The soldiers in the streets gave them no trouble as they went, though there was clearly an agitation among them and the night was raucous with their cries and hammerings upon doors and the horses passing were like drums on the cobblestones. Rustem, in his exhaustion, paid them no attention, moving in the midst of his escort, placing one foot in front of another, using his stick tonight, not just carrying it for effect, hardly seeing where he was going:
At length they came to his door. The door of Bonosus's small house by the walls. One of the guards knocked for him and it was opened quickly. They were probably expecting the soldiers, Rustem thought. The searchers. The steward was there, his expression concerned, and Rustem saw the girl, Elita, standing behind him, still awake at this hour. He stepped over the threshold, left foot first, mumbled a thanks to those who'd walked him here, nodded briefly to the steward and the girl, and went up the stairs to his room. There seemed to be many stairs tonight. He opened the door and went in, left foot first.
Inside, Alixana of Sarantium was sitting by the open window, looking down at the courtyard below.
CHAPTER XIV
He didn't know it was her, of course. Not until she spoke. In his dazed, stumbling state Rustem hadn't the least idea why this unknown woman was in his bedchamber. His first, incoherent thought was that she might be someone Bonosus knew. But that ought to have been a boy, surely?
Then he did believe he recognized her-as a patient, one of those who had come to see him the very first morning. But that made no sense. What was she doing here now? Did the Sarantines know nothing of proper conduct?
Then she stood up beside the window and she said, "Good evening, physician. My name is Aliana. It was Alixana this morning."
Rustem fell back against the door, pushing it shut. His legs felt weak. There was a horror in him. He couldn't even speak. She was ragged, dirty, visibly exhausted, looking like nothing so much as a street beggar, and it never for a moment occurred to him to doubt the truth of what she said. The voice, he thought afterwards. It was the voice.
She said, "They are looking for me. I have no right to place you at risk, but I am doing so. I must rely on your compassion for someone you have treated as a patient-however briefly-and I must tell you I… I have nowhere else to go. I have been avoiding soldiers all night. I was even in the sewers, but they are looking there now."
Rustem crossed the room. It seemed to take a long time. He sat down on the edge of his bed. Then it crossed his mind that he ought not to sit in the presence of an Empress and he stood up. He put a hand on one of the bedposts for support.
"How did you… why are… how
here?
She smiled at him. There was nothing resembling amusement in her face, however. Rustem had been trained to look at people carefully, and now he did. This woman was at the end of whatever reserves of strength she had. He glanced down. She was unshod; there was blood on one foot, and he thought it might be from a bite. She had mentioned the sewers. Her hair had been cropped off, raggedly. A disguise, he thought, as his brain began to work again. Her garment had also been cut, just above the knees. Her eyes looked hollow, dark, as if one could see into the sockets, into the bone behind.
But she smiled at his fumbling incoherence. "You were much more articulate the last time, doctor, explaining why I might hope one day to bear a child. Why am I here? Desperation, I confess. Elita is one of my women, one of those I trust. I used her to report on Bonosus. It was useful, in obvious ways, to know what the Master of the Senate was doing that he might prefer… not be known."
"Elita? One of…?"
He was having a good deal of trouble. She nodded. There was a smear of mud across her forehead and on one cheek. This was a hunted woman. Her husband was dead. All those soldiers in the streets tonight, mounted, on foot, pounding at doors, they were there for her. She said, "She has reported generously of your nature, doctor. And of course I know myselt that you refused to follow orders from Kabadh and kill the Antae queen."
'What?
I…You
know
that I…?" He sat down again.
"Doctor, we'd have been remiss if we didn't know such things, wouldn't we? In our own City? The merchant who brought you that message… have you seen him since?"
Rustem swallowed hard, shook his head.
"It didn't take long to have him offer the details. Of course you were closely watched from then on. Elita said you were unhappy after that merchant left. You don't like the idea of killing, do you?"
