The Sarantine Mosaic (140 page)

assist a recovering patient in keeping a calm, unexcited demeanour.

And there was wine.
And
,
Rustem noticed, belatedly, in the crowded room, his son Shaski was there, sitting on the lap of a fourth dancer in the corner, watching it all and laughing.

‘Hello, Papa!' his son said, not in the least disconcerted, as Rustem stood in the doorway and glared in an allinclusive fashion around the room.

‘Oh, dear. He's upset. Everyone, out!' Scortius said from the bed. He handed his wine cup to one of the women. ‘Take this. Someone take the boy to his mother. Don't forget your clothes, Taleira. The doctor's working very hard for all of us and we don't want him taxed unduly. We want him to stay well, don't we?'

There was laughter and a flurry of movement. The man in the bed grinned. A
wretched
patient, in every possible way. But Rustem had seen what he'd done on the Hippodrome sands at the beginning of the week before, and had known better than anyone else the will that had been required, and it was impossible to deny the admiration he felt. He didn't
want
to deny it, actually.

Besides which, the people were going out.

‘Shirin, stay, if you will. I have a question or two. Doctor, is it all right if one friend remains? This is a visit that honours me, and I haven't had a chance to speak to her privately yet. I believe you've met her. This is Shirin of the Greens. Didn't the mosaicists bring you to a wedding feast in her home?'

‘My first day, yes,' Rustem said. He bowed to the dark-haired woman, who was remarkably attractive in a small-boned fashion. Her scent was quite distracting. The room emptied, with one of the men carrying Shaski on his back. The dancer rose from her seat to greet him.

She smiled. ‘I remember you very well, doctor. You had a servant killed by some of our younger Greens.'

Rustem nodded. ‘It is true. With so many deaths since, I'm surprised you remember it.'

She shrugged. ‘Bonosus's son was involved. Not a trivial thing.'

Rustem nodded a second time and crossed to his patient. The woman sat down quietly. Scortius had already drawn the bedsheet back, exposing his muscular, bandaged torso. Shirin of the Greens smiled.

‘How exciting,' she said, eyes wide.

Rustem snorted, amused in spite of himself. Then he paid attention to what he was doing, unwrapping the layers of dressing to expose the wound beneath. Scortius lay on his right side, facing the woman. She'd have to stand to see the black and purple skin around the twice-over fracture and the deep knife wound.

Rustem set about cleansing the wound again and then applying his salves. No need for any further drainage. The challenge was what it had always been, but more so: to treat broken bones and a stab wound in the same location. He was quietly pleased with what he saw, though he wouldn't have dreamed of letting Scortius see that. A hint that the doctor was content and the man would undoubtedly be out the door and on the race-track, or prowling the night streets to one bedroom or another.

They had told him about this one's nocturnal pursuits.

‘You said you had questions,' Shirin murmured. ‘Or is the doctor … ?'

‘My doctor is private as a hermit on a crag. I have no secrets from him.'

‘Except when you have plans to depart from your sick-room without leave,' Rustem murmured, bathing the man's skin.

‘Well, yes, there was that. But otherwise, you know all. You were … even under the stands, I recall, just before the race.'

His tone had changed. Rustem caught it. He remembered that sequence of moments. Thenaïs with her blade, the Green driver coming just in time.

‘Oh? What happened under the stands?' Shirin was asking, fluttering her eyelashes at the two of them. ‘You
must
tell!'

‘Crescens declared his undying love for me and then hammered me half to my grave when I told him I preferred you. Hadn't you heard?'

She laughed. ‘No. Come, what happened?'

‘Various things.' The chariot-driver hesitated. Rustem could feel the man's heartbeat. He said nothing. ‘Tell me,' Scortius murmured, ‘Cleander Bonosus, is he still in trouble with his father? Do you know?' Shirin blinked. Clearly not the question she'd expected. ‘He did me a great service when I was hurt,' Scortius added. ‘Brought me to the doctor.'

