‘Martinian. What in Jad’s—?’
‘I don’t want to go. I’m old. My hands hurt. I want to drink mulled wine this winter with friends and hope there are no wars for a while. I have no desire to sail to Sarantium. This is your summons, Crispin.’
‘Not my name.’
‘It ought to be. You’ve done most of the work for years now.’ Martinian grinned. ‘About time, too.’
Crispin did not return the smile. ‘Think about this. This Emperor is said to be a patron. A builder. What more could you ask for in life than a chance to see the City and work there in honour? Make something that will last, and be known?’
‘Warm wine and a seat by the fire in Galdera’s tavern.’ And my wife beside me in the night until I die, he thought, but did not say.
The other man made a disbelieving sound.
Martinian shook his head. ‘Crispin, this is your summons. Don’t let their mistake confuse things. They want a master mosaicist. We are known for our work in the tradition of Rhodian mosaic. It makes sense for them to have someone from Batiara be a part of this, east-west tensions notwithstanding, and you know which of the two of us ought to make the journey.’
‘I know that I have not been asked. You have. By name. Even if I wanted to go, which I don’t.’
Martinian, uncharacteristically, said something obscene involving Crispin’s anatomy, the thunder god of the Bassanids, and a lightning bolt.
Crispin blinked. ‘You will now practise speaking like me?’ he asked, not smiling. ‘That will have things even further reversed, won’t it?’
The older man was flushed. ‘Do not even pretend that you don’t want to go. Why did you pretend not to know about their sanctuary? Everyone knows about the Victory Riot and the burning in Sarantium.’
‘Why did you pretend not to be yourself?’ There was a little silence. The other man looked away, towards the distant woods. Crispin said, ‘Martinian, I don’t want to go. It isn’t pretending. I don’t want to do anything. You know that.’
His friend turned back to him. ‘Then that’s why you must go. Caius, you are too young to stop living.’
‘They were younger and they weren’t. They stopped.’
He said it quickly, harshly. He hadn’t been ready for Martinian’s words. He needed to be ready when such things came up.
It was quiet here. The god’s sun going down red in the west, preparing to journey through the long dark. In sanctuaries throughout Batiara the sunset rites would soon begin. The blue moon was above the eastern trees. No stars yet. Ilandra had died vomiting blood, black sores covering her, bursting. Like wounds. The girls. His girls had died in the dark.
Martinian took off his shapeless hat. His hair was grey, and he had lost most of it in the centre. He said, quite gently, ‘And you honour the three of them by doing the same? Shall I blaspheme some more? Don’t make me. I don’t like it. This packet from Sarantium is a gift.’
‘Then accept it. We’re nearly done here. Most of what’s left is border work and polishing, and then the masons can finish.’
Martinian shook his head. ‘Are you afraid?’
Crispin’s eyebrows met when he frowned. ‘We have been friends a long time. Please do not talk to me that way.’
‘We have been friends a long time. No one else will,’ said Martinian implacably. ‘One in four people died here last summer, following the same numbers the summer before. More than that, they say, elsewhere. The Antae used to worship their own dead, with candles and invocations. I suppose they still do, in Jad’s sanctuaries instead of oak groves or crossroads, but not . . . Caius, not by following them into a living death.’
Martinian looked down as he finished at the twisted hat in his hands.
One in four. Two summers in succession. Crispin knew it. The burial mound behind them was only one among many. Houses, whole quarters of Varena and other cities of Batiara still lay deserted. Rhodias itself, which had never really recovered from the Antae sack, was a hollow place, forums and colonnades echoing with emptiness. The High Patriarch in his palace there was said to walk the corridors alone of a night, speaking to spirits unseen by men. Madness came with the plague. And a brief, savage war had come among the Antae, as well, when King Hildric died, leaving only a daughter after him. Farms and fields everywhere had been abandoned, too large to be worked by those left alive. There had been tales of children sold into slavery by their parents for want of food or firewood as winter came.
One in four. And not only here in Batiara. North among the barbarians in Ferrieres, west in Esperana, east in Sauradia and Trakesia, indeed all through the Sarantine Empire and into Bassania and probably beyond, though tales didn’t run that far. Sarantium itself hard hit, by report. The whole world dredged deep by Death’s hunger.
But Crispin had had three souls in Jad’s creation to live with and love, and all three were gone. Was the knowledge of other losses to assuage his own? Sometimes, half asleep at night in the house, a wine flask empty by his bed, he would lie in the dark and think he heard breathing, a voice, one of the girls crying aloud in her dreams in the next room. He would want to rise to comfort her. Sometimes he would rise, and only come fully awake as he stood up, naked, and became aware of the appalling depth of stillness around him in the world.
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.