Sailing to Sarantium (11 page)

His head felt as if a small but insistent hammer inside it were
trying to pound its way out. His confusion was extreme, disorienting.
Had she captured him or rescued him? And why, in either case? He
didn't dare ask. Amid the perfumes he smelled flour again suddenly.
That would be himself. From the sack. He looked down at his dinner
tunic and made a sour face. The blue was streaked and smeared a
greyish-white. Which meant that his hair and beard . ..

'You were attended to, somewhat, while you slept, 'said the queen,
graciously enough. 'I had my own physician summoned. He said bleeding
was not immediately necessary. Would a glass of wine be of help?'

Crispin made a sound that he trusted to convey restrained, well-bred
assent. She did not laugh again, or smile. It occurred to him that
this was a woman not unused to observing the effects of violence upon
men. A number of well-known incidents, unbidden, came into his head.
Some were quite recent. The thought of them did nothing to ease him
at all.

The queen made no movement, and a moment later Crispin realized that
she had meant what she said quite literally. They were alone in this
room. No servants, not even slaves. Which was simply astonishing. And
he could hardly expect her to serve him wine. He looked around and,
more by luck than any effective process of observation, encountered a
flask and cups on the table by his elbow. He poured, carefully, and
watered two cups, unsure whether that was a presumption. He was not
conversant with the Antae court. Martinian had taken all their
commissions from King Hildric and then his daughter, and had
delivered the reports.

Crispin looked up. His eyesight seemed to be improving as the hammer
subsided a little and the room elected to stabilize. He saw her shake
her head at the cup he had poured for her. He set it down. Waited.
Looked at her again.

The queen of Batiara was tall for a woman and unsettlingly young.
Seen this closely, she had the straight Antae nose and her father's
strong cheekbones. The wide-set eyes were a much-celebrated blue, he
knew, though he couldn't see that clearly in the candlelight. Her
hair was golden, bound up, of course, held by a golden circlet
studded with rubies.

The Antae had worn bear grease in their hair when they'd first come
to settle in the peninsula. This woman was not, manifestly, an
exponent of such traditions. He imagined those rubies-he couldn't
help himself-set in his mosaic torch on the sanctuary dome. He
imagined them gleaming by candlelight there.

The queen wore a golden sun disk about her throat, an image of
Heladikos upon it. Her robe was blue silk, threaded with fine gold
wire, and there was a purple band running down the left side, from
high collar to ankle. Only royalty wore purple, in keeping with a
tradition going back to the Rhodian Empire at its own beginnings six
hundred years ago.

He was alone in a palace room at night with the headache of his life
and a queen-his queen-regarding him with a mild, steady appraisal.

It was common opinion, all through the Batiaran peninsula, that the
queen was unlikely to live through the winter. Crispin had heard
wagers offered and taken, at odds.

The Antae might have moved beyond bear grease and pagan rituals in a
hundred years but they were most emphatically not accustomed to being
ruled by a woman, and any choice of a mate-and king-for Gisel was
fraught with an almost inconceivable complexity of tribal hierarchies
and feuds. In a way, it was only due to these that she was still
alive and reigning a year and more after her father's death and the
savage, inconclusive civil war that had followed. Martinian had put
it that way one night over dinner. The factions of the Antae were
locked in balance around her; if she died, that balance spiralled
away and war came. Again.

Crispin had shrugged. Whoever reigned would commission sanctuaries to
their own glory in the god's name. Mosaicists would work. He and
Martinian were extremely well known, with a reputation among the
upper classes and reliable employees and apprentices. Did it matter
so much, he'd asked the older man, what happened in the palace in
Varena? Did any such things signify greatly after the plague?

The queen was still gazing at him beneath level brows, waiting.
Crispin, belatedly realizing what was expected, saluted her with his
cup and drank. It was magnificent wine. The very best Sarnican. He'd
never tasted anything so complex. Under any normal circumstances, he
would .. .

He put it down, quickly. After the blow to his head, this drink could
undo him completely.

'A careful man, I see,' she murmured.

