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

CHAPTER XV

In the morning the eunuchs, almost invariably the first to hear tidings in the palaces, told Crispin what had happened in the night.

Their collective mood was entirely different from the subdued apprehension of the evening before. You could have called it exhilarated. A colour of sunrise, unlocked for, if one's mind worked that way. Crispin felt his dreams slipping away in the fierce, hard brightness of what they said, the sudden swirl of activity all around, like cloths unfurling.

He had one of them escort him back to the Porphyry Room. He didn't expect to be able to enter again, but the eunuch simply gestured and the guards opened the doors for them. There were changes here, too. Four of the Excubitors, garbed and helmed for ceremony, were stationed in the four corners of the room, rigidly at attention. Someone had laid flowers about the room, and the traditional plate of food for the dead soul's journey was in place on a side table. The plate was gold, with jewels set around the rim. Torches still burned near the raised bier that held the shrouded body.

It was very early still. No one else was here. The eunuch waited politely by the door. Crispin walked forward and knelt beside Valerius for a second time, making the sign of the sun disk. This time he spoke the Rites, offering a prayer for the journeying soul of the man who'd brought him here. He wished he had more to say, but his own thoughts were still tumbled and chaotic. He rose again and the eunuch took him outside and through the gardens to the Bronze Gates, and he was allowed to exit there into the Hippodrome Forum.

Signs of life here. A normal kind of life. He saw the Holy Fool, standing in his customary place, offering an entirely predictable litany of the follies of earthly wealth and power. Two food stalls were set up already, one selling grilled lamb on sticks, the other roasted chestnuts. People were buying from each of them. As Crispin watched, the yogurt vendor arrived and a juggler set up not far from the Holy Fool.

The beginnings of a new beginning. Slowly, almost hesitantly, as if the dance of the ordinary, the rhythm of it, had been forgotten in the violence of yesterday and needed to be learned again. There were no marching clusters of soldiers now, and Crispin knew that, men and women being what they were, the City would be itself again very soon, past events receding like the memory of a night when one has drunk too much and done things best forgotten.

He took a deep breath. The Bronze Gates were behind him, the equestrian statue of Valerius I rising to his right, the City itself unfurling before him like a banner. Everything possible, as if so often felt in the morning. The air was crisp, the sky bright. He smelled the roasting chestnuts, heard all those here being sternly admonished to forsake the pursuits of the world and turn to the holiness of Jad. Knew it would not happen. Could not. The world was what it was. He saw an apprentice approach two serving girls on their way to the well with pitchers and say something that made them laugh.

The hunt for Alixana had been called off. It was being proclaimed, the eunuchs had said. They still wanted to find her, but for a different reason, now. Leontes wished to honour her and honour the memory of Valerius. Newly anointed, a pious man, wishing to begin a reign in all proper ways. She hadn't reappeared, however. No one knew where she was. Crispin had a sudden memory from the night: that stony moonlit beach in his dream, silver and black the colours.

Gisel of Batiara was to be married to Leontes later today in a ceremony in the Attenine Palace, becoming Empress of Sarantium. The world had changed.

He remembered her in her own palace, back in the autumn with the leaves falling, a young queen sending him east with a message, offering herself to an Emperor far away. There had been wagers throughout Varena that summer and fall on how long she had to live before someone found her with poison or a blade.

She would be presented to the people in the Hippodrome tomorrow or the next day, and she and Leontes would be crowned. There was so much to be done, the eunuchs had told him, hurrying about, an impossible number of details to be attended to.

In a real way, he had caused this to happen. Crispin had been the one to bring her into the palace, passing through the streets of the City to the Porphyry Room through the wild night. It might-there was a chance it might-mean that Varena, Rhodias, the whole of Batiara would be saved now from assault. Valerius had been about to wage war; the fleet would have sailed any day now, carrying death with it. Leontes, with Gisel beside him, might do things differently. She offered him that chance. This was altogether good.

Styliane had been blinded in the night, they had told him.

She had been put aside by Leontes, their marriage formally renounced for the horror of her crime. You could do these things more quickly, the eunuchs said, if you were an Emperor. Her brother Tertius was dead, they told him, strangled in one of those rooms under the palace no one liked to talk about. His body would be displayed later today, hanging from the triple walls. Gesius was in charge of that, too. No, they'd said, when he asked, Styliane herself had not been reported killed. No one knew where she was.

Crispin looked up at the statue rising before him. A man on a horse, a martial sword, image of power and majesty, a dominant figure. But it was the women, he thought, who had shaped the story here, not the men with their armies and blades. He had no idea what to make of that. He wished he could dispel the heaviness, the tangled, confusing mire of all of this, blood and fury and memory.

The juggler was very good. He had five balls in the air, of different sizes, and a dagger in there with them, spinning and glinting in the light. Most people were ignoring him, hurrying past. It was early in the day, tasks and errands to be done. Morning in Sarantium was not a time for lingering.

Crispin looked over to his left at Valerius's Sanctuary, the dome rising serenely, almost disdainfully above it, above all of this. He gazed at it for a time, taking an almost physical pleasure in the grace of what Artibasos had achieved, and then he went there. He had his own work waiting to be done. A man needed to work.

Others, he was unsurprised to see, were of the same view. Silano and Sosio, the twins, were at work in the small, fenced, temporary yard beside the Sanctuary, tending to the quicklime for the setting bed at the ovens. One of them (he could never tell them apart) waved hesitantly and Crispin nodded back.

Inside, he looked up and saw that Vargos was already overhead on the scaffolding, laying the thinnest, fine layer where Crispin had been about to work the day before. His Inici friend from the Imperial Road had emerged, unexpectedly, as an entirely competent mosaic labourer. Another man who had sailed to Sarantium and changed his life. Vargos never said as much, but Crispin thought that for him-as for Pardos-a good portion of his pleasure in this work came from piety, from working in a place of the god. Neither man would achieve as much satisfaction, Crispin thought, doing private commissions for dining rooms or bedchambers.

Pardos was also overhead, on his own scaffolding, doing the wall design Crispin had assigned him above the double row of arches along the eastern side of the space beneath the dome. Two of the other guild artisans on the team he'd assembled were also here and at work.

Artibasos would be around somewhere as well, though his own labours were essentially done. Valerius's Sanctuary was complete in its execution. It was, in fact, ready for him: to house the ruined body. Only the mosaics and the altars and whatever tomb or memorial they now needed remained to be achieved. Then the clerics would come in and they would hang the sun disks in their proper locations and consecrate this as a holy place.

