Kay, Guy Gavriel – Sarantine Mosaic 01 – Sailing to Sarantium

His mother had suggested he come live with her. Martinian and his wife had invited him to do the same. They said it was unhealthy for him to stay alone with only the servants in a house full of memories. There were rooms he could take above taverns or inns where he would hear the sounds of life from below or along hallways. He had been urged, actively solicited, to marry again after most of the year had passed. Jad knew, enough widows had been left with too-wide beds, and enough young girls needed a decent, successful man. Friends told him this. He still seemed to have friends, despite his best efforts. They told him he was gifted, cele­brated, had a life in front of him yet. How could people not understand the irrelevance of such things? He told them that, tried to tell them.

‘Good night,’ Martinian said.

Not to him. Crispin looked over. The others were leaving, following the road the courier had taken back to the city. End of day. Sun going down. It was quite cold now.

‘Good night,’ he echoed, lifting a hand absently to the men who worked for them and to the others engaged in finishing the building itself. Cheerful replies followed. Why should they not be cheerful? A day’s work done, the rains had passed for a time, the harvest was in with winter not yet here, and there was splendid new gossip now to trade in the taverns and around hearth fires tonight. An Imperial Summons for Martinian to the City, an amusing game played with a pompous east­ern courier.

The stuff of life, bright coinage of talk and shared conjecture, laugh­ter, argument. Something to drink on, to regale a spouse, a sibling, a long­time servant. A friend, a parent, an innkeeper. A child.

Two children.

Who knows love?

Who says he knows love?

What is love, tell me.

‘I know love,’ says the littlest one ….

A Kindath song, that one. Ilandra had had a nurse from among the moon-worshippers, growing up in the wine country south of Rhodias where many of the Kindath had settled. A tradition in her family, to be nursed by them, and to choose among the Kindath for their physicians. A better family than his own, though his mother had connections and dig­nity. He’d married well, people had said, understanding nothing. People didn’t know. How could they know? Ilandra used to sing the tune to the girls at night. If he closed his eyes he could have her voice with him now.

If he died he might join her in the god’s Light. All three of them.

‘You are afraid,’ Martinian said again, a human voice in the world’s twilight, intruding. Crispin heard anger this time. Rare, in a kindly man. ‘You are afraid to accept that you have been allowed to live, and must do something with that grace.’

‘It is no grace,’ he said. And immediately regretted the sour, self-pitying tone in the words. Lifted a quick hand to forestall a rebuke. ‘What must I do to make everyone happy, Martinian? Sell the house for a pittance to one of the land speculators? Move in with you? And with my mother? Marry a fifteen-year-old ready to whelp children? Or a widow with land and sons already? Both? Take Jad’s vows and join the clerics? Turn pagan? Become a Holy Fool?’

‘Go to Sarantium,’ said his friend.

‘No.’

They looked at each other. Crispin realized that he was breathing hard. The older man said, his voice soft now in the lengthening shadows,’That is too final for something so large. Say it again in the morning and I’ll never speak of this again. On my oath.’

Crispin, after a silence, only nodded. He needed a drink, he realized. An unseen bird called, clear and far from towards the woods. Martinian rose, clapped his hat on his head against the sundown wind. They walked together back into Varena before the night curfew sounded and the gates were locked against whatever lay outside in the wild forests, the night fields and lawless roads, in the moonlit, starlit air where daemons and spir­its assuredly were.

Men lived behind walls, when they could.