Sailing to Sarantium (13 page)

'I will send to tell him to expect you,' Martinian had said with
firmness. 'He knows more useful things than any man I know, and you
are a fool if you undertake a journey like this without first
speaking with Zoticus. Besides, he makes wonderful herbal infusions.'

'I don't like herbal infusions.'

'Crispin,' Martinian had said warningly. And had given directions.
And so here he was, cloaked against the wind, pacing alongside the
rough stones of the wall, booted feet tracing the vanished, long-ago
bare footsteps of a child who had gone out from the city alone one
summer's day to escape the sorrow in his house.

He was alone now, too. Birds flitted from branch to bough on both
sides of the road. He watched them. The hawk was gone. A brown hare,
too exposed, made swift, deliberately jerky progress across the field
on his left. A cloud swept across the sun and its elongated shadow
raced over the same field. The hare froze when the shadow reached it
and then hurtled erratically forward again as light returned. On the
other side of the road the wall marched beside him, well built, well
maintained, of heavy grey stones. Ahead, he could see the gateway to
he farmyard, a marker stone opposite it. Unused though it now was,
this had been a road laid down in the great days of the Rhodian
Empire. In no great distance-a morning's steady walking-it met the
high road that ran all the way to Rhodias itself and beyond, to the
southern sea at the end of the peninsula. As a child, Crispin used to
enjoy the sensation of being on the same road as someone gazing into
those distant ocean waters.

He stopped for a moment, looking at the wall. He had climbed it
easily that morning long ago. There were still apples in the trees
beyond. Crispin pursed his lips, weighing a thought. This was not a
time to be duelling with childhood memories, he told himself sternly,
repressively. He was a grown man, a respected, well-known artisan, a
widower. Sailing to Sarantium.

With a small, resolute shrug of his shoulders, Crispin dropped the
package he was carrying-a gift from Martinian's wife for the
alchemist-onto the brown grass beside the path. Then he stepped
across the small ditch, pushed a hand through his hair, and proceeded
to climb the wall again.

Not all skills were lost to the years, and it seemed he wasn't so old
after all. Pleased with his own agility, he swung one knee up, then
the other, stood on the wide, uneven top of the wall, balanced, and
then stepped-only boys leaped-across to a good branch. He found a
comfortable spot, sat down and, pausing to be judicious, reached up
and picked an apple.

He was surprised to find his heart was racing.

He knew that if they saw this, his mother and Martinian and half a
dozen others would be performing a collective rueful headshake like
the Chorus in one of those seldom-performed tragedies of the ancient
Trakesian poets. Everyone said Crispin did things merely because he
knew that he shouldn't do them. A perversity of behaviour, his mother
called it.

Perhaps. He didn't think so, himself. The apple was ripe. Tasty, he
decided.

He dropped it onto the grass among fallen ones for the small animals
and stood up to cross back to the wall. No need to be greedy or
childish. He'd proven his point, felt curiously pleased with himself.
Settled a score with his youth, in a way.

'Some people never learn, do they?'

One foot on a branch, one on top of the wall, Crispin looked down
very quickly. Not a bird, not an animal, not a spirit of the
half-world of air and shadow. A man with a full beard and
unfashionably long grey hair stood in the orchard below, gazing up at
him, leaning on a staff, foreshortened by the angle.

Flushing, acutely embarrassed, Crispin mumbled, 'They used to say
this orchard was haunted. I ... wanted to test myself'

'And did you pass your test?' the old man-Zoticus, beyond
doubt-queried gently.

'I suppose.' Crispin stepped across to the wall. 'The apple was
good.'

'As good as they were all those years ago?'

'Hard to remember. I really don't-'

Crispin stopped. A prickling of fear.

'How do ... how did you know I was here? Back then?'

'You are Caius Crispus, I presume? Martinian's friend.'

Crispin decided to sit down on the wall. His legs felt oddly weak. 'I
am. I have a gift for you. From his wife.'

'Carissa. Splendid woman! A neckwarmer, I do hope. I find I need them
now, as winter comes. Old age. A terrible thing, let me tell you. How
did I know you were here before? Silly question. Come down. Do you
like mint leaves in an infusion?'