Crispin gazed at what he had journeyed here to achieve, and it seemed to him as if, in some deep, ultimately inexplicable fashion, just to look was enough to steady him. He felt the images of the day before recede- Lecanus Daleinus in his hut, men dying in that clearing, Alixana dropping her cloak on the beach, the screaming in the streets and the burning fires, Gisel of the Antae in her carried litter, eyes alight as they went through the dark, and then in a purple-draped room where Valerius lay dead-all the whirling visions fell away, leaving him gazing up at what he had made here. The apex of what he could do, being a fallible mortal under Jad.

You had to live, Crispin thought, in order to have anything to say about living, but you needed to find a way to withdraw to accomplish that saying. A scaffolding overhead, he thought, was as good a place as any for that and better, perhaps, than most.

He went forward, surrounded and eased by the familiar sounds of work, thinking about his girls now, reclaiming their faces, which he would try to render today, next to Ilandra and not far from where Lmon lay on the grass.

But before he reached the ladder, before he began to climb to his place above the world, someone spoke from behind one of the vast pillars.

Crispin turned quickly, knowing the voice. And then he knelt, and lowered his head to touch the perfect marble floor.

One knelt before Emperors in Sarantium.

"Rise, artisan," said Leontes, in the brisk tone of a soldier. "We owe you greatly, it seems, for services last night."

Crispin stood up slowly and looked at the other man. All around the Sanctuary the noises were coming to a halt. The others were watching them, had now seen who was here. Leontes wore boots and a dark green tunic with a leather belt. His cloak was pinned at his shoulder with a golden ornament, but the effect was unassuming. Another man at work. Behind the Emperor, Crispin saw a cleric he vaguely recognized, and a secretary he knew very well. Pertennius had a bruised and swollen jaw. His eyes were icy cold as he looked at Crispin. Not surprisingly.

Crispin didn't care.

He said, "The Emperor is gracious beyond my deserving. I simply tried to assist my queen in her desire to pay homage to the dead. What came of it has nothing to do with me, my lord. It would be a presumption to claim otherwise."

Leontes shook his head. "What came of it would not have happened without you. The presumption is to pretend otherwise. Do you always deny your own role in events?"

"I deny that I had any intended role in… events. If people make use of me it is a price I pay to have the chance to do my work." He wasn't sure why he was saying this.

Leontes looked at him. Crispin was remembering another conversation with this man, amid the steam of a bathhouse half a year ago, both of them naked under sheets. What we build-even the Emperor's Sanctuary-we hold precariously and must defend. A man had come in to kill Crispin that day.

The Emperor said, "And was this true yesterday morning, as well? When you went to the isle?"

They knew about that. Of course they did. It was hardly likely to have been kept secret. Alixana had warned him.

Crispin met the other man's blue gaze. "It is exactly the same, my lord. The Empress Alixana asked me to accompany her."

"Why?"

He didn't think they would do anything to him now. He wasn't certain (how could one be?), but he didn't think so. He said, "She wished to show me dolphins in the sea."

"Why?" Blunt and assured. Crispin remembered that immense self-confidence. A man never defeated in the field, they said.

"I do not know, my lord. Other things happened, it was never explained."

A lie. To Jad's anointed Emperor. He would lie for her, however. Dolphins were a heresy. He would not be the one to betray her. She was gone, had not reappeared. Would have no power at all now even if she did trust them and come from hiding. Valerius was dead, she might never be seen again. But he would not, he would not betray her. A small thing, really, but in another way it wasn't. A man lived with his words and actions.

"What other things? What happened on the isle?"

This he could answer, though he didn't know why she had wanted him to see Lecanus Daleinus and hear her pretend to be his sister.

"I saw the… prisoner there. We were on the isle, elsewhere, when he escaped."

"And then?"

"As you must know, my lord, there was an attempt on her life. It was… repelled by the Excubitors. The Empress left us then and made her own way back to Sarantium."

"Why so?"

Some men asked questions when they knew the answers. Leontes seemed to be one of those. Crispin said, "They had tried to kill her, my lord. Daleinus had escaped. She was of the belief that an assassination plot might be unfolding."

Leontes nodded. "It was, of course."

"Yes, my lord," Crispin said.

"The participants have been punished."

"Yes, my lord."

One of the participants, the leader, had been this man's wife, golden as he was. He was Emperor of Sarantium now, because of her plot. Styliane. A child when it had all begun, the burning that had begotten a burning. Crispin had lain with her in a tangled, desperate darkness so little time ago. Remember this room. Whatever else I do. The words came to him again. He suspected he could recall every word she'd ever spoken to him, if he tried. She was in a different kind of darkness now, if she was alive. He didn't ask. He didn't dare ask.

There was a silence. Behind the Emperor, the cleric cleared his throat, and Crispin suddenly recollected him: the adviser to the Eastern Patriarch. A fussy, officious man. They had met when Crispin had first submitted the sketches for the dome.

"My secretary… has complained of you," the Emperor said, looking briefly back over his shoulder. A hint of amusement in his voice, almost a smile. A minor disagreement among the troops.

"He has cause," Crispin said mildly. "I struck him a blow last night. An unworthy action."

That much was true. He could say that much.

Leontes made a dismissive movement with one hand. "I'm sure Pertennius will accept that apology. Everyone was under great strain yesterday. I… felt it myself, I must say. A terrible day and night. The Emperor Valerius was like… an older brother to me." He looked Crispin in the eye.

"Yes, my lord." Crispin lowered his gaze.

There was another brief silence. "Queen Gisel has requested your presence in the palace this afternoon. She would like one of her countrymen present when we wed, and given your role-denied though it may be- in the events of last night, you are easily the most appropriate witness from Batiara."

"I am honoured," Crispin said. He should have been, but there was, still, this slow, deep coil of rage within him. He couldn't define it or place it, but it was there. Everything was so brutally entangled here. He said, "The more so since the thrice-exalted Emperor came to extend the invitation himself"

A flirting with insolence. His anger had gotten him in trouble before.

Leontes smiled, however. The brilliant, remembered smile. "I fear I have rather too many affairs to attend to, to have come only for that, artisan. No. No, I wanted to see this Sanctuary and the dome here. I've not been inside before."

Few people had, and the Supreme Strategos would have been an unlikely man to petition for an early glimpse at architecture or mosaic work. This had been Valerius's dream, and Artibasos's, and it had become Crispin's.

The cleric, behind Leontes, was looking up. The Emperor did the same.

Crispin said, "I should be honoured to walk you about, my lord, though Artibasos-who will be somewhere in here-is far better able to guide you."

