The Sarantine Mosaic (47 page)

‘It is yours,' said the Emperor, after a brief, repressive silence. ‘What one owns one may give.'

It was true, of course. But what did one own if life, if love, could be taken away to darkness? Was it
all
not just … a loan, a leasehold, transitory as candles?

Not the time, or the place, for that.

Crispin took a deep breath, forcing himself towards clarity, away from shadows. He said, knowing this might be another mistake, ‘I should be honoured if the Lady Styliane would accept this from me, then. I would not have even had the chance to speak to this challenge had she not thought so kindly of my worth. And I fear my own impolitic words earlier might have distressed a fellow artisan she values. May this serve to make my amends?' He was aware of the charioteer beside him, the man's drop-jawed gaze, a flurry of incredulous sound among the courtiers.

‘Nobly said!'
cried Faustinus from by the two thrones.

It occurred to Crispin that the Master of Offices, powerful in his control of the civil service, might not be an especially subtle man. It also occurred to him in that same moment—noting Gesius's thoughtful expression and the Emperor's suddenly wry, shrewd one—that this might not be accidental.

He nodded at the attendant—vividly clad in silver— and the man carried the pillow over to the golden-haired lady standing near the thrones. Crispin saw that the Strategos, beside her, was smiling but that Styliane Daleina herself had gone pale. This might indeed have been an error; he had no sure instincts here at all.

She reached forward, however, and took the ruby ring, held it in an open palm. She had no real choice. Exquisite as it was, beside the spectacular pearl about her throat it was almost a trifle. She was the daughter of the wealthiest family in the Empire. Even Crispin knew this. She needed this ruby about as much as Crispin needed … a cup of wine.

Bad analogy
, he thought. He
did
need one, urgently.

The lady looked across the space of the room at him for a long moment, and then said, all icy, composed perfection, ‘You do me too much honour in your turn, and honour the memory of the Empire in Rhodias with such generosity. I thank you.' She did not smile. She closed her long fingers, the ruby nestled in her palm.

Crispin bowed.

‘I must say,' interjected the Empress of Sarantium, plaintively, ‘that I am desolate now beyond all words. Did I, too, not urge you to speak, Rhodian? Did I not stop our beloved Scortius to give you an
opportunity
to show your cleverness? What gift will you make to
me
, dare I ask?'

‘Ah, you are cruel, my love,' said the Emperor beside her. He looked amused again.

‘I am cruelly scorned and overlooked,' said his wife.

Crispin swallowed hard. ‘I am at the service of the Empress in all things I may possibly do for her.'

‘Good!' said Alixana of Sarantium, her voice crisp, changing on the instant, as if this was exactly what she'd wanted to hear.
‘Very
good. Gesius, have the Rhodian conducted to my rooms. I wish to discuss a mosaic there before I retire for the night.'

There was another rustle of sound and movement. Lanterns flickered. Crispin saw the sallow-faced man near the Strategos pinch his lips together suddenly. The Emperor, still amused, said only, ‘I have summoned him for the Sanctuary, beloved. All other diversions must follow our needs there.'

‘I am not,' said the Empress of Sarantium, arching her magnificent eyebrows, ‘a diversion.'

She smiled, though, as she spoke, and laughter followed in the throne room like a hound to her lead.

Valerius stood. ‘Rhodian, be welcome to Sarantium. You have not entered among us quietly.' He lifted a
hand. Alixana laid hers upon it, shimmering with rings, and she rose. Together, they waited for their court to perform obeisance. Then they turned and went from the room through the single door Crispin had seen behind the thrones.

Straightening, and then standing up once more, he closed his eyes briefly, unnerved by the speed of events. He felt like a man in a racing chariot, not at all in control of it.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to see the real charioteer, Scortius, gazing at him. ‘Be very careful,' the Soriyyan murmured softly. ‘With all of them.'

‘How?' Crispin managed to say, just before the gaunt old Chancellor swooped down upon him as upon a prize. Gesius laid thin, proprietary fingers on Crispin's shoulder and smoothly guided him from the room, across the tesserae of the Imperial hunt, past the silver trees and the jewelled birds in the branches and the avidly watchful, silken figures of the Sarantine court.

