Guy Gavriel Kay - Sarantine 1 - Sailing to Sarantium

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Guy Gavriel Kay

SAILING TO SARANTIUM

Valerius the Trakesian has great ambition. Rumored to be responsible for the ascen-sion of the previous Emperor, his

uncle, amid fire and blood, Valerius himself has now risen to the Golden Throne of the vast empire ruled by the fabled

city, Sarantium.

Valerius has a vision to match his ambition: a glittering dome that will pro-claim his magnificence down through the

ages. And so, in a ruined western city on the far distant edge of civilization, a not-so-humble artisan receives a call

that will change his life forever.

Crispin is a mosaicist, a layer of bright tiles. Still grieving for the family he lost to the plague, he lives only for his

arcane craft, and cares little for ambition, less for money, and for intrigue not at all. But an imperial summons to the

most magnificent city in the world is a difficult call to resist.

In this world still half-wild and tan-gled with magic, no journey is simple; and a journey to Sarantium means a walk

destiny. Bearing with him a and a Queen's seductive promise, Crispin sets out for the fabled city from which none

return unaltered, guarded only by his own wits and a bird soul talisman from an alchemist's treasury.

(continued from front flap)

In the Aldwood he encounters a great beast from the mythic past, and in robbing the zubir of its prize he wins a

woman's devo-tion and a man's loyalty-and loses a gift he didn't know he had until it was gone.

In Sarantium itself, where rival Factions vie in the streets and palaces and chariot racing is as sacred as prayer, Crispin

will begin his life anew. In an empire ruled by intrigue and violence, he must find his own source of power. And he

does: high on the scaffolding of the greatest art work ever imagined, while struggling to deal with the dangers-and the

seductive lures-of the men and women around him.

Guy Gavriel Kay's magnificent historical fantasies draw from the twin springs of history and legend to create seam-less

worlds as vibrant as any in literature. Sailing to Sarantium begins THE SARANTINE MOSAIC, a new and signal

triumph by today's most esteemed master of high fantasy.

GUY GAVRIEL KAY'S distinguished liter-ary career began when he helped compile Tolkien's posthumous masterpiece,

The Silmarillion. Kay's own epic trilogy THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY appears on "The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy

List." Subsequently the author of Tigana, A Song for Arbonne, and The Lions of Al-Rassan, he has been both a

winner of the Prix Aurora Award and a World Fantasy Award nominee. His works have been translated into fourteen

languages. He lives in Toronto.

HarperPrism

http://www.harperprism.com

SAILING TO

SARANTIUM

SAILING TO SARANTIUM

GUY GAVRIEL KAY

HarperPrism

A Division o/ HarperCollinsPublishers

10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299

America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

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HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please

write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

A hardcover edition of this book was published in Canada in 1998 by Viking.

FIRST U.S. EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kay, Guy Gavriel.

Sailing to Sarantium / Guy Gavriel Kay.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-06-105117-9 I. Tide

PR9199.3.K39S25 1999 813'.54-dc21 98-47254

99 00 01 02 */RRD 10987654321

For my sons,

Samuel Alexander and Matthew Tyler, with love, as I watch them

'...fashion everything

From nothing every day, and teach

The morning stars to sing.'

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I imagine it is obvious from the tide of this work, but I owe a debt of inspiration to William Butler Yeats, whose

meditations in poetry and prose on the mysteries of Byzantium led me there and gave me a number of underlying

motifs along with a sense that imagination and history would be at home together in this milieu.

I have long believed that to do a variation in fiction upon a given period, one must first try to grasp as much as

possible about that period. Byzantium is well served by its historians, fractious as they might be amongst each other. I

have been deeply enlightened and focused by their writing and-via electronic mail-by personal communications and

generous encouragement offered by many scholars. It hardly needs to be stressed, I hope, that those people I name

here cannot remotely bear any responsibility for errors or deliberate alterations made in what is essen-tially a fantasy

upon themes of Byzantium.

I am happy to record the great assistance I have received from the work of Alan Cameron on chariot racing and the

Hippodrome factions; Rossi, Nordhagen, and L'Orange on mosaics; Lionel Casson on travel in the ancient world;

Robert Browning, particularly on Justinian and Theodora; Warren Treadgold on the military; David Talbot Rice,

Stephen Runciman,

Gervase Mathew and Ernst Kitzinger on Byzantine aesthetics; and the broader histories of Cyril Mango, H.W

Haussig, Mark Whittow, Averil Cameron and G. Ostrogorsky. I should also acknowledge the aid and stimulation I

received from participating in the lively and usefully dispu-tatious scholarly mailing lists on the Internet relating to

Byzantium and Late Antiquity. My research methods will never be the same.

On a more personal level, Rex Kay remains my first and most astrin-gent reader, Martin Springett brought his

considerable skills to prepar-ing the map, and Meg Masters, my Canadian editor, has been a calm, deeply valued

presence for four books now. Linda McKnight and Anthea Morton-Saner in Toronto and London are sustaining

friends as well as canny agents, and a sometimes demanding author is deeply aware of both of these elements. My

mother guided me to books as a child and then to the belief I could write my own. She still does that. And my wife

creates a space into which the words and stories can come. If I say I am grateful it grievously understates the truth.

