Eudric and the one beside him took their seats, exactly as before. The two clerics glanced nervously over at them and then raised their hands once more, four palms outwards, and then they spoke, in perfect ritual unison.
‘Holy Jad,’ they said, ‘let there be Light for all your children gathered here, now and in days to come.’ And the people in the sanctuary spoke the response, raggedly at first and then more clearly. Then the clerics spoke again, and the response came again.
Pardos rose quietly then as the rites began, and he moved past Couvry and Radulph and those sitting beyond them towards the eastern aisle and then he walked past all the people gathered there beneath the mosaic of Jad and Heladikos with his gift of fire, and he went out the doors into the cold of the yard and down the path and through the gate and away from there.
At the moment a man and a woman she had loved since childhood were dying in her father’s sanctuary, the queen of the Antae was standing fur-cloaked and hooded at the stern railing of a ship sailing east from Mylasia through choppy seas. She was gazing back west and north to land, to where Varena would be, far beyond the intervening fields and forests. There were no tears in her eyes. There had been earlier, but she was not alone here and visible grief, for a queen, required privacy.
Overhead, on the mainmast of the sleek, burnished ship, whipped by the stiff breeze, flew a crimson lion and a sun disk on a blue field: the banner of the Sarantine Empire.
The handful of Imperial passengers-couriers, military officers, taxation officials, engineers-would disembark at Megarium, giving thanks for a safe journey through wind and white waves. It was late to be sailing, even for the short run across the bay.
Gisel would not be among those leaving the ship. She was going farther. She was sailing to Sarantium.
Almost everyone else on board had been present as a screen, a mask, to deceive the Antae port officials in Mylasia. If this ship had not been in the harbour, the other passengers would have ridden the Imperial road north and east to Sauradia and then back down south to Megarium. Or they might have taken another, less trim craft than this royal one, had the seas been judged safe for a fast trip across the bay.
This ship, expertly manned, had been riding at anchor in Mylasia waiting for one passenger only, should she decide to come.
Valerius II, Jad’s Holy Emperor of Sarantium, had extended an extremely private invitation to the queen of the Antae in Batiara, suggesting she visit his great City, seat of Empire, glory of the world, to be feted and honoured there, and perhaps hold converse upon matters of moment for both Batiara and Sarantium in Jad’s world as it was in that year. The queen had had conveyed to the ship’s captain in Mylasia harbour-discreedy-her acceptance six days ago.
She had been about to be killed, otherwise.
She was likely to die in any case, Gisel thought, looking back over the white-capped sea at the receding coastline of her home, wiping at tears that were caused by the wind at the stern, but only by the wind. Her heart ached as with a wound, and a grim, hard-eyed image of her father was in her mind, for she knew what he would have thought and said of this flight. It was a grief. It was a grief, among all the others of her life.
Her hood blew back in a swirling of the salt wind, exposing her face to the elements and men’s eyes, sending her hair streaming. It didn’t matter. Those on board knew who she was. The need for uttermost care had ended when the ship slipped anchor on the dawn tide carrying her from her throne, her people, her life.
Was there a way to return? A course to sail between the rocks of violent rebellion at home and those of the east, where an army was almost certainly being readied to reclaim Rhodias? And if there was such a course, if it existed in the god’s world, was she wise enough to find it? And would they let her live so long?