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

CHAPTER XII

The Imperial boat tacked across the straits-no dolphins to be seen this time-and was docked with flawless expertise by a worried crew. Crispin was not the only one watching the port anxiously during their approach. Men had been killed on the isle. At least two of the Excubitors" own number were traitors. Daleinus had escaped. The Empress had left them to row back with one man only. Danger was in the brightness of the air. No one new was waiting for them, however. No enemies, no friends, no one at all. They came into the slip and the dock crew moored them with the ropes and then stood by, waiting for the Empress to descend.

Whatever the shape of the plot unfolding today, Crispin thought, on the isle, in the Imperial Precinct, it had not been so precisely devised as to include the possibility that the Empress might be taking a pleasure cruise with a visiting artisan, to look at dolphins-and visit a prisoner on an island.

Alixana, he thought, could have stayed with them after all to sail home. But then what? Have herself carried in the litter back to the Attenine Palace or the Traversite to inquire if her husband had been attacked or killed yet by Lecanus Daleinus and the suborned Excubitors, and did they have any immediate plans for her?

It was the Excubitors in the plot, he realized, that had made her certain there was a large scheme unfolding here. If the Imperial Guard were being turned, any of them, something deadly and immediate was at work. This was not simply an escape by a prisoner, a flight to freedom.

No, he knew why she'd left her robe on the strand to make her way back in secrecy. He wondered if he'd ever see her again. Or the Emperor. And then he wondered-for he had to-what would happen to him when it was learned, as it surely would be, that he'd made this morning's journey with the Empress across the water. They would ask him what he knew. He didn't know what he would say. He didn't know, yet, who would be asking.

He thought about Styliane then. Remembering what she'd said to him before he'd left her in the night, through a window into the courtyard. Some events must happen now. I will not say I am sorry. Remember this room, though, Rhodian. Whatever else I do.

He was not so innocent as to believe that the ruined brother on the isle, even with his bird-soul, had shaped his escape alone. Crispin wondered where his anger was: it had defined him for two years. Anger, he thought, was a luxury of sorts. It offered simplicity. There was nothing simple here. A thing was done once, she had said, and all else follows upon it.

All else. An empire, a world, all who lived within that world. The shape of the past defining the shape of the present. I will not say I am sorry.

He remembered going up the dark stairs, desire running in him like a river. The bitter complexity of her. Remembered it as he would always now remember Alixana, too. Images begetting images. The Empress on the stony beach. The whore, Pertennius had called her in his secret papers. Vile things, such hatred. Anger was easier, Crispin thought.

He looked down. The crew on the dock were standing in order, still expecting the Empress to descend. The Excubitors and sailors aboard looked uncertainly at each other and then-it might have been amusing had there been any space for laughter in the world-at Crispin, for guidance. Their leader had gone with the Empress.

Crispin shook his head. "I have no idea," he said. "Go to your posts. Report, 1 suppose. Whatever you do when… this sort of thing happens." This sort of thing. He felt like an idiot. Linon would have told him as much.

Carullus would have known what to say to them. But Crispin was not a soldier. Nor had his father been. Though that hadn't stopped Horius Crispus from dying in battle, had it? Styliane's father had burned. That abomination on the isle had been handsome once, and proud. Crispin thought of the god's image on the dome in Sauradia, his face grey, his fingers broken in the struggle against evil.

And he was falling, piece by piece.

They lowered the wide plank to the dock. They didn't unroll the carpet. The Empress was not here. Crispin went down and away from all of them amid the bustle of a harbour preparing for war, and no one stopped him, no one even noted his passing.

In the distance as he walked from the sea he could hear a roaring sound. The Hippodrome. Men and women watching horses run for their delight. There was a sickness within him, a black foreboding in the day. Some events must happen now.

He had no idea where to go, what to do. The taverns would be quiet, with so many at the Hippodrome, but he didn't want to sit somewhere and get drunk. Yet. With the chariots running, Carullus wouldn't be at home, he thought, nor would Shirin. Artibasos would be in the Sanctuary, and so would Pardos and Vargos, almost certainly. He could go to work. He could always do that. He had been working this morning when she'd come for him. He'd been trying to summon the distance and the clarity to render his daughters on the dome, that they might be there for as near to forever as an artisan could dream of achieving.

He didn't have any of it now. Not the girls, or distance or clarity. Not even the simplicity of anger any more. For the first time Crispin could remember, the thought of going up and absorbing himself in craft repelled him. He had seen men die this morning, had struck a blow himself. Going up the ladder now would be… a coward's retreat. And he would badly mar whatever work he tried to do today.

Another huge roar from the Hippodrome. He was walking that way.

Entered into the Hippodrome Forum, saw the vast bulk of the building, the Sanctuary across the way, the statue of the first Valerius and the Bronze Gates beyond it, leading into the Imperial Precinct.

Events were happening there now, or had already happened. He looked at those gates, standing very still in a huge space. Imagined walking up and seeking admittance. An urgent need to speak to the Emperor. About some aspect of his dome, colour choices, the angle of tesserae. Could he be announced and presented?

Crispin became aware that his mouth was very dry and his heart was hammering painfully. He was a Rhodian, from a fallen, conquered land, one that Valerius was proposing to visit again with devastating war. He'd sent messages home, to his mother, his friends, knowing they would mean nothing, could achieve nothing.

He ought to hate the man who was readying this fleet, these soldiers. Instead, he was remembering Valerius one night in the Sanctuary, running his hand through the hair of a rumpled architect, like a mother, telling him-ordering him-to go home and sleep.

Were the Antae better than what Sarantium might bring to the peninsula? Especially the Antae as they would be now, civil war savagely portended. There were more deaths coming, whether Valerius's army sailed or not.

And assassination attempts were not confined to barbarians like the Antae, Crispin thought, looking at the proud glory of those bronze gates. He wondered if Valerius was dead; thought again of Alixana. On the beach just now, the surf-washed stones: When your wife died… how did you go on living?

How had she known to ask that?

He ought not to care so much. He ought to still be a stranger here, detached from these glittering, deadly figures and whatever was happening today. These people-women and men-were so far beyond him they moved through an entirely different space in Jad's creation. He was an artisan. A layer of glass and stone. Whoever ruled, he had told Martiman once, in his anger, there would be work for mosaicists, why should they be concerned with what intrigues happened in palaces?

