"Lord of Emperors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER VI

Same hour of night, same wind, four men walking elsewhere in the City, under that risen moon.

It was never entirely safe in Sarantium after nightfall, but a party of four could feel reasonably secure. Two of them carried heavy sticks. They walked briskly enough in the cold, slowed somewhat, as the road sloped downwards and then back up, by wine consumed and the bad foot one of them dragged. The oldest, small and portly, was wrapped in a heavy cloak to his chin but swore whenever the wind gusted and sent debris tumbling down the dark street.

The were women abroad, too, in doorways for shelter, for they wore too little clothing in the nature of their profession. A number of them could be seen lingering with the unhoused beggars by the heat of the bakers" ovens.

One of the younger men showed an inclination to slow down here, but the one in the cloak rasped an oath and they kept moving. A woman-a girl, really-followed them a little way and then stopped, standing alone in the street before retreating to the warmth. As she did, she saw an enormous litter carried by eight bearers-not the usual four or six-come around a corner and then move down the street, following the four men. She knew better than to call out after this aristocrat. If such as these wanted a woman, they made their own choices. If they did call one over to the curtained litter, it wasn't necessarily safe for the girl. The wealthy had their own rules here, as elsewhere.

None of the men walking were sober. They had been given wine at the end of a wedding feast by the hostess, and had only just emerged from a noisy tavern where the oldest one had bought several more flasks for all of them to share.

It was a long walk now, but Kyros didn't mind. Strumosus had been astonishingly genial in the tavern, discoursing volubly upon eel and venison, and the proper marriage of sauce and principal dish as recorded by Aspalius four hundred years ago. Kyros and the others had been aware that their master was pleased with how the day had unfolded.

Or he had been until they'd stepped back outside and realized just how cold it was now, and how late, with a long way yet through the windy streets to the Blues" compound.

Kyros, reasonably immune to the chill, as it happened, was too exhilarated to care: the combination of a successful banquet, too much wine, intense images of their hostess-her scent, smile, words about his own work in the kitchen-and then Strumosus's affable, expansive mood in the tavern. This was one of the very good days, Kyros decided. He wished he were a poet, that he could put some of these tumbling-about feelings into words.

There was a clatter of noise ahead. Half a dozen young men spilled from the low door of a tavern. It was too dark to see them clearly: if they were Greens this could be dangerous, with the season soon to start and anticipation rising. If they had to run, Kyros knew he would be the problem. The four men bunched themselves more closely together.

Unnecessarily, as it turned out. The tavern party meandered untidily down the hill towards the waterfront, attempting a marching song of the day. Not Greens. Soldiers on leave in the City. Kyros drew a relieved breath. He glanced back over his shoulder-and so he was the one who saw the litter following behind them in the darkness.

He said nothing, walked on with the others. Laughed dutifully at Rasic's too-loud joke about the inebriated soldiers-one of them had stopped to be sick in a shop doorway. Kyros looked back again as they turned a corner, passing a sandal shop and a yogurt stand, both long since closed for the night: the litter came around the corner, keeping pace with them. It was very large. Eight men carried it. The curtains were drawn on both sides.

Kyros felt a queasy apprehension. Litters at night weren't at all unusual-the well-to-do tended to use them, especially when it was cold. But this one was moving too precisely at their own speed and going exactly where they went. When it followed them diagonally across a square, around the central fountain, and then up the steep street on the opposite side, Kyros cleared his throat and touched Strumosus on the arm.

"I think…" he began, as the chef looked at him. He swallowed. "It is possible we're being followed."

The other three stopped and looked back. The litter immediately halted, the dark-clad bearers motionless and silent. The street was empty around them. Closed doors, closed shop fronts, four men standing together, a patrician's curtained litter, silence, nothing else.

The white moon hung overhead above a small chapel's copper dome. From a distance there came the flaring sound of sudden, raucous laughter. Another inn, patrons leaving. Then that sound faded away.

In the stillness the three young men heard Strumosus of Amoria let out a long breath, then swear, quietly but with intense feeling.

"Stay where you are," he told them. And he walked back towards the litter.

"Fuck," whispered Rasic, for want of anything better to say. Kyros felt it too: a sense of menace, oppression.

They were silent, watching the little chef. Strumosus approached the litter. None of the bearers moved or spoke. The chef stopped by the drawn curtains on one side. He appeared to be speaking, but they couldn't hear him, or any reply from within. Then Kyros saw the curtain lifted and pulled back slightly. He had no idea who was inside, man or woman, or more than one person-the litter was easily large enough for that. He did know that he was afraid now.

"Fuck," said Rasic again, watching.

"Fuck," Mergius echoed.

"Shut up," Kyros said, uncharacteristically. "Both of you."

Strumosus appeared to be speaking again, then listening. Then he folded his arms across his chest and said something else. After a moment the curtain fell closed, and a moment later the litter was turned around and began to move the other way, back down towards the square. Strumosus stayed where he was, watching, until it disappeared beyond the fountain. He walked back to the three young men. Kyros could see that he was disturbed, but he didn't dare ask any questions.

"Who in the god's name was that?" Rasic said, not feeling the same compunction.

Strumosus ignored him, as if the young man hadn't even spoken. He started walking; they fell in stride with him. No one said anything more, not even Rasic. They came to the compound without further incident, were known by torchlight and admitted.

"Good night," Strumosus said to the three of them, at the entrance to the dormitory. Then he walked away without waiting for a response.

Rasic and Mergius went up the steps and in, but Kyros lingered on the porch. He saw that the chef did not go towards his private rooms. Instead, he walked across the courtyard to the kitchens. A moment later Kyros saw lamps being lit there. He wanted to go over but did not. Too much presumption. After another moment, he took a last breath of the cold air and stepped inside after the others. He went to bed. Didn't sleep for a long time. A very good day and night had been, obscurely, changed into something else.

In the kitchen, Strumosus of Amoria moved with precision to build up the fire, light the lamps, pour himself a cup of wine. He watered it judiciously, then took a knife, sharpened it, and rhythmically chopped vegetables. He cracked two eggs, added the vegetables, sea salt, a generous pinch of expensive eastern pepper. He beat the mixture in a small, chipped bowl he'd had for years and used only for himself. Heated a saucepan on a grate placed over the cooking fire, drizzled olive oil into it, and made himself a flat-bottomed egg dish, nipping it intuitively. He set the saucepan down on a stone surface and selected a white-and-blue patterned plate from a shelf. He transferred his swift creation to the plate, decorated the surface with flower petals and mint leaves and then paused briefly to evaluate the effect. A chef who is careless about how he feeds himself, he was fond of telling his assistants, will become careless about feeding others.

He wasn't hungry at all, but he was disturbed and had needed to cook, and once a dish had been well made it was very much a crime in his interpretation of Jad's created world not to enjoy it. He sat on a high stool at the work island in the centre of the room and ate alone, drinking the wine, refilling his cup, watching the white moon's light falling on the courtyard outside. He'd thought Kyros might come over here and wouldn't entirely have minded company, but the boy lacked-as yet- confidence to go with his perceptiveness.

Strumosus realized that his wine cup was empty again. He hesitated, then refilled it, mixing less water than before. It was rare for him to drink this much, but he didn't often have an encounter like the one in the street just now.

He'd been offered a job and had refused. Two such proposals today, in fact. First from the young dancer, and then in the dark just now. Not a problem, those, in themselves. It happened often. People knew of him, desired his services, some had the money to pay him. He was happy here with the Blues, however. It wasn't an aristocratic kitchen but it was an important one, and he had a chance to play a role in changing perceptions about his own art and passion. It was said that the Greens were now searching for a master chef. Strumosus had been amused and pleased.

But the person who'd made him the offer from inside that sumptuous litter was different. Someone he knew very well, in fact, and memories-including those of his own deferential, complicitous silences on certain matters in times past-were with him now. The past does not leave us until we die, Protonias had written long ago, and then we become someone rise's memories, until they die. For most men it is all that endures after them. The gods have made it so.

