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

CHAPTER XIII

There was a level of fear in the Blues" compound that Kyros had never known before. It was as if they were all horses, not yet broken, sweating with apprehension, trembling with it. Scortius wasn't the only wounded man. Members of the faction had been coming into the compound with injuries ranging from minor to hideously mortal all afternoon. There was considerable chaos. The wounded were receiving attention from Ampliarus, the new, pale-featured physician of the faction, and from Columella, who was properly their horse doctor but inspired more confidence in most of them than Ampliarus did. There was also a grey-bearded Bassanid doctor no one knew, but who had apparently been treating Scortius somewhere during the time of his absence. A mystery, but no time to consider it.

Beyond the gates at sunset there still came the sounds of running and shouting men, the tread of marching soldiers, clash of metal, horses" hooves, screaming sometimes. Those inside were under ferociously strict orders not to go out.

Adding to the anxiety was the fact that even so late in the day-the sky crimson now in the west above a line of clouds-Astorgus had not returned.

He'd been seized by the Urban Prefect's men as the rioting began, borne off by them for questioning. And they all knew what could happen to men interrogated in that windowless building on the far side of the Hippodrome.

In the absence of the factionarius, control of the compound normally fell to Columella, but he was entirely engaged in treating the wounded. Instead it was the small, rotund cook, Strumosus, who asserted himself, giving calm, brisk instructions, arranging for a steady supply of clean linen and bedding for the injured, assigning anyone healthy-grooms, servants, jugglers, dancers, stableboys-to give assistance to the three doctors, posting additional guards at the compound gates. He was listened to. There was real need for a sense of control.

Strumosus had his own people-the undercooks and kitchen boys and servers-furiously busy preparing soups and grilled meats and cooked vegetables, carrying well-watered wine to the injured and the frantic. Men and women needed food at such a time, the cook told them in the kitchen, astonishingly composed for a man notoriously volatile. Both the nourishment and the illusion of ordinariness had roles to play, he'd observed, as if delivering a lecture on a quiet afternoon.

That last was true, Kyros thought. The act of preparing food had a calming effect. He felt his own fear receding in the mundane, unthinking routine of selecting and chopping and dicing vegetables for his soup, adding spices and salt, tasting and adjusting, aware of the others at their own tasks all around him in the kitchen.

One might almost imagine it was a banquet day, all of them caught up in the usual bustle of preparation.

Almost, but not quite. They could hear men crying in anger and pain as they were helped into the courtyard from the frenzied streets beyond the gates. Kyros had already heard the names of a dozen men he knew who had died today in the Hippodrome or the fighting outside it.

Rasic, at his station beside Kyros, was swearing steadily, chopping with barely controlled fury, treating onions and potatoes as if they were members of the Greens or the military. He'd been at the races in the morning but not when violence exploded in the afternoon: the kitchen workers who drew the lucky straws and were allowed to go to the first races were under standing orders to return before the last morning running, to help prepare the midday meal.

Kyros tried to ignore his friend. His own heart was heavy and fearful, not angry. There was great violence outside. People were being badly hurt, killed. He was worried about his mother and father, about Scortius, Astorgus.

And the Emperor was dead.

The Emperor was dead. Kyros had been a child when Apius died, barely more than that when the first Valerius went to the god. And both of them had passed from the world in their beds, in peace. The talk today was of black murder, the assassination of Jad's anointed one, the god's regent upon earth.

It was the shadow over everything, Kyros thought, like a ghost half glimpsed out of the edge of one's eye, hovering above a colonnade or chapel dome, changing the fall of sunlight, defining the day, and the night to come.

At darkfall the torches and lamps were lit. The compound took on the altered look of a night camp by a battlefield. The barracks were filled by now with the wounded, and Strumosus had ordered the tables of the dining hall to be covered with sheets and used as makeshift beds for those who needed them. He himself was everywhere, moving quickly, concentrating, unruffled.

Passing through the kitchen, he stopped and looked around. He gestured at Kyros and Rasic and two of the others. "Take a short rest, "he said. "Eat something yourselves, or lie down, or stretch your legs. Whatever you like." Kyros wiped perspiration from his forehead. They had been working almost without pause since the midday meal and it was night now, full dark.

He didn't feel like eating or lying down. Neither did Rasic. They went out of the hot kitchen into the chilly, torchlit shadows of the courtyard. Kyros felt the cold, which was unusual for him. He wished he'd put on a cloak over his sweaty tunic. Rasic wanted to go down to the gates, so they went there, Kyros dragging his foot along, trying to keep up with his friend. Stars were visible overhead. Neither moon was up yet. There was a lull, a hushed feeling out here now. No one crying at this moment, no one being carried in or sprinting past on some errand for the doctors in the barracks or the dining hall.

They came to the gates, to the guards there. Kyros saw that these men were armed, swords and spears and chest-plates. They wore helmets, like soldiers. Weapons and armour were forbidden to citizens in the streets, but the faction compounds had been given their own laws and they were allowed to defend themselves.

It was quiet here, too. They looked through the iron gates down the dark lane. There were occasional movements in the street beyond: distant sounds, a single voice calling, a carried torch passing at the head of their laneway. Rasic asked for news. One of the guards said that the Senate had been summoned into session.

"Why?" Rasic snapped. "Useless fat farts. Voting themselves another ration of wine and Karchite boys?"

"Voting an Emperor," the guard said. "If your brain's small, kitchen boy, keep your mouth shut to hide the fact."

"Fuck you," Rasic snarled.

"Shut up, Rasic," Kyros said quickly. "He's upset," he explained to the guards.

"We all are," the man said bluntly. Kyros didn't know him.

They heard footsteps approaching from behind them, turned. By the torches mounted on the walls by the gate Kyros recognized a charioteer.

"Taras!" said another guard, and there was respect in his voice.

They'd heard, in the kitchens: Taras, their newest driver, had won the first afternoon race, working with the miraculously returned Scortius in some dazzling, amazing fashion. They'd come first, second, third and fourth, entirely obliterating the Green triumphs of the last session and the morning.

And then violence had exploded, during the victory laps.

The young driver nodded his head, came up to stand by Kyros before the gates. "What do we know about the factionarius?" he asked.

"Nothing yet," a third guard said. He spat somewhere into the dark beyond the lamplight. "Fuckers in the Urban Prefect's office won't say a thing, even when they come by here."

"They probably don't know," Kyros said. A torch flared, showering sparks, and he looked away. It seemed to him he was always the one trying to be reasonable among men who didn't feel troubled by any need to be. He wondered what it would be like to sprint through the streets waving a blade in his hand, screaming in fury. Shook his head. A different person, a different life. Different foot, for that matter.

"How's Scortius?" he asked, looking at the other charioteer. Taras had a cut on his forehead and an ugly bruise on his cheek.

Taras shook his head. "Sleeping now, they told me. They gave him something to make him sleep. There was a lot of pain, from where his ribs were broken, before."

"Will he die?" Rasic asked. Kyros quickly made the sign of the sun disk in the darkness, saw two of the guards do the same.

