The Sarantine Mosaic

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  It was deeply tempting to invite Vargos to come west. Crispin’s uncertainty about his future would be balanced by having this man with him. The big, scarred servant he had hired at the western border of Sauradia to take him along the Imperial Road had become someone whose presence brought a measure of stability to the world.

  That could happen, when you went into the Aldwood with someone, and came out. They didn’t speak of that day at all, but it underlay everything that was said, and the sadness of parting.

  Only at the end did Vargos say something that brought it briefly to the surface. ‘You’re sailing?’ he had asked, as they were settling their account in the tavern. ‘Not back along the road?’

  ‘I’d be afraid to,’ Crispin had said.

  ‘Carullus would give you a guard.’

  ‘Not against what frightens me.’

  And Vargos had nodded his head.

  ‘We were … allowed to leave,’ Crispin had murmured, remembering fog on the Day of the Dead, Linon on the dark, wet grass. ‘You don’t test that by going back.’

  And Vargos had nodded again and they had gone back out into the streets.

  A FEW DAYS LATER they had to pretty much carry Carullus from The Spina. The soldier was caught in such a whirlwind of emotion it was almost comical: his marriage, his meteoric rise, which meant at the same time missing a glorious war, his delight in what had happened to his beloved Leontes set against what that meant to his dear friend, and an awareness, day by passing day, of Crispin’s onrushing departure date.

  That particular night as they drank he talked even more than usual. The others were almost in awe of his volubility: stories, jests, observations in an endless stream, battlefield experiences, lap-by-lap recollections of races seen years ago. He wept at the end of the night, hugging Crispin hard, kissing both his cheeks. The three others took him home through the streets. Approaching his own door Carullus was singing a victory song of the Greens.

  Kasia heard him, evidently. She opened the door herself, in a night robe, holding a candle. The two other men supported Carullus as he saluted his wife and then made his precarious way—still singing—up the stairs.

  In the hallway by the door, Crispin stood alone with Kasia. She gestured and they went into the front room. Neither said anything. Crispin knelt and poked at the fire with an iron rod. After a while the other two came down.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Vargos said.

  ‘I know he will,’ said Kasia. ‘Thank you.’

  There was a brief silence. ‘We’ll wait down the street,’ Pardos said.

  Crispin heard the door close as they went out. He stood up.

  ‘When do you sail?’ Kasia asked. She looked wonderful. Had gained weight, lost the bruised look he remembered in her eyes. They are going to kill me tomorrow. First words she’d ever spoken to him.

  ‘Three days,’ he said now. ‘Someone apparently mentioned I was looking for a ship, word got around, and Senator Bonosus was good enough to send a message that I could have passage on a commercial vessel of his going to Megarium. Kind of him. She, ah, won’t be fast, but she’ll get me there. Then it’s easy to cross the bay from Megarium, this time of year, to Mylasia. Ships go back and forth all the time. Or I could walk, of course. Up the coast, back down. To Varena.’

  She smiled a little as he rambled. ‘You sound like my husband. Many words to a simple question.’

  Crispin laughed. Another silence.

  ‘They’ll be waiting for you outside,’ she said.

  He nodded. There was suddenly a difficulty in his throat. She, too, he’d never see again.

  She walked him to the front door. He turned there.

  She put her hands to either side of his face and, rising on tiptoe, kissed him on the lips. She was soft and scented and warm.

  ‘Thank you for my life,’ she said.

  He cleared his throat. Found his head spinning, that no words would come. Too much wine. Amusing: a torrent of words, no words at all. She opened the door. He stumbled onto the threshold, under the stars.

  ‘You are right to leave,’ Kasia said softly. She put a hand on his chest and gave him a little push. ‘Go home and have children, my dear.’

  And then she closed the door before he could say anything at all in reply to something so astonishing.

  It was astonishing. There were people in the world who could—and would—say such a thing to him.

  One person, at least.

  ‘Let’s walk for a little,’ he said to the other two when he caught up to them, waiting under a wall lamp.

