Kay, Guy Gavriel – Sarantine Mosaic 01 – Sailing to Sarantium

This, in turn, might have occasioned a significant change in various affairs, both personal and of much wider import. It could, in fact, have changed his life and a number of other lives, and-arguably-the course of events in the Empire.

This happens, more often than is sometimes suspected. Lovers first meet at a dinner one almost failed to attend. A wine barrel falling from a wagon breaks the leg of someone who chose an impulsive route to his usual bathhouse. An assassin’s thrown dagger fails to kill only because the intended victim turns-randomly-and sees it coming. The tides of for­tune and the lives of men and women in the god’s created world are shaped and altered in such fashion.

Crispin didn’t come back to the inn.

Or, rather, as he and Carullus and Vargos approached it at sundown through the roiling, tumultuous festival streets, half a dozen men detached themselves from where they were standing by the front wall of the inn and approached them. They were clad, he noted, in subtly patterned knee-length dark green tunics, with a vertical brown stripe on both sides, brown trousers, dark brown belts. Each wore an identical necklace with a medallion, a badge of office. They were grave, composed, entirely at odds with the chaos around them.

Carullus stopped when he saw them. He looked cautious, but not alarmed. Crispin, taking his cue from this, stood easily as the leader of the six men came up to him. He was admiring the taste and cut of the cloth­ing, in fact. Just before the man spoke, he realized he was a eunuch. ‘You are the mosaicist? Martinian of Varena?’ Crispin nodded. ‘May I know who asks?’

Overhead at her window Kasia was watching. She had been looking out for the three men as soon as the cheering from the Hippodrome had stopped. She looked down and thought of calling out. Did not. Of course.

‘We are sent from the Chancellor’s Offices. Your presence is requested in the Imperial Precinct.’

‘So I understand. It is why I have journeyed to Sarantium.’ ‘You do not understand. You are greatly honoured. You are to come tonight. Now. The Emperor will be hosting a banquet shortly. After this he will receive you in the Attenine Palace. Do you comprehend? Men of the highest rank wait weeks, months to be seen. Ambassadors some­times leave the city without an audience at all. You will be presented tonight. The Emperor is greatly engaged by the progress of the new Sanc­tuary. We are to bring you back with us and prepare you.’

Carullus made a small, whistling sound. One of the eunuchs looked at him. Vargos was motionless, listening. Crispin said, ‘I am honoured, indeed. But now? I am to be presented as I am?’

The eunuch smiled briefly. ‘Hardly as you are.’ One of the others sniffed audibly, with amusement.

‘Then I must bathe and change my clothing. I have been in the Hip­podrome all day.’

‘This is known. It is unlikely that any clothing you have brought will be adequate to a formal court appearance. You are here by virtue of the Chancellor’s request. Gesius therefore assumes responsibility for you before the Emperor. We will attend to your appearance. Come.’ He went. It was why he was here.

Kasia watched from the window, biting her lip. The impulse to call after him was very strong, though she could not have said why. A premonition. Something from the half-world? Shadows. When Carullus and Vargos came upstairs she told them about the afternoon visitor, about that last, strangely specific question he’d asked. Carullus swore, deepening her fears. ‘Nothing for it,’ he said, after a moment. ‘No way to tell him now. There’s a trap of some kind, but there would have to be, at that court. He has quick wits, Jad knows it. Let us hope he keeps them about him.’ ‘I must go,’ Vargos said, after a silence. ‘Sundown.’ Carullus looked at him, gave Kasia a shrewd glance, and then led them both briskly out into the crowded, now-darkening streets to a good-sized sanctuary some distance back towards the triple walls. Among a great many people in the space before the altar and the sun disk on the wall behind it they heard the sundown rites chanted by a wiry, dark-bearded cleric. Kasia stood and knelt and stood and knelt between the two men and tried not to think about the zubir, or Caius Crispus, or about all the people packed so closely around her here, and in the City.