He stopped abruptly, forcing one of the eunuchs in a corridor to sidestep him quickly. He was wondering where the whore was. She was unlikely-surely-to be in the kathisma, though that would have been something to observe. Was she still in her bath in the other palace, naked and slippery with a soldier? He smoothed his tunic. Styliane would deal with her, he thought.
We must have order in the City tonight, she had said.
He knew what she meant. How could he not? The last death of an Emperor without a named heir had been Apius's, and in the violence that followed that-in the Hippodrome and the streets and even the Imperial Senate chamber-an ignorant Trakesian peasant had been lifted on a shield, acclaimed by the rabble, robed in porphyry. Order was hugely important now, and calm among the eighty thousand in the Hippodrome.
It crossed his mind that if all went as it should, by the end of this day his own status might rise a great deal. He thought of another woman, then, and smoothed his tunic again.
He was very happy, a rare, almost an unprecedented state for him, as he carried enormous, world-shaking tidings to the kathisma, with blood on the blade in his belt.
The sun was high above the City, past its peak, going down, but that day-and night-had a long way yet to go in Sarantium.
In the tunnel, among the dead, two golden figures stood looking at each other in silence, and then walked slowly out and up the wide stairs, not touching, but side by side.
On the stones behind them, on the mosaic stones under a blue cloak, lay Valerius of Sarantium, the second of that name. His body. What was left of it. His soul was gone, to dolphins, to the god, to wherever souls go.
Somewhere in the world, just then, a longed-for child was born and somewhere a labourer died, leaving a farm grievously undermanned with the spring fields still to be ploughed and the crops all to be planted. A calamity beyond words.
CHAPTER XII
The Imperial boat tacked across the straits-no dolphins to be seen this time-and was docked with flawless expertise by a worried crew. Crispin was not the only one watching the port anxiously during their approach. Men had been killed on the isle. At least two of the Excubitors" own number were traitors. Daleinus had escaped. The Empress had left them to row back with one man only. Danger was in the brightness of the air. No one new was waiting for them, however. No enemies, no friends, no one at all. They came into the slip and the dock crew moored them with the ropes and then stood by, waiting for the Empress to descend.
Whatever the shape of the plot unfolding today, Crispin thought, on the isle, in the Imperial Precinct, it had not been so precisely devised as to include the possibility that the Empress might be taking a pleasure cruise with a visiting artisan, to look at dolphins-and visit a prisoner on an island.
Alixana, he thought, could have stayed with them after all to sail home. But then what? Have herself carried in the litter back to the Attenine Palace or the Traversite to inquire if her husband had been attacked or killed yet by Lecanus Daleinus and the suborned Excubitors, and did they have any immediate plans for her?
It was the Excubitors in the plot, he realized, that had made her certain there was a large scheme unfolding here. If the Imperial Guard were being turned, any of them, something deadly and immediate was at work. This was not simply an escape by a prisoner, a flight to freedom.
No, he knew why she'd left her robe on the strand to make her way back in secrecy. He wondered if he'd ever see her again. Or the Emperor. And then he wondered-for he had to-what would happen to him when it was learned, as it surely would be, that he'd made this morning's journey with the Empress across the water. They would ask him what he knew. He didn't know what he would say. He didn't know, yet, who would be asking.
He thought about Styliane then. Remembering what she'd said to him before he'd left her in the night, through a window into the courtyard. Some events must happen now. I will not say I am sorry. Remember this room, though, Rhodian. Whatever else I do.
He was not so innocent as to believe that the ruined brother on the isle, even with his bird-soul, had shaped his escape alone. Crispin wondered where his anger was: it had defined him for two years. Anger, he thought, was a luxury of sorts. It offered simplicity. There was nothing simple here. A thing was done once, she had said, and all else follows upon it.
All else. An empire, a world, all who lived within that world. The shape of the past defining the shape of the present. I will not say I am sorry.
He remembered going up the dark stairs, desire running in him like a river. The bitter complexity of her. Remembered it as he would always now remember Alixana, too. Images begetting images. The Empress on the stony beach. The whore, Pertennius had called her in his secret papers. Vile things, such hatred. Anger was easier, Crispin thought.
He looked down. The crew on the dock were standing in order, still expecting the Empress to descend. The Excubitors and sailors aboard looked uncertainly at each other and then-it might have been amusing had there been any space for laughter in the world-at Crispin, for guidance. Their leader had gone with the Empress.
Crispin shook his head. "I have no idea," he said. "Go to your posts. Report, 1 suppose. Whatever you do when… this sort of thing happens." This sort of thing. He felt like an idiot. Linon would have told him as much.
Carullus would have known what to say to them. But Crispin was not a soldier. Nor had his father been. Though that hadn't stopped Horius Crispus from dying in battle, had it? Styliane's father had burned. That abomination on the isle had been handsome once, and proud. Crispin thought of the god's image on the dome in Sauradia, his face grey, his fingers broken in the struggle against evil.
And he was falling, piece by piece.
They lowered the wide plank to the dock. They didn't unroll the carpet. The Empress was not here. Crispin went down and away from all of them amid the bustle of a harbour preparing for war, and no one stopped him, no one even noted his passing.
In the distance as he walked from the sea he could hear a roaring sound. The Hippodrome. Men and women watching horses run for their delight. There was a sickness within him, a black foreboding in the day. Some events must happen now.
He had no idea where to go, what to do. The taverns would be quiet, with so many at the Hippodrome, but he didn't want to sit somewhere and get drunk. Yet. With the chariots running, Carullus wouldn't be at home, he thought, nor would Shirin. Artibasos would be in the Sanctuary, and so would Pardos and Vargos, almost certainly. He could go to work. He could always do that. He had been working this morning when she'd come for him. He'd been trying to summon the distance and the clarity to render his daughters on the dome, that they might be there for as near to forever as an artisan could dream of achieving.
He didn't have any of it now. Not the girls, or distance or clarity. Not even the simplicity of anger any more. For the first time Crispin could remember, the thought of going up and absorbing himself in craft repelled him. He had seen men die this morning, had struck a blow himself. Going up the ladder now would be… a coward's retreat. And he would badly mar whatever work he tried to do today.
Another huge roar from the Hippodrome. He was walking that way.
Entered into the Hippodrome Forum, saw the vast bulk of the building, the Sanctuary across the way, the statue of the first Valerius and the Bronze Gates beyond it, leading into the Imperial Precinct.