Sailing to Sarantium (43 page)

'What?' Valerius II sat upright now. He leaned forward. A finger
stabbed the air as he spoke. 'This was Rhodias, artisan! Speak not to
us of the fallen west. This was the Rhodian Empire at its apex! In
the god's name! What did Saranios name this city when he drew the
line with his sword from channel to ocean for the first walls? Tell
me!'

There was fear now in the room, palpably. Crispin saw men and women,
elegant and glittering, their eyes fixed on the floor like subdued
children. 'He ... he ... Sarantium, thrice-exalted.'

'And what else? What else? Say it, Siroes!'

'The ... he called it the New Rhodias, thrice-great lord.' The
patrician voice was a croak now. 'Glorious Emperor, we know, we all
know there has never been a holy sanctuary on earth to match the one
you have envisaged and are bringing into being. It will be the glory
of Jad's world. The dome, the dome is unmatched in size, in majesty
..."

'We can only bring it into being if our servants are competent. The
dome Artibasos has designed is too big, you are now saying, to use
proper mosaic technique upon? Is that it, Siroes?'

'My lord, no!'

'You are being given insufficient resources from the Imperial
treasury? Not enough apprentices and craftsmen? Your own recompense
is inadequate, Siroes?' The voice was cold and hard as a stone in the
depths of winter.

Crispin felt fear and pity. He couldn't even see the man being so
ruthlessly annihilated, but behind him he heard the sound of someone
sinking to his knees.

'The Emperor's generosity surpasses my worth as much as he surpasses
all those in this room in majesty, my thrice-exalted lord.'

'We rather believe it does, in fact,' said Valerius II icily. 'We
must reconsider certain aspects of our building plans. You may leave
us, Siroes. We are grateful to the lady Styliane Daleina for urging
your talents upon us, but it begins to appear that the scope of our
Sanctuary might have you overmatched. It happens, it happens. You
will be appropriately rewarded for what you have done to this point.
Fear not.'

Another piece of the puzzle. The aristocratic wife of the Strategos
had sponsored this other mosaicist before the Emperor. Crispin's
appearance tonight, his swift summons to court, had threatened that
man, and so her, by extension.

It was appallingly true, what he'd conjectured earlier: he'd arrived
here with allegiances and enemies before he'd even opened his
mouth-or lifted his head from the floor. I could be killed here, he
thought suddenly. Behind him he heard the silver doors opening. There
were footsteps. A pause. The banished artisan would be doing his
obeisance.

The doors closed again. Candles flickered in the draft. The light
wavered, steadied. It was silent in the throne room, the courtiers
chastened and afraid. Siroes, whoever he was, had left. Crispin had
just ruined a man by answering a single question honestly without
regard for tact or diplomacy. Honesty at a court was a dangerous
thing, for others, for oneself. He kept his own eyes on the mosaic of
the floor again. A hunting scene in the centre. An Emperor of long
ago, in the woods with a bow, a stag leaping, the Imperial arrow in
flight towards it. A death coming, if the scene continued.

The scene continued.

Alixana said, 'If this distressing habit of spoiling a festive
evening persists, my beloved, I shall join brave Leontes in
regretting your new Sanctuary. I must say, paying the soldiers on
time seems to cause so much less turmoil.'

The Emperor looked unperturbed. 'The soldiers will be paid. The
Sanctuary is to be one of our legacies. One of the things that will
send our names down the ages.'

'A lofty ambition to now lay on the shoulders of an untried,
ill-mannered westerner,' said Styliane Daleina, tartness in her
voice.

The Emperor glanced over at her, his expression blank. She had
courage, Crispin had to concede, to be challenging him in this mood.

Valerius said, 'It would be, were it on his shoulders. The Sanctuary
has already risen, however. Our splendid Artibasos, who designed and
built it for us, carries the burden of that-and the weight of his
heroic dome, like some demigod of the Trakesian pantheon. The
Rhodian, should he be capable, will attempt to decorate the Sanctuary
for us, in a manner pleasing to Jad and ourselves.'

'Then we must hope, thrice-exalted, he finds more pleasing manners in
himself' said the fair-haired woman.