They'd been watching him, all along. And what
had
happened to the man who'd brought him the message? He didn't want to ask.
"Killing? Of course I don't," Rustem said. "I am a healer."
"Will you shield me, then?" asked the woman. "They will be here soon enough."
"How can I…?"
"They will not know me. Their weakness tonight is that most of the men searching have no idea what the Empress looks like. Unless I am betrayed, they will only be able to find women who don't appear to belong where they are and take them for questioning. They will not know me. Not as I am now."
She smiled again. That bleakness. Hollow-eyed.
"You understand," the woman by the window said quietly, "that Styliane will have my eyes and tongue put out and my nose slit and then she will give me to any men who still want me, in certain rooms underground, and then she will have me burned alive. There is… nothing else that matters to her so much."
Rustem thought of the aristocratic, fair-haired woman standing beside the Strategos at the wedding he'd attended on his first day here. "She is Empress now?" he said.
The woman said, "Tonight, or tomorrow. Until I kill her, and her brother. Then I can die and let the god judge my life and deeds as he will."
Rustem looked at her a long time. He was remembering more clearly now, rational thought coming back, some small measure of composure. She had indeed come to him that first morning, when he and the household had hastened to arrange the ground floor into treatment rooms. A woman of the common sort, he'd thought, had prudently made certain she could afford his fee before admitting and examining her. Her voice… had been different then. Of course it had.
The westerners, like his own people, had a limited understanding of conception and childbirth. Only in Ispahani had Rustern learned certain things: enough to understand that a failure to bear might sometimes arise in the husband, not the wife. Men in the west, in his own country, were disinclined to listen to that, of course.
But Rustem was not uncomfortable explaining this to the women who came to him. What they did with the information was not his burden or responsibility.
That woman of the common sort-who turned out to have been the Empress of Sarantium-had been one of those. And had seemed not at all surprised, after his questions and his examination, when he'd said what he said to her.
Looking closely, the physician in Rustem was shaken anew by what he saw: the absolute, clenched rigidity with which the woman was holding herself together, set against the flat, matter-of-fact way in which she spoke of killing and her own death. She was not far from breaking, he thought.
He said, "Who knows you are here?"
"Elita. I entered over the courtyard wall, and then up into this room. She found me here when she came to make up your fire. I knew she was sleeping here, of course. Forgive me for that. I had to hope she would do the fire in this room. I'd be captured by now if anyone else had come. They will take me right now if you call out, you understand?"
"You climbed the wall?"
That smile that was not a smile. "Physician, you don't want to know the things I have done or where I've been today and tonight."
And then after a moment she said, for the first time,
'Please?
Empresses never had to say that, Rustem thought, but in the moment just before she'd spoken it they'd both heard, even up here, a pounding at the front door, and through the window Rustem saw a flaring of torches in the garden and heard voices down below.
Ecodes of Soriyya, veteran decunon of the Second Amorian, a career soldier, was keenly aware, even with the turmoil of the night and the two fast cups of wine he'd (unwisely) accepted after searching the home of a fellow southerner, that one conducted oneself with composure in the home of a Senator, and had one's men do the same, even if they were frustrated and in a hurry and there was an enormous reward to be pursued.
The ten of them went about their business briskly and very thoroughly but didn't trouble the woman servants and took some care not to break anything as they flung open trunks and wardrobes and checked every room, above and below stairs. Things
had
been broken during searches earlier after they'd helped clear the faction rabble from the streets and Ecodes expected to hear of complaints in the morning. That didn't worry him unduly. The Second Amorian's tribunes were good officers, on the whole, and they knew the men needed some release at times and that soft citizens were always grumbling about the honest soldiers who protected their homes and lives. What was a broken vase or platter in the scheme of things? How far would one go in protesting that a servant had had her breast squeezed or her tunic lifted by a soldier in passing?