Taras shrugged. "They don't know, or they won't say. The Bassanid doctor is very angry."

"Fuck the Bassanid," Rasic said, predictably. "Who is he, anyhow?" There came a sudden clattering sound from beyond the gates and a sharp, rasped command. They turned quickly to peer down the laneway. "More of ours coming back," the first guard said. "Open the gates." Kyros saw a group of men-perhaps a dozen-being herded roughly down the laneway by soldiers. One of the men couldn't walk; he was being supported between two others. The soldiers had their swords out, hustling the Blues along. He saw one of them sweep his blade and hit a stumbling man with the flat of it, swearing in a northern accent.

The gates swung open. Torches and lamps flickered with the movement. The man who'd been hit tripped and fell on the cobbled laneway. The soldier cursed again and prodded him hard with the point of his blade. "Get up, you lump of horsedung!"

The man pushed himself awkwardly to one knee as the others hurried through the gates. Kyros, without stopping to think, limped out and knelt by the fallen man.

He draped the man's right arm over his shoulder. There was a smell of sweat and blood and urine. Kyros staggered to his feet, swayed, supporting the other fellow. He'd no idea who it was, in the dark, but it was a Blue, they all were, and he was hurt.

"Move, clubfoot! Unless you want a sword up your butt," the soldier said. Someone laughed. They're under orders, Kyros told himself. There's been rioting. The Emperor's dead. They are afraid, too.

It seemed a long way, those ten steps back to the gates of the compound. He saw Rasic come running out to help him. Rasic went to lift the injured man's other arm to put it around his own shoulders, but the man between them cried out in agony at the movement, and they realized he had a sword wound in that arm.

"You fuckers!" Rasic snarled, turning on the soldiers in a rage. "He has no weapon! You goat-fuckers! You didn't have to-"

The nearest soldier, the one who had laughed, turned to Rasic and- expressionlessly, this time-lifted his sword. A mechanical, precise motion, like something not human.

"No!" Kyros shouted, and twisting violently, still supporting the wounded man, he grabbed for Rasic with his free hand. He stumbled sideways with the weight and the too-quick movement, tried to keep his balance.

And it was in that moment, some time after darkfall on the day the Emperor Valerius II died, that Kyros of the Blues, born in the Hippodrome, who had certainly never thought of himself as one of Jad's beloved and had never even seen from close the god's most holy regent upon earth, the thrice-exalted shepherd of his people, also felt something white and searing plunge into him from behind. He fell then, as Valerius had, and he, too, had a flashing thought of so many things yet desired and not yet done.

This may be shared, if nothing else is shared at all.

Taras, cursing himself as befuddled and hopelessly too slow, sprang through the gates past the guards, who would have been cut down if they'd gone into the lane with weapons.

The man called Rasic stood frozen as a statue, his mouth open as he stared down at his fallen friend. Taras seized him by the shoulders and almost threw him back towards the gates and the guards before he, too, could be chopped down. Then he knelt, lifting his hands in a quick, placating gesture to the soldiers, and picked up the man Kyros had been trying to help. The wounded man cried out again, but Taras gritted his teeth and half dragged, half carried him to the gates. He gave him to the guards and turned around again. He was going to go back, but something made him stop.

Kyros was lying face down on the cobblestones and he was motionless. Blood-black in the shadows-was pouring from the sword wound in his back.

In the laneway the soldier who had stabbed him looked indifferently down at the body, and then over at the gates where the Blues stood clustered in the wavering torchlight. "Wrong horsedung," he said lightly. "Don't matter. Take a lesson. People do not speak to soldiers that way. Or someone dies."

"You… come in here, say that… butt-fucking… goatboy! Blues! Blues!" Rasic was crying helplessly even as he stammered his obscenities, his features blurred and distorted.

The soldier took a heavy step forward.

"No!" snapped another of them, the same thick accent, authority in the word. "Orders. Not inside. Let's go."

Rasic was still weeping, calling for aid, screaming a foul-mouthed tirade of impotent fury. Taras felt like doing the same, actually. As the soldiers turned to leave, one of them stepping right over the prone body of the slain undercook, he heard footsteps. More torches appeared behind them in the compound.

"What is it? What happened here?" It was Strumosus, with the Bassanid doctor, a number of other men with lights attending them.

"Another dozen of ours brought back," one of the guards said. "At least two badly injured, probably by the soldiers. And they just-"

"It's Kyros!" Rasic cried, clutching at the cook's sleeve. "Strumosus, look! It's Kyros they've killed now!"

'What?" Taras saw the small man's expression change. 'You! Hold!" he shouted, and the soldiers-astonishingly-turned in the laneway. "Bring light!" Strumosus snapped over his shoulder, and he went right out through the gates. Taras hesitated a moment, and then followed, stopping a little behind.

"You foul, misbegotten offal! I want the name and rank of your leader!" the little chef said, barely controlled rage in his voice. "Immediately! Tell me!

"Who are you to give orders to-?"

"I speak for the accredited Blues faction and you are in our laneway at the gates of our compound, you scabrous vermin. There are regulations about this and there have been for a hundred years and more. I want your name-if you are the pustulent leader of these drunken louts who disgrace our army."

"Fat little man," said the soldier, "you talk too much." And he laughed and turned and walked away, not looking back.

"Rasic, Taras, you will recognize them?" Strumosus was rigid, his fists clenched.

"1 think so," said Taras. He had a memory of kneeling to claim the wounded man, looking straight up into the face of the one who'd stabbed Kyros.

"Then they will answer for this. They killed a prodigy here tonight, the foul, ignorant brutes."

Taras saw the doctor step forward. "That is worse than killing an ordinary man? Or a hundred of them?" The Bassanid's accented voice was almost a whisper, betraying the depths of his weariness. "Why a prodigy?"

"He was becoming a cook. A real one," said Strumosus. "A master."

"Ah," said the doctor. "A master? Young for that." He looked down at Kyros where he lay.

"You've never seen brilliance, a gift, show itself young? Aren't you young-for all the false dyeing of your hair, and that ridiculous stick?"

Taras saw the doctor look up then, and in the light of the carried torches and lanterns, he registered the presence of something-a memory? — in the Bassanid's face.

The man said nothing, though. There was blood all over his clothing, a smear of it on one cheek. He didn't look young, just now.

"This boy was my legacy," Strumosus went on. "I have no sons, no heirs. He would have… outdone me in his day. Would have been remembered.

Again the doctor hesitated. He looked down again at the body. After a moment, he sighed. "He may yet be," he murmured. "Who decided he was dead? He won't survive if left here on the stones, but Columella should be able to clean the wound and pack it-he saw how I do it. And he knows how to stitch. After that"

"He's alive!" Rasic cried and rushed forward, dropping beside Kyros.

"Careful!" the doctor snapped. "Get a board and lift him on it. And whatever you do, don't let that idiot Ampliarus bleed him. If he suggests it throw him out of the room. Give him to Columella. Now where," he said, turning to Strumosus, "is my escort? I am ready to go home. I am… extremely tired." He leaned upon the stick he carried.

