Guy Kay - Lord of Emperors

Others, he was unsurprised to see, were of the same view. Silano and Sosio, the twins, were at work in the small, fenced, temporary yard beside the Sanctuary, tending to the quicklime for the setting bed at the ovens. One of them (he could never tell them apart) waved hesitantly and Crispin nodded back.

Inside, he looked up and saw that Vargos was already overhead on the scaffolding, laying the thinnest, fine layer where Crispin had been about to work the day before. His Inici friend from the Imperial Road had emerged, unexpectedly, as an entirely competent mosaic labourer. Another man who had sailed to Sarantium and changed his life. Vargos never said as much, but Crispin thought that for him-as for Pardos-a good portion of his pleasure in this work came from piety, from working in a place of the god. Neither man would achieve as much satisfaction, Crispin thought, doing private commissions for dining rooms or bedchambers.

Pardos was also overhead, on his own scaffolding, doing the wall design Crispin had assigned him above the double row of arches along the eastern side of the space beneath the dome. Two of the other guild artisans on the team he'd assembled were also here and at work.

Artibasos would be around somewhere as well, though his own labours were essentially done. Valerius's Sanctuary was complete in its execution. It was, in fact, ready for him: to house the ruined body. Only the mosaics and the altars and whatever tomb or memorial they now needed remained to be achieved. Then the clerics would come in and they would hang the sun disks in their proper locations and consecrate this as a holy place.

Crispin gazed at what he had journeyed here to achieve, and it seemed to him as if, in some deep, ultimately inexplicable fashion, just to look was enough to steady him. He felt the images of the day before recede- Lecanus Daleinus in his hut, men dying in that clearing, Alixana dropping her cloak on the beach, the screaming in the streets and the burning fires, Gisel of the Antae in her carried litter, eyes alight as they went through the dark, and then in a purple-draped room where Valerius lay dead-all the whirling visions fell away, leaving him gazing up at what he had made here. The apex of what he could do, being a fallible mortal under Jad.

You had to live, Crispin thought, in order to have anything to say about living, but you needed to find a way to withdraw to accomplish that saying. A scaffolding overhead, he thought, was as good a place as any for that and better, perhaps, than most.

He went forward, surrounded and eased by the familiar sounds of work, thinking about his girls now, reclaiming their faces, which he would try to render today, next to Ilandra and not far from where Lmon lay on the grass.

But before he reached the ladder, before he began to climb to his place above the world, someone spoke from behind one of the vast pillars.

Crispin turned quickly, knowing the voice. And then he knelt, and lowered his head to touch the perfect marble floor.

One knelt before Emperors in Sarantium.

"Rise, artisan," said Leontes, in the brisk tone of a soldier. "We owe you greatly, it seems, for services last night."

Crispin stood up slowly and looked at the other man. All around the Sanctuary the noises were coming to a halt. The others were watching them, had now seen who was here. Leontes wore boots and a dark green tunic with a leather belt. His cloak was pinned at his shoulder with a golden ornament, but the effect was unassuming. Another man at work. Behind the Emperor, Crispin saw a cleric he vaguely recognized, and a secretary he knew very well. Pertennius had a bruised and swollen jaw. His eyes were icy cold as he looked at Crispin. Not surprisingly.

Crispin didn't care.

He said, "The Emperor is gracious beyond my deserving. I simply tried to assist my queen in her desire to pay homage to the dead. What came of it has nothing to do with me, my lord. It would be a presumption to claim otherwise."

Leontes shook his head. "What came of it would not have happened without you. The presumption is to pretend otherwise. Do you always deny your own role in events?"

"I deny that I had any intended role in… events. If people make use of me it is a price I pay to have the chance to do my work." He wasn't sure why he was saying this.

Leontes looked at him. Crispin was remembering another conversation with this man, amid the steam of a bathhouse half a year ago, both of them naked under sheets. What we build-even the Emperor's Sanctuary-we hold precariously and must defend. A man had come in to kill Crispin that day.

The Emperor said, "And was this true yesterday morning, as well? When you went to the isle?"

They knew about that. Of course they did. It was hardly likely to have been kept secret. Alixana had warned him.

Crispin met the other man's blue gaze. "It is exactly the same, my lord. The Empress Alixana asked me to accompany her."

"Why?"

He didn't think they would do anything to him now. He wasn't certain (how could one be?), but he didn't think so. He said, "She wished to show me dolphins in the sea."

"Why?" Blunt and assured. Crispin remembered that immense self-confidence. A man never defeated in the field, they said.

"I do not know, my lord. Other things happened, it was never explained."

A lie. To Jad's anointed Emperor. He would lie for her, however. Dolphins were a heresy. He would not be the one to betray her. She was gone, had not reappeared. Would have no power at all now even if she did trust them and come from hiding. Valerius was dead, she might never be seen again. But he would not, he would not betray her. A small thing, really, but in another way it wasn't. A man lived with his words and actions.

"What other things? What happened on the isle?"

This he could answer, though he didn't know why she had wanted him to see Lecanus Daleinus and hear her pretend to be his sister.

"I saw the… prisoner there. We were on the isle, elsewhere, when he escaped."

"And then?"

"As you must know, my lord, there was an attempt on her life. It was… repelled by the Excubitors. The Empress left us then and made her own way back to Sarantium."

"Why so?"

Some men asked questions when they knew the answers. Leontes seemed to be one of those. Crispin said, "They had tried to kill her, my lord. Daleinus had escaped. She was of the belief that an assassination plot might be unfolding."

Leontes nodded. "It was, of course."

"Yes, my lord," Crispin said.

"The participants have been punished."

"Yes, my lord."

One of the participants, the leader, had been this man's wife, golden as he was. He was Emperor of Sarantium now, because of her plot. Styliane. A child when it had all begun, the burning that had begotten a burning. Crispin had lain with her in a tangled, desperate darkness so little time ago. Remember this room. Whatever else I do. The words came to him again. He suspected he could recall every word she'd ever spoken to him, if he tried. She was in a different kind of darkness now, if she was alive. He didn't ask. He didn't dare ask.

There was a silence. Behind the Emperor, the cleric cleared his throat, and Crispin suddenly recollected him: the adviser to the Eastern Patriarch. A fussy, officious man. They had met when Crispin had first submitted the sketches for the dome.

"My secretary… has complained of you," the Emperor said, looking briefly back over his shoulder. A hint of amusement in his voice, almost a smile. A minor disagreement among the troops.

"He has cause," Crispin said mildly. "I struck him a blow last night. An unworthy action."

That much was true. He could say that much.

Leontes made a dismissive movement with one hand. "I'm sure Pertennius will accept that apology. Everyone was under great strain yesterday. I… felt it myself, I must say. A terrible day and night. The Emperor Valerius was like… an older brother to me." He looked Crispin in the eye.