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.’
‘What 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 drily, 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 outsprint 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 gra
vity.
‘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.
The Sarantine Mosaic Page 71