The chef looked at him. "One more patient. This one. Please? I told you, I have no sons. I believe he… I believe… Do you not have children? Do you understand what I am saying?"

"There are doctors here. None of these people today were my patients. I shouldn't have even come for the racer. If people insist on being fools-"

"Then they are only being as the god has made them, or as Perun and the Lady have. Doctor, if this boy dies it will be a triumph for Azal. Stay. Honour your profession."

"Columella-"

"— is a doctor to our horses. Please."

The Bassanid stared at him a long moment, then shook his head. "I was promised an escort. This is not the medicine I practise, not the way I conduct my life."

"None of us conducts his life this way by choice," said Strumosus, in a voice no one there had ever heard him use. "Who chooses violence in the dark?"

There was a silence. The Bassanid's face was expressionless. Strumosus looked at him a long time. When he spoke again it was almost in a whisper.

"If you are decided, we will not hold you, of course. I regret my unkind words before. The Blues of Sarantium thank you for your aid here, today and tonight. You will not go unrequited." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Two of you go down to the street with torches. Don't leave the laneway. Call for the Urban Prefect's men. They won't be far. They'll take the doctor home. Rasic, run back in and bring four men and a table plank. Tell Columella to get ready for us."

The frieze broke as men moved to his bidding. The doctor turned his back on them all and stood, gazing out at the street. Taras could tell from the way he stood how utterly exhausted he was. The stick didn't look like an affectation; it looked like something he needed. Taras knew the feeling: end of a day's racing, when the simple act of walking off the sands and down the tunnel to the changing rooms seemed to demand more strength than he had.

He looked past the Bassanid to the street as well. And in that instant he saw a sumptuous litter go by at the head of their laneway: an apparition, an astonishing evocation of gilded grace and beauty in an ugly night. The two torch-bearers had neared the end of the lane; the litter was illuminated with a brief, golden glow and then it moved on, was gone, heading towards the Hippodrome, the Imperial Precinct, the Great Sanctuary, an unreal image, swift as dreaming, an object from some other world. Taras blinked, and swallowed hard.

The two messengers began calling for men of the Urban Prefect. They were all over the streets tonight. He looked at the eastern physician again and suddenly-incongruously-had an image of his mother, a memory from his own childhood. A vision of her standing in that same way before the cooking fire, having just refused him permission to go out again and back to the stables or hippodrome at home (to watch a foal being birthed or the breaking of a stallion to the harness and chariot, or anything to do with horses)-and then taking a deep breath and, out of love, indulgence, some understanding that he himself was only just beginning to realize, turning to her son and changing her mind, saying, 'All right. But take some of the elixir first, it is cold now, and wear your heavy cloak… "

The Bassanid took a deep breath. He turned. In the darkness Taras thought of his mother, far away, long ago. The doctor looked at Strumosus.

"All right," he said quietly. "One more patient. Because I am a fool as well. Be sure they lift him onto the board face down, and with his left side first."

Taras's heart was pounding hard. He saw Strumosus staring back at the doctor. The torchlight was erratic, flickering. There were noises in the night now, ahead of them and coming from behind as Rasic brought aid. A cold wind blew torch smoke between the two men.

"You do have a son, don't you?" Strumosus of Amoria said, so softly Taras barely heard it.

After a moment, the Bassanid said, "I do."

The carriers came out then, hurrying behind Rasic, bearing a plank from the dining hall. They lifted Kyros onto it, carefully arid as instructed, and then they all went back in. The Bassanid paused at the gates, crossing the threshold with his left foot first.

Taras followed, the last to go in, still thinking of his mother, who also had a son.

She had a sense that much of her life here in the city they called the centre of the world was spent at windows, in one room or another over the streets, looking out, observing, not actually doing anything. It wasn't necessarily bad, Kasia thought-the things she'd done at the posting inn, the tasks she'd had to perform back home (especially after the men had died) weren't in any way desirable, but there was still this odd feeling, at times, that here at the heart of where the world was supposed to be unfolding she was merely a spectator, as if the whole of Sarantium was a kind of theatre or hippodrome and she was in her seat, looking down.

On the other hand, what sort of active role was there for a woman to play here? And it certainly couldn't be said that she had any least desire to be in the streets now. There was so much movement in the city, so little calm, so many people one didn't know at all. No wonder people became agitated: what was there to make them feel safe, or sure? If an Emperor was their father, in some complex way, why shouldn't they become dangerously uncontrolled when he died? At her window Kasia decided that it would be good to have a child, a household full of them, and soon. A family, they might be something to defend you-as you defended them-from the world.

It was dark now, the stars overhead between houses, torches below, soldiers marching, calling out. The white moon would be up behind the house: even in the city Kasia knew the phases of the moons. The violence of the day had mostly passed. The taverns had been closed, the whores ordered off the streets. She wondered where the beggars and the homeless would go. And she wondered when Carullus would be home. She watched; had lit no lamps in this room, could not be seen from below.

She was less fearful than she'd thought she might be. Time passing did that. One could adjust to many things, it seemed, given enough time: crowds, soldiers, the smells and noises, chaos of the city, the utter absence of anything green and quiet, unless one counted the silence in the chapels during the day sometimes, and she didn't like the chapels of Jad.

It still amazed her that people here could see the fireballs that appeared at night, tumbling and flickering along the streets-the signifiers of powers entirely outside the ambit of the Jaddite god-and ignore them entirely. As if something that couldn't be explained wasn't to be acknowledged. It didn't exist. People spoke freely of ghosts, spirits, and she knew that many used pagan magics to invoke spells, whatever the clerics might say-but no one ever talked about the flames in the street at night.

At her window Kasia watched them, counted them. There seemed to be more than usual. She listened to the soldiers below. She had seen them entering houses along the street earlier, heard the banging on doors in the night. Change in the air, a change in the shape of the world. Carullus had been excited. He loved Leontes, and Leontes was going to be the new Emperor. It meant good things for them, he'd said, when he'd stopped at home for a moment near sundown. She'd smiled at him. He'd kissed her and gone out again. They were looking for someone. She knew who it was.

That had been some time ago. Now, at her window in darkness, she waited, watched-and saw something entirely unexpected. Passing along their quiet, little-trafficked street Kasia saw, like Taras of the Blues a few moments before, a golden litter appear out of the dark. A kind of vision, like the fireballs, something entirely out of tune with the rest of the night.

She had no idea, of course, who might be inside, but she knew they weren't supposed to be out there-and that they knew it, too. There were no runners with torches, as there surely ought to have been: whoever this was, they were trying to pass unseen. Kasia watched it until the bearers reached the end of the street and turned and went out of sight.

In the morning, she thought she might have fallen asleep at the window, dreamt what she saw, something golden, passing below her in a dark of booted soldiers and oaths and hammering at doors, for how could she have known it was gold, without light?

The august and illuminated, the blessed and revered Eastern Patriarch of most holy Jad of the Sun, Zakarios, had also been awake, and in some distress of body and spirit, in his chamber in the Patriarchal Palace at that same late-night hour.