It didn't seem in the least silly to Crispin. For the moment he
deferred a reply. 'I'll get the gift,' he said, and climbed
down-jumping would lack all dignity-on the outside of the wall. He
reclaimed the parcel from the grass, brushed some ants from it, and
walked up the road towards the farmyard gate, breathing deeply to
calm himself.

Zoticus was waiting, leaning on his staff, two large dogs beside him.
He opened the gate and Crispin walked in. The dogs sniffed at him but
heeled to a command. Zoticus led the way towards the house through a
neat, small yard. The door was open, Crispin saw.

'Why don't we just eat him now?'

Crispin stopped. Childhood terror. The very worst kind, that made
nightmares for life. He looked up. The voice was lazy, aristocratic,
remembered. It belonged to a bird perched on the branch of an ash
tree, not far from the doorway.

'Manners, manners, Linon. This is a guest.' Zoticus's tone was
reproving.

'A guest? Climbing the wall? Stealing apples?'

'Well, eating him would hardly be a proportionate response, and the
philosophers teach that proportion is the essence of the virtuous
life, do they not?'

Crispin, stupefied, fighting fear, heard the bird give an elaborate
sniff of disapproval. Looking more closely, he abruptly realized,
with a further shock, that it was not a real bird. It was an
artifice. Grafted.

And it was talking. Or else ...

'You are speaking for it!' he said quickly. 'Casting your voice? The
way the actors do, on stage sometimes?'

'Mice and blood! Now he insults us!'

'He is bringing a neckwarmer from Carissa. Behave, Linon.'

'Take the neck thing, then let us eat him.'

Crispin, his own choler rising suddenly, said bluntly, 'You are a
construct of leather and metal. You can't eat anything. Don't
bluster.'

Zoticus glanced quickly over at him, surprised, and then laughed
aloud, the sound unexpectedly robust, filling the space before his
doorway.

'And that,' he said, 'will teach you, Linon! If anything can.'

'It will teach me that we have an ill-bred guest this morning.'

'You did propose eating him. Remember?'

'I am only a bird. Remember? Indeed, I am less than that, it seems. I
am a construct of leather and metal.'

Crispin had the distinct sense that if the small grey and brown thing
with the glass eyes could have moved it would have turned its back on
him, or flown away in disgust and wounded pride.

Zoticus walked over to the tree, turned a screw on each of the tiny
legs of the bird, loosening their grip on the branch, and picked it
up. 'Come,' he said. 'The water is boiled and the mint was picked
this morning.'

The mechanical bird said nothing, nestled in his free hand. It looked
like a child's toy. Crispin followed into the house. The dogs lay
down in the yard.

The infusion was good, actually. Crispin, more calm than he'd
expected to be, wondered if the old alchemist might have added
something besides mint to it, but he didn't ask. Zoticus was standing
at a table examining the courier's map Crispin had produced from the
inner pocket of his cloak.

Crispin looked around. The front room was comfortably furnished, much
as any prosperous farmhouse might be. No dissected bats or pots with
green or black liquids boiling in them, no pentagrams chalked on the
wooden floor. There were books and scrolls, to mark a learned and an
unexpectedly well-off man, but little else to suggest magics or
cheiromancy. Still, he saw half a dozen of the crafted birds, made of
various materials, perched on shelves or the backs of chairs, and
they gave him pause. None of these had spoken yet, and the small one
called Linon lay silently on its side on a table by the fire. Crispin
had little doubt, however, that any and all of them could address him
if they chose.

It amazed him how calmly he accepted this. On the other hand, he'd
had twenty-five years to live with the knowledge.

'The Imperial Posting Inns, whenever you can,' Zoticus was murmuring,
head lowered still to the map, a curved, polished glass in one hand
to magnify it. 'Comforts and food are unreliable elsewhere.'

Crispin nodded, still distracted. 'Dog meat instead of horse or
swine, I know.'

Zoticus glanced up, his expression wry. 'Dog is good,' he said. 'The
risk is getting human flesh in a sausage.'

Crispin kept a composed face with some effort. 'I see,' he said.
'Well spiced, I'm sure.'

'Sometimes,' said Zoticus, turning back to the map. 'Be especially
careful through Sauradia, which can be unstable in autumn.'

