The Sarantine Mosaic (65 page)

Was there a way to return? A course to sail between the rocks of violent rebellion at home and those of the east, where an army was almost certainly being readied to reclaim Rhodias? And if there
was
such a course, if it existed in the god's world, was she wise enough to find it? And would they let her live so long?

She heard a footfall on the deck behind her. Her women were below, both of them violently unwell at sea. She had six of her own guards here. Only six to go so far, and not Pharos, the silent one she'd so dearly wanted by her side—but he was
always
by her side, and
the deception would have failed had he not remained in the palace.

It wasn't one of the guards who approached now, nor the ship's captain, who was being courteous and deferential in exactly proper measure. It was the other man, the one she had summoned to the palace to help her achieve this flight, the one who had said why Pharos would have to remain in Varena. She remembered weeping then.

She turned her head and looked at him. Middling height, long grey-white hair and beard, the rugged features and deep-set blue eyes, the ashwood staff he carried. He was a pagan. He would have to be, she thought, to be what else he was.

‘The breeze is a good one, they tell me,' said Zoticus the alchemist. He had a deep, slow voice. ‘It will carry us swiftly to Megarium, my lady.'

‘And you will leave me there?'

Blunt, but she had little choice. She had needs, desperate ones; could not make traveller's talk just now. Everything, everyone who
might
be a tool needed to be
made
a tool, if she could manage it.

The craggy-faced alchemist came to the rail, standing a diffident distance apart from her. He shivered and wrapped himself in his cloak before nodding his head. ‘I am sorry, my lady. As I said at the outset, I have matters that must be attended to in Sauradia. I am grateful for this passage. Unless the wind gets wilder, in which case my gratitude will be tempered by my stomach.' He smiled at her.

She did not return it. She could have her soldiers bind him, deny him departure at Megarium; she doubted the Emperor's seamen would interfere. But what was the point of doing that? She could bind the man with ropes, but not his heart and mind to her, and that was what she needed from him. From someone.

‘Not so grateful as to stay by your queen who needs you?' She did not veil her reproach. He had been a man inclined to women in his youth, she remembered learning once. She wondered if she might think of something yet, to keep him. Would her maidenhead be a lure? He might have bedded virgins but would never have slept with a queen before, she thought bitterly. There was a pain in her, watching the grey coastline recede and merge into the grey sea. They would be in the sanctuary by now, back home, beginning her father's rites under the candles and the lanterns.

The alchemist did not avert his eyes, though her own gaze was icy cold. Was this the first of the prices she was paying, and would continue to pay, Gisel thought … that a queen adrift on another ruler's boat, with only a handful of soldiers by her and her throne left behind for others to claim, could not compel proper homage or duty any more?

Or was it just the man? There was no disrespect in him, to be fair, only a frank directness. He said gravely, ‘I have served you, Majesty, in all ways I can here. I am an old man, Sarantium is very far. I have no powers that would aid you there.'

‘You have wisdom, secret arts, and loyalty … I still believe.'

‘And are right to believe that last. I have as little desire as you, my lady, to see Batiara plunged into war again.'

She pushed at a whipping strand of hair. The wind was raw on her face. She ignored it. ‘You understand that is why I am here? Not my own escape? This is no … escape.'

‘I understand,' said Zoticus.

‘It isn't simply a question of who rules in Varena among us, it is Sarantium that matters.
None
of them in the palace has the least understanding of that.'

‘I know it,' said Zoticus. ‘They will destroy each other and lie open to the east.' He hesitated. ‘May I ask what you hope to achieve in Sarantium? You spoke of returning home … how would you, without an army?'

A hard question. She didn't know the answer. She said, ‘There are armies and … armies. There are different levels of subjugation. You know what Rhodias is now. You know what … we did to it when we conquered. It is possible I can act so that Varena and the rest of the peninsula is not ruined the same way.' She hesitated. ‘I might even stop them from coming. Somehow.'