The patriarchal residence was outside the Imperial Precinct, just behind the site of the Great Sanctuary-both the old one that had burned and the much larger one now risen in its place. Saranios the Great, who had founded this city, had deemed it a useful thing for the clerics and the palace officers to be seen to be separate.

There had been those who had disagreed in later years, wishing they had the Patriarchs more securely under their thumbs, but Valerius II had not been one of these, and Zakarios, who had just come from observing the Emperor's body where it lay in state in the Porphyry Room of the Attenine Palace, was thinking about that, and about the man. He was grieving, in fact.

The truth was, he hadn't actually observed the body. It seemed that only some Excubitors had, and the Chancellor, and then Gesius had made the decision that Valerius's body be covered-entirely wrapped in a purple mantle-and not seen.

He had been burned. Sarantine Fire.

Zakarios found it painful to contemplate. No amount of faith or political worldliness or combination of the two could help him deal easily with an image of Valerius as blackened, melted flesh. It was very bad. His stomach was giving him trouble, even thinking about it.

He had gone-as was necessary and proper-from speaking the holy Words of Passage in the Porphyry Room to the great silver doors of the Reception Chamber in the same palace. And there he had performed the equally holy Ceremony of Anointing for Leontes, now created Emperor in Sarantium by the express will of the Senate, earlier that day.

Leontes, as deeply pious a man as any Patriarch could ask for on the Golden Throne, had knelt and spoken the responses without prompting and with deep emotion in his voice. The wife, Styliane, had stood a little distance away, expressionless. All of the major officials of the court had been present, though Zakarios did note that Gesius, the aged Chancellor (even older than I am, the Patriarch thought) had also stood apart, by the doors. The Patriarch had been in his own office long enough to know that there would be swift changes in power within the Imperial Precinct in the days to come, even as the Rites of Mourning were observed.

There was to be a public crowning of husband and wife in the Hippodrome tomorrow, the new Emperor advised his Patriarch when the anointing was done. Zakarios was earnestly entreated to be present in the kathisma to participate. In times such as this, Leontes murmured, it was especially important to show the people that the holy sanctuaries and the court were as one. It was phrased as a request, but it wasn't, really. He was on the throne as he spoke, sitting there for the first time, tall and golden and grave. The Patriarch had inclined his head and indicated his acceptance and agreement. Styliane Daleina, soon to be Empress of Sarantium, had favoured him with a brief smile, her first of the night. She looked like her dead father. He had always thought that.

Zakarios understood, from his privy adviser, the cleric Maximius, that it was the brother, exiled Lecanus, who had been behind this profane and evil deed, along with the equally banished Lysippus-a man the clerics of the City had reason to loathe and fear.

Both of these men were dead, Maximius had reported. Leontes had himself slain the gross Calysian, like the mighty warrior he was. Maximius was very happy tonight, Zakarios thought, hadn't even troubled to hide it. His adviser was still with him now, though the hour was late. Maximius stood on the balcony overlooking the City. Across the way, the dome of the new Great Sanctuary rose. Valerius's Sanctuary. His vast, ambitious dream. One of them.

Leontes had said that the Emperor would be buried there: fittingly, the first man to be so laid to rest. His regret had seemed genuine; Zakarios knew that his piety was. The new Emperor had views on certain controversial matters of holy faith. Zakarios knew that was part of the reason for Maximius's pleasure now, and that he, too, ought to be pleased. He wasn't. A man he had greatly respected was dead, and Zakarios felt too old for the kind of fight that might now begin in the sanctuaries and chapels, even with the Imperial Precinct supporting them.

The Patriarch felt a griping in his belly and winced. He rose and walked out on the balcony, adjusting the ear flaps on his cap. Maximius looked over at him and smiled. "The streets are quiet now, Holiness, Jad be praised. Only soldiers and the Urban Prefect's guards, that I have seen. We must be eternally grateful to the god that in this time of danger he has seen fit to look after us."

"I wish he'd attend to my stomach," Zakarios said, ungratefully.

Maximius assumed an expression of sympathy. "Would a bowl of the herbal-"

"Yes," said Zakarios. "It might."

He was unreasonably angered by his adviser tonight. Maximius was too cheerful. An Emperor was dead, murdered. Maximius had been put in his place more than once by Valerius over the years, something Zakarios ought to have done more often himself.

The cleric betrayed nothing with his expression now, no response to the Patriarch's bluntness-he was good at that. He was good at a number of things. Zakarios often wished he didn't need the man quite so much. Now Maximius bowed, and went back into the room to summon a servant and have the drink prepared.

Zakarios stood alone at the stone rail of the high balcony. He shivered a little, for the night was cool and he was susceptible to chills now, but at the same time the air was reviving, bracing. A reminder (he suddenly thought) that if others were dead, he himself, by the grace of Jad's mercy, was not. He was still here to serve, to feel the wind in his face, see the glory of the dome in front of him with the stars and-just now- the white moon to the east.

He looked down. And saw something else.

In the dark street where there were no soldiers passing now, a litter appeared from a narrow lane. Moving quickly, unlit by any runners, it was carried up to one of the small rear doors to the Sanctuary. These were always locked, of course. The builders were not yet finished, nor were the decorations complete. Inside was scaffolding, equipment, decorative materials, some of it dangerous, some of it expensive. No one was allowed in without cause, and certainly not at night.

Zakarios, feeling an odd, unexpected sensation, watched as the curtain of the litter was pulled back. Two people emerged. There were no lights, the Patriarch couldn't make out anything about them at all; both were cloaked against the night, dark figures in darkness.

One of them went to the locked door.

A moment later it opened. A key? Zakarios couldn't see. The two of them went inside. The door was closed. The bearers did not linger, carried the exquisite litter away, back the way they had come, and an instant later the street was empty again. As if nothing had ever been there, the whole brief, puzzling episode a fantasy of some kind beneath the starlit, moonlit dome.

"The infusion is being prepared, Holiness," Maximius said briskly, reappearing on the balcony. "I pray that it will bring you ease."

Zakarios, looking down thoughtfully from beneath his hat and ear flaps, made no reply.

"What is it?" Maximius said, coming forward.

"Nothing," said the Eastern Patriarch. "There's nothing there." He wasn't sure why he said that, but it was the truth, wasn't it?

He saw one of the small, fleeting fires appear just then, at the same street corner where the litter had gone. It, too, vanished a moment later. They always did.

She entered the Sanctuary ahead of him after he'd turned the two keys in the two locks and swung the small oak door open and stood aside for her. He followed, closed the door quickly, locked it. Habit, routine, the things done each and every ordinary day. Turning a key, opening or locking a door, walking into a place where one has been working, looking around, looking up.

His hands were shaking. They had made it this far. He hadn't believed they would. Not with the City as it was tonight. Ahead of him, in a small ambulatory under one of the semi-domes behind the enormous one that was Artibasos's offering to the world, Gisel of the Antae cast back the hood of her cloak. "No!" Crispin said sharply. "Keep it up!"