"Not necessary," said Leontes. Brisk, businesslike. "I can observe for myself what is currently done, and Pertennius and Maximius both saw the original drawings, I understand."

Crispin felt, for the first time, a faint thrill of fear. Tried to master it. Said, "Then, if my guidance is not needed, and I am requested for later in the day, might I have the Emperor's leave to withdraw to my labours? The setting bed for today's section has just been laid for me up above. It will dry if I delay over-long."

Leontes returned his gaze from overhead. And Crispin saw a flicker of something that might-just-have been called sympathy in the man's face.

The Emperor said, "I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't go up, were I you, artisan."

Simple words, one could even say they had been gently spoken.

It was possible for the world, the sensual evidence of it-sounds, smells, texture, sight-to recede far away, to dwindle down, as if perceived through a keyhole, to one single thing.

All else fell away. The keyhole showed the face of Leontes.

"Why so, my lord?" Crispin said.

He heard his own voice, on the words, crack a little. But he knew. Before the other man replied, he finally understood why these three had come, what was happening, and he cried out then, in silence, within his heart, as at another death.

I have been a better friend than you know. I did tell you not to become attached to any work on that dome.

Styliane. Had said that. The very first time she'd been waiting in his room, and then again, again, that night in her own chamber two weeks ago. A warning. Twice. He hadn't heard it, or heeded.

But what could he have done? Being what he was?

And so Crispin, standing under Artibasos's dome in the Great Sanctuary, heard Leontes, Emperor of Sarantium, Jad's regent upon earth, the god's beloved, say quietly, "The Sanctuary is to be holy, truly so, but these decorations are not, Rhodian. It is not proper for the pious to render or worship images of the god or show mortal figures in a holy place." The voice calm, confident, absolute. "They will come down, here and elsewhere in the lands we rule."

The Emperor paused, tall and golden, handsome as a figure from legend. His voice became mild, almost kindly. "It is difficult to see one's work undone, come to naught. It has happened to me many times. Peace treaties and such. I am sorry if this is unpleasant for you."

Unpleasant.

An unpleasantness was a cart rumbling through the street below one's bedroom too early in the morning. It was water in one's boots on winter roads, a chest cough on a cold day, a bitter wind finding a chink in walls; it was sour wine, stringy meat, a tedious sermon in chapel, a ceremony running long in summer heat.

Unpleasantness was not the plague and burying children, it was not Sarantine Fire, not the Day of the Dead, or the zubir of the Aldwood appearing out of fog with blood dripping from its horns, it was not… this. It was not this.

Crispin looked up, away from the men before him. Saw Jad, saw Ilandra, triple-walled Sarantium, fallen Rhodias, the wood, the world as he knew it and could bring it forth. They will come down.

This was not an unpleasantness. This was death.

He looked back at those standing before him. He must have looked quite ghastly in that moment, he realized after, for even the cleric seemed alarmed, and Pertenmus's newly smug expression altered somewhat. Leontes himself added quickly, "You understand, Rhodian, that you are accused of no impiety at all. That would be unjust and we will not be unjust. You acted in accord with faith as it was understood… before. Understandings may change, but we will not visit consequences on those who proceeded faithfully in… good faith…"

He trailed off.

It was astonishingly difficult to speak. Crispin tried. He opened his mouth, but before he could even try to shape words another voice was heard.

"Are you barbarians? Are you entirely mad? Do you even know what you are saying? Can someone be so ignorant? You lump-witted military imbecile!"

Imbecile. Someone used to use that word. But this time it was not an alchemist's stolen bird-soul addressing Crispin. It was a small, rumpled, barefoot architect, exploding from the shadows, his hair in alarming disarray, his voice high, strident, bristling with rage, carrying through the Sanctuary, and he was addressing the Emperor of Sarantium.

"Artibasos, no! Stop!" Crispin rasped, finding his voice. They would kill the little man for this. Too many people had heard. This was the Emperor.

"I will not stop. This is an abomination, an act of evil! Barbarians do this, not Sarantines! Will you destroy this glory? Leave the Sanctuary naked?"

"There is no fault found with the building itself," Leontes said. He was exerting real self-restraint, Crispin realized, but the celebrated blue eyes were flinty now.

"How very good of you to say so." Artibasos was out of control, his arms waving like windmills. "Have you any idea, can you have any idea of what this man has achieved? No fault? No fault? Shall I tell you how grievous a fault there will be if the dome and walls are stripped?"

The Emperor looked down at him, still controlling himself. "There is no suggestion of that. Proper doctrine allows them to be decorated… with… 1 don't care… flowers, fruit, even birds and animals."

"Ah! There is a solution! Of course! The Emperor's wisdom is vast!" The architect was still enraged, wild. "You will turn a holy place decorated with a vision and grandeur that honours the god and exalts the visitor into a place covered with… vegetation and little rabbits? An aviary? A fruit storehouse? By the god! How pious, my lord!"

"Curb your tongue, man!" snapped the cleric.

Leontes himself said nothing for a long moment. And under that silent gaze the little man finally stopped. His furiously waving arms fell to his sides. He did not back down, though. Staring at his Emperor, he drew himself up. Crispin held his breath.

"It would be best," Leontes murmured, speaking through thin lips, his own colour high, "if your friends removed you now from us, architect. You have our permission to depart. We do not wish to begin our reign by appearing harsh in our treatment of those who have done service, but this manner before your Imperial lord demands you be branded or executed."

"Then kill me! I do not wish to live to see-"

'Stop!" Crispin cried. Leontes would give the order, he knew it.

He looked around frantically and saw, with desperate relief, that Vargos had come down from the scaffolding. He nodded urgently at the big man and Vargos came quickly forward. He bowed. Then, expressionlessly, without warning, he simply picked up the small architect, threw him over his shoulder, and carried the struggling, loudly protesting Artibasos off into the dimness of the Sanctuary.

Sound carried extremely well in this space-the building had been brilliantly designed. They could hear the architect cursing and shouting for a long time. Then a door was opened and closed, in the shadows of some recess, and there was silence. No one moved. Morning sunlight fell through high windows.

Crispin was remembering the bathhouse again. His first conversation with this man, in the drifting steam. He ought to have known, he thought. Ought to have been prepared for this. He'd been warned by Styliane and even by Leontes himself that afternoon, half a year ago: I'm interested in your views on images of the god.