The old gods themselves were almost gone now, Strumosus thought, looking at his wine cup. And how many living souls remembered Protonias of Trakesia? How did a man leave a name?

He sighed, looking around his familiar kitchen, every corner of it thought out, allocated, an imposing of order in the world. Something is about to happen, the little chef thought suddenly, alone in a circle of lamps. He'd thought he knew what it was-hadn't been shy about offering his views. A war in the west: what thinking man could miss the signs?

But sometimes thought and observation were not the keys. Sometimes the locked doors were opened by something within the blood, in the soul, in dream.

He wasn't so sure any more of what it was that was approaching. But he did know that if Lysippus the Calysian was in Sarantium again, and moving about in his litter in the darkness, that blood and dream would be part of it.

Someone else's memories, until they die.

He wasn't afraid for himself, but it did cross his mind to wonder if he should be.

It was time to go to bed. He didn't want to go to bed. He ended up dozing where he sat on his stool, bent forward, the plate and cup pushed away, his head pillowed on his folded arms as the lamps burned slowly down and the dark drew back in.

In the heart of that same night, the wind so keen outside it seemed the god was withholding spring from his world, a man and a woman were drinking spiced wine by a fire on their wedding night.

The woman sat on a backless, cushioned seat, the man on the floor by her feet, his head resting against her thigh. They watched the flames in a silence characteristic of her but unusual for him. It had been a very long day. One of her hands rested lightly on his shoulder. Both of them were remembering other flames, other rooms; a slight awkwardness inhabited the place, an awareness of the other chamber-and the bed- just beyond the beaded arch of a door.

He said, at length, "You haven't worn that scent before, have you? You don't wear any perfume usually. Do you?"

She shook her head, then realizing he couldn't see her, murmured, "No." And, after a hesitation, "It's Shirin's. She insisted I wear it tonight."

He turned his head then and looked up at her, his eyes wide. "Hers? Then… it's the Empress's perfume?"

Kasia nodded. "Shirin said I should feel like royalty tonight." She managed a smile. "I think it is safe. Unless you've invited guests."

Their guests had left them some time ago at the front door, departing with bawdy jests and a ragged soldiers" chorus of one particularly obscene song.

Carullus, newly appointed chiliarch of the Second Calysian Cavalry, chuckled briefly, then fell silent.

"I can't imagine wanting anyone else to be with me," he said quietly. And then, "And you don't need Alixana's scent to be royal here."

Kasia made a wry face, an expression from her past, at home. She seemed to be recovering those aspects of herself, slowly. "You are a flatterer, soldier. Did that work on the girls in taverns?"

She had been a girl in a tavern.

He shook his head, still serious, intent. "Never said it. Never had a wife."

Her expression changed, but he was looking into the fire again and couldn't see it. She looked down at him. At this soldier, this husband. A big man, black hair, broad shoulders, thick hands, a burly chest. And she abruptly realized, wondering at it, that he was afraid of her, of hurting or distressing her.

Something twisted, oddly, within Kasia then as the firelight danced. There had been a pool of water once, far in the north. She would go there to be alone. Erimitsu: the clever one. Too sharp, disdainful. Before the plague and then an autumn road with her mother standing among falling leaves watching them lead her away, roped to the other girls.

The gods of the north, those windswept open spaces, or Jad, or the zubir of the southern Aldwood-someone or something had led her to this room. There seemed to be shelter here. A fire, walls. A man sitting-quietly on the floor at her feet. A place out of the wind, for once.

It was a gift, it was a gift. The twist in her heart tightened as she looked down. A gift. Her hand, in turn, tightened on his shoulder, moved to brush his hair.

"You do now," she said. "You have a wife now. Will you not take her to bed?"

"Oh, Jad!" he said, releasing his breath in a rush, as if he'd been holding it for a long time.

She actually laughed. Another gift.

Mardoch of the First Amorian Infantry, summoned north from the borderlands to Deapolis with his company-none of the officers would say for certain why, though everyone had guesses-was half convinced he'd been poisoned by something he'd eaten in one of the cauponae they'd sampled tonight. Wretched luck. His very first leave in the City, after six months in the Emperor's army, and he was sick as a Bassanid dog, with the older men laughing at him.

A few of the others had waited the first two times he'd been forced to stop and heave his guts in a shop doorway, but when his belly churned again and he slowly recovered to stand precariously upright, wiping his wet chin, shivering against a wall in the butt-freezing wind, he discovered that the bastards had gone on without him this time. He listened, heard singing voices somewhere ahead, and pushed off from the wall to follow.

He was far from sober, in addition to the extreme disarray of his internal organs. He soon lost track of the singing and he had no real idea where he was. He decided he'd head back towards the water-they'd been going that way in any case-and find either another caupona or their inn or a girl. The white moon had to be east, which gave him a direction. He didn't feel as sick any more, either, which was a blessing of bright Heladikos, ever the soldier's friend.

It was cold, though, and the downward-sloping way seemed longer and the lanes more twisty than earlier in the evening. It was strangely difficult to keep going in the proper direction. He kept seeing those eerie flames as he went, appearing, disappearing. You weren't supposed to talk about them, but they were unsettling, in the extreme. Made him jump, they did. Mardoch kept walking, cursing under his breath.

When a litter he hadn't seen or heard pulled up beside him and a clipped, aristocratic voice from inside asked if a citizen could assist a brave soldier of the Empire, he was entirely happy to accede.

He achieved a salute, then climbed inside as one of the big bearers pulled the curtain back for him. Mardoch settled himself on plump cushions, aware of his own unsavoury smell, suddenly. The man inside was even bigger than the litter-bearer-stupefyingly so, in fact. He was huge. It was very dark when the curtain fell back, and there was a sweetish scent, some perfume that threatened to churn Mardoch's stomach again.

"You are heading for the waterfront, I assume?" the patrician asked.

" "Course I am," Mardoch snorted. "Where else'll a soldier find a whore he can afford? Begging your lordship's pardon."

"Best to be careful of the women there," the man said. His voice was distinctive, curiously high-pitched, very precise.

"Everyone says that." Mardoch shrugged. It was warm here, the pillows were astonishingly soft. He could almost sleep. In the dark it was hard to make out the details of the man's face. The bulk of him was what registered.

"Everyone is wise. Will you take wine?"

Two days later, when muster was taken in Deapolis among the First Amorians, Mardoch of Sarnica would be among three men reported missing and routinely declared a deserter. It did happen when the young country soldiers went into the City and were exposed to what it offered in the way of temptation. They were all warned, of course, before being allowed to go on leave. Recaptured men could be blinded or maimed for desertion, depending on their officers. For a first offence and a voluntary return, you would probably just be whipped. But with rumours of war growing and the frenzy of building in the shipyards in Deapolis and on the other side of the strait, past the small forested islands, the soldiers knew that those who didn't return on their own might expect much worse when they were tracked down. Men were killed for deserting in wartime.

Within another day or two some of the rumours would become more specific. The eastern army was losing half its pay, it was said. Then someone heard they'd lose all of it. Some business about farmland granted to compensate. Farmland at the edge of the desert? No one found it amusing. Those plans were said to be for those who stayed behind in the east. The rest of them were going to war — in those boats being slapped together much too quickly for an infantryman's comfort. That was why they'd been ordered to Deapolis. To sail that long way west, far from home, to Batiara, to fight the Antae or the Inicii — those savage, godless tribes that ate their enemies" cooked flesh and drank their hot blood, or gouged knife slits in bellies and raped soldiers in there before gelding and skinning them and hanging them from oak trees by their hair.

Two of the three missing soldiers would come back to the company on that second day, white-faced and apprehensive, badly the worse for drinking binges. They would take their lashes, be routinely salved by the company physician with wine in the wounds and down their throats. Mardoch of Sarnica didn't return, was never found, in fact. A lucky bastard, some of his companions would decide, looking anxiously at the boats being built.