Golden hair, dressed with jewels. The blue eyes bright as jewels, alight in the always-lit Sanctuary. Lamps everywhere here, in walls, suspended on chains from the ceiling and all the domes, candles burning at the side altars, even though Valerius's rebuilt Sanctuary had not yet been opened, or sanctified.

She looked at him a moment but then, surprisingly, obeyed. He was aware that he had spoken peremptorily. It was fear, not presumption, though. He wondered what had become of his anger; he seemed to have misplaced it today, tonight, dropping it the way Alixana had dropped her cloak on the isle.

The sides of the hood came forward, shadowing Gisel's features again, hiding the almost frightening brilliance of her tonight, as if the woman here with him was another light in this place.

In the litter, he had been made aware of desire, forbidden and impossible as mortal flight, or fire before Heladikos's gift: a stirring, utterly irrational, equally unmistakable. Riding with her, aware of her body, her presence, he remembered how Gisel had come to him shortly after she'd arrived here, climbing up to the scaffold where he'd stood alone, and had had him kiss her palm in full view of all those watching, agape, from below. Creating a reason, false as alloyed coins, for him to visit her: a woman alone, without advisers or allies or anyone to trust, and tangled in a game of countries where the stakes were as high as they ever became.

Her reputation was not, he had come to see, what Gisel of the Antae was trying to protect. He could honour her for it, even while aware he was being used, toyed with. He remembered a hand lingering in his hair the very first night in her own palace. She was a queen, deploying resources. He was a tool for her, a subject to be given precise orders when he was needed.

He was needed now, it seemed.

You must get us into the Imperial Precinct. Tonight.

A night when the streets rang with the tread of soldiers looking for a missing Empress. A night after a day when flaming riot and murder defined Sarantium. When the Imperial Precinct would be in a fever and frenzy of tension: an Emperor dead, another to be proclaimed. An invasion from the north, on the day when war was to be proclaimed in Batiara.

He had heard Gisel's words almost without hearing them, so improbable did they seem. But he hadn't said to her, as he'd said so many times before to himself, to others, I am an artisan, no more.

It would have been a lie, after what had happened this morning. He was irrevocably down from the scaffolding, had been brought down some time ago. And on this night of death and change, the queen of the Antae, as forgotten here by everyone as a trivial guest might be at a banquet, had asked to be taken to the palaces.

A journey through most of the City, and in the dark, in a litter that turned out to be gilded, sumptuously pillowed, scented with perfume, where two people could recline at opposite ends, bodies unsettlingly near to each other, one of them alight with purpose, the other aware of the degree of his own fear, but remembering-with a wryness that spoke to his nature-that less than a year ago he had had no desire for life at all, had been more than half inclined to seek his death.

Easy enough to find tonight, he'd thought in the litter. He'd dictated to the bearers the route to take and forbidden any torches at all. They had listened to him, the way his apprentices did. It wasn't the same, though: that was his craft, upon walls or domes or ceilings, something touching the world but apart from it. This was not.

They were borne swiftly, almost silently, through the streets, keeping to shadows, stopping when boots were heard or torches seen, crossing squares the long way, through the covered, shadowed colonnades. Once, they'd stopped in the doorway of a chapel as four armed horsemen galloped across the Mezaros Forum. Crispin had drawn back the curtain of the litter to watch, and did so again at intervals, looking out at stars and barred doors and shop fronts as they passed through the night city. He saw the strange fires of Sarantium flare and disappear as they went: a journey as much through a starlit half-world as it was through the world, a feeling that they were travelling endlessly, that Sarantium itself had somehow been carried out of time. He'd wondered if anyone could even see them in the dark, if they were really here.

Gisel had been silent, nearly motionless throughout, adding to the sense of strangeness, never looking out when he pulled the curtains. Intense, coiled, waiting. The perfume in the litter was of sandalwood and something else he didn't recognize. It made him think of ivory, in the way that all things reminded him of colours. One of her ankles lay against his thigh. Unaware: he was almost certain she was unaware of that.

Then they had come, finally, to the door behind the Great Sanctuary and Crispin had put into motion-a movement into time again, as they left the enclosed world of the litter-the next part of what he supposed would have to be called a plan, though it was hardly that, in truth.

Some puzzles, even for one engaged by them, were intractable. Some could destroy you if you tried to solve them, like those intricate boxes the Ispahani were said to devise, where turning them the wrong way caused blades to spring out, killing or maiming the unwary.

Gisel of the Antae had handed him one of those. Or, seen another way, shifting the box a little differently in his hands, she was one of those tonight.

Crispin took a long breath, and realized that they weren't together any more. Gisel had stopped, was behind him, looking up. He turned back and followed her gaze to the dome that Artibasos had made, that Valerius had given to him-to Caius Crispus, widower, only son of Honus Crispus the mason, from Varena.

The lamps were burning, suspended from their silver and bronze chains and set into the brackets that ran with the windows all around. The light of the white moon, rising, was coming in from the east like a blessing of illumination upon the work he had achieved here in this place, in Sarantium after his sailing.

He would remember, he would always remember, that on the night when she herself was burning with directed intent like a beam of sunlight focused by glass onto one spot, the queen of the Antae had stopped beneath his mosaics upon a dome and looked up at them by lamplight and moonlight.

At length she said, "You complained to me, I remember, about deficient materials in my father's chapel. Now I understand."

He said nothing. Inclined his head. She looked up again, at his image of Jad over this City, at his forests and fields (green with spring in one place, red and gold and brown as autumn in another), at his zubir at the edge of a dark wood, his seas and sailing ships, his people (Ilandra there now, and he had been about to begin the girls this morning, filtering memory and love through craft and art), his flying and swimming creatures and running beasts and watchful ones, with a place (not yet done, not yet) where the western sunset flaming over ruined Rhodias would be the forbidden torch of falling Heladikos: his life, all lives under the god and in the world, as much as he could render, being mortal himself, entangled in his limitations.

Much of it done now, some yet to do, with the labour of others-Pardos, Silano and Sosio, the apprentices, Vargos working among them now-taking form under his direction on walls and semi-domes. But the shape of it, the overarching design, was here to be seen now, and Gisel paused, and looked.

As her gaze came to him again, he saw that she seemed about to say something else, but did not. There was an entirely unexpected expression on her face, and long afterwards he thought he understood it, what she had almost said.

'Crispin! Holy Jad, you are all right! We feared-"

He held up a hand, imperious as an Emperor in this place, urgent with apprehension. Pardos, rushing up, stopped in his tracks, fell silent. Vargos stood behind him. Crispin felt a flicker of relief himself: they had obviously elected to remain in here all day and night, were safe. He was sure Artibasos was somewhere about as well.

"You haven't seen me," he murmured. "You are asleep. Go now. Be asleep. Tell Artibasos the same if he's wandering here. No one saw me." They were both looking at the hooded figure beside him. "Or anyone else," he added. She was unrecognizable, he devoutly hoped.

Pardos opened his mouth and closed it.

"Go," said Crispin. "If I have a chance to explain after, I will."

Vargos had come quietly up beside Pardos: burly, capable, reassuring, a man with whom he had seen a zubir. Who had led them out of the Aldwood on the Day of the Dead. He said, quietly, "Is there no help we can offer? Whatever you are doing?"

