Sailing to Sarantium (8 page)

And he had liked that girl in Trakesia.

 

In the good weather Pardos was outside at the oven making quicklime
for the setting bed. The heat of the fire was pleasant when the wind
picked up, and he liked being in the sanctuary yard. The presence of
the dead under their headstones didn't frighten him, or not in
daylight at any rate. Jad had ordained that man would die. War and
plague were part of the world the god had made. Pardos didn't
understand why, but he had no expectation of understanding. The
clerics, even when they disagreed about doctrine or burned each other
over Heladikos, all taught submission and faith, not a vainglorious
attempt to comprehend. Pardos knew he wasn't wise enough to be vain
or to comprehend.

Beyond the graven, sculpted headstones of the named dead, a dark
earth mound rose-no grass there yet-at the northern end of the yard.
Beneath it lay bodies claimed by the plague. It had come two years
ago and then again last summer, killing in numbers too great for
anything but mass burial by slaves taken in war. There was lime ash
in there, too, and some other elements mixed in. They were said to
help contain the bitter spirits of the dead and what had killed them.
It was certainly keeping the grass from coming back. The queen had
ordered three court cheiromancers and an old alchemist who lived
outside the walls to cast binding spells as well. One did all the
things one could think to do in the aftermath of plague, whatever the
clerics or the High Patriarch might say about pagan magics.

Pardos fumbled for his sun disk and gave thanks for being alive. He
watched the black smoke of the lime kiln rise up towards the white,
swift clouds, and noted the autumn reds and golds of the forest to
the east. Birds were singing in the blue sky and the grass was green,
though shading to brown near the sanctuary building itself where the
afternoon light failed in the shadow of the new walls.

Colours, all around him in the world. Crispin had told him, over and
over, to make himself see the colours. To think about them, how they
played against each other and with each other; to consider what
happened when a cloud crossed the sun-as now-and the grass darkened
beneath him. What would he name that hue in his mind? How would he
use it? In a marinescape? A hunting scene? A mosaic of Heladikos
rising above an autumn forest towards the sun? Look at the
grass-now!-before the light returned. Picture that colour in glass
and stone tesserae. Embed it in memory, so you could embed it in lime
and make a mosaic world on a wall or a dome.

Assuming, of course, there ever emerged a glassworks again in
conquered Batiara where they made reds and blues and greens worthy of
a name, instead of the muddied, bubbled, streaked excrescences they'd
received in the morning shipment from Rhodias.

Martinian, a calm man and perhaps prepared for this, had only sighed
when the urgently awaited sheets of new glass were unwrapped. Crispin
had foamed into one of his notorious, blasphemous rages and smashed
the topmost dirty brown sheet of what was supposed to be red, cutting
one hand.
'This is red!
Not that dungheap colour!' he had
shouted, letting drops of his blood fall on the brownish sheet.

He could be entertaining in his fury, actually, unless you happened
to be the one who had given him cause to lose his temper. When they
had their beer and crusts of bread at lunch, or walking back towards
Varena's walls at sunset after work, the labourers and apprentices
would trade stories of things Crispin had said and done when angry.
Martinian had told the apprentices that Crispin was brilliant and a
great man; Pardos wondered if a temper came with that.

He'd had some shockingly inventive ideas this morning for how to deal
with the glassworks steward. Pardos himself would never have been
able to even conceive of broken shards being inserted and applied in
the ways Crispin had proposed, swearing violently even though they
were on consecrated ground.

Martinian, ignoring his younger partner, had set about accepting and
discarding sheets, eyeing them with care, sighing now and again. They
simply couldn't reject them all. For one thing, there was little
chance of better quality in replacements. For another, they were
working against time, with a formal re-burial and a ceremony for King
Hildric planned by his daughter the queen for the first day after the
Dykania Festival. It would take place here in the newly expanded
sanctuary they were decorating now. It was already mid-autumn, the
grapes harvested. The roads south were muddy after last week's rains.
The chances of getting new glass sent up from Rhodias in time were
too slim even to be considered.

