Lord of Emperors. Guy Gavriel Kay
she laughed. ‘On further thought, it isn’t necessary, is it? My hand will do, artisan. You may kiss my hand.’
She lifted it to him. He took it in his own and raised it to his lips, and just as he did so she turned her hand in his and it was her palm, soft and warm, that he kissed.
‘I wonder,’ said the queen of the Antae, ‘if anyone could see me do that.’ And she smiled again.
Crispin was breathing hard. He straightened. She remained very near and, bringing up both her hands, she smoothed his disordered hair.
‘We will leave you,’ she said, astonishingly composed, the too-bright manner gone as swiftly as it had come, though her colour remained high. ‘You may call upon us now, of course. Everyone will assume they know why. As it happens, we wish to go to the theatre.’
‘Majesty,’ Crispin said, struggling to regain a measure of calm. ‘You are the queen of the Antae, of Batiara, an honoured guest of the Emperor . . . an artisan cannot possibly escort you to the theatre. You will have to sit in the Imperial Box. Must be seen there. There are protocols . . .’
She frowned, as if struck only now by the thought. ‘Do you know, I believe you are correct. I shall have to send a note to the Chancellor then. But in that case, I may have come up here to no purpose, Caius Crispus.’ She looked up at him. ‘You must take care to provide us with a reason.’ And she turned away.
He was so deeply shaken that she was five rungs down the ladder before he even moved, offering her no assistance at all.
It didn’t matter. She went down to the marble floor as easily as she’d come up. It occurred to him, watching her descend towards a score of unabashedly curious people staring up, that if he was marked now as her lover, or even her confidant, then his mother and his friends might be endangered back home when word of this went west. Gisel had escaped a determined assassination attempt. There were men who wanted her throne, which meant ensuring she did not take it back. Those linked to her in any way would be suspect. Of what, it hardly mattered.
The Antae were not fastidious about such things.
And that truth, Crispin decided, staring down, applied as much to the woman nearing the ground now. She might be young, and terribly vulnerable here, but she’d survived a year on her throne among men who wished her dead or subjected to their will, and had managed to elude them when they did try to kill her. And she was her father’s daughter. Gisel of the Antae would do whatever she had to do, he thought, to achieve her purposes, until and unless someone did end her life. Consequences for others wouldn’t even cross her mind.
He thought of the Emperor Valerius, moving mortal lives this way and that like pieces on a gameboard. Did power shape this way of thinking, or was it only those who already thought this way who could achieve earthly power?
It came to Crispin, watching the queen reach the marble floor to accept bows and her cloak, that he’d been offered intimacy by three women in this city, and each occasion had been an act of contrivance and dissembling. Not one of them had touched him with any tenderness or care, or even a true desire.
Or, perhaps, that last wasn’t entirely so. When he returned home later in the day to the house the Chancellor’s people had by now arranged for him, Crispin found a note waiting. Tidings took little time to travel in this city—or certain kinds of tidings did. The note, when unfolded, was not signed, and he’d never seen the round, smooth handwriting before, but the paper was astonishingly fine, luxurious. Reading the words, he realized no signature was needed, or possible.
You told me, Styliane Daleina had written, that you were a stranger to the private rooms of royalty.
Nothing more. No added reproach, no direct suggestion that he’d deceived her, no irony or provocation. The stated fact. And the fact that she’d stated it.
Crispin, who’d intended to have a midday meal at home and then return to the Sanctuary, had taken himself off instead to his preferred tavern and then to the baths. In each of these places he’d had more wine than was really good for him.
His friend Carullus, tribune of the Fourth Sauradian, had found him later in the evening, back at The Spina. The burly soldier had seated himself opposite Crispin, signalled for a cup of wine for himself and grinned. Crispin had refused to smile back.
‘Two pieces of news, my inexplicably drunken friend,’ Carullus had said breezily. He held up a finger. ‘One, I have met with the Supreme Strategos. I have met with him, and Leontes has promised half the arrears for the western army will be sent before midwinter and the rest by spring. A personal promise. Crispin, I’ve done it!’
Crispin looked at him, trying to share in his friend’s delight and failing utterly. This was hugely important news, though—everyone knew about the army unrest and the arrears of pay. It was the reason Carullus had come to the City, if one excepted a desire to see chariots in the Hippodrome.
‘No, you haven’t done it,’ he said morosely. ‘It just means there’s a war coming. Valerius is sending Leontes to Batiara, after all. You don’t invade with unpaid troops.’
Carullus only smiled. ‘I know that, you sodden dolt. But who gets the credit, man? Who writes his governor in the morning that he has succeeded in getting the payment released when everyone else has failed?’
Crispin nodded and reached for his wine again. ‘Pleased for you,’ he said. ‘Truly. Forgive, if I’m not as pleased to hear that my friends and my mother are now to be invaded.’
Carullus shrugged. ‘Warn them. Tell them to leave Varena.’
‘Get fucked,’ Crispin had said, uncharitably. Whatever was happening was not Carullus’s fault, and his advice might be good—even more so in the light of what had happened that morning on the scaffolding.
‘That activity on your mind? I heard about your visitor this morning. Do you keep pillows up on that scaffold of yours? I’ll let you sober up but I’ll expect a very detailed explanation in the morning, my friend.’ Carullus licked his lips.
Crispin swore again. ‘It was play-acting. Theatre. She wanted to talk to me and needed to give people something to think.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Carullus, his eyebrows arched high. ‘Talk to you? You rogue. They say she’s magnificent, you know. Talk? Hah. Maybe you’ll make me believe that in the morning. In, ah, the meantime,’ he added after an unexpected pause, ‘that, er, reminds me of my second bit of news. I suppose I’m, ah, out of that sort of game now, myself. Actually.’
Crispin had looked muzzily up from his wine cup.
‘What?’
‘I’m, well, as it happens, I’m getting married,’ Carullus of the Fourth said.
‘What?’ Crispin repeated, cogently.
‘I know, I know,’ the tribune went on, ‘Unexpected, surprising, amusing, all that. A good laugh for all. Happens, though, doesn’t it?’ His colour heightened. ‘Ah, well, it does, you know.’
Crispin nodded his head in bemusement, refraining only with some effort from saying, ‘What?’ for a third time.
‘And, um, well, do you, er, mind if Kasia leaves your house now? It won’t look right, of course, not after we have it proclaimed in chapel.’
‘What?’ Crispin said, helplessly.
‘Wedding’ll be in the spring,’ Carullus went on, eyes bright. ‘I promised my mother back when I first left home that if I ever married I’d do it properly. There’ll be a season’s worth of proclaiming by the clerics, so someone can object if they want to, and then a real wedding celebration.’
‘Kasia?’ Crispin said, finally getting a word in. ‘Kasia?’
And as his brain belatedly began to function, to put itself tentatively around this astonishing information, Crispin shook his