Crispin shook his head. 'Not really, Majesty.' He had no idea what
was expected of him here, or what to expect. It occurred to him that
he ought to feel outraged . . . he'd been assaulted and abducted
outside his own home. Instead, he felt curious, intrigued, and he was
sufficiently self-aware to recognize that these feelings had been
absent from his life for some time.

'May I assume,' he said, 'that the footpads who clapped a flour sack
on my head and dented my braincase were from the palace? Or did your
loyal guards rescue me from common thieves?'

She smiled at that. She couldn't be older than her early twenties,
Crispin thought, remembering a royal betrothal and a husband-to-be
dying of some mischance a few years ago.

'They were my guards. I told you, their orders were to be courteous,
while ensuring you came with them. Apparently you did some injuries
to them.'

'I am delighted to hear it. They did some to me.'

'In loyalty to their queen and in her cause. Do you have the same
loyalties?'

Direct, very direct.

Crispin watched as she moved to an ivory and rosewood bench and sat
down, her back very straight. He saw that there were three doors to
the room and imagined guards poised on the other side of each of
them. He pushed his hands through his hair-a characteristic motion,
leaving it randomly scattered-and said quietly,'I am engaged, to the
best of my skill, and using deficient materials, in decorating a
sanctuary to honour your father. Is that answer enough, Majesty?'

'Not at all, Rhodian. That is self-interest. You are extremely well
paid, and the materials are the best we can offer right now. We've
had a plague and a war, Caius Crispus.'

'Oh, really,' he said. Couldn't help himself.

She raised her eyebrows. 'Insolence?'

Her voice and expression made him abruptly aware that whatever the
proper court manners might be, he was not displaying them, and the
Antae had never been known for patience.

He shook his head. 'I lived through both,' he murmured. 'I need no
reminders.'

She regarded him in silence another long moment. Crispin felt an
unexplained prickling along his back up to the hairs of his neck. The
silence stretched. Then the queen drew a breath and said without
preamble:'I need an extremely private message carried to the Emperor
in Sarantium. No man-or woman-may know the contents of this, or that
it is even being carried. That is why you are here alone, and were
brought by night.'

Crispin's mouth went dry. He felt his heart begin to hammer again. 'I
am an artisan, Majesty. No more than that. I have no place in the
intrigues of courts.' He wished he hadn't put down the wine glass.
'And,' he added, too tardily,'I am not going to Sarantium.'

'Of course you are,' she said dismissively. 'What man would not
accept that invitation.' She knew about it. Of course she did. His
mother knew about it.

'It is not my invitation,' he said pointedly. 'And Martinian, my
partner, has indicated he will not go.'

'He is an old man. You aren't. And you have nothing to keep you in
Varena at all.'

He had nothing to keep him. At all.

'He isn't old,' he said.

She ignored that. 'I have made inquiries into your family, your
circumstances, your disposition. I am told you are choleric and of
dark humour, and not inclined to be properly respectful. Also that
you are skilled at your craft and have attained a measure of renown
and some wealth thereby. None of this concerns me. But no one has
reported you to be cowardly or without ambition. Of course you will
go to Sarantium. Will you carry my message for me?'

Crispin said, before he had really thought about the implications at
all, 'What message?'

Which meant-he realized much later, thinking about it, reliving this
dialogue again and again on the long road east-that the moment she
told him he had no real choice, unless he did decide to die and seek
Ilandra and the girls with Jad behind the sun.

The young queen of the Antae and of Batiara, surrounded by mortal
danger and fighting it with whatever tools came to hand, however
unexpectedly, said sofdy,'You will tell the Emperor Valerius II and
no one else that should he wish to regain this country and Rhodias
within it, and not merely have a meaningless claim to them, there is
an unmarried queen here who has heard of his prowess and his glory
and honours them.'

Crispin's jaw dropped. The queen did not flush, nor did her gaze
flicker at all. His reaction was being closely watched, he realized.
He said, stammering, 'The Emperor is married. Has been for years. He
changed the laws to wed the Empress Alixana.'

