Crispin walked out again, into the gentle, deceiving sunshine. The Empress stood, alone, still rooted to the earth, near the encircling trees. Dangerous, he had time to think, before one of the two Excubitors beside the nearest of the dead men stood up and moved behind his fellow soldier. His sword was still drawn. The other man was kneeling, examining the body of the guard. The drawn sword went up, a glinting of metal in the light.
'No!" Crispin screamed.
They were the Excubitors, the Imperial Guards, best soldiers in the Empire. The kneeling soldier didn't look up or back. He'd have died, had he done so. Instead, he hurtled straight to one side from his kneeling position, rolling hard as he did, over the flat of his own sword. The blade that had been sweeping down to take him from behind bit, instead, into the body of the already-slain guard. The attacker swore savagely, ripped his blade free, turned to face the other soldier-the leader of this quartet- who was up now, his own sword levelled.
There was still no one near the Empress, Crispin saw.
The two Excubitors faced each other in the sunlight, feet wide for balance, circling slowly. The other two soldiers were on their feet now, halfway across the clearing, but frozen as if in shock.
There was death here now. There was more than that.
Caius Crispus of Varena, in the world, of the world, said a quick silent prayer to the god of his fathers and took three hard running steps, hammering his shoulder with all the force he could command into the small of the back of the traitorous soldier in front of him. Crispin wasn't a fighter, but he was a big man. The man's breath was expelled with a rush, his head snapped back, his arms splayed helplessly out and wide with the impact, the sword spinning from nerveless fingers.
Crispin fell to the ground with him, on top of him, rolled quickly away. He pushed himself up. In time to see the man whose life he'd saved plunge his blade, without ceremony, straight into the back of the other soldier where he lay on the ground, killing him.
The Excubitor threw Crispin one swift, searching look, then wheeled and sprinted towards the Empress, bloodied sword in hand. Struggling up from his knees, heart in his throat, Crispin watched him go. Alixana stood motionless, a sacrifice in a glade, accepting her fate.
The soldier stopped in front of her and spun around to defend his Empress.
Crispin heard a strange sound in his own throat. There were two dead men next to him in this clearing. He ran, stumbling, over to Alixana himself. Her face, he saw, was still chalk white.
The other two Excubitors came quickly over now, their own blades out, horror written in both faces. The leader, standing in front the Empress, waited for them, his head and eyes darting about, scanning the clearing and the shadows of the pines.
"Sheathe!" he snapped. "Formation. Now."
They did, drew themselves up side by side. He stood before them, his gaze ferocious. Looked at one, and then the other.
Then he plunged his bloodied sword into the belly of the second man.
Crispin gasped, his fists clenched at his side.
The leader of the Excubitors watched his victim fall, then he turned again and looked at the Empress.
Alixana had not moved. She said, her voice entirely without inflection, almost inhuman, "He was bought as well, Mariscus?"
The man said, "My lady, I could not be sure. Of Nerius I am sure." He gestured with his head at the remaining soldier. He looked at Crispin searchingly. "You trust the Rhodian?" he asked.
"I trust the Rhodian," said Alixana of Sarantium. There was no life in her tone, in her face. "I believe he saved you."
The soldier showed no response to that. He said, "I do not understand what has happened here. But it is not safe for you, my lady."
Alixana laughed. Crispin would remember that sound, too.
"Oh, I know," she said. "I know. It is not safe for me. But it is too late now." She closed her eyes. Crispin saw that her hands were at her sides. His own were twisting and clenching, windows to the roiling he felt within. "It is so obvious now, much too late. Today will have been a day when they changed the Urban Prefect's guards here, I'll wager. I imagine they were already here, watching, when we sailed in at the end of the morning, waiting until we left this clearing."
Crispin and the two soldiers looked at her.
"Two dead here," said Alixana. "So two of the Prefect's men were bought. And the four new ones arriving on their little boat will have been, of course, or there'd have been no point. And you think two of the Excubitors, too." A spasm crossed her features, was gone. The mask reasserted itself. "He will have left as soon as we went away. They'll have reached the City by now. Some time ago, I imagine."
None of the three men with her said a word. Crispin's heart ached. These were not his people, Sarantium was not his place on Jad's earth, but he understood what she was saying. The world was changing. Might have already changed.
Alixana opened her eyes then. Looked straight at him. "He has something that allows him to… see things?" No reproach in her tone. Nothing in her tone. Had he told her right away…
He nodded. The two soldiers looked uncomprehending. They didn't matter. She did. She mattered very much, he realized, gazing at her. She turned past him, towards the two dead men near the prison house.
And then turned completely away, from the men standing with her, from the dead in the clearing. Faced north, her shoulders straight as always, head lifted a little, as if to see beyond the tall pines, beyond the strait with its dolphins and ships and white-capped waves, beyond harbour, city walls, bronze gates, the present and the past, the world and the half-world.
"I believe," said Alixana of Sarantium, "it may even be over by now."
She turned back to look at them. Her eyes were dry.
"I have placed you in mortal danger, Rhodian. I am sorry for it. You will have to go back on the Imperial ship alone. You may expect to be asked hard questions, perhaps as soon as you land. More likely later, tonight. It will be known you were with me today, before I disappeared."
"My lady?" he said. "You don't know what has happened." He paused, swallowed hard. "He is cleverer than any man alive." And then her last word penetrated, and he said, "Disappeared?"
She looked at him. "I do not know for certain, you are correct. But if things have fallen out in a certain way, the Empire as we have known it is ended and they will be coming for me. I would not care, but…" She closed her eyes again. "But I do have… one or perhaps two things to do. I cannot let myself be found before that. Mariscus will take me back- there will be small craft on this island-and I will disappear."
She stopped, drew a breath. "I knew he should have been killed," she said. And then, "Crispin, Caius Crispus, if I am right, Gesius will be no help to you now." Her mouth twitched. A fool might have called it a smile. "You will need Styliane. She is the one who might guard you. She feels something for you, I believe."
He didn't know how she might know that. He was far past caring about such things. He said, "And you, my lady?"
A distant trace of amusement. "What do I feel for you, Rhodian?"
He bit his lip hard. "No, no. My lady, what are you to do? May I… may we not help?"
She shook her head. "Not your role. Not anyone's. If I am correct about what has happened, I have a task to do before I die, and then it can end." She looked at Crispin, standing very near him and yet in another place, another world, almost. "Tell me, when your wife died… how did you go on living?"
He opened his mouth, and closed it without answering. She turned away. They went back through the forest to the sea. On the stony strand of the isle, he was still unable to speak. He watched as she undipped and let fall her purple cloak, and then dropped the brooch that had pinned it and turned and went away along the white stones. The man named Mariscus followed her out of sight.