... and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty,

and we were at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer

than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.

-Chronicle of the Journey of Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev, to Constantinople

PROLOGUE

Thunderstorms were common in Sarantium on midsummer nights, sufficiendy so to make plausible the oft-repeated

tale that the Emperor Apius passed to the god in the midst of a towering storm, with lightning flashing and rolls of

thunder besieging the Holy City. Even Pertennius of Eubulus, writing only twenty years after, told the story this way,

adding a statue of the Emperor top-pling before the bronze gates to the Imperial Precinct and an oak tree split asunder

just outside the landward walls. Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the

profession.

In fact, on the night Apius breathed his last in the Porphyry Room of the Attenine Palace there was no rain in the City.

An occasional flash of lightning had been seen and one or two growls of thunder heard earlier in the evening, well

north of Sarantium, towards the grainlands of Trake-sia. Given the events that followed, that northern direction might

have been seen as portent enough.

The Emperor had no living sons, and his three nephews had rather spectacularly failed a test of their worthiness less

than a year before and had suffered appropriate consequences. There was, as a result, no Emperor Designate in

Sarantium when Apius heard-or did not hear-as the last words of his long life, the inward voice of the god saying to

him alone, 'Uncrown, the Lord of Emperors awaits you now.'

The three men who entered the Porphyry Room in the still-cool hour before dawn were each acutely aware of a

dangerously unstable situation. Gesius the eunuch, Chancellor of the Imperial Court, pressed his long, thin fingers

together piously, and then knelt stiffly to kiss the dead Emperor's bare feet. So, too, after him, did Adrastus, Master of

Offices, who commanded the civil service and administration, and Valerius, Count of the Excubitors, the Imperial

Guard.

'The Senate must be summoned,' murmured Gesius in his papery voice. 'They will go into session immediately.'

'Immediately,' agreed Adrastus, fastidiously straightening the collar of his ankle-length tunic as he rose. 'And the

Patriarch must begin the Rites of Mourning.'

'Order,' said Valerius in soldier's tones, 'will be preserved in the City. I undertake as much.'

The other two looked at him. 'Of course,' said Adrastus, delicately. He smoothed his neat beard. Preserving order was

the only reason Valerius had for being in the room just now, one of the first to learn the lamen-table situation. His

remarks were ... a shade emphatic.

The army was primarily east and north at the time, a large element near Eubulus on the current Bassanid border, and

another, mostly mercenar-ies, defending the open spaces of Trakesia from the barbarian incursions of the Karchites

and the Vrachae, both of whom had been quiescent of late. The strategos of either military contingent could become a

decisive factor-or an Emperor-if the Senate delayed.

The Senate was an ineffectual, dithering body of frightened men. It was likely to delay unless given extremely clear

guidance. This, too, the three officials in the room with the dead man knew very well.

'I shall,' said Gesius casually, 'make arrangements to have the noble fam-ilies apprised. They will want to pay their

respects.'

'Naturally,' said Adrastus. 'Especially the Daleinoi. I understand Flav-ius Daleinus returned to the City only two days

ago.'

The eunuch was too experienced a man to actually flush.

Valerius had already turned for the doorway. 'Deal with the nobility as you see fit,' he said over his shoulder. 'But

there are five hundred thou-sand people in the City who will fear the wrath of Holy Jad descending upon a leaderless

Empire when they hear of this death. They are my con-cern. I will send word to the Urban Prefect to ready his own

men. Be thankful there was no thunderstorm in the night.'

He left the room, hard-striding on the mosaic floors, burly-shouldered, still vigorous in his sixtieth year. The other two

looked at each other. Adrastus broke the shared gaze, glancing away at the dead man in the mag-nificent bed, and at

the jewelled bird on its silver bough beside that bed. Neither man spoke.

Outside the Attenine Palace, Valerius paused in the gardens of the Imperial Precinct only long enough to spit into the

bushes and note that it was still some time before the sunrise invocation. The white moon was over the water. The

dawn wind was west; he could hear the sea, smell salt on the breeze amid the scent of summer flowers and cedars.

He walked away from the water under the late stars, past a jumble of palaces and civil service buildings, three small

chapels, the Imperial Silk Guild's hall and workspaces, the playing fields, the goldsmiths' workshops, and the absurdly

ornate Baths of Marisian, towards the Excubitors' bar-racks near the bronze gates that led out to the City.

Young Leontes was waiting outside. Valerius gave the man precise instructions, memorized carefully some time ago in

preparation for this day.

His prefect withdrew into the barracks and Valerius heard, a moment later, the sounds of the Excubitors-his men for

the last ten years- readying themselves. He drew a deep breath, aware that his heart was pounding, aware of how

important it was to conceal any such intensities. He reminded himself to send a man running to inform Petrus, outside

the Imperial Precinct, that Jad's Holy Emperor Apius was dead, that the great game had begun. He offered silent

thanks to the god that his own sister-son was a better man, by so very much, than Apius's three nephews.

