Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

"Ah," said the man named Siroes. "He likes skinny women. I don't mind them. What do you charge for an afternoon encounter?"

It was important to be calm. She was a free citizen. "Do you insult all the women you meet? Or have I offended you somehow? I was told the Imperial Precinct was known for its courtesies. I appear to have been wrongly informed. Shall I call for the innkeeper to have you thrown out, or shall I simply scream?"

Again the man hesitated, and this time, looking at him, Kasia thought she saw something. It was unexpected, but she was almost sure.

"Thrown out?" He gave that same short rasp of laughter. "You aren't presumptuous, you are ignorant. Where is Martinian?"

Careful, she said to herself. This man was important, and Crispin might depend upon him, work with him, for him. She could not give way to panic or anger, either one.

She schooled her voice, cast her eyes downwards, thought of Morax, genuflecting to some fat-pursed merchant. "I am sorry, my lord. I may be a barbarian and unused to the City, but I am no one's whore. Martinian of Varena is at the Hippodrome with the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian."

Siroes swore under his breath. She caught it again, then, that hint of something unexpected. He's afraid, she thought. "When will he be back?"

"My lord, I would imagine when the racing ends." They heard a roar from across the narrow streets and the expanse of the Hippodrome Forum. Someone had won a race, someone had lost it. "Will you wait for him? Or shall I leave him a message from you?"

" Wait? Hardly. Amusing, I must say, that the Rhodian thinks he is at leisure to go to the games when he's taken the god's time arriving."

"Surely not a failing during Dykania, my lord? The Emperor and the Chancellor were both to be at the Hippodrome, we were told. No court presentations were scheduled."

"Ah. And who is informing you so comprehensively?"

"The tribune of the Fourth Sauradian is very knowledgeable, my lord."

"Hah! The Sauradians? A country soldier."

"Yes, my lord. Of course, he is an officer and does have an appointment with the Supreme Strategos. I suppose that required that he make himself aware of doings in the Imperial Precinct. As best he could. Of course, as you say, he wouldn't really know very much."

She looked up in time to catch an uneasy glance from the mosaicist. She cast her eyes quickly downwards again. She could do this. It was possible, after all.

Siroes swore again. "I cannot wait on an ignorant westerner. There is to be an Imperial Banquet after the chariots tonight. I have an honoured couch there." He paused. "Tell him that. Tell him… I came as a colleague to extend greetings before he was faced with the. strain of a court appearance."

She kept her eyes down.

"He will be honoured, I know it. My lord, he will be distressed to have missed your visit."

The mosaicist twitched his cloak up on one shoulder, adjusting the golden brooch that pinned it. "Don't fake proper manners or speech. It hardly suits a bony whore. I do have enough time to fuck you. Will a half solidus get your clothes off?"

She held back the biting retort. She wasn't afraid any more, astonishingly. He was. She met his gaze. "No," she said. "It will not. I shall tell Martinian of Varena you were here and offered, though."

She moved to close the door.

"Wait!" His eyes flickered. "A jest. I made a jest. Country folk never understand court wit. Do you… would you… by chance have any experience of Martinian's work, or, ah, his views on… say, the transfer method of setting tesserae?"

A terrified man. They were dangerous sometimes. "I am neither his whore nor his apprentice, my lord. I shall tell him, when he returns, that this is what you came to learn."

"No! I mean… do not trouble yourself. I will discuss the matter with him myself, naturally. I shall have to, ah, ascertain his competence. Of course."

"Of course," Kasia said, and closed the door on the Mosaicist to the

Imperial Court.

She locked it, leaned back against the wood, and then, unable not to, began to laugh silently, and then to weep, at the same time.

Had he arrived back at the inn after the racing, as he had intended, had he spoken with Kasia and learned of her encounter with a visitor-the details of which would have meant rather more to him than they did to her-Crispin would almost certainly have conducted himself differently in certain matters that followed.

This, in turn, might have occasioned a significant change in various affairs, both personal and of much wider import. It could, in fact, have changed his life and a number of other lives, and-arguably-the course of events in the Empire.

This happens, more often than is sometimes suspected. Lovers first meet at a dinner one almost failed to attend. A wine barrel falling from a wagon breaks the leg of someone who chose an impulsive route to his usual bathhouse. An assassin's thrown dagger fails to kill only because the intended victim turns-randomly-and sees it coming. The tides of fortune and the lives of men and women in the god's created world are shaped and altered in such fashion.

Crispin didn't come back to the inn.

Or, rather, as he and Carullus and Vargos approached it at sundown through the roiling, tumultuous festival streets, half a dozen men detached themselves from where they were standing by the front wall of the inn and approached them. They were clad, he noted, in subtly patterned knee-length dark green tunics, with a vertical brown stripe on both sides, brown trousers, dark brown belts. Each wore an identical necklace with a medallion, a badge of office. They were grave, composed, entirely at odds with the chaos around them.

Carullus stopped when he saw them. He looked cautious, but not alarmed. Crispin, taking his cue from this, stood easily as the leader of the six men came up to him. He was admiring the taste and cut of the clothing, in fact. Just before the man spoke, he realized he was a eunuch. "You are the mosaicist? Martinian of Varena?" Crispin nodded. "May I know who asks?"

Overhead at her window Kasia was watching. She had been looking out for the three men as soon as the cheering from the Hippodrome had stopped. She looked down and thought of calling out. Did not. Of course.

"We are sent from the Chancellor's Offices. Your presence is requested in the Imperial Precinct."

"So I understand. It is why I have journeyed to Sarantium." "You do not understand. You are greatly honoured. You are to come tonight. Now. The Emperor will be hosting a banquet shortly. After this he will receive you in the Attenine Palace. Do you comprehend? Men of the highest rank wait weeks, months to be seen. Ambassadors sometimes leave the city without an audience at all. You will be presented tonight. The Emperor is greatly engaged by the progress of the new Sanctuary. We are to bring you back with us and prepare you."

Carullus made a small, whistling sound. One of the eunuchs looked at him. Vargos was motionless, listening. Crispin said, "I am honoured, indeed. But now? I am to be presented as I am?"

The eunuch smiled briefly. "Hardly as you are." One of the others sniffed audibly, with amusement.

"Then I must bathe and change my clothing. I have been in the Hippodrome all day."

"This is known. It is unlikely that any clothing you have brought will be adequate to a formal court appearance. You are here by virtue of the Chancellor's request. Gesius therefore assumes responsibility for you before the Emperor. We will attend to your appearance. Come." He went. It was why he was here.

Kasia watched from the window, biting her lip. The impulse to call after him was very strong, though she could not have said why. A premonition. Something from the half-world? Shadows. When Carullus and Vargos came upstairs she told them about the afternoon visitor, about that last, strangely specific question he'd asked. Carullus swore, deepening her fears. "Nothing for it," he said, after a moment. "No way to tell him now. There's a trap of some kind, but there would have to be, at that court. He has quick wits, Jad knows it. Let us hope he keeps them about him." "I must go," Vargos said, after a silence. "Sundown." Carullus looked at him, gave Kasia a shrewd glance, and then led them both briskly out into the crowded, now-darkening streets to a good-sized sanctuary some distance back towards the triple walls. Among a great many people in the space before the altar and the sun disk on the wall behind it they heard the sundown rites chanted by a wiry, dark-bearded cleric. Kasia stood and knelt and stood and knelt between the two men and tried not to think about the zubir, or Caius Crispus, or about all the people packed so closely around her here, and in the City.