"As I told you, we attach no consequences to those things done before our time." The Emperor was explaining again. "But there have been… lapses in the true faith, failures of proper observance. Images of the god are not to be created. Jad is ineffable and mysterious, entirely beyond our grasp. For a mortal man to dare picture the god behind the sun is a heresy. And to exalt mortal men in a holy place is arrogant presumption. It always has been, but those… before us simply did not understand it."

They will come down, here and elsewhere, in the lands we rule.

"You are… changing our faith, my lord."

It was, barely, possible to shape words.

"An error, artisan. We change nothing. With the wisdom of the Eastern Patriarch and his advisers to guide us-and we expect the Patriarch in Rhodias to agree-we will restore a proper understanding. We must worship Jad, not an image of the god. Otherwise we are no better than the pagans before us with their offerings to statues in the temples."

"No one… worships this image above us, my lord. They are only made mindful of the power and majesty of the god."

"You would instruct us in matters of faith, Rhodian?" It was the dark-bearded cleric this time. The Patriarch's assistant.

It was all without meaning, these words. One could argue against this as easily as one fought against plague. It was as final. The heart could cry. There was nothing at all to be done.

Or, almost nothing.

Martinian used to say that there was always some kind of choice. And here, now, one might yet try to do a single thing. Crispin drew a deep breath, for this would go against everything in his nature: pride and rage, the deep sense of himself as above all such pleading. But there was something too large at stake now.

He swallowed hard and said, ignoring the cleric, looking directly at Leontes, "My lord Emperor, you were good enough to say you… owed me greatly, for services?"

Leontes returned his gaze. His heightened colour was receding. "I did."

"Then I have a request, my lord." The heart could cry. He kept his eyes on the man in front of him. If he looked overhead he was afraid he would shame himself and weep.

Leontes's expression was benign. A man accustomed to dealing with requests. He lifted a hand. "Artisan, do not ask for this to be saved… it cannot be."

Crispin nodded. He knew. He knew. He would not look up above.

He shook his head. "It is… something else."

"Then ask," the Emperor said, with an expansive gesture. "We are aware of your services to our beloved predecessor, and that you have performed honourably by your own understanding."

By his own understanding.

Crispin said, speaking slowly, "There is a chapel of the Sleepless Ones, in Sauradia, on the Imperial Road. Not far from the eastern military camp." He heard his own voice as if from far away. Carefully, carefully, he did not look overhead.

"I know it," said the man who had commanded armies there.

Crispin swallowed again. Control. It was necessary to keep one's control. "It is a small chapel, inhabited by holy men of great piety. There is…" He took a breath. "There is a… decoration there, on the dome, a rendering of Jad done long ago by artisans of a piety as… as they understood it… almost unimaginable."

"I believe I have seen it." Leontes was frowning.

"It is… it is falling down, my lord. They were gifted and devout beyond words, but their… understanding of… technique was imperfect, so long ago."

"And so?"

"And so I… my request of you, thrice-exalted lord, is that this image of the god be allowed to fall down in its own time. That the holy men who live there in peace and offer their night-long prayers for all of us, and travellers on the road, not be forced to see their chapel dome stripped bare."

The cleric quickly began to speak, but Leontes held up a hand. Pertennius of Eubulus had said nothing the entire time, Crispin realized. He seldom did. An observer, a chronicler of wars and buildings. Crispin knew what else the man chronicled. He wished he'd hit him harder the night before. He wished he'd killed him, in fact.

"It is falling, this… rendering?" The Emperor's voice was precise.

"Piece by piece," Crispin said. "They know it, the holy ones. It grieves them, but they see it as the will of the god. Perhaps… it is, my lord." He could hate himself for saying that last, but he wanted this to happen. He needed it to happen. He did not speak of Pardos and a winter spent in restoration. It was not a lie, any of what he said.

"Perhaps it is," the Emperor agreed, nodding his head. "The will of Jad. A sign for all of us of the virtue of what we are doing now." He looked back at the cleric, who dutifully nodded as well.

Crispin lowered his eyes. Looked at the floor. Waited.

"This is your request of us?"

"It is, my lord."

"Then it shall be so." The soldier's voice, crisp with command. "Pertennius, you will have documents prepared and filed appropriately. One to be delivered above our own seal for the clerics there to keep in their possession. The decoration in that chapel shall be permitted to come down by itself, as a holy sign of the error of all such things. And you will record it as such in your chronicle of our reign."

Crispin looked up.

He was gazing at the Emperor of Sarantium, golden and magnificent-looking very much the way the god of the sun was rendered in the west, in fact-but he was really seeing the image of Jad in that chapel by the road in the wilderness, the god pale and dark, suffering and maimed in the terrible defence of his children.

"Thank you, my lord," he said.

He looked upwards then, after all. Despite everything. Couldn't help himself. A death. Another death. She had warned him. Styliane. He looked, but did not weep. He had wept for Ilandra. For the girls.

And thinking so, he realized that there was one last small thing-terribly small, a gesture, no more-that he could still do, after all.

He cleared his throat. "Have I leave to withdraw, my lord?"

Leontes nodded. "You have. You do understand we are very well disposed towards you, Caius Crispus?"

Using Crispin's name, even. Crispin nodded. "I am honoured, my lord." He bowed formally.

And then he turned and walked to the scaffolding, which was not far away.

"What are you doing?" It was Pertennius, as Crispin reached the ladder and placed a foot upon it.

Crispin didn't turn around.

"I have work to do. Up there." His daughters. Today's task, memory and craft and light.

"They will only bring it down!" The secretary's voice was uncomprehending.

Crispin did turn then, to look back over his shoulder. They were staring at him, the three of them, so were the others in the Sanctuary.

He said, "I understand. But they will have to do that. Bring it down. I will make what I make, in this civilized, holy place. Others will have to give the orders to destroy. As barbarians destroyed Rhodias… since it could not defend itself."

He was looking at the Emperor, who had spoken to him of exactly this in the wet, drifting steam half a year before.

He could see that Leontes, too, remembered. The Emperor, who was not Valerius, not at all Valerius, but who had his own intelligence, said quietly, "You will waste your labour?"

And Crispin said, as softly, "It is not waste," and turned again and began to climb, as he had so many times, up to the scaffolding and the dome.

On the way up, before he reached the place where the setting bed for the tesserae had been smoothly laid and awaited him, he realized something else.

It wasn't a waste, there was meaning to this, as much as he could bring to bear on any single action in his life, but it was an ending.

Another journey lay ahead, home at the end of it.

It was time to leave.

Fotius the sandalmaker, in his very best blue tunic, was telling everyone who would listen about the events that had occurred in this same place all those years ago when Apius died and the first Valerius came to the Golden Throne.