  Both were taciturn men, not intrusive at all. They left him to his thoughts, kept their own, as they paced through the streets and squares, offering their presence as security and companionship. The Urban Prefect’s guards were about, the taverns and cauponae open again, though the City was still formally in mourning. That meant the theatres were closed and the chariots wouldn’t run, but Sarantium was alive now in the springtime dark with smells and sounds and movements into and out of lantern-light.

  A pair of women called to the three of them from a doorway. Crispin saw a flame flicker in the lane beyond, one of those he’d had to grow accustomed to, appearing without source, disappearing as soon as seen. The half-world.

  He led the others down towards the harbour. The fleet had gone, leaving only the usual naval complement, with the merchant vessels and fishing boats. A rougher neighbourhood, waterfronts always were. The other two, in stride a little behind him, came nearer. Three big men were unlikely to be disturbed, even here.

  Crispin felt almost clear-headed now. He made a decision, and he was to keep it: rising the next morning, eating a meal without wine, taking a trip to the baths, having a shave there (a habit by now, he’d break it at sea).

  So many farewells, he was thinking, Kasia’s words still with him, walking with two friends by the harbour at night. Some goodbyes not yet properly done, some never to be done.

  His work not done, never to be done.

  It will all come down.

  As he walked he found himself continually looking into doorways and down alleys. When the women called to him, offering themselves with promises of delight and forgetting, he turned and looked at them before moving on.

  They reached the water. Stopped, listening to the creak of ships and the waves slapping the planks of the piers. Masts moved, the moons appearing to swing from one side of them to another, rocking. There were islands out there, Crispin thought, looking at the sea, with strands of stony beach that would be silver, or blue-tinted in the moonlight beyond the dark.

  He turned away. They went on, climbing back up the lanes leading from the water, his companions offering silence as a kind of grace. He was leaving. Sarantium was leaving him.

  A pair of women walked by. One stopped and called to them. Crispin stopped as well, looked at her, turned away.

  She could change her voice, he knew, sound like anyone at all. Probably look like anyone. Artifice of the stage. If she was alive. He had a fantasy, he admitted finally to himself: he was walking in the darkness of the City, thinking that if she was still here, if she saw him, she might call to him, to say farewell.

  It was time to go to bed. They walked back. A servant sleepily admitted them. He said goodnight to the others. They went to their rooms. He went up to his. Shirin was waiting there.

  Some goodbyes, not yet properly done.

  He closed the door behind him. She was sitting on the bed, one leg neatly crossed over the other. Images begetting images. No dagger this time. Not the same woman.

  She said, ‘It is very late. Are you sober?’

  ‘Tolerably,’ he said. ‘We took a long walk.’

  ‘Carullus?’

  He shook his head. ‘We pretty much carried him home to Kasia.’

  Shirin smiled a little. ‘He doesn’t know what to celebrate, what to mourn.’

  ‘That’s about right,’ he said. ‘How did you get in?’

  She arched her eyebrows. ‘My li
tter’s waiting across the road. Didn’t you see it? How did I get in? I knocked at the door. One of your servants opened it. I told them we hadn’t yet said goodbye and could I wait for you to return. They let me come up.’ She gestured, he saw the glass of wine at her elbow. ‘They have been attentive. How do most of your visitors get in? What did you think, that I climbed through a window to seduce you in your sleep?’

  ‘I’m not so lucky a man,’ he murmured. He took the chair by the window. He felt a need to sit down.

  She made a face. ‘Men are better awake, most of the time,’ she said. ‘Though I could make a case the other way, for some of those who send me gifts.’

  Crispin managed a smile. Danis was on her thong about Shirin’s neck. They’d both come. Difficult. Everything was difficult these last days.

  He couldn’t really say why this encounter was, however, and that was a part of the problem, in itself.

  ‘Pertennius being troublesome again?’ he asked.

  ‘No. He’s with the army. You should know that.’

  ‘I’m not paying attention to everyone’s movements. Do forgive me.’ His voice was sharper than he’d meant it to be.