He was marginal, incidental… and burdened with images. He looked at the Bronze Gates, still hesitating, still imagining an approach, but then he turned away.

He went to a chapel. Randomly chosen, the first one he came to along a lane running down and east. Not a street he knew. The chapel was small, quiet, nearly empty, a handful of women, mostly older, shapes in shadow, murmuring, no cleric at this hour. The chariots taking the people away. An old, old battle. Here the sunlight almost disappeared into a pallid half-light filtering through too-small windows ringing a low dome. No decorations. Mosaics were expensive, so were frescoes. It was obvious no wealthy people attended here, salving their souls with gifts to the clerics. There were lamps suspended from overhead in a single line from altar to doors, a handful of others at the side altars, but only a few of them were lit: they would be frugal with oil, at winter's end.

Crispin stood for a time facing the altar and the disk, and then he knelt-no cushions here-on the hard floor and closed his eyes. Among women at prayer he thought of his mother: small and brave and exquisite, scent of lavender always about her, alone for so long, since his father died. He felt very far away.

Someone rose, signed the disk, arid walked out. An old woman, bent with her years. Crispin heard the door open and swing shut behind him. It was very quiet. And then, in that stillness, he heard someone begin to sing.

He looked up. No one else seemed to stir. The voice, delicate and plaintive, was off to his left. He seemed to see a shadowy figure there, at one of the side altars where the lamp was not burning. There were a handful of candles lit by the altar but he couldn't even tell if the singer was a girl or an older woman, the light was so subdued.

He did realize, after a moment, collecting his meandering thoughts, that the voice was singing in Trakesian, which was entirely strange. The liturgy here was always chanted in Sarantine.

His command of Trakesian-the old tongue of those who had ruled much of the world before Rhodias-was precarious, but as he listened it came to Crispin that what he was hearing was a lament.

No one else moved. No one entered. He knelt among praying women in a dim, holy place and listened to a voice sing of sorrow in a ancient tongue, and it occurred to him that music was one of the things that had not been in his life since Ilandra died. Her night songs for the girls had been for him, as well, listening in the house.

Who knows love?

Who says he knows love?

This singer, a shape and barely that, a voice without a body, was not singing a Kindath lullaby. She was offering-Crispin finally understood- an entirely pagan sorrow: the corn maiden and the antlered god, the Sacrifice and the Hunted One. In a chapel of Jad. Images that had already been ancient when Trakesia was great.

Crispin shivered, kneeling on stone. Looked again to his left, eyes straining to pierce the gloom. Only a shadow. Candles. Only a voice. No one moved.

And it came to him then, feeling unseen spirits hovering in the dimness, that Valerius the Emperor had been Petrus of Trakesia before he came south to his uncle from the northern fields, and that he would have known this song.

And with that, there came another thought and Crispin closed his eyes again and named himself a fool. For if this were true-and of course it was-then Valerius would also have known exactly what the bison in Crispin's sketches for the Sanctuary was. He was from northern Trakesia, the forests and grainlands, places where pagan roots had been in the soil for centuries.

Valerius would have recognized the zubir as soon as he'd seen it in the drawings.

And he had said nothing. Had given the sketches to the Eastern Patriarch, had approved them for the dome of his own legacy, his Sanctuary of Jad's Holy Wisdom. Awareness entered Crispin like a wind. Overwhelmed, he pushed his hands through his hair.

What man dared try to reconcile so many things in the span of a single life, he thought. East and west brought together again, north coming down to south, a faction dancer becoming an Empress. The daughter of one's enemy and… victim, married to one's own friend and Strategos. The zubir of the Aldwood, huge and wild-the essence of the wild-on a dome consecrated to Jad in the heart of the triple-walled City.

Valerius. Valerius had tried. There was… a pattern here. Crispin felt he could nearly see it, almost understand. He was a maker of patterns himself, working in tesserae and light. The Emperor had worked with human souls and the world.

There was a voice here, mourning.

Shall the maiden never walk the bright fields again, Her hair as yellow as the grain? The horns of the god can hold the blue moon. When the Huntress shoots him he dies.

How can we, the children of time, ever live If these two must die? How can we, the children of loss, ever learn what we may leave behind?

When the sound of roaring is heard in the wood The children of earth will cry.

When the beast that was roaring comes into the fields The children of blood must die.

He struggled to understand the Trakesian words, and yet he understood so much, bypassing thought: the way he'd looked up in that chapel in Sauradia on the Day of the Dead and grasped a truth about Jad and the world on the dome. His heart was full, aching. Mysteries swept through him. He felt small, mortal, and alone, pierced by a song as by a sword.

After a time he became aware that the solitary voice had ended. He looked over again. No sign of the singer. No one there. At all. He turned quickly to the doors. No one was walking out. No movement anywhere in the chapel, no footsteps. None of the others in the dim, filtered light had even stirred, during the song or now. As if they hadn't even heard it.

Crispin shivered again, uncontrollably, a feeling of something unseen brushing against him, against his life. His hands were shaking. He stared at them as if they belonged to someone else. Who was it who had sung that lament? What was being mourned with pagan words in a chapel of Jad? He thought of Linon, in grey mist on the cold grass. Remember me. Did the half-world linger forever, once you entered it? He didn't know. He didn't know.

He clasped his hands together, staring at them-scratches, cuts, old scars-until they grew steady again. He spoke the Invocation to Jad into shadow and silence and he made the sign of the sun disk and then he asked the god for mercy and for light, for the dead and the living he knew, here and far away. And then he rose and went back out into the day, walking home along streets and lanes, through squares, under covered colonnades, hearing the noise from the Hippodrome behind him as he went-very loud now, something happening. He saw men running, appearing from all directions, carrying sticks and knives. He saw a sword. His heart was still hammering like a drum, painful in his breast.

It was beginning. Or, seen another way, it was ending. He ought not to care so much. He did, though, more than words could tell. It was a truth, not to be denied. But there was no role left for him to play.

He was wrong, in the event.

Shirin was waiting when he arrived at his home. She had Danis about her neck.

The riot boiled up with unbelievable speed. One moment the Blues were running their Victory Lap, the next, the screaming had changed, turned ugly, and there was savage violence in the Hippodrome.

Cleander, in the tunnel where Scortius lay, looked back out through the Processional Gates and saw men battling with fists and then knives as the factions fought through the neutral stands to get at each other. People were being trampled in their efforts to get out of the way. He saw someone lifted bodily and thrown through the air, landing on heads several rows below. As he watched, a woman, twisting to get out of the way of a cluster of antagonists, fell to her knees and Cleander imagined-even at this distance and with the uproar all around-that he could hear her screams as they trampled her. People were milling desperately towards the exits in a brutal crush of bodies.