Valerius smiled, unexpectedly. 'Cleverly put,' he said. This Emperor,
Crispin was coming to realize, was a man who valued intelligence a
great deal. 'Caius Crispus, we fear you have earned the displeasure
of one of the ornaments of our court. You must endeavour, while you
labour among us, to make amends to her.'

He didn't feel like making amends, as it happened. She had endorsed
an incompetent for her own reasons and was now trying to make Crispin
suffer the consequences. 'It is a regret to me, already,' he
murmured. 'I have no doubt the Lady Styliane is a jewel among women.
Indeed, the pearl she wears about her throat, larger than any single
womanly ornament I can see before me, is evidence and reflection of
that.' He knew what he was doing this time, as it happened. It was
dangerously rash, and he didn't care. He didn't like this tall,
arrogant woman with the perfect features and yellow hair and cold
eyes and that stinging tongue.

He heard a collective intake of breath, could not mistake the sudden
burning of anger in the woman's eyes, but it was the other woman he
was really waiting on, and Crispin, turning to her, found what he was
looking for: the briefest flicker of surprised, ironic understanding
in the dark gaze of the Empress of Sarantium.

In the awkwardness that followed his making explicit something the
lady Styliane Daleina would far rather not have had made so clear,
the Empress said, with deceptive mildness, 'We have many ornaments
among us. It occurs to me now that another of them has promised us to
lay to rest a wager proposed at the banquet. Scortius, before I
retire for the night, if I am to sleep easily, I must know the answer
to the Emperor's question. No one has come forward to claim the
offered gem. Will you tell us, charioteer?' This time Crispin did
turn to look, as the brilliant array of courtiers to his right parted
in a shimmer of silk and a small, trim man moved, neat-footed and
composed, to stand beside a candelabrum. Crispin moved a little to
one side, to let Scortius of the Blues wait alone before the thrones.
Unable to help himself, he stared at the man.

The Soriyyan driver he'd seen perform marvels that day had deep-set
eyes in a dark face traced lightly-and in one or two cases less
lightly-by scars. His easy manner suggested he was no stranger to the
palace. He wore a knee-length linen tunic in a natural, off-white
colour, stripes in a dark blue running down from each shoulder to the
knee, gold thread bordering it. A soft blue cap covered his black
hair. His belt was gold, simple, extremely expensive. About his
throat was a single chain, and from it, on his chest, hung a golden
horse with jewels for its eyes.

'We all strive,' the charioteer said gravely, 'in all we do, to
please the Empress.' He paused deliberately, then white teeth
flashed. 'And then the Emperor, of course.'

Valerius laughed. 'Sheathe that deadly charm, charioteer. Or save it
for whomever you are seducing now.'

There was feminine laughter. Some of the men, Crispin noted, did not
appear amused. Alixana, her own dark eyes flashing now, murmured,
'But I like when he unsheathes it, my lord Emperor.'

Crispin, caught unawares, was unable to control his own sudden burst
of laughter. It didn't matter. Valerius and the court around him gave
vent to amusement as the charioteer bowed low to the Empress,
smiling, unruffled. This was, Crispin understood finally, a court
with a nature at least partly defined by its women.

By the woman on the throne, certainly. The Emperor's return to good
humour was manifestly unfeigned. Crispin, looking at the two thrones,
abruptly thought of Ilandra, with the queer inner twist, as of a
blade, that still came whenever he did so. Had his wife made the same
sort of openly provocative remark he, too, would have been relaxed
enough to find it amusing, so sure had he been of her. Valerius was
like that with his Empress. Crispin wondered-not for the first
time-what it would have been like to be wed to a woman one could not
trust. He glanced at the Strategos, Leontes. The tall man wasn't
laughing. Neither was his aristocratic bride. There might be many
reasons for that, mind you.

'The jewel,' said the Emperor 'is still on offer, until Scortius
reveals his secret. A pity our Rhodian didn't see the event, he seems
to have so many answers for us.'

'The racing today, my lord? I did see it. A magnificent spectacle.'
It occurred to Crispin, a little too late, that he might be making
another mistake.

Valerius made a wry face. 'Ah. You are a partisan of the track? We
are surrounded by them, of course.'

Crispin shook his head. 'Hardly a partisan, my lord. Today was the
first time I was ever in a hippodrome. My escort, Carullus of the
Fourth Sauradian, who is here to meet with the Supreme Strategos, was
good enough to be my guide to the running of the chariots.' It
couldn't hurt Carullus to have his name mentioned here, he thought.

