The Emperor sipped from his cup and looked at Crispin, waiting. An answer seemed to be expected.
It was very late; an utterly unanticipated mood seized Crispin, though it was one his mother and friends would all have claimed they knew. He murmured, ‘One of the Antae’s most venerated clerics has written that heresies are not like clothing styles or beards, my lord, to go in and out of fashion by the season or the year.’
Alixana laughed aloud. Valerius smiled a little, though the grey eyes remained attentive in the round, soft face. ‘I read that,’ he said. ‘Sybard of Varena. A Reply to a Pronouncement. An intelligent man. I wrote to him, saying as much, invited him here.’
Crispin hadn’t known that. Of course he hadn’t known that.
What he did know-what everyone seemed to know-was that Valerius’s manifest ambitions in the Batiaran peninsula derived much of their credibility from the religious schisms and the declared need to rescue the peninsula from ‘error.’ It was odd, and at the same time of a piece with what he was already learning about the man, that the Emperor might anchor a possible reconquest of Rhodias and the west in religion, and at the same time praise the Antae cleric whose work challenged, point by point, the document that gave him that anchor.
‘He declined the invitation,’ said Alixana softly, ‘with some unkind words. Your partner Martinian also declined our invitation. Why, Rhodian, do none of you want to come to us?’
‘Unfair, my heart. Caius Crispus has come, on cold autumn roads, braving a barber’s razor and our court… only to find himself beset by a mischievous Empress with an impious request.’
‘Better my mischief than Styliane’s malice,’ said Alixana crisply, still leaning back against the table. Her tone changed, slyly. It was interesting: Crispin knew the shadings of this voice, already. He felt as if he always had. ‘If heresies change by the season,’ she murmured, ‘may not the decorations of my walls, my lord Emperor? You have already conquered here, in any case.’
She smiled sweetly, at both of them. There was a brief silence.
‘What poor man,’ said the Emperor finally, shaking his head, his expression bemused, ‘may hope to be wise enough to have rejoinders for you?’
His Empress’s smile deepened. ‘Good. I may do it, then? I do want dolphins here. I shall make arrangements for our Rhodian to-‘
She stopped. An Imperial hand was uplifted across the room, straight as a judge’s, halting her. ‘After,’ said Valerius sternly. ‘After the Sanctuary. The chooses to do so. It is a heresy, seasonal or otherwise, and the weight of it, discovered, would fall on the artisan not the Empress. Consider. And decide after.’
‘After,’ said Alixana, ‘is likely to be a long time from now. You have built a very large Sanctuary, my lord. My chambers here are lamentably small.’ She made a moue of displeasure.
Crispin had an emerging sense that this was both a normal byplay for the two of them and something contrived to divert him. Why the latter, he wasn’t sure, but the thought produced an opposite effect: he remained uneasy and alert.
And there came, just then, a knocking at the outer door.
The Emperor of Sarantium looked over quickly, and then he smiled. He looked younger when he did, almost boyish. ‘Ah! Perhaps I am wise enough, after all. An encouraging thought. It appears,’ he murmured, ‘that I am about to win a wager. My lady, I shall look forward to your promised payment.’
Alixana looked put out. ‘I cannot believe she would do this. It must be something else. Something…’ She trailed off, biting at her lower lip. The lady-in-waiting had appeared at the inner doorway, eyebrows raised in inquiry. The Emperor set down his drink and silently withdrew past her, out of sight into the interior room. He was smiling as he went, Crispin saw.
Alixana nodded to her woman. The lady-in-waiting hesitated, and gestured towards her mistress and then at her own hair. ‘My lady . .. ?’
The Empress shrugged, impatience flitting across her face. ‘People have seen more than my unbound hair, Crysomallo. Leave it be.’