He wished there were, Crispin realized. But he shook his head. "Not tonight. I am glad to see you safe." He hesitated. "Pray for me." He'd never said anything like that before. He grinned a little. "Even though you haven't seen me."

Neither man smiled. Vargos moved first, taking Pardos by the elbow, leading him away into the shadows of the Sanctuary.

Gisel looked at him. Did not speak. He led her across the marble floor and the vast space under the dome into an ambulatory on the other side, and then to a low door set in the far wall. There he drew a deep breath and knocked-four times quickly, twice slowly-and then a moment later he did it again, remembering, remembering.

There was a stillness, a waiting time, as long as a night. He looked at the massed bank of candles at the altar to their right, thought of praying. Gisel stood motionless beside him. If this failed, he had nothing in reserve.

Then he heard the lock being turned on the other side. And the low door of the only plan he'd been able to devise swung open before them. He saw the white-robed cleric who had opened it, one of the Sleepless Ones, in the short stone tunnel behind the altar at the very back of the small chapel built into the wall of the Imperial Precinct, and he knew the man and gave thanks-with his whole heart-to the god, and he was remembering the first time he'd passed through this same door, with Valerius, who was dead.

The cleric knew him as well. The knock had been the Emperor's, taught to Artibasos and then to Crispin. Working by lamplight, they had opened for Valerius on more than one night through the winter as he came at the end of his own day's labours to look upon theirs. Much later than this, many times. He'd been named the Night's Emperor; it was said he never slept.

The cleric seemed blessedly unperturbed, only raised his eyebrows, without speaking. Crispin said, "I have come with one who wishes to join me in paying a last tribute to the Emperor. We would speak our prayers by his body and then here again, with you."

"He is in the Porphyry Room," the cleric said. "It is a terrible time."

"It is," said Crispin, feelingly.

The cleric had not moved aside. "Why is your companion hooded?" he asked.

"That the common folk not see her," Crispin murmured. "It would be unseemly."

"Why so?"

Which meant there was no help for it. Even as Crispin turned to her, Gisel had pushed back her hood. The cleric held a lantern. Light fell upon her face, her golden hair.

"I am the queen of the Antae," she murmured. She was taut as a bowstring. Crispin had a sense she would vibrate like one if touched. "Good cleric, would you have a woman parade through the streets tonight?"

The man, visibly overawed-and looking at the queen, Crispin could understand why-shook his head and stammered, "No, of course… no, no! Dangerous. A terrible time!"

"The Emperor Valerius brought me here. Saved my life. Purposed to restore my throne to me, as you may know. Is it not seemly in the eyes of Jad that I bid him farewell? I would not rest easy if I did not so."

The small cleric in his white robe backed up before her, and then he bowed and he shifted to one side. He said, with great dignity, "It is seemly, my lady. Jad send Light to you, and to him."

"To all of us," said Gisel, and walked forward, ahead of Crispin now, ducking at the arch of the low stone tunnel, and then through the small chapel and into the Imperial Precinct.

They were there.

When Crispin had been younger, learning his craft, Martinian had often lectured about the virtues of directness, avoiding the overly subtle. Crispin, over the years, had made the same point many times to their various apprentices. "If a military hero comes to a sculptor and asks for a statue in his own honour, it would be foolish beyond words not to do the obvious. Put the man on a horse, give him a helmet and a sword." Martinian used to pause, after saying this. So would Crispin, before going on: "It may feel tired, overdone, but what is the reason for this commission, you must ask yourself. Has anything been achieved if the patron doesn't feel honoured by a work designed to honour him?"

Subtle concepts, brilliant innovation came with risks… sometimes the exercise of the moment would be entirely defeated by them. That was the point.

Crispin led the queen out of the chapel and back into the night, and he didn't ask her to draw up her hood again. They made no attempt to hide at all. They walked along tended paths, gravel crunching underfoot, past sculptures of Emperors and soldiers (suitably rendered) in the starlit, moonlit gardens, and they saw no one and were disturbed by no one as they went.

Such dangers as might be feared tonight by those who lived here were thought to be outside the Bronze Gates, in the labyrinths of the City.

They went past a fountain, not flowing yet so early in the spring, and then the long portico of the silk guild, and then, with the sound of the sea in his ears, Crispin led his queen up to the entrance of the Attenine Palace, which was alight with lamps tonight. There were guards here, but the double doors stood wide open. He walked straight up the steps to them, and there he saw a man standing just inside, beyond the guards, in the green and brown colours of the Chancellor's eunuchs.

He stopped in front of the guards, the queen beside him. They eyed him warily. He ignored them, pointed at the eunuch. "You!" he snapped. "We need an escort for the queen of the Antae."

The eunuch turned, his training immaculate, betraying no surprise at all, and he stepped out onto the portico. The guards looked from Crispin to the queen. The Chancellor's man bowed to Gisel, and then, a moment later, so did they. Crispin drew a breath.

"Rhodian!" said the eunuch as he straightened. He was smiling. "You need another shave." And it was with a sense of being blessed, guarded, granted aid, that Crispin recognized the man who had barbered his beard the first time he'd come to this palace.

"Probably," Crispin admitted. "But at the moment the queen wishes to see the Chancellor and to pay her last respects to Valerius."

"She can do both at once, then. I am at your service, Majesty. The Chancellor is in the Porphyry Room with the body. Come. I will take you there." The guards didn't even move as they went through, so regal was Gisel, so obviously confident the man escorting her.

It was not a long way, as it turned out. The Porphyry Room, where Empresses of Sarantium gave birth, where Emperors lay in state when they were summoned to the god, was on this level, halfway down a single straight corridor. There were lamps at intervals, shadows between them, no one at all seemed to be about. It was as if the Imperial Precinct, the palace, the hallway lay under some sort of alchemist's spell, so calm and still was it. Their footsteps echoed as they went. They were alone with their escort, walking to visit the dead.

The man who led them stopped outside a pair of doors. They were silver, bearing a pattern of crowns and swords in gold. Two guards here, as well. They seemed to know Gesius's man. Nodded. The eunuch knocked once, softly, and opened the door himself. He gestured for them to go inside.

Gisel went first again. Crispin paused in the doorway, uncertain now. The room was smaller than he'd expected. There were purple hangings on all the walls, an artificial tree of beaten gold, a canopied bed against the far wall, and a bier in the centre now, with a shrouded body upon it. There were, candles burning all around, and one man knelt-on a cushion, Crispin saw-while two clerics softly chanted the Mourning Rites.

The kneeling man looked up. It was Gesius, parchment pale, thin as a scribe's pen, looking very old. Crispin saw him recognize the queen.

"1 am very pleased to find you, my lord," Gisel said. "I wish to pray for the soul of Valerius who has left us, and to speak with you. Privately." She crossed to a ewer on a stand, poured water on her hands in the ritual of ablution, dried them on a cloth.

Crispin saw something flicker in the old man's face as he looked at her.

