The Sarantine Mosaic

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Rustem had been vaguely aware of all this as they went, and of how ports seemed to be the same from here to Ispahani, but he had mostly been thinking about his son as they’d moved away from the docks, leaving the noises behind them. Shaski would have been wide-eyed and open-mouthed, taking all this in the way parched ground absorbs rain. The boy had that sort of quality, he decided—he’d been thinking of him more than a man ought to dwell on his small child at home—an ability to take things in and then try to make them his own, to know when and how to use them.

  How else explain the uncanny moment when a seven-year-old boy had come after his father into a garden carrying the implement that ended up saving the life of the King of Kings? And making the fortune of their family? Rustem shook his head, remembering it on a morning in Sarantium, walking with his soldier-servant towards the forum they’d been directed to and the inn beside it where they would stay if there were rooms to be had.

  He was under instructions not to establish any direct link with the Bassanid envoy here, only the expected, routine note sent to report his arrival. Rustem was a physician searching for medical treatises and knowledge. That was all. He would seek out other physicians—he’d been given names in Sarnica and had set out with some of his own. He would make his contacts, attend lectures, give some perhaps. Buy manuscripts or pay scribes to copy them. Stay until summer. Observe what he could.

  Observe all he could, in fact, and not just about the healing profession and its treatises. There were things they wished to know, in Kabadh.

  Rustem of Kerakek was a man who ought not to attract any attention at all in a time of harmony between the Emperor and the King of Kings (a peace bought expensively by Valerius) with only the occasional border or trade incident to mar a smooth surface.

  That ought to have been so, at any rate.

  The outrageously clothed and barbered young man who wove his way unsteadily towards Rustem from a tavern doorway as he and Nishik ascended a steep, unfortunately quiet laneway, heading for the Mezaros Forum, seemed oblivious to such carefully thought out considerations.

  This seemed equally true of the three friends similarly dressed and adorned who followed behind him. All four were dressed in Bassanid-style robes for some reason, but with crudely designed golden jewellery in their ears and about their necks and with their hair worn untidily long down their backs.

  Rustem stopped, having little option. The four youths barred their way and the laneway was narrow. The leader swayed a little to one side then straightened himself with an effort. ‘Green or Blue?’ he rasped, wine fumes on his breath. ‘Answer or be beaten like a dry whore!’

  This question had something to do with horses. Rustem knew that much, but had no idea what answer would be best. ‘I beg your indulgence,’ he murmured in what he knew by now to be perfectly adequate Sarantine. ‘We are strangers here and don’t understand such things. You are blocking our way.’

  ‘We are, aren’t we? Fucking observant, you are. Bassanid butt-fucker,’ said the young man, switching away from the Blue-or-Green business readily enough. Rustem’s origin and Nishik’s was obvious from their clothing; they hadn’t made any effort to hide it. The vulgarity was disconcerting and the sour smell of wine on the young man’s breath so early of a morning sickened Rustem a little. The fellow was doing damage to his health. Not even the rawest recruits off duty in the fortress drank this early.

  ‘Mind your foul tongue!’ Nishik exclaimed loudly, playing the loyal servant, but with a little too much edge in his voice. ‘This is Rustem of Kerakek, a respected physician. Make way!’

  ‘A doctor? Bassanid? Saves the fucking lives of slime who kill our soldiers? The fuck I’ll make way, you goatfaced castrate slave!’ Saying which, the young man proceeded to alter the nature of an already unfortunate encounter by drawing a short, quite elegant sword.

  Rustem, taking a quick breath, noticed that the other youths looked alarmed at this. Not as drunk, he thought. There’s a hope here.

  There was, until Nishik snarled an oath of his own and, unwisely, turned to the mule that had stolidly accompanied them all this way, grappling for his own blade strapped to the animal’s side. Rustem was sure he knew what was in Nishik’s mind: the soldier, outraged by insults and impediment from a civilian, and a Jaddite at that, would be determined to disarm him in a swift lesson. A well-deserved tutoring, undoubtedly. But it was not the way to enter Sarantium quietly.