He saw Leontes and the Excubitors emerging from the barracks into the shadows of the pre-dawn hour. His features

were impassive, a soldier's.

It was to be a race day at the Hippodrome, and Astorgus of the Blues had won the last four races run at the previous

meeting. Fotius the sandal-maker had wagered money he couldn't afford to lose that the Blues' prin-cipal charioteer

would win the first three races today, making a lucky seven in a row. Fotius had dreamt of the number twelve the night

before, and three quadriga races meant Astorgus would drive twelve horses, and when the one and the two of twelve

were added together . . . why, they made a three again! If he hadn't seen a ghost on the roof of the colon-nade across

from his shop yesterday afternoon, Fotius would have felt entirely sure of his wager.

He had left his wife and son sleeping in their apartment above the shop and made his way cautiously-the streets of

the City were dangerous at night, as he had cause to know-towards the Hippodrome. It was long before sunrise; the

white moon, waning, was west towards the sea, float-ing above the towers and domes of the Imperial Precinct. Fotius

couldn't afford to pay for a seat every time he came to the racing, let alone one in the shaded parts of the stands. Only

ten thousand places were offered free to citizens on a race day. Those who couldn't buy, waited.

Two or three thousand others were already in the open square when he arrived under the looming dark masonry of the

Hippodrome. Just being here excited Fotius, driving away a lingering sleepiness. He hastily took a blue tunic from his

satchel and pulled it on in exchange for his ordinary brown one, modesty preserved by darkness and speed. He joined

a group of others similarly clad. He had made this one concession to his wife after a beating by Green partisans two

years before during a partic-ularly wild summer season: he wore unobtrusive garb until he reached the relative safety

of his fellow Blues. He greeted some of the others by name and was welcomed cheerfully. Someone passed him a cup

of cheap wine and he took a drink and passed it along.

A tipster walked by selling a list of the day's races and his predictions. Fotius couldn't read, so he wasn't tempted,

though he saw others handing over two copper folks for a sheet. Out in the middle of the Hippodrome

Forum a Holy Fool, half naked and stinking, had staked a place and was already haranguing the crowd about the evils

of racing. The man had a good voice and offered some entertainment... if you didn't stand down-wind. Street vendors

were already selling figs and Candaria melons and grilled lamb. Fotius had packed himself a wedge of cheese and

some of the bread ration from the day before. He was too excited to be hungry, in any case.

Not far away, near their own entrance, the Greens were clustered in similar numbers. Fotius didn't see Pappio the

glassblower among them, but he knew he'd be there. He'd made his bet with Pappio. As dawn approached, Fotius

began-as usual-to wonder if he'd been reckless with his wager. That spirit he'd seen, in broad daylight...

It was a mild night for summer, with a sea wind. It would be very hot later, when the racing began. The public baths

would be crowded at the midday interval, and the taverns.

Fotius, still thinking about his wager, wondered if he ought to have stopped at a cemetery on the way with a

curse-tablet against the princi-pal Green charioteer, Scortius. It was the boy, Scortius, who was likeliest to stand-or

drive-today between Astorgus and his seven straight tri-umphs. He'd bruised his shoulder in a fall in mid-session last

time, and hadn't been running when Astorgus won that magnificent four-m-a-row at the end of the day.

It offended Fotius that a dark-skinned, scarcely bearded upstart from the deserts of Ammuz-or wherever he was

from-could be such a threat to his beloved Astorgus. He ought to have bought the curse-tablet, he thought ruefully.

An apprentice in the linen guild had been knifed in a dockside caupona two days before and was newly buried: a

perfect chance for those with tablets to seek intercession at the grave of the violently dead. Everyone knew that made

the inscribed curses more powerful. Fotius decided he'd have only himself to blame if Astorgus failed today. He had

no idea how he'd pay Pappio if he lost. He chose not to think about that, or about his wife's reaction.

'Up the Blues!' he shouted suddenly. A score of men near him roused themselves to echo the cry.

'Up the Blues in their butts!' came the predictable reply from across the way.

'If there were any Greens with balls!' a man beside Fotius yelled back. Fotius laughed in the shadows. The white moon

was hidden now, over behind the Imperial Palaces. Dawn was coming, Jad in his chariot riding up in the east from his

dark journey under the world.

And then the mortal chariots would run, in the god's glorious name, all through a summer's day in the holy city of

Sarantium. And the Blues, Jad willing, would triumph over the stinking Greens, who were no better than barbarians or

pagan Bassanids or even Kindath, as everyone knew. 'Look,' someone said sharply, and pointed.

Fotius turned. He actually heard the marching footsteps before he saw the soldiers appear, shadows out of the

shadows, through the Bronze Gate at the western end of the square.

The Excubitors, hundreds of them, armed and armoured beneath their gold-and-red tunics, came into the Hippodrome

Forum from the Imper-ial Precinct. That was unusual enough at this hour to actually be terrify-ing. There had been two

small riots in the past year, when the more rabid partisans of the two colours had come to blows. Knives had

appeared, and staves, and the Excubitors had been summoned to help the Urban Prefect's men quell them. Quelling by

the Imperial Guard of Sarantium was not a mild process. A score of dead had strewn the stones afterwards both times.