He looked at his stepmother, then at the kathisma at the far end of the long straight. His father was up there, too far away to be of any help to them at all. He didn't even know they'd come today. Cleander drew a deep breath. He took a last quick look at the doctors labouring over the prone body of Scortius and then he left. He took his stepmother gently by the elbow and led her further into the tunnel. She came obediently, saying nothing at all. He knew this place extremely well. They came at length to a small, locked door. Cleander picked the lock (it wasn't difficult, and he'd done it before) and then unhooked the latch and they emerged at the very eastern end of the Hippodrome.

Thenai's was compliant, eerily detached, seemingly oblivious to the panic all around them. Cleander looked around the corner for her litter, back near the main gates through which they'd entered, but immediately realized there was no point trying to get to it: the fighting had already spilled out of the Hippodrome. The factions were brawling in the forum now. Men were coming, at a run. The noise from inside was huge, ugly. He took his stepmother's elbow again and they started the other way, as quickly as he could make her go.

He had an image in his mind, couldn't shake it: the expression on Astorgus's face when the yellow-clad gate attendant had stepped forward and reported what Cleander himself had seen but had determined not to tell. Astorgus had gone rigid, his face a mask. After a frozen moment, the Blues" factionarius had turned on his heel without a word and gone back out onto the sands.

On the track, the Blues had still been celebrating, the young rider who'd won the race doing victory laps with the two White riders.

Scortius had been unconscious in the tunnel. His Bassanid physician, assisted by the Blues" own doctor, desperately trying to stanch the flow of blood and keep him breathing, among the living. They were covered with blood themselves by then.

A few moments later those in the tunnel had heard the cheering in the stands turn to something else, a deep, terrifying sound, and then the fighting had begun. At that point they didn't know why, or what Astorgus had done.

Cleander hurried his stepmother up onto a colonnade, letting a swarm of young men sprint past in the street, shouting, waving cudgels and knives. He saw someone with a sword. Two weeks ago he could have been that man, racing towards bloodshed with a weapon in his hand. Now he saw all of them as threats, wild-eyed and uncontrolled. Something had happened to him. He kept a hand on his stepmother's arm.

He heard himself hailed by name. Turned swiftly to the loud voice and felt a surge of relief. It was the soldier, Carullus: the one he'd met in the Spina last autumn, the one whose wedding feast Shirin had just hosted. Carullus had his left arm around his wife and a knife in his right hand. They came quickly up the steps to the colonnade.

"In stride with me, lad," he said, his manner brisk but entirely calm. "We'll get the women home so they can have a quiet cup of something warm on a pleasant day in spring. Isn't it a beautiful day? I love this time of year."

Cleander was unspeakably grateful. Carullus was a big, intimidating man, and he moved like a soldier. No one disturbed them as they went, though they saw one man crack a staff over the head of another right beside them in the street. The staff broke; the struck man fell, awkwardly. Carullus winced. "Broken neck," he said matter-of-factly, looking back, keeping them moving. "He won't get up."

They came down into the road again at the end of the colonnade. Someone hurled a cookpot from a window overhead, narrowly missing them. Carullus stooped and picked it up. "A wedding gift! How unexpected! Is this better than the one we have, love?" he asked his wife, grinning.

The woman shook her head, managed a smile. Her eyes were terrified. Carullus tossed the pot over his shoulder. Cleander glanced at his stepmother. No terror there. Nothing there. It was as if she hadn't even heard or seen any of this: the arrival of companions, the man struck down-killed-right beside them. She seemed in another world entirely.

They continued without further incident, though the streets were crowded with running, shouting figures and Cleander saw shopkeepers hastily closing their shop fronts and doors, boarding up. They reached their house. The servants were watching for them. Well trained, they had already set about barricading the courtyard gates, and those waiting at the door were holding heavy sticks. This was hardly the first riot in memory.

Cleander's mother entered the house without speaking. She hadn't spoken since they'd left the Hippodrome. Since the race had begun, he suddenly realized. It fell to him to offer thanks to the soldier. He stammered his gratitude, invited them in. Carullus declined with a smile. "I'd best report to the Strategos, soon as I get my wife home. A small word of advice: stay indoors tonight, lad. The Excubitors will be out, for certain, and not choosing with any great care where they strike in the dark."

"I will," said Cleander. He thought about his father, but decided that wasn't a cause of concern: from the kathisma they could get back into the Imperial Precinct. His father could wait there or get a soldiers" escort home. His own duty was to his mother and his sisters here. Keeping them safe.

Dictating his celebrated Reflections forty years afterwards, Cleander Bonosus would describe the day the Emperor Valerius II was assassinated by the Daleinoi, the day his own stepmother killed herself in her bath- opening her wrists with a small blade no one knew she had-as the day he became a man. Schoolboys would learn and copy the well-known phrases, or memorize them for recitation: Just as it is adversity that hardens the spirit of a people, so can adversity strengthen the soul of a man. What we master becomes ours to use.

Sorting through complex and sometimes distant events to determine the causes of a riot is not an easy task, but it fell squarely within the responsibilities of the Urban Prefect, under the direction of the Master of Offices, and he was not unfamiliar with the process.

He also had, of course, access to some acknowledged professionals-and their tools-when it came time to ask significant questions.

As it happened, the more rigorous methods were not required (to the disappointment of some) in the case of the riot that occurred on the day the Emperor Valerius II was murdered.

The disturbance in the Hippodrome began before anyone knew of that death. This much was certain. It was an attack on a charioteer that started it, and this time the Blues and Greens were not united as they had been two years before in the Victory Riot. Rather the contrary, in fact.

The inquiry established that it was one of the Hippodrome staff who'd revealed that the Blues" champion, Scortius, had been viciously struck by Crescens of the Greens just before the first race of the afternoon. Crescens, apparently, had been the first to note the reappearance of his rival.

The attendant, on duty at the Processional Gates, later swore on oath to what he'd seen. Corroboration was provided, reluctantly, by the young son of Senator Plautus Bonosus. The lad, to his credit, had kept quiet at the time, though he confirmed afterwards that he'd seen Crescens elbow the other driver in what he personally knew to be already broken ribs. He explained his silence at the time by saying that he had a sense of what the consequences of pointing out the incident might be.