He did not smile, or dismiss that. He said only, ‘Somehow. But then you would not return either, would you?'

She had thought of that, too. ‘Perhaps. I would pay that price, I suppose. Alchemist, if I knew all paths to what will be, I'd not have asked for counsel. Stay by me. You know what I am trying to save.'

He bowed then, but ignored the renewed request. ‘I do know, my lady. I was honoured, and remain so, that you summoned me.'

Ten days ago, that had been. She'd had him brought to her on the easy pretext that he was once more to offer his spells of the half-world to help ease the souls of the dead in the plague mound—and her father's spirit, too, with the memorial day approaching. He had first come to the palace more than a year before, when the mound was raised.

She remembered him from that time: a man not young but measured and observant, a manner that reassured. No boasting, no promised miracles. His paganism meant little to her. The Antae had been pagans themselves, not so long ago, in the dark forests of Sauradia and the bloodsown fields beside.

It was said that Zoticus spoke with the spirits of the dead. That was why she had summoned him two summers
ago. It had been a time of universal fear and pain: plague, a savage Inici incursion in the wake of it, a brief, bloody civil war when her father died. Healing had been desperately needed, and comfort wherever it could be found.

Gisel had invoked every form of aid she could those first days on the throne, to quiet the living and the dead. She had ordered this man to add his voice to those that were to calm the spirits in the burial mound behind the sanctuary. He had joined the cheiromancers, with their tall, inscribed hats and chicken entrails, in the yard one sundown after the clerics had spoken their prayers and had gone piously within. She didn't know what he had done or said there, but it had been reported that he was the last to leave the yard under the risen moons.

She had thought of him again ten days ago, after Pharos had brought her tidings that were terrifying but not, in truth, entirely unexpected. The alchemist came, was admitted, bowed formally, stood leaning on his staff. They had been alone, save for Pharos.

She had worn her crown, which she rarely did in private. It had seemed important somehow. She was the queen. She was still the queen. She could remember her own first words; imagined, on the deck of the ship, that he could as well.

‘They are to kill me in the sanctuary,' she had said, ‘on the day after Dykania, when we honour my father there. It is decided, by Eudric and Agila and Kerdas, the snake. All of them together, after all. I never thought they would join. They are to rule as a triumvirate, I am told, once I am gone. They will say I have been treating with the Inicii.'

‘A poor lie,' Zoticus had said. He had been very calm, the blue eyes mild and alert above the grey beard. It could surprise no one in Varena, she knew, that there were threats on her life.

‘It is meant to be weak. A pretext, no more. You understand what will follow?'

‘You want me to hazard a guess? I'd say Eudric will have the others out of the way within a year.'

She shrugged. ‘Possibly. Don't underestimate Kerdas, but it hardly matters.'

‘Ah,' he had said then, softly. A shrewd man. ‘Valerius?'

‘Of course, Valerius. Valerius and Sarantium. With our people divided and brutalizing each other in civil war, what will stop him, think you?'

‘A few things might,' he'd said gravely, ‘eventually. But not at first, no. The Strategos, whatever his name is, would be here by summer.'

‘Leontes. Yes. By summer. I must live, must stop this. I do not want Batiara to fall, I do not want it drenched in blood again.'

‘No man or woman could want that last, Majesty.'

‘Then you will help me,' she'd said. She was being dangerously frank, had already decided she had next to no choice. ‘There is no one in this court I trust. I cannot arrest all three of them, they each walk with a small army wherever they go. If I name any one of them my betrothed, the others will be in open revolt the next day.'

‘And you would be negated, rendered nothing at all, the moment you declared it. They would kill each other in the streets of every city and in the fields outside all walls.'

She had looked at him, heartsick and afraid, trying not to hope too much. ‘You understand this, then?'

‘Of course I do,' he had said, and smiled at her. ‘You should have been a man, my lady, the king we need … though making us all the poorer in another way, of course.'