Someone else said, 'Holy Jad, the pennons!' and Fotius saw, belatedly, that the Excubitors' banners were lowered on

their staffs. He felt a cold wind blow through his soul, from no direction in the world. The Emperor was dead.

Their father, the god's beloved, had left them. Sarantium was bereft, forsaken, open to enemies east and north and

west, malevolent and god-less. And with Jad's Emperor gone, who knew what daemons or spirits from the half-world

might now descend to wreak their havoc among helpless mortal men? Was this why he'd seen a ghost? Fotius

thought of plague coming again, of war, of famine. In that moment he pictured his child lying dead. Terror pushed him

to his knees on the cobbles of the square. He realized that he was weeping for the Emperor he had never seen except

as a distant, hieratic figure in the Imperial Box in the Hippodrome.

Then-an ordinary man living his days in the world of ordinary men-Fotius the sandalmaker understood that there

would be no racing today. That his reckless wager with the glassblower was nullified. Amid terror and grief, he felt a

shaft of relief like a bright spear of sunlight. Three races in a row? It had been a fool's wager, and he was quit of it.

There were many men kneeling now. The Holy Fool, seeing an oppor-tunity, had raised his voice in

denunciation-Fotius couldn't make him out over the babble of noise, so he didn't know what the man was decry-ing

now. Godlessness, license, a divided clergy, heretics with Heladikian beliefs. The usual litanies. One of the Excubitors

strode over to him and spoke quietly. The holy man ignored the soldier, as they usually did. But then Fotius,

astonished, saw the ascetic dealt a slash across the shins with a spear shaft. The ragged man let out a cry-more of

surprise than any-thing else-and fell to his knees, silent.

Over the wailing of the crowd another voice rose then, stern and assured, compelling attention. It helped that the

speaker was on horse-back, the only mounted man in the forum.

'Hear me! No harm will come to anyone here,' he said, 'if order is pre-served. You see our banners. They tell their tale.

Our glorious Emperor, Jad's most dearly beloved, his thrice-exalted regent upon earth, has left us to join the god in

glory behind the sun. There will be no chariots today, but the Hippodrome gates will be opened for you to take

comfort together while the Imperial Senate assembles to proclaim our new Emperor.'

A louder murmur of sound. There was no heir; everyone knew it. Fotius saw people streaming into the forum from all

directions. News of this sort would take no time at all to travel. He took a breath, struggling to hold down a renewed

panic. The Emperor was dead. There was no Emperor in Sarantium.

The mounted man again lifted a hand for stillness. He sat his horse straight as a spear, clad as his soldiers were. Only

the black horse and a border of silver on his overtunic marked his rank. No pretension here. A peasant from Trakesia,

a farmer's son come south as a lad, rising in the army ranks through hard work and no little courage in battle. Everyone

knew this tale. A man among men, that was the word on Valerius of Trakesia, Count of the Excubitors.

Who now said, 'There will be clerics in all the chapels and sanctuar-ies of the City, and others will join you here, to lead

mourning rites in the Hippodrome under Jad's sun.' He made the sign of the sun disk. 'Jad guard you, Count Valerius!'

someone cried. The man on the horse appeared not to hear. Bluff and burly, the Trakesian never courted the crowd as

others in the Imperial Precinct did. His Excubitors did their duties with efficiency and no evident partisanship, even

when men were crippled and sometimes killed by them. Greens and Blues were dealt with alike, and sometimes even

men of rank, for many of the wilder partisans were sons of aristocracy. No one even knew which faction Valerius

preferred, or what his beliefs were, in the mani-fold schisms of Jaddite faith, though there was the usual speculation.

His nephew was a patron of the Blues, that was known, but families often divided between the factions.

Fotius thought about going home to his wife and son after morning prayers at the little chapel he liked, near the

Mezaros Forum. There was a greyness in the eastern sky. He looked over at the Hippodrome and saw that the

Excubitors, as promised, were opening the gates.

He hesitated, but then he saw Pappio the glassblower standing a little apart from the other Greens, alone in an empty

space. He was crying, tears running into his beard. Fotius, moved by entirely unexpected emo-tion, walked over to the

other man. Pappio saw him and wiped at his eyes. Without a word spoken the two of them walked side by side into

the vastness of the Hippodrome as the god's sun rose from the forests and fields east of Sarantium's triple landward

walls and the day began.

Plautus Bonosus had never wanted to be a Senator. The appointment, in his fortieth year, had been an irritant more

than anything else. Among other things, there was an outrageously antiquated law that Senators, could not charge

more than six per cent on loans. Members of the 'Names'-the aristocratic families entered on the Imperial Records-

could charge eight, and everyone else, even pagans and the Kindath, were allowed ten. The numbers were doubled

for marine ventures, of course, but only a man possessed by a daemon of madness would venture moneys on a

merchant voyage at twelve per cent. Bonosus was hardly a madman, but he was a frustrated businessman, of late.

