As it happened, these were his thoughts in the precise moment when the irritated, carrying eastern voice from below penetrated his concentration and his life. A coincidence, or the heard accents of Sarantium carrying his mind sailing that way towards the celebrated channel and the inner sea and the gold and silver and silk of the Emperor?
He looked down.
Someone, short as a snail from this height, was addressing him as Martinian. This would have been merely vexing had Martinian himself-by the doorway, as was usual at this hour-not also been gazing up at Crispin as the easterner barked the wrong name, disturbing all the work in the sanctuary.
Crispin bit back two obscene retorts and then a third response which was to direct the imbecile in the right direction. Something was afoot. It might only be a jibe directed at the courier-though that would be unlike his partner-or it might be something else.
He’d deal with it later.
‘I’ll be down when I’m done,’ he called, much more politely than the circumstances warranted. ‘Go pray for someone’s immortal soul in the meantime. Do it quietly.’
The red-faced man shouted, ‘Imperial Couriers are not kept waiting, you vulgar provincial! There is a letter for you!’
Interesting as this undoubtedly was, Crispin found it easy to ignore him. He wished he had some red vivid as the courier’s cheeks, mind you. Even from this height they showed crimson. It occurred to him that he’d never tried to achieve that effect on a face in mosaic. He slotted the idea among all the others and returned to creating the holy flame given as a gift to mankind, working with what he had.
Had his instructions not been unfortunately specific, Tilliticus would simply have dropped the packet on the dusty, debris-strewn floor of the shabby little sanctuary, reeking with the worst Heladikian heresy, and stormed out.
Men did not come-even here in Batiara-in their own slow time to receive an invitation from the Imperial Precinct in Sarantium. They raced over, ecstatic. They knelt. They embraced the knees of the courier. Once, someone had kissed his muddy, dung-smeared boots, weeping for joy.
And they most certainly offered the courier largess for being the bearer of such exalted, dazzling tidings.
Watching the ginger-haired man named Martinian finally descend from his scaffolding and walk deliberately across the floor towards him, Pronobius Tilliticus understood that his boots were not about to be kissed. Nor was any sum of money likely to be proffered him in gratitude.
It only confirmed his opinion of Batiara under the Antae. They might be Jad-worshippers, if barely, and they might be formal tributary allies of the Empire in a relationship brokered by the High Patriarch in Rhodias, and they might have conquered this peninsula a century ago and rebuilt some of the walls they had levelled then, but they were still barbarians.
And they had infected with their uncouth manners and heresies even those native-born descendants of the Rhodian Empire who had a claim to honour.
The man Martinian’s hair was actually an offensively bright red, Tilliticus saw. Only the dust and lime in it and in his untidy beard softened the hue. His eyes, unsoftened, were a hard, extremely unpleasant blue. He wore a nondescript, stained tunic over wrinkled brown leggings. He was a big man, and he carried himself in a coiled, angry way that was quite unappealing. His hands were large, and there was a bloodstained bandage wrapped around one of them.
He’s in a temper, the fool by the doorway had said. The fool was still on his stool, watching the two of them from beneath something misshapen that might once have been a hat. The deaf and mute apprentice had wandered in by now, along with all the others from outside. It ought to have been a splendid, resonant moment for Tilliticus to make his proclamation, to graciously accept the artisan’s stammering gratitude on behalf of the Chancellor and the Imperial Post, and then head for the best inn Varena could offer with some coins to spend on mulled wine and a woman. ‘And so? I’m here. What is it you want?’
The mosaicist’s voice was as hard as his eyes. His glance, when it left Tilliticus’s face and sought that of the older man in the doorway, did not grow any less inimical. An unpleasant character, entirely.