As he walked through the silver doors into the antechamber again, someone behind him clapped their hands sharply three times and then, amid a resumption of talk and languid, late-night laughter, Crispin heard the mechanical birds of the Emperor begin to sing.

CHAPTER VIII

‘J
ad boil the bastard in his own fish sauce!' Rasic snarled under his breath as he scrubbed at a stained pot. ‘We might as well have joined the Sleepless Ones and gotten some holy credit for being up all fucking night!'

Kyros, stirring his soup over the fire with a long wooden spoon, pretended not to be listening. You didn't boil things in the fish sauce, anyhow. Strumosus was known to have exceptionally good hearing, and there was a rumour that once, years ago, the eccentric cook had tossed a dozing kitchen boy into a huge iron pot when the soup in that pot came to a boil unattended.

Kyros was pretty sure that wasn't true, but he
had
seen the rotund master chef bring a chopping knife down a finger's breadth away from the hand of an undercook who was cleaning leeks carelessly. The knife had stuck, quivering, in the table. The undercook had looked at it, at his own precariously adjacent fingers, and fainted. ‘Toss him in the horse trough,' Strumosus had ordered. Kyros's bad foot had excused him from that duty, but four others had done it, carrying the unconscious undercook out the door and down the portico steps. It had been winter then, a bitterly cold, grey afternoon. The surface of the water in the trough across the courtyard was frozen. The undercook revived, spectacularly, when they dropped him in.

Working for a notoriously temperamental cook was not the easiest employment in the City.

Still, Kyros had surprised himself over the course of a year and a half by discovering that he enjoyed the kitchen. There were mysteries to preparing food, and Kyros had found himself thinking about them. It helped that this wasn't just any kitchen, or any chef. The short, hot-tempered, ample-stomached man who supervised the food here was a legend in the City. There were those who held the view that he was far too aware of the fact, but if a cook
could
be an artist, Strumosus was. And his kitchen was the Blues' banqueting hall in Sarantium, where feasts for two hundred people were known to take place some nights.

Tonight, in fact. Strumosus, in a fever of brilliance, controlled chaos, and skin-blistering invective, had co-ordinated the preparation of eight elaborate courses of culinary celebration, climaxing in a parade of fifty boys— they'd recruited and cleaned up the stablehands—carrying enormous silver platters of shrimp-stuffed whitefish in his celebrated sauce around the wildly cheering banquet room while trumpets sounded and blue banners were madly waved. An overly enthused Clarus—the Blues' principal male dancer—had leaped flamboyantly from his seat at the high table and hastened over to plant a kiss full on the lips of the cook in the doorway to the kitchens. Shouts and ribald laughter ensued as Strumosus pretended to swat the little dancer away and then acknowledged the applause and whistles.

It was the last night of Dykania, end of another racing season, and the Glorious Blues of Great Renown had once more thrashed the hapless whey-faced Greens, both during the long season and today. Scortius's astonishing victory in the first afternoon race already seemed destined to become one of those triumphs that were talked about forever.

The wine had flowed freely all night, and so had the toasts that came with it. The faction's poet, Khardelos,
had stood up unsteadily, propped himself with one splayed hand on the table, and improvised a verse, flagon lifted:

Amid the thundering voices of the gathered throng

Scortius flies like an eagle across the sand

beneath the eagle's nest of the kathisma!

All glory to the glorious Emperor!

Glory to the swift Soriyyan and his steeds!

All glory to the Blues of Great Renown!

Kyros had felt prickles of sheer delight running along his spine.
Like an eagle across the sand
. That was wonderful! His eyes misted with emotion. Strumosus, beside him at the kitchen door in the momentary lull of activity, had snorted softly. ‘A feeble wordsmith,' he'd murmured, just loudly enough for Kyros to hear. He often did that. ‘Old phrases and butchered ones. Must talk to Astorgus. The charioteers are splendid, the kitchen is matchless, as we all know. The dancers are good enough. The poet, however, must go. Must go.'