'Ah, well then. As a first-timer you wouldn't be able to address the
question in any case. Go ahead, Scortius. We await enlightenment.'

'Oh, no. No, let us ask him, my lord,' said Styliane Daleina. There
really was malice in her cold beauty. 'As our thrice-exalted Emperor
says, the artisan seems to know so much. Why should the chariots be
beyond his grasp?'

'There is much that lies beyond me, my lady,' Crispin said, as mildly
as he could. 'But I shall endeavour to ... satisfy you.' He smiled in
turn, briefly. He was paying a price for what he'd done inadvertently
to her artisan, and for the deliberate reference to her pearl. He
could only hope the price would stop at barbed innuendoes.

Alixana said, from her throne, 'The question we debated at dinner,
Rhodian, was this: how did Scortius know to surrender the inside
track in the first race of the afternoon? He let the Green chariot
come inside him, deliberately, and led poor Crescens straight into
disaster.'

'I recall it, my lady. It led the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian
into a financial disaster, as well.'

A weak sally. The Empress did not smile. 'How regrettable for him.
But none of us has been able to offer an explanation that matches the
answer our splendid charioteer is holding in reserve. He has promised
to tell us. Do you wish to hazard a guess before he does?'

'There is,' Valerius added, 'no shame attached to not knowing.
Especially if this was your first time at the Hippodrome.'

It never really occurred to him not to answer. Perhaps it should
have. Perhaps a more careful man, judging nuances, would have
demurred. Martinian would have been such a man, almost certainly.

Crispin said, 'I have a thought, my lord, my lady. I may be very
wrong, of course. I probably am.'

The charioteer beside him glanced over. His eyebrows were raised a
little, but his brown-eyed, observant gaze was intrigued and
courteous.

Crispin looked back at him, and smiled. 'It is one thing to sit above
the track and ponder how a thing was done, it is another to do it at
speed on the sands. Whether I am right or not, permit me to salute
you. I did not expect to be moved today, and I was.'

'You do me too much honour,' Scortius murmured.

'What is it, then?' said the Emperor. 'Your thought, Rhodian? There
is an Ispahani ruby to be claimed.'

Crispin looked at him and swallowed. He hadn't known, of course, what
was on offer. This was no trivial prize; it was wealth, from the
farthest east. He turned back to Scortius, clearing his throat.
'Would it have to do with light and dark in the crowd?'

And from the immediate smile on the charioteer's face, he knew that
he had it. He did. A puzzle-solving mind. All his life.

In the waiting silence, Crispin said, with growing confidence, 'I
would say that the very experienced Scortius took his cue from the
darkness of the crowd as he reached the turn below the Imperial Box,
my lord Emperor. There must have been other things he knew that I
cannot even imagine, but I'd hazard that was the most important
thing.'

'The darkness of the crowd,' said the Master of Offices. Faustinus
glared. 'What nonsense is this?'

'I hope it is not nonsense, my lord. I refer to their faces, of
course.' Crispin said no more. He was looking at the charioteer
beside him.

Everyone was, by now.

'We seem,' the Soriyyan said, at length, 'to have a chariot-driver
here.' He laughed, showing white, even teeth. 'I fear the Rhodian is
no mosaicist at all. He is a dangerous deceiver, my lord.'

'He is correct?' said the Emperor sharply.

'He is entirely so, thrice-exalted lord.'

'Explain!' It was a command, whip like.

'I am honoured to be asked,' said the champion of the Blues, calmly.

'You are not asked. Caius Crispus of Varena, explain what you mean.'
Scortius looked abashed, for the first time. Crispin realized that
the Emperor was genuinely vexed, and he guessed why: there was,
clearly, another puzzle-solving mind in this room.

Crispin said cautiously, 'Sometimes a man who sees a thing for the
first time may observe that which others, more familiar, cannot truly
see any more. I confess that I grew weary of the later races in the
long day, and my gaze wandered. It went to the stands across the
spina.'

'And that taught you how to win a chariot race?' Valerius's brief
pique had passed. He was engaged again, Crispin saw. Beside him,
Alixana's dark gaze was unreadable.