‘I also came to thank you for my gem, of course. It was … an interesting gesture. I am not difficult to find, artisan, should you have any thoughts about your home and the prospects of a war. It will become clear to you soon, I believe, that the man who brought you here to make holy images for him also intends to wreak violence upon Batiara for no reason but his own glory.’
Crispin cleared his throat. ‘I am pleased to find my small gift deemed worthy of thanks.’ He paused. ‘I am an artisan only, my lady.’
She shook her head, the expression cool again. ‘That is a coward in you, hiding from truths of the world, Rhodian. All men-and women- are more than one thing. Or have you willed yourself to be limited in this way? Will you live on a scaffold above all the dying?’
Her intelligence was appalling. Just as the Empress’s had been. It crossed his mind that had he not met Alixana first he might indeed have had no defences against this woman. Styliane Daleina might not be wrong, after all. And then he wondered if the Empress had thought of that. If that was why he’d received so immediate a late-night invitation to the Traversite Palace. Could these women be that quick, that subtle? His head was aching.
‘I have been here two days only, my lady, and have not slept tonight. You are speaking subversion against the Emperor who invited me to Sarantium, and even against your husband, if I understand you. Am I to be bought with a woman’s hair on my pillow for a night, or a morning?’ He hesitated. ‘Even yours?’
The smile returned at that, enigmatic and provoking. ‘It happens,’ she murmured. ‘It is sometimes longer than a night, or the night is… longer than an ordinary one. Time moves strangely in some circumstances. Have you never found that, Caius Crispus?’
He dared make no reply. She didn’t seem to expect one. She said, ‘We may continue this another time.’ She paused. It seemed to him she was wrestling with something. Then she added, ‘About your images. The domes and walls? Do not grow … too attached to your work there, Rhodian. I say this with goodwill, and probably should not. It is weak of me.’
He took a step towards her. She lifted a hand. ‘No questions.’
He stopped. She was an incarnation of icy, remote beauty in his room.
But she wasn’t remote. Her tongue had touched his, her hand, moving downwards . . .
And this woman, too, seemed able to read his very thoughts. The smile came again. ‘You are excited now? Intrigued? You like your women to show weakness, Rhodian? Shall I remember that, and the pillow?’
He flushed, but met her ironic gaze. ‘I like the people in my life to show some … of themselves. The uncalculated. Movements outside the games of which you spoke. That would draw me, yes.’
Her turn now to be silent, standing very still by the door. Sunlight, sliding through the shutters, fell in bands of pale morning gold across the wall and floor and the blue of her robe.
‘That,’ she said, finally, ‘might be too much to expect in Sarantium, I fear.’ She looked as if she would add something, but then shook her head and murmured only, ‘Go to sleep, Rhodian.’
She opened the door, went out, closed it, was gone, save for her scent and the mild disarray of his bed, and the greater disarrangement of his being.
He fell onto the bed, still clothed. He lay with eyes open, thinking of nothing at first, then of high, majestic walls, with marble columns above marble columns, and the dwarfing, graceful immensity of the dome he’d been given, and then he thought for a long time about certain women, living and dead, and then he closed his eyes and slept.
When he dreamt, though, as the sun rose through the windy, clear autumn morning outside, it was of the zubir at first, obliterating time and the world in mist, and then of one woman only.
‘Let there be Light for us,’ Vargos chanted with the others in the small neighbourhood chapel as the services came to an end. The cleric in his pale yellow robe made the two-handed gesture of solar benediction they used in the City, and then people began talking again and milling briskly towards the doors and the morning street.