The lad was given a formal commendation in the official report. It was regrettable that the Hippodrome staffer had not had as much good sense, but he couldn't actually be punished for what he'd done. The racetrack staff were supposed to be resolutely neutral, but that was fiction, not reality. The gatekeeper, it emerged, was a partisan of the Blues. Neutrality was not a Sarantine trait in the Hippodrome.

It was established, accordingly, to the Urban Prefect's satisfaction- and so recorded in his report to the Master of Offices-that Crescens of the Greens had delivered what he'd intended to be an unseen assault on the other driver, a wounded man. Clearly, he had been trying to undermine the impact of Scortius's dramatic return.

This afforded a measure of explanation, though hardly a complete mitigation, for what had apparently happened next. Astorgus, the Blues" factionarius, a man of experience and probity, a man who ought to have known better, had walked across the sands to the spina, where Crescens was still standing after suffering an unfortunate fall in his last race, and had struck him in the face and body, breaking his nose and dislocating the rider's shoulder in full view of eighty thousand highly excited people.

He'd had provocation, undeniably-was later to say that he believed that Scortius was about to die-but it was still an irresponsible act. If you wanted to have someone beaten, you did it at night, if you had any sense at all.

Crescens wouldn't race again for almost two months, but didn't die.

Neither did Scortius.

About three thousand people did go to the god, however, in the Hippodrome and the streets that day and night. Precise numbers were always demanded by the Master of Offices, always difficult to produce. The toll was a significant but not an outrageous number for a riot that included burning and looting after darkfall. Compared to the last major conflagration, where thirty thousand had been slain, this one was a much more trivial event. Some Kindath homes were set afire in their quarter, as usual, and a few foreigners-Bassanid merchants for the most part-were killed, but this latter development was to be expected, given the perfidious breaching of the Eternal Peace that had, by twilight, been reported in the City, along with the death of the Emperor. Frightened people did unpleasant things.

Most of the killings came after dark, when the Excubitors, carrying torches and swords, marched out of the Imperial Precinct to quiet the streets. By then the soldiers were all aware that they had a new Emperor, and that Sarantine territory had been attacked in the north-east. It was undoubtedly an excess of zeal occasioned by these facts that led to some of the civilian fatalities and a few of the Bassanid deaths.

It was hardly worth noting, really. One couldn't expect the army to be patient with brawling civilians. No blame at all was attached to them. Indeed, another commendation was offered to the Count of the Excubitors, for the swift quelling of the night's violence.

Much later, Astorgus and Crescens would both be tried by the judiciary for their assaults: the first prominent trials conducted under the new Imperial regime. Both men behaved themselves with dignity, declaring extreme remorse for their actions. Both would receive reprimands and fines: identical ones, of course. The matter would then be closed. They were important men in the scheme of things. Sarantium needed them both alive and well and at the Hippodrome, keeping the citizens happy.

The last time an Emperor died without an heir, Plautus Bonosus was thinking, there had been a mob smashing on the doors of the Senate Chamber, battering its way in. This time there was a real riot outside, and the people in the streets didn't even know the Emperor had died. An aphorism in there somewhere, Bonosus thought ironically, a paradox worth recording.

Paradoxes have layers, irony can be double-edged. He didn't yet know of his wife's death.

In the Senate Chambers they were waiting for others of their number to arrive through the unruly streets. The Excubitors were out and about, collecting Senators, escorting them as quickly as possible. Not surprising, that speed. Most of the City was unaware of the Emperor's death, so far. That ignorance wouldn't last long, not in Sarantium, even in the midst of a riot. Perhaps especially, Bonosus thought, reclining in his seat, in the midst of a riot.

Many levels of memory were competing in his mind and he was also trying-unsuccessfully-to come to terms with the fact that Valerius was dead. An Emperor murdered. It hadn't happened in a very long time. Bonosus had known better than to ask questions.

The soldiers had reason to want the Senate assembled expeditiously.

Whatever the story of the death of Valerius turned out to be-the exiled Lysippus had been declared to be back in the City, and involved, as was the banished and imprisoned Lecanus Daleinus-there was no real question as to who should succeed the slain Emperor.

Or, putting it a little differently, thought Bonosus, there were reasons for Leontes to proceed swiftly, before such questions might arise.

The Supreme Strategos was, after all, married to a Daleinus, and there might be those who took a reflective view of assassinating one's predecessor on the Golden Throne. Especially when the murdered man had been one's own mentor and friend. And when the deed was done on the eve of war. It could be called-by someone much more reckless than Plautus Bonosus-a vile and contemptible act of treachery.

Bonosus's thoughts kept whirling about. Too many shocks in one day. The return of Scortius, that astonishing race that had turned from glory into riot in a heartbeat. And then, just as the fighting began, there had been the voice of Leontes's grey secretary in his ear: 'Your presence is Immediately requested in the palace.

He hadn't said by whom. It didn't matter. Senators did what they were told. Bonosus had risen to go just as he realized something had happened in the spina-he would learn the details afterwards-and he heard a deep-throated roar as the Hippodrome erupted.

He suspected, looking back, that Leontes (or his wife?) had wanted him to come to them alone, as Master of the Senate, to learn the tidings before anyone else did. That would give them time to quietly summon the Senate, control the release of the terrible news.

It didn't work out that way.

As the stands exploded into fury and a rush for the exits, the inhabitants of the Imperial Box rose to their feet and made a collective rush of their own for the doors leading back to the Attenine Palace. Bonosus remembered the expression on the pallid secretary's face: startled and displeased, and afraid.

When Bonosus and Pertennius did make it back through the long walkway to the palace's audience chamber, it was crowded with noisy, frightened courtiers who'd fled the kathisma ahead of them. Others were arriving. In the centre of the room-near the thrones and the silver tree-stood Leontes and Styliane.

The Strategos lifted a hand for silence. Not the Master of Offices, not the Chancellor. Gesius had just entered the room, in fact, through the small door behind the two thrones. He stopped there, brow furrowed in perplexity. In the stillness his gesture shaped it was Leontes, blunt and grave, who said, "I am sorry, but this must be told. We have lost our father today. Jad's most holy Emperor is dead."