  Nor, in fact, was it wise for other reasons entirely. The man with the already-drawn sword happened to know how to use it, having had instruction in the blade from a very early age at his father’s city home and country estate. He was also, as Rustem had already noted, well past the point of prudently evaluating his own conduct or that of others.

  The young man with the stylish blade took a single step forward and stabbed Nishik between the third and fourth ribs as the Bassanid soldier was pulling his own weapon free of the ropes about the mule.

  A chance encounter, purest accident, a wrong laneway taken at a wrong moment in a city full of lanes and streets and paths. Had they missed the ferry, been detained by customs, stopped to eat, taken another route, things would have been entirely otherwise at this moment. But the world—guarded by Perun and Anahita and menaced always by Black Azal—had somehow reached this point: Nishik was down, his blood was red on the street, and a drawn sword was pointed unsteadily at Rustem. He tried to think back to which omen he’d missed that all should have gone this terribly awry.

  But even as he pondered this, struggling to deal with the sudden randomness of death, Rustem felt a rare, cold fury rising, and he lifted his walking staff. As the young swordsman looked down in either drunken confusion or satisfaction at the fallen man, Rustem dealt him a quick, sharp, punishing blow across the forearm with the staff. He listened for the sound of a bone cracking and was actually distressed not to hear it, though the vicious youngster let out a scream and his sword fell clattering.

  All three of the others, unfortunately, promptly drew their own blades. There was a disconcerting absence of people in the morning lane.

  ‘Help!’ Rustem shouted, not optimistically, ‘Assassins!’ He looked quickly down. Nishik had not moved. Things had gone appallingly wrong here, a catastrophe swirling up out of nothing at all. Rustem’s heart was pounding.

  He looked back up, holding his staff before him. The man he’d injured and disarmed was clutching at his elbow, screaming at his friends, his face distorted by pain and a childish outrage. The friends moved forward. Two daggers had been drawn, one short sword. Rustem understood that he had to flee. Men could die in the city streets like this, without purpose or meaning. He turned to run—and caught a flashing blur of movement from the corner of his eye.

  He spun back swiftly, raising his staff again. But he wasn’t the target of the figure he’d glimpsed.

  A man had burst out from a tiny, flat-roofed chapel up the lane and, without breaking stride, now barrelled from behind into three armed men, wielding only a traveller’s staff almost identical to Rustem’s own. He used it briskly, clubbing the sword-wielder hard across the back of the knees. As the man cried out and pitched forward, the new figure stopped, wheeled, and whipped his staff back the other way, clipping a second assailant across the head. The young man let out an aggrieved sound—more a boy’s cry than anything else—and fell, dropping his knife, clutching at his scalp with both hands. Rustem saw blood welling between his fingers.

  The third one—the only one left armed now—looked at this compact, bristling new arrival, then over at Rustem, and finally down to where Nishik lay motionless on the street. ‘Holy fucking Jad!’ he said, and bolted past Rustem, tearing wildly around the corner and out of sight.

  ‘You’d be advised to do the same,’ Rustem said to the pair felled by the man who’d intervened. ‘But not you!’ He pointed a shaking finger at the one who had stabbed Nishik. ‘You stay where you are. If my man is dead I want you brought before the law for murder.’

  �
��Fuck that, pig,’ said the youth, still clutching at his elbow. ‘Get my sword, Tykos. Let’s go.’

  The one called Tykos made as if to claim the blade but the man who’d saved Rustem stepped forward quickly and stamped a booted foot down upon it. Tykos looked sidelong at him, frozen in the act of bending, then straightened and sidled away. The leader snarled another foul-mouthed oath and the three youths followed their vanished friend swiftly down the lane.

  Rustem let them go. He was too stunned to do anything else. Heard his own heart pounding and fought for control, breathing deeply. But before turning the corner, their assailant stopped and looked back up, pushing his long hair from his eyes, then gesturing obscenely with his good arm. ‘Don’t think this is over, Bassanid. I’m coming for you!’

  Rustem blinked, then snapped, entirely uncharacteristically, ‘Fuck yourself,’ as the young man disappeared.

  Rustem stared after him a moment, then knelt quickly, set down his staff, and laid two fingers against Nishik’s throat. After a moment he closed his eyes and withdrew his hand.