Senator of the Sarantine Empire. Such an honour! Even his wife's preen-ing irked him, so little did she understand the

way of things. The Senate did what the Emperor told it to do, or what his privy counsellors told it; no less, and

certainly no more. It was not a place of power or any legit-imate prestige. Perhaps once it had been, back in the west, in

the earliest days after the founding of Rhodias, when that mighty city first began to grow upon its hill and proud, calm

men-pagans though they might have been-debated the best way to shape a realm. But by the time Rhodias in Batiara

was the heart and hearth of a world-spanning Empire-four hundred years ago, now-the Senate there was already a

compliant tool of the Emperors in their tiered palace by the river.

Those fabled palace gardens were clotted with weeds now, strewn with rubble, the Great Palace sacked and charred

by fire a hundred years ago. Sad, shrunken Rhodias was home to a weak High Patriarch of Jad and conquering

barbarians from the north and east-the Antae, who still used bear grease in their hair, it was reliably reported.

And the Senate here in Sarantium now-the New Rhodias-was as hollow and complaisant as it had been in the western

Empire. It was possible, Bonosus thought grimly, as he looked around the Senate Cham-ber with its elaborate mosaics

on floor and walls and curving across the small, delicate dome, that those same savages who had looted Rhodias- or

others worse than them-might soon do the same here where the Emperors now dwelled, the west being lost and

sundered. A struggle for succession exposed any empire, considerably so.

Apius had reigned thirty-six years. It was hard to believe. Aged, tired, in the spell of his cheiromancers the last years,

he had refused to name an heir after his nephews had failed the test he'd set for them. The three of them were not even

a factor now-blind men could not sit the Golden Throne, nor those visibly maimed. Slit nostrils and gouged eyes

ensured that Apius's exiled sister-sons need not be considered by the Senators.

Bonosus shook his head, irked with himself. He was following lines of thought that suggested there was an actual

decision to be made by the fifty men in this chamber. In reality, they were simply going to ratify what-ever emerged

from the intrigues taking place even now within the Imper-ial Precinct. Gesius the Chancellor, or Adrastus, or Hilarinus,

Count of the Imperial Bedchamber, would come soon enough and inform them what they were to wisely decide. It was

a pretence, a piece of theatre.

And Flavius Daleinus had returned to Sarantium from his family estates across the straits to the south just two days

before. Most opportunely.

Bonosus had no quarrel with any of the Daleinoi, or none that he knew of, at any rate. This was good. He didn't much

care for them, but that was hardly the issue when a merchant of modestly distinguished lin-eage considered the

wealthiest and most illustrious family in the Empire.

Oradius, Master of the Senate, was signalling for the session to begin. He was having little success amid the tumult in

the chamber. Bonosus made his way to his bench and sat down, bowing formally to the Mas-ter's Seat. Others noticed

and followed his example. Eventually there was order. At which point Bonosus became aware of the mob at the doors.

The pounding was heavy, frightening, rocking the doors, and with it came a wild shouting of names. The citizens of

Sarantium appeared to have candidates of their own to propose to the distinguished Senators of the Empire.

It sounded as if there was fighting going on. What a surprise, Bonosus thought sardonically. As he watched,

fascinated, the ornately gilded doors of the Senate Chamber-part of the illusion that matters of moment tran-spired

here-actually began to buckle under the hammering from with-out. A splendid symbol, Bonosus thought: the doors

looked magnificent, but yielded under the least pressure. Someone farther along the bench let out an undignified

squeal. Plautus Bonosus, having a whimsical turn of mind, began to laugh.

The doors crashed open. The four guards fell backwards. A crowd of citizens-some slaves among them-thrust

raucously into the chamber. Then the vanguard stopped, overawed. Mosaics and gold and gems had their uses,

Bonosus thought, amused irony still claiming him. The torch-bearing image of Heladikos, riding his chariot towards

his father the Sun-an image of no little controversy in the Empire today-looked down from the dome.

No one in the Senate Chamber seemed able to form a response to the intrusion. The crowd milled about, those still

outside pushing forward, those in the chamber holding back, unsure of what they wanted to do now that they were

here. Both factions-Blues and Greens-were present. Bonosus looked at the Master. Oradius remained bolted to his

seat, mak-ing no motion at all. Suppressing his amusement, Bonosus gave an inward shrug and stood.

'People of Sarantium,' he said gravely, extending both hands, 'be wel-come! Your aid in our deliberations in this difficult

time will be invalu-able, I am certain. Will you honour us with those names that commend themselves to you as worthy

to sit the Golden Throne, before you with-draw and allow us to seek Jad's holy guidance in our weighty task?'

It took very little time, actually.

Bonosus had the Registrar of the Senate dutifully repeat and record each one of the shouted names. There were few

surprises. The obvious strate-goi, equally obvious nobility. Holders of Imperial Office. A chariot racer. Bonosus, his

outward manner sober and attentive, had this name recorded, as well: Astorgus of the Blues. He could laugh about

that afterwards.