There was a babble of disbelief. A woman cried out. Someone near Bonosus made the sign of the sun disk, then others did. Someone knelt, then all of them did, the sound like a murmuring of the sea. All of them except Styliane and Leontes. And Gesius, Bonosus saw. The Chancellor didn't looked perplexed now. His expression was otherwise. He put out a hand to steady himself on a table and said, from directly behind those tall, golden figures and the thrones, "How? How did this happen? And how is it that you know?"

The thin, precise voice cut hard through the room. This was Sarantium. The Imperial Precinct. Not a place where certain things could be easily controlled. Not with so many competing interests and clever men.

And women. It was Styliane who turned to face the Chancellor, Styliane who said, her voice oddly without force-as if she'd just been bled by a physician, Bonosus thought-'He was murdered in the tunnel between palaces. He was burned, by Sarantine Fire."

Bonosus remembered closing his eyes at that. Past and present coming together so powerfully he felt dizzied. He opened his eyes. Pertennius, kneeling next to him, was white-faced, he saw.

"By whom?" Gesius released the table and took a step forward. He stood alone, a little apart from everyone else. A man who had served three Emperors, survived two successions.

Was unlikely to last through a third, asking these questions in this way. It occurred to the Senator that the aged Chancellor might not care.

Leontes looked at his wife, and again it was Styliane who replied. "My brother Lecanus. And the exiled Calysian, Lysippus. They seem to have suborned the guards at the tunnel door. And obviously my brother's guards on the isle."

Another murmuring. Lecanus Daleinus and fire. The past here with them in the room, Bonosus thought.

"I see," said Gesius, his papery voice so devoid of nuance it was a nuance of its own. "Just the two of them?"

"So it would seem," said Leontes, calmly. "We will need to investigate, of course."

"Of course," agreed Gesius, again with nothing to be discerned in his tone. "So good of you to point that out, Strategos. We might have neglected to think of it. I imagine the Lady Styliane was alerted by her brother of his evil intent and arrived tragically too late to forestall them?"

There was a small silence. Too many people were hearing this, Bonosus thought. It would be all over the City before sunset. And there was already violence in Sarantium. He felt afraid.

The Emperor was dead.

"The Chancellor is, as ever, wisest of us," said Styliane quietly. "It is as he says. I beg you to imagine my grief and shame. My brother was also dead, by the time we arrived. And the Strategos killed Lysippus when we saw him there, standing over the bodies."

"Killed him," Gesius murmured. He smiled thinly, a man infinitely versed in the ways of a court. Indeed. And the soldiers you mentioned?"

"Were already burned," Leontes said.

Gesius said nothing this time, only smiled again, allowing silence to speak for him. Someone was weeping in the crowded chamber.

"We must take action. There is rioting in the Hippodrome," Faustinus said. The Master of Offices finally asserting himself. He was rigid with tension, Bonosus saw. "And what about the announcement of the war?"

"There will be no announcement now," said Leontes flatly. Calm, assured. A leader of men. "And the rioting is not a cause for concern."

"It isn't? Why not?" Faustinus eyed him.

"Because the army is here," Leontes murmured, and looked slowly around the chamber at the assembled court.

It was in that moment, Bonosus thought afterwards, that he himself had begun to see this differently. The Daleinoi might have planned an assassination for their own reasons. He didn't believe for a moment that Styliane had arrived too late at that tunnel, that her blind, maimed brother had been able to plan and execute this from his island. Sarantine Fire spoke to vengeance, more than anything else. But if the Daleinus children had also assumed that Styliane's soldier husband would be a useful figure on the throne, a gateway for their own ambition… Bonosus decided they might have been wrong.

He watched Styliane turn to the tall man she'd married on Valerius's orders. He was an observant man, Plautus Bonosus, had spent years reading small signals, especially at court. She was arriving, he decided, at the same conclusion he was.

The army is here. Four words, with a world of meaning. An army could quell a civilian riot. Obvious. But there was more. The armies had been two weeks away and divided among leaders when Apius died without an heir. They were right here now, massed in and all about the City, preparing to sail west.

And the man speaking of them, the man standing golden before the Golden Throne, was their dearly beloved Strategos. The army was here, and his, and the army would decide.

"I will attend to the Emperor's body," said Gesius very softly. Heads turned back to him. "Someone should," he added, and went out.

Before nightfall that day the Senate of Sarantium had been called into imperative session in its handsome, domed chamber. They accepted formal tidings from the Urban Prefect, clad in black, speaking nervously, of the untimely death of Jad's most dearly beloved, Valerius II. A show-of-palms vote led to a resolution that the Urban Prefect, in conjunction with the Master of Offices, would conduct a full investigation into the circumstances of what appeared to be a foul assassination.

The Urban Prefect bowed his acceptance and left.

Amid noises of clashing weapons and shouting in the street outside, Plautus Bonosus spoke the formal words that convened the Senate to use its collective wisdom in choosing a successor for the Golden Throne.

Three submissions were made to them from the mosaic star on the floor in the midst of their circle of seats. The Quaestor of the Sacred Palace spoke, then the principal adviser to the Eastern Patriarch, and finally Auxilius, Count of the Excubitors, a small, dark, intense man: he had broken the Victory Riot two years ago, with Leontes. All three speakers urged the Senate, with varying degrees of eloquence, to choose the same man.

After they were done, Bonosus asked for further submissions from guests. There were none. He then invited his colleagues to make their own speeches and remarks. No one did. One Senator proposed that an immediate vote be taken. They heard a renewed sound of fighting just beyond their doors.

With no one displaying any sign of disagreement to this proposition, a vote was, accordingly, proposed by Bonosus. The pebbles were distributed in pairs to all present: white meaning agreement with the only name put forward, black indicating a desire for further deliberation and other candidates to be considered.

The motion passed, forty-nine Senators approving, one electing to demur. Auxilius, who had lingered in the visitors" gallery, hastily left the chamber.

As a consequence of this formal vote, Plautus Bonosus instructed the senatorial clerks to draw up a document under seal indicating that the august body of the Sarantine Senate was of the view that the successor to the lamented Valerius II, Jad's Holy Emperor, regent of the god upon earth, ought to be Leontes, currently serving with honour as Supreme Strategos of the Sarantine army. The clerks were instructed to express the collective and fervent hope of the Senate that his would be a reign blessed by the god with glory arid good fortune.

The Senate adjourned.

That same night, in the Imperial Chapel inside the walls of the Precinct, Leontes, often called the Golden, was anointed Emperor by the Eastern Patriarch. Saranios had built that chapel. His bones lay within.

