Direct, very direct.
Crispin watched as she moved to an ivory and rose-wood bench and sat down, her back very straight. He saw that there were three doors to the room and imagined guards poised on the other side of each of them. He pushed his hands through his hair—a characteristic motion, leaving it randomly scattered—and said quietly, ‘I am engaged, to the best of my skill, and using deficient materials, in decorating a sanctuary to honour your father. Is that answer enough, Majesty?’
‘Not at all, Rhodian. That is self-interest. You are extremely well paid, and the materials are the best we can offer right now. We’ve had a plague and a war, Caius Crispus.’
‘Oh, really,’ he said. Couldn’t help himself.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Insolence?’
Her voice and expression made him abruptly aware that whatever the proper court manners might be, he was not displaying them, and the Antae had never been known for patience.
He shook his head. ‘I lived through both,’ he murmured. ‘I need no reminders.’
She regarded him in silence another long moment. Crispin felt an unexplained prickling along his back up to the hairs of his neck. The silence stretched. Then the queen drew a breath and said without preamble: ‘I need an extremely private message carried to the Emperor in Sarantium. No man—or woman—may know the contents of this, or that it is even being carried. That is why you are here alone, and were brought by night.’
Crispin’s mouth went dry. He felt his heart begin to hammer again. ‘I am an artisan, Majesty. No more than that. I have no place in the intrigues of courts.’ He wished he hadn’t put down the wine glass. ‘And,’ he added, too tardily, ‘I am not going to Sarantium.’
‘Of course you are,’ she said dismissively. ‘What man would not accept that invitation.’ She knew about it. Of course she did. His mother knew about it.
‘It is not my invitation,’ he said pointedly. ‘And Martinian, my partner, has indicated he will not go.’
‘He is an old man. You aren’t. And you have nothing to keep you in Varena at all.’
He had nothing to keep him. At all.
‘He isn’t old,’ he said.
She ignored that. ‘I have made inquiries into your family, your circumstances, your disposition. I am told you are choleric and of dark humour, and not inclined to be properly respectful. Also that you are skilled at your craft and have attained a measure of renown and some wealth thereby. None of this concerns me. But no one has reported you to be cowardly or without ambition. Of course you will go to Sarantium. Will you carry my message for me?’
Crispin said, before he had really thought about the implications at all, ‘What message?’
Which meant—he realized much later, thinking about it, reliving this dialogue again and again on the long road east—that the moment she told him he had no real choice, unless he did decide to die and seek Ilandra and the girls with Jad behind the sun.
The young queen of the Antae and of Batiara, surrounded by mortal danger and fighting it with whatever tools came to hand, however unexpectedly, said softly, ‘You will tell the Emperor Valerius II and no one else that should he wish to regain this country and Rhodias within it, and not merely have a meaningless claim to them, there is an unmarried queen here who has heard of his prowess and his glory and honours them.’
Crispin’s jaw dropped. The queen did not flush, nor did her gaze flicker at all. His reaction was being closely watched, he realized. He said, stammering, ‘The Emperor is married. Has been for years. He changed the laws to wed the Empress Alixana.’
Calm and very still on her ivory seat, she said, ‘Alas, husbands or wives may be put aside. Or die, Caius Crispus.’
He knew this.
‘Empires,’ she murmured, ‘live after us. So does a name. For good or ill. Valerius II, who was once Petrus of Trakesia, has wanted to regain Rhodias and this peninsula since he brought his uncle to the Golden Throne twelve summers ago. He purchased his truce with the King of Kings in Bassania for that reason alone. King Shirvan is bribed so Valerius may assemble an army for the west when the time ripens. There are no mysteries here. But if he tries to take this land in war, he will not hold it. This peninsula is too far away from him, and we Antae know how to make war. And his enemies east and north—the Bassanids and the northern barbarians—will never sit quiet and watch, no matter how much he pays them. There will be men around Valerius who know this, and they may even tell him as much. There is another way to achieve his . . . desire. I am offering it to him.’ She paused. ‘You may tell him, too, that you have seen the queen of Batiara very near, in blue and gold and porphyry, and may . . . give him an honest description, should he ask for one.’
This time, though she continued to hold his gaze and even lifted her chin a little, she did flush. Crispin became aware that his hands were perspiring at his sides. He pressed them against his tunic. He felt the stirrings, astonishingly, of a long-dormant desire. A kind of madness, that, though desire often was. The queen of Batiara was not, in any possible sense, someone who could be thought of in this way. She was offering her face and exquisitely garbed body to his recording gaze, only that he might tell an Emperor about her, halfway around the world. He had never dreamed of moving—never wanted to move—in this world of royal shadows and intrigue, but his puzzle-solving mind was racing now, with his pulse, and he could begin to see the pieces of this picture.
No man—or woman—may know.
No woman. Clear as it could be. He was being asked to carry an overture of marriage to the Emperor, who was very much married, and to the most powerful and dangerous woman in the known world.
‘The Emperor and his low-born actress-wife have no children, alas,’ said Gisel softly. Crispin realized his thoughts must have been in his face. He was not good at this. ‘A sad legacy, one might imagine, of her . . . profession. And she is no longer young.’
I am, was the message beneath the message he was to bring. Save my life, my throne, and I offer you the homeland of the Rhodian Empire that you yearn for. I give you back the west to your east, and the sons to your need. I am fair, and young . . . ask the man who carries my words to you. He will say as much. Only ask.
‘You believe . . .’ he began. Stopped. Composed himself with an effort. ‘You believe this can be kept secret? Majesty, if I am even known to have been brought to you . . .’
‘Trust me in this. You can do me no service if you are killed on the way or when you arrive.’
‘You reassure me greatly,’ he murmured.
Surprisingly, she laughed again. He wondered what those on the other side of the doors would think, hearing that. He wondered what else they might have heard.
‘You could send no formal envoy with this?’
He knew the answer before she gave it. ‘No such messenger from me would have a chance to bespeak the Emperor in . . . privacy.’
‘And I will?’
‘You might. You have pure Rhodian blood on both sides. They acknowledge that, still, in Sarantium, though they complain about you. Valerius is said to be interested in ivory, frescoes . . . such things as you do with stones and glass. He is known to hold conversation with his artisans.’
‘How commendable of him. And when he finds that I am not Martinian of Varena? What sort of conversation will then ensue?’
The queen smiled. ‘That will depend on your wits, will it not?’
Crispin drew another breath. Before he could speak, she added, ‘You have not asked what return a grateful, newly-crowned Empress might make to the man who conveyed this message for her and had success follow upon it. You can read?’