"Will you take wine?" Mardoch heard the light, clipped voice ask him in the shadowed warmth of the enclosed litter. The movement of the bearers was steady, soothing.

Silly question to ask a soldier. Of course he'd take wine. The cup was heavy, had jewels set into it. The wine was dark and good. The other man watched him as Mardoch drained the cup.

When he held it out for more, the enormous patrician shook his head slowly in the close, scented darkness. "That will be sufficient, I think," the man said. Mardoch blinked. He had a blurred, confused sense that a hand was lying on his thigh, and it wasn't his own. "Fuck off," he thought he said.

Rustem was a physician, and had spent too much time in Ispahani to be shocked or startled by iron rings set into bedposts or the other, more delicate devices he found in the room they showed him to in the Senator's small, elegant guest-house near the triple walls.

This was, he concluded, a bedroom wherein Plautus Bonosus was evidently inclined to amuse himself away from the comfort-and the constraints-of his family.

It was hardly unusual: aristocrats all over the world did variants of the same thing if they lived in circumstances that allowed for some privacy. Kerakek had no such houses, of course. Everyone in a village knew what everyone else was doing, from the fortress on down.

Rustem placed the series of thin golden rings-designed, he had belatedly realized, to fit over the shafts of variously sized male sexual organs-back into their leather bag. He pulled the drawstrings closed and replaced the bag beside the silken scarves and lengths of thin cord and a number of more obscure objects in the brass-lined trunk from which he'd taken it. The trunk hadn't been locked, and the room was now his own, as a guest of the Senator. He'd felt no guilt about looking around while arranging his own belongings. He was a spy for the King of Kings. He needed to become skilful at this. Scruples would have to be expunged. Would Great Shirvan and his advisers be interested to learn of the night-time inclinations of the Master of the Sarantine Senate?

Rustem closed the trunk and glanced over at the subsiding fire. He could stoke it himself, of course, but he made a different decision. The objects he had just observed and held had induced unusual feelings, and an awareness of just how far away he was from his own wives. Despite the fatigue attendant upon a long and turbulent day-with a death at the outset-Rustem noted, with professional expertise, the signs of arousal within himself.

He went to the door, opened it, and called down for someone to build up the fire. It was a small house. He heard an immediate reply from below stairs. With some satisfaction he saw the young serving girl-Elita, she'd named herself earlier-enter the room, eyes deferentially lowered, a few moments afterwards. He'd thought it might be the rather officious steward, but that fellow was clearly above such duties and probably asleep already. The hour was late.

Rustem sat in the window seat and watched the woman attend to the flames and sweep the ashes. When she'd done and had risen to her feet, he said mildly,'I tend to be cold at night, girl. I should prefer you to stay."

She flushed, but made no demur. He'd known she wouldn't, not in a house of this sort. And he was an honoured guest.

She proved to be soft, agreeably warm, compliant if not truly adept. He preferred that, in a way. If he'd wanted extreme carnal experience he'd have inquired after an expensive prostitute. This was Sarantium. One could get anything here, word was. Anything in the world. He treated the girl kindly, letting her stay in the bed with him after. Her own was certainly going to be no more than a pallet in a cold room below, and they could hear the wind outside.

It did occur to him, as he felt his mind beginning to drift, that the servants might have been instructed to keep a watchful eye on this visiting Bassanid-which would explain the girl's acquiescence as easily as anything else. There was something amusing in that, and something disturbing, too. He was too tired to sort it through. He fell asleep. He dreamed of his daughter, the one he was losing as the King of Kings raised him to glory and the priestly caste.

The girl, Elita, was still with him some time later when the entire house was roused by an urgent pounding and a shouting at the door in the depths of the night.

Moving in a litter through darkness from the Imperial Precinct to her own city home, an unexpected escort riding beside her, Gisel decided, long before they arrived, what she intended to do.

She thought that she might in time be able to reclaim some pride in that fact: it would be her choice, her decision made. That didn't mean that anything she did would necessarily succeed. With so many other plans and schemes now in place-here and back home-the odds were overwhelmingly against her. They always had been, from the time her father died and the Antae had reluctantly crowned his only living child. But at least she could think, act, not bob like a small boat on the great wave of events.

She had known, for example, exactly what she was doing when she sent an angry, bitter artisan halfway across the world with a proposal of marriage to the Emperor of Sarantium. She remembered standing before that man, Caius Crispus, alone at night in her palace, letting him look- demanding that he gaze his fill of her.

You may tell the Emperor you have seen the queen of the Antae very near…

She flushed, remembering that. After what she'd encountered in the palace tonight, the measure of her innocence was clear. It was past time to lose some of that innocence. But she couldn't even really say what plan tonight's decision-with the unworthy thread of fear still in it-might further. She only knew she was going to do it.

She lifted the curtain a little, could see the horse still keeping pace beside her litter. She recognized a chapel door. They were nearing her house. Gisel took a deep breath, tried to be amused at her fear, this primitive anxiety.

It was simply a question, she told herself, of putting something new into play, something that came from her, to see what ripples it might create. In this tumble and rush of huge events, one used whatever came to hand or mind-as always-and she had decided to treat her own body as a piece in the game. In play.

Queens lacked, really, the luxury to think of themselves otherwise. In an elegant room in a palace tonight, the Emperor of Sarantium had taken away from her any lingering illusions about consultation, negotiation diplomacy, anything that might forestall for Batiara the iron-edged truth of war.

Seeing him in that exquisite small chamber with his Empress, seeing her, had also removed certain other illusions. In that astonishing room, with its fabrics and wall hangings and silver candlesticks, amid mahogany and sandalwood, and leather from Soriyya, and incense, with a golden sun disk on the wall above each door and a golden tree wherein sat a score of jewelled birds, Gisel had felt as if the souls in the room were at the very centre of the spinning world. Here was the heart of things. Sudden, violent images of the future had seemed to dance and whirl in the fire-lit air, hurtling past at a dizzying speed along the walls while the room itself remained, somehow, motionless as those birds on the golden branches of the Emperor's tree.

Valerius was going to war in Batiara.

It had been resolved in his mind long ago, Gisel finally understood. He was a man who made his own decisions, and his gaze was on generations yet to be born as much as on those he ruled today. She had met him now, she could see it.

She herself, her presence here, might be of assistance or might not. A tactical tool. It didn't matter, not in the larger scheme. Neither did anyone else's views. Not the Strategos's, the Chancellor's, not even Alixana's.

The Emperor of Sarantium, contemplative and courteous and very sure of himself, had a vision: of Rhodias reclaimed, the sundered Empire remade. Visions on this scale could be dangerous; such ambition carried all before it sometimes. He wants to leave a name, Gisel had thought, kneeling before him to hide her face, and then rising again, her composure intact. He wants to be remembered for this.

Men were like that. Even the wise ones. Her father no exception. A dread of dying and being forgotten. Lost to the memory of the world as it went mercilessly on without them. Gisel searched within herself and found no such burning need. She didn't want to be hated or scorned when Jad called her to him behind the sun, but she felt no fierce passion to have her name sung down the echoing years or have her face and form reserved in mosaic or marble forever-or for however long stone and glass could endure.

What she liked, she realized wistfully, was the idea of rest at the end, when it came. Her body beside her father's in that modest sanctuary outside Varena's walls, her soul in grace with the god the Antae had adopted. Was such grace allowed? The possibility of it?

Earlier, in the palace, meeting the watchful eyes of the eunuch Chancellor Gesius for a moment, Gisel had thought she'd seen pity and understanding, both. A man who'd survived to serve three Emperors in his day would have some knowledge of the turnings of the world.

But Gisel was still inside these turnings, still young and alive, far from detached serenity or grace. Anger caught in her throat. She hated the very idea that someone might pity her. An Antae, a queen of the Antae? Hildric's daughter? Pity? It was enough to make one kill.

