Sailing to Sarantium (53 page)

The bells seemed to have stopped. She tugged fingers through her
tangled hair and went out into the hall. She hesitated there, then
decided it was permissible to look in on him, tell of the other
mosaicist who had come, find out what had happened in the night. If
it was not permitted, best she learn that now, Kasia thought. She was
free. A citizen of the Sarantine Empire. Had been a slave less than a
year. It did not define your life, she told herself.

His door was closed, of course. She lifted a hand to knock and heard
voices inside.

Her heart lurched, surprising her greatly, though afterwards she
would find it less surprising. The words she heard spoken were a
shock, however, and so was what Crispin said in reply. Kasia felt
herself flush, listening; her lifted hand trembled in the air.

She didn't knock. Turned, in great confusion, to go down.

On the stairs she met two of Carullus's men coming up. They told her
about the attack in the night.

Kasia found herself leaning against the wall as she listened. Her
legs felt oddly weak. Two of the soldiers had died, the little
Soriyyan and Ferix from Amoria: men she had come to know. All six of
the attackers had been killed, whoever they had been. Crispin was all
right. Carullus had been wounded. The two of them had only just come
in, at dawn. They had been seen going up the stairs, hadn't stopped
to talk.

No, the soldiers said, there had been no one else with them.

She hadn't heard them in the hallway. Or perhaps she had, and
that-not the bells-had drawn her from dream, or had shaped her dream.
A faceless man beside a waterfall. Carullus's men, grim and scowling,
went past her to their shared room to get their weapons. They would
carry them everywhere now, she understood. Deaths altered things.

Kasia paused on the stairway, shaken and uncertain. Vargos would be
at chapel by now; there was no one to be with downstairs. It came to
her that an enemy might already be upstairs, but Crispin had not
sounded . . . alarmed. It occurred to her that she ought to tell
someone, or check on him herself, risking embarrassment. Someone had
tried to kill him last night. Had killed two men. She took a deep
breath. The stone of the wall was rough against her shoulder. He had
not sounded alarmed. And the other voice had been a woman's.

She turned back and went to Carullus's room. They'd said he'd been
wounded. Resolutely, she knocked there. He called out tiredly. She
spoke her name. The door opened.

Small things change a life. Change lives.

 

Crispin twisted violently to one side, away from the levelled knife.
He jammed a hand hard against the post at the foot of the bed to stay
upright.

'Ah,' said the woman in the shuttered half-light of his bedroom.
'It's you, Rhodian. Good. I feared for my virtue.'

She laid down the knife. After, he would remember thinking it was not
the weapon she needed to wield. At the time he was speechless.

'So,' said Styliane Daleina, sitting at ease upon his bed, 'I am told
the little actress let down her hair for you in her chambers. Did she
go to her knees the way they say she used to on stage, and take you
in her mouth?'

She smiled, utterly composed.

Crispin felt himself go white as he stared at her. It took him a
moment to find his voice. 'You appear to have been misinformed. There
were no actresses in the Blues' compound when I arrived there,' he
said very carefully. He knew what she'd meant. He was not going to
acknowledge it. 'And I was in the kitchen only, no one's private
chambers. What are you doing in mine?' He ought to have called her
'my lady.'

She had changed her clothing. The court garb was gone. She was
wearing a dark blue robe with a hood, thrown back now to frame her
golden hair, which was still pinned, though without ornament now. She
would have had the hood up, he imagined, to pass unknown through the
streets, to enter here. Had she bribed someone? She would have had
to. Wouldn't she?

She didn't answer his spoken question. Not with words, at any rate.
She looked up at him for a long moment from the bed, then stood. A
very tall woman, blue-eyed, fair-haired, a scent about her: Crispin
thought of flowers, a mountain meadow, an undercurrent of
intoxication, poppies. His heart was racing: danger and-rising
swiftly and against his will-desire. The expression on her face was
thoughtful, appraising. Without hurrying, she lifted one hand and
traced a finger along his shaven jaw. She touched his ear, circled
it. Then she rose up on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth.

He didn't move. He could have withdrawn, he thought afterwards, could
have stepped back. He was no innocent, had known-fatigued as he
was-that measuring look in her eyes as she stood up in the shadow and
light of the room. He hadn't stepped back. He did refrain from
responding, though, as best he could, even when her tongue ...

