He looked back at the man from Kabadh. "I was… I thought I was here as an observer."
The man shrugged. "Needs change," he said. He rose. "Thank you for your assistance, doctor. I am sure your help will address my… difficulty." He walked out.
Rustem remained where he was for a long time, then remembered that the servants of Plautus Bonosus were almost certainly reporting on him and he forced himself to move, to reassume the movements of normality, though all had changed.
A physician, by his oath, was to strive to heal the sick, to do battle with Azal when the Enemy laid siege to the bodies of mortal men and women.
Instead, his king, the Brother to the Sun and Moons, had just asked him to kill someone.
It was important to conceal the signs of his disquiet. He concentrated on his work. As the morning passed, he persuaded himself that his having any opportunity to do what had been asked of him was so remote that surely he could not be faulted for a failure. He could say as much when he went home.
Or, more correctly, he almost persuaded himself of that.
He had seen the King of Kings, in Kerakek. It could not be said that Great Shirvan had conveyed any sense of indulgence towards those who might claim… difficulty in executing orders he conveyed to them.
In the small house of Plautus Bonosus he finished with his morning patients and went upstairs. He decided it was time to stitch the charioteer's wound. By now he had proper fibulae with clips for the ends. He performed that procedure. Routine, effortless. Requiring no thought at all, which was good.
He continued to watch for and was relieved not to see the green oozing of pus. After a number of days had passed with the wound healing, he had just about decided it was time to bind the ribs more firmly. The patient had been entirely cooperative, if legitimately restless. Active, physical men took confinement badly, in Rustem's experience, and this man wasn't even able to have regular visitors, given the secrecy surrounding his presence here.
Bonosus had come twice, on the pretence of seeing his houseguest from Bassania, and once, at night, a cloaked figure appeared who turned out to be a man named Astorgus, evidently of significance in the Blues" group. It appeared that some unhappy results had transpired on the first day of the racing. Rustem didn't ask for details, though he did mix a slightly stronger sedative for his patient that night, noting signs of agitation. He was prepared for such things.
He wasn't prepared, at all, to go along the hall one morning, in the second week after the charioteer had arrived in the dead of night, and find the bedroom empty and the window open.
There was a folded note, set beneath the urine flask. 'Do come to the Hippodrome," it read. "I owe you some amusement.
Above the paper, the flask had been dutifully filled. His brow furrowed, Rustem noted with a quick glance that the colour was satisfactory. He walked over to the window, saw a tree quite close to hand, thick branches, not yet hidden by budding leaves. It wouldn't have been hard for a fit man to get out and down. For someone with inadequately wrapped, badly broken ribs and a deep, still-healing stab wound…
Glancing at the window ledge Rustem saw blood.
Looking more closely down on the small courtyard he observed a thin trail of it crossing the stones to the wall by the street. Suddenly angered, he looked up at the sky. Perun and the Lady knew, surely, that a physician could only do so much. He shook his head. It was a beautiful morning, he realized.
He decided that after seeing his patients he would attend at the Hippodrome that afternoon for the second day's racing. I owe you some amusement. He sent a runner to the Master of the Senate, asking if Bonosus might assist him in obtaining admission.
He was being very naive, of course, though excusably, as a stranger in Sarantium.
Plautus Bonosus was already at the Hippodrome by then, in the kathisma, the Imperial Box, the servant reported when he returned. The Emperor himself was attending the morning's races, would retire at midday to deal with larger affairs in the palace. The Master of the Senate would remain all day, a representative of the state.
Larger affairs. From the harbour the sound of shouts and hammering could be heard, even this far inland towards the walls.
Ships were being made ready to sail. It was said that there were ten thousand foot-soldiers and cavalry assembled here and in Deapolis across the straits. As many were reported to be gathering in Megarium to the west, Rustem had been told by a patient a few days ago. The Empire was clearly on the brink of war, an invasion, something indescribably dramatic and exciting, though nothing, as yet, had been announced.
Somewhere in the City a woman Rustem had been ordered to kill was going about the rhythm of her days.
Eighty thousand Sarantines were in the Hippodrome, watching chariots run. Rustem wondered if she would be there.
CHAPTER IX
Crispin, in a mood he'd have been unwilling to define, was beginning work on the images of his daughters on the dome that same morning when the Empress of Sarantium came and took him away to see dolphins among the islands in the straits.
Looking a long way down from the scaffold when Pardos, working beside him, touched his arm and pointed, he registered the explicit demand of Alixana's presence. He looked back for a moment at Ilandra where he had placed her on the dome-a part of this holy place and its images-and then over at the surface nearby where his girls were awaiting their own incarnation out of memory and love. He would give his daughters form in a different guise, in light and glass, as Zoticus had given souls bodily form in the crafted birds of his alchemy.
What was this but a different kind of alchemy, or the attempt to make it so?
At the rail Pardos was anxiously glancing down and then back at Crispin and then down again. Less than two weeks in the City and his apprentice-his associate now-was obviously aware of what it meant to have an Empress waiting for you on the marble floor below.
Crispin, along with Artibasos the architect, had received invitations to two large banquets in the Attenine Palace over the winter, but had not spoken privately with Alixana since autumn. She had come here once before, had stood very nearly where she was standing now, to see what was being done overhead. He remembered coming down to her, to all of them.
He was unable to deny the quickening beat of his heart now. He cleaned his hands of plaster and lime as best he could, wiped at a cut finger-bleeding slightly-with the cloth tucked in his belt. He discarded the cloth and even allowed Pardos to adjust and brush his tunic, though he swatted the younger man away when he gestured towards Crispin's hair.
On the way down, though, he paused long enough on the ladder to push a hand through the hair himself. Had no idea if that improved anything.
Evidently it didn't. The Empress of Sarantium, richly if soberly garbed in a long blue gold-belted tunic and a porphyry cloak that came to her knees, with only rings and earrings for jewellery, smiled with amusement at him. She reached down as he knelt before her and ordered his much-abused red hair more to her satisfaction.
"Of course the wind in the straits will undo my efforts," she murmured in the instantly memorable voice.
"What straits?" Crispin asked, rising to her gesture.
And so he learned that the dolphins of which she'd spoken on his first night in the palace half a year ago remained on her mind. She turned and walked serenely past a score of still-kneeling artisans and labourers. Crispin followed, feeling excitement and the presence of danger-as he had from the very beginning with this woman.
Men were waiting outside in the livery of the Imperial Guard. There was even a cloak for him in the litter he entered with the Empress of Sarantium. This was all happening very quickly. Her manner, as they were lifted and began to move, was matter-of-fact, entirely pragmatic: if he was to render dolphins leaping from the sea for her, he ought to see them first. She smiled sweetly from across the curtained litter. Crispin tried and failed to return the smile. Her scent was inescapable in the cushioned warmth.