Lord of Emperors

EPILOGUE

An old man in a chapel doorway, not far from the walls of Varena. Once he would have been engaged in considering the present colour of those walls, somewhere between honey and ochre, pondering ways of using glass and stone and light to accomplish that hue as it appeared in this particular late-spring sunshine. Not any more. Now, he is content to simply enjoy the day, the afternoon. He is aware, in the way that sometimes creeps up on the aged, that there are no assurances of another spring.

He is virtually alone here, only a few other men about, somewhere in the yard or in the unused old chapel adjacent to the expanded sanctuary. The sanctuary is not in use now, either, though a king is buried here. Since an assassination attempt in the autumn, the clerics have refused to conduct services, or even remain in their dormitory, despite substantial pressure from those currently governing in the palace. The man in the doorway has views on this, but for the moment he simply enjoys the quiet as he waits for someone to arrive. He has been coming here for some days now, feeling more impatient than an old man really should, he tells himself, if the lessons of a long life had been properly absorbed.

He tilts the stool on which he sits, leans back against the wood of the doorway (an old habit), and slides forward the remarkably shapeless hat he wears. He is irrationally fond of the hat, enduring all jests and gibes it provokes with perfect equanimity. For one thing, the headgear-absurd even when new-saved his life almost fifteen years ago when an apprentice, fearful in a darkened chapel at evening, thought he was a thief approaching without a light. The blow from a staff that the young fellow (broad-shouldered, even back then) had intended to bring crashing down on an intruder's head was averted at the last instant when the hat was seen and known.

Martinian of Varena, at his ease in the spring light, looks off down the readjust before allowing himself to fall asleep.

He saw that same apprentice coming. Or, more accurately, these long years later, he saw his one-time apprentice, now his colleague and partner and awaited friend, Caius Crispus, approaching along the path leading to the wide, low wooden gate that fenced in the sanctuary yard and its graves.

"Rot you, Crispin," he said mildly. 'Just as I was about to nap." Then he considered the fact that he was quite alone, that no one was listening to him, and he allowed himself an honest response, quickly tilting the stool back forward, aware of the sudden hard beating of his heart.

He felt wonder, anticipation, very great happiness.

Watching, shadowed in the doorway, he saw Crispin-hair and beard shorter than when he'd left, but not otherwise discernibly altered- unhook the gate latch and enter the yard. Martinian lifted his voice and called to the other men waiting. They weren't apprentices or artisans: no work was being done here now. Two of those men came striding quickly around the corner of the building. Martinian pointed towards the gate.

"There he is. Finally. I couldn't tell you if he's in a temper, but it is generally safer to assume as much."

Both men swore, much as he had, though with more genuine feeling, and started forward. They had been in Varena nearly two weeks, waiting with increasing irritation. Martinian was the one who had suggested the odds were good that the traveller, when he did come, would stop at this chapel outside the walls. He is pleased to have been correct, though not happy about what the other man will find here.

In his doorway, he watched two strangers go forward, the first souls to greet a traveller on his return from far away. Both of them are easterners, ironically. One is an Imperial Courier, the other an officer in the army of Sarantium. The army that was supposed to have been invading this spring and wasn't, now.

That being the largest change of all.

Some time later, after the two Sarantines had formally conveyed whatever messages they had lingered to deliver and had gone away, along with the soldiers who had been here on guard with them, Martinian decided that Crispin had been sitting alone by the gate long enough, whatever the tidings had been. He rose slowly and walked forward, nursing the usual ache in his hip.

Crispin had his back to him, seemed immersed in the documents he'd been given. It was not good to surprise a man, Martinian had always felt, so he called the other's name while still a distance away.

"I saw your hat," Crispin said, not looking up. "I only came home to burn it, you understand."

Martinian walked up to him.

Crispin, sitting on the large moss-covered boulder he'd always liked, looked over at him. His eyes were bright, remembered. "Hello," he said. "I didn't think to find you here."