The man was being subtle. This wasn't, Rustem surmised, the real question he wanted answered. And because he
had
been under the Hippodrome stands he had an idea what that real question was. Something occurred to him, rather too late.

Scortius was undeniably clever. He was also clearly unaware of something. Rustem had certainly never brought it up, and it seemed evident no one else had. It might be part of the city's talk, or forgotten in a time of uttermost turbulence, but it hadn't penetrated this room.

The Greens' dancer said, ‘The boy? I really don't know. I suspect all's changed there, after what happened in their house.'

A heartbeat. Rustem felt it, and winced. He'd been right, after all.

‘What happened in their house?' Scortius asked.

She told him.

Thinking back, later, Rustem was impressed, yet again, with the strength of will the wounded man displayed, continuing to speak, expressing conventional, polite sorrow at tidings of a young woman's untimely, self-inflicted death. But Rustem had had his hands on the man's body, and he could feel the impact of the woman's words. Caught breath, then measured, careful breath, a tremor, involuntary, and the pounding heart.

Taking pity, Rustem finished his dressing change more swiftly than usual (he could do it again, later) and reached for the tray of medications by the bed. ‘I have to give you something for sleep now, as usual,' he lied. ‘You'll be unable to entertain the lady in any proper fashion.'

Shirin of the Greens, by all evidence unaware of anything untoward having just transpired, took her cue like an actress and rose to go. She stopped by the bedside and bent down to kiss the patient on the forehead. ‘He never entertains any of us in a proper fashion, doctor.' She straightened and smiled. ‘I'll be back, my dear. Rest, to be ready for me.' She turned and went out.

He looked at his patient and, wordlessly, poured two full measures of his preferred sedative.

Scortius stared up at him from his pillow. His eyes were dark, his face quite white now. He accepted the mixture, both doses, without protest.

‘Thank you,' he said, after a moment. Rustem nodded.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, surprising himself.

Scortius turned his face to the wall.

Rustem reclaimed his walking stick and went out, closing the door behind him, to leave the man his privacy.

He had his speculations but he quelled them. Whatever the man in the bed had said before about his doctor knowing all, it wasn't the truth, ought not to
be
the truth.

It occurred to him, going down the corridor, that they really needed to assert more control over Shaski's movements here. It was not at all proper for a child, the doctor's son, to be part of the disruption in patients' rooms.

He would have to speak with Katyun about it, among other things. It was time for a midday meal, but he paused to look for Shaski in his put-together treatment rooms in the next building. The boy was more often there than anywhere else.

He wasn't now. Someone else was. Rustem recognized the Rhodian artisan—not the young one who'd saved his life in the streets, but the other, more senior fellow who had dressed them in white and taken them all to a wedding feast.

The man—Crispinus was his name, something like that—looked unwell, but not in a fashion likely to elicit Rustem's sympathy. Men who drank themselves into illness, especially this early in the day, had only themselves to blame for the consequences.

‘Good day, doctor,' the artisan said, clearly enough. He stood up from the table he'd been sitting upon. No visible unsteadiness. ‘Am I intruding?'

‘Not at all,' Rustem said. ‘How may I … ?'

‘I came to visit Scortius, thought I'd confirm with his doctor that it was all right.'

Well, wine-smitten or not, at least
this
man knew the protocol in matters of this sort. Rustem nodded briskly. ‘I wish there were more like you. There was just a party with dancers in his room, and wine.'

The Rhodian—
Crispin
was the name, actually— smiled faintly. There was a line of strain above his eyes and a degree of unhealthy pallor that suggested that he'd been drinking for longer than this morning. It didn't square with what Rustem remembered of the decisive
man he'd encountered that first day here, but this wasn't his patient and he made no comment.

‘Who would drink wine this early in the day?' the Rhodian said wryly. He rubbed his forehead. ‘Dancers entertaining him? That sounds like Scortius. You threw them out?'

Rustem had to smile. ‘Does that sound like me?'

‘From what I've heard, yes.' The Rhodian was another clever man, Rustem decided. He kept a hand on the table, supporting himself.