It was decided that if the City grew quiet overnight there would be a public ceremony in the Hippodrome the next afternoon, to crown both the Emperor and his Empress. There always was. The people needed to see.

Plautus Bonosus, escorted home that night by a contingent of Excubitors, fingered the unused white pebble in his pocket. On reflection, he cast it away into the darkness.

The streets were indeed much calmer by then. The fires had been put out. Contingents of the army had been sent up from the harbour at sundown and from the temporary barracks outside the walls. The presence of heavily armed soldiers, marching in order, had ended the violence very smoothly. It had all gone smoothly today, Bonosus thought. Not like the last time there had been no heir. He was trying to understand why he felt so much bitterness. It wasn't as if there was anyone else more suited to the porphyry robes of Empire than Leontes. That wasn't the point though. Or was it?

The soldiers were still moving through the streets in tightly banded, efficient clusters. He couldn't remember ever seeing the army making itself so obvious within the City. Walking with his escort (he had declined a litter) he saw that the patrols were knocking on doors, entering houses.

He knew why. There was a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He'd been trying to suppress certain thoughts, but not very successfully. He understood too well what was taking place. This happened, it had to happen, whenever a violent change of this sort occurred. Valerius, unlike Apius before him, or his own uncle, had not passed to the god in peace, in old age, to lie serenely in state in the Porphyry Room robed for his passage. He had been murdered. Certain things-certain other deaths, if Bonosus was honest with himself-would have to follow upon that.

One, in particular.

And so, these soldiers, spreading through the City with their torches, combing the lanes and alleys near the harbour, porticoes of the wealthy, warrens within the Hippodrome, chapels, taverns, cauponae (even though those were closed by order tonight), inns and guildhouses and workshops, bakeries and brothels, probably even down into the cisterns… and entering citizens" homes in the night. The heavy knock on the door in the dark.

Someone had disappeared, needed to be found.

Hearing his own doorway, Bonosus saw that the house was properly barricaded against a riot. The leader of his escort knocked, politely in this case, and declared their identity.

Locks were unbolted. The door was opened. Bonosus saw his son. Oleander was weeping, his eyes swollen and red. Bonosus, with no premonition at all, asked him why, and Cleander told him.

Bonosus went into his house. Cleander thanked the guards and they went away. He closed the door. Bonosus sat down heavily on a bench in the hallway. His whirling thoughts were stilled. He had no thoughts at all. An emptiness.

Emperors died, before their time. So did others. So did others. The world was what it was.

'There's a riot in the Hippodrome. And there was another bird in the City today!" Shirin said urgently, as soon as Crispin entered his house and saw her waiting in the front room, pacing before the fire. She was agitated: had spoken the words with a servant still in the hallway.

'Another bird!" Danis echoed, silently, almost as upset. Mice and blood, Linon would have said. And called him an imbecile for walking the streets alone just now.

Crispin took a deep breath. The half-world. Did you ever leave it, once you entered? Did it ever leave you?

"I know about the fighting," he said. "It is in the streets now." He turned and dismissed the servant. Then registered something. "You said a bird was here. Not any more?"

'I don't feel it now," Danis said in his mind. 'It was here, and then it was…gone.

"Gone away? From the City?"

He could see the anxiety in the woman, feel it coming from the bird.

'More than that, I think. I think it is…gone. It didn't fade. It was just there and then, not there?

Crispin needed wine. He saw Shirin looking at him closely. The clever, observant gaze. All flash and play removed from her now.

"You know about this," she said. Not a question. Zoticus's daughter. "You don't seem… surprised."

He nodded. "I know something. Not very much."

She looked pale and cold, even near the fire. She said, hugging herself with her hands, "I had two separate messages, two of my… informants. They both say the Senate is being summoned. They also say… they say that the Emperor may be dead." He wasn't sure, but he thought she might have been crying. It was Danis he heard next, in silence:

'They said he was murdered.

Crispin took a breath. He could feel his heart beating, still too fast. He looked at Shirin, slender, graceful, afraid. He said, "I suspect… that might be true."

When the Huntress shoots him he dies.

There was more sorrow in him than he would ever have expected.

She bit her lip. "The bird? That Danis felt? She said it was… a bad presence."

No reason, really, not to say this much. Not to her. She was here with him, in the half-world. Her father had drawn them both into it. "It belonged to Lecanus Daleinus. Who escaped his prison today and came here."

Shirin sat down suddenly, on the nearest bench. Still hugging herself. She was very white. "The blind one? The burned…? He left the isle?"

"Had help, obviously."

"From?"

Crispin drew another breath. "Shirin. My dear. If your tidings are true and Valerius is dead, there are going to be questions asked of me. Because of where I was this morning. You are… better off not knowing. Can say you don't know. That I refused to tell."

Her expression changed. You were on that island? Oh, Jad! Crispin, they will… you aren't going to be stupid are you?"

He managed a faint smile. "For a change, you mean?"

She shook her head fiercely. "No jesting. At all! If the Daleinoi have killed Valerius, they will be… He saw something else occur to her. "Where is Alixana? If they killed Valerius"

She let the thought hang in the air and fade away. Men and women lived, died. Faded away. He didn't know what to say. What he could say. A robe discarded on a stony strand. They would find it. Might even have done so by now. Shall the maiden never walk the bright fields again?

"You had better stay here tonight," he said, finally. "The streets will be dangerous. You shouldn't have come out, you know."

She nodded. "I know." And then, after a moment, "Have you any wine?"

A blessedly clever woman. He gave an order to the servant, for wine and water and for food. The eunuchs had staffed this house for him. His people were very good. In the late-afternoon streets outside there was fighting. Soldiers were assembling Senators, escorting them to the Senate Chamber and then returning to the streets to achieve order in a dangerous time.

Not long after darkfall they had done so, and had set about their other task.

When the hard knocking came at his door Crispin was waiting for it. He had left Shirin for long enough to wash and change his clothing: he had still been wearing the nondescript tunic he'd donned for work, the one he'd been wearing on the isle. He put on his best tunic and trousers now, with a leather belt, not at all certain why he was doing so. He went to answer the knocking himself, nodding for the servant to stand back. He swung the door open, was briefly blinded by torches.

"Shall I hit you with my helmet?" Carullus asked, on the threshold.