Martinian had also intended some kind of jest, but found himself incapable of one, just then. Instead, he bent forward, wordlessly, and kissed the younger man on the forehead, in benediction. Crispin stood up, and put his arms around him and they embraced.

"My mother?" the younger man asked, when they stepped back. His voice was gruff.

"Is well. Awaiting you."

"How did you all…? Oh. The courier. So you knew I was on the way?"

Martinian nodded. "They arrived some time ago."

"I had a slower boat. Walked from Mylasia."

"Still hate horses?"

Crispin hesitated. "Riding them." He looked at Martinian. His eyebrows met when he frowned; Martinian remembered that. The older man was trying to sort out what else he was seeing in the traveller's face. Differences, but hard to pin down.

Crispin said, "They brought the tidings from Sarantium? About the changes?"

Martinian nodded. "You'll tell me more?"

"What I know."

"You are… all right?" A ridiculous question, but in some ways the only one that mattered.

Crispin hesitated again. "Mostly. A great deal happened."

"Of course. Your work… it went well?"

Another pause. As if they were fumbling their way back towards easiness. "It went very well, but…" Crispin sat down on the rock again. "It is coming down. Along with others, everywhere." 'What?

"The new Emperor has… beliefs about renderings of Jad."

"Impossible. You must be wrong. That-"

Martinian stopped.

Crispin said, "I wish I was. Our work will be coming down here, too, I suspect. We'll be subject to Sarantine edicts, if all goes as the Empress intends."

The Empress. They knew about this. A miracle of the god, some had already named it. Martinian thought there might be more earthly explanations. "Gisel?"

"Gisel. You heard?"

"Word came from other couriers on the same ship." Martinian sat down himself now, on the facing rock. So many times, they'd sat here together, or on the tree stumps beyond the gate.

Crispin looked over his shoulder at the sanctuary. "We're going to lose this. What we did here."

Martinian cleared his throat. Something needed to be said. "Some of it has been lost, already."

"So soon? I didn't think…"

"Not for that reason. They… scraped down Heladikos in the spring."

Crispin said nothing. Martinian remembered this expression, too, however.

"Eudric was trying to earn support from the Patriarch in Rhodias, with the invasion looming. Backing away from the heresy of the Antae."

Heladikos and his torch had been the very last thing Crispin had done before he'd gone away. The younger man sat very still. Martinian was trying to read him, see what had changed, what had not. It felt odd not to understand Crispin intuitively, after so many years. People went away and they changed; hard on those who remained behind.

More sorrow and more life, Martinian thought. Both things. The documents from the courier were still clutched between the other man's large hands.

Crispin said, "Did it work? The… backing away?"

Martinian shook his head. "No. They had shed blood in a chapel, with Patriarchal envoys present and at risk. Eudric has a long way to go to win any kindness there. And he earned a good deal of outrage in Varena when our tesserae came down. The Antae saw it as disrespectful to Hildric. Sacking his chapel, in a way."

Crispin laughed softly. Martinian tried to remember the last time he'd heard his friend laugh in the year before he'd gone away. "Poor Eudric. Full circle, that. The Antae protesting destruction in a holy place in Batiara."

Martinian smiled a little. "I said that too." His turn to hesitate. He had expected an angrier reaction. He changed the ground a little. "It does look as if there will be no attack now. Is that so?"

Crispin nodded. "Not this year, at least. The army is north and east, against Bassania. We'll become a province of Sarantium, if negotiations hold."

Martinian shook his head slowly. He took off his hat, looked at it, put it back on his balding head. No attack.

Every man who could walk had been engaged in reinforcing the walls of Varena all winter. They'd been making weapons, drilling with them, storing food and water. There hadn't been much food to store, after a poor harvest.

He was afraid he might cry. "I didn't think to live so long."

The other man looked at him. "How are you?"

An attempt at a shrug. "Well enough. My hands. My hip, sometimes. Mostly water in my wine, now."

Crispin made a face. "Me too. Carissa?"

"Is very well. Anxious to see you. Is probably with your mother now."

