As a rose, perhaps, that died in a wind or at summer’s end.
He thought suddenly of the young queen of the Antae then, and of the message he carried, and he was aware of pity and fear within himself, a very long way from home.
A silver branching of candles wavered on the table by the rose. There was no sound, but the flicker of movement made him turn.
She had been on the stage in her youth, knew very well-even now- how to move with silence and a dancer’s grace. She was small, slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed, exquisite as the rose. She brought thorns to mind, the drawing of blood, the danger at the heart of beauty.
She had changed to a night robe of deep red, had had her women remove the spectacular headdress and the jewels at wrist and throat. Her hair was down now for the night, thick and long and dark, unsettling. There were diamonds still hanging at her ears, her only ornament, catching the light. Her scent was about her, drifting towards him through a space she defined, and surrounding her, also, was an aura: of power, and of amused intelligence, and of something else he could not name but knew he feared and was right to fear.
‘How deeply acquainted might you be, Rhodian, with the private chambers of royalty?’ Her voice was low, wry, shockingly intimate.
Careful, oh careful, he told himself, setting down his wine cup and bowing low, hiding a surging anxiety with the slowness of the movements. He straightened. Cleared his throat. ‘Not at all, my lady. I am honoured and out of my element.’
‘A Batiaran far from his peninsula? A fish netted from water? How would you taste, Caius Crispus of Varena?’ She did not move. The firelight was caught in her dark eyes and in the diamonds beside them. It flashed from the diamonds, was drowned in her eyes. She smiled.
She was toying with him. He knew this, but his throat was still dry. He coughed again, and said, ‘I have no idea. I am at your service in all things, thrice-exalted.’
‘You did say that. They shaved your beard, I understand. Poor man.’ She laughed, came forward then, straight towards him and then past, as he caught his breath. She stood by the long table, looking at the rose. ‘You were admiring my flower?’ Her voice was honey, or silk.
‘Very much, my lady. A work of great beauty and sadness.’
‘Sadness?’ She turned her head, looked at him.
He hesitated. ‘Roses die. An artifice so delicate reminds us of the . .. impermanence of all things. All beautiful things.’
Alixana said nothing for a time. Not a young woman any more. Her dark, accentuated eyes held his until he looked away and down. Her scent, this near, was intoxicating, eastern, it made him think of colours, many things did: this was near to the red of her robe, but deeper, darker, porphyry, in fact. The purple of royalty. He looked down and wondered: could that be intentional, or was it only him-turning scent, sound, taste into colour? There were hidden arts here in Sarantiurn of which he would know nothing. He was in the City of Cities, ornament of the world, eye of the universe. There were mysteries.
‘The impermanence of the beautiful. Well said. That,’ the Empress murmured, looking at the rose, ‘is why it is here, of course. Clever man. Could you, Rhodian, make me something in mosaic that suggests the opposite: a hint of what endures beyond the transitory?’
She had asked him here for a reason, after all. He looked up. ‘What would suggest that for you, Empress?’
‘Dolphins,’ she said, without any warning at all.
He felt himself go white.
She turned fully around and watched him, leaning against the ivory of the table, hands braced on either side of her, fingers spread. Her expression was thoughtful, evaluating; that disconcerted him more than irony would have done.
‘Drink your wine,’ the Empress said. ‘It is very good.’ He did. It was.
It didn’t help him. Not with this.
Dolphins were deadly at this point in the story of the world. Much more than simply marine creatures, leaping between water and air, graceful and decorative-the sort any woman might enjoy seeing on the walls of her rooms. Dolphins were entangled in paganism, or trammelled in the nets of Heladikian heresies, or both.