"Of course, Majesty. I am at your service in all things." Gisel looked briefly at the clerics. Gesius gestured. They broke off their chanting and went out through a single door on the far side of the room, beside the bed. The door closed, candles flickered with the movement.

"You may go, Caius Crispus." The queen didn't even turn around. Crispin looked at the eunuch who had escorted them. The man turned, expressionless, and went through the door. Crispin was about to follow, but then he hesitated and turned back.

He went forward, past Gisel, and he poured water for himself, in turn, murmuring the words spoken in the presence of the dead, and he dried his hands. Then he knelt at the side of the bier, beside the body of the dead Emperor. He smelled-over the scent of incense in the room- something charred and burnt, and he closed his eyes.

There were words of prayer suited for this moment. He didn't speak them. His thoughts were empty at first, then he shaped an image in his mind of Valerius. A man of ambition, in more ways than Crispin suspected he would ever grasp. Round-faced, soft-featured, mild of voice and bearing.

Crispin knew-still-that he ought to have hated and feared this man. But if there was a truth to be understood down here among the living at the bottom of the scaffold it was that hatred, fear, love, all of them, were never as simple as one might wish them to be. Without praying in any formal way, he bade farewell in silence to the image shaped in his mind, which was all he felt entitled to do.

He rose and went to the door. As he went out he heard Gisel say softly to the Chancellor-and was ever after to wonder if she spoke when she did to allow him to overhear, as a gift of sorts-'The dead are gone from us. We can only to speak of what will happen now. I have a thing to say."

The doors swung shut. Standing in the corridor, Crispin felt suddenly weary beyond words. He closed his eyes. Swayed on his feet. The eunuch was at his side. He said, a voice gentle as ram, "Come, Rhodian. A bath, a shave, wine."

Crispin opened his eyes. Shook his head. But heard himself saying, even as he did so, "All right." He was spent. He knew it.

The went back down the corridor, turned, turned again. He had no idea where they were. They came to a flight of stairs.

"Rhodian!"

Crispin looked up. A man, lean and grey, striding with brisk, angular efficiency, came up to them. There was no one else in the hallway, or on the stairs above them.

"What are you doing here?" asked Pertennius of Eubulus.

He was really very tired. "Always turning up, aren't I?"

"Very much so."

"Paying my respects to the dead," he said.

Pertennius sniffed, audibly. "Wiser to pay them to the living," he said.

And smiled then, with his wide, thin mouth. Crispin tried and failed to recall the man ever smiling like that before. "Any tidings from outside?" Pertennius asked. "Have they cornered her yet? She can't run for long, of course."

It was unwise. In the extreme. Crispin knew it, even as he moved. It was, in truth, sheerest, self-destructive folly. But it seemed, in that moment, that he had found his anger after all, and in the finding-in the moment of locating it again-Crispin drew back his fist and sent it forward with all the force he had, smashing the secretary of the newly anointed Emperor full in the face, sending him flying backwards to sprawl on the marble floor, motionless.

There was a rigid, an almost intolerable silence.

"Your poor, poor hand," said the eunuch mildly. "Come, come let us tend to it." And he led the way up the stairs without a backwards glance at the unconscious man. Crispin went where he was taken.

They treated him kindly in the upper-level chambers where the Chancellor and his retinue resided. Many of them remembered with amusement his first evening here, half a year ago. He was bathed, as promised, given wine, was even shaved, though there was no jesting tonight. Someone played a stringed instrument. He realized that these men-all Gesius's-were facing very great changes themselves. If the Chancellor fell, which was almost a certainty, their own future became precarious. He said nothing. What could he say?

Eventually he slept, in a good bed and a quiet room they provided for him. And so spent one night of his life sleeping in the Attenine Palace of Sarantium not far from a living Emperor and a dead one. He dreamt of his wife, who was dead too, but also of another woman running and running, fleeing pursuit down an endless, exposed beach of smooth hard stones in too-bright moonlight with dolphins leaping offshore in a black, shining sea.

Behind Crispin and the eunuch, as the doors closed in the room with the draped walls and the golden tree and a blackened body in a shroud, an elderly man who had been expecting to meet his own death tonight, and had determined to greet it with dignity in this same room where he had prayed for three dead Emperors, was listening to a young woman speak-a woman he had forgotten tonight, as had they all. With every word spoken he seemed to feel his will reviving, his mind chasing and shaping contingencies.

By the time she stopped, vivid and fierce, looking at him closely, Gesius was entertaining the possibility of life beyond the sunrise after all.

For himself, if not for others.

And in that precise moment, before he could speak his reply, the small inner door to the Porphyry Room was opened without a knock and- as if drawn hither by something supernatural, preordained, in a night fraught with power and mystery-a tall man, broad-shouldered, golden-haired, came in alone.

Thrice-exalted Leontes, regent upon earth now under Jad of the Sun, newly proclaimed, pious as a cleric, come to pray by candlelight with a sun disk in his hands for his predecessor's soul as it journeyed. He stopped on the threshold and glanced briefly at the eunuch, whose presence was expected, and then more carefully at the woman standing by the bier, who was not expected at all.

Gesius prostrated himself on the floor.

Gisel of the Antae did not, or not immediately.

First, she smiled. And then she said (still standing, her father's daughter, courageous and direct as a blade), "Great lord, thanks be to Jad you have come. The god is merciful beyond our deserving. I am here to tell you that the west is yours now, lord, and lifelong freedom from the stain of this night's black and godless evil. If you but choose."

And Leontes, who had not been prepared for anything like this at all, said, after a long moment, "Explain yourself, my lady."

She looked back at him, unmoving, tall and fair, brilliant as a diamond. An explanation in herself, really, the Chancellor thought, keeping utterly silent, hardly breathing.

Only then did she kneel, gracefully, and lower her forehead to touch the marble floor in obeisance. And then, straightening, but still kneeling before the Emperor with jewels in her hair and all about her, she did explain.

When she was done, Leontes was silent for a long time.

At length, his magnificent features grave, he looked over at the Chancellor and asked one question: "You agree? Lecanus Daleinus could not have planned this himself from the isle?"

And Gesius, inwardly declaring to the god that he was unworthy of so much largess, said only, seeming calm and unruffled as dark water on a windless morning, "No, my great lord. Most surely he could not."

"And we know that Tertius is a coward and a fool."

It was not a question, this time. Neither the Chancellor nor the woman said a word. Gesius was finding it difficult to breathe, tried to hide the fact. He had a sense that there were scales hovering in the air of the room, above the burning candles.

Leontes turned to the body under silk on the bier. "They burned him. Sarantine Fire. We all know what that means."

They had known. The question had been whether Leontes would ever acknowledge it to himself. The answer, in Gesius's mind, had been negative, until the woman-this other tall, fair-haired woman with blue eyes- had come and altered everything. She had invited the Chancellor to speak to the new Emperor, had told him what should be said. He had been about to do so, having nothing to lose at all-and then the new Emperor had arrived, himself. The god was mysterious, unknowable, overwhelming. How could men not be humble?

