Guy Kay - Lord of Emperors

They were there.

When Crispin had been younger, learning his craft, Martinian had often lectured about the virtues of directness, avoiding the overly subtle. Crispin, over the years, had made the same point many times to their various apprentices. "If a military hero comes to a sculptor and asks for a statue in his own honour, it would be foolish beyond words not to do the obvious. Put the man on a horse, give him a helmet and a sword." Martinian used to pause, after saying this. So would Crispin, before going on: "It may feel tired, overdone, but what is the reason for this commission, you must ask yourself. Has anything been achieved if the patron doesn't feel honoured by a work designed to honour him?"

Subtle concepts, brilliant innovation came with risks… sometimes the exercise of the moment would be entirely defeated by them. That was the point.

Crispin led the queen out of the chapel and back into the night, and he didn't ask her to draw up her hood again. They made no attempt to hide at all. They walked along tended paths, gravel crunching underfoot, past sculptures of Emperors and soldiers (suitably rendered) in the starlit, moonlit gardens, and they saw no one and were disturbed by no one as they went.

Such dangers as might be feared tonight by those who lived here were thought to be outside the Bronze Gates, in the labyrinths of the City.

They went past a fountain, not flowing yet so early in the spring, and then the long portico of the silk guild, and then, with the sound of the sea in his ears, Crispin led his queen up to the entrance of the Attenine Palace, which was alight with lamps tonight. There were guards here, but the double doors stood wide open. He walked straight up the steps to them, and there he saw a man standing just inside, beyond the guards, in the green and brown colours of the Chancellor's eunuchs.

He stopped in front of the guards, the queen beside him. They eyed him warily. He ignored them, pointed at the eunuch. "You!" he snapped. "We need an escort for the queen of the Antae."

The eunuch turned, his training immaculate, betraying no surprise at all, and he stepped out onto the portico. The guards looked from Crispin to the queen. The Chancellor's man bowed to Gisel, and then, a moment later, so did they. Crispin drew a breath.

"Rhodian!" said the eunuch as he straightened. He was smiling. "You need another shave." And it was with a sense of being blessed, guarded, granted aid, that Crispin recognized the man who had barbered his beard the first time he'd come to this palace.

"Probably," Crispin admitted. "But at the moment the queen wishes to see the Chancellor and to pay her last respects to Valerius."

"She can do both at once, then. I am at your service, Majesty. The Chancellor is in the Porphyry Room with the body. Come. I will take you there." The guards didn't even move as they went through, so regal was Gisel, so obviously confident the man escorting her.

It was not a long way, as it turned out. The Porphyry Room, where Empresses of Sarantium gave birth, where Emperors lay in state when they were summoned to the god, was on this level, halfway down a single straight corridor. There were lamps at intervals, shadows between them, no one at all seemed to be about. It was as if the Imperial Precinct, the palace, the hallway lay under some sort of alchemist's spell, so calm and still was it. Their footsteps echoed as they went. They were alone with their escort, walking to visit the dead.

The man who led them stopped outside a pair of doors. They were silver, bearing a pattern of crowns and swords in gold. Two guards here, as well. They seemed to know Gesius's man. Nodded. The eunuch knocked once, softly, and opened the door himself. He gestured for them to go inside.

Gisel went first again. Crispin paused in the doorway, uncertain now. The room was smaller than he'd expected. There were purple hangings on all the walls, an artificial tree of beaten gold, a canopied bed against the far wall, and a bier in the centre now, with a shrouded body upon it. There were, candles burning all around, and one man knelt-on a cushion, Crispin saw-while two clerics softly chanted the Mourning Rites.

The kneeling man looked up. It was Gesius, parchment pale, thin as a scribe's pen, looking very old. Crispin saw him recognize the queen.

"1 am very pleased to find you, my lord," Gisel said. "I wish to pray for the soul of Valerius who has left us, and to speak with you. Privately." She crossed to a ewer on a stand, poured water on her hands in the ritual of ablution, dried them on a cloth.

Crispin saw something flicker in the old man's face as he looked at her.

"Of course, Majesty. I am at your service in all things." Gisel looked briefly at the clerics. Gesius gestured. They broke off their chanting and went out through a single door on the far side of the room, beside the bed. The door closed, candles flickered with the movement.

"You may go, Caius Crispus." The queen didn't even turn around. Crispin looked at the eunuch who had escorted them. The man turned, expressionless, and went through the door. Crispin was about to follow, but then he hesitated and turned back.

He went forward, past Gisel, and he poured water for himself, in turn, murmuring the words spoken in the presence of the dead, and he dried his hands. Then he knelt at the side of the bier, beside the body of the dead Emperor. He smelled-over the scent of incense in the room- something charred and burnt, and he closed his eyes.

There were words of prayer suited for this moment. He didn't speak them. His thoughts were empty at first, then he shaped an image in his mind of Valerius. A man of ambition, in more ways than Crispin suspected he would ever grasp. Round-faced, soft-featured, mild of voice and bearing.

Crispin knew-still-that he ought to have hated and feared this man. But if there was a truth to be understood down here among the living at the bottom of the scaffold it was that hatred, fear, love, all of them, were never as simple as one might wish them to be. Without praying in any formal way, he bade farewell in silence to the image shaped in his mind, which was all he felt entitled to do.

He rose and went to the door. As he went out he heard Gisel say softly to the Chancellor-and was ever after to wonder if she spoke when she did to allow him to overhear, as a gift of sorts-'The dead are gone from us. We can only to speak of what will happen now. I have a thing to say."

The doors swung shut. Standing in the corridor, Crispin felt suddenly weary beyond words. He closed his eyes. Swayed on his feet. The eunuch was at his side. He said, a voice gentle as ram, "Come, Rhodian. A bath, a shave, wine."

Crispin opened his eyes. Shook his head. But heard himself saying, even as he did so, "All right." He was spent. He knew it.

The went back down the corridor, turned, turned again. He had no idea where they were. They came to a flight of stairs.

"Rhodian!"

Crispin looked up. A man, lean and grey, striding with brisk, angular efficiency, came up to them. There was no one else in the hallway, or on the stairs above them.

"What are you doing here?" asked Pertennius of Eubulus.

He was really very tired. "Always turning up, aren't I?"

"Very much so."

"Paying my respects to the dead," he said.

Pertennius sniffed, audibly. "Wiser to pay them to the living," he said.

And smiled then, with his wide, thin mouth. Crispin tried and failed to recall the man ever smiling like that before. "Any tidings from outside?" Pertennius asked. "Have they cornered her yet? She can't run for long, of course."

It was unwise. In the extreme. Crispin knew it, even as he moved. It was, in truth, sheerest, self-destructive folly. But it seemed, in that moment, that he had found his anger after all, and in the finding-in the moment of locating it again-Crispin drew back his fist and sent it forward with all the force he had, smashing the secretary of the newly anointed Emperor full in the face, sending him flying backwards to sprawl on the marble floor, motionless.