The Sarantine Mosaic (34 page)

Then, just as Crispin was thinking so, struggling to make a dream's peace with these apprehended truths, beginning to lift a hand in farewell to the loved woman behind the forest god, the
zubir
was gone, confounding him again.

It disappeared as it had in the road in fog, and did not reappear. Crispin stopped breathing in his dream, felt a hammer pounding within him, and did not know that he cried aloud in a cold room in a Sauradian night.

Ilandra smiled in the palace. They were alone. No barriers. Her smile cut the heart from him. He might have been a body lying on a road then, his chest torn open. He wasn't. In his dream he saw her step lightly forward: nothing between, nothing to bar her now. ‘There are birds in the trees,' his dead wife said, coming into his arms, ‘and we are young.' She rose up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. He tasted salt, heard himself say something terribly, hugely important, couldn't make out his words. His own words. Couldn't.

Woke to the wild wind outside and a dead fire and the Inici girl—a shadow, a weight—sitting on his bed beside him wrapped in his cloak. Her hands clutched her own elbows.

‘What? What
is
it?' he cried, confused, aching, his heart pounding. She had kissed …

‘You were shouting,' the girl whispered.

‘Oh, dear Jad. Oh, Jad. Go to sleep …' He struggled to remember her name. He felt drugged, heavy, he wanted that palace again. Wanted it like some men want the juice of poppies, endlessly.

She was silent, motionless. ‘I'm afraid,' she said.

‘We're all afraid. Go to sleep.'

‘No. I mean, I would comfort you, but I'm afraid.'

‘Oh.' It became unfairly needful to order his thoughts. To be
here
. His jaw hurt, his heart. ‘People I loved died. You can't comfort me. Go to sleep.'

‘Your … children?'

Every word spoken was drawing him farther from that palace. ‘My daughters. Last summer.' He took a breath. ‘I am ashamed to be here. I let them die.' He had never said this. But it was true. He had failed them. And had survived.

‘
Let
them die? Of the
plague
?' the Inici woman on his bed said, incredulous. ‘No one can
save
anyone from that.'

‘I know. Jad. I
know
. It doesn't matter.'

After a moment, she said, ‘And your … their mother?'

He shook his head.

The god-cursed shutter was still banging. He wanted to go out into the savage night and rip it from the wall and lie down in the icy wind with Ilandra. ‘Kasia,' he said. That was her name. ‘Go to sleep. It isn't your duty to comfort here.'

‘Not a duty,' she said.

So much anger in him. ‘Jad's blood! What do you propose? That your lovemaking skills transport me to joy?'

She went rigid. Drew a breath. ‘No. No. No, I … have no skills. That wasn't … what I meant.'

He closed his eyes. Why did he have to even
address
these things now? So vivid, so rich a dream: on tiptoe, within his arms, a gown he remembered, the necklace, a scent, softness of parted lips.

She was dead, a ghost, a body in a grave.
I am afraid
, Kasia of the Inicii had said. Crispin let out a ragged
breath. That shutter still banging along the wall outside. Over and over and over. So inane. So … ordinary. He shifted in the bed.

‘Sleep here then,' he said. ‘There is nothing to fear. What happened today is over now.' A lie. It didn't end until you died. Life was an ambush, wounds waiting for you.

He turned on his side, facing the door, making room for her. She didn't move at first, then he felt her slide under both blankets. Her foot touched his, moved quickly away, but he realized from the icy touch how cold she must have been with the fire dead. It was the bottom of the night. Spirits in the wind? Souls? He closed his eyes. They could lie together. Share mortal warmth. Men bought tavern girls on winter nights for no more than this sometimes.

The
zubir
had been there in the palace and had disappeared. No obstacle. Nothing between. But there was. Of course there was.
Imbecile
, he could hear a voice saying.
Imbecile.
Crispin lay still for another long moment then, slowly, he turned.

She was lying on her back, staring up at darkness, still afraid. She had thought for a long time that she would die today, he knew. Die brutally. He tried to comprehend what such an expectation would be like. Moving as if through water, or in dream, he laid a hand to her shoulder, her throat, brushed some of the long golden hair back from her cheek. She was so young. He took another breath, deeply unsure, even now, still half lost in another place, but then he touched one small, firm breast through the thinness of her tunic. She never took her eyes from his.

‘Skills are a very small part of it,' he said. His own voice sounded odd. Then he kissed her, as gently as he could.

He tasted salt again as he had in the dream. Drew back, looking down at her, at the tears. But she lifted a
hand, touched his hair, then hesitated as if unsure what to do next, how to move—how to
be
—when it was by choice. The pain of others, he thought. The night so dark with the sun beneath the world. He lowered his head very slowly and kissed her again, then moved and brushed her nipple with his lips, through the tunic. Her hand stayed in his hair, tightening. Sleep was a refuge, he thought, walls were, wine, food, warmth, and this. And this. Mortal bodies in the dark.

‘You are not at Morax's,' he said. Her heart was so fast, he could feel it. The year she must have lived through. He intended to be careful, patient, but it had been a long time for him, and his own gathering urgency surprised and then mastered him. She held him close after, her body softer than he would have guessed, hands unexpectedly strong against his back. They slept like that for a while and later—nearer morning when they both awoke—he guided their pace more attentively, and in time he heard her begin to make her own sequence of discoveries, on a taken breath and another—like a climber reaching one ridge and then a higher one—before the god's sun finally rose in testament to battles won again, if at cost, in the night.