Martinian was, as usual, visibly resigned to the situation. They
would have to make do. Pardos knew that Crispin was as aware of this
as his partner. He just had his temper. And getting things right
mattered to him. Perhaps too much so, in the imperfect world Jad had
made as his mortal children's dwelling place. Pardos the apprentice
made a quick sign of the sun disk again and stoked the kiln, keeping
it as hot as he could. He stirred the mixture inside with a long
shovel. This would not be a good day to become distracted and let the
setting lime emerge faulty.

Crispin had imaginative uses for broken glass on his mind.

So attentive was he to the lime mixture cooking in the oven that
Pardos actually jumped when a voice-speaking awkwardly accented
Rhodian-addressed him. He turned quickly, and saw a lean, red-faced
man in the grey and white colours of the Imperial Post. The courier's
horse grazed behind him near the gate. Belatedly, Pardos became aware
that the other apprentices and labourers working outside the
sanctuary had stopped and were looking over this way. Imperial
Couriers from Sarantium did not appear in their midst with any
frequency at all.

'Are you hard of hearing?' the man said waspishly. He had a recent
wound on his chin. The eastern accent was pronounced. 'I said my name
is Tilliticus. Sarantine Imperial Post. I'm looking for a man named
Martinian. An artisan. They said he'd be here.'

Pardos, intimidated, could only gesture towards the sanctuary.
Martinian, as it happened, was asleep on his stool in the doorway,
his much-abused hat pulled over his eyes to block the afternoon
sunlight.

'Deaf and mute. I see,' said the courier. He clumped off through the
grass towards the building.

'I'm not,' said Pardos, but so softly he wasn't heard. Behind the
courier's back, he flapped urgently at two of the other apprentices,
trying to signal them to wake Martinian before this unpleasant man
appeared in front of him.

He had not been asleep. From his favourite position-on a pleasant
day, at any rate-in the sanctuary entrance, Martinian of Varena had
noticed the courier riding up from a distance. Grey and white showed
clearly against green and blue in sunlight.

He and Crispin had used that concept, in fact, for a row of Blessed
Victims on the long walls of a private chapel in Baiana years ago. It
had been only a partial success-at night, by candlelight, the effect
was not what Crispin had hoped it would be-but they'd learned a fair
bit, and learning from errors was what mosaic work was about, as
Martinian was fond of telling the apprentices. If the patrons had had
enough money to light the chapel properly at night, it might have
been different, but they'd known the resources when they made their
design. It was their own fault.

One always had to work within the constraints of time and money.
That, too, was a lesson to be learned-and taught.

He watched the courier stop by Pardos at the lime kiln and he tipped
his hat forward over his eyes, feigning sleep. He felt a peculiar
apprehension. No idea why. And he was never able to give an adequate
explanation afterwards, even to himself, as to why he did what he did
next that autumn afternoon, altering so many lives forever. Sometimes
the god entered a man, the clerics taught. And sometimes daemons or
spirits did. There were powers in the half-world, beyond the grasp of
mortal men.

He was to tell his learned friend Zoticus, over a mint infusion some
days later, that it had had to do with feeling old that day. A week
of steady rain had caused his finger joints to swell painfully. That
wasn't really it, however. He was hardly so weak as to let such a
thing lead him into so much folly. But he truly didn't know why he'd
chosen-with no pre-meditation whatsoever-to deny being himself.

Did a man always understand his own actions? He would ask Zoticus
that as they sat together in the alchemist's farmhouse. His friend
would it give him a predictable reply and refill his cup with the
infusion, mixed with something to ease the ache in his hands. The
unpleasant courier would be long gone by then, to wherever his
postings had taken him.

And Crispin, too, would be gone.

Martinian of Varena feigned sleep as the easterner with the nose and
cheekbones of a drinker approached him and rasped,'You! Wake! I'm
looking for a man named Martinian. An Imperial Summons to Sarantium!'