"We should go, then. I was only stopping to see… the finished work here. There's little point now."

"No," said Martinian. He looked at the papers. "What… what did they bring you?"

Crispin hesitated again. He seemed to measure his words and thoughts more, Martinian thought. Did they teach that in the east?

Without speaking, the other man simply handed over the thick sheaf of documents. Martinian took them and read. He wouldn't have denied a consuming curiosity: some men had waited here a long time to deliver whatever these were.

He saw what these were. Colour left his face as he turned each signed and sealed deed and document of title. He went back and counted. Five of them, six, seven. Then the enumeration of other items and a listing of where they could be found and claimed. He found it difficult to breathe.

"We seem to be wealthy," Crispin said mildly.

Martinian looked up at him. Crispin was gazing off towards the forest, east. What he'd said was an understatement, prodigiously so. And the «we» was a great courtesy.

The papers delivered by the Imperial Courier attested, one by one by one, to lands all over Batiara, and moneys and moveable goods, now owned by or belonging to one Caius Crispus, artisan, of Varena.

The last page was a personal note. Martinian glanced up for permission. Crispin, looking back at him now, nodded. It was brief. Written in Sarantine. It read:

We did promise certain things if your journey bore fruit for us. Our beloved father taught us to keep royal promises and the god enjoins us to do so. Changes along the way do not change the truth of things. These are not gifts, but earned. There is another item, one we discussed in Varena as you will recall. It is not included among these, remaining yours to consider and choose for yourself-or not. The other conveyance sent herewith is, we trust, further evidence of our appreciation.

It was signed, "Gisel, Empress of Sarantium."

"Jad's blood and eyes and bones, what did you do there, Crispin?"

"She thinks I made her Empress," the other man said.

Martinian could only stare.

Crispin's tone was odd, eerily detached.

Martinian realized, suddenly, that it was going to take a great deal of time to understand what had happened to his friend in the east. There really were changes here. One didn't sail to Sarantium without that happening, he thought. He felt a chill.

"What is the… unincluded item she mentions?"

"A wife." Crispin's voice was flat. A chill, bleak tone, remembered from the year before.

Martinian cleared his throat. "I see. And the 'other conveyance'?"

Crispin looked up. Seemed to make an effort to bestir himself.'I don't know. There are a lot of keys in here." He held up a heavy leather purse. "The soldier said they'd orders to be on guard until I came, then it was my own look-out."

"Oh. The trunks in the old chapel, then. There are at least twenty of them."

They went to see.

Treasure, Martinian wondered? Gold coins and precious gems?

It wasn't that. As Crispin turned numbered keys in numbered locks, one after another, and opened trunk lids in the gentle light of the old, little-used chapel adjacent to the expanded sanctuary, Martinian of Varena, who had never travelled to Sarantium or even out of his own beloved peninsula, found himself beginning to weep, ashamed of the weakness of an old man.

But these were tesserae such as he had never seen or ever thought to see in all his days. A lifetime of working with muddied or streaked imitations of the brilliant colours of the mind's imagining had slowly conditioned him to accept the limitations of the possible here in broken Batiara. The deficiencies of the mortal world, the constraints placed upon achievement.

Now, long past a time when he might have fiercely set forth upon some project of a grandeur equal to these dazzling, flawless pieces of glass, they had come.

It was late. It was very, very late.

There was another note, in the first trunk. Crispin looked at it and then gave it to him. Martinian wiped his eyes and read. Same hand, the language changed now, Rhodian, the style personal, not royal.

I have an undertaking from the Emperor. A promise made to me. You will not do the god, nor Heladikos. Anything else you see fit to render in the sanctuary complex housing my father shall be preserved from edict and pronouncement and any decreed harm, so far as I may be able to make it so. This, as small compensation for a mosaic in Sarantium, done with adequate materials, and taken away.

The signature was also different: nothing but her name this time. Martinian laid down the note. Put his hand, slowly, into that first heavy trunk, into the tesserae-pale gold in this one, the colour warm and even as honey.

