Guy Gavriel Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

Colours, all around him in the world. Crispin had told him, over and over, to make himself see the colours. To think about them, how they played against each other and with each other; to consider what happened when a cloud crossed the sun—as now—and the grass darkened beneath him. What would he name that hue in his mind? How would he use it? In a marinescape? A hunting scene? A mosaic of Heladikos rising above an autumn forest towards the sun? Look at the grass—now!—before the light returned. Picture that colour in glass and stone tesserae. Embed it in memory, so you could embed it in lime and make a mosaic world on a wall or a dome.

Assuming, of course, there ever emerged a glassworks again in conquered Batiara where they made reds and blues and greens worthy of a name, instead of the muddied, bubbled, streaked excrescences they’d received in the morning shipment from Rhodias.

Martinian, a calm man and perhaps prepared for this, had only sighed when the urgently awaited sheets of new glass were unwrapped. Crispin had foamed into one of his notorious, blasphemous rages and smashed the topmost dirty brown sheet of what was supposed to be red, cutting one hand. ‘ This is red! Not that dungheap colour!’ he had shouted, letting drops of his blood fall on the brownish sheet.

He could be entertaining in his fury, actually, unless you happened to be the one who had given him cause to lose his temper. When they had their beer and crusts of bread at lunch, or walking back towards Varena’s walls at sunset after work, the labourers and apprentices would trade stories of things Crispin had said and done when angry. Martinian had told the apprentices that Crispin was brilliant and a great man; Pardos wondered if a temper came with that.

He’d had some shockingly inventive ideas this morning for how to deal with the glassworks steward. Pardos himself would never have been able to even conceive of broken shards being inserted and applied in the ways Crispin had proposed, swearing violently even though they were on consecrated ground.

Martinian, ignoring his younger partner, had set about accepting and discarding sheets, eyeing them with care, sighing now and again. They simply couldn’t reject them all. For one thing, there was little chance of better quality in replacements. For another, they were working against time, with a formal re-burial and a ceremony for King Hildric planned by his daughter the queen for the first day after the Dykania Festival. It would take place here in the newly expanded sanctuary they were decorating now. It was already mid-autumn, the grapes harvested. The roads south were muddy after last week’s rains. The chances of getting new glass sent up from Rhodias in time were too slim even to be considered.

Martinian was, as usual, visibly resigned to the situation. They would have to make do. Pardos knew that Crispin was as aware of this as his partner. He just had his temper. And getting things right mattered to him. Perhaps too much so, in the imperfect world Jad had made as his mortal children’s dwelling place. Pardos the apprentice made a quick sign of the sun disk again and stoked the kiln, keeping it as hot as he could. He stirred the mixture inside with a long shovel. This would not be a good day to become distracted and let the setting lime emerge faulty.

Crispin had imaginative uses for broken glass on his mind.

So attentive was he to the lime mixture cooking in the oven that Pardos actually jumped when a voice— speaking awkwardly accented Rhodian—addressed him. He turned quickly, and saw a lean, red-faced man in the grey and white colours of the Imperial Post. The courier’s horse grazed behind him near the gate. Belatedly, Pardos became aware that the other apprentices and labourers working outside the sanctuary had stopped and were looking over this way. Imperial Couriers from Sarantium did not appear in their midst with any frequency at all.

‘Are you hard of hearing?’ the man said waspishly. He had a recent wound on his chin. The eastern accent was pronounced. ‘I said my name is Tilliticus. Sarantine Imperial Post. I’m looking for a man named Martinian. An artisan. They said he’d be here.’

Pardos, intimidated, could only gesture towards the sanctuary. Martinian, as it happened, was asleep on his stool in the doorway, his much-abused hat pulled over his eyes to block the afternoon sunlight.

‘Deaf and mute. I see,’ said the courier. He clumped off through the grass towards the building.

‘I’m not,’ said Pardos, but so softly he wasn’t heard. Behind the courier’s back, he flapped urgently at two of the other apprentices, trying to signal them to wake Martinian before this unpleasant man appeared in front of him.

HE HAD NOT BEEN ASLEEP. From his favourite position— on a pleasant day, at any rate—in the sanctuary entrance, Martinian of Varena had noticed the courier riding up from a distance. Grey and white showed clearly against green and blue in sunlight.

He and Crispin had used that concept, in fact, for a row of Blessed Victims on the long walls of a private chapel in Baiana years ago. It had been only a partial success—at night, by candlelight, the effect was not what Crispin had hoped it would be—but they’d learned a fair bit, and learning from errors was what mosaic work was about, as Martinian was fond of telling the apprentices. If the patrons had had enough money to light the chapel properly at night, it might have been different, but they’d known the resources when they made their design. It was their own fault. One always had to work within the constraints of time and money. That, too, was a lesson to be learned—and taught.

He watched the courier stop by Pardos at the lime kiln and he tipped his hat forward over his eyes, feigning sleep. He felt a peculiar apprehension. No idea why. And he was never able to give an adequate explanation afterwards, even to himself, as to why he did what he did next that autumn afternoon, altering so many lives forever. Sometimes the god entered a man, the clerics taught. And sometimes daemons or spirits did. There were powers in the half-world, beyond the grasp of mortal men.

He was to tell his learned friend Zoticus, over a mint infusion some days later, that it had had to do with feeling old that day. A week of steady rain had caused his finger joints to swell painfully. That wasn’t really it, however. He was hardly so weak as to let such a thing lead him into so much folly. But he truly didn’t know why he’d chosen— with no premeditation whatsoever—to deny being himself.

Did a man always understand his own actions? He would ask Zoticus that as they sat together in the alchemist’s farmhouse. His friend would give him a predictable reply and refill his cup with the infusion, mixed with something to ease the ache in his hands. The unpleasant courier would be long gone by then, to wherever his postings had taken him. And Crispin, too, would be gone.

Martinian of Varena feigned sleep as the easterner with the nose and cheekbones of a drinker approached him and rasped, ‘You! Wake! I’m looking for a man named Martinian. An Imperial Summons to Sarantium!’

He was loud, arrogant as all Sarantines seemed to be when they came to Batiara, his words thick with the accent. Everyone heard him. He meant for them to hear him. Work stopped inside the sanctuary being expanded to properly house the bones of King Hildric of the Antae, dead of the plague a little more than a year ago.

Martinian pretended to rouse himself from an afternoon doze in the autumn light. He blinked owlishly up at the Imperial Courier, and then pointed a stiff finger into the sanctuary—and up towards his longtime friend and colleague Caius Crispus. Crispin was just then attempting the task of making muddy brown tesserae appear like the brilliant glowing of Heladikos’s sacred fire, high up on a scaffold under the dome.