Leontes, muscles rippling under his tunic and robe, crossed to the platform where Valerius II lay covered, toe to head, in purple silk. There was a sun disk under the cloth, held in his crossed hands, the Chancellor knew: he had placed it there, along with the coins on Valerius's eyes.

Leontes stood a moment between the tall candles, looking down, and then, with a swift, violent movement, pulled back the cloth from the dead man's body.

The woman looked quickly away from the horror revealed. So did the Chancellor, though he had seen it already tonight. Only the newly anointed Emperor of Sarantium, soldier of half a hundred battlefields, who had seen death in so many shapes and guises, endured looking down at this. It was as though, Gesius thought, staring grimly at the marble floor, he needed to.

At length, they heard Leontes draw the shroud back up, covering the dead again, in decency.

He stepped back. Drew a breath. A last weight settled, with finality, on the scales in the air.

Leontes said, in a voice that did not admit of the possibility of doubt in the world, of error, "It is a foul and black abomination in the eyes of Jad. He was the god's anointed, holy and great. Chancellor, you will have men find Tertius Dalemus, wherever he may be, and bind him in chains to be executed. And you will bring here to me now in this chamber the woman who was my wife, that she may look a last time upon this, her work tonight."

Who was my wife.

Gesius stood up, so quickly he became dizzy for a moment. He hurried out, through the same inner door by which the Emperor had entered. The world had changed, and was changing again. No man, however wise, could ever dare say he knew what the future held.

He closed the door behind himself.

Two people were left alone then, with the dead man and the candles and the golden tree in a room devised for the births and deaths of Emperors.

Gisel, still kneeling, looked up at the man before her. Neither of them spoke. There was something within her so overflowing, so intense, it was extremely near to pain.

He moved first, coming towards her. She rose only when he extended a hand to aid her and she closed her eyes when he kissed her palm.

"I will not kill her," he murmured.

"Of course not," she said.

And kept her eyes tightly, tightly closed, that what blazed in them in that moment might not be seen.

There were intricate matters of marriage and Imperial succession and a myriad of other details of law and faith that needed attending to. There were deaths to be achieved, with formal propriety. Steps taken (or not taken) at the outset of a reign could define it for a long time.

The august Chancellor Gesius, affirmed in his position that same night, dealt with all of these things, including the deaths.

It did take some little time to observe the necessary protocols. There was, therefore, no Imperial coronation in the Hippodrome until three days after. On that morning, bright and auspicious, in the kathisma, before the assembled, wildly cheering citizens of Sarantium-eighty thousand of them and more shouting at the top of their lungs-Leontes the Golden took the name Valerius III, in humble, respectful homage, and he crowned his golden Empress, Gisel, who did not change the name her own great father had given her when she was born in Varena, and so was recorded in history that way when the deeds of their reign together came to be chronicled.

In the Porphyry Room on the night this was set in motion, a door was opened and a man and woman kneeling in prayer before a covered body turned to see a second woman enter.

She stopped on the threshold and looked at them. Leontes stood up. Gisel did not, clasping her sun disk, her head cast down in what might have been thought to be humility.

"You asked for me? What is it?" said Styliane Daleina briskly to the man she had today brought to the Golden Throne. "I have much to do tonight."

"No, you don't," said Leontes, blunt and final as a judge. And was watching her as she registered-quickly, always quickly-the import of his tone.

If he had hoped (or feared) to see terror or fury in her eyes then he was disappointed (or relieved). He did see something snicker there. A different man might have known it for irony, a vast, black amusement, but the man who could have read her that way lay dead on the bier.

Gisel stood up. And of the three of them living, she was the one wearing the colours of royalty in this room. Styliane looked at her for a moment, and what might perhaps have been unexpected was the measure of her calm, approaching indifference.

She looked away from the other woman, as if dismissing her. She said to her husband, "You have discerned a way to claim Batiara. How clever of you. Did you do it all by yourself?" She glanced at Gisel, and the queen of the Antae lowered her eyes to the marble floor again, not in apprehension or intimidation, but so that exultation might be secret a little longer.

Leontes said, "I have discerned murder and impiety and will not live with them under Jad."

Styliane laughed.

Even here, even now, she could laugh. He looked at her. How could a soldier, who judged so much of the world in terms of courage, not admire this, whatever else he felt?

She said, "Ah. You will not live with them? You renounce the throne? The court? Will join an order of clerics? Perch on a rock in the mountains with your beard to your knees? I would never have imagined it! Jad's ways are mighty."

"They are," said Gisel, speaking for the first time, and the mood was changed, effortlessly. "They are, indeed."

Styliane looked at her again, and this time Gisel lifted her eyes and met that gaze. It was simply too difficult, after all, to be secret. She had sailed here utterly alone, fleeing death, without allies of any kind, those who loved her dying in her stead. And now…

The man did not speak. He was staring at the aristocratic wife Valerius had given him in great honour, for shining conquests in the field. He had summoned her here intending to pull back the cloth again from the dead man and force her to look upon the hideous ruin of him, but in that moment he understood that such gestures held no meaning, or not any meaning one might expect.

He had never really understood her in any case, the daughter of Flavius Daleinus.

He gestured to Gesius, standing behind her in the doorway. His wife saw his movement and she looked at him, and she smiled. She smiled. And then they took her away. She was blinded before dawn by men whose vocation that was, in an underground room from which no sounds could escape to trouble the world above.

Through the moonlit streets of the city, past troops of foot-soldiers and mounted men galloping, boarded-up taverns and cauponae and the unlit fronts of houses, past chapels dark and the banked fires of the bakeries, under scudding clouds and stars hidden and revealed, Rustem of Kerakek, the physician, was escorted late that night by men of the Urban Prefect's guard from the Blues" compound to the house near the walls he'd been given for his use.

They had offered him a bed in the compound, but he had been taught long ago that a physician did better to sleep away from where his patients were. It preserved dignity, detachment, privacy. Even bone-weary as he was (he had done three more procedures after cleaning and closing the wound of the boy stabbed from behind), Rustem followed the habits of training and, after turning to the east and praying in silence to Perun and the Lady that his efforts be found acceptable, had asked for the escort promised earlier that night. They'd walked him to the gates again and called for the guards. He'd promised to return in the morning.

The soldiers in the streets gave them no trouble as they went, though there was clearly an agitation among them and the night was raucous with their cries and hammerings upon doors and the horses passing were like drums on the cobblestones. Rustem, in his exhaustion, paid them no attention, moving in the midst of his escort, placing one foot in front of another, using his stick tonight, not just carrying it for effect, hardly seeing where he was going:

At length they came to his door. The door of Bonosus's small house by the walls. One of the guards knocked for him and it was opened quickly. They were probably expecting the soldiers, Rustem thought. The searchers. The steward was there, his expression concerned, and Rustem saw the girl, Elita, standing behind him, still awake at this hour. He stepped over the threshold, left foot first, mumbled a thanks to those who'd walked him here, nodded briefly to the steward and the girl, and went up the stairs to his room. There seemed to be many stairs tonight. He opened the door and went in, left foot first.

Inside, Alixana of Sarantium was sitting by the open window, looking down at the courtyard below.