She didn't seem to care. Appeared to find it amusing, in fact, that
he withheld himself, standing rigid before her. She took her time,
quite deliberately, body fitted close against his, tongue brushing
his lips, pushing between them, then moving down to his throat. He
heard her soft laughter, the breath warm against his skin.

'I do hope she left some life in you,' murmured the aristocratic wife
of the Supreme Strategos of the Empire, and proceeded to slip a hand
down the front of his tunic to his waist-and past it-by way of
inquiry.

This time Crispin did step back, breathing hard, but not before she'd
touched him through the silk of his garment. He saw her smile, the
small, even teeth. She was exquisite, was Styliane Daleina, like pale
glass, pale ivory, like one of the knife blades made in the far west
of the world, in Esperana, where they crafted such things to be works
of beauty as well as agents of death.

'Good,' she said, again. She looked at him, assured, amused, daughter
of wealth and power, wedded to it. He could taste her, feel where her
mouth had been along his throat. She said, musingly, 'I will
disappoint you, I now fear. How can I compete with the actress in
this? It was said in her youth that she lamented holy Jad had granted
her an insufficiency of orifices for the acts of love.'

'Stop it!' Crispin rasped. 'This is a game. Why are you playing it?
Why are you here?' She smiled again. White teeth, hands coming up
into her hair, long, wide sleeves of the robe falling back to show
bare, slender arms. He said, in anger, fighting desire, 'Someone
tried to kill me tonight.'

'I know,' said Styliane Daleina. 'Does it excite you? I hope it
does.'

'You know? What else do you know about it?' Crispin said. Even as he
spoke, she began to unpin her golden hair.

She paused. Looked at him, a different expression in her eyes this
time. 'Rhodian, had I wished you dead, you would be. Why would a
Daleinus hire drunks in a caupona? Why would I trouble to kill an
artisan?'

'Why would you trouble to come uninvited to his room?' Crispin
snapped.

She laughed again at that. Her hands were busy another moment,
collecting pins; then she shook her head and the richness of her hair
spilled down, falling about her shoulders, filling the hood of her
robe.

'Must the actress be allowed all the interesting men?' she said.

Crispin shook his head, the familiar anger rising now. He sought
refuge in it. He says it again 'This is a game you are playing. You
are not here because you want to be bedded by a foreign artisan.' She
hadn't stepped back. There was very little space between them and her
scent enveloped them both. A dark redness, heady as poppies, as
unmixed wine. Very different from the Empress's. It had to be.
Carullus and then the eunuchs had told him that.

Deliberately, Crispin sat down on the wooden chest under the window.
He took a deep breath. 'I have asked some questions. They seem
reasonable in the circumstances. I'm waiting,' he said, and then
added, 'My lady.'

'So am I,' she murmured, one hand pushing her hair back. But the
voice had changed again, responding to his tone. There was a silence
in the room. Crispin heard a cart rumble past in the street below.
Someone shouted. It was morning. Bands of light and dark fell across
her body. The effect, he thought, was quite beautiful.

She said, 'You may be inclined to underestimate yourself, Rhodian.
You have little concept of what the patterns are at this court. No
one is summoned as swiftly as you were. Ambassadors wait weeks,
artisan. But the Emperor is infatuated with his Sanctuary. In one
single night you have been invited to court, given control of the
mosaics there, had private counsel with the Empress, and caused the
dismissal of the man who was doing the work before you came.'

'Your man,' Crispin said.

'After a fashion,' she said carelessly. 'He had done some work for
us. I judged it of some use to have Valerius in our debt for finding
him a craftsman. Leontes disagreed with that, but had his own reasons
for preferring Siroes. He has . . . views on what you and the other
artisans should be permitted to do in the sanctuaries.'

Crispin blinked. That might need thinking about. Later. 'It was
Siroes who hired those soldiers, then?' he guessed. 'I had no
intention of ruining anyone's career.'

'You did, however,' said the woman. The aristocratic coolness he
remembered from before was in her voice again. 'Quite completely. But
no, I can attest that Siroes was not in a position to hire assassins
tonight. Trust me in this.'

Crispin swallowed. There was nothing reassuring in her tone, but
there was a note of truth. He decided he didn't want to ask why she
was so certain.

