Vargos shook his head. He mumbled something Crispin couldn’t make out. His lips were badly swollen, the words garbled.
‘He wants to come with you,’ Kasia said softly. The sun was low, now, behind her, almost straight along the road. It was growing colder, twilight coming. ‘He says he cannot serve on this road any more, after this morning. They will kill him.’
Crispin, after a moment’s thought, realized that had to be true. He remembered a blow struck by Vargos in the dark of the innyard before dawn this morning. Vargos, too, had intervened in this sacrifice. His own was not the only life in the midst of change, it seemed. In the last bronze glow of the sun under-lighting clouds he looked closely at the man in the other litter. ‘This is correct? You wish me to retain your services all the way to the City?’
Vargos nodded his head.
Crispin said, ‘Sarantium is a different world, you know that.’
‘Know that,’ Vargos said, and this time he heard it clearly. ‘Your man.’
He felt something unexpected then, like a shaft of light through everything else that day. It took him a moment to recognize it as happiness. Crispin stretched out a hand from his litter and the other man reached across the space between to touch it with his own.
‘Rest now,’ said Crispin, struggling to keep his own eyes open. His head was hurting a great deal. ‘It will be all right.’ He wasn’t sure he believed that, but after a moment he saw that Vargos had indeed closed his eyes and was asleep. Crispin touched his bruised chin again and struggled not to yawn: it hurt when he opened his mouth so much. He looked at the girl. ‘We’ll talk tonight,’ he mumbled. ‘Need to sort out your life, too.’
He saw that quick, flaring apprehension in her again. Not a surprise, really. Her life, what had happened to her this year, and this morning. He saw Carullus coming over: long strides, his shadow behind him on the road. Not a bad man, really. An easy laugh, sense of humour. Crispin had provoked him. In front of his soldiers. It was true. Not the wisest thing. Might admit that later. Might not. Might be better not.
He was asleep before the tribune reached his litter.
‘Don’t hurt him!’ Kasia said to the officer as he came up, though Crispin never heard it. She stepped quickly between the litter and the soldier.
‘I can’t hurt him, girl,’ said the tribune of the Fourth Sauradian, shaking his head bemusedly, looking at her. ‘He has both my balls on a smith’s anvil and the hammer in his hand.’
‘Good!’ she said. ‘Keep remembering that.’ Her expression was fierce, northern, not at all doe-like just then.
The soldier laughed aloud. ‘Jad rot the moment I saw the three of you in that chapel,’ he said. ‘Now Inici slave girls tell me what to do? What ere you even doing abroad on the fucking Day of the Dead, anyhow? Don’t you know it is dangerous today in Sauradia?’
She went pale, he saw, but made no reply. There was a tale here, his instincts told him. They also told him he wasn’t likely to hear it. He could have her beaten for disrespect, but knew he wouldn’t. He really was a kind-hearted man, Carullus told himself. The Rhodian didn’t know how lucky he was.
Carullus also had a sense-a mild one, to be sure-that his own future might possibly be at risk as a result of this encounter at the sanctuary. He’d seen, a little too late, the Rhodian’s Permit, and who had signed it, and had read the specific terms of the Emperor’s request for the presence of a certain Martinian of Varena.
An artisan. Only an artisan, but personally invited to the City to lend his great expertise and knowledge to the Emperor’s new Sanctuary of Jad’s Holy Wisdom. Another building. Another fucking building.
Wisdom, holy or wholly practical, suggested to Carullus that he exercise a measure of caution here. The man talked a very confident game, and he had papers to back him up. He did own the girl, too; those documents had been in the satchel as well. Only since last night, mind you. Part of that story he wasn’t going to learn, Carullus guessed. The girl was still glaring at him with those blue northern eyes. She had a strong, clever face. Yellow hair.