"Careful. They'll be sharp," Crispin said.

"Puppy," said Martinian of Varena, "I was cutting my hands to pieces on these things before you were born."

"I know," said Crispin. "My point." He took back the note. And then he smiled.

Martinian said, "We can remake the dome in the sanctuary. Not Jad, not Heladikos, she says here. We can find a new way of doing chapels. Consult with the clerics, maybe? Here, and in Rhodias? In Sarantium, even?" Martinian's voice quavered with desire. His heart was racing. He felt an overwhelming need to keep touching these tesserae, to bury his hands in them.

It was late, but it wasn't too late.

Crispin smiled again, looking around the quiet, dusty room. They were utterly alone. Two men, twenty enormous, laden trunks, nothing else. No one came here any more.

They would have to hire guards, Martinian thought suddenly.

"You will remake it," Crispin said gently. "The dome." His mouth quirked a little. "With whomever we have left working for us, that you haven't driven away with your tyrant nature."

Martinian ignored that. He was reacting to the gentleness. Something lost for a long time, back again.

"And you?" he asked.

For it occurred to him now that the younger man might not want to work at all. He'd seemed almost indifferent to the news of what had been done to his Heladikos. Martinian thought he understood. How could it even register, after what had happened in the east?

Crispin had written him a little about that dome in Sarantium, about what he was trying to accomplish there, equal to the setting. And the young woman, Zoticus's daughter, had mentioned it in one of the letters they'd exchanged. A glory of the earth, she'd called it. The dome itself and what his friend was doing upon it.

And the mosaic was coming down. Martinian could picture it happening. Soldiers and labourers. Spear-butt and axe-head and dagger, scraping implements ripping and chopping the surface. Tesserae falling and falling.

How could anyone want to work again, after that?

Martinian took his hands from the trunk, the golden glass. He bit his lip. A glory of the earth. His friend was still in mourning, he finally realized, and here he was, exulting like a child with a new toy.

But he was wrong. Or, he later realized, not entirely right.

Crispin had walked away from him by then, was gazing absently at the flat, rough walls above the creaking double doors at each end. This little chapel had been built to the oldest floor plan known: two entrances, a central altar under a low, flat dome, curved bays east and west for private prayer and reflection, candle banks at each of these for memorials. Stone floor, stone walls, no benches, no dais. There wasn't even an altar or a sun disk here now. The chapel was at least four hundred years old, dating to the beginnings of the sanctioned worship of Jad in Rhodias. The light entering was soft and mild, falling cool as pale wine on stone.

Martinian, seeing his colleague's gaze move from surface to surface, tracking the fall of sunlight through the smeared and broken windows above (windows could be cleaned, panes replaced), began to look about for himself. And then, after a time, in a silence that aspired to simple happiness, he just watched Crispin as he turned and turned about.

At the last, Crispin was looking from north to south again, at the semicircular arc of the walls directly above each of the doors. He was seeing images not yet in the world, Martinian knew.

He had done it often enough, himself. It was the way you began.

"I'll make something here," Crispin said.

Varena's very ancient chapel of Jad Without the Walls had not been used for holy purposes since the larger sanctuary beside it had been constructed, about two hundred years afterwards. The complex had been further expanded twice, subsequently, acquiring a dormitory, refectory, kitchen, a bakehouse, a brewery, and a small infirmary with an herbal garden behind, leaving the original chapel to function as a storehouse for a time and then not even as that, lying dusty, untended, home to rodents and other field creatures in winter.

It had a patina of age upon it, an aura of peace even in that untended state, and the stones were very beautiful, taking sunlight with serenity. It was a long time since sufficient lamps had been lit here to judge how the chapel might appear after dark, properly illuminated.

It was an unexpected place for two panels of mosaic art, but the absence of altar or disk could be seen as legitimizing the entirely secular nature of the new work, which was being done-unusually for mosaics- by one man alone.

The works were modestly sized, one above each of the double doors.