Memory. Relief. And then swift sorrow: loyalties so hopelessly entangled here. He couldn't even sort out his own. He knew that Carullus must have specifically asked to lead this detail to his door. He wondered who had granted that approval. Where Styliane was, just now.

"Your wife," he said calmly, "would probably be upset if you did. She was the last time, remember?"

"Believe me, I remember." Carullus stepped inside. Spoke a word to his men and they waited on the threshold. "We're doing a search of the entire city. Every house, not just yours."

"Oh. Why would mine have been singled out?"

"Because you were with the Emp… with Alixana this morning."

Crispin looked at his friend. Saw worry in the big man's eyes, but also something else: an undeniable excitement. Dramatic times, the most dramatic imaginable, and he was one of Leontes's own guard now.

"I was with the Empress." Crispin emphasized the word, aware he was being perverse. "She took me to see dolphins, and then to the prison isle. We saw Lecanus Daleinus in the morning and when we came back, after a meal elsewhere, he was gone. Two of the guards on duty were dead. The Empress went away with one soldier alone. Didn't come back on the ship. They will know all that in the palace by now. What has happened, Carullus?"

"Dolphins?" said other man, as if nothing else had registered.

"Dolphins. For a mosaic."

"They're heresy. Forbidden."

"Will she be burned for it?" Crispin asked coldly. Couldn't help but ask.

He saw his friend's eyes flicker.

"Don't be an idiot. What has happened?" Crispin said. Tell me."

Carullus stepped past him into the front room, saw Shirin there, by the fire. He blinked.

"Good evening, soldier," she murmured. "I haven't seen you since your wedding. Are you well? And Kasia?"

"I… yes, um, yes, we are. Thank you." Carullus stammered, for once at a loss for words.

"I have been told that the Emperor was killed today," she said, giving him no respite. "Is it true? Tell me it isn't."

Carullus hesitated, then he shook his head. "I wish I could. He was burned in a tunnel between palaces. By Lecanus Daleinus, who did indeed escape the isle today. And by Lysippus, the Calysian, who was exiled, as you know, but slipped secretly back into the city."

"No one else?"

"Two… Excubitors were also there." Carullus looked uncomfortable.

"A vast plot, then. Those four?" Shirin's expression was guileless. "Are we safe now? I heard the Senate was sitting."

"You are well informed, my lady. They were."

"And?" Crispin asked.

"They have adjourned for the night. Leontes was named by them and is being anointed Emperor tonight. It will be announced tomorrow morning, with his coronation and that of the new Empress in the kathisma."

That note again, an excitement the man could not suppress. Carullus loved Leontes, and Crispin knew it. The Strategos had even come to his wedding, promoted him there in person, and had then appointed him to his personal guard.

"Meanwhile," said Crispin, not fighting the bitterness, "all the soldiers in Sarantium are hunting for the old Empress."

Carullus looked at him. "Please tell me you don't know where she is, my friend."

There was something painful lodged in Crispin's breast, like a stone.

"I don't know where she is, my friend."

They stared at each other in silence.

'She says to be careful. And to be fair.

Crispin wanted to snarl an oath. He did not. Danis was right, or Shirin was. He gestured with one hand. "Search the house, have them search."

Carullus cleared his throat and nodded. Crispin looked at him, then added, "And thank you for doing this yourself. Do you need me to come somewhere for questioning?"

'Not that fair!" Danis exclaimed sharply.

Carullus hesitated another moment, then shook his head. He returned to the hallway and opened the outside door. They heard him giving orders. Six men came in. Two went upstairs, the others went towards the back, on the ground floor.

Carullus came back into the front room. "You might be questioned later. I have no orders about that now. You went to the isle with her, saw Lecanus, then he was gone, and then she left. How?"

"I told you. With one Excubitor. I don't know his name. I don't even know that she left. She may still be on the isle, Carullus. They will kill her when they find her, won't they?"

His friend swallowed. Looked quite miserable.

"I have no idea," he said.

"Of course you do," Shirin snapped. "It just isn't your fault, you want to say. Or Leontes's, of course. Nothing's his fault."

"I don't… I truly don't think he had anything to do with this," the big soldier said.

Crispin looked at the other man. His closest friend here. Kasia's husband. As honest and decent a person as he knew. "No, I don't think he knew anything about it."

"Poor helpless man. It must have been Styliane, then," said Shirin, still furious. "She is the Daleinoi in our day. One brother blind and imprisoned, the other a complete fool."

Crispin looked at her. So did Carullus. The two men exchanged glances. Crispin said, "My dear, please leave that thought in this room. You told me not to be stupid, earlier. Let me say the same to you."

"He's right," Carullus said soberly.

'Jad rot you both!" Danis said in silence, and Crispin heard the pain in the bird that could not be spoken by the woman.

"We are all unhappy tonight," Carullus added. "These are not easy times."

'Unhappy? I could laugh! The man is in his glory!" Danis said, with a savagery unknown for her.

It wasn't true, or not entirely true, but Crispin had no way to say so aloud. He looked at Shirin, and belatedly, in the lamplight, he realized that she was weeping.

"You will hunt her down like some beast," she said bitterly. "All of you. An army of soldiers after one woman whose husband has just been killed, whose life died with him. And then what? Send her back to a hovel in the Hippodrome? Make her dance naked for their amusement? Or are you to quietly kill her when you find her? Spare poor, virtuous Leontes the details?"

It was a woman speaking, and a performer, Crispin understood finally. Fear and this unexpected depth of rage, thinking of the other dancer who had defined, for all of them, the City and the world.

But even here there were layers, because if Leontes was oblivious to what had happened, Styliane was not. It wasn't just about men pursuing a helpless woman. It was also about two women at war, and only one of them could live now.

"I don't know what they will do," said Carullus, and even Shirin, lifting her face, not hiding her tears, had to have heard the distress in his voice.

There were footsteps. A soldier at the arched entrance to the room. He reported no one hiding in the house or the courtyard within. The others filed past him and outside again.

Carullus looked at Crispin. Seemed about to say something more but did not. He turned to Shirin. "May we escort you home, my lady?"

"No," she said.

He swallowed. "There are orders, everyone to remain inside. There are many soldiers in the streets… some of them… unused to the city. It will be safer if-"

"No," she said.

Carullus stopped. After another moment he bowed to her and left the room.

Crispin walked him to the door. Carullus stopped there. "They are… anxious to find her tonight, as you say. There will be some unpleasantness, I suspect, as they search."

