Sailing to Sarantium (19 page)

'Do not,' said the red-bearded man quietly, 'call me your lordship,
if you will. I travel this way for a reason, recall?'

'Of course,' said Morax, cringing. 'Of course! Forgive me! But what
shall...?'

'Martinian will do,' said the man. 'Martinian of Varena.'

'Mice and blood! What are you doing?'

'I'm
not sure,'
Crispin replied honestly.
'But I need your help. Does her story
sound true
to you?'

Linon, after that first ferocity, grew instantly subdued. After an
unexpected silence, she said,
'It does, in fact. What is more true
is that we must keep entirely out of this. Crispin, the Day of the
Dead is not a thing to meddle with.'
She never used his name.
Imbecile was her preferred form of address.

'I know. Bear with me. Help, if you can.'

He looked at the pudgy, slope-shouldered innkeeper and said aloud,
'Martinian will do.' He paused and added confidingly, 'And I will
thank you for your discretion.'

'Of course!' cried the innkeeper. 'My name is Morax, and I am
entirely at your service, my ... Martinian.' He actually winked. A
greedy, petty man.

'The best room is over the kitchen,' Linon said silently. 'He is
doing what you asked.'

'You know this inn?'

'I know most of them on this road, imbecile. You are taking us into
perilous waters.'

'I'm sailing to Sarantium. Of course I am,' Crispin replied wryly, in
silence. Linon gave an inward snort and was still. Another girl, with
a purpling bruise on one cheek, had taken the wine jug from the
yellow-haired one. Both of them hurried away.

'May I suggest our very best Candarian red wine with your dinner?'
the innkeeper said, gripping his own hands in the way all innkeepers
seemed to have. 'There is a modest surcharge, of course, but...'

'You have Candarian? That will be fine. Bring it unmixed, with a jug
of water. What is dinner, friend Morax?'

'Aren't we the lordly one!'

'We have some choice country sausages of our own making. Or a stew of
chicken, even now being prepared.'

Crispin opted for the stew.

On the way up to the room over the kitchen he tried to understand why
he'd done what he'd just done. No clear answer came. In fact, he
hadn't done anything. Yet. But it occurred to him, with something
near to actual pain, that he'd last seen that huge-eyed look of
terror in his older daughter's face, when her mother lay vomiting
blood before she died. He'd been unable to do anything. Enraged,
nearly insane with grief. Helpless.

'They perform this abomination all over Sauradia?'

He was naked in the metal tub in his room, knees drawn up to his
chest. The largest tub wasn't particularly large. The yellow-haired
girl had oiled him, not very competently, and was now scrubbing his
back with a rough cloth, for want of any strigil. Linon lay on the
window-sill.

'No. No, my lord. Only here at the southing of the Old Wood ...
Aldwood, we say . . . and at the northern edge. There are two oak
groves sacred to Ludan. The ... forest god.' Her voice was low, close
to a whisper. Sound carried through these walls. She spoke Rhodian
acceptably, though not easily. He switched to Sarantine again. 'You
are Jaddite, girl?'

She hesitated. 'I was brought to the Light last year.'

By the slave trader, no doubt. 'And Sauradia is Jaddite, is it not?'
Another hesitation.

'Yes, my lord. Of course, my lord.'

'But these pagans still take young girls and ... do whatever they do
to them? In a province of the Empire?'

'Crispin.You are better not knowing this.'

'Not in the north, my lord,' said the girl. She scrubbed the cloth
across his ribs. 'In the north a thief or a woman taken in adultery
... someone who has already forfeited their life is hanged on the
god's tree. Only hanged. Nothing ... worse.'

'Ah. A milder barbarism. I see. And why is it different here? No
thieves or adulterous women to be had?'

'I don't know.' She did not react to his sarcasm. He was being
unfair, he knew. 'I'm sure it isn't that, my lord. But... it may be
that Morax uses this to keep peace with the village. He ... allows
travellers without Permits to stay, especially in autumn and winter.
He's wealthy because of it. The village inns suffer. Perhaps this is
his way of making it up to them? He gives one of his slaves. For
Ludan?'