There had been a murder then, too, he said sagely, and he, Fotius, had seen a ghost on his way to the Hippodrome that morning, presaging it. Just as he, Fotius, had seen another one three days ago, in broad daylight, crouched on top of a colonnade, on the very morning the Emperor had been so foully slain by the Daleinoi.

There was more, he added, and he did have listeners, which was always gratifying. They were waiting for the Mandator to appear in the kathisma-the Patriarch would follow, and then the officials of the court and then those who were to be crowned today. It would be impossible to talk then, of course, with the noise of better than eighty thousand people.

In those days, Fotius expounded to some of the younger craftsmen in the Blues" section, there had been a corrupt, evil attempt to subvert the will of the people right here in the Hippodrome-and it had been engineered by the Daleinoi back then, too! And what's more, one of those working to achieve that had been the very same Lysippus the Calysian who had just been part of the murder in the palace!

And it had been Fotius himself, the sandalmaker declared proudly, who had unmasked the slimy Calysian as an imposter when he'd tried to pretend he was a follower of the Blues and incite the faction to acclaim Flavius Daleinus down there on the sands.

He pointed to the exact spot. He remembered it well. Thirteen, fourteen years, and as yesterday. As yesterday.

Everything came around in circles, he said piously, making the sign of the disk. Just as the sun rose and then set and then rose again, so did the patterns and fates of mortal men. Evil would be found out. (He had heard his chapel's cleric say all this, just a week ago.) Flavius Daleinus had paid for his sins in fire that day long ago, and now his children and the Calysian had also paid.

But, someone objected, why did Valerius II die of the same fire, if it was all a matter of justice?

Fotius looked scornfully at the young man, a clothmaker. Would you, he said, seek to understand the ways of the god?

Not really, the clothmaker said. Only those of men here in the City. If the Calysian had been part of the Daleinus conspiracy to claim the throne back then, why did he end up as Quaestor of Revenue for Valerius I and then his nephew? For both of them? He wasn't exiled till we demanded it, the man said, as others turned to him. Remember? Less than three years ago.

A cheap debating trick, Fotius thought indignantly. It wasn't as if anyone would forget. Thirty thousand people had died.

Some people, Fotius retorted airily, had the most limited understanding of affairs in the court. He didn't have enough time today to educate the young. There were weighty events unfolding. Didn't the clothmaker know that the Bassanids were across the border in the north?

Well, yes, the man said, everyone knew that. But what did that have to do with Lysippus the-

Trumpets blew.

What followed was performed with rituals of ceremony and precedent laid down in the days of Saranios and revised only marginally in hundreds of years, for what were rituals if they changed?

An Emperor was crowned by a Patriarch, and then an Empress was crowned by the Emperor himself. The two crowns, and the Imperial sceptre and ring, were those of Saranios and his own Empress, brought east from Rhodias and used only on these occasions, guarded in the Attenine Palace at all other times.

The Patriarch blessed the two anointed ones with oil and incense and sea water, and then he gave his blessing to the multitude gathered to bear witness. The principal dignitaries of the court presented themselves- garbed in splendour-before the Emperor and Empress and made the triple obeisance in full view of the people. An aged representative of the Senate presented the new Emperor with the Seal of the City and golden keys to the triple walls. (The Master of the Senate had been graciously excused from appearing today. It seemed there had been a sudden death in his own family, and a burial only the day before.)

There were chants, religious and then secular, for the factions were very much a part of this, and their Accredited Musicians led the Blues and Greens in ritual acclamations, crying the names of Valerius III and the Empress Gisel in that thronged space where the names cried were most often those of horses and the men who rode in chariots behind them. No dancing followed, no racing, no entertainment at all: an Emperor had been assassinated, his body would be laid to rest soon in the Great Sanctuary he'd ordered built after the last one had burned.

There was universal approval of the name Leontes had chosen for his own Imperial title, in homage to his patron and predecessor. A genuine sense of mystery and wonder attached to the fact that his new bride was already a queen. The women in the stands seemed to like that. A romance, and royalty.

Nothing was said (or if something was said, it was done very quietly) about the Emperor's put-aside wife or the speed of this remarriage. The Daleinoi had once more proven themselves treacherous beyond description. No Emperor would wish to ascend the Golden Throne of Saranios tainted before Jad and the people by the stain of a murderous spouse.

They said he had let her live.

More justice than she deserved, was the general view in the Hippodrome. Both brothers were dead, however, and the loathed Calysian. One wouldn't ever want to make the mistake of thinking that Leontes- Valerius III-was soft in any way.

The number of armed soldiers present here was evidence of that.

And so, too, was the Mandator's first public announcement after the Investiture Ceremony was done. His words were caught and relayed by official speakers through the vast stands, and their import was clear, and exhilarating.

It seemed their new Emperor would not be lingering long among them. The Bassanid army was in Calysium, had overrun Asen (again) and was said to be marching and riding towards Eubulus even now.

The Emperor, who had been their Supreme Strategos four days before, was disinclined to indulge them in this.

He would lead the assembled armies of Sarantium himself. Not overseas to Rhodias, but north and east. Not over the dangerous, dark waters but up in spring weather along the wide, smoothly paved Imperial Road to deal with the cowardly, truce-breaking soldiers of King Shirvan. An Emperor in the field himself! It had been a very long time. Valerius III, the sword of Sarantium, the sword of holy Jad. There was something awesome and thrilling in just thinking about it.

The easterners had thought to take advantage of Leontes and the army sailing west, had vilely breached the Eternal Peace they'd sworn by their own pagan gods to keep. They would learn the dimensions of their mistake, the Mandator proclaimed, his words picked up and echoed through the Hippodrome.

Eubulus would be defended, the Bassanids driven back across the border. And more. Let the King of Kings defend Mihrbor now, the Mandator cried. Let him try to defend it against what Sarantium would bring against him. The time was done when they would pay monies to Kabadh to buy a peace. Let Shirvan sue for mercy. Let him pray to his gods. Leontes the Golden, who was now an Emperor, was coming after him.

The noise that greeted this was loud enough, some thought, to reach the very sky and the god behind the bright sun overhead.

As for Batiara, the Mandator continued, when the shouting subsided enough for his voice to be heard and relayed again, look who was Empress of Sarantium now. Look who might deal with Rhodias and Varena, which were her own! This Empress had a crown of her own and had brought it here to them, was daughter of a king, a queen in her own name. The citizens of Sarantium could believe that Rhodias and the west might be theirs, after all, with no brave soldiers dying on distant western battlefields, or on the trackless seas.