It was flattery. A man with a woman. She had no time for it. ‘How do I get away?' she'd said bluntly. ‘I must get away and survive the leaving so I can return. Help me.'

He had bowed, again. ‘I am honoured,' he'd said, had to say. And then: ‘Where, my lady?'

‘Sarantium,' she had said baldly. ‘There is a ship.'

And she'd seen that she'd surprised him after all. Had felt some small pleasure then, amid the bone-deep anxiety that walked with her and within her as a shadow or half-world spirit through all the nights and days.

She'd asked if he could kill people for her. Had asked it once before, when they had raised the plague mound. It had been a casual question then, for information. It wasn't this time, but his answer had been much the same.

‘With a blade, of course, though I have little skill. With poisons, but no more readily than many people you might summon. Alchemy transmutes things, my lady, it does not pretend to the powers the charlatans and false cheiromancers claim.'

‘Death,' she had said, ‘is a transmutation of life, is it not?'

She remembered his smile, the blue eyes resting on her face, unexpectedly tender. He would have been a handsome man once, she thought; indeed, he still was. It came to her that the alchemist was troubled in his own right, bearing some burden. She could see it but had no room to acknowledge the fact in any way. Who lived in Jad's world without griefs?

He'd said, ‘It may be seen that way, or otherwise, my lady. It may be seen as the same journey in a different cloak. You need,' he had murmured, changing tone, ‘at least a day and a night away from these walls before they discover you are gone, if you are to reach Mylasia safely. My lady, that requires that someone you trust pretend to be the queen on the day of the ceremony.'

He was clever. She needed him to be. He went on. She listened.

She would be able to leave the city in a disguise on the second night of Dykania when the gates were open for the festival. The queen could wear the heavily veiled white of full Rhodian mourning in the sanctuary, which would allow someone to take her place. She could declare an intention to withdraw from public view into her private chambers the day before the consecration, to pray for her father's soul. Her guards—a select, small number of them—could wait outside the walls and meet her on the road. One or two of her women could wait with them, he said. Indeed, she would need ladies-in-waiting with her, would she not? Two other guards could, in festival guise themselves, pass out through the walls with her amid the night chaos of Dykania and join the others in the countryside. They could even meet, he said, at his own farmhouse, if that was acceptable to her. Then they would have to ride like fury for Mylasia. It could be done in a night and a day and an evening. Half a dozen guards would keep her safe on the road. Could she ride like that, he asked?

She could. She was Antae. Had been in the saddle since girlhood.

Not so long ago.

She made him repeat the plan, adding details, going step by step. She changed some things, interpolated others. Had to, he couldn't know the palace routines well enough. She added a female complaint as a further excuse for her withdrawal before the consecration. There were ancient fears about a woman's blood among the Antae. No one would intrude.

She had Pharos pour wine for the alchemist and let him sit while she considered, finally, who might pose as herself. A terrible question. Who could do it? Who
would? Neither she nor the grey-bearded man sipping at his wine said so, but each of them knew it was almost certain that woman would die.

There was only one name, really, in the end. Gisel had thought she might weep, then, thinking of Anissa who had nursed her, but she did not. Then Zoticus, looking at Pharos, had murmured, ‘He, too, will have to stay behind, to guard the woman disguised as you. Even I know he never leaves you.'

It was Pharos who had reported the triple-headed plot to her. He looked at the other man now from by the doorway, shook his head once, decisively, and moved to stand next to Gisel. The shelter at her side. Shield. All her life. She looked up at him, turned back to the alchemist, opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it, as around a pain, without speaking.

It was true, what the old man said. It was agonizingly true. Pharos
never
left her, or the doorway to her chambers if she was within. He had to be seen in the palace and then the sanctuary while she fled, in order that she
could
flee. She lifted one hand then and laid it upon the muscled forearm of the mute, shaven-haired giant who had killed for her and would die for her, would let his soul be lost for her, if need be. Tears did come then, but she turned her head aside, wiped them away. A luxury, not allowed.