  ‘Anahita guide him, Perun guard him, Azal never learn his name,’ he said softly, in his own tongue. Words he had spoken so often. He had been at war, seen so many people die. This was different. This was a city street in morning light. They had simply been walking. A life was done.

  He looked up and around, and realized that there had, in fact, been watchers from the recessed doorways and small windows of the shops and taverns and the apartments stacked above them along the lane.

  An amusement, he thought bitterly. It would make a tale.

  He heard a sound. The short, stocky young man who’d intervened had reclaimed a pack he must have dropped. Now he was slipping the first assailant’s sword into the ropes on the mule, beside Nishik’s.

  ‘Distinctive,’ he said tersely. ‘Look at the hilt. It may identify him.’ His accent, speaking Sarantine, was heavy. He was dressed for travel, in a nondescript brown tunic and cloak, belted high, with muddy boots and the heavy pack now on his back.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Rustem said, unnecessarily. ‘They killed him.’

  ‘I see that,’ said the other man. ‘Come on. They may be back. They’re drunken and out of control.’

  ‘I can’t leave him in the street,’ Rustem protested.

  The young man glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Over there,’ he said, and knelt to slip his hands under Nishik’s shoulders. He smeared blood on his tunic, didn’t seem to notice. Rustem bent to pick up Nishik by the legs. Together they carried him—no one helping, no one even coming into the lane—up to the small chapel.

  When they reached the doorway, a cleric in a stained yellow robe stepped out hastily, his hand outthrust. ‘We don’t want him!’ he exclaimed.

  The young man simply ignored him, moving straight past the holy man, who scurried after them, still protesting. They took Nishik into the dim, chill space and set him down near the door. Rustem saw a small sun disk and an altar in the gloom. A waterfront chapel. Whores and sailors meeting each other here, he thought. More a place of venal commerce and shared disease than prayer, most likely.

  ‘What are we supposed to do with this?’ the cleric protested in an irate whisper, following them in. There were a handful of people inside.

  ‘Pray for his soul,’ the young man said. ‘Light candles. Someone will come for him.’ He glanced meaningfully at Rustem, who reached for his purse and took out a few copper folles.

  ‘For the candles,’ he said, extending them to the cleric. ‘I’ll have someone get him.’

  The cleric made the coins disappear—more smoothly than a holy man ought, Rustem thought sourly—and nodded briefly. ‘This morning,’ he said. ‘By midday he’s tossed into the street. This is a Bassanid, after all.’

  He had been listening, earlier. Had done nothing at all. Rustem gave him his coldest look. ‘He was a living soul. He is dead. Show respect, for your own office and your god if for nothing else.’

  The cleric’s mouth fell open. The young man laid a hand on Rustem’s arm and drew him outside.

  They went back and Rustem took the mule’s halter. He saw the blood on the stones where Nishik had lain, and he cleared his throat. ‘I owe you a great debt,’ he said.

  Before the other man could reply, there came a clattering sound. They both spun to look.

  Fully a dozen long-haired youths careened around the corner and skidded to a halt.

  ‘There!’ cried their first assailant savagely, pointing in triumph.

  ‘Run!’ snapped the young man at Rustem’s side.

  Rustem grabbed his own pack from the mule, the one with his papers from home and the manuscripts he’d bought in Sarnica, and he sprinted uphill, leaving behind the mule, his clothing, his staff, two swords, and all shreds of the dignity he’d imagined himself bearing as he entered the city of cities that was Sarantium.

  At this same hour, in the Traversite Palace of the Imperial Precinct, the Empress of Sarantium is lying in a scented bath in a warm, tiled room through which wisps of steam are drifting, while her secretary—sitting on a bench, his back carefully turned to the exposed, reclining form of the Empress—reads aloud to her a letter in which the leader of the largest of the dissident tribes in Moskav proposes that she induce the Emperor to fund his long-planned revolt.

  The letter also, with little subtlety, intimates that the writer is prepared to personally attend to the Empress’s physical delight and rapture at some time in the future, should this persuasion of Valerius take place. The document concludes with an expression of well-phrased sympathy that a woman of the Empress’s manifest magnificence should still be enduring the attentions of an Emperor so helplessly unable to conduct his own affairs of state.