Oradius, evident danger past, roused himself to a fulsome speech of gratitude in his rich, round tones. It seemed to go

over well enough, though Bonosus rather doubted the rabble in the chamber understood half of what was being said

to them in the archaic rhetoric. Oradius asked the guards to assist the Empire's loyal citizenry from the chamber. They

went-Blues, Greens, shopkeepers, apprentices, guildsmen, beggars, the many-raced sortings of a very large city.

Sarantines weren't especially rebellious, Bonosus thought wryly, so long as you gave them their free bread each day,

let them argue about religion, and provided their beloved dancers and actors and charioteers.

Charioteers, indeed. Jad's Most Holy Emperor Astorgus the Chario-teer. A wonderful image! He might whip the people

into line, Bonosus thought, briefly amusing himself again.

His flicker of initiative spent, Plautus Bonosus leaned sideways on his bench, propped on one hand, and waited for

the emissaries from the Imperial Precinct to come and tell the Senators what they were about to think.

It turned out to be a little more complex than that, however. Murder, even in Sarantium, could sometimes be a surprise.

In the better neighbourhoods of the City it had become fashionable in the previous generation to add enclosed

balconies to the second and third storeys of houses or apartments. Reaching out over the narrow streets, these sun

rooms now had the ironic, if predictable, effect of almost com-pletely blocking the sunlight, all in the name of status

and in order to afford the womenfolk of the better families a chance to view the street life through beaded curtains or

sometimes extravagant window openings, without themselves suffering the indignity of being observed.

Under the Emperor Apius, the Urban Prefect had passed an ordi-nance forbidding such structures to project more than

a certain distance from the building walls, and had followed this up by tearing down a number of solaria that violated

the new law. Needless to say, this did not happen on the streets where the genuinely wealthy and influential kept their

city homes. The power of one patrician to complain tended to be offset by the ability of another to bribe or intimidate.

Private mea-sures, of course, could not be entirely forestalled, and some regrettable incidents had unfortunately taken

place over the years, even in the best neighbourhoods.

In one such street, lined with uniformly handsome brick facades and with no shortage of lanterns set in the exterior

walls to offer expensive light-ing at night, a man now sits in a flagrantly oversized solarium, alternately watching the

street below and the exquisitely slow, graceful movements of a woman as she plaits and coils her hair in the bedroom

behind him.

Her lack of self-consciousness, he thinks, is an honour of sorts extended to him. Sitting unclothed on the edge of the

bed, she displays her body in a sequence of curves and recesses: uplifted arm, smooth hol-low of arm, honey-coloured

amplitude of breast and hip, and the lightly downed place between her thighs where he has been welcomed in the

night just past.

The night a messenger came to report an Emperor dead.

As it happens, he is wrong about one thing: her absorbed, unembar-rassed nakedness has more to do with

self-directed ease than any partic-ular emotion or feeling associated with him at this moment. She is not, after all,

unused to having her body seen by men. He knows this, but prefers, at times, to forget it.

He watches her, smiling slightly. He has a smooth-shaven, round face with a soft chin and grey, observant eyes. Not a

handsome or an arrest-ing man, he projects a genial, uncontentious, open manner. This is, of course, useful.

Her dark brown hair, he notes, has become tinged with red through the course of the summer. He wonders when she's

had occasion to be outside enough for that to happen, then realizes the colour might be arti-ficial. He doesn't ask. He is

not inclined to probe the details of what she does when they are not together in this apartment he has bought for her

on a carefully chosen street.

That reminds him of why he is here just now. He looks away from the woman on the bed-her name is Aliana-and back

out through the beaded curtains over the street. Some movement, for the morning is advanced and the news will have

run through Sarantium by now.

The doorway he is watching remains closed. There are two guards out-side it, but there always are. He knows the

names of these two, and the others, and their backgrounds. Details of this sort can sometimes matter. Indeed, they

tend to matter. He is careful in such things, and less genial than might appear to the unsubtle.

A man had entered through that doorway, his bearing urgent with tidings, just before sunrise. He had watched this by

the light of the exterior torches, and had noted the livery. He had smiled then. Gesius the Chancellor had chosen to

make his move. The game was begun, indeed. The man in the solarium expects to win it but is experienced enough in

the ways of power in the world, already, to know that he might not. His name is Petrus.

'You are tired of me,' the woman says, ending a silence. Her voice is low, amused. The careful movements of her arms,

attending to her hair, do not cease. 'Alas, the day has come.'

'That day will never come,' the man says calmly, also amused. This is a game they play, from within the entirely

improbable certainty of their rela-tionship. He does not turn from watching the doorway now, however.

'I will be on the street again, at the mercy of the factions. A toy for the wildest partisans with their barbarian ways. A

cast-aside actress, disgraced and abandoned, past my best years.'

She was twenty in the year when the Emperor Apius died. The man has seen thirty-one summers; not young, but it

was said of him-before and after that year-that he was one of those who had never been young.

'I'd give it two days,' he murmurs, 'before some infatuated scion of the Names, or a rising merchant in silk or Ispahani

spice won your fickle heart with jewellery and a private bathhouse.'