Killing was not, in the circumstances, a possibility tonight. Other things were, including the spill of her own blood. An irony? Of course it was.

The world was full of those.

The litter stopped. She lifted the curtain again, saw the door of her own home, night torches burning in their brackets on the wall to either side. She heard her escort swing down from his horse, saw his face appear beside her. His breath made a puff of smoke in the very cold night air.

"We have arrived, gracious lady. I am sorry for the chill. May I help you alight?"

She smiled at him. Found that she could smile quite easily. "Come in to warm yourself. I'll have a mulled wine made before you ride back through the cold." She looked straight into his eyes.

The pause was brief. "I am greatly honoured," said golden Leontes, Supreme Strategos of the Sarantine armies. A tone that made one believe him. And why not believe him? She was a queen.

He handed her out of the litter. Her steward had already opened the front door. The wind was gusting and swirling. They went in. She had servants build the fires on the ground floor and upstairs and prepare spiced, heated wine. They sat near the larger fire in the reception room and spoke of necessarily trivial things. Chariots and dancers, the day's minor wedding at a dancer's home.

War was coming.

Valerius had told them tonight, changing the world.

They talked of games in the Hippodrome, of how unseasonably windy it was outside with winter due to have ended by now. Leontes, easy and relaxed, told of a Holy Fool who had apparently just installed himself on a rock beside one of the landward gates-and had vowed he would not descend until all pagans and heretics and Kindath had been expelled from the Holy City. A devout man, he said, shaking his head, but one who did not understand the realities of the world.

It was important, she agreed, to understand the realities of the world.

The wine came, a silver tray, silver cups. He saluted her formally, speaking Rhodian. His courtesy was flawless. It would be, she knew, even as he led an army ravaging through her home, even if he burned Varena to the ground, unhousing her father's bones. He would prefer not to torch it, of course. Would do so if he had to. In the god's name.

Her heart was pounding but her hands, she saw, were steady, revealing nothing. She dismissed her women and then the steward. A few moments after they left she stood and set down her cup-her decision, her act-and crossed the room. She stopped before his chair, looking down at him. Bit her lower lip, and then smiled. She saw him smile in turn, and pause to drain his wine before he stood up, entirely at ease, accustomed to this. A golden man. She took him by the hand and up the stairs and to her bed.

He hurt her, being unprepared for innocence, but women from the beginning of time had known this particular pain and Gisel made herself welcome it. He was startled and then visibly pleased when he saw her blood on the sheets. Vanity. A royal fortress conquered, she thought.

He spoke generously of the honour, of his astonishment. A courtier, at least as much as a soldier. Silk over the corded muscle, devout faith behind the wielded sword and the fires. She smiled, said nothing at all. Made herself reach for him, that hard, scarred soldier's body, that it might happen again.

Knew what she was doing. Had no idea what it might achieve. Something in play, on the board, her body. Face to a pillow that second time, she cried out in the dark, in the night, for so many reasons.

He'd thought of going to the stables, but it seemed there were some conditions, some states of mind, that not even standing with Servator in the mahogany stall the Blues had made for his horse would address.

There had been a time-long ago, not so long ago-when all he'd wanted was to be among horses, in their world. And now, still a young man by most measures, the finest stallion the world knew was his own and he was the most honoured charioteer on the god's created earth, and yet somehow tonight such dreams made real were not enough to assuage.

An appalling truth.

He had been to a wedding ceremony today, watched a soldier he knew and liked marry a woman clearly worthy of him. He'd had a little too much to drink among convivial people. And he had seen-first at the ceremony and then during the reception afterwards-the woman who troubled his own nights. She had been with her husband, of course.

He hadn't known Plautus Bonosus and his second wife would be among the guests. Almost a full day in her presence. It was… difficult.

And so it seemed the undeniable good fortune of his life was not sufficient to address what was afflicting him now. Was he hopelessly greedy? Covetous? Was that it? Spoiled like a sulky child, demanding far too much of the god and his son?

He had broken a rule of his own tonight, a rule of very long standing. He had gone to her home in the dark after the wedding party broke up. Had been absolutely certain Bonosus would be elsewhere, that after the raillery of the celebration and the bawdy mood it induced, the Senator's well-known, if discreetly managed, habits would assert themselves and he'd spend the night at the smaller home he maintained for his private use.

Not so. Inexplicably not so. Scortius had seen lights blazing in the iron-barred upper windows over the street at the mansion of Senator Bonosus. A shivering servant relighting wind-snuffed torches in the walls had descended from his ladder and volunteered, for a small sum, the information that the master was indeed home, closeted with his wife and son

Scortius had kept a shrouding cloak over his face until his footsteps had led him away into the narrow lanes of the City. A woman called from a recessed doorway as he passed: "Let me warm you, soldier! Come with me! It isn't a night to lie alone."

It wasn't, Jad knew. He felt old. Partly the wind and cold: his left arm, broken years ago, one of so many injuries, ached when the wind was bitter. The humiliating infirmity of an aged man, he thought, hating it. Like one of those hobbling, crutch-wielding old soldiers allowed a stool by the fire in a military tavern, sitting there all night, boring the unwary with a ten-times-told story of some minor campaign of thirty years before, back when great and glorious Apius was Jad's dearly beloved Emperor and things hadn't descended to the sad state of today and could an old soldier not be given something to wet his throat?

He could become like that, Scortius thought sourly. Toothless and unshaven at a booth in The Spina telling about the magnificent race day once, long ago, during the reign of Valerius II, when he had…

He caught himself massaging the arm and stopped, swearing aloud. It ached, though, it really did. They didn't run the chariots in winter, or he'd have had a problem handling a quadriga in the turns. Crescens of the Greens hadn't looked this afternoon as if anything ached in him at all, though he must have had his injuries over the years. Every rider did. The Greens" principal driver was obviously ready for his second season in the Hippodrome. Confident, even arrogant-which was as it should be.

The Greens also had some new horses up from the south, courtesy of a high-ranking military partisan; Astorgus's sources said two or three were exceptional. Scortius knew they did have one outstanding new right-sider, a trace horse the Blues had dealt them in a transaction Scortius had encouraged Astorgus to make. You gave up some things to gain something else, in this case a driver. But if he was right about the horse and bout Crescens, the Greens" standard-bearer would have quickly claimed he stallion for his own team and be that much more formidable.

Scortius wasn't worried. He even enjoyed the idea of someone think he could challenge him. It stirred fires within him, the ones that needed stoking after so many years in ascendancy. A formidable Crescens was good for him, good for the Hippodrome. It was easy enough to see that But he wasn't easy tonight. Nothing to do with horses, or his arm, really.

It isn't a night to lie alone.

Of course it wasn't, but sometimes lovemaking-bought in a doorway or otherwise-wasn't the real need either. There were notes lying on a table in his home from women who would be exquisitely happy to relieve him of the burden of being by himself tonight, even now, even so late. That wasn't what he wanted, though for a long time it had been.

The woman he'd gone trudging uphill in the cutting wind to see was… closeted with her husband, the servant had said. Whatever that meant.

He swore again, fiercely. Why wasn't the accursed Master of the Senate off playing his night games with this season's boy? What was wrong with Bonosus, in Jad's name?

It was at this point, walking alone (a little reckless, but one didn't normally bring companions when attending upon one's mistress at night, intending to climb her wall), that he'd thought of going to the stables. He wasn't far from the compound. They'd be warm; the smells and night sounds of horses would be those he'd known and loved all his life. He might even find someone awake in the kitchens to offer a last cup of wine and a quiet bite of food.

He didn't want wine or food. Or even the presence of his beloved horses now. What he wanted was denied to him, and the degree of frustration he felt was what-perhaps more than anything-was disturbing him. It felt childish. His mouth twitched at the irony. Did he feel old or young or both? Past time to make up one's mind, wasn't it? He considered, decided: he wanted to be a boy again, simple as a boy, or failing that, he wanted to be in a room alone with Thenai's.