Crispin nodded. Unpleasantness. A courtier's masking word. Changes were taking place, even as the night passed, the moons rose. But none of this was Carullus's fault. "I… understand. I am grateful that it was you at my door. Jad guard you."

"And you, my friend. Stay inside."

"I will."

He had truly intended to. Who can know what will come, however, overtaking a life?

Last autumn, at home, it had been an Imperial Courier bearing a summons to Sarantium. Tonight it was something else, but still a summons for there came another knocking, a quieter one, not long after the soldiers left.

Crispin answered it himself again. No flaring of torches this time, no sight of armed men. This was someone cloaked and hooded, and alone. A woman, breathless with running and fear. She asked his name. He gave it, without thinking, stepped aside, she entered, hurriedly, a glance over her shoulder into the night. He closed the door. In the entrance to his home, she wordlessly extended a written note, and then fumbled in her cloak and produced a ring.

He took both. Her hands were trembling. He recognized the ring, and felt his heart thump once, very hard.

He had forgotten someone.

The sealed note, when torn open, contained a command, not a request, and from someone whom-as he stood there, and felt his heart begin to beat properly again-Crispin realized he did have a duty to obey, however bitter the confusions and torn loyalties shaping a terrible day and night.

It also meant going out into the streets again.

Shirin appeared in the arched doorway.

"What is it?"

He told her. He wasn't sure why, but he told her.

"I'm taking you," she said.

He tried to say no. A waste of time.

She had a litter and guards, she pointed out. Was known, had the protection that came with that. Could plausibly be heading home with a friend, even with the streets forbidden. He didn't have the force to refuse her. What was she going to do? Stay in his house while he went out?

Shirin had a two-person litter. Crispin ordered the messenger to be attended to, given food, a bed for the night if she wanted. The woman's eyes betrayed her relief: she'd clearly been terrified she'd have to go back out. Crispin put on his own cloak and then, Shirin beside him, opened the door, waiting for a moment when the street was quiet before they stepped out. The darkness was laden with aura and menace, clear as the stars, heavy as the weight of earth on the dead. Valerius had died in a tunnel, Carullus had said.

Her litter-bearers came for them from the shadows at the end of the portico. Shirin gave them instructions to take her home. They started down the street. Peering through the drawn curtains as they moved, they both saw the strange, small flames flitting at corners, unlit by any visible source, darting and vanishing. Souls, spirits, echoes of Heladikos's fire, inexplicable.

But one always saw those flames in Sarantium at night.

What was new were the noises, and the torches everywhere, smoking, casting orange, erratic light. From all around came the sound of booted feet. Running, not marching. A sense of speed, urgency, the night spinning with it. A banging upon doors, shouted commands to open. Searchers. For one woman. They heard two horses gallop past, orders barked, curses. It occurred to Crispin suddenly that most of these soldiers wouldn't have the least idea what Alixana looked like. He thought again of the Imperial robe, discarded on the island. She wasn't about to be adorned and garbed like an Empress. It wouldn't be so easy to rind her: unless she was betrayed. That, of course, was a possibility.

They made no attempt at concealment as they went, were stopped twice. The Urban Prefect's men both times, which was fortunate, for these troops knew the Principal Dancer of the Greens immediately, and they were allowed to continue on their way to her house.

They didn't go to her house. As they neared her street, Shirin leaned out and changed her orders, instructing her bearers to continue east, towards the walls. From here on the danger grew, was real, for she couldn't claim to be going home now, but they were not stopped again. The search hadn't come this far yet, it seemed; it was fanning out from the Imperial Precinct and up from the harbour, house to house, street to street in the dark.

In time, they came to a dwelling, not far from the triple walls. Shirin ordered the bearers to stop. In the litter there was a silence.

"Thank you," Crispin said, at length. She stared at him. Danis was silent, on the chain about her throat.

He got out. Looked at the closed doorway in front of him, and then up at the night stars. Then he turned back to her. She still hadn't spoken. He leaned into the litter and kissed her gently on the lips. He remembered the first day they'd met, that passionate embrace in the doorway, Danis protesting urgently, Pertenmus of Eubulus appearing behind her.

There was a man who would be happy tonight, Crispin thought suddenly, with bitterness.

Then he turned away and knocked-one more knocking in Sarantium that night-on the door of the person who had summoned him. A servant opened instantly; had been waiting, he realized. He went in.

The servant gestured nervously. Crispin stepped forward.

The queen of the Antae was waiting in the first room on the right, branching off the hallway.

He saw her standing before the fire, glittering, jewellery at ears and throat and on her fingers and in her hair, garbed in a silken robe of porphyry and gold. Purple, for royalty tonight. Tall and fair and… entirely, dazzlingly regal. There was a fierce brilliance to her, a kind of shining like the jewels she wore. It caught at your breath to look at her. Crispin bowed, and then, a little bit overwhelmed, he knelt on the wooden floor.

"No flour sack this time, artisan. I'm using gentler methods, you see."

"I am grateful, my lady." He could think of nothing else to say. She had seemed able to read his thoughts back then, too.

"They say the Emperor is dead." Direct, as always. Antae, not Sarantine. A different world. West for east, forest and field by origin, not these triple walls and gates of bronze and golden trees in the palaces.'Is it true? Valerius is dead?"

This was his own queen asking. "I believe he is," he said, clearing his throat. "I have no actual-"

"Murdered?"

Crispin swallowed. Nodded.

"The Daleinoi?"

He nodded again. Kneeling, looking at her where she stood before the fire, he thought he had never seen her like this. Had never seen anyone look as Gisel did just now. A creature almost alight, like the flames behind her, not entirely human.

She gazed at him, the famously wide-set blue eyes. Crispin's mouth was dry. She said, "In that case, Caius Crispus, you must get us into the Imperial Precinct. Tonight."

"Me?" said Crispin, eloquently.

Gisel smiled thinly. "There is no one else I could think of," she said. "Or trust. I am a helpless woman and alone, far from my home."

He swallowed again, painfully, could find nothing to say. He was thinking suddenly that he might die tonight, and that he had erred, earlier, seeing this terrible day and night as a clash of two women. He'd been wrong. Saw it now. There were three, not two.

In fact, they had all forgotten about her. The sort of overlooking that could matter greatly, change many things about the world-although perhaps not in any immediate, obvious way for some, such as the family on its farm in the northern grainlands, the one whose best labourer had just died, suddenly and too young, with the seeds all to be sown.