The acclamations that accompanied this were as loud as the ones before, and-the perceptive noted-they were led by the aforementioned soldiers this time.

It was a glittering day, and so most of the histories would describe it. The weather mild, the god's sun shining upon them all. The Emperor magnificent, the new Empress as golden as he, tall for her sex, utterly regal in her bearing and blood.

There were always fears and doubts in a time of change. The half-world might creep closer, ghosts and daemons be seen, when the great of the world died and their souls departed, but who could be truly fearful, standing in the Hippodrome in sunshine, looking at these two?

One lamented a dead Emperor, and might wonder about the still-absent figure of his Empress, the one who had been a dancer in her day, born right here in the Hippodrome (not like the new Empress, not like her at all). One might pause to consider the colossal fall of the Daleinoi and the sudden shifting of a theatre of war… but in the stands that day there was an undeniable feeling of uplift, of exuberance, something new beginning, and there was nothing compelled or contrived about the approval that resounded.

Then the Mandator declared that the racing season would resume as soon as the period of mourning was over and paused to announce that Scortius of the Blues was healing and well, and that Astorgus, the Blues" factionarius, and Crescens of the Greens had agreed to humbly accept judicial admonishment and had made peace with each other. And as he gestured, those two well-known men stood forward, stepping up upon raised platforms in their factions" sections to be seen. They made the charioteers" open-palmed gesture towards each other and then turned and bowed together towards the kathisma, and eighty thousand people went wild. The holy Patriarch took pains to keep his countenance inscrutable behind his white beard as the crowd celebrated its chariots and horses and the ceremony came to a close.

Nothing at all was said that afternoon, by the Mandator or anyone else, about changes in the doctrines of Jad regarding depictions of the god himself in holy places and elsewhere.

There would be time to present such complex matters to the people, carefully, in the sanctuaries and chapels. The Hippodrome that day was not a place for nuances and subtleties of faith. Timing, as any good general knew, was the essence of a campaign.

Valerius III, wearing the full weight of the garments of Imperial power, stood up easily, as if they were no burden in the least, and saluted his people as they saluted him. Then he turned and extended a hand to his Empress and they walked together from the kathisma through the door at the back and out of sight. The cheering did not stop.

All was well. All would be well, one might truly believe. Fotius accepted a swift, entirely unexpected embrace from the young clothmaker, and returned it, then they both turned to hug others beside them in the stands, all of them shouting the Emperor's name in the clear, bright light.

Over the course of an exhausting ten days in the Blues" compound, Rustem of Kerakek had developed a hypothesis about Sarantines and their physicians. In essence, the instructions of the doctors were accepted or ignored as the patients saw fit.

It was entirely otherwise in Bassania. At home, the doctor was at risk when he took on the care of a patient. By speaking the formal words of acceptance, a physician placed his own worldly goods and even his life at hazard. If the sick person failed to follow precisely the doctor's instructions, this commitment, this hazarding, was negated.

Here, doctors risked nothing but the possibility of a poor reputation, and based on what he'd seen here (in an admittedly short while), Rustem didn't think that constituted much of a concern at all. None of the physicians he'd observed at work seemed to know much more than an inadequately digested muddle of Galinus and Merovius, supplemented by vastly too much letting of blood and their own cobbled-together medications, most of which were noxious in some degree or other.

Given this, it made sense that patients would form their own decisions about whether to heed their physicians or not.

Rustem wasn't used to it, and wasn't inclined to accept it.

As an example, as the prime example, from the outset he had firmly instructed the attendants caring for Scortius the charioteer that visitors were limited to one in the morning and one after midday, and only for short periods and with no wine at all to be brought or consumed. He had, as a precaution, relayed these directives to Strumosus (since at least some of the wine came from the casks by the kitchen) and to Astorgus, the factionarius. The latter was soberly attentive and had promised to do his best to enforce compliance. He had, Rustem knew, a profoundly vested interest in the recovery of the invalid charioteer.

They all did.

The problem was that the patient didn't see himself as an invalid, or requiring any extremes of care, even after almost dying twice in a short while. A man who would slip from his room out a window and down a tree and over a wall and walk the length of the city to race horses in the Hippodrome with broken ribs and an unhealed wound was unlikely (Rustem had to concede) to take kindly to a limitation on wine or the number of visitors, particularly female, who attended at his bedside.

At least he had stayed in the bed, Astorgus had pointed out wryly, and mostly by himself. There had been reports of night-time activities inconsistent with a healing regimen.

Rustem, still caught up in the bewildering intensity of the past few days and the arrival of his family, found it more difficult than usual to project the proper outrage and authority. He was acutely aware, among other things, that if he or his women or children left this guarded compound they were at grave risk of assault in the streets. Bassanids here, since the news of the border attack, and then the departure of the Sarantine army north, led by the Emperor himself, were in a precarious circumstance, and there had been killings. His own decision not to return home was reinforced by the painful understanding that the King of Kings would have ordered the northern attack while fully aware that this would be a consequence for those of his people in the west. Including the man who had saved his own life.

Rustem owed a great deal to the Blues" faction, and he knew it.

Not that he'd been lax in his recompense. He'd treated the wounded of the riot here on a steady, day-long basis, attending upon them at night, awakened by messengers as needed. He was seriously short of sleep, but knew he could last this way for some time yet.

He took a particular pleasure in the recovery of the young fellow from the kitchen. There had been early and grave signs of infection there, and Rustem had spent one full night awake and very busy by the young man's bedside when the wound changed colour and fever rose. The chef, Strumosus, had come in and out several times, watching in silence, and the other kitchen worker, Rasic, had actually made himself a bed on the floor of the hallway outside. And then, in the midst of the crisis night for the wounded man, Shaski had also appeared. He had gotten out of his bed without either of his mothers knowing and had come, barefoot, to bring his father a drink in the middle of the night knowing, somehow, exactly where Rustem was. Somehow. Rustem had-unspeaking, at first-accepted the drink and brushed the child's head with a gentle hand and told him to go back to his room, that everything was all right.

Shaski had gone sleepily to bed without saying or doing anything more, as those nearby observed the boy's arrival and departure with expressions that Rustem suspected he and his family would have to grow accustomed to. It was one of the reasons he was taking them all away.

The young man, Kyros, had his fever break towards morning and the wound progressed normally after that. The greatest risk he endured was that the idiot doctor, Ampliarus, might slip into the room unnoticed and pursue his mad fixation with bleeding those already wounded.