Not the god, or Heladikos. Anything else you see fit to render.

He had it as a promise. Her father had taught her to keep promises. It had once been a holy place, but not for centuries. There still clung to the space, to the stones, to the air in the slanting descent of morning or afternoon light, a quiet grace. But it was not holy now, so even if there were proscriptions against rendering human figures in such places, this would be exempt, surely, over and above the promise.

He was relying on this, was aware that he ought to have learned by now not to rely on anything, that what a man could make, another man could unmake with sword or fire or decree.

He had it in writing, though, from an Empress. And the light here- never even noticed before-was a different kind of promise. And so it had come to be that he had spent a full year at work here, summer, autumn, through the winter, which had been cold. He'd done everything himself, that being a part of what this labour was, as he had conceived it from the outset, standing with Martinian on the day he'd come home. Everything: cleaning the chapel, sweeping, washing, on his knees, replacing the broken windows, removing the grime from those that had endured. Preparing the quicklime in the exterior ovens, wiping down the surfaces to take the setting bed, even assembling his own two scaffolds and ladders with hammers and nails. They didn't have to be high, could remain fixed in place. He was only working on two walls, not a dome.

Over in the larger sanctuary, Martinian and the employees and apprentices were redoing the dome. In consultation with Sybard of Varena and other clerics here and in Rhodias, they had elected to depict a landscape overhead: the progression from forest to field, farmhouse, harvest… an evocation of the progression of the Antae, in fact. No holy figures, no human figures. The Patriarch in Rhodias, as part of complex negotiations still going on with Sarantium and Varena, had agreed to reconsecrate the sanctuary when the work was done.

It was, after all, Hildric's burial place, and his daughter was Empress of Sarantium, which Empire now included Mihrbor and a large part of northern Bassama, subject to whatever the peace treaty-also being negotiated-might stipulate.

Here in Varena, this unused former chapel wasn't a part of any discussions at all. It was an unimportant place. It might even be said that whatever was done here was a foolish labour, unlikely to be seen by many people at all.

That was all right, Crispin thought. Had thought so all through the year, feeling more peace within himself than he could ever remember.

He didn't feel peaceful today, however. He felt a strangeness, at the end of a long, private time. The others had left him almost entirely alone throughout. Martinian would occasionally come by at the end of a day and look quietly for a few moments but he never said anything and Crispin had never asked him to.

This was his own, accountable to no one living. No patron had approved the sketches, no one's dazzling architecture or worldly ambition needed to be matched or understood or harmonized. In a curious way Crispin had had a sense all year that he was speaking to the unborn, not the living, to generations who might or might not come through these doors and find two mosaics, hundreds of years and more from today, and look up, and make of them… what they would.

He had been a part, in Sarantium, of something colossal, a shared vision on the largest possible scale, aspiring towards the more-than-human-and it was not to be. His part of that would have been destroyed by now.

Here, his striving was as ambitious (he knew it, Martinian, silent each time he looked, would know it) but it was entirely, profoundly, resolutely mortal in its scale.

And because of that, perhaps, it might last.

He didn't know. (How could a man know?) But here in this soft, kind light Crispin had set stones and glass for a year and a little more (summer again, the leaves dark green outside, bees in the wildflowers and the hedgerows) to leave something behind him when he died. Something that might tell those who came after that a certain Caius Crispus of Varena, son of Horius Crispus the mason, had lived, had been here on the god's earth for his allotted time and had known a little of human nature, and of art.

Gathered in this, he had passed a year. And there was nothing left to be done now. He had just finished the last thing, which no one had ever done in a mosaic before.

He was still on the rungs of a ladder beneath the northern wall, the one just done. He tugged at his beard, which was long again, as was his hair, not nearly as orderly as they ought to be for a man of wealth and distinction, but he'd been… occupied. He turned, a hand hooked through the ladder for balance, and looked across to the southern doors, at the arc of the wall above them, where he'd done the first of his two panels.