'Enough. It is blindingly obvious no one has ever taught you how to
give a rubdown. Jad's blood! An Imperial Inn without a strigil?
Disgraceful. Get me a dry towel, girl.' Crispin was aware of a
familiar, hard anger within him and struggled to keep his voice down.
'A fine reason to kill a slave, of course. Relations with the
neighbours.'

She rose and hurriedly fetched a towel from the bed-the excuse for a
towel they had sent up. This was not his bathhouse in Varena. The
room itself was nondescript but of decent size, and some warmth did
seem to be rising from the kitchen below. He had already noted that
the door had one of the newer iron locks, opened with a copper key.
The merchants would like that. Morax knew his business, it seemed,
both the licit and the illicit sides of it. He was probably wealthy,
or on the way to it.

Crispin controlled his anger, thinking hard. 'I was correct down
below? There are people here tonight without Permits?'

He stood up and stepped, dripping, out of the small tub. She was
flushed from his rebuke, anxious, visibly afraid. It only made him
more angry. He took the towel, rubbed his hair and beard, then
wrapped himself against the cold. Then he swore, bitten by some
crawling creature in the towel.

She stood by, hands awkwardly at her sides, eyes downcast. 'Well?' he
demanded again. 'Answer. Was I correct?'

'Yes, my lord.' Speaking Sarantine, which she clearly understood more
readily, she sounded intelligent for her station, and there was life
in the blue eyes when the terror was at bay. 'Most of them are
illegal. Autumn is a quiet time. If the taxing officers or soldiers
come he bribes them, and the Imperial Couriers are back and forth too
often to complain ... so long as they are not put out by the other
patrons. Morax takes good care of the couriers.'

'I'm sure he does. I know that kind of man. All for a price.'

Absently, Crispin nodded his agreement with the bird and then
collected himself. He began to dress. Dry clothes from the satchel
they had brought up for him. His wet outer garments had been left to
dry by a downstairs fire.

'Quiet, Linon. I'm thinking!'

'May all the powers gather to protect us!'

It had grown gradually easier to ignore this sort of thing over the
past little while. Something in Linon was peculiar today, however.
Crispin put that away for later, along with the rather deeper
question of why he was involving himself in this. Slaves died all
over the Empire every day, were abused, whipped, sold-made into
sausages. Crispin shook his head: was he really so simple that the
ridiculous association of a terrified girl with his daughter was
drawing him into a world that had no safe place for him at all?
Another hard question. For later.

Back in the days when he still enjoyed things, Crispin had always had
a puzzle-solving mind. In work, in play. Designing a wall mosaic,
gambling at his bathhouse. Now, as he dressed quickly in the twilight
chill, he found himself engaged in slotting pieces of information
like tesserae within his mind to make a picture. He turned it, tilted
it like glass to catch angles of light.

'What
will they do to her?'
He asked it
impulsively.

Linon was still for so long this time he thought the bird was
ignoring him. He put on his sandals, waiting. The voice in his mind
when it came was cold, uninflected, unlike anything he had heard
before from her.

'She will have the juice of poppies in the morning, with whatever
she drinks. She will be given to whoever comes for her. From the
village, probably. They will take her away. Sometimes they mate them
with an animal, for the sake of the fields and the hunters, sometimes
the men do it themselves, one after another. They wear masks then, of
animals. After, a priest of Ludan cuts out her heart. He may be a
smith, a baker in the village. The innkeeper downstairs. We would not
know. it is considered a good omen if she lives until the heart is
removed. It is buried in the fields. They peel her skin from her and
burn it, as the dross of life. Then she is hanged by her hair from
the holy oak at the moment the sun sets, for Ludan to take as his
own.'

'Holy Jad! You can't be-'

'Be silent! Imbecile! I told you, you were better off not
knowing!'

The girl had looked up, startled. Crispin glared at her and her
glance instantly dropped away, a different sort of fear in her now.

Sickened, unbelieving, Crispin began worrying the puzzle again with a
part of his mind, struggling for calm. Turning pieces of glass to
find the light. Even a dim, precarious light, like candles in a
breeze or a slant of winter sun through an arrow slit.