He saw the white moon when it rose. Was passing a chapel of the Sleepless Ones just then, walking east, could hear the chanting inside Could have gone in, a few moments out of the cold, praying among holy men, but the god and his son at this immediate moment didn't offer any answers either.

Perhaps they would have, had he been a better, more pious man, but he wasn't and they didn't and that was that. He saw a quick blue flicker of flame further down the street-a reminder of the half-world's presence among men, never far away in the City-and he came, in that moment, to a sudden, unexpected decision.

There was another wall he could climb.

If he was awake and abroad and this restless perhaps he could put the mood to use. On the thought, not allowing himself time to hesitate, he turned and set off along a lane angled to the street.

He walked briskly, kept to shadows, became motionless in a doorway when he saw a party of drunken, singing soldiers stumble out of a tavern. He remained where he was a moment and watched a massive litter appear from blackness at the other end of the street and then turn down the steep road they took, heading towards the harbour. He considered this for a moment, and then shrugged. There were always stories unfolding in the night. People died, were born, found love or grief.

He went the other way, uphill again, rubbing his arm at intervals, until he came again to the street and then the house where he'd spent much of the afternoon and evening in celebration of a wedding.

The house the Greens provided for their best dancer was handsome and well maintained, in an extremely good neighbourhood. It had a wide portico, and a well-proportioned solarium and balcony overlooking the street. He had been in this home before today, as it happened, and even upstairs-visiting earlier inhabitants. Sometimes those living here placed their own bedroom at the front, using the solarium as an extension, a place from which to watch the life below. Sometimes the front chamber was a sitting room, with the bedroom at the back, over the courtyard.

Without much to rely upon but instinct, he decided that Shirin of the Greens would not be the sort who placed herself over the street. She spent enough of her days and nights looking out on people from a stage. She'd be sleeping above the courtyard, he decided. Unfortunately the houses were set so closely together here that there was no way to get to the courtyards from the front.

He looked up and down the empty street. Torches burned fitfully on walls; some had been extinguished by the wind. He looked up, and sighed. In silence, having done this sort of thing many times before, he moved to the end of the portico, mounted the stone railing and, reaching above his head with both hands, gripped and then pulled himself straight upwards in one smooth motion onto the porch roof.

One became very strong in the upper body and legs after years of mastering four horses in a chariot.

One also developed injuries. He paused long enough to give vent under his breath to the pain in his arm. He really was becoming too old for this sort of thing.

From portico roof to solarium balcony involved a short vertical jump, another hard gripping, and then a steady pull upwards until one knee could get purchase. Life would have been easier if Shirin had chosen to make this her bedchamber, after all. She hadn't, as he'd surmised. A glance inside-darkness, some benches, a fabric hanging on the wall above a sideboard. It was a reception room.

He swore again, and then stepped up on the balcony railing, balancing. The roof above was flat, as they all were in this neighbourhood, no edging at all, to let the rain run off. Made it hard to find a grip. This, too, he remembered from elsewhere. Other houses. He could fall here if his hands slipped. It was a long way down. He imagined some servant or slave finding him in the morning street, neck broken. A sudden hilarity entered into him. He was being indescribably reckless here and he knew it.

Thenai's ought to have been alone. She hadn't been. He was here, climbing to another woman's roof in the wind.

Footsteps sounded in the street below. He remained motionless, both feet on the railing, a hand on a corner column for balance, until they went away. Then he let go of the column and jumped again. He got both hands flat on the roof-the only way to do this successfully-and, grunting, levered himself up and onto it. A hard movement, not without cost.

He remained lying where he was for a time, on his back, determinedly not rubbing at his arm, looking up at the stars and the white moon. The wind blew. Jad had made men to be foolish creatures, he decided. Women were wiser, on the whole. They slept at night. Or closeted themselves with their husbands. Whatever that meant.

He laughed this time, softly to himself, at himself, and stood up. He walked, treading lightly, towards the place where the roof ended at a view of the interior courtyard below. He saw a small fountain, dry still at winter's end, stone benches around it, bare trees. The white moon shone, and the stars. Windy night, brilliantly clear. He realized that he felt happy, suddenly. Very much alive.

He knew exactly where her bedroom would be, could see the narrow balcony below. He took another look at the pale moon. A sister of the god, the Kindath called it. A heresy, but one could-privately-understand it sometimes. He looked over the roof edge. Going down would be easier. He dropped to his stomach, swung his legs over the side, lowered himself as far as he could, hands stretched above him. Then he dropped neatly to the balcony, landing silently, like a lover or a thief. He straightened from a crouch, moved softly forward to peer through the two glass-panelled doors into the woman's room. One door, oddly, was ajar in the cold night. He looked at the bed. No one there.

"There is a bow trained on your heart. Stop where you are. My servant will kill you happily if you do not declare yourself," said Shirin of the Greens.

It seemed wise to stop where he was.

He had no idea how she'd known he was there, how she'd had time to summon a guard. It also occurred to him-very belatedly-to wonder why he'd assumed she would be sleeping alone.

Declare yourself, she'd ordered. He did have his self-respect.

"I am Heladikos, son of Jad," he said gravely. "My father's chariot is here. Will you come ride with me?"

There was a silence.

"Oh, my!" Shirin said, her voice changing. 'You?

Speaking quickly, in a low tone, she dismissed the guard. After he'd left she swung open the door to the balcony herself and Scortius, pausing to bow, entered her chamber. There came a light tapping at the inner door. Shirin crossed, opened it only a crack, accepted a lit taper from the servant briefly revealed in the hallway and then closed the door again. She moved about the room lighting candles and lamps herself.

Scortius saw the bedcovers in disarray. She had been asleep; was dressed now, however, a dark green robe buttoned high over whatever she wore to bed, if anything. Her dark hair, cut short, just reached her shoulders. A fashion emerging; Shirin of the Greens set fashions for the women of Sarantium. She was barefoot, high-arched, moving dancer-light over her floor. He felt, looking at her, a quick pulse of desire. This was a very attractive woman. He loosened his cloak, let it fall to the floor behind him. He began to feel a measure of control returning with the warmth. He knew all about this sort of encounter. She finished with the candles, turned back to him.

"I take it Thenai's was with her husband?"

Asked it with such a wide-eyed, innocent smile.

He swallowed hard. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Watched her sit, still smiling, on a cushioned seat near the banked fire.

"Do sit down, charioteer," she murmured, her back straight, exquisitely poised. "One of my women will bring us wine."

With great confusion and very real relief, he sank into the indicated seat.

The problem was that he was an absurdly attractive man. Shedding his cloak, clad still in white from the wedding, Scortius appeared permanently young, immune to all the aches and doubts and infirmities of lesser mortals.

She'd been lying alone, by choice of course. Jad knew there were enough who would have offered their versions of solace in the dark had she asked or allowed. But Shirin had discovered that the greatest luxury of status, the real privilege it conveyed, was the power to not allow, and to ask only when and where she truly desired.

There would come a time when it would make sense to take a protector, perhaps even an important husband from the army or one of the wealthy merchants or even someone from the Imperial Precinct. There was a living Empress who was proof of such possibilities. But not now. She was young still, at the apex of her fame in the theatre, and had no need-yet-for a guardian.

She was guarded, by celebrity, and other things. Among those other things was the fact that she had someone here to warn her when there were those who sought her room after darkfall.

'I understand that he couldn't be killed, but why is the man sitting at his ease with wine to come? Enlighten me, please.

'Danis, Danis. Isn't he gorgeous?" she asked silently, knowing what the bird would say to that.

'Oh. Wonderful. Wait for him to smile once more, then take him to bed, is that the idea?

Scortius of Soriyya smiled, uneasily.

"Why, ah, would you think that, I, er…"

"Thenai's?" she finished for him. "Oh, women know these things, dear man. I saw you looking at her this afternoon. I must say she's exquisite."

