She shrugged. ‘I’m a dancer. There are always rumours. Will you take wine? Do you really come from my bastard of a so-called father?’
The words were rightly spoken, tossed away.
Crispin blinked. ‘Yes I will and yes I do. I wouldn’t have been able to invent a tale like that,’ he said, also mildly.
She went past him and he followed her down the corridor. There was a doorway at the end of the hallway, opening to a courtyard with a small fountain and stone benches, but it was too cold to sit outside. Shirin turned in to a handsome room where a fire had been laid. She clapped her hands once, and murmured quiet instructions to the servant who immediately appeared. She seemed to have regained her self-possession.
Crispin found that he was struggling to keep his own.
Lying on a wooden and bronze trunk set against the wall by the fire, on its back as if it were a discarded toy, was a small leather and metal bird.
Shirin turned from the servant and followed his gaze. ‘That actually was a gift from my endlessly doting father.’ She smiled thinly. ‘The only thing I’ve ever received from him in my life. Years ago. I wrote to him that I’d come to Sarantium and been accepted as a dancer by the Greens. I’m not sure why I bothered to tell him, but he did reply. That one time. He told me not to become a prostitute and sent me a child’s toy. It sings if you wind it up. He makes them, I gather. A pastime of sorts? Did you ever see any of his birds?’
Crispin swallowed, and nodded his head. He was hearing-could not help but hear-a voice crying in Sauradia.
‘I did,’ he said finally. ‘When I visited him before leaving Varena.’ He hesitated, then took the chair she gestured towards, nearest the fire. Courtesy for guests on a cold day. She took the seat opposite, legs demurely together, her dancer’s posture impeccable. He went on, ‘Zoticus, your father … is actually a friend of my colleague. Martinian. I’d never met him before, to be honest. I can’t actually tell you very much, only report that he seemed well when I saw him. A very learned man. We . . . spent part of an afternoon together. He was kind enough to offer me some guidance for the road.’
‘He used to travel a great deal, I understand,’ Shirin said. Her expression grew wry again. ‘Else I’d not be alive, I suppose.’
Crispin hesitated. This woman’s history was not something to which he was entitled. But there was the bird, silenced, lying on the trunk. A pastime of sorts. ‘Your mother … told you this?’
Shirin nodded. Her short black hair bobbed at her shoulders with the movement. Crispin could see her appeal: a dancer’s grace, quick energy, effervescence. The dark eyes were compelling. He could imagine her in the theatre, neat-footed and alluring.
She said,’To be just, my mother never said anything bad about him that I can recall. He liked women, she said. He must have been a handsome man, and persuasive. My mother had been intending to withdraw from the world among the Daughters of Jad when he passed through our village.’
‘And after?’ Crispin said, thinking about a grey-bearded pagan alchemist on an isolated farm amid his parchments and artifacts.
‘Oh, she did retreat to them. She’s there now. I was born and raised among holy women. They taught me my prayers and my letters. I was… everyone’s daughter, I suppose.’
‘Then how . . . ?’
‘I ran away.’
Shirin of the Greens smiled briefly. She might be young, but it was not an innocent smile. The houseservant appeared with a tray. Wine, water, a bowl of late-season fruit. Zoticus’s daughter dismissed her and mixed the wine herself, bringing his cup across. He caught her scent again, the Empress’s.
Shirin sat down once more, looking across the room at him, appraisingly. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, not unreasonably. She tilted her head a little sideways. Her glance went briefly past him, then returned.
‘Is this the new regimen? You silence me except when you need my opinion? How gracious. And, yes, really, who is this vulgar-looking person?’