Might have already changed.

Alixana opened her eyes then. Looked straight at him. "He has something that allows him to… see things?" No reproach in her tone. Nothing in her tone. Had he told her right away…

He nodded. The two soldiers looked uncomprehending. They didn't matter. She did. She mattered very much, he realized, gazing at her. She turned past him, towards the two dead men near the prison house.

And then turned completely away, from the men standing with her, from the dead in the clearing. Faced north, her shoulders straight as always, head lifted a little, as if to see beyond the tall pines, beyond the strait with its dolphins and ships and white-capped waves, beyond harbour, city walls, bronze gates, the present and the past, the world and the half-world.

"I believe," said Alixana of Sarantium, "it may even be over by now."

She turned back to look at them. Her eyes were dry.

"I have placed you in mortal danger, Rhodian. I am sorry for it. You will have to go back on the Imperial ship alone. You may expect to be asked hard questions, perhaps as soon as you land. More likely later, tonight. It will be known you were with me today, before I disappeared."

"My lady?" he said. "You don't know what has happened." He paused, swallowed hard. "He is cleverer than any man alive." And then her last word penetrated, and he said, "Disappeared?"

She looked at him. "I do not know for certain, you are correct. But if things have fallen out in a certain way, the Empire as we have known it is ended and they will be coming for me. I would not care, but…" She closed her eyes again. "But I do have… one or perhaps two things to do. I cannot let myself be found before that. Mariscus will take me back- there will be small craft on this island-and I will disappear."

She stopped, drew a breath. "I knew he should have been killed," she said. And then, "Crispin, Caius Crispus, if I am right, Gesius will be no help to you now." Her mouth twitched. A fool might have called it a smile. "You will need Styliane. She is the one who might guard you. She feels something for you, I believe."

He didn't know how she might know that. He was far past caring about such things. He said, "And you, my lady?"

A distant trace of amusement. "What do I feel for you, Rhodian?"

He bit his lip hard. "No, no. My lady, what are you to do? May I… may we not help?"

She shook her head. "Not your role. Not anyone's. If I am correct about what has happened, I have a task to do before I die, and then it can end." She looked at Crispin, standing very near him and yet in another place, another world, almost. "Tell me, when your wife died… how did you go on living?"

He opened his mouth, and closed it without answering. She turned away. They went back through the forest to the sea. On the stony strand of the isle, he was still unable to speak. He watched as she undipped and let fall her purple cloak, and then dropped the brooch that had pinned it and turned and went away along the white stones. The man named Mariscus followed her out of sight.

How did you go on living?

No answers came to him on the ship when he and the remaining Excubitor came to it and the mariners weighed anchor at the soldier's harsh order and they sailed back to Sarantium.

The Imperial cloak and the golden brooch were left behind on the isle, were still lying there when the stars came out that night, and the moons.