Calm and very still on her ivory seat, she said, 'Alas, husbands or
wives may be put aside. Or die, Caius Crispus.'

He knew this.

'Empires,' she murmured, 'live after us. So does a name. For good or
ill. Valerius II, who was once Petrus of Trakesia, has wanted to
regain Rhodias and this peninsula since he brought his uncle to the
Golden Throne twelve summers ago. He purchased his truce with the
King of Kings in Bassania for that reason alone. King Shirvan is
bribed so Valerius may assemble an army for the west when the time
ripens. There are no mysteries here. But if he tries to take this
land in war, he will not hold it. This peninsula is too far away from
him, and we Antae know how to make war. And his enemies east and
north-the Bassanids and the northern barbarians-will never sit quiet
and watch, no matter how much he pays them. There will be men around
Valerius who know this, and they may even tell him as much. There is
another way to achieve his... desire. I am offering it to him.' She
paused. 'You may tell him, too, that you have seen the queen of
Batiara very near, in blue and gold and porphyry, and may . . . give
him an honest description, should he ask for one.'

This time, though she continued to hold his gaze and even lifted her
chin a little, she did flush. Crispin became aware that his hands
were perspiring at his sides. He pressed them against his tunic. He
felt the stirrings, astonishingly, of a long-dormant desire. A kind
of madness, that, though desire often was. The queen of Batiara was
not, in any possible sense, someone who could be thought of in this
way. She was offering her face and exquisitely garbed body to his
recording gaze, only that he might tell an Emperor about her, halfway
around the world. He had never dreamed of moving-never wanted to
move-in this world of royal shadows and intrigue, but his
puzzle-solving mind was racing now, with his pulse, and he could
begin to see the pieces of this picture.

No man-or woman-may know.

No woman. Clear as it could be. He was being asked to carry an
overture of marriage to the Emperor, who was very much married, and
to the most powerful and dangerous woman in the known world.

'The Emperor and his low-born actress-wife have no children, alas,'
said Gisel softly. Crispin realized his thoughts must have been in
his face. He was not good at this. 'A sad legacy, one might imagine,
of her ... profession. And she is no longer young.'

I am, was the message beneath the message he was to bring. Save my
life, my throne, and I offer you the homeland of the Rhodian Empire
that you yearn for. I give you back the west to your east, and the
sons to your need. I am fair, and young . . . ask the man who carries
my words to you. He will say as much.

Only ask.

'You believe ...' he began. Stopped. Composed himself with an effort.
'You believe this can be kept secret? Majesty, if I am even known to
have been brought to you...'

'Trust me in this. You can do me no service if you are killed on the
way or when you arrive.'

'You reassure me greatly,' he murmured.

Surprisingly, she laughed again. He wondered what those on the other
side of the doors would think, hearing that. He wondered what else
they might have heard.

'You could send no formal envoy with this?'

He knew the answer before she gave it. 'No such messenger from me
would have a chance to bespeak the Emperor in ... privacy.'

'And I will?'

'You might. You have pure Rhodian blood on both sides. They
acknowledge that, still, in Sarantium, though they complain about
you. Valerius is said to be interested in ivory, frescoes... such
things as you do with stones and glass. He is known to hold
conversation with his artisans.

'How commendable of him. And when he finds that I am not Martinian of
Varena? What sort of conversation will then ensue?'

The queen smiled. 'That will depend on your wits, will it not?'

Crispin drew another breath. Before he could speak, she added,'You
have not asked what return a grateful, newly-crowned Empress might
make to the man who conveyed this message for her and had success
follow upon it. You can read?' He nodded. She reached into a sleeve
of her robe and withdrew a parchment scroll. She extended it a little
towards him. He walked nearer, inhaled her scent, saw that her
eyelashes were accented and extended subtly. He took the parchment
from her hand.

She nodded permission. He broke the seal. Uncurled the scroll. Read.

He felt the colour leave his face as he did so. And hard upon
astonishment came bitterness, the core of pain that walked with him
in the world.