He steadied the secretary with a hand on his elbow. They trudged on, close as cousins, as brothers, clad in white under the white moon. At intervals, out of the corner of his eye, Crispin saw tongues of flame flicker and vanish along the streets. You always saw those at night in Sarantium; one even commented on it after they'd spent any time in the City. A little later, as they passed behind the Sanctuary and turned up the wide street that would bring them to the secretary's rooms, they saw a sumptuous litter appear in front of them, its curtains closed. They both knew where they were, however, and who, almost certainly, would be inside.

Neither man commented, though Pertennius took a sudden deep breath of the cold night air and straightened his shoulders, walking a few steps alone with an exaggerated gravity, before stumbling again and accepting Crispin's guiding hand. They passed a watchman of the Urban Prefecture and nodded gravely to him: two inebriated men, out later than was safe, but well dressed, suited to this neighbourhood. Ahead, they saw the litter turn into a torchlit courtyard as servants swung open the gates and then closed them quickly.

The blue moon was up now above the houses, a crescent. A faint white line of flame appeared to run right across a laneway where it met the wide street and then it disappeared.

"Must come in!" Pertennius of Eubulus said as they went past the massive stone house and the barred gates where the litter had been admitted and came to his door. "A chance to converse. Away from the street crowd, the soldiers. Actors. Uneducated rabble."

"Oh, no," Crispin demurred. He achieved a smile. There was something sourly amusing about the man taking that tone in his current state. "We both need sleep, friend." He was feeling his own wine now, and other things. A restlessness of spring. Night. A wedding. The presence of the past. This wasn't the person he wanted to be with now. He didn't know who was.

'Must!" the secretary insisted. "Talk to you. My own task. Write about the Emperor's buildings, the Sanctuary. Your work. Questions! Why a bison? Those women? On the dome? Why so much of… of you, Rhodian?" The gaze, in moonlight, was direct for a disconcerting instant, could almost have been called lucid.

Crispin blinked. More here than he'd expected, from the man, from the moment. After a long hesitation, and with a mental shrug, he went to the door with Leontes's secretary and entered when a servant admitted them. Pertennius stumbled on his own threshold, but then led him heavily up a flight of stairs. Crispin heard the door being closed below Behind them in the night streets of the City, flames appeared and disappeared as they always did, seen or unseen, unlit by any taper or spark unfathomable as the moonlit sea or the desires of men and women between their birth and dying.

The first thing Gisel came to understand, as she and the Strategos and his exquisitely haughty wife entered the presence of the Emperor and Empress of Sarantium, was that they were expected. She was not supposed to realize that, she knew. They wanted her to believe that Leontes's impulsive action in inviting her had taken Valerius and Alixana by surprise here. She was to labour under this misapprehension, feel emboldened, make mistakes. But she had lived in a court all her life and whatever these arrogant easterners might believe about the Antae in Batiara, there were as many similarities as there were differences between her own palace complex in Varena and the Imperial Precinct here.

Weighing alternatives quickly as the musician lowered his instrument and the Emperor and a very small gathering of companions turned to her, Gisel elected to offer a full, formal salutation, brushing the floor with her forehead. Valerius-smooth-cheeked, bland, genial of expression- looked at Leontes and then back to Gisel as she rose. His mouth curved in a hesitant welcome. Alixana, in a low-backed ivory chair, dressed in deep red and adorned with jewellery, offered an entirely gracious smile.

And it was the ease of this on both their parts, the effortless deception done together, that made Gisel suddenly afraid, as if the walls of this warm room had given way to reveal the vast, cold sea beyond.

She had sent an artisan here half a year ago with an offer of marriage for this man. The woman, the Empress, knew of it. The artisan had told her about that. They had both anticipated-or deduced it- Caius Crispus said, before he had even spoken with them. She believed him. Seeing them now, the Emperor feigning surprise, Alixana offering the illusion of full welcome, she believed him implicitly.

"Forgive us, thrice-exalted, this unplanned intrusion," said Leontes briskly. "It is royalty I bring you, the queen of the Antae. It is past time, in my view, she was here among us. I will accept any fault attached to this."

His manner was blunt and direct. No trace of the suave, courtly pacing and tone he'd revealed in the dancer's home. But he had to know this was no surprise, didn't he? Or was she wrong about that? Gisel stole a quick glance at Styliane Daleina: nothing to be read in those features.

The Emperor gestured in a distracted way, and servants hastened to offer seats to the two women. Styliane smiled a little to herself, holding a private amusement close, as she crossed the room and accepted a cup of wine and a chair.

Gisel also sat down. She was looking at the Empress. Doing so, she felt a faint but very real horror at her own folly of the year before. She had proposed that this woman-old, childless, surely worn out and tiresome by now-might be expendable.

Folly was not, really, an adequate word. Alixana of Sarantium, polished and smooth as a pearl, glittered with light where it reflected from her jewels and found her dark eyes. There was amusement there too, but of a very different sort from what could be seen in the Strategos's wife.

"No intrusion, Leontes," she murmured now, speaking first. Her voice was low, honeyed, calm. "You honour us, of course, all three of you. You have come from a wedding, I see. Will you take wine and share some further music here and then tell us about it?"

"Please," said Valerius II earnestly, Emperor of half the world. "Regard yourselves as invited and honoured guests!"

They were perfect, the two of them. Gisel made her decision.

Ignoring an offered cup, she rose smoothly from her seat, clasped her hinds before her and murmured, "The Emperor and Empress are far too good. They even allow me the flattering illusion that this visit was unanticipated. As if anything that transpires in great Sarantium could possibly pass unnoticed by their all-seeing eyes. I am deeply grateful for this courtesy."

She saw the thin, aged Chancellor Gesius look suddenly thoughtful where he sat warming himself near the fire. There were only five other quests here, all superbly dressed and barbered men, and the balding, plump musician. Leontes looked irate suddenly, even though he'd surely have had to be the one who'd warned Valerius they were coming. Styliane was smiling again, behind her wine cup and her rings.

Valerius and Alixana laughed aloud. Both of them.

"And so we learn our lesson," the Emperor said, a hand rubbing at his soft chin. "Like impish children caught out by their tutor. Rhodias is older than Sarantium, the west came long before the east, and the queen of the Antae, who was daughter to a king before she ruled in her own name, was always likely to be aware of courtly practices."

"You are clever and beautiful, child," said Alixana. "A daughter such as I might wish to have had."

Gisel drew a breath. There could not possibly be anything sincere in this, but the woman had just casually drawn attention to their ages, her own childlessness, Gisel's appearance.