He was loud, arrogant as all Sarantines seemed to be when they came
to Batiara, his words thick with the accent. Everyone heard him. He
meant for them to hear him. Work stopped inside the sanctuary being
expanded to properly house the bones of King Hildric of the Antae,
dead of the plague a little more than a year ago.

Martinian pretended to rouse himself from an afternoon doze in the
autumn light. He blinked owsley up at the Imperial Courier, and then
pointed a stiff finger into the sanctuary-and up towards his longtime
friend and colleague Caius Crispus. Crispin was just then attempting
the task of making muddy brown tesserae appear like the brilliant
glowing of Heladikos's sacred fire, high up on a scaffold under the
dome.

Even as he pointed, Martinian wondered at himself. A summons? To the
City? And he was playing the games of a boy? No one here would give
him away to an arrogant Sarantine, but even so ...

In the stillness that ensued, a voice they all knew was suddenly
heard overhead with unfortunate clarity. The resonance of sound
happened to be very good in this sanctuary.

'By Heladikos's cock, I will carve slices from his rump with this
useless glass and force feed him his own buttocks in segments, I
swear by holy Jad!'

The courier looked affronted.

'That's Martinian,' said Martinian helpfully. 'Up there. He's in a
temper.'

In fact, he really wasn't any more. The blasphemous vulgarity was
almost reflexive. Sometimes he said things, and wasn't even aware he
was speaking aloud, when a technical challenge engaged him entirely.
At the moment, he was obsessed, in spite of himself, with the problem
of how to make the torch of Heladikos gleam red when he had nothing
that was red with which to work. If he'd had some gold he could have
sandwiched the glass against a gold backing and warmed the hue that
way, but gold for mosaic was a fatuous dream here in Batiara after
the wars and the plague.

He'd had an idea, however. Up on the high scaffold, Caius Crispus of
Varena was setting reddish-veined marble from Pezzelana flat into the
soft, sticky lime coat on the dome, interspersed with the best of the
tesserae they'd managed to salvage from the miserable sheets of
glass. The glass pieces he laid at angles in the setting bed, to
catch and reflect the light.

If he was right, the effect would be a shimmer and dance along the
tall shape of the flame, the flat stones mingled with the tilted,
glinting tesserae. Seen from below, it ought to have that result in
sunlight through the windows around the base of the dome, or by the
light of the wall candles and the suspended iron lanterns running the
length of the sanctuary. The young queen had assured Martinian that
her bequest to the clerics here would ensure evening and winter
lighting. Crispin had no reason to disbelieve it was her father's
tomb, and the Antae had had a cult of ancestor-worship, only thinly
masked by their conversion to the Jaddite faith.

He had a cloth knotted around the cut in his left hand, and that made
him awkward. He dropped a good stone, watched it fall a long way and
swore again, reaching for another one. The setting bed was beginning
to harden beneath the flame and torch he was filling in. He would
have to work faster. The torch was silver. They were using whitish
marble and some river-smooth stones for that-it ought to work. He'd
heard that in the east they had a way of frosting glass to make an
almost pure white tessera like snow, and that mother-of-pearl was
available, for crowns and jewellery. He didn't even like thinking
about such things. It only frustrated him, here in the west amid
ruins.

As it happened, these were his thoughts in the precise moment when
the irritated, carrying eastern voice from below penetrated his
concentration and his life. A coincidence, or the heard accents of
Sarantium carrying his mind sailing that way towards the celebrated
channel and the inner sea and the gold and silver and silk of the
Emperor?

He looked down.

Someone, short as a snail from this height, was addressing him as
Martinian. This would have been merely vexing had Martinian
himself-by the doorway, as was usual at this hour-not also been
gazing up at Crispin as the easterner barked the wrong name,
disturbing all the work in the sanctuary.

Crispin bit back two obscene retorts and then a third response which
was to direct the imbecile in the right direction. Something was
afoot. It might only be a jibe directed at the courier-though that
would be unlike his partner-or it might be something else.

He'd deal with it later.

'I'll be down when I'm done,' he called, much more politely than the
circumstances warranted. 'Go pray for someone's immortal soul in the
meantime. Do it quietly.'