"Urn, no! I mean, I'd, ah, say rather that… women may see strands of stories, where none are really to be found." His smile grew more assured. "Though I must say you are exquisite."

'You see? I knew it!" said Danis. 'You know what this man is like! Stay where you are. Don't smile back!

Shirin smiled. Lowered her eyes demurely, hands in her lap. "You are too kind, charioteer."

A scratching at the door again. To preserve her guest's identity-and avoid the windstorm of gossip this visit would cause-Shirin rose and took the tray herself from Pharisa, not letting her in. She set it down on the side table and poured for both of them, though Jad knew she didn't need more wine at this hour. There was a tingle of excitement in her that she couldn't deny. The whole of the City-from palace to chapel to wharfside caupona-would be stupefied were it to learn of this encounter between the First of the Blues and the Greens" Principal Dancer. And the man was-

'More water in yours!" Danis snapped.

'Quiet, you. There's plenty of water in it.

The bird sniffed. 'I don't know why I bothered to warn you of sounds on the roof. Might as well have let him find you naked in bed. Save him so much bother.

'We didn't know who it was,'she said reasonably.

"How did you, ah, realize I was there?" Scortius asked, as she handed him his cup. She watched him take a long drink.

"You sounded like four horses landing on the roof, Heladikos," she laughed. Untrue, but the truth was not for him, or anyone. The truth was a bird her father had sent her, with a soul, never sleeping, supernaturally alert, a gift of the half-world where spirits dwelled.

'Don't make jokes," Danis complained. 'You'll encourage him! You know what they say about this man!

'Of course I do," Shirin murmured inwardly. 'Shall we test it, my dear? He's famously discreet.

She wondered how and when he was going to make his overture of seduction. She took her seat again, across the room from him, and smiled, amused and at ease, but feeling an excitement within her, hidden like the soul of the bird. It didn't happen often, this feeling, it really didn't.

"You do know," said Scortius of the Blues, not moving from his seat, that this visit is entirely honourable, if… unusual. You are completely safe from my uncontrolled desires." His smile flashed, he set down his cup with an easy hand. "I'm only here to make you an offer, Shirin, an agent with a business proposal."

She swallowed hard, tilted her head thoughtfully. "You, ah, have control of the uncontrollable?" she murmured. Wit could be a screen.

He laughed, again easily. "Handle four horses from a bouncing chariot," he said. "You learn."

'Wliat is the man talking about?" Danis expostulated.

'Quiet. I may decide to be insulted.

"Yes," she said coolly, sitting up straight, holding her wine carefully "I'm sure you do. Go on." She lowered her voice, changed its timbre. Wondered if he'd notice.

The change in her tone was unmistakable. This was an actress: she could convey a great deal merely with a shift of voice and posture. And she just had. He wondered again why he'd assumed she'd be alone. What that said about her, or his sense of her. An awareness of the woman's pride, at the very least… self-contained, making her own choices.

Well, this would be her own choice, whatever she did. That was, after all, the point of what he'd come to say, and so he said it, speaking carefully: "Astorgus, our factionarius, has been wondering aloud and at some length what it would take to induce you to change factions."

What she did was change position again, rising swiftly, a taut uncoiling. She set down her cup, staring coldly at him.

"And for this, you enter my bedchamber in the middle of the night?"

It began, more and more, to seem a bad idea.

He said, defensively, "Well, this isn't really the sort of proposal one would want to make in a public-"

"A letter? An afternoon visit? A private word exchanged during today's reception?"

He looked up at her, read the cold anger, and was silent, though within him, looking at the fury of her, something else registered and he felt again the stirrings of desire. Being the man he was, he thought he knew the source of her outrage.

She said, glaring down at him, "As it happens, that last is exactly what Strumosus did today."

"I didn't know that," he said.

"Well, obviously," she said tartly.

"Did you accept?" he asked, a little too brightly.

She wasn't about to let him off so easily. "Why are you here?"

Scortius became aware, looking at her, that she was wearing nothing at all beneath the silk of her dark green robe. He cleared his throat.

"Why do any of us do what we do?" he asked, in turn. Question for question for question. "Do we ever really understand?"

He hadn't expected to say that, actually. He saw her expression change. He added, "I was restless, couldn't sleep. Wasn't ready to go home to bed. It was cold in the streets. I saw drunken soldiers, a prostitute, a dark litter that unsettled me for some reason. When the moon came up I decided to come here… thought I might as well try to… accomplish something, so long as I was awake." He looked at her. "I'm sorry."

"Accomplish something," she echoed dryly, but he could see her anger slipping away. "Why did you assume I'd be alone?"

He'd been afraid she'd ask that.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I was just asking myself the same question. There is… no man's name linked to yours, I suppose, and I have never heard you to be…" He trailed off.

And saw the ghost of a smile at the edge of her mouth. "Attracted to men?"

He shook his head quickly. "Not that. Um… reckless with your nights?"

She nodded. There was a silence. He needed more wine now but was reluctant to let her see that.

She said, quietly, "I told Strumosus I couldn't change factions."

"Couldn't?"

She nodded. "The Empress has made that clear to me."

And with that said, it seemed painfully obvious, actually. Something he ought to have known, or Astorgus certainly. Of course the court would want the factions kept in equilibrium. And this dancer wore Alixana's own perfume.

She didn't move, or speak. He looked around, thinking it through, saw the wall hangings, the good furnishings, flowers in an alabaster vase, a small crafted bird on a table, the disturbing disarray of the bed coverings. He looked back up at her, where she stood in front of him.

He stood up as well. "I feel foolish now, among other things. I ought to have understood this before troubling your night." He made a small gesture with his hands. "The Imperial Precinct won't let us be together, you and I. You have my deepest apologies for the intrusion. I will leave you now."

Her expression changed again, something amused in it, then something wry, then something else. "No you won't," said Shirin of the Greens. "You owe me for an interrupted sleep."

Scortius opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again when she came forward and put her hands behind his head and kissed him.

"There are limits to what the court can decree. And if there are images of others that lie down with us," she murmured, drawing him to the bed, "it will not be the first time in the history of men and women."

His mouth was dry with excitement, unexpectedly. She took his hands and drew them around her body by the bed. She was sleek, and firm, and extremely desirable. He didn't feel old any more. He felt like a young chariot-racer up from the south, new to the glories of the great City, finding a soft welcome in candlelit places where he had not thought to find such a thing at all. His heart was beating very fast.

"Speak for yourself," he managed to murmur.

"Oh, but I am," she said softly, cryptically, before letting herself fall back onto the bed and pulling him down with her amid the scent, unmistakable, of a perfume only two women in the world could wear.

'Well, I'm grateful you had the decency to silence me before you-" 'Oh, Danis, please. Please. Be gentle." "Hah. Was he?

Shirin's inward voice was lazy, slow. 'Some of the time." The bird made an indignant sound. 'Indeed." "I wasn't," said the dancer, after a moment. 'I don't want to know! When you behave-" "Danis, be gentle. I'm not a maid, and it has been a long time." "Look at him, sleeping there. In your bed. No care in the world." "He has cares, trust me. Everyone does. But I'm looking. Oh, Danis, isn't he a beautiful man?

There was a long silence. Then, 'Yes," said the bird, silently; the bird that had been a girl slain at dawn one autumn in a grove in Sauradia. 'Yes, he is.

Another stillness. They could hear the wind outside in the dark, turning night. The man was, indeed, asleep, on his back, hair tousled.

Was my father?" asked Shirin abruptly.

'Was he what?

'Beautiful?

'Oh." Another silence, inward, outward, darkness in the room with the candles burnt out. Then, 'Yes," said the bird, again. 'Yes, he was, my dear. Shirin, go to sleep. You are dancing tomorrow.

'Thank you, Danis." The woman in the bed sighed softly. The man slept on. 'I know. I will now.