Kyros had looked over and blushed to see Strumosus's sharp, small eyes on him. ‘Part of your education, boy. Be not seduced by cheap sentiment any more than by a heavy hand with spices. There's a difference between the accolades of the masses and the approval of those who really know.' He turned and went back into the heat of the kitchen. Kyros quickly followed.

Later, scarred, craggy-faced Astorgus, once the most celebrated charioteer in the City himself and now the Blues' factionarius, made a speech announcing a new statue to Scortius for the spina in the Hippodrome. There were already two of them, but both had been raised by the pustulent Greens. This one, Astorgus declared, would be made of silver not bronze, to the
greater glory of the Blues and the charioteer, both. There was a deafening roar of approval. One of the younger serving boys in the kitchen, startled by the noise, dropped a dish of candied fruit he was carrying out. Strumosus buffeted him about the head and shoulders with a long-handled wooden spoon, breaking the spoon. The spoons broke easily, as it happened. Kyros had noticed that the cook seldom did much actual damage, for all the apparent force of his blows.

When he had a moment, Kyros paused in the doorway again, looking at Astorgus. The factionarius was drinking steadily but to little evident effect. He had an easy, smiling word for everyone who stopped by his seat at the table. A calm, immensely reassuring man. Strumosus said Astorgus was the principal reason for the Blues' current domination of the racing and many other matters. He had wooed Scortius, Strumosus himself, was said to be working on other clever schemes all the time. Kyros wondered, though: how would it feel to be known as a competent administrator when you had once been the object yourself of all the wild cheers, the statues raised, the enraptured speeches and poems comparing you to eagles and lions, or to the great Hippodrome figures of all the ages? Was it hard? It
must
be, he thought, but couldn't really know, not from looking at Astorgus.

The banquet meandered its way to a vague close, as such events tended to. A few quarrels, someone violently ill in a corner of the hall, too sick to make it as far as the room set aside for vomiting. Columella, the horse doctor, slumped in his seat morosely, chanting verses from Trakesia long ago in a monotone. He was always like that late at night. He knew more old poetry than Khardelos did. Those on either side of him were fast asleep with their heads among the platters on the table. One of the younger female dancers was doing a sequence of movements by
herself, over and over, face intent, hands fluttering up like paired birds, then falling to rest at her sides as she spun. Kyros seemed to be the only one watching her. She was pretty, he thought. Another pair of dancers took her with them when they left. Then Astorgus left, helping Columella along, and soon no one was left in the hall. That had been a while ago.

As far as Kyros could judge, it had been a very successful banquet. Scortius hadn't been there, of course. He had been summoned to the Imperial Precinct, and so was forgiven his absence. An invitation from the Emperor brought glory to them all.

On the other hand, the brilliant charioteer was also the reason Strumosus—exhausted, dangerously irritable— and a handful of unfortunate boys and undercooks were still awake in the kitchen in the depths of an autumn night after even the most impassioned of the partisans had staggered to their homes and beds. The Blues' staff and administration were asleep by now across the courtyard in the dormitory or their private quarters, if rank had earned them such. The streets and squares beyond the gated compound were quiet at the end of the festival. Slaves under the supervision of the Urban Prefect's office would be out already, cleaning the streets. It was cold outside now; a north wind had come slicing down out of Trakesia, winter in it.

Ordinary life would resume with the sun. The parties were over.

But it seemed that Scortius had solemnly promised the master cook of the Blues that he would come to the kitchens after the Emperor's banquet and sample what had been offered tonight, comparing it to the fare in the Imperial Precinct. He was late. It was late. It was
very
late. No approaching footsteps could be heard outside.

They had all been enthused at the prospect of sharing the last of a glorious day and night with the charioteer, but that had been a long time ago. Kyros suppressed a yawn and eyed the low fire, stirring his fish soup, careful not to let it boil. He tasted it, and decided against adding any more sea salt. It was an extreme honour for one of the scullion boys to be entrusted with supervising a dish and there had been indignation when Kyros was given such tasks after barely a year in the kitchen. Kyros himself had been astonished; he hadn't known Strumosus was even aware of his presence.