The Empress lifts one shoulder, a motion of hers he has always loved. Her dark hair ripples, catching the light. ‘As you say, he was a prize after discrediting Siroes and solving the charioteer’s mystery.’
‘And the gift to Styliane. Leontes didn’t much like that.’
‘That isn’t what he didn’t like, Petrus. And she will not have liked having to match his generosity, at all.’
‘He’ll have a guard. At least for the first while. Styliane did sponsor the other artisan, after all.’
She nods. ‘I have told you, more than once, that that marriage is a mistake.’
The man frowns. Sips his wine. The woman watches him closely, though her manner appears relaxed. ‘He earned it, Aliana. Against the Bassanids and in the Majriti.’
‘He earned appropriate honours, yes. Styliane Daleina was not the way to reward him, my love. The Daleinoi hate you enough, as it is.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ he murmurs wryly, then adds, ‘Leontes was the marriage-dream of every woman in the Empire.’
‘Every woman but two,’ she says quietly. ‘The one here with you and the one forced to wed him.’
‘I can only leave it to him to change her mind, then.’
‘Or watch her change him?’
He shook his head. ‘I imagine Leontes knows how to lay a siege of this kind, as well. And he is proof against treachery. He is secure in himself and his image of Jad.’
She opens her mouth to say something more, but does not. He notices though, and smiles. ‘I know,’ he murmurs. ‘Pay the soldiers, delay the Sanctuary.’
She says, ‘Among other things. But what does a woman understand of these great affairs?’
‘Exactly,’ he says emphatically. ‘Stick to your charities and dawn prayers.’
They both laugh. The Empress is notorious for mornings abed. There is a silence. He drinks his wine, finishing it. She rises smoothly, takes the cup, fills it again and comes back, sitting as she hands it to him again. He lays a hand on her slippered foot where it rests on a pillow beside him. They watch the fire for a time.
‘Gisel of the Antae might bear you children,’ she says softly.
He continues to gaze into the flames. He nods. ‘And be much less trouble, one has to assume.’
‘Shall I resume selecting a wardrobe for exile? May I take the necklace?’
The Emperor continues to look into the tongues of fire. Heladikos’s gift, according to the schismatics he has agreed to suppress in the cause of harmony in the faith of Jad. Chieromancers claim they can read futures in flames, see shapes of destiny. They, too, are to be suppressed. All pagans are. He has even-with a reluctance few will know-closed the old pagan Schools. A thousand years of learning. Even Aliana’s dolphins are a transgression. There are those who would burn or brand the artisan for Grafting them, if he ever does.
The Emperor reads no mystic certainties of any kind in the late-night flames, sitting at the woman’s feet, one hand touching her instep and the jewelled slipper. He says, ‘Never leave me.’
‘Wherever would I go?’ she murmurs after a moment, trying to keep the tone light and just failing.
He looks up. ‘Never leave me,’ he says again, the grey eyes on hers this time.
He can do this to her, take breath from chest and throat. A constriction of great need. After all these years.
‘Not in life,’ she replies.
CHAPTER IX
Kasia awakened from a dream at dawn. She lay in bed, confused, half asleep, and only gradually became aware that there were bells pealing outside. There had been no Jaddite bells at home where the gods were found in the black forest or by rivers or in the grainfields, assuaged by blood. These sanctuary bells were a part of city life. She was in Sarantium. Half a million people, Carullus had said. He’d said she’d get used to the crowds, learn to sleep through the bells if she chose.
The dream had been of her waterfall at home, in summer. She’d been sitting on a bank of the pool below the falls, shaded by leafy trees that bent low over the water. There had been a man with her, which had never been so at home, in life.