The dancer was asleep when he woke, still in the dark of night. He had trained himself to do this: lingering until dawn in a strange bed was dangerous. And although there was no immediate threat here, no lover or husband to fear, it would be awkward in the extreme, painfully public, to be seen leaving the house of Shirin of the Greens in the morning.

He looked over at the woman a moment, smiling a little. Then he rose. Dressed quickly, glancing once more around the silent room. When he looked back at the bed she was awake, and gazing at him. A light sleeper? He wondered what had awakened her. Then wondered, again, how she'd known he was on the roof.

"A thief in the night?" she murmured sleepily. "Take what you want and go?"

He shook his head. "A grateful man."

She smiled. "Tell Astorgus you did all you possibly could to persuade me."

He laughed aloud, but softly. "You assume this is all I can do?" Her turn to laugh, a low ripple of pleasure. "Go," she said, "before I call you back to test it."

"Good night," he said. "Jad shelter you, dancer."

"And you. On the sands and off."

He went out the doors to the balcony, closed them behind him, mounted the balustrade. He leaped up to the roof, swung himself onto it. His shoulder didn't hurt at all now. The cold wind blew but he didn't feel it. The white moon was over towards the west, though much of the night was yet to run before the god finished his battles under the world and dawn could come. The stars were bright overhead, no clouds at all. Standing on Shirin's roof in this elevated quarter of the vast city he could see Sarantium spread below him, domes and mansions and towers, random torches in stone walls, clustered, jumbled wooden houses, shop fronts closed up, squares, statues in them, an orange glow of flame where the glassworks were, or perhaps a bakery, lanes running crazily downward, and beyond them, beyond them all, the harbour and then the sea, vast and dark and deep, roiled by the wind and hinting at forever.

In a mood he could only call exhilarated, one he could remember from long ago but hadn't experienced in some time, Scortius retraced his steps to the front edge of the roof, swung himself down to the upper balcony there, and then, moving lightly, lowered himself to the portico. He stepped down into the street, smiling behind the cloak he drew across his face.

'Fuck him!" he heard. "That bastard! Look! He came from her balcony!"

Exhilaration could be dangerous. It made you careless. He turned swiftly, saw half a dozen shadowy figures, and wheeled to run. He didn't like running away, but this wasn't a situation that presented options. He was feeling strong, knew he was fleet of foot, was certain he could out-sprint whoever these assailants were.

He very likely would have, in fact, had there not been as many others coming at him from the other side. Twisting away, Scortius saw the glint of daggers, a wooden staff, and then an entirely illegal drawn sword.

They had been planning to sing to her. The idea was to gather in the street below what they assumed to be her bedroom above the front portico and offer music in her glorious name. They even had instruments. The plan, however, had been Cleander's-he was their leader-and when it emerged that his father had confined him to his quarters for the accidental death of that Bassanid servant, the young Green partisans had found themselves drinking irritably and without purpose in their usual tavern. The talk had been of horses and prostitutes.

But no self-respecting young man of lineage could be expected to submit tamely to confinement on a spring night in the very week the racing was to begin again. When Cleander showed up he seemed a shade uneasy to those who knew him best, but he grinned in the doorway as they shouted their welcome. He'd actually killed a man today. It was undeniably impressive. Cleander drank two quick glasses of unmixed wine and offered a definitive opinion about one woman whose rooms were not far from his father's house. She was too expensive for most of them, so no one was in a position to refute his observations.

Then he pointed out that they'd planned to chorus Shirin's undying fame and he saw no reason to allow the late hour to forestall them. She'd be honoured, he told the others. It wasn't as if they were intruding upon her, only offering a tribute from the street. He told them what she'd been wearing at her reception that afternoon when she greeted him-personally.

Someone mentioned the dancer's neighbours and the Urban Prefect's watchmen, but most of them knew enough to laugh and shout the craven fellow down.

They made their way out the door. Ten or twelve young men (they lost a few en route) in a stumbling cluster, variously garbed, one with a stringed instrument, two with flutes, moving uphill through a sharp, cold wind. If an officer of the watch was anywhere about he elected-prudently-not to make his presence visible. The partisans of both factions were notoriously unstable in the week the racing began. End of winter, beginning of the Hippodrome season. Springtime did things to the young, everywhere.

It might not feel like spring tonight but it was.

They reached her street and divided themselves, half to each side of her wide portico where they could all see the solarium balcony, should Shirin elect to appear above them like a vision when they sang. The one with the strings was swearing about the numbing cold on his fingers. The others were busily spitting and clearing throats and nervously muttering the verses of Cleander's chosen song when one of them saw a man climbing down from that same balcony to the porch.

It was an obscene, monstrous outrage. A violation of Shirin's purity, her honour. What right did someone else have to be descending from her bedroom in the middle of the night?

The contemptible coward turned to run as soon as they cried out.

He had no weapon, didn't get far. Marcellus's staff caught him a heavy blow to the shoulder as he tried to dodge around the group of them to the south. Then quick, wiry Darius knifed him in the side, ripping the blade upwards, and one of the twins got him with a kick in the ribs on the same side while the bastard was flattening Darius with a blow of his fist. Darius moaned. Cleander came running up then, with his sword drawn-the only one of them reckless enough to carry one. He'd already killed today, and he was the one who knew Shirin.

The others backed away from the man, who was lying on the ground now, holding his torn side. Darius got to his knees, then moved away. They fell silent, a sense of awe, the power of the moment overtaking them. They were all looking at the sword. There were no torches burning on the walls; the wind had blown them out. No sight or sound of the night watch. Stars, wind, and a white moon westering.

"I am reluctant to kill a man without knowing who he is," said Cleander with really impressive gravity.

"I am Heladikos, the son of Jad," said the bastard lying on the road. He appeared-amazingly-to be struggling with hilarity as much as anything else. He was bleeding. They could see dark blood on the road. "All men must die. Stab away, child. Two in a day? A Bassanid servant and a god's son? Makes you a warrior, almost." He'd kept the cloak about his face, somehow, even as he fell.

Someone gasped. Cleander made a startled movement.

"How the fuck do you know about-?"

Cleander moved closer, knelt. Sword to the wounded man's breast, he twitched the cloak aside. The man on the ground made no movement at all. Cleander looked at him for one instant-then let the cloak fall from his fingers as if it were burning to the touch. There was no light. The others couldn't see what he saw.

They heard Cleander, though, as the cloak fell once more over the downed man's face.

"Oh, fuck!" said the only son of Plautus Bonosus, Master of the Sarantine Senate. He stood up. "Oh, no. Oh, fuck. Oh, holy Jad!"

"My great father!" said the wounded man brightly.

This was followed, unsurprisingly, by silence. Someone coughed nervously.

"Does this mean we aren't singing?" Declanus asked plaintively.

"Get out of here. All of you!" Cleander rasped hoarsely over his shoulder. "Go! Disappear! My father will fucking kill me."

"Who is it?" snapped Marcellus.

"You don't know. You don't want to know. This never happened. Get home, go anywhere, or we're all dead men! Holy Jad!"

"What the-?"

'Go!

A light appeared in a window overhead. Someone began shouting for the watch-a woman's voice. They went.

Thanks be to Jad, the boy had a brain and wasn't hopelessly drunk. He had quickly covered Scortius's face again after their eyes locked in the darkness. None of the others-he was sure of it-knew who it was they'd attacked.

There was a chance to get out of this.

If he lived. The knife had gone in on his left side, and ripped, and then the kick in the same side had broken ribs. He'd had breaks before. Knew what they felt like.

They felt very bad. It was, putting it mildly, not easy to breathe. He clutched his side and felt blood pouring from the wound through his fingers. The boy with the knife had jerked it upwards after stabbing him.

But they left. Thanks be to Jad, they left. Leaving only one behind. Someone at a window was calling for the watch.