'A private bathhouse,' she agrees, 'would be a considerable lure.'

He glances over, smiling. She'd known he would, and has managed, not at all by chance, to be posed in profile, both

arms uplifted in her hair, her head turned towards him, dark eyes wide. She has been on the stage since she was seven

years old. She holds the pose a moment, then laughs.

The soft-featured man, clad only in a dove-grey tunic with no under-garments in the aftermath of lovemaking, shakes

his head. His own sand-coloured hair is thinning a little but not yet grey. 'Our beloved Emperor is dead, no heir in

sight, Sarantium in mortal peril, and you idly torment a grieving and troubled man.'

'May I come and do it some more?' she asks.

She sees him actually hesitate. That surprises and even excites her, in truth: a measure of his need of her, that even on

this morning.

But in that instant there comes a sequence of sounds from the street below. A lock turning, a heavy door opening and

closing, hurried voices, too loud, and then another, flat with command. The man by the beaded curtain turns quickly

and looks out again.

The woman pauses then, weighing many things at this moment in her life. But the real decision, in truth, has been

made some time ago. She trusts him, and herself, amazingly. She drapes her body-a kind of defend-ing in the bed linen

before saying to his now-intent profile, from which the customary genial expression has entirely gone, What is he

wearing?'

He ought not to have been, the man will decide much later, nearly so surprised by the question and what she-very

deliberately-revealed with it. Her attraction for him, from the beginning, has resided at least as much in wit and

perception as in her beauty and the gifts that drew Saran-tines to the theatre every night she performed, alternately

aroused and then driven to shouts of laughter and applause.

He is astonished, though, and surprise is rare for him. He is not a man accustomed to allowing things to disconcert

him. This happens to be one matter he has not confided in her, however. And, as it turns out, what the silver-haired

man in the still-shaded street has elected to wear as he steps from his home into the view of the world, on a morning

fraught with magnitude, matters very much.

Petrus looks back at the woman. Even now he turns away from the street to her, and both of them will remember that,

after. He sees that she's covered herself, that she is a little bit afraid, though would surely deny it. Very little escapes

him. He is moved, both by the implications of her voicing the question and by the presence of her fear.

'You knew?' he asks quietly.

'You were extremely specific about this apartment,' she murmurs, 'the requirement of a solarium over this particular

street. It was not hard to note which doorways could be watched from here. And the theatre or the Blues' banqueting

hall are sources of information on Imperial maneuverings as much as the palaces or the barracks are. What is he

wearing, Petrus?'

She has a habit of lowering her voice for emphasis, not raising it: train-ing on the stage. It is very effective. Many

things about her are. He looks out again, and down, through the screening curtain at the cluster of men before the one

doorway that matters.

'White,' he says, and pauses before adding softly, no more than a breath of his own,'bordered, shoulder to knee, with

purple.'

'Ah,' she says. And rises then, bringing the bedsheet to cover herself as she walks towards him, trailing it behind her.

She is not tall but moves as if she were. 'He wears porphyry. This morning. And so?'

'And so,' he echoes. But not as a question.

Reaching through the beads of the curtain with one hand, he makes a brief, utterly unexceptionable sign of the sun

disk for the benefit of the men who have been waiting in the street-level apartment across the way for a long time now.

He waits only to see the sign returned from a small, iron-barred guard's portal and then he rises to cross towards the

small, quite magnificent woman in the space between room and solarium.

'What happens, Petrus?' she asks. 'What happens now?'

He is not a physically impressive man, which makes the sense of com-posed mastery he can display all the more

impressive—and unsettling— at times.

'Idle torment was offered,' he murmurs. 'Was it not? We have some little leisure now.'

She hesitates, then smiles, and the bedsheet, briefly a garment, slips to the floor.

There is a very great tumult in the street below not long after. Scream-ing, desperately wild shouts, running footsteps.

They do not leave the bed this time. At one point, in the midst of lovemaking, he reminds her, a whisper at one ear, of

a promise made a little more than a year ago. She has remembered it, of course, but has never quite let herself believe

it. Today—this morning—taking his lips with her own, his body within hers again, thinking of an Imperial death in the

night just past, and another death now, and the uttermost unlikeliness of love, she does. She actually does believe

him now.

Nothing has ever frightened her more, and this is a woman who has already lived a life, young as she is, where great

fear has been known and appropriate. But what she says to him, a little later, when space to speak returns to them, as

movement and the conjoined spasms pass, is: 'Remember, Petrus. A private bath, cold and hot water, with steam, or I

find myself a spice merchant who knows how to treat a high-born lady.'

All he'd ever wanted to do was race horses.

From first awareness of being in the world, it seemed to him, his desire had been to move among horses, watch them

canter, walk, run; talk to them, talk about them, and about chariots and drivers all the god's day and into starlight. He

wanted to tend them, feed them, help them into life, train them to harness, reins, whip, chariot, noise of crowd. And

then—by Jad's grace, and in honour of Heladikos, the god's gallant son who died in his chariot bringing fire to men—

stand in his own quadriga behind four of them, leaning far forward over their tails, reins wrapped about his body lest

they slip through sweaty fingers, knife in belt for a desperate cutting free if he fell, and urge them on to speeds and a

taut grace in the turnings that no other man could even imagine.