On the other hand, there were houses and there were houses, and it could be bad for one's chances of promotion to offend an actual Senator. Ecodes had been given reason to believe that he might make centurion soon, especially if he had a good war.
If there
was
a war. There was a lot of talk going about tonight as soldiers met and passed each other in the streets of Sarantium. Armies fed on rumour, and the latest was that they wouldn't be going west in any great hurry after all. The war in Batiara had been the grand scheme of the last Emperor, the one who'd been murdered today. The new Emperor was the army's own beloved leader, and though no one could possibly doubt the courage and will of Leontes, it did make sense that a new man on the throne might have things to deal with here before sending his armies sailing off to battle.
That suited Ecodes well enough, in truth, though he would never have said as much to anyone. Fact was, he hated ships and the sea with a fear deep as bones or pagan spells. The thought of entrusting his body and soul to one of those round, slow tubs hulking in the harbour with their drunken captains and crews frightened him infinitely more than had any attack of Bassanids or desert tribes, or even the Karchites, foaming at the mouth with battle rage, on his one tour of duty in the north.
In a battle you could defend yourself, or retreat if you had to. A man with some experience had ways of surviving. On a ship in a storm (Jad forbid!) or simply drifting out of sight of land, there was nothing a soldier could do but heave his guts and pray. And Batiara was a long way off. A very long way.
As far as Ecodes of Soriyya was concerned, if the Strategos-the glorious new Emperor-decided to have himself a good long think about the west for a while, direct his armies north and east, say (there was talk in the dark that the fucking Bassanids had breached the peace, sending a force over the border), this would be altogether a proper, wise thing.
You couldn't be promoted to centurion for a good war if you were drowned on the way, could you?
He accepted a terse report from Priscus that the courtyard and garden were empty. They had the house searches pretty much down to a routine now. They'd been in enough of them tonight. The main floor rooms near the front here had been made into some sort of medical chambers, but they were empty. The steward-a lean-faced, officious type-had obediently assembled the servants downstairs and accounted for the three women by name. Priscus and four of the others went down the hall to check the household staff's rooms and the kitchen. Ecodes, speaking as politely as he could, inquired as to who might be occupying the rooms upstairs. There had been two men until this morning, the steward explained. A recovering patient and the Bassanid doctor who was staying here as a guest of the Senator.
Ecodes refrained (politely) from spitting at the mention of a Bassanid.
"What patient?" he asked.
"Not a woman, a man. And we are under instructions not to say," the steward murmured blandly. The smooth, superior-sounding bastard had exactly the sort of city manner Ecodes most despised. He was a servant, no more than that, and yet he acted as if he'd been born to olive groves and vineyards.
"Fuck your instructions," Ecodes said, mildly enough. "I haven't time tonight. What man?"
The steward grew pale. One of the women brought a hand to her mouth. Ecodes thought (couldn't be sure) she might be hiding a giggle. Probably had to hump the thin-blooded bastard to keep her job. Wouldn't be unhappy to see him caught up a bit, Ecodes would wager.
"It is understood that you have ordered me to tell you?" the steward said. Lump of dung, Ecodes thought. Covering himself here.
"Fucking right it's understood. Tell."
"The patient was Scortius of Soriyya," said the steward. "Rustem of Kerakek had been treating him in secrecy here. Until this morning."
"Holy Jad!" gasped Ecodes. "You aren't spinning a tale?"
The steward's expression made it clear, if any doubt had hitherto existed, that he wasn't the tale-spinning sort.
Ecodes licked his lips nervously and tried to absorb this information. It had nothing to do with anything, but these were tidings! Scortius was by a long bowshot the most famous son of Soriyya today. The hero of every boy and man in that desert-bordered land, including Ecodes. Enough soldiers on leave had attended the racing today for the story of the Blues" champion's unexpected reappearance in the Hippodrome- and what had followed-to be known to everyone searching tonight. There were rumours he might die of his wounds: the Emperor and the greatest charioteer on the very same day.