Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

There was a great deal to be done. He was here for a reason, after all. He flexed his hand. It was puffy, but that would be all right. He thanked Jad for the instinct that had led him to use his left fist. A mosaicist's good hand was his life.

On the way out he paused by the marble counter in the foyer. On sheerest impulse he asked the attendant there about an address he'd been given a long time ago. It turned out to be close by. For some reason he'd thought it might be. This was a good neighbourhood.

Crispin elected to make a call. A duty visit. Get it done with, he told himself, before work began to consume him, the way it always did. Rubbing his smooth chin, he walked out of the baths into the late-afternoon sunshine.

Two grim soldiers striding purposefully behind him, Caius Crispus of Varena followed the given directions towards the house and street name he'd had handed to him on a torn-off piece of parchment in a farmhouse near Varena. Eventually, turning off a handsome square and then into a wide street with well-made stone houses on either side, he ascended the steps of a covered portico and knocked firmly at the door with his good hand.

He hadn't decided what he would-or could-say here. There might be some awkwardness. Waiting for a servant to answer, Crispin looked about. On a marble plinth by the door stood a bust of the Blessed Victim Eladia, guardian of maidens. Given what he had heard before, he suspected it was meant ironically here. The street was quiet; he and the two soldiers were the only figures to be seen, save for a young boy grooming a mare tethered placidly nearby. The row houses here looked cared for and comfortably prosperous. There were torches set in the front walls and on the porticos, promising the security of light after darkfall.

It was possible, standing amid these smooth facades, to envisage an infinitely calmer life in Sarantium than the violent intricacies he had discovered so far. Crispin found himself picturing delicately hued frescoes within proportioned rooms, ivory, alabaster, well-turned wooden stools and chests and benches, good wine, candles in silver holders, perhaps a treasured manuscript of the Ancients to read by a fire in winter or in the peace of a courtyard among summer flowers and droning bees. The accoutrements of a civilized life in the city that was the centre of the world behind its triple walls and guarded by the sea. The black forests of Sauradia seemed infinitely far away.

The door opened.

He turned, preparing to give his name and have himself announced. He saw the slender figure of a woman dressed in crimson on the threshold, dark-haired, dark-eyed, small-boned. He had just enough time to note this much and realize this was not a servant before the woman cried out and hurled herself into his arms, kissing him with a hungry passion. Her hands clenched in his hair, pulling him down to her. Before he could react in any cogent way at all, while the two soldiers were gaping slack-jawed at them, her mouth moved to his ear. Crispin felt her tongue, then heard her whisper fiercely: "In Jad's name, pretend we are lovers, I beg of you! You will not regret it, I promise!"

" What are you doing?" Crispin heard a stunningly familiar voice say from nowhere he could have placed. His heart lurched. He gasped in shock, then the woman's mouth covered his own again. His good hand came up-obedient or involuntary, he couldn't have said-and held her as she kissed him like a lost love regained.

"Oh, no!" he heard within: a terribly known voice, but a new, lugubrious tone. "No, no, no! This will never work! You'll get him beaten or killed, whoever he is."

At which point someone, standing in the front hallway of the house behind the woman in Crispin's arms, cleared his throat.

The woman in the red, knee-length tunic detached herself as if with anguished reluctance, and as she did Crispin received another shock: he realized belatedly that he knew her scent. It was the perfume only one woman in the City was said to be allowed to use. And this woman was not, manifestly, the Empress Alixana.

This woman was-unless he had been led very greatly astray-Shirin of the Greens, their Principal Dancer, celebrated object of the anguished desire of at least one young aristocrat Crispin had met in a tavern yesterday, and very likely a great many other men, young or otherwise. She was also the daughter of Zoticus of Varena.

And the bewailing, anxious inner voice he'd just heard-twice-had been Linon's.

Crispin's head hurt again, suddenly. He found himself wishing he'd never left the baths, or the inn. Or home.

The woman stepped back, her hand trailing lingeringly along the front of his tunic, as if reluctant to let him go, as she turned to the person who had coughed.

And following her gaze, overwhelmed by too many things at once, Crispin found himself struggling suddenly not to laugh aloud like a child or a simple-witted fool.

"Oh!" said the woman, a hand coming up to cover her mouth in astonishment. "I didn't hear you follow me! Dear friend, forgive me, but I could not restrain myself. You see, this is-"

"You do seem to insinuate yourself, don't you, Rhodian," said Pertennius of Eubulus, secretary to the Supreme Strategos, whom Crispin had just seen disappearing through steam. And this man he had last encountered delivering a pearl to the Empress the night before.

Pertennius was dressed extremely well today, in fine linen, blue and silver, embroidered, with a dark blue cloak and a matching soft hat. The secretary's thin, long-nosed face was pale, and-not surprisingly in the current circumstances-the narrow, observant eyes were not noticeably cordial as they evaluated the tableau in the doorway.

"You… know each other?" the woman said, uncertainly. Crispin noted, still struggling to control his amusement, that she had also gone pale now.

"The Rhodian artisan was presented at court last night," Pertennius said. "He has just arrived in the City," he added heavily.

The woman bit her lip.

‘I warned you! I warned you! You deserve everything that happens now" the patrician voice that had been Linon's said. It sounded distant, but Crispin was hearing it within, as he had before.

It wasn't addressing him.

He forced the implications of this away and, looking at the alchemist's dark-haired daughter, took pity. There was, of course, no way they could pretend to be lovers or even intimate friends, but.

"I admit I did not anticipate so generous a welcome," he said easily. "You must love your dear father very much, Shirin." He continued, smiling, giving her time to absorb this. "Good day to you, secretary. We do seem to frequent the same doorways. Curious. I should have looked for you in the baths just now, to share a cup of wine. I did speak with the Strategos, who was good enough to honour me with his company. Are you well, after your late errand last night?"

The secretary's mouth fell open. He looked very like a fish, so. He was courting this woman, of course. It would have been obvious, even if the young Green partisans in The Spina had not said as much yesterday.

"The Strategos?" Pertennius said. "Her father!" he said.

"My father!" Shirin repeated in a usefully indeterminate tone.

"Her father," Crispin confirmed agreeably. "Zoticus of Varena, from whom I bring tidings and counsel, as promised by my message earlier." He smiled at the secretary with affable blandness and turned to the woman, who was gazing at him now with unfeigned astonishment. "I do hope I am not intruding upon an appointment?"

"No, no!" she said hastily, colouring a little. "Oh, no. Pertennius simply happened to be in this quarter, he said. He… elected to honour me with a visit. He said." She was quick-witted, Crispin realized. "I was about to explain to him… when we heard your knock, and in my excitement