  She glared at him.

  ‘She says she feels like killing you,’ Danis spoke for the first time.

  ‘Say it yourself,’ Crispin snapped. ‘Don’t hide behind the bird.’

  ‘I am not hiding. Unlike some people. It isn’t … polite to say such things aloud.’

  He laughed, against his will. Protocols of the half-world.

  Reluctantly, she smiled as well.

  There was a small silence. He breathed her scent in his room. Two women in the world wore this perfume. One now, more likely, the other was dead, or hiding still.

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ Shirin said.

  He looked at her without speaking. She lifted her small chin. Her features, he had long ago decided, were appealing but not arresting in repose. It was in the expressiveness of her, in laughter, pain, anger, sorrow, fear—any and all of those—that Shirin’s face came alive, her beauty compelled attention and awareness and gave birth to desire. That, and when she moved, the dancer’s grace, suppleness, unspoken hint that physical needs scarcely admitted could be assuaged. She was a creature never to be fully captured in an art that did not move.

  He said, ‘Shirin, I cannot stay. Not now. You know what has happened. You called me a liar and an idiot for trying to make … less of it, when last we spoke.’

  ‘Danis called you an idiot,’ she corrected, and then was silent again. Her turn to gaze at him.

  And after a long moment, Crispin said, bringing the thought into words, ‘I cannot ask you to come with me, my dear.’

  The chin lifted a little more. Not a word spoken. Waiting.

  ‘I … have thought of it,’ he murmured.

  ‘Good,’ said Shirin.

  ‘I don’t even know if I’ll stay in Varena, what I’ll do.’

  ‘Ah. The wanderer’s hard life. Nothing a woman could share.’

  ‘Not … this woman,’ he said. He was entirely sober now. ‘You are just about the second empress of Sarantium, my dear. They need you desperately, the new rulers. They’ll want continuity, the people diverted. You can expect to be showered with even more than you have now.’

  ‘And ordered to marry the Emperor’s secretary?’

  He blinked. ‘I doubt it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Do you? You know all about the court here, I see.’ She glared at him again. ‘Why not stay, then? They’ll geld you and make you Chancellor when Gesius dies.’

  He looked at her. Said, after a moment, ‘Shirin, be truthful. Do you honestly fear they’ll force you to marry someone—anyone—right now?’

  A silence.

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ Danis said.

  Then she shouldn’t have mentioned it, he thought, but did not say. Didn’t say it, because something was twisting in his own heart as he looked at her. Zoticus’s daughter, as brave as her father, in her own way.

  He said, ‘Did you … did Martinian sell your father’s farm for you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t ask him to. Forgot to mention that to you. I asked him to find a tenant, to keep it going. He did. He’s written me a few letters. Told me a lot about you, actually.’

  Crispin blinked again. ‘I see. Another thing you forgot to mention to me?’

  ‘I suppose we simply haven’t talked enough.’ She smiled. ‘So there,’ said Danis.

  Crispin sighed. ‘That feels true, at least.’

  ‘I’m pleased you agree.’ She sipped her wine.

  He looked at her. ‘You are angry. I know. What must I do? Do you want me to take you to bed, my dear?’

  ‘To help with my anger? No thank you.’

  ‘To help with this sorrow,’ he said.

  She was silent.

  ‘She says to say she wishes you had never come here,’

  Danis said.

  ‘I’m lying, of course,’ Shirin added aloud.

  ‘I know,’ Crispin said. ‘Do you want me to ask you to come west?’

  She looked at him.

  ‘Do you want me to come west?’

  ‘Sometimes I do, yes,’ he admitted, to himself as much as to her. It was a relief to say it.

  He saw her take a breath. ‘Well, that’s a start,’ she murmured. ‘Helps with the anger, too. You might be able to take me to bed for other reasons now.’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, my dear,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think I—’

  ‘I know. Don’t. Don’t say it. You couldn’t think about … any of this when you came, for reasons I know. And now you can’t for … new reasons, that I also know. What do you want to ask of me, then?’

