The Sarantine Mosaic

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  ‘I gather,’ said Pardos gravely, ‘this is a question of interrupting Crispin on the scaffold?’

  ‘Caius Crispus, yes,’ said the one called Sosio quickly. ‘You, er, know him?’

  ‘He has to be at a wedding!’ said the other brother.

  ‘Right away! He’s in the wedding party.’

  ‘But he doesn’t allow anyone to interrupt him!’

  ‘Ever! He killed someone for it once!’

  ‘Back in Varena. With a trowel, they say! Inside a holy chapel!’ Silano’s expression was horrified.

  Pardos nodded in sympathy. ‘I know, I know. He did do that. In a chapel! In fact, I was the person he killed. It was terrible, dying like that! A trowel!’ He paused, and winked as their mouths fell open, identically. ‘It’s all right, I’ll get him for you.’

  He went forward, before his smile—which he really couldn’t suppress any longer—completely betrayed him. He passed right under the staggering sweep of the dome. Looking up, he saw Crispin’s rendering of Jad in the east above the emerging details of Sarantium seen as if on the horizon, and because he’d just spent an entire winter in a certain chapel in Sauradia, Pardos perceived immediately what his teacher was doing with his own image of the god. Crispin had been there too. The Sleepless Ones had told him that.

  He came to the scaffold. Two young apprentices were standing there, bracing it, as they always had to do. Usually those on that task were bored and idle. This pair looked terrified. Pardos found that he really couldn’t stop smiling.

  ‘Hold steady for me, will you?’ he said.

  ‘You can’t!’ one of the boys gasped in horror. ‘He’s up there!’

  ‘So I understand,’ said Pardos. He could remember, so easily, feeling—and probably looking—exactly as this white-faced apprentice did. ‘He needs to be given a message, though.’

  And he grasped the rungs of the scaffold ladder and started up. He knew that high above, Crispin would soon feel, if he hadn’t immediately, the tug and sway. Pardos kept his eyes on his hands, as they were all trained to do, and climbed.

  He was halfway up when he heard a well-known voice he’d travelled the world to hear again call down in cold, remembered fury, ‘Another step up and I end your wretched existence and powder your bones into the setting bed!’

  That’s very good, actually, Pardos thought. A new one. He looked up. ‘You shut up,’ he cried. ‘Or I’ll carve your buttocks with tesserae and feed them to you in segments!’

  There was a silence. Then, ‘I say that, rot your eyes! Who the—?’

  Pardos continued upward without answering.

  Above him, he felt the platform shift as Crispin came to the edge and looked down.

  ‘Who are you?’ Another silence, followed by: ‘Pardos? Pardos?’

  Pardos didn’t speak, kept climbing. His heart was full. He reached the top and stepped over the low rail and onto the platform under the mosaic stars of a dark blue mosaic sky.

  To be enveloped in a hard embrace that almost toppled them both.

  ‘Curse you, Pardos! What took you so long? I’ve needed you here! They wrote that you left in the fucking autumn! Half a year ago! Do you know how late you are?’

  Ignoring for the moment the fact that Crispin, on departing, had explicitly refused accompaniment, Pardos disengaged.

  ‘Do you know how late you are?’ he asked.

  ‘Me? What?’

  ‘Wedding,’ said Pardos happily, and watched.

  It gave him even greater pleasure, later, to recollect the appalled dawning of awareness on Crispin’s unexpectedly smooth-shaven features.

  ‘Ah! Ah! Holy Jad! They’ll kill me! I’m a dead man! If Carullus doesn’t, bloody Shirin will! Why didn’t one of those imbeciles down there tell me?’

  Without delaying for the extremely obvious answer, Crispin rushed past Pardos, vaulted recklessly over the railing and began hurtling down the ladder, sliding more than stepping, the way the apprentices did when they raced each other. Before following, Pardos glanced over at where Crispin had been working. He saw a bison in an autumn forest, huge, done in black, edged and outlined in white. It would be very strong, that way, against the brilliant colours of the leaves around it, a dominant image. That had to be deliberate. Crispin had taken the apprentices once to see a floor mosaic at an estate south of Varena, where black and white had been used against colour in this way. Pardos went back down, feeling suddenly thoughtful.