The senior physician at the army base was a Bassanid, and skilful. The former was strictly against regulations, the latter so rare—and valuable—as to have caused the military governor commanding southern Sauradia to ignore all applicable bureaucratic and ecumenical rules. He wasn't, as it happened, the only senior military official in the Empire to take this view. There were openly pagan physicians, Bassanids worshipping Perun and Anahita, Kindaths with their moon goddesses, all through the army. As between a regulation and a good doctor … there was no decision at all.

Unfortunately, from a practical viewpoint, the physician took a careful look at the mildly admonished Inici servant, examined a red sampling of his urine, and declared he was unable to ride a horse for a fortnight. This meant they had to commandeer a cart or a wagon for him. And since the girl was travelling east as well and women couldn't ride horses, the wagon had to be large enough for two.

Then the artisan revealed that he had an acute dislike of riding, and since they were using wheeled transport in any case …

The military governor had his secretary sign the papers, wasting no more time than absolutely necessary on this distraction. The Emperor in his supreme wisdom wanted this man for something to do with the newest sanctuary in Sarantium. The newest, insanely expensive sanctuary. He had—through the lofty offices of the Chancellor—ordered good soldiers to spend their time tracking a Rhodian artisan on the road. A four-person military carriage was only one more insult.

In the prevailing circumstances the governor proved amenable to a diffident—if loquacious—suggestion from one of the tribunes of the Fourth Sauradian, the man who had found this party.

Carullus proposed that he accompany the artisan, following in the wake of a rapidly couriered letter from the governor, to add a direct personal appeal to the Master of Offices and to the Supreme Strategos, Leontes, that the arrears of pay be attended to as expeditiously as possible. The god knew, Carullus could talk, the governor thought glumly, dictating his letter for the military messenger. Might as well put his tongue to use.

It also appeared that the Rhodian had not, after all, been lax in responding to his invitation. The postal courier charged with the Imperial papers had taken an unconscionably long time to reach Varena. His name and
civil service number were, as usual, on the envelope below the broken seal—the governor's secretary had recorded them. Tilliticus. Pronobius Tilliticus.

The governor spent an irritated moment pondering what sort of foolish mother gave her son a name almost identical to that for female genital organs in current military slang. Then he dictated a postscript, suggesting to the Master of Offices that the courier be reprimanded. He was unable to resist adding an offer that
important
communications west to the Antae kingdom in Batiara might better be entrusted to the military. Despite his recently chronic stomach pains, the governor did smile sourly to himself, dictating that part of the letter. He sent off the messenger.

The artisan's party stayed at the camp for two nights only, though the physician was unhappy about this speed. During the brief stay a notary attended upon the Rhodian to record and archive in his files—and forward copies, as requested, to the civil registry in the City— documents attesting to the freed status of the woman, Kasia of the Inicii.

At the same time, the recruiting centurion of the Fourth Sauradian cavalry dealt with the necessary protocols for the military conscription of the man, Vargos—a procedure that released him from his contract with the Imperial Post and triggered the immediate right to all moneys owing under his civil contract. Paperwork arranging the transfer of the appropriate sums to the military paymaster in the City was also processed. The centurion was entirely happy to do this, in fact … relations between the military and the civil service were about as cordial here as they were anywhere else. Which was to say, not at all.

The centurion was markedly less enthused about signing the release of the same fellow from his all-too-transitory
military service. Had his instructions not been explicit about this, he might well have demurred. The man was strong and fit, and once he recovered from his accidental injuries would make an excellent soldier. They'd been coping with desertions—with pay more than half a year in arrears, it was not in the least surprising—and all the units were undermanned.

It was not to be. Both Carullus and the governor appeared anxious to get the red-bearded Rhodian and his party on their way. Imperial papers signed by Chancellor Gesius himself
could
have that sort of effect, the centurion supposed. The governor was near enough to his retirement to have an extreme disinclination to ruffle feathers in the City.

Carullus, for his own part, was apparently going with the artisan to Sarantium, leading an escort himself. The centurion had no idea why.

IN FACT
, there were several reasons, the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian cavalry thought, during the days of travelling east and then, in Trakesia, curving gradually down south. A tribune commanded five hundred men, was much more significant than any messenger bearing yet another letter of complaint. He could have a legitimate expectation of at least being received and obtaining a formal answer as to the arrears for the Sauradian troops. The Master of Offices might not give him more than platitudes, but Carullus had hopes of seeing either Leontes himself or one of his personal cadre of officers and getting a clearer picture.

In addition, he hadn't been to Sarantium in years, and the chance to visit the City was too appealing to be passed up. He'd calculated that they could arrive—even moving slowly—before the season-ending races in the Hippodrome during the Dykania Festival. Carullus had a
lifelong passion for the chariots and his beloved Greens that found little satisfaction in Sauradia.

Beyond this, he had developed an unanticipated but quite genuine liking for the red-bearded Rhodian he'd clipped with his helmet. Martinian of Varena was not an especially genial man—not that Carullus really needed
other
people to keep a conversation going—but the artisan could hold his wine almost as well as a soldier, knew a number of startlingly obscene western songs, and showed none of the arrogance most Rhodians displayed when confronting an honest Imperial soldier. He also swore with an inventiveness of phrase worth copying.

In addition, Carullus had reluctantly come to acknowledge to himself—looking around to determine the whereabouts of certain others in the party as they rode—that he was being continually assailed by an entirely new emotion.