"Holy Jad," whispered Bonosus's son. "Scortius. I swear… we had no idea"

"Know you didn't. Thought… were killing just anyone." It was irresponsible to be feeling such hilarity, but the absurdity of this was so extreme. To die, like this? "No. We didn't! I mean Not really the time to be ironic, actually. "Get me upright, before someone comes." "Can you… can you walk?" "Of course I can walk." Probably a lie.

"I'll take you to my father's house," the boy said. Bravely enough. The charioteer could guess what consequences would await Cleander after he appeared at the door with a wounded man. Closeted with his wife and son.

Something became clear, suddenly. That was why they'd been together tonight. And then something else did, driving amusement entirely away. "Not your house. Holy Jad, no!"

He was not going to appear at Thenais's door at this hour of night, having been wounded by partisans after descending from the bed chamber of Shirin of the Greens. He winced at the image of her face, hearing this. Not at the outraged expression that would ensue: the lack of one. The detached, ironic coldness coming back.

"But you need a physician. There's blood. And my father can keep this-"

"Not your house."

"Then where? Oh! The Blues" compound! We can-" A good thought, but…

"Won't help. Our doctor was at the wedding today and will be drunk and unconscious. Too many people, too. We must keep this quiet. For… for the lady. Now be silent and let me-" "Wait! I know. The Bassanid!" exclaimed Cleander. It was, in fact, a good thought.

And resulted in the two of them arriving, after a genuinely harrowing progress through the city, at the small house Bonosus kept for his own use near the triple walls. On the way they passed the enormous dark litter again. Scortius saw it stop, was aware of someone watching them from within, making no movement at all to help. Something made him shiver; he couldn't have said what.

He had lost a fair bit of blood by the time they reached their destination. Every step with his left foot seemed to drive the kicked ribs inward, shockingly. He'd refused to allow the boy to get help at any tavern. No one was to know of this. Cleander almost carried him the last part of the way. The lad was terrified, exhausted, but he got them there.

"Thank you, boy," he managed to say, as the house's steward, in a nightshirt, grey hair disconcertingly upright in the glow of the candle he held, opened the door to their pounding. "You did well. Tell your father. No one else'

He hoped that was clear enough. Saw the Bassanid coming to stand behind the steward, lifted one hand briefly in apologetic greeting. It occurred to him that if Plautus Bonosus had been in this house tonight instead of the eastern doctor, none of this would have happened. Then he did, in fact, lose consciousness.

She is awake, in her room with the golden rose that was made for her long ago. Knows he will come to her tonight. Is looking at the rose, in fact, and thinking about frailty when she hears the door open, the familiar tread, the voice that is always with her.

"You are angry with me, I know."

She shakes her head. "Afraid of what will come, a little. Not angry, my lord."

She pours his wine, waters it. Crosses to the seat he has taken by the fire. He takes the wine, and her hand, kisses the palm. His manner is quiet, easy, but she knows him better than she knows anyone alive and can read the signs of his excitement.

"It was finally useful, "she says, "to have the queen watched all this time."

He nods. "She's clever, isn't she? Knew we weren't surprised."

"I saw that. Will she be difficult, do you think?"

He looks up, smiles. "Probably."

The implication being, of course, that it doesn't really matter. He knows what he wants to do, and to have others do. None of them will learn all the details, not even his Empress. Certainly not Leontes, who will lead the army of conquest. She wonders, suddenly, how many men her husband will send, and a thought crosses her mind. She dismisses it, then it slips back in: Valerius is, in fact, more than subtle enough to be careful, even with his trusted friends.

She does not tell him that she, too, had a warning that the Strategos was bringing Gisel to the palace today. Alixana believes, privately, that her husband does know she's watching Leontes and his wife and has done so for some time, but it is one of the things they do not discuss. One of the ways in which theirs is a partnership.

Most of the time.

The signs have long been present-no one will be able to claim to have been taken entirely by surprise-but without warning or consultation, the Emperor has just declared an intention to go to war this spring. They have been at war for much of his reign, to the east, north, south-east, far off in the Majriti deserts. This is different. This is Batiara. Rhodias. Heartland of the Empire. Sundered, then lost beyond a wide sea.

"You are sure of this?" she asks him.

He shakes his head. "Sure of the consequences? Of course not. No mortal can claim to know the unknown that might come," her husband says softly, still holding her hand. "We live with that uncertainty." He looks at her. "You are angry with me. For not telling you."

She shakes her head again. "How could I be?" she asks, meaning what she says. "You have always wanted this, I have always said I did not think it could be done. You see it differently, and are wiser than any of us."

He looks up, the grey eyes mild. "I make mistakes, love. This might be one. But I need to try, and this is the time to do it, with Bassania bribed to be quiet, and chaos in the west, and the young queen here with us. It makes too much… sense."

His mind works that way. In part.

In part. She draws a breath, and murmurs, "Would you still need to do this if we had a son?"

Her heart is pounding. That almost never happens any more. She watches him. Sees the startled reaction, then what replaces it: his mind engaging, addressing, not flinching away.

After a long time, he says, "That is an unexpected question."

"I know," she says. "It came to me while I was waiting here for you." Not entirely true. It came to her first a long time ago.

He says, "You think, if we did, that because of the risk…?"

She nods. "If you had an heir. Someone you were leaving this to." She does not gesture. There is more than any gesture could compass. This. An empire. A legacy of centuries.

He sighs. Has still not released her hand. Says, softly, looking into the fire now, "Maybe so, love. I don't know."

An admission. For him to say that much. No sons, no one to come after, to take the throne, light the candles on the anniversary of their deaths. There is an old pain in her.

He says, still quietly, "There are some things I have always wanted. I'd like to leave behind Rhodias reclaimed, the new Sanctuary and its dome, and… and perhaps some memory of what we were, you and I."

"Three things," she says, not able to think, just then, of anything more clever. It occurs to her that she will weep if she does not take care. An Empress ought not to weep.

"Three things," he echoes. "Before it ends, as it always ends."

Uncrown, a voice was said to say when it ended for one of Jad's holy, anointed ones. The Lord of Emperors awaits you now.

No one could say if it was true, if those words were truly spoken and heard. The god's world was made in such a way that men and women lived in mist and fog, in a wavering light, never knowing with certainty what would come.

"More wine?" she says.

He looks at her, nods his head, lets go of her hand. She takes his cup, fills it, brings it back. It is silver, worked in gold, rubies set around it.

"I am sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, love."

He isn't even certain why he says this, but a feeling is with him now, something in her face, something hovering in the air of this exquisite room like a bird: not singing, enchanted into invisibility, but present nonetheless in the world.

Not far away from that palace room where no bird is singing, a man is as high in the air as birds might fly, working from a scaffold under a dome. The exterior of the dome is copper, gleaming under moon and stars. The interior is his.

There is light here in the Sanctuary; there always is, by order of the Emperor. The mosaicist has served tonight as his own apprentice, mixing lime for the setting bed, carrying it up the ladder himself. Not a great amount, he isn't covering a wide area tonight. He isn't doing very much at all. Only the face of his wife, dead now two years, very nearly.

There is no one watching him. There are guards at the entrance, as always, even in the cold, and a small, rumpled architect is asleep somewhere in this vastness of lamplight and shadow, but Crispin works in silence, as alone as a man can be in Sarantium.

If anyone were watching him, and knew what it was he was doing, they would need a true understanding of his craft (of all such crafts, really) not to conclude that this was a hard, cold man, indifferent in life to the woman he is so serenely rendering. His eyes are clear, his hands steady, meticulously choosing tesserae from the trays beside him. His expression is detached, austere: addressing technical dilemmas of glass and stone, no more.

No more? The heart cannot say, sometimes, but the hand and eye- if steady enough and clear enough-may shape a window for those who come after. Someone might look up one day, when all those awake or asleep in Sarantium tonight are long dead, and know that this woman was fair, and very greatly loved by the unknown man who placed her overhead, the way the ancient Trakesian gods were said to have set their mortal loves in the sky, as stars.

Eventually, morning came. Morning always comes. There are always losses in the night, a price paid for light.