  Crispin was waiting at the bottom, grimacing, dancing from foot to foot in his impatience. ‘Hurry, you idiot! We’re so late it kills me. It will kill me! Come on! Why did you take so poxed long to get here?’

  Pardos stepped deliberately down off the ladder. ‘I stopped in Sauradia,’ he said. ‘A chapel by the road there. They said you’d been there too, earlier.’

  Crispin’s expression changed, very quickly. He looked intently at Pardos. ‘I was,’ he said after a pause. ‘I was there. I told them that they had to … Were you … Pardos, were you restoring it?’

  Pardos nodded slowly. ‘As much as I felt I could, on my own.’

  Crispin’s expression changed again, warming him, sunlight on a raw morning. ‘I’m pleased,’ his teacher said. ‘I’m very pleased. We’ll speak of this. Meanwhile, come, we’ll have to run.’

  ‘I’ve been running. Through the whole of Sarantium, it feels like. There are a group of young men outside, rich enough not to care about the law, who are trying to kill me and this Bassanid doctor.’ He gestured at the physician, who had approached with the artisan brothers. The twins’ faces were a paired study in confusion. ‘They killed his manservant,’ Pardos said. ‘We can’t just walk outside.’

  ‘And my man’s body will be thrown into the street by certain of your most pious clerics if he is not claimed by midday.’ The doctor spoke excellent Sarantine, better than Pardos’s. He was still angry.

  ‘Where is he?’ Crispin said. ‘Sosio and Silano can get him.’

  ‘I have no idea of the name of—’

  ‘Chapel of Blessed Ingacia,’ Pardos said quickly. ‘Near the port.’

  ‘What?’ said the twin named Sosio.

  ‘What were you doing there?’ said his brother in the same breath. ‘It’s a terrible place! Thieves and whores.’

  ‘How do you know so much about it?’ Crispin asked wryly, then appeared to recollect his urgency.

  ‘Get two of the Imperial Guard to go with you. Carullus’s men will all be at the accursed wedding by now. Tell them it is for me, and why. And you two,’ he turned to Pardos and the doctor. ‘Come on! You’ll stay with me for the morning, I have guards.’ Crispin snapping orders was something Pardos remembered. His moods had always changed like this. ‘We’ll go out a side door and we have to move! You’ll need something white to wear, this is a wedding! Idiots!’ He hurried off; they followed quickly, having little choice.

  Which is how the mosaicist Pardos of Varena and the physician Rustem of Kerakek came to attend—wearing white over-tunics borrowed from Crispin’s wardrobe— the formal ceremony and then the celebration banquet of a marriage on the day they each arrived in Jad’s holy and august city of Sarantium.

  The three of them were late, but not hopelessly so, in the event.

  The musicians were lingering outside. A soldier, waiting anxiously by the doorway, saw their approach and hurried inside to report it. Crispin, murmuring a rapid stream of apologies in all directions, was able to hastily take his place before the altar in time to hold a slender golden crown over the head of the bridegroom for the ceremony. His own hair was considerably disordered, but it almost always was. Pardos noticed that the very attractive woman who was to hold the crown above the bride did fist his teacher hard in the ribs just before the service began. There was a ripple of laughter through the chapel. The presiding cleric looked startled; the groom smiled and nodded approval.

  The bride’s face Pardos didn’t see until afterwards. She was veiled in the chapel as the words of union were spoken by
the cleric and then in unison by the couple being wed. Pardos had no idea who they were; Crispin hadn’t had time to explain. Pardos didn’t even know the name of the Bassanid standing beside him; events had unfolded at an unbelievable speed this morning, and a man was dead.

  The chapel was elegant, gorgeous in fact, an extravagance of gold and silver, veined marble pillars, a magnificent altar of jet-black stone. Overhead, on the small dome, Pardos saw—with surprise—the golden figure of Heladikos, carrying his torch of fire, falling in his father’s chariot. Belief in the god’s son was banned now, images of him deemed a heresy by both Patriarchs. It seemed the users of this patrician chapel had sufficient importance to prevent their mosaic being destroyed thus far. Pardos, who had adopted the god’s bright son with the god himself, as had all the Antae in the west, felt a flicker of warmth and welcome. A good omen, he thought. It was unexpected and comforting to find the Charioteer waiting for him here.