  Alixana stretches her arms out of the water and above her head and allows herself a smile. She looks down at the curves of her own breasts. The fashion in dancers has changed since her day. Many of the girls now are much as the male dancers are: small breasts, straight hips, a boyish look. This would not be a way to describe the woman in her bath. She has seen and lived through more than thirty quite remarkably varied years now and can still stop a conversation or double a heartbeat with her entrance into a room.

  She knows this, of course. It is useful, always has been. At the moment, however, she is remembering a girl, about eight years of age, taking her first proper bath. She had been fetched from a laneway south of the Hippodrome where she’d been wrestling and tumbling with three other children in the dust and offal. It had been a Daughter of Jad, she remembers, a square-jawed, sternfaced woman, grey and unsmiling, who had separated the brawling offspring of the Hippodrome workers and then taken Aliana off with her, leaving the others watching, open-mouthed.

  In the forbidding, windowless, stone-walled house where that sect of holy women resided, she had taken the now silent, overawed girl to a small, private room, ordered hot water brought, and towels, and had stripped and then bathed her there in a bronze tub, alone. She had not touched Aliana, or not intimately. She’d washed her filthy hair and scrubbed her grimy fingers and nails, but the woman’s expression had not changed as she did so, or when she leaned back after, sitting on a three-legged wooden stool, and simply looked at the girl in the bath for a long time.

  Thinking back, the Empress is very much aware of what must have been the underlying complexities of a holy woman’s actions that afternoon, the hidden and denied impulses stirring as she cleansed and then gazed at the undeveloped, naked form of the girl in the bath. But at the time she had only been aware of apprehension slowly giving way to a remarkable sensation of luxury: the hot water and the warm room, the hands of someone else tending to her.

  Five years later she was an official dancer for the Blues, growing in recognition, the child-mistress of one of the more notorious of the faction’s aristocratic patrons. And she was already known for her love of bathing. Twice a day at the bathhouse when she could, amid languorous perfumes and warmth and the drifting of steam, which meant s
helter and comfort to her in a life that had known neither.

  Nor has this changed, though she now knows the most extreme comforts in the world. And to her the most remarkable thing, really, about all of this is how vividly, how intensely, she can still remember being the girl in that small bath.

  The next letter, read while the Empress is being powdered, dried, painted, and dressed by her ladies, is from a nomadic religious leader in the desert south of Soriyya. A certain number of these desert wanderers are now Jaddite in their beliefs, having abandoned their incomprehensible heritage built around wind spirits and sets of holy lines, invisible to sight, mapping and crisscrossing the sands, marking sacred places and correspondences.

  All the desert tribes embracing Jad have also adopted a belief in the god’s son. This often happens among those converting to the faith of the sun god: Heladikos is the way to his father. Officially, the Emperor and Patriarchs have forbidden such beliefs. The Empress, usefully thought to be sympathetic to such out-of-favour doctrines, tends to conduct the exchange of letters and gifts with the tribesmen. They can be significant, often are. Even with the expensively bought peace with the Bassanids in place, in the unstable regions of the south allies are impermanent and important, valuable for hired warriors, and for gold and silphium—that extravagantly expensive spice—and for offering caravan routes for eastern goods coming around Bassania.

  This letter ends without any promise of physical delight. The Empress refrains from expressing disappointment. Her current secretary has no sense of humour and her attendants become distracted when amused. The desert leader does offer a prayer for light to attend upon her soul.

  Alixana, dressed now, sipping at a cup of honeyed wine, dictates replies to both communications. She has just finished the second when the door opens, without a knock. She looks up.

  ‘Too late,’ she murmurs. ‘My lovers have fled and I am, as you see, entirely respectable.’

  ‘I shall destroy forests and cities searching for them,’ the thrice-exalted Emperor, Jad’s holy regent upon earth, says as he takes a cushioned bench and accepts a cup of the wine (without honey) from one of the women. ‘I shall grind their bones into powder. May I please proclaim that I found Vertigus importuning you and have him torn apart between horses?’