But hippodromes and chariots were in the wider world and of the world, and nothing in the Sarantine Empire—not

even worship of the god—was clean and uncomplicated. It had even become dangerous here in the City to speak too

easily of Heladikos. Some years ago the High Patriarch in what remained of ruined Rhodias and the Eastern Patriarch

here in Sarantium had issued a rare joint Pronouncement that Holyjad, the god in the Sun and behind the Sun, had no

born children, mortal or otherwise—that all men were, in spirit, the sons of the god. That Jad's essence was above and

beyond propagation. That to worship, or even hon-our the idea of a begotten son was paganism, assailing the pure

divinity of the god.

But how else, clerics back in Soriyya and elsewhere had preached in opposition, had the ineffable, blindingly bright

Golden Lord of Worlds made himself accessible to lowly mankind? If Jad loved his mortal cre-ation, the sons of his

spirit, did it not hold that he would embody a part of himself in mortal guise, to seal the covenant of that love? And

that seal was Heladikos, the Charioteer, his child.

Then there were the Antae, who had conquered in Batiara and accepted the worship of Jad-embracing Heladikos with

him, but as a demi-god himself, not merely a mortal child. Barbaric paganism, the orthodox clerics now

thundered-except those who lived in Batiara under the Antae. And since the High Patriarch himself lived there at their

sufferance in Rhodias, the fulminations against Heladikian heresies were muted in the west.

But here in Sarantium issues of faith were endlessly debated every-where, in dockfront cauponae, whorehouses,

cookshops, the Hippo-drome, the theatres. You couldn't buy a brooch to pin your cloak without hearing the vendor's

views on Heladikos or the proper liturgy for the sunrise invocations.

There were too many in the Empire-and especially in the City itself-who had thought and worshipped in their own way

for too long for the Patriarchs and clerics to persecute aggressively, but the signs of a deepening division were

everywhere, and unrest was always present.

In Soriyya, to the south between desert and sea, where Jaddites dwelt perilously near to the Bassanid frontier, and

among the Kindath and the grimly silent, nomadic peoples of Ammuz and the deserts beyond, whose faith was

fragmented from tribe to tribe and inexplicable, shrines to Heladikos were as common as sanctuaries or chapels built

for the god. The courage of the son, his willingness to sacrifice, were virtues exalted by clerics and secular leaders

both in lands bordering enemies. The City, behind its massive triple walls and the guarding sea, could afford to think

differently, they said in the desert lands. And Rhodias in the far-off west had long since been sacked, so what true

guidance could its High Patri-arch offer now?

Scortius of Soriyya, youngest lead racer ever to ride for the Greens of Sarantium, who only wanted to drive a chariot

and think of nothing but speed and stallions, prayed to Heladikos and his golden chariot in the silence of his soul,

being a contained, private young man-half a son of the desert himself. How, he had decided in childhood, could any

chari-oteer do otherwise than honour the Charioteer? Indeed, he was inwardly of the belief-untutored though he might

be in such matters-that those he raced against who followed the Patriarchal Pronouncement and denied the god's son

were cutting themselves off from a vital source of inter-vention when they wheeled through the arches onto the

dangerous, prov-ing sands of the Hippodrome before eighty thousand screaming citizens.

Their problem, not his.

He was nineteen years old, riding First Chariot for the Greens in the largest stadium in the world, and he had a genuine

chance to be the first rider since Ormaez the Esperanan to win his hundred in the City before his twentieth birthday, at

the end of the summer.

But the Emperor was dead. There would be no racing today, and for the god knew how many days during the

mourning rites. There were twenty thousand people or more in the Hippodrome this morning, spilling out onto the

track, but they were murmuring anxiously among themselves, or listening to yellow-robed clerics intone the liturgy,

not watching the chariots wheeled out in the Procession. He'd lost half a race day last week to a shoulder injury, and

now today was gone, and next week? The week after?

Scortius knew he ought not to be so concerned with his own affairs at a time such as this. The clerics-whether

Heladikian or Orthodox- would all castigate him for it. On some things the religious agreed.

He saw men weeping in the stands and on the track, others gesturing too broadly, speaking too loudly, fear in their

eyes. He had seen that fear when the chariots were running, in other drivers' faces. He couldn't say he had ever felt it

himself, except when the Bassanid armies had come raiding across the sands and, standing on their city ramparts, he

had looked up and seen his father's eyes. They had surrendered that time, lost their city, their homes-only to regain

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GuyGavrielKay SAILINGTOSARANTIUM ValeriustheTrakesianhasgreatambition.RumoredtoberesponsiblefortheascensionofthepreviousEmperor,hisuncle,amidfireandblood,ValeriushimselfhasnowrisentotheGoldenThroneofthevastempireruledbythefabledcity,Sarantium. Valeriushasavisiontomatchhisambition:agli...

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Guy Gavriel Kay - Sarantine 1 - Sailing to Sarantium

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