'I
can't let them do this to her,'
he said
inwardly to Linon.

'Ah! Let sound the soldiers' drums! Caius Crispus of Varena, bold
hero of a later age! You can't? I don't see why not. They will only
find someone else. And kill you for trying to interfere. Who are you,
artisan, to step between a god and his sacrifice?'

Crispin had finished dressing. He sat down on the bed again. It
creaked.

'I don't know how to answer that.'

'Of
course you don't,'
said Linon.

The girl whispered, 'My lord. I will do anything you like, always.'

'What else does a slave do?' he snapped, distracted. She flinched, as
if struck. He drew a breath.

'I
need your help,'
he said again to the
bird. The puzzle had taken a shape, poor though it might be. He
rocked back and forth a little, creaking the bed.
'Here's
what I want to happen . . .'

A few moments later he explained to the girl what steps she, in her
turn, had to take if she wanted to live through the day to come. He
made it sound as if he knew what he was doing. What became almost
intolerable was the look that entered her eyes as he spoke and she
understood that he was going to try to save her. She wanted to
survive, so much. It burned in her, this desire to live.

He had told Martinian, back home, that he felt no real desire for
anything, not even life. Perhaps, Crispin thought, that made him the
perfect man for the folly of this.

He sent the girl downstairs. She knelt in front of him first, looked
as if she wanted to say something, but he quelled that with a glance
and gestured to the door. After she left he sat for another moment,
then stood up and began attending to what needed to be prepared in
the room.

'Are
you angry?'
he asked Linon suddenly,
surprising himself.

'Yes,'
said the bird, after a moment.

'Will you’d tell me why?'

'No.'

'Will you help me?'

'I am a lump of leather and metal, as someone once said. You can
render me blind, deaf, and silent with a thought. What else can I
do?'

Going down the stairs towards the noise and warmth of the common
room, Crispin glanced outside. It was full dark outside, the forest
lost to sight in the black. Clouds again, no moons or stars to be
seen. He ought to have been going down with no more on his mind than
the anticipation of a good red wine from Candaria and some modest
hopes for the stew. Instead, every shadow, every movement in the
shadows beyond the streaked windows, carried an aura of dread. It is
considered a good omen if she lives until the heart is removed.

He was committed, just about. He carried the copper key at his belt,
but he had left the door to his room ajar, like an ineffectual
Rhodian fool unused to the harsh realities of travel, the real
dangers of the road.

It had become clear that the red-bearded Rhodian drinking and even
sharing a steadily replenished quantity of expensive wine was
travelling all the way to Sarantium with a Permit signed by the
Imperial Chancellor himself. The entire common room knew it by now.
The man kept dropping the name of Gesius into every third sentence.
It would have been irritating, had he not been so genial . . . and
generous. It appeared he was an artisan of some sort, a soft, city
fellow summoned to help with one of the Emperor's projects.

Thelon of Megarium considered himself adept at sizing up such men,
and the opportunity they represented.

For one thing, the artisan-Martinian, he'd named himself-was quite
evidently not carrying his purse. Which meant that the Permit, and
whatever moneys he had been advanced or had carried with him from
Batiara-obviously a sufficient sum to allow the real indulgence of
Candarian wine-were not on his person, unless he'd stuffed them in
his underclothes. Thelon grinned behind his hands at the thought of a
crumpled, shit-smeared paper being presented at the next Posting Inn.
No, the Imperial Permit was not in Martinian's clothing, he'd wager a
good deal.

Or if he'd had a good deal to wager, he would have. Thelon was
without resources and attached to his uncle's mercantile party only
out of the goodness of his uncle's heart-as his uncle was prone to
remind him. They were on their way home to Megarium, having made some
useful transactions at the military camp towards Trakesia where the
Fourth and the First Sauradian legions were based. Useful for Uncle
Erytus, that is. Thelon had no direct interest in any profits. He
wasn't even being paid. He was here merely to learn the route, his
uncle had said, and the people to be dealt with, and to show he could
conduct himself properly among a class of folk better than waterfront
rabble.