Not Jad. Not Heladikos. Nothing aspiring to holiness or faith. But there, in great and glittering splendour on the wall, in the carefully judged fall of light through the seasons and days (and there were brackets he'd hung himself, for lanterns in the night), were the Emperor of Sarantium, Valerius III, who had been Leontes the Golden, and his Empress, Gisel, who had sent the materials (tesserae like gems) and the promise that had set him free.

They were flanked by their court, but the work was done in such a way that only the two central figures were individually rendered, brought to vivid, golden life (and both of them were golden, their hair, their adornments, the gold in their robes). The courtiers, men and women, were hieratic, uniform, done after the old style, individual traits receding, only subtle differences of footwear and garb, stance and hair colour to offer a sense of movement for the eye, which was brought back, always, to the two figures at the centre. Leontes and Gisel, tall and young and magnificent, in the glory of their coronation day (which he had not seen, but that didn't matter, it didn't matter at all), preserved here (given life here) until the stones and glass fell or the building burned or the world ended. The lord of Emperors could come, would come, and age them, take them both away, but this could still be here.

That panel was done. He had made it first. It was… as he had wanted it to be.

He stepped down then, walked across the centre of the small chapel, where the god's altar had stood long ago, to the other side and stepped up on the ladder there, a few steps off the ground, and swung himself around and looked back at the northern wall from exactly the same perspective.

Another Emperor, another Empress, their court. Same colours, almost exactly. And an utterly different work, asserting something (for those who could look, and see) worlds apart, with love.

Valerius II, who had been Petrus of Trakesia in his youth, stood centred here, as Leontes was on the opposite wall, not tall, not golden at all, not young. Round-faced (as he had been), receding hair (as it had been), the wise, amused grey eyes gazing out upon Batiara, where the Empire had begun, the Empire he'd dreamed of reclaiming.

Beside him was his dancer.

And through tricks of line and light and glass and craft the watcher's eye would rest here upon Alixana, even more than upon the Emperor beside her, and find it difficult to leave. There is beauty, one might be made to think, and there is this, which is something more.

The gaze would move on, however (and come back), because around these two, for ages after to see them and see into them, were the men and women of this court, and here Crispin had done it differently.

This time each figure in the panel was unique in his rendering or hers. Stance, gesture, eyes, mouth. A hurried glance upon entering might see the two works as the same. A moment's pause would show them otherwise. Here, the Emperor and Empress were jewels within a crown of others, each of their attendants given their own brightness or shadow. And Crispin-their creator here, their lord-had set their names, in Sarantine, into the drapes and folds of their clothing, that those who came after might know: for naming, and so remembering, was at the heart of this for him.

Gesius, the aged Chancellor, pale as parchment, keen as a knife's edge; Leontes the Strategos (here, too, and so present on each wall); the Eastern Patriarch Zakarios, white of hair and beard, a sun disk in his long fingers. Beside the holy man (not by accident, there were no accidents here), a small, dark, muscular figure with a silver helmet, a brilliant blue tunic, and a whip in one hand. An even smaller figure, startlingly barefoot among the courtiers, had wide-open eyes and brown hair in comical disarray and the name written here was "Artibasos'.

There was a burly, black-haired, ruddy soldier next to Leontes, not as tall but broader of build, clad not as a courtier but in the colours of the Sauradian cavalry, an iron helmet under one arm. A thin, pale man was beside him (thinner and more pale with the craft of that proximity), sharp of feature, long of nose, watchful. An unsettling face, bitterness in his gaze as he looked towards the pair in the centre. His name was written on a rolled parchment he held.

To the other side were the women.

Nearest to and a little behind the Empress was a lady even taller than Gisel on the opposite wall, as golden, and-it could be said-even more fair, at least as seen by the one who had rendered them both. Arrogant in her stance and tilt of head, a fierce, uncompromising blue in her gaze. A single small ruby worn, oddly, about her throat. A hint of fire in it, but curious for its modesty, given the rest of her jewellery and the dazzle of gold and gems worn by the other ladies on the wall.

