Guy Gavriel Kay - Lord of Emperors

She knows this, of course. It is useful, always has been. At the moment, however, she is remembering a girl, about eight years of age, taking her first proper bath. She had been fetched from a laneway south of the Hippodrome where she’d been wrestling and tumbling with three other children in the dust and offal. It had been a Daughter of Jad, she remembers, a square-jawed, stern-faced woman, grey and unsmiling, who had separated the brawling offspring of the Hippodrome workers and then taken Aliana off with her, leaving the others watching, open-mouthed.

In the forbidding, windowless, stone-walled house where that sect of holy women resided, she had taken the now silent, overawed girl to a small, private room, ordered hot water brought, and towels, and had stripped and then bathed her there in a bronze tub, alone. She had not touched Aliana, or not intimately. She’d washed her filthy hair and scrubbed her grimy fingers and nails, but the woman’s expression had not changed as she did so, or when she leaned back after, sitting on a three-legged wooden stool, and simply looked at the girl in the bath for a long time.

Thinking back, the Empress is very much aware of what must have been the underlying complexities of a holy woman’s actions that afternoon, the hidden and denied impulses stirring as she cleansed and then gazed at the undeveloped, naked form of the girl in the bath. But at the time she had only been aware of apprehension slowly giving way to a remarkable sensation of luxury: the hot water and the warm room, the hands of someone else tending to her.

Five years later she was an official dancer for the Blues, growing in recognition, the child-mistress of one of the more notorious of the faction’s aristocratic patrons. And she was already known for her love of bathing. Twice a day at the bathhouse when she could, amid languorous perfumes and warmth and the drifting of steam, which meant shelter and comfort to her in a life that had known neither.

Nor has this changed, though she now knows the most extreme comforts in the world. And to her the most remarkable thing, really, about all of this is how vividly, how intensely, she can still remember being the girl in that small bath.

The next letter, read while the Empress is being powdered, dried, painted, and dressed by her ladies, is from a nomadic religious leader in the desert south of Soriyya. A certain number of these desert wanderers are now Jaddite in their beliefs, having abandoned their incomprehensible heritage built around wind spirits and sets of holy lines, invisible to sight, mapping and crisscrossing the sands, marking sacred places and correspondences.

All the desert tribes embracing Jad have also adopted a belief in the god’s son. This often happens among those converting to the faith of the sun god: Heladikos is the way to his father. Officially, the Emperor and Patriarchs have forbidden such beliefs. The Empress, usefully thought to be sympathetic to such out-of-favour doctrines, tends to conduct the exchange of letters and gifts with the tribesmen. They can be significant, often are. Even with the expensively bought peace with the Bassanids in place, in the unstable regions of the south allies are impermanent and important, valuable for hired warriors, and for gold and silphium —that extravagantly expensive spice—and for offering caravan routes for eastern goods coming around Bassania.

This letter ends without any promise of physical delight. The Empress refrains from expressing disappointment. Her current secretary has no sense of humour and her attendants become distracted when amused. The desert leader does offer a prayer for light to attend upon her soul.

Alixana, dressed now, sipping at a cup of honeyed wine, dictates replies to both communications. She has just finished the second when the door opens, without a knock. She looks up.

‘Too late,’ she murmurs. ‘My lovers have fled and I am, as you see, entirely respectable.’

‘I shall destroy forests and cities searching for them,’ the thrice-exalted Emperor, Jad’s holy regent upon earth, says as he takes a cushioned bench and accepts a cup of the wine (without honey) from one of the women. ‘I shall grind their bones into powder. May I please proclaim that I found Vertigus importuning you and have him torn apart between horses?’

The Empress laughs and then gestures, briefly. The room empties of secretary and attendants. ‘Money, again? I could sell my jewels,’ she says, when they are alone.

He smiles. His first smile of the day, which for him has gone on for some time by now. She rises, brings a plate of cheese, fresh bread, cold meats to him. It is a custom, they do this every morning when demands allow. She kisses his forehead as she sets down the plate. He touches her wrist, breathing in her scent. In a way, he thinks, a new part of his day begins when he first does so. Each morning.

‘I’d make more selling you,’ he says.

‘How exciting. Gunarch of Moskav would pay.’

‘He can’t afford you.’ Valerius looks around the bathing room, red and white marble and ivory and gold, jewelled chalices and drinking cups and alabaster caskets on the tables. Two fires are lit; oil lamps hang from the ceiling in silver-wire baskets. ‘You are a very expensive woman.’

‘Of course I am. Which reminds me. I still want my dolphins.’ She gestures towards the upper part of the wall on the far side of the room. ‘When are you done with the Rhodian? I want him to start here.’

Valerius looks at her repressively, says nothing.

She smiles, all innocence, wide-eyed. ‘Gunarch of Moskav writes that he could offer me delights such as I have only dreamt of in the dark.’

Valerius nods absently. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Speaking of dreams . . . ’ his Empress says. The Emperor catches the shift in tone—she is skilled at such changes, of course—and looks at her as she returns to her own seat.

‘I suppose we were,’ he says. There is a silence. ‘Better than talking of illicit dolphins. What is it now, love?’

She shrugs, delicately. ‘Clever you. The dream was about dolphins.’

The Emperor’s expression is wry. ‘Clever me. I have just been steered like a boat where you wanted to go.’

She smiles, but not with her eyes. ‘Not really. It was a sad dream.’

Valerius looks at her. ‘You really do want them for these walls?’

He is deliberately misunderstanding, and she knows it. They have been here before. He doesn’t like talking about her dreams. She believes in them, he does not, or says he does not.

‘I want them only on the walls,’ she says. ‘Or in the sea far from us for a long time yet.’

He sips his wine. Takes a bite of cheese with the bread. Country food, his preference at this hour. His name was Petrus, in Trakesia.

‘None of us knows where our souls travel,’ he says, at length, ‘in life, or after.’ He waits until she looks up and meets his eyes. His face is round, smooth, innocuous. No one is deceived by this, not any more. ‘But I believe I am unshakeable on this war in the west, love, proof against dreams and argument.’

After a time, she nods. Not a new conversation, or a new conclusion. The dream in the night was real, though. She has always had dreams that stay with her.

They talk of affairs of state: taxation, the two Patriarchs, the opening ceremonies for the Hippodrome, a few days off. She tells him of an amusing wedding taking place today, with a surprisingly fashionable guest list.

‘There are rumours,’ she murmurs, pouring more wine for him, ‘that Lysippus has been seen in the city.’ Her expression is suddenly mischievous.

He looks rueful, as if caught out.

She laughs aloud. ‘I knew it! You’ve been planting them?’