  Then, partway through the service, the Bassanid touched Pardos on the arm and pointed. Pardos looked over. He blinked. The man who’d killed the doctor’s servant had just entered the chapel.

  He was quiet and composed, clad in exquisitely draped white silk, with a belt of links of gold and a dark green cloak. His hair was neatly tucked away now under a soft, green, fur-trimmed hat. The gaudy jewellery was gone. He moved discreetly to take his place between an older, handsome man and a much younger woman. He didn’t look drunken now. He looked like a young prince, a model for Heladikos in splendour overhead.

  There were those of the Imperial Precinct and the higher civil offices who actively courted the racing factions, either or both of them. Plautus Bonosus, Master of the Senate, was not one of these. He took the view that a benign detachment from both Blues and Greens best suited his position. In addition, he was not, by nature, one of those inclined to lay siege to the girl dancers and, accordingly, the charms of the notorious Shirin of the Greens were purely a matter of aesthetics for him and not a source of desire or enticement.

  As such, he’d never have attended this wedding, had it not been for two factors. One was his son: Cleander had desperately urged him to attend, and to bring him, and since it was increasingly unusual for his son to show the least interest in civilized gatherings, Bonosus had been reluctant to pass up an opportunity to have the boy appear presentable and functional in society.

  The other reason, a little more self-indulgent, had been the information, conveyed smoothly by the dancer with her invitation, that the banquet in her home was to be prepared by Strumosus of Amoria.

  Bonosus did have his weaknesses. Charming boys and memorable food would probably lead the list.

  They left the two unmarried girls at home, of course. Bonosus and his second wife attended—scrupulously punctual—at the ceremony in their own neighbourhood chapel. Cleander arrived late, but he was clean and appropriately garbed. Looking with some bemusement at his son beside him, Bonosus was almost able to remember the dutiful, clever boy he’d been as recently as two years ago. Cleander’s right forearm seemed puffy and discoloured but his father elected not to ask about that. He didn’t want to know. They joined the white-clad procession and the musicians (very good ones, in fact, from the theatre) for the short, rather chilly walk to the dancer’s home.

  He did feel briefly uneasy as the musical parade through the streets ended before a portico with a well done copy of a classical Trakesian bust of a woman. He knew how his wife would feel about entering here. She’d said nothing, of course, but he knew. They made their way into a common dancer’s abode, thereby conferring all the symbolic dignity of his office upon the woman and her house.

  Jad alone knew what went on in here at night after the theatre. Thenaïs was impeccable, as ever, revealing not the least trace of disapproval. His second wife, significantly younger than he was, was flawlessly well bred and famously reticent. He’d chosen her for both qualities after Aelina had died in a summer of plague three years ago, leaving him with three children and no one to manage the house.

  Thenaïs offered a gracious smile and polite murmur as Shirin of the Greens, slender and vivacious, welcomed them at her door. Cleander, between his father and stepmother, blushed crimson as Bonosus presented him, and locked his eyes on the floor as the dancer lightly touched his hand in greeting.

  One mystery solved, the Senator thought, eyeing the boy with amusement. Now he knew why Cleander had been so eager to attend. At least he has good taste, Bonosus thought wryly. The Senator’s mood was further assuaged as a servant handed him wine (which proved to be a splendid Candarian) and another woman deftly presented a small plate holding delicate morsels of seafood.

  Bonosus’s view of the world and the day grew positively sunny as he tasted his first sampling of Strumosus’s artistry. He let out an audible sigh of pleasure and gazed about with a benign eye: a Green hostess, the Blues’ chef in the kitchen, a number of guests from the Imperial Precinct (making him feel less conspicuous, in fact, as he noted their presence and nodded at one), sundry performers from the theatre, including one curly-haired former lover whom he promptly resolved to avoid.

  He saw the rotund head of the silk guild (a man who seemed to attend every party in the City), the Supreme Strategos’s secretary, Pertennius of Eubulus, surprisingly well turned out, and the Greens’ burly, beak-nosed factionarius, whose name he could never remember. Elsewhere, the Emperor’s much-favoured Rhodian mosaicist was standing with a stocky, rough-bearded young man and an older, also bearded fellow, distinctly Bassanid. And then the Senator noticed another unexpected, noteworthy guest.