  She wore a soft cap of dark green, a ruby in it. Her cloak lay beside her on the bed. Her gown was silk, green as the cap, with gold. Her earrings were gold and rings flashed on her fingers. He thought, looking at her, claiming this image, that he’d never be gifted enough at his craft to capture how she appeared just then, even sitting still as she was.

  Speaking carefully, he said, ‘Don’t … sell the farmhouse yet. Perhaps you’ll need to … visit your property in the western province. If it becomes a province.’

  ‘It will. The Empress Gisel, I have decided, knows what she wants and how to get it.’

  His own thought, actually. He didn’t say it. The Empress wasn’t the point just now. He discovered that his heart was beating rapidly. He said, ‘You might even … invest there, depending how events unfold? Martinian’s shrewd about such things, if you want advice.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Depending how events unfold?’ ‘Gisel’s … arrangements.’

  ‘Gisel’s,’ she murmured. And waited again.

  He took a breath. A mistake, perhaps; her scent was inescapably present. ‘Shirin, there is no way you should leave Sarantium and you know it.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said, encouragingly.

  ‘But let me go home and find out what I … well, let me … Ah, well if you do marry someone here, by choice, I’d be … Jad’s blood, woman, what do you want me to say?’

  She stood up. Smiled. He felt helpless before the layers of meaning in that smile.

  ‘You just did,’ she murmured. And bending before he could rise, she kissed him chastely on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Crispin. A safe voyage. I’ll expect you to write me soon. About properties, perhaps? That sort of thing.’

  That sort of thing.

  He stood up. Cleared his throat. A woman desirable as moonlight when the night was dark.

  ‘You, um, you kissed me better the first time we met.’

  ‘I know,’ she said sweetly. ‘Might have been a mistake.’

  And she smiled again and went to the door and opened it herself and went out. He stood rooted to the spot.

  ‘Go to bed,’ said Danis. ‘We’ll have the servants let us out. A good journey, she says to say.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he sent, before remembering they couldn’t make
out his thoughts. He wished, suddenly, he could make out his own.

  He didn’t go to bed. There would have been no point. Stayed awake a long time, sitting in a chair by the window. Saw her wineglass and the flask on a tray but didn’t take them, didn’t drink. He’d made himself a promise about that, earlier tonight, in the street.

  He was grateful for clear-headedness in the morning. A message—more than half expected—was waiting for him when he came down the stairs, delivered at sunrise. He ate, went to chapel on impulse, with Vargos and Pardos, then to the baths, had himself shaved, paid some visits in the Blues’ compound and elsewhere. Was aware, as the day progressed, of the movement of the sun overhead. This day, this night, one more, then gone.

  Some goodbyes not yet done. One more coming at darkfall.

  In the palace.

  ‘I HAD CONSIDERED a flour sack,’ said the Empress of Sarantium, ‘for memory’s sake.’

  ‘I am grateful, my lady, that you left it as a thought.’

  Gisel smiled. She had risen from a small desk, where she’d been opening sealed correspondence and reports with a small knife. Leontes was north and east with the army, but the Empire was still to be run, guided through changes. She and Gesius, he thought, would be doing so.

  She crossed the room, took another seat. She was still holding the small paper knife. It had an ivory handle, carved in the shape of a face, he saw. She noticed his gaze. Smiled. ‘My father gave me this when I was very young. The face is his, actually. It comes off, if you twist.’ She did so. Held the ivory in one hand, the suddenly hiltless blade in the other. ‘I wore this against my skin when I boarded ship to sail here, had it hidden when we landed.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘I didn’t know, you see, what they intended to do with me. At the … very last, sometimes, we can only control how we end.’

  Crispin cleared his throat, looked around the room. They were almost alone, one woman servant with them here in the Traversite Palace, Gisel’s rooms, that had been Alixana’s. She hadn’t had time to change them yet. Other priorities. The rose was gone, he saw.