‘I gave him a soporific just now, he'll sleep awhile. You'd do better to come back later in the afternoon.'

‘I'll do that, then.' The man pushed himself away from the table and swayed. His expression was rueful. ‘Sorry. I've been indulging … a sorrow.'

‘May I help?' Rustem said politely.

‘I wish, doctor. No. Actually … I'm leaving. Day after next. Sailing west.'

‘Oh. Going home? No further employment here for you?'

‘You might say that,' the artisan said after a moment.

‘Well … a safe journey to you.' He really didn't know the man. The Rhodian nodded his head and walked steadily past Rustem and out the door. Rustem turned to follow him. The man stopped in the hallway.

‘I was given your name, you know. Before I left home. I'm … sorry we never had a chance to meet.'

‘Given my name?' Rustem echoed, bemused. ‘How?'

‘A … friend. Too complicated to explain. Oh … there's something in there for you, by the way. One of the messenger boys brought it while I was waiting. Apparently left at the gate.' He gestured towards the innermost of the two rooms. An object wrapped in cloth stood on the examining table there.

‘Thank you,' Rustem said.

The Rhodian went down the short corridor and out. The sunlight, Rustem thought, was probably an affliction for him just now.
Indulging a sorrow.
Not his patient. They couldn't
all
be his concern.

He was interesting, though. Another stranger, observing the Sarantines. A man he might have liked to know better, actually. Leaving now. It wouldn't happen. Odd, about being given Rustem's name. Rustem walked into his inner room. On the table beside the parcel he saw a note, his name on it.

First, he unwrapped the cloth from the object on the table. And then, entirely overcome, he sat down on a stool and stood staring at it.

There was no one about. He was entirely alone, looking.

Eventually he stood up and took the note. It had a seal, which he broke. He unfolded and read, and then he sat down again.

With gratitude
,
the brief inscription read,
this exemplar of all things that must bend or they break.

He sat there for a very long time, becoming aware of how rare it was for him to be alone now, how seldom he had this silence or calm. He stared at the golden rose on the table, long and slim as the living flower might have been, golden petals unfurling, the very last one, at the top, fully opened, rubies in all of them.

He knew then, with that frightening, otherworldly certainty that Shaski seemed to have, that he would never see her again.

HE TOOK THE ROSE
with him (wrapped and concealed) when he and his family eventually sailed, a very long way west to a land where such objects of uttermost craft and art were, as yet, unknown.

It was a place where competent physicians were urgently needed, and could rise swiftly in a society that was in the process of defining itself. His unusual domestic arrangements were tolerated on that far frontier, but he was advised, early, to change his faith. He did so, adopting the god of the sun in the manner that Jad was worshipped in Esperana. He had responsibilities, after all: two wives, two children (then a third and then a fourth, both boys, not long after they settled), and four former soldiers from the east who had changed their lives to come with them. Two of their new household women from Sarantium had, unexpectedly, also taken ship with his family. And he had an eldest child, a son, who was best made to appear—they all understood this—to fit in, as much as could be, lest he be singled out and danger come to him thereby.

One bent sometimes, thought Rustem, so as not to be broken by the winds of the world, whether of desert or sea or these wide, rolling grasslands in the farthest west.

All of his children and one of his wives turned out to like horses, very much. His longtime soldier friend Vinaszh—who married and had a family of his own but continued to entwine his destiny with theirs—turned out to have an eye for choosing and breeding them. He was a good businessman. So was Rustem, to his own surprise. He ended his days in comfort, a rancher as much as a doctor.

He gave the rose to his daughter when she married.

He kept the note, though, all his life.

CHAPTER XVI

H
e had known the last days here would be difficult, he hadn't fully grasped just how much so. For one thing, from the time he came down from the dome the second time, late at night, after returning from the Imperial wedding in the palace and working by lantern-light to finish an image of his daughters that would be torn down almost as soon as it had set, Crispin had spent very little time entirely sober.