Rustem had been present, and undeniably amused (though he'd tried to conceal it, of course), when Kyros regained consciousness just before dawn. Rasic, the friend, had been sitting by the bed then, and when the sick man opened his eyes, the other one let out a cry that brought others hurrying into the room, forcing Rustem to order all of them out in his sternest manner.

Rasic, evidently seeing this order as applying to those other than himself, remained, and went on to tell the patient what Strumosus had said about him outside the gates while Kyros was unconscious, and thought to be dead. Strumosus entered in the midst of this recitation. Paused, briefly, in the doorway.

"He's lying, as usual," the little chef said peremptorily, coming into the room as Rasic stopped, briefly fearful, then grinning. "The way he lies about girls. I wish you would all keep a firmer grip on the world as Jad made it, not the one in your dreams. Kyros might have some excuse, with whatever potions our Bassanid has been pushing down his throat, but Rasic has no justification whatever. A genius? This lad? My own legacy? I am insulted by the thought! Does any of that make the least sense to you, Kyros?"

The crippled boy, pale, but clearly lucid, shook his head slightly on the pillow, but he was smiling, and then Strumosus was, as well.

"Really!" the little chef said. "The idea's absurd. If I have a legacy it is almost certainly going to be my fish sauce."

"Of course it is," Kyros whispered. He was still smiling. So was Rasic, flashing crooked teeth. So was Strumosus.

"Get some rest, lad," the chef said. "We'll all be here when you awake. Come Rasic, you too. Go to bed. You'll work a triple shift tomorrow, or something."

There were times, Rustem thought, when his profession offered great rewards.

Then there were moments when it felt as if it would be less of a struggle to walk straight into the teeth of a sandstorm.

Scortius could make him feel like that. As now, for example. Rustem walked into the man's sick-room to change his dressing (every third day now) and found four chariot-racers sitting and standing about, and not one, not two, but three dancers in further attendance, with one of them- clad in an entirely inadequate fashion-offering a performance not at all calculated to assist a recovering patient in keeping a calm, unexcited demeanour.

And there was wine. And, Rustem noticed, belatedly, in the crowded room, his son Shaski was there, sitting on the lap of a fourth dancer in the corner, watching it all and laughing.

"Hello, Papa!" his son said, not in the least disconcerted, as Rustem stood in the doorway and glared in an all-inclusive fashion around the room.

"Oh, dear. He's upset. Everyone, out!" Scortius said from the bed. He handed his wine cup to one of the women. "Take this. Someone take the boy to his mother. Don't forget your clothes, Taleira. The doctor's working very hard for all of us and we don't want him taxed unduly. We want him to stay well, don't we?"

There was laughter and a flurry of movement. The man in the bed grinned. A wretched patient, in every possible way. But Rustem had seen what he'd done on the Hippodrome sands at the beginning of the week before, and had known better than anyone else the will that had been required, and it was impossible to deny the admiration he felt. He didn't want to deny it, actually.

Besides which, the people were going out.

"Shirin, stay, if you will. I have a question or two. Doctor, is it all right if one friend remains? This is a visit that honours me, and I haven't had a chance to speak to her privately yet. I believe you've met her. This is Shirin of the Greens. Didn't the mosaicists bring you to a wedding feast in her home?"

"My first day, yes," Rustem said. He bowed to the dark-haired woman, who was remarkably attractive in a small-boned fashion. Her scent was quite distracting. The room emptied, with one of the men carrying Shaski on his back. The dancer rose from her seat to greet him.

She smiled. "I remember you very well, doctor. You had a servant killed by some of our younger Greens."

Rustem nodded. "It is true. With so many deaths since, I'm surprised you remember it."

She shrugged. "Bonosus's son was involved. Not a trivial thing."

Rustem nodded a second time and crossed to his patient. The woman sat down quietly. Scortius had already drawn the bedsheet back, exposing his muscular, bandaged torso. Shirin of the Greens smiled.

"How exciting," she said, eyes wide.

Rustem snorted, amused in spite of himself. Then he paid attention to what he was doing, unwrapping the layers of dressing to expose the wound beneath. Scortius lay on his right side, facing the woman. She'd have to stand to see the black and purple skin around the twice-over fracture and the deep knife wound.

Rustem set about cleansing the wound again and then applying his salves. No need for any further drainage. The challenge was what it had always been, but more so: to treat broken bones and a stab wound in the same location. He was quietly pleased with what he saw, though he wouldn't have dreamed of letting Scortius see that. A hint that the doctor was content and the man would undoubtedly be out the door and on the race-track, or prowling the night streets to one bedroom or another.

They had told him about this one's nocturnal pursuits.

"You said you had questions," Shirin murmured. "Or is the doctor…?"

"My doctor is private as a hermit on a crag. I have no secrets from him."

"Except when you have plans to depart from your sick-room without leave," Rustem murmured, bathing the man's skin.

"Well, yes, there was that. But otherwise, you know all. You were… even under the stands, I recall, just before the race."

His tone had changed. Rustem caught it. He remembered that sequence of moments. Thenai's with her blade, the Green driver coming just in time.

"Oh? What happened under the stands?" Shirin was asking, fluttering her eyelashes at the two of them. "You must tell!"

"Crescens declared his undying love for me and then hammered me half to my grave when I told him I preferred you. Hadn't you heard?"

She laughed. "No. Come, what happened?"

"Various things." The chariot-driver hesitated. Rustem could feel the man's heartbeat. He said nothing. "Tell me," Scortius murmured, "Cleander Bonosus, is he still in trouble with his father? Do you know?" Shirin blinked. Clearly not the question she'd expected. "He did me a great service when I was hurt," Scortius added. "Brought me to the doctor."

The man was being subtle. This wasn't, Rustem surmised, the real question he wanted answered. And because he had been under the Hippodrome stands he had an idea what that real question was. Something occurred to him, rather too late.

Scortius was undeniably clever. He was also clearly unaware of something. Rustem had certainly never brought it up, and it seemed evident no one else had. It might be part of the city's talk, or forgotten in a time of uttermost turbulence, but it hadn't penetrated this room.

The Greens" dancer said, "The boy? I really don't know. I suspect all's changed there, after what happened in their house."

A heartbeat. Rustem felt it, and winced. He'd been right, after all.

"What happened in their house?" Scortius asked.

She told him.

Thinking back, later, Rustem was impressed, yet again, with the strength of will the wounded man displayed, continuing to speak, expressing conventional, polite sorrow at tidings of a young woman's untimely, self-inflicted death. But Rustem had had his hands on the man's body, and he could feel the impact of the woman's words. Caught breath, then measured, careful breath, a tremor, involuntary, and the pounding heart.