One of whom stood next to this golden one, less tall, dark hair showing beneath a green, soft cap, clad in a green robe and a jewelled belt. One could see laughter here, and grace in the way one hand curved up and outward in a gesture of the stage. Another dancer, you might conclude, even before reading the explanation of her name.

To the very edge of the scene, strangely situated on the womens" side of the composition, stood another man, a little detached from the court lady nearest him. He might have been called an afterthought if precision of design had not shown so plainly here. Instead, one might think him… out of place. But present. He was there. A big man, this one was, dressed entirely properly, though the silk of his garments draped a little awkwardly on his body. The anger that showed in him might perhaps have been caused by this.

He had red hair and was the only figure there shown with a beard, other than Zakarios, but this was not a holy man.

He was turned inward, looking towards the centre like the scribe, staring at the Emperor or Empress (difficult to tell which). Indeed, it could be observed, upon study of the elements here, that the line of this man's gaze was a balancing one, against that of the lean, thin-faced one on the other side of the panel, and that-perhaps-this was why he was where he was.

This red-haired figure, too, wore an ornament about his throat. (Only he and the tall, fair woman did.) A medallion of gold, with the letter C inscribed within it twice, interlocking. Whatever that might mean.

And this second work, too, was finished save for one small patch near the bottom, below the Emperor, where the smooth, grey-white mixture of the setting bed had received its tesserae just now, drying into place.

Crispin stood, suspended a little above the ground, and he looked at his work for a long time, suspended also, in a different way, in a moment difficult to sort through: the sense that he would be entirely done with this, finished forever, as soon as he stepped down from this ladder. He felt as if he were hovering in a timelessness before that happened and this labour and its achievement moved into the past, or the future, but would never again be now.

His heart was full. He thought of centuries of mosaic workers… here in Varena, in Sarantium, in Rhodias, or far to the south in lands across the sea, cities on coasts beyond Candaria, or eastward in ancient Trakesia, or in Sauradia (holy men with their gifts, bringing Jad into a chapel there, their names lost to silence)… all the makers unknown, gone, shrouded in vanished time, dead.

Their works (whatever works survived) a glory of the god's earth and his gift of light, the makers dimmer than shadows.

He looked at that place near the bottom where the tesserae were newly laid, still fixing themselves, and he saw the doubled C of his initials, matching the medallion he wore on the panel. Thinking of them, of all of them, lost or living or yet to come, he had signed his work upon the wall.

He heard a sound as the door opened quietly behind him. End of day, end of last day. Martinian, knowing how near he was to finishing, come to see. He hadn't told his friend, his teacher, about the signing of his name, the initials. It was a kind of gift, perhaps an overwhelming one for an emotional man who would know-better than anyone alive-the thoughts behind those two letters intertwined.

Crispin took a deep breath. It was time to come down again.

He stopped, however, and did not move. For with that taken breath he realized that it wasn't Martinian who had entered to stand behind him on the stone floor. He closed his eyes. Felt a tremor in the hand and arm holding him to the ladder.

A scent. Not ever to be mistaken. Two women in Sarantium had worn it once. No one else allowed. One as her own, the other as a gift, for her art, which was the same as the first's had been, ephemeral as dream, as life. What was the dancer when the dance was done?

Dead. Gone as the artisans" names were gone. Perhaps enduring, for others, after, in the image made here. But not moving and alive on Jad's earth. This was the world of mortal men and women, where certain things did not happen, even with zubirs, alchemist's birdsouls, the half-world hovering, love.

And Crispin knew that he would live in this world again, after all, that he could even embrace it in the years left to him before he, too, was called away. There were gifts, graces, compensations, deep and very real. One could even smile, in gratitude.

Without turning, still on the ladder, he said, "Hello, Shirin, my dear. Did Martinian tell you when to come in?"

And from behind him, then, as the world changes, changes utterly, he hears Alixana say, "Oh, dear. I am not wanted, after all."

Not wanted.

One can forget to breathe, can weep, for unworthiness.

