The other man fell to his knees with a weak, coughing sound. Before he could grapple for the dropped knife, Crispin kicked him twice, in the ribs and then, as his assailant slid sideways on the wet floor, in the head. The man lay there and he did not move.
Crispin, breathing raggedly, slumped back naked onto the stone bench. He was dripping wet, slick with perspiration. He closed his eyes then opened them again. His heart was pounding wildly. He looked over at Leontes, who had made no movement at all from his position by the door.
‘So kind … of you … to assist,’ Crispin gasped. His left hand was already swelling up. He glared at the other man through the eddying mist and the wet heat.
The golden-haired soldier smiled. A light sheen of perspiration glistened all along his perfect body. ‘It is important for a man to be able to defend himself. And pleasing to know one can. Don’t you feel better, having dealt with him yourself?’
Crispin tried to control his breathing. He shook his head angrily. Sweat dripped in his eyes. There was a pool of blood trickling across the stone floor, seeping into the white sheet in which the fallen man lay tangled.
‘You should,’ Leontes said gravely. ‘It is no small thing to be able to protect your own person and your loved ones.’
‘Fuck you. Say that to plague sores,’ Crispin snarled. He felt nauseated, struggling for control.
‘Oh dear. You can’t talk to me like that,’ the Strategos said with surprising gentleness. ‘You know who I am. Besides, I have invited you to my house . . . you shouldn’t talk to me like that.’ He made it sound like a social failing, a lapse of civilized protocol. It might have been comical, Crispin thought, had he not been so near to vomiting in the now-stifling wet heat, with a stranger’s dark blood continuing to soak into the white sheet at his feet.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ Crispin rasped through clenched teeth. ‘Kill me with a hidden blade? Send your wife to poison me?’
Leontes chuckled benignly. ‘I have no reason to kill you. And Styliane’s reputation is far worse than her nature. You’ll see, when you join us for dinner. In the meantime, you’d best come out of the heat, and take some pride in knowing that this man will quite certainly reveal who it was who hired him. My men will take him to the Urban Prefect’s offices. They are extremely good at interrogation there. You have solved last night’s mystery yourself, artisan. At the small price of a bruised hand. You ought to be a satisfied man.’
Fuck you, Crispin almost said again, but didn’t. Last night’s mystery. It seemed everyone knew about the attack by now. He looked over at the tall commander of all the Sarantine armies. Leontes’s blue gaze met his through the eddying of the steam.
‘This,’ said Crispin bitterly, ‘is the ambit of satisfaction for you? Clubbing someone senseless, killing him? This is what a man does to justify his place in Jad’s creation?’
Leontes was silent a moment. ‘You haven’t killed him. Jad’s creation is a dangerous, tenuous place for mortal men, artisan. Tell me, how lasting have the glories of Rhodias been, since they could not be defended against the Antae?’
They were rubble, of course. Crispin knew it. He had seen the fire-charred ruin of mosaics the world had once journeyed to honour and exalt.
Leontes added, still gently, ‘I would be a poor creature were I to see value only in bloodshed and war. It is my chosen world, yes, and I would like to leave a proud name behind me, but I would say a man finds honour in serving his city and Emperor and his god, in raising his children and guiding his lady wife towards those same duties.’
Crispin thought of Styliane Daleina. I lie where pleasure leads me, not need. He pushed the thought away. He said, ‘And the things of beauty? The things that mark us off from the Inicii with their sacrifices, or the Karchites drinking bear blood and scarring their faces? Or is it just better weapons and tactics that mark us off?’ He was too limp, in fact, to summon real anger any more. It occurred to him that mosaicists-all artisans, really-seemed never to leave behind their names, proud or otherwise. That was for those who swung swords, or axes that could send a man’s head flying from his body. He wanted to say that, but didn’t.