  ‘Scortius is here,’ he murmured to his wife, sampling a tiny, pickled sea urchin, in silphium and something unidentifiable, an astonishing flavour that tasted of ginger and the east. ‘He’s with the Green racer from Sarnica, Crescens.’

  ‘An eccentric gathering, yes,’ Thenaïs replied, not even bothering to follow his gaze towards where the two chariot-drivers were surrounded by a cluster of admirers. Bonosus smiled a little. He liked his wife. He even slept with her on occasion.

  ‘Taste the wine,’ he said.

  ‘I have. Candarian. You’ll be happy.’

  ‘I am,’ said Bonosus happily.

  And he was, until the Bassanid fellow he’d noticed with the mosaicist came striding over to accuse Cleander of murder, in an eastern voice that was explicit enough— if blessedly low in volume—to eliminate all possibility of avoiding an unpleasantness.

  CHAPTER IV

  He hadn’t known Nishik long at all—only for the duration of their journey here—and he couldn’t have said he liked the man. The stocky soldier made a poor manservant and an insufficiently respectful companion. He hadn’t troubled himself to disguise the fact that he regarded Rustem as no more than a burdensome civilian: the traditional soldier’s attitude. Rustem had made a point in the first days of mentioning his travels a few times, but when that elicited no useful response he stopped, finding the exercise of attempting to impress a common soldier to be undignified.

  Having acknowledged this, it remained to note that the casual killing of a companion—whether one was partial to him or not—was hardly something one ought to countenance, and Rustem had no intention of doing so. He was still outraged about the morning’s deadly encounter and his own humiliating flight through the Jaddite city.

  This information he conveyed to the big, red-haired artisan at the wedding celebration to which he’d been brought. He was holding a cup of excellent wine, but could take no pleasure in the fact or the reality of his arrival—finally—in the Sarantine capital after a hard winter trek. The presence of the murderer at the same gathering undermined any such feelings and gave an edge to his anger. The young man, dressed now like some Sarantine lordling, bore no resemblance at all to the profane, drunken bully who’d accosted them with his cronies in the laneway. He didn’t even seem to have recognized Rustem.

  Rustem pointed out the fellow at the request of the mosaicist, who seemed a brisk, no-nonsense person,
belying a first impression of unhealthy choler and passion. The artisan swore under his breath and promptly fetched the bridegroom to their little group.

  ‘Cleander’s fucked up again,’ the mosaicist—his name was Crispin—said grimly. He seemed prone to vulgar language.

  ‘Tried to grab Shirin in the hallway?’ The soldier bridegroom continued to present an inordinately cheerful visage.

  ‘I wish it were that. No, he killed this man’s servant this morning, in the street, with witnesses around. Including my friend Pardos, who just arrived in the City. Then he and a swarm of Greens chased both of them all the way to the Sanctuary, with swords drawn.’

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ said the soldier, with feeling. His expression had changed. ‘Those stupid little boys.’

  ‘They aren’t boys,’ said Rustem coldly. ‘Boys are ten years old or such. That fellow was drunk at sunrise and killed with a blade.’

  The big soldier looked at Rustem carefully for the first time. ‘I understand that. He’s still very young. Lost his mother at a bad time and left some intelligent friends for a wild group of younger ones in the faction. He’s also hopelessly smitten with our hostess here and will have been drinking this morning because he was terrified of coming to her house.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Rustem, using a gesture his students knew well. ‘That explains why Nishik had to die! Of course. Forgive me for mentioning the matter.’

  ‘Don’t be a shit, Bassanid,’ said the soldier, his eyes briefly hard. ‘No one’s condoning a killing. We’ll try to do something. I’m explaining, not excusing. I should also mention that the boy is the son of Plautus Bonosus. There’s a need for some discretion.’

  ‘Who is—?’

  ‘Master of the Senate,’ said the mosaicist. ‘He’s over there, with his wife. Leave this with us, physician. Cleander can use a good scare put into him and I can promise you we’ll make it happen.’