Taking pity, Rustem finished his dressing change more swiftly than usual (he could do it again, later) and reached for the tray of medications by the bed. "I have to give you something for sleep now, as usual," he lied. "You'll be unable to entertain the lady in any proper fashion."

Shirin of the Greens, by all evidence unaware of anything untoward having just transpired, took her cue like an actress and rose to go. She stopped by the bedside and bent down to kiss the patient on the forehead. "He never entertains any of us in a proper fashion, doctor." She straightened and smiled. "I’ll be back, my dear. Rest, to be ready for me." She turned and went out.

He looked at his patient and, wordlessly, poured two full measures of his preferred sedative.

Scortius stared up at him from his pillow. His eyes were dark, his face quite white now. He accepted the mixture, both doses, without protest.

"Thank you," he said, after a moment. Rustem nodded.

"I'm sorry," he said, surprising himself.

Scortius turned his face to the wall.

Rustem reclaimed his walking stick and went out, closing the door behind him, to leave the man his privacy.

He had his speculations but he quelled them. Whatever the man in the bed had said before about his doctor knowing all, it wasn't the truth, ought not to be the truth.

It occurred to him, going down the corridor, that they really needed to assert more control over Shaski's movements here. It was not at all proper for a child, the doctor's son, to be part of the disruption in patients" rooms.

He would have to speak with Katyun about it, among other things. It was time for a midday meal, but he paused to look for Shaski in his put-together treatment rooms in the next building. The boy was more often there than anywhere else.

He wasn't now. Someone else was. Rustem recognized the Rhodian artisan-not the young one who'd saved his life in the streets, but the other, more senior fellow who had dressed them in white and taken them all to a wedding feast.

The man-Crispinus was his name, something like that-looked unwell, but not in a fashion likely to elicit Rustem's sympathy. Men who drank themselves into illness, especially this early in the day, had only themselves to blame for the consequences.

"Good day, doctor," the artisan said, clearly enough. He stood up from the table he'd been sitting upon. No visible unsteadiness. "Am I intruding?"

"Not at all," Rustem said. "How may I…?"

"I came to visit Scortius, thought I'd confirm with his doctor that it was all right."

Well, wine-smitten or not, at least this man knew the protocol in matters of this sort. Rustem nodded briskly. "I wish there were more like you. There was just a party with dancers in his room, and wine."

The Rhodian-Crispin was the name, actually-smiled faintly. There was a line of strain above his eyes and a degree of unhealthy pallor that suggested that he'd been drinking for longer than this morning. It didn't square with what Rustem remembered of the decisive man he'd encountered that first day here, but this wasn't his patient and he made no comment.

"Who would drink wine this early in the day?" the Rhodian said wryly. He rubbed his forehead. "Dancers entertaining him? That sounds like Scortius. You threw them out?"

Rustem had to smile. "Does that sound like me?"

"From what I've heard, yes," The Rhodian was another clever man, Rustem decided. He kept a hand on the table, supporting himself.

"I gave him a soporific just now, he'll sleep awhile. You'd do better to come back later in the afternoon."

"I'll do that, then." The man pushed himself away from the table and swayed. His expression was rueful. "Sorry. I've been indulging… a sorrow."

"May I help?" Rustem said politely.

"I wish, doctor. No. Actually… I'm leaving. Day after next. Sailing west."

"Oh. Going home? No further employment here for you?"

"You might say that," the artisan said after a moment.

"Well… a safe journey to you." He really didn't know the man. The Rhodian nodded his head and walked steadily past Rustem and out the door. Rustem turned to follow him. The man stopped in the hallway.

"I was given your name, you know. Before I left home. I'm… sorry we never had a chance to meet."

"Given my name?" Rustem echoed, bemused. "How?"

"A… friend. Too complicated to explain. Oh… there's something in there for you, by the way. One of the messenger boys brought it while I was waiting. Apparently left at the gate." He gestured towards the innermost of the two rooms. An object wrapped in cloth stood on the examining table there.

"Thank you," Rustem said.

The Rhodian went down the short corridor and out. The sunlight, Rustem thought, was probably an affliction for him just now. Indulging a sorrow. Not his patient. They couldn't all be his concern.

He was interesting, though. Another stranger, observing the Sarantines. A man he might have liked to know better, actually. Leaving now. It wouldn't happen. Odd, about being given Rustem's name. Rustem walked into his inner room. On the table beside the parcel he saw a note, his name on it.

First, he unwrapped the cloth from the object on the table. And then, entirely overcome, he sat down on a stool and stood staring at it.

There was no one about. He was entirely alone, looking.

Eventually he stood up and took the note. It had a seal, which he broke. He unfolded and read, and then he sat down again.

With gratitude, the brief inscription read, this exemplar of all things that must bend or they break.

He sat there for a very long time, becoming aware of how rare it was for him to be alone now, how seldom he had this silence or calm. He stared at the golden rose on the table, long and slim as the living flower might have been, golden petals unfurling, the very last one, at the top, fully opened, rubies in all of them.

He knew then, with that frightening, other-worldly certainty that Shaski seemed to have, that he would never see her again.

He took the rose with him (wrapped and concealed) when he and his family eventually sailed, a very long way west to a land where such objects of uttermost craft and art were, as yet, unknown.

It was a place where competent physicians were urgently needed, and could rise swiftly in a society that was in the process of defining itself. His unusual domestic arrangements were tolerated on that far frontier, but he was advised, early, to change his faith. He did so, adopting the god of the sun in the manner that Jad was worshipped in Esperana. He had responsibilities, after all: two wives, two children (then a third and then a fourth, both boys, not long after they settled), and four former soldiers from the east who had changed their lives to come with them. Two of their new household women from Sarantium had, unexpectedly, also taken ship with his family. And he had an eldest child, a son, who was best made to appear-they all understood this-to fit in, as much as could be, lest he be singled out and danger come to him thereby.

One bent sometimes, thought Rustem, so as not to be broken by the winds of the world, whether of desert or sea or these wide, rolling grasslands in the farthest west.

All of his children and one of his wives turned out to like horses, very much. His longtime soldier friend Vinaszh-who married and had a family of his own but continued to entwine his destiny with theirs- turned out to have an eye for choosing and breeding them. He was a good businessman. So was Rustem, to his own surprise. He ended his days in comfort, a rancher as much as a doctor.

He gave the rose to his daughter when she married.

He kept the note, though, all his life.