'Who was it, then?'

Styliane Daleina raised her hands, palms out, an elegant, indifferent
gesture. 'I have no idea. Run down the table of your enemies. Pick a
name. Did the actress like my necklace? Did she put it on?'

'The Emperor wouldn't let her,' Crispin said, deliberately.

And saw that he'd surprised her. 'Valerius was there?'

'He was there. No one went down on her knees.'

She was amazingly self-possessed. A lifetime of dealing with intrigue
and lesser mortals. She smiled a little. 'Not yet,' she said, the
timbre of her voice lower, the glance direct. It was a game, and he
knew it, but entirely against his will, Crispin felt the stirrings of
desire again.

As carefully as he could, he said, 'I am unused to being offered
love-making on so little acquaintance, except by whores. My lady, I
am generally disinclined to accept their offers as well.'

She gazed at him, and Crispin had a sense that-perhaps for the first
time-she was taking the trouble to shape an evaluation of the man in
the room with her. She had been standing. Now she sank down onto the
end of the bed, not far from the chest where he sat. Her knee brushed
his, then withdrew a little.

'Would that please you?' she murmured. 'To treat me like a whore,
Rhodian? Put my face hard to the pillow, take me from behind? Hold me
by the hair as I cry out, as I say shocking, exciting things to you?
Shall I tell you what Leontes likes to do? It will surprise you,
perhaps. He rather enjoys-'

'No!' Crispin rasped, a little desperately. 'What is this about'?
Does it amuse you to play the wanton? Do you wander the streets
soliciting lovers? There are other bedrooms in this inn.'

Her expression was impossible to read. He hoped his tunic was
concealing the evidence of his arousal. He dared not look down to
check.

She said, 'What is this about, he asks. I have assumed you to be
intelligent, Rhodian. You gave some sign of it in the throne room.
Are you stupid with exhaustion now? Can you not guess that there
might be people in this city who think an invasion of Batiara a
destructive folly? Who might assume that you-as a Rhodian-might share
that belief and have some desire to save your family and your country
the consequences of an invasion?'

The words were knives, sharp and precise, almost military in their
directness. She added, in the same tone, 'Before you became
hopelessly enmeshed in the devices of the actress and her husband, it
made some sense to assess you.'

Crispin rubbed a hand across his eyes and forehead. She'd given him a
partial explanation, after all. A renewal of anger chased fatigue.
'You bed all those you recruit?' he said, staring coldly at her.

She shook her head. 'You are not a courteous man, Rhodian. I bed
where my pleasure leads me.' Crispin was unmoved by the reproof. She
spoke, he thought, with the untrammelled assurance of one never
checked in her wishes. The actress and her husband.

'And plot to undermine your Emperor's designs?'

'He killed my father,' said Styliane Daleina bluntly, sitting on his
bed, pale hair framing the exquisite, patrician face. 'Burned him
alive with Sarantine Fire.'

'An old rumour,' Crispin said, but he was shaken, and trying to hide
it. 'Why are you telling me this?'

She smiled, quite unexpectedly. 'To arouse you?'

And he had to laugh. Try as he might to hold back, the effortless
shift of tone, the irony of it, was too witty. 'Immolation is
unexciting for me, I fear. Do I take it the Supreme Strategos shares
the view that no war ought to be waged in Batiara? He has sent you
here?'

She blinked. 'Take no such thing. Leontes will do whatever Valerius
tells him. He will invade you as he invaded the Majriti deserts or
the northern steppes, or laid siege to Bassanid cities east.'

'And all the while his new, beloved bride will be acting to subvert
him?'

She hesitated for the first time. 'His new prize is the phrase you
want, Rhodian. Open your eyes and ears, there are things you ought to
learn before Petrus the Trakesian and his little dancer co-opt you to
their service.'

Contempt lay undisguised in the aristocratic voice. She would have
had no choice, Crispin imagined, in the matter of her wedding. The
Strategos was young, though, triumphant, celebrated, an undeniably
handsome man. Crispin looked at the woman in the room with him and
had a sense of having entered black waters, with unimaginably complex
currents trying to suck him down. He said, 'I am only a mosaicist, my
lady. I was brought here to assist with images on sanctuary walls and
a dome.'