Crispin watched him. Zoticus had taken a quill now and was making
notations on the map. 'Tribal rites?'

The alchemist glanced up briefly, eyebrows arched. His features were
strong, the blue eyes deep-set, and he wasn't as old as the grey hair
and the staff might have suggested. 'Yes, that. And knowing they will
be mostly on their own again until spring, even with the big army
camp near Trakesia and soldiers at Meganum. Notorious winter
brigands, the Sauradi tribes. Lively women, as I recall, mind you.'
He smiled a little, to himself, and returned to his annotations.

Crispin shrugged. Sipped his tea. Resolutely tried to put his mind
away from sausages.

Some might have seen this long autumn journey as an adventure in
itself. Caius Crispus did not. He liked his own city walls, and good
roofs against rain, and cooks he knew, and his bathhouse. For him,
broaching a new cask of wine from Meganum or the vineyards south of
Rhodias had always been a preferred form of excitement. Designing and
executing a mosaic was an adventure... or had been once. Walking the
wet, windswept roads of Sauradia or Trakesia with an eye out for
predators-human or otherwise-in a struggle to avoid becoming someone
else's sausage was not an adventure, and a greybeard's cackling about
lively women did not make it one.

He said, 'I'd still like an answer, by the way, silly question or
not. How did you know I was here all those years ago?'

Zoticus put down the quill and sat in a heavy chair. One of the
mechanical birds-a falcon with a silver and bronze body and yellow
jewelled eyes, quite unlike the drab, sparrow-like Linon-was fixed to
the high back of the chair, screws adjusted so its claws held fast.
It gazed intrinsically at Crispin with a pale glitter.

'You do know I am an alchemist.'

'Martinian said as much. I also know that most who use that name are
frauds, hooking coins and goods from innocents.'

Crispin heard a sound from the direction of the fire. It might have
been a log shifting, or not.

'Entirely true,' said Zoticus, unperturbed. 'Most are. Some are not.
I am one of those who are not.'

'Ah. Meaning you know the future, can induce passionate love, cure
the plague, and find water?' He sounded truculent, Crispin knew. He
couldn't help it.

Zoticus gazed at him levelly. 'Only the last, actually, and not
invariably. No. Meaning I can sometimes see and do things most men
cannot, with frustratingly erratic success. And meaning I can see
things in men and women that others cannot. You asked how I knew you?
Men have an aura, a presence to them. It changes little, from
childhood to death. Very few people dare my orchard, which is
useful-as you might guess-for a man living alone in the countryside.
You were there once. I knew your presence again this morning. The
anger in you was not present in the child, though there was a loss
then, too. The rest is little enough altered. It is not,' he said
kindly, 'so complicated an explanation, is it?'

Crispin looked at him, cupping his drink in both hands. His glance
shifted to the jewelled falcon gripping the back of the alchemist's
heavy chair. 'And these?' he asked, ignoring the observations about
himself.

'Oh. Well. That's the whole point of alchemy, isn't it? To transmute
one substance into another, proving certain things about the nature
of the world. Metals to gold. The dead to life. I have learned to
make inanimate substance think and speak, and retain a soul.' He said
it much as he might have described learning how to make the mint tea
they were drinking.

Crispin looked around the room at the birds. 'Why... birds?' he
asked, the first of fully a dozen questions that occurred.
The
dead to life.

Zoticus looked down, that private smile on his face again. After a
moment, he said, 'I wanted to go to Sarantium myself once. I had
ambitions in the world, and wished to see the Emperor and be honoured
by him with wealth and women and world's glory. Apius, some time
after he took the Golden Throne, initiated a fashion for mechanical
animals. Roaring lions in the throne room. Bears that rose on their
hind legs. And birds. He wanted birds everywhere. Singing birds in
all his palaces. The mechanical artisans of the world were sending
him their best contrivances: wind them up and they warbled an off-key
paean to Jad or a rustic folk ditty, over and over again until you
were minded to throw them against a wall and watch the little wheels
spill out. You've heard them? Beautiful to look at, sometimes. And
the sound can be appealing-at first.'

Crispin nodded. He and Martinian had done a Senator's house in
Rhodias.