And turn, too quickly, almost falling, a cry escaping from the heart's core, and look upon her face again, in life, a thing dreamt of in the long dark, not thought to be possible again.

She is looking up at him, and he sees that she (being what she is) has already read what is in his eyes, his wordless cry, if she hadn't already known it from her image on the opposite wall.

There is a silence as he looks at her and sees her gazing back at him, and then past and across, at what he has made of her above the doors to the north, and then back to where he stands upon the ladder above the ground, and she is alive and here, and he has been wrong, again, about what can happen in the world.

He says, "I thought you were dead."

"I know."

She looks at the wall again where he has placed her at the centre of all eyes, at the heart of light. Looks back at him, says, an unexpected trembling in her voice, "You made me… taller than I am."

He is looking into her eyes as she says it. Hears, beneath the simple words, what else she is telling him, a year and half a world away from her life.

"No I didn't," he says. It is difficult to speak. He is still shaking.

She is changed, could never be taken for an Empress now. A way to survive, of course, to cross land or sea. To come here. To where he is. And stand, looking up. Her dark hair is shorter, growing back in. She wears a traveller's robe of good make, dark brown, belted, a wide hood, thrown back. She has not attended (that he can see) to her lips or eyes or cheeks, wears no jewellery at all.

He can only just begin to imagine what this year has been for her.

He swallows hard. "My lady…"

"No," she says quickly. Lifts a hand. "I am not that. Here." She smiles faintly. "They believe I'm some disgraceful creature, out there."

"I'm not surprised," he manages to say.

"Come to lure you with eastern decadence."

He says nothing this time. Looks at her.

A year since she laid down her robe on a stony beach, lost a love more swiftly than to plague, laid down a life. There is an uncertainty now, a fragility, as she scans his face. He thinks of the rose in her room.

She murmurs, "I said on the island… that I trusted you."

He nods his head. "I remember. I didn't know why."

"I know you didn't. It was the second time I'd come for you."

"I know. When I first came. Why? Back then?"

She shakes her head. "I couldn't say. No clear reason. I expected you would finish your work and leave us."

He makes a wry face. He can do this. Enough time has passed. "Instead, I finished half my work and left you."

Her expression is grave. "It was taken from you. Sometimes half is all we are allowed. Everything we have can be taken away. I always knew that. But sometimes… people can be followed. Brought back down again?"

He is still trembling. "Three times? I am unworthy."

She shakes her head. "Who is ever worthy?"

"You?"

She smiles a little. Shakes her head again. Says, "I asked you how you went on living. After."

On the island, on the beach. In his dreams. "I couldn't even answer. I didn't know. I still don't. I was only half alive, though. Too bitter. It started to change in Sarantium. But even then I was… trying to stay away, by myself. Up there."

She nods this time. "Lured down by a decadent woman."

He looks at her. At Alixana. Standing here.

Can see her thinking, teasing out nuances. "Will I… make trouble for you?" she asks. Still that hesitance.

"I have no doubt of it." He tries to smile.

She is shaking her head again. A worried look. Gestures at the far wall. "No, I mean, people may know me, from this."

He takes a breath and lets it out. Understands, finally, that this hesitance is his to take away.

"Then we will go where they will not," he hears himself say.

She bites her lip. "You would do that?"

And he says, swept back into the rush and flow of time and the world, "You will be hard-pressed to think of what I will not do for you." He grips the ladder tightly. "Will it… be enough?"

Her expression changes. He watches it happen. She bites her lip again, but it means something else now. He knows, has seen that look before.

"Well," she says, in the voice he has never stopped hearing,'I still want dolphins."

He nods his head, as if judiciously. His heart is full of light.

She pauses. "And a child?"

He draws a breath and steps down off the scaffolding. She smiles.

Aut lux hie nata est, aut capta hic libera regnat. Light was either born here or, held captive, here reigns free.

-Inscription in Ravenna, among the mosaics

I think that